Snow and Christmas
The snow is back with vengeance! We had a good downpour of it from late November up until about maybe a week and a half ago, but lately it's been reasonably mild (i.e. 4 degrees Celsius (39F) with a wind chill factor bringing it lower than that, which isn't exactly mild!), but the past day or so just before the new cold front moved in, the chill has been noticeable. It's 10am and it's only -3C (26F) at the moment. Apparently the wind chill is bringing that down to around -10C (14F), even -15C (5F) in parts of Northern Ireland. And there is about 2-3 inches of snow in the city centre. I know where my parents live (30 miles north of here in a town away from the sea and in more of a country area) they've gotten a lot more than that.
As usual, the country can't cope! You'd think that for a couple of islands in line with Moscow and only kept temperate thanks to the South Western ocean currents, we'd be a little better at it, but give us Brits/Irish a bit of cold weather and snow, and we shut down! I'm sure any Americans currently caught up in the chill over there would laugh at our measly temperatures and snow fall. But then we're the same when we get a heatwave :D
I do hope we still have snow over next weekend, though. I plan to be stuck in the house a fair few days, so I don't care how bad it is outside - well, as long as the heating doesn't break down...
Other than weather, I've just been spazzing lately. I've had so much work needing wrapped up by my holidays (24th December - 2nd January inclusive) that I've been panicking to get it done. Luckily most of it is wrapped now, just a few things to finish off, and some other things I've on hold for as I'm waiting for clients to get back to me. At least it means December and January should be very nice in terms of income.
But it has meant that sorting out Christmas has been a stress-fest. And with the weather making the already bogged down postal service even worse, everything had to be ordered earlier than normal as most presents were coming from shops online. Still waiting on a few things as things that tend to take 3 days have been taking more than a week in some cases. Hell, even next day delivery has often meant day after tomorrow. But everything is almost set. I even have most presents wrapped.
We were even able to sort out the DS. My mum loves old style games, and after stealing the iPad (this is a woman who only uses the computer to talk to her niece in London!) to play Solitaire and Pacman the last time she was up, she was lamenting over the death of her old Gameboy. So we've been hankering over getting a new DS to replace our original one for a while and decided to do so in order to give her our one. Thankfully after not being happy with the prices of second-hand DSLites, most shops brought a deal in where it was only going to be about £30-40 more to go from a second-hand DSLite to a new DSi. So I've got mum a bunch of games to go with it. Also knitting a scarf for my niece, which has hopefully arrived. Probably just going to give her and her parents a gift voucher as I'm not sure what else to get them and it's just not going to arrive on time now with the weather problems.
So as long as the Sainsbury's grocery order is able to get here on Monday, everything will be grand! And if it doesn't with the weather, we have three days to get the stuff in town if the worst happens.
As usual, the country can't cope! You'd think that for a couple of islands in line with Moscow and only kept temperate thanks to the South Western ocean currents, we'd be a little better at it, but give us Brits/Irish a bit of cold weather and snow, and we shut down! I'm sure any Americans currently caught up in the chill over there would laugh at our measly temperatures and snow fall. But then we're the same when we get a heatwave :D
I do hope we still have snow over next weekend, though. I plan to be stuck in the house a fair few days, so I don't care how bad it is outside - well, as long as the heating doesn't break down...
Other than weather, I've just been spazzing lately. I've had so much work needing wrapped up by my holidays (24th December - 2nd January inclusive) that I've been panicking to get it done. Luckily most of it is wrapped now, just a few things to finish off, and some other things I've on hold for as I'm waiting for clients to get back to me. At least it means December and January should be very nice in terms of income.
But it has meant that sorting out Christmas has been a stress-fest. And with the weather making the already bogged down postal service even worse, everything had to be ordered earlier than normal as most presents were coming from shops online. Still waiting on a few things as things that tend to take 3 days have been taking more than a week in some cases. Hell, even next day delivery has often meant day after tomorrow. But everything is almost set. I even have most presents wrapped.
We were even able to sort out the DS. My mum loves old style games, and after stealing the iPad (this is a woman who only uses the computer to talk to her niece in London!) to play Solitaire and Pacman the last time she was up, she was lamenting over the death of her old Gameboy. So we've been hankering over getting a new DS to replace our original one for a while and decided to do so in order to give her our one. Thankfully after not being happy with the prices of second-hand DSLites, most shops brought a deal in where it was only going to be about £30-40 more to go from a second-hand DSLite to a new DSi. So I've got mum a bunch of games to go with it. Also knitting a scarf for my niece, which has hopefully arrived. Probably just going to give her and her parents a gift voucher as I'm not sure what else to get them and it's just not going to arrive on time now with the weather problems.
So as long as the Sainsbury's grocery order is able to get here on Monday, everything will be grand! And if it doesn't with the weather, we have three days to get the stuff in town if the worst happens.