Bramble On!

This might get a bit random...I'm sort of writing this post in bits as I tidy up and get myself sorted out for the week. Plus, I'm feeling a bit fragmented anyway.

So. #1, the Acer's pretty much sorted. I'm happy enough with the following: gthumb for photo management (gimp for heavy editing), VLC for video playback, Audacious (a WinAmp clone I've used in the past) for music, Stellarium for geeking at the heavens, XChat for IRC (getting and giving tips/advice), VNC to remote control the mac/tv....Doom (I've yet to figure out what's up with Quake3) and various kid games...yadda yadda yadda. I'm more than chuffed. It roolz!

And it proved a talking point today also.

I should explain. Today was the belated joint celebration of Roise and Uncle Laur's birthdays. A huge portion of the "Rosie-side" of the family (as | think of it) and I went for lunch in a lovely pub just outside Bristol. This involved: Ian (Grandad3 as I, perhaps unkindly, think of him), Uncle Laur and girlfriend Logs, Flo and me in one car + Rose, Es, Baboo and Rose's boyfriend in another and Great Aunt Kathleen (she'll hate being called that I imagine) on her bike.

It was a really lovely afternoon, despite the uppity waitress with our puddings, the strange "sauce tray waitress" who would/could not leave her sauces unattended and the occasional piercing wail from Flo whenever something completely harmless (but obviously truly devastating in her mind) happened. Viz: falling over a molehill, someone bursting a balloon etc....the pub had a lovely garden and all the kids seem to mingle well. Most of the time. Well, sometimes....

The adults where basically completely unorganised. I mean that in a nice way....There were also about 6 billion digital cameras knocking around and all in almost constant use. I kept my 8 MegaPixel phone quiet (and also the 5 Meg samsung) and took a quiet shot of Flo singing a song about her balloon (which she later demanded to "pop by jumping"). Kids are fucking weird!


We went for an unexpectedly muddy walk for the rest of the afternoon and got occasionally brambled to boot.

Yesterday, Flo and I went for trip on the little train and stopped at "the caffffff" for a juice and a biscuit before going to the museum for a while and then having a (very delicious) pizza. She spent a lot of time on my shoulders being "Prince Atchitaka riding Hearku" because her new shoes were rubbing a bit. Apparently, when I am Hearku I am not allowed to talk or neigh. That said, my random neighing had been freaking out other passers-by....


I bask in my non-nuclear family...wait, does that mean it's particle physics again? If so, I'm teh anti-neutrino....you can be a strange quark.