The Maternity Ward visit

Well that went well, and a lot quicker than I expected.

It was all about doing a reccie of the ward, get an idea where everything is, you know drinks machine, paper shop, the important stuff.  Oh, and where the baby would be delivered.

Turns out they have three different types of room, depending on how easy the labour is, and whether there are any complications.  Surely the whole birth thing is quite complicated as it is, although we now know which room we don’t want to be in as it’ll mean something’s gone tits up.  It’s the one with the most monitors and apparatus, scary place!

Thing is, it’s all very well and good doing this kind of visit, but I have a feeling my powers of intuition and memory may go out the window when it all starts.  My memory isn’t the best when I’m calm and settled!

The one lasting point that has already stuck in my mind is the heating.  Now I know they turn up the heat in hospitals, but this was bloody ridiculous.  Imagine really dry heat which you can’t get away from. Sahara without the sand and camels almost.  I’ve got a ruddy headache from it now, and we were only in there for about 40 minutes.

Here’s a thought, next time I make that journey, it’ll be for real!

It really is anytime now!

My wife went for her latest Midwife visit yesterday, and I’m glad to report that everything is going ok.   Although two things worried me slightly.

1. The midwife apparently wasn’t 100% sure which way up the baby was facing.  Now this is quite critical.  Head down, relatively fine; head up…oh boy!  So now we’re both having that minor doubt that maybe that hard lump that we thought was baby’s backside, is infact it’s cranium.
2. Assuming that it is the right way around, the midwife also stated that she thought the baby could be coming early.  Current due date is 2nd November, which potentially means a Halloween baby.

Oh yes, I really want a child born on the day of the devil!  Although the true meaning of Halloween isn’t quite like that.  Thank you Wikipedia, you’ve saved me from typing it out!

Either way, it’s still a bit creepy.  Flashbacks of a certain Only Fools and Horses episode don’t help.

So the waiting begins.

Electricity hates me!

More precisely, electrical items hate me.

A new oven has been ordered and is on the way for tomorrow hopefully so I get to be an engineer and install it.  That is, hack out a piece of the sideboard big enough to feed a standard three pin plug through, plug into socket, screw oven into place, done.  It may have ended up costing us over twice what we were expecting but a new oven is better than a potential fire hazard.

All well and good, but now two light fittings have blown their fuses.  I’m starting to feel like an outcast for Heroes who’s power to blow a 13 amp fuse without doing anything wasn’t quite enough to be kept off the cutting room floor.

Pressure is on this week at work as I now have to have a fully working version of the departments new internal website by Friday.  That includes gaping holes of information that the team are used to with the old system, never mind not even getting near implementing the new stuff that needs to go in.

What the boss wants, the boss gets, but it’s going to feel like a bit of a half-arsed effort. Frankly I feel quite embarresed to release it to the team in its current state, but on the up side I’ll get some unwitting bug testing done when it goes live.

Speaking of which, I have a ton of links to check.

TTFN

Beer and ovens

Or should that be lack of beer, and knackered oven.

In the past week I have actually managed to keep to my temporary ‘no beer’ rule, bar one pint of Old Speckled Hen with a meal at our local pub when I was ‘allowed’ it. :p  Good god that tasted good…

I’m even managing avoiding the temptation of warm beer from the box of Stella in our garage.  The saving grace is our old sofa and armchair, along with an amalgamation of junk, blocking a swift scavenging run to said box.

Besides sounding like an alcoholic, it actually isn’t that hard to go without the old tipple.  I do miss it of an evening with a film, good food, or on Live, but it’s hardly a life or death thing.  Plus I do feel better knowing that should Claire’s labour start in waking hours I’ll at least be completely sober to take up ambulance duties to the hospital.

At least, that’s what I keep telling myself when the Stella calls!

Weekend was good.  Watching Leeds Rhinos win the Super League Final and England just about brush off the French was a superb Saturday night.

However, yesterday (Sunday) our oven decided to be a bastard and die on us.  So Claire calls out an engineer to get an idea of how much this is going to cost us.  It wasn’t heating up, so I thought a new element would cure it.  Ooooh no!

Turns out, the bottom of the oven had somehow dropped, knocking some electrical connections, causing a spark and shorting the circuit.  The words ‘hazard’ and ‘fire’ were mentioned in some order and as such we now have a gaping hole were the cooker once sat after the guy removed it for us.  If you call un-doing four screws and unplugging a standard three pin plug removal! New cooker here we come, just when we really can’t afford it.

But isn’t that always the sodding way!?

RIP my Twitter account

After not using Twitter for the last three or four months, I’ve finally taken the time to just delete it all together.  It just has no real relevance to me personally anymore.

Sure, it’s a quick, convenient way to blog about what I’m doing, when I’m doing it (oo-er), but the reality is I can’t be arsed to write a sentence about what I’m doing, when I’m doing it; because I’m bloody well doing it!  If I want to blog about something, I’ll write it here with more explanation, or drop it on the Consoles & Conkers forum, or email someone, or call them, grab them over Live etc. etc.

Did that make sense?

On another unrelated note, I’ve just returned to work today after a week off.  A week that was probably the last amount of leisure time that my wife and I would spend together as a couple, what with Junoir being due on 2nd November.

The next holiday from work will be Paternity leave (of which I have three weeks), and that’s hardly going to be a holiday.  More a journey of abject discovery as the two of us try to get our heads around the presence of this small third person in the house.  It’s all exciting and daunting in equal measure!

Can’t say I’m ready, but then I doubt I would be even with years of getting ready for the new arrival.  As Phil said to me not long ago, it’s all about on the job training that never stops.

Also, a quick congrats to Paul, Gem and the kids for their house move last week. It’s been a long time coming and I’m really glad that you guys have got somewhere more suitable for you all!  So that house warming……