Limp Biscuit

Due to the piano incident, I am walking with a limp. This makes me feel even more Cornish than usual as most Cornish people have some problems walking. I don't know if it is due to on breeding or industrial accidents, or perhaps too many years spent underground mioning, but a lot of Cornish people have limps. I was once in a coffee shop in Bodmin which overlooks the main street, and as I looked out at all the people doing their daily business I couldn't help but notice that all of them had limps.

So I am sat here eating biscuits, and typing this. Not all bad you know.

It's been a Dell of a day

The US and the UK have different Mothering Sunday, which caused me to get into a lot of trouble with my mother when I missed the UK’s. The US had theirs this Sunday passed, so I redeemed myself by sending flowers to her.

We had an interesting day here; we went to breakfast and then Jen spent the rest of the day shouting at Dell’s desktop support. You see we bought a new computer which has the all singing and dancing Window’s Vista on it. However, Window’s vista isn’t compatible with our MP3 players. My understanding is that this affects all MP3 players in some way, but out MP# player is Dell. So Dell has supplied a PC that they knew would not support out Dell software. Upon calling the desktop support we got given an answer to install a new driver. When this didn’t work we called back and were told that we shouldn’t have installed that driver, that we should take it off, and the 3rd time we called we had to have the system reset as updating the drivers had messed up the whole computer.

A lovely, relaxing Mothering Sunday for Jen.

We're leaving on a jet plane

..not for a while but we have finally bought our tickets, and not moment too soon as we opened our last bottle of HP sauce last night. Hopefully there will be enough left to last until July when we fly over.

We are all excited about the trip (although Ellie's so excited she wets her pants) and I am looking forward to showing the girls my home country. There wil be so much to see and do that I am not sure that 2 weeks is long enough, but my work 9and my wallet) won't let us stay longer.

We hope to catch up with everyone in the Uk, that we know so if you read this, drop me an email and we can catch up at some point.

Marshy boy turns 32

Hope you had a good birthday Marshy. 32 wow you are old.

Let's talk about growth

Ellie's growth to be precise. We had our 1st appointment with her new pediatrician. We will skate over the fact that it took the insurance company nearly 2 months to approve this transfer, and instead focus on how well she is doing. She is now up to a whopping 11lbs 5oz, which is the 5th percentile on the chart. This is the 1st time that she has been on the chart since her birth weight, so we were very excited. Her head is in the 10th percentile (can't imagine where she get's her big head from) and her length is also in the 5th percentile. So she is doing really well. New photo's to come soon.

baby, baby

The move continues without my much needed help. But other exciting things are happing. Our friends the Jackson’s have had their 3rd child. This time it’s a boy to add to William and Amber and so Benjamin Joshua was healthily to two happy but tired parents. I have asked Stuart if it ever gets easier, but so far he is yet to respond.

And the baby news just keeps on coming, Caroline and Douglas are also pregnant with Caroline due in November. Congratulations to them both.

We are still waiting for new on Jurg and Amanda’s baby which is due anytime now. Good luck Amanda and Jurg remember the things she calls you during labour are not heartfelt.

The Piano Man

No picture of the real incident yet, so for illustration purposes please imagine this piano being dropped on your foot. This is what happened to me yesterday.

We are in the throes of moving house, and have been shifting boxes all week. This weekend it came to moving the big stuff, including Jen's piano. We tried to move it (we being 3 of us), only for it to slip and come crashing down on my toe.

I have had problems with my toe for a while now and it was one of the reasons I stopped playing rugby. I had gone to see the doctor about my foot 3 weeks ago and she had ordered that I get an X-ray done, but as of yet I hadn't done anything. Well yesterday I finally got my X-ray. After the piano was dropped I continued loading furniture, and got in the truck to go to our new house.

We stopped at a red light only to be hit by a car from behind, the driver apparently not paying attention. As I got out of the truck to inspect the damage my foot seemed to have swollen to twice it's size, so it was decided that I should go to casualty (or as the Americans say ER). Now my last experience of ER was with Ellie and there were the usual clots with nails through their head from a DIY incident or drunks who had got into a fight. Yet yesterday there was no one waiting and I was admitted the moment I filled out the paperwork.

They took an X-ray - it is not fractured just very badly bruised, and in order for it to heal quicker they have put a splint on me and I have some crutches to use. Nice. The only upside of the whole affair is that I can no sit an type this while everyone else moves my stuff for me, although I really wouldn't recommend doing this to yourself as it hurts like HELL.

So not the best of days yesterday, but we are nearly (and by we I mean everyone else) finished. Once I find the camera (and by I, I mean my wife) I'll get a snap and put it up here so you can share my misery.

Cinco de Mayo

Today at work we had a Cinco de Mayo celebration. Now if like me you have never heard of Cinco de Mayo let me explain. This is a National Mexican holiday which celebrates the defeat of the French in Mexico by General Serpione. It is also widely celebrated in the US, particularly in States that border Mexico. There are 2 reasons for this, the first being that there are a lot of Hispanic people here in California, and the 2nd reason is that Americans love an excuse to eat and or shop. All of their celebrations are around eating and shopping, Thanksgiving is a huge glut of food, and when the Turkey is done the next day is the biggest shopping day of the year.

But like Thanksgiving most Americans that I speak to have no real idea or concept of what it is really about. They know that Independence Day is when they “whipped your limey ass” but they don’t know the ins and outs of the war of independence, few of them remember how much the French helped them in that war. Few can really talk deeply about the real reason for Thanksgiving, and few see the irony of giving thanks to the Native American who in return they almost wiped out. And Cinco de Mayo (Fifth of May in Spanish) few if any know why it is celebrated, and even fewer realize just how it helped the US survive as a country. The battle of Puebla should be celebrated in the US because the French forces that were involved not only wanted to take Mexico but were looking to take advantage of the US Civil War and take huge tracts of land by coming up through Mexico. The fact that they were routed and slowed down by the Mexicans saved the Union forces from having to fight another enemy, and concentrate their forces on the confederates.

So I enjoyed my chicken and bean dinner and told my colleagues why we were doing it, but they didn’t care, they just wanted to eat, go shopping tomorrow and perhaps crack open a Corona – come to think of it maybe they have the right idea.

ELO?

I found this picture on our Intranet site, as an example of people working together. Does this not look like a Prog rock group in the 1970’s?

Brit Pop

BBC America (the channel of choice in the Burr household) has been showing some interesting music shows over the last few week. There was one on The beatles (we missed that one for obvious reasons), there was one on the Rolling Stones which was interesting, there was one about Top of the Pops which was entertaining for the hair styles alone, and there was one about Tom Jones which was educational for Jen.

The last 2 episodes were a huge disappointment though. The penultimate one was about Brit Pop, and “how it changed the world as we know it”. It was embarrsing to see a succession of British journalist’s and social commentators (the normal array of second rate comedians you get on these shows) claim that Brit Pop changed the face of pop music in the world, how the best band in the world were oasis at this time, and how Brit Pop was a massive political statement/movement.

Now maybe I have forgotten most of that time, but I seem to remember that Parklife was the modern day equivalent of Come On Eileen by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, with huge groups of students dancing in a circle kicking their legs out. I remember the terrible lyrics that Oasis came up with (She’s Electric is a classic example of poor lyrics – “She’s got a cousin, in fact she’s got about a dozen” anyone?), and I remember how Pulp’s Different Class album was a call to all ugly people everywhere that there was someone who was just like you. I do not remember massive political statements. And apart from a small handful of bands, does anyone listen to or even care about the music that came out of that time? When was the last time you listened to the entire Blur Parklife album? When was the last time anyone listened to Shed 7, Elastica, Gay Dad, The Bluetones? There were some truly awful groups who were pulled into the Brit Pop movement.
As I was sat there with jen there was just a long lit of groups that had never done anything since 1997. Now I don’t dispute that some of these groups wrote great songs. Wonderwall by Oasis is a sheer classic song. But apart form that song are there many others that would make your top 50 songs? Comments are as always more than welcome.

The final show was the Brit Awards which were held in February, but we only just got. Now it may be that I am now too old for this sort of thing, and I’ll be honest the Brits were never my favourite since they have never really been in tune with my musical tastes, but this year’s seem worse than at any time I can remember. I have no idea who the host was, but he was awful, it was like a 2007 version of Julian Clary but with out the humour and with added hair. And the bands I had no idea about, and Oasis getting lifetime achievement award was surely a cunning joke that I failed to get.

To recover I had to listen to all my Bowie albums in chronological order. Ahh that’s better.

May I continue?

Ok so April saw me not do too much with the blog, but I am going to try and keep it more updated going forward. So much seemed to happen, yet if I try and recount a funny story or incident there are none. Maybe my life from now on is going to be incident and humour free? Let’s hope so.

Ellie is slowly sleeping for longer stretches in the night, although last night she did wake up at 4am and then not go back to sleep, but maybe that is because we spent the night in our new home. We have moved closer to my workplace, and although still renting this place has access to a pool, gym and tennis courts. All of which I pretend I will take advantage of and then do nothing with.

Jen and I have been so tired recently that when we celebrated our wedding anniversary we decided that we weren’t going to go out but instead have a Chinese take away and watch a DVD. We watched The Holiday with Jude law, Kate Winslet, Cameron Diaz and Jack Black. It was very enjoyable.

Anyway more soon I promise. Expect to read some hilarious capers in the coming weeks as we try and move all of our stuff into out new apartment!