Is This Thing On?

So, turns out poor old 0ddness has been a bit neglected of late. A lot late. But, with yesterday being a momentous occasion, I figured I would appear out of lurkdom and grace you with my presence.

Yes, I still think a lot of myself. Go figure.

(FYI: Long Post Klaxon!)

Firstly, I was indeed 41 years old yesterday. Of course, I didn't realise it was my birthday this weekend until Wednesday when someone asked me which day it was. And when asked how old I was, I had to pause, and do some pretty complicated mathematics in my head to work it out.

So, with the freshest thing first, I'll start with yesterday - in which I became older, no wiser, sexy as ever, and generally continued to grace the world with my presence. As mentioned already. As is usual, I don't make a big deal of my birthday - I'm not into the whole party-hearty because I managed to not die for another year. Yesterday was nice and quiet and chilled out. My gift from Poppy was me tripping over her potty, and splashing pee all up my leg, so that was nice. And warm.

In August, I finally bit the bullet and started looking for a new doggo. Since I lost Sally Dog, I wanted something small and stupid with a wanky obnoxious name - but have been putting it off and putting it off. First we needed somewhere bigger. Then we needed money. Then with Poppy, we needed her to be less... Baby. So, last month, Kellie made some phone calls (and aside from avoiding a rather dodgy situation with what later turned out to be some travellers and puppy farming!) she found a lady with a couple of Jack Russell puppies. We travelled over to see them, a boy and a girl, and set to having a play.

The little girl - as a typical female - was probably just having an off day, and didn't seem bothered by us. The little boy was an idiot, wanted to lick my chin and eat my stubble, and seemed to like having cuddles. He also like being near Poppy (kind of important with THAT force of nature) and on top of that, didn't growl at Kellie - so he can't sense evil.

We took him home there and then, and since then, the little idiot has been charging around like a mad thing. Naming took a couple of days (He was just "dog" to start with!) and we toyed with everything from Dave to Kujo to Jeff to Gobshite... Eventually, however, remembering a dog my Great Uncle had maaaaany years ago, we opted for Lord Montgomery II. Granted, we call him Monty, but everywhere he's registered, the vets, his microchip, his insurance, his name tag - he is Lord Montgomery. Which the vets find hilarious.

He's such an idiot. No sense of how small he is, can't navigate a series of three steps without tripping over at least one of them, can go through a baby gate in one direction, but cannot work out how to come back through... He tries to leap up onto the sofa - but takes off about three feet too soon, so generally hits the front of the sofa face first. As I write this, he is snuggled against me, on my lap. Oh yes, he's a lap dog.

Him and Poppy get on like, well, a toddler and a puppy. I should sell the idea to Disney for their next Princess. A noisy troublemaker and a puppy, systematically destroying everything they go near - but everyone still loves them. For some reason.

Anyway... With Monty being my early birthday present, I didn't expect to get presents yesterday, but low and behold, a large box was produced. I was genuinely not expecting anything, so to unwrap it and find a brand new spanking shiny gaming laptop inside, I was shocked into speechlessness. I expected it to be a box with a brick in it. Or something explosive. Or divorce papers.

You see, last year, I made the transition from a PC Gamer to a PS4 Gamer. The PS4 was my birthday present last year. My old Aspire laptop - while still able to run a lot of things - was getting a bit rickety. It survived the Great Kicking of Kellie in 2012, it was resurrected after the Dropping Off Of Screen in 2013, and even last year, it survived the Great Coffee Flood...

The Second Great Coffee Flood, however, proved to be it's undoing. All seemed well for a week or so, then, in the immortal words of the great Nanny Plum, it went BANG. Literally, BANG. Complete with the Blue/Grey Smoke Of Electronics Doom.

I have no idea what died, though I suspect either the power gubbins or the processor, but it was Dee Eee Dee Dead. And that, I am afraid to say, was that for the laptop. Within a fortnight, my old wheezy Medion PC System also gave up the ghost, and has since been sitting on my desk staring at me like a corpse glaring at its murderer.

But now, I am back in the world of the living. I am still a PS4 Gamer, but am also once again a PC Gamer. And, MOST importantly, I can now get many many Gigabytes of data retrieved from my old systems. See, having no computer to speak of meant the laptop and the PC have been sitting there rotting, their four hard drives holding tightly onto lots and lots of photos from over the years - including a multitude of Bethy pictures.

Thankfully, after doing the Medion hard drives, all the photos from the last ten years or so are safe and sound and YES I've already backed it all up. Thank you Google Drive & Photos. Of course, the anally-retentive Dan has spent the last three days sorting the photos and putting them into the correct Month & Year folders... Because why wouldn't you?!

I've not had a look at my laptop drives yet - I have to confess, I am a little nervous to do so, mainly because of the spectacular way it exited the mortal coil... As long as there was no surge in electrickery or, you know, fire, I think they should be good.

So, moving on from the most important thing (Yes, still me), I move on to the wee little troll that is Poppy.

She is growing like a weed. All the new stuff we got her for the summer is already looking a bit little on her. Not that it matters too much, as she is currently going through her "Nekkid Toddler" phase and hates to wear clothing. And runs around without a care in the world. She looks so much like Bethany some days,it pulls at my heart strings, and she is SO much like her, from the trouble making, to the putting herself on the naughty step after intentionally doing wrong, to hiding her dummies, so when you take it away from her, another one appears out of nowhere! She is gorgeous, funny, stubborn and bright as a button.

She's now entitled to her 15 hours a week of nursery, and so - realising both how fast she's growing and how little she is, she started three mornings a week at a little nursery near us. At first, she was, shall we say.... Less than impressed... She's never really been away from Mummy or Daddy or Siblings or Nanny - and the first few weeks she did to get used to it in August... They did NOT go well. But with the girls at nursery helping out, we persevered, and now she hates NOT going to school. She's still doing exactly what Tamsyn did was she was small and lovely, and refuses to speak except in her own language. Since starting nursery, she is coming on more and more.

For those of you that don't follow me on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, she also had her first proper injury in the summer - she gashed open her forehead beside her eyebrow. Typical guilty daddy moment, I looked away from her for a few seconds, and down she went. Because she was wet, the blood went EVERY-fooking-WHERE and she looked like Carrie. It was awful. It was touch and go for a while if she'd need referring to another hospital for the plastics team that rebuilt Jaysens hand as it was so close to her eye, but in the end, it was nice and clean and not too deep. Steri-Strips and TLC, and she now has a scar above her left eyebrow, but with copious usage of Bio-Oil, I'm hoping that it fades more and more over time.

As I mentioned earlier, she and the dog love each other, and are generally always running around together. Where one goes, the other follows. If she curls up for a nap somewhere, he usually curls up with her too, and it is exactly what we wanted - for them to grow up together and be best friends. They play with each others toys, play with each other, and literally bounce off one another. Until they both flake out and have a nap...

And it's at times like that, the rest of us can sit for half an hour, have a breather, drink some coffee, clear up the chaos, and wait for it to start all over again - because when one wakes up, the other wakes up.

As for the other morons children in the house - well, I say children... Dom is 19, has moved on from being one of the managers at McDonalds, and now works at some big financial place doing something... Financial. Jaysen is 18 (19 in a few months even!), still in college studying something with animals, while working at the Dogs Trust a couple of times a week - and now he's considering University. Molly is 15 and in her last year of school, getting ready for her GCSEs. Tamsyn is 12 (but seems older?) and is shooting up like a bloody weed as well. Both Molly & Tamsyn go to Army Cadets twice a week, and it's definitely doing them both the world of good.

Jaysen: Being Special

Molly: Probably Sulking

Poppys Other Great Passion: Water!

Tamsyn: Not Actually My Son

My Classy Kellie

NERDS

Lucina (Doms better half), Molly (doing something with her fingers),
Kellie (squashed), Tamsyn (still a girl) and Poppy (trying to escape)

Tam & Mo with their detachment (Armed Forces Day)

Now, oddly, I cannot find any photos of Dominic that fulfil the following criteria. Firstly, I wanted a recent photo, and secondly, I wanted it to be of him fully dressed and not on the toilet. As it seems all the photos I have of him seem to be in his pants or on the loo, here's the next closest thing.

Dominic: Needs a Haircut

And so, after what can only be described as a wall of text and random photos (and a cauliflower) I will leave it at that... I can cover my medical rubbish any other time - probably at three in the morning when I feel shite, and all of Kellies medical rubbish is a blog post unto itself.

And yes, I am fully aware that while blogging has never been considered "cool", I still prefer it to most other forms of Social Media. And, while on THAT subject - while I might have things appear on Facebook, I do not actively go on there, and have not done so for a long time. Too much drama, bitching, politics, and what seems to be playground behaviour - so I continue to avoid that. I use Twitter now and then, and post pictures to Instagram occasionally. I am hoping - though I'm not making any promises - that now I am back with a screen and a keyboard and no danger of autocorrect, that I will manage to blog a little more regularly. Aside from that, if you play on PS4, feel free to add me - username is Danielson0

Until next time, you little crowd of nutters that made it this far!

Wheeeee!

We are all aware that simple things entertain me. Look at the blog, after all. On twitter, I follow a sum total of about four "famous" sorts, one of which is the QI Elves, those that gather the Quite Interesting information for the TV show of the same name.

On Twitter, they tweet random quite interesting facts and information, a lot of which is often submitted their way. Yesterday, I found an image that I thought was - oooh - quite interesting, and my first thought was Posh Tottys wee man. This morning while bumbling around online the elves posted some spacey-type stuff, and I thought "Hmm, the elves might appreciate that image too" so I tweeted them a link to it.

And I got Favourited. They have 230,000-odd followers, and I got a tweet on their favourites list.

Like I say, in the grand scheme of things, this means exactly nothing to anything, but it makes me happy, and that's all that counts :D

Twitterers & Bloggers

I've had a Twitter account for several years now.  I seem to come and go on it, and even while I am on a "Using It" phase at the moment, I'm still not entirely sure it's as great as everyone makes out to be.  I think it's just me, to be honest, but still, for the time being, I am on there.

I DID notice the other day, that I actually have two Twitter accounts.  Oops.  The one I use is the one I link to over there on the right, @0dd1 or by clicking this link.

But anyway, I digress.  The point of this post is for me to share with you blogs that I think you may well enjoy.  I will be adding them to the Blog Roll down on the right over there too, but think I might as well let you know when I find/am shown blogs that catch my interest.

As this is something I've only just thought about doing, the list is currently only a couple long, but none the less, they ARE interesting blogs, but NO, as is usual for me, I am not paid to link them, I don't get anything for linking them, and you don't have to visit them if you don't want.  BUT you should.  Go say HI! They are new blogs for the most part, so you don't have to trawl through months or years of Archives to catch up ;)

Pink Oddy: Yep, she's Odd.  but with an O not a 0. She's "of the same wavelength" judging by some of the conversations on Twitter too!

Living With LC: A new dad, blogging about the conception and birth of his first child. I LOVE seeing the Dad-Perspective of things, it make a nice change!

Like I say, go have a lookie-see at their blogs and say howdy, they're both brilliant :)

For everyone else on my blog-rolls, please be aware that in the next little while, I am going to be "clearing up" which means if you blog is private, very out of date, or deleted, then I am going to be shuffling it off the list.  So expect to see that list a little shorter later.  If you've moved your blog, please let me know the new URL, as again, dead links will be removed.