Be Excellent To Each Other

Can you give him a dry slap please, Ange.

For the first time since we moved, we have proper, on demand hot water.

It's ace. Don't take it for granted, folks. It's a privilege, not a right

To the privileges dude

Mrs T has a new job! She is now a New Product Development Technician at "the UK’s leading supplier of home baking, cooking and healthy snacking products".

Well done MrsT!

Did you get a decent price for the mud hut you moved out of?

Awesome!

Yay...just got an e-mail to say I have won a t-shirt from Philosophy Football in a competition I'd forgotten I'd entered.

Yay! I've just been asked to play drums for someones demo.

The government have given the money to renew the sea wall behind our house. Fuckers had to do something right eventually I guess.

Right now it looks like the Berlin Wall and is all broken and stuff, there was a massive flood here back in the 70s and it's always a worry that it'll happen again. It's going to be all landscaped and pretty looking too. Quite chuffed.

woot belayed by a few hours - The company did well, so I got almost the full amount of my bonus percentage. Boss told me what it was, and I was slightly puzzled as it amounted to more than my allotted bonus percentage, and it turns out he'd been so chuffed with me he'd bumped my bonus up. Huzzah!

I can see a quadcopter in my near future.

I received a cheque today from Orange from my last contract.

£1.74.

Sorry about that - surprised it got as far as That London before the battery ran out.

Somewhere I have a bill from Orange demanding payment of £0.02 to settle my account.

I never bothered (called up and they wrote it off) but I framed it alongside the pre-paid envelope that they included with the bill to post remittance back to them.

I found it really rather odd that they would spend money to post a bill to me, AND include a pre-paid envelope, all for the sake of tuppence.

I get a harshly worded demand for -7p every year off barclaycard. Bless em.

Heh.

I live in the Cotswolds though.

Meh, s'all the same to me.

"The South"

Quite.

I'm also thinking about an RC boat, so I have the full set. I have a plane, a tank, a land rover, a small helicopter, and need a big outdoor heli and a boat.

I fancied a tank but the vids I've seen of them in action are really underwhelming. What have you got?

Just fancy a Drift Car next.

And maybe a Rock Crawler.

I've got a Heng Long 1/16th scale Tiger. I posted a picture in the Christmas thread. It's pretty good.

Handed in my notice today. 3 and a half weeks til I quit and my swedish mate comes and visits me!

Going on holiday!!!! A proper TWO WEEK holiday!!!!!!!!!

Woohoooooooo

I wish I was going NOW.



NOW NOW NOW.

Ooh. Where you going?

Dominican Republic - Caribbean bliss!!

Awesome!

Honeymoon?

Also, I picked up my contract today, new start date of April 8th. Squeee!

Well done!!

And.

No?! Sun sea sand and find myself a nice man who will keep me so I don't have to come home

You're going on your own?

I went to Barbados on my own in 2009. It sucked. Not only did I not have anybody to share the experience with (especially bad as I spent my birthday there) but I got mugged.

Good luck!

Thanks for filling me with joyous prospects!!

Not going alone, just not going "with" someone.

Shall be Awesomes

I bet. I'm jealous, I can only dream of getting two weeks off

It's my first time ever, so I empathise!! I shall send you 2 week good luck vibes

*does twilight zone humming*

A relatively small yay which will mean very little to most here, I'm sure, but my shawl pattern is the 'hottest' pattern on Ravelry:



Which, for a site with 650,000+ patterns listed is quite nice for me

Mimi that's awesome! Well done.

Fab news Mimi! I love Ravelry

Thank you, ladies

Sort of a YAY and a NAY really.

YAY - The roofs and chimneys and guttering and basically everything up the top of the house will be fixed this summer by a superb, reputable, local roofing firm. (And we're going to get the bay and utility room roofs done as part of the same package of work.)

NAY - We now owe Clydesdale Bank £12,000.

Odd that it was cheaper to borrow the money off a bank I'd never even fucking heard of before, than the HSBC who we hold our current account, savings account, credit cards (always paid off in full), and mortgage with

Needless to say I borrowed a little bit more than the cost of the work for, ahem, sundry expenses. *


* New super-super telly and XBox720 or PS4 when they get released.

If you don't mind me asking, what are the repayment terms?

I'm thinking of borrowing a (slightly) lower amount and wish to compare!

Not brilliant TBH.

£10,000 over 60 months at 7.9% APR, but it's the best rate I could get, a lot of lenders wouldn't even offer the loan. Ends up costing us around £2000 in interest.

The problem is we're mortgaged to the hilt (we bought near the top of the market before the world finance system went pop), we've already got a loan secured against the house which we used to clear all our unsecured debt (credit cards being the major fucker there), and of course the C6 is on finance as well.

On top of that Mrs AE has never been able to return to work, (that's where most of the unsecured debt came from, Carer's Allowance and DLA doesn't replace a wage and we plugged the gap with credit), which unfortunately I based our finances on when I was doing the planner before we bought this house, and my wage has been decreasing in real terms for the last four years (below inflation pay 'rises'), plus my pension contributions are increasing every year too.

I paid to get my credit record and score from Equifax and I'm in the top 'excellent' band with a faultless payment history, registered on the electoral roll for years, no defaults or CCJs etc - it's just that we've already got a shitload of debt and I don't think lenders were falling over themselves to add another £12K to it.

No choice though, we've got no equity left in the house and if we don't get the roof done we'll be into major structural damage territory.

I laugh at the idea of having enough saved to last three months without any income, we'd be fucked after a month if my wage stopped. It's only because of the fact my wage is pretty decent to start with that we've been able to survive financially at all.

It's a worry sometimes, but that's what alcohol and tranquilisers are for.

Made my day!!!!!

That is nice

Aww!

Off to India tomorrow for work, nice trip, bussiness class flights and 5 Star Hotel (costing £80 a night)

Staying in Bangalore and have the weekend to myself before having 4 long 12 hour days sorting out IT offshoring stufff.

Looking forward to it as I've never been to India before.

Ooh, that sounds like great fun!

Bangalore is great for a visit. It used to be even better with the old airport (even though it was a dump) as it was 20 minutes from the centre, and 5 minutes from our offices New airport is apparently a lot nicer, I havn't been yet, but it also 2 hours out of town...

Which hotel are you staying in? 5 star in india isn't always what you would expect

Don't pay the tourist prices for the tuctucs, they are around 10-20 times more than local rates, so you have to haggle. Even if the massively inflated rate is still only like a quid for 20 minutes, if you don't haggle them down then you are helping price the locals out of the market, which is a bad thing.

Whatever you do, don't eat from the pavement vendors, and only drink bottled water. Make sure they open the bottle in front of you, if it comes opened, send it back.

Have fun, great city, but only in short doses, it is absolutely mental

Note to self; when visiting India, take Trooper.

I find it's always useful to have a Trooper handy.

Note to self; never visit India.

We already have a proper civilisation here!

Staying here

http://www.theparkhotels.com/bangalore/bangalore.html

Can't say I know it, but that looks very nice, I doubt you'll have any issues.

Small yay. Last year I took up one of those LivingSocial offer things which got me a cheap Ocado shop and discounts for six months, including free delivery during that period. The other week they sent out an email about the offer changing slightly which I wasn't too fussed about so just deleted it.

Today they apologised for a mistake in the email and in order to make amends, they were extending it for another six months. Result. Should save me a few quid that.