Amusement

New car!

Wii fit update

"I haven't seen Keith in quite a while," said the Wii Fit yesterday, while Keith was in the room. Poor little blind Wii.

Anyway, after just over a month of playing Wii Fit, here's the routine I've moved on to:

6 minutes of hula hoop
4 minutes of running on the spot
30 minutes of step
10 minutes of running around the living room (I say "running", sometimes it's little more than shuffling)
10 minutes of boxing

I'm sure I'm doing myself some damage somewhere. Oh well. 40 more years to find out!

Much news

In brief:

Mister Monkey and I attended the Tom Waits extravaganza in Dublin's tent city. It was a magnificent gig, but did little to dispel the idea that people are idiots. Someone brought their baby along, which we discovered when it started crying loudly, and there seemed to be a lot of the IFI phenomenon of blokes trying to watch the gig while their accompanying womenfolk were texting their mates or trying to talk to their bloke because they were bored shitless and don't like Tom Waits (or, in the case of the IFI, whichever classic western happens to be on). Otherwise, fantastic.

Then, on Sunday, R&D and the kids came for a visit. A lot of Wii was played and some people were humiliated by their five year old sons. I'm not naming any names. We also had a visit to the beach where it wasn't exactly nice, but it wasn't completely pissing down with rain, so A ran into the water, got soaked inside two seconds, and whipped his kecks off for a good run up and down. D and I discussed the morality of photographing other people's kids when they are in this state, and we came to the conclusion that it's all a bit of a minefield.

L did a lot of screaming all day long. I encouraged her by screaming back. We had a good time.

HOWEVER! While we were in the living room having a great time and playing Wii and screaming at each other, Woody Chops was out in the kitchen figuring out how to get into the press where his food is kept. Having worked out how to open the door, he then proceeded to gorge himself until he took on the look of an Indian cow or some other animal that is thin all over with a massively distended stomach. We didn't realise what he'd done; we thought he had BLOAT, which is very dangerous for dogs, because it can lead to TORSION and DEATH. So we called the vet at 11pm and rushed him up to the surgery, where he was knocked out (I don't recommend holding your dog in your arms while he's put under a general anesthetic. The sudden slump is unbearably upsetting), and a garden hose was rammed into his gullet, through which he was fed liquid paraffin and water. It all got very messy, with me at the very messy end, holding his tail and keeping a bowl under his bum. It was Monday evening before his stomach was really back to its proper size, but by then he'd forgotten the whole incident and was trying to gnaw our arms off because he was dying of starvation. When questioned by the vet on Tuesday morning, Woody admitted that he had learned nothing from the adventure and would still eat all things if the opportunity arose. We will be baby-proofing the food press from now on.

This was all most unfortunate, because a nice man came to visit us on Monday with a view to giving Woody a home. I think, in our heart of hearts, we were a little conflicted about this man, and were almost hoping we would get a bad vibe off him so we could refuse to give him our precious baby, but he was very nice and Woody seemed to like him. In that he tried to put the man's whole fist in his mouth, which is the Woody sign of approval, and the man didn't care that Woody was all greasy from the paraffin and clearly a bit mental. If the man's homecheck goes okay and he still wants to take Woody, well, he will be taking him soon.

In among all this, I have started my cognitive behavioral therapy. The lady is very nice, even if she does believe that a person's "energy" actually comes off them as physical heat (sure thing, lady!) and the therapy seems to be doing me some good. I even went into Dublin last night to go to the pub. Even more shocking, several of the people I was meeting in the pub were people I have not met before! And, Mister Monkey did not come with me! And, the pub was particularly packed because James May and Oz Clarke were there with a film crew filming stuff for the BBC! So it was your basic Friday night disaster waiting to happen. But I went anyway. What is more, I had a good time.

That is all my news. I hope that you have also had a pleasant week, filled with incident.

Ace of Spies update

Do you have UKTV Drama on your telly? Then you can join the Reilly Ace of Spies fun this weekend. They're repeating the series again from Saturday, 7pm.

Now we can catch the first three episodes, which we missed last time.

Hooray!