Paul and Mel's UK

Friday, May 09, 2008

I can see clearly now ...

Phew! What a week. It's been crazy-busy for me this week. Monday was a public holiday so Paul and I went with S&M to a gorgeous country pub for lunch. The weather has been beautiful so we got to sit outside in the beer garden eating our meals, watching kids play and bumble bees fly.

On Tues I was in Edinburgh and Wed and Thur in Copenhagen. Whirlwind tours.

Today I spent the morning in the office and then in the afternoon got my Lasik Eye Surgery done. The surgery was at 2:30pm and it's now almost just midnight and I can see just fine. The surgery itself didn't hurt, it was just very wierd. The clamp on my eyes was extremely uncomfortable and it was a little disconcerting having a suction thingy put on my eye, but other than that, it was just fine.

I went straight to sleep after getting home (with these gorgeous eye goggles on so I don't bump my eyes during the sleep and dislodge me unhealed, unattached cornea) and now I have drops that I need to put in for the next 7 days. But waa laa! That's it. All done.

It's too early to tell but so far ... I recommend it.

Monday, May 05, 2008

M & A's Awesome Austrian Adventure

Pics live here.

Enjoy.

Sunday, May 04, 2008

The pitter patter of tiny feet

And before you get too excited (mum!) it's not exactly what you think.

We have issues. Serious serious issues in our little house in Southfields. Paul and I are reasonably house-proud individuals, me more so than him and at the moment we're feeling kinda yucky about living here.

As you know, we live on the first floor and in the loft of a converted Victorian house and up until recently we've really loved living here. It's not the coolest place on the block - think blue carpet, yellow walls, daggy rust-red couch and green tiles in the kitchen - but it's clean and homely and big enough for us to hang out in all day without bumping into each other (important!).

But lately things haven't been so nice. Paul found a mushroom growing in our entrance way and it turns out we've got dry rot under the floor boards on the ground level. This is going to be fixed by someone coming in, pulling up all the floorboards in the entry and getting a humidifier in to dry up underneath. This could take weeks and meanwhile we will have an area at the entrance to our house that is completely exposed to the ground underneath - not ideal.

Well, it gets worse. I was in the kitchen last Sunday afternoon making a cup of tea when I noticed that the floor looked kinda swollen and when you stepped on it, it was squishy. I called Paul in (interrupted him playing his music - not happy) to confirm my fears and he proceeded to pull the dishwasher and washing machine out from underneath the bench top to see what was leaking - we found a bit of water but to our absolute horror also found MOUSE POO!

Eeooow!

So we spent the best part of last Sunday evening setting poison, plugging up holes with steel wool, bleaching everything we could possibly think of that may have come into contact with ungodly rodents and dry-heaving!

The landlord came to visit on Friday to investigate and the flooring under our lino in the kitchen is saturated (I don't think they connected the dishwasher properly) so the lino has been ripped up and we are attempting to dry out the floor. Our kitchen now looks like this ... The plastic bags around the dishwasher and washing machine are Paul's attempt at trying to ensure that mousey-mousey doesn't venture into our territory (he heard something squeaking last night so said poison clearly hasn't kicked in yet).

There goes my cooking mojo.