60

"Right then," I thought, "I've got the present ordered. That's sorted. Hmm, I'll get a card while I'm thinking about it and in advance."

I found a birthday card quite quickly. I do seem to be getting better at that. Come Christmas, I can spend HOURS literally just umming and arring over cards. It doesn't help that there are too many card shops ;)

So, I had my card. Within due course, still with loads of time to go, the present arrived through my door too.

Excellent. It was Dad's birthday in a couple of weeks time, and I'd got everything sorted.

The Sunday a handful of days before his birthday, I was on Messenger in the evening. At around 10:30pm, I get a message from my Mum.

Mum says
Don't forget it's dads 60th on thursday

60th. See, she has this habit of reminding me things like that just after I can realistically do anything about it. I work about 15 minutes from town, so I can't realistically pop in for lunch. I work from 9-5:30. There were no weekends between then and me. If I'd actually completely forgotten, I'm not entirely sure what she'd expect me to do about it. "Look Dad, I got you some... Apples! And... a turnip! AND! AND! Some 'sports for schools' vouchers! Hoh yeah. Isn't this just the best birthday ever?"

Well, Tesco's selection of "60" cards isn't great. Certainly not with both "60" and "Dad". Hmmmmmmmm.

So, my little connundrum was solved by posting the (non-60) birthday card that I did have, and making a second card - that way it said both "60" AND "Dad". Hah! I went down that weekend and took him his card and pressie.

But the thing that gets me...

I can't believe my Dad is 60!

I mean... 60? I must have looked up the history of the Messenger conversation at least twice to make sure that my Mum actually did say 60. 60's like ten years older than one of my bosses! And only ten years younger than the other! And I'm only 27 (well, only just... oh! it's a month today until a new number ;) )! He can't be 60.

Can he?

Apparently he can ;)

It was a good little house

I always liked it, anyway.

Ok, so it was "cosy", or as less diplomatic people would say, "quite small", but I liked it none-the-less :)

And ok, so it had more of a steep (almost vertical) few feet of grassy bank instead of a garden... But still. I liked it :)

It was our home. It had four rooms, two up, two down. But it was home.

I saw Mrs M several weeks ago. She was moving the last of the things from it, and they'd hired a van for the day. I almost had the impression I may not see her again. I asked whether she'd be back over this way at any point, and she said "I've not got any reason to."
I asked if she wanted to see me when I was over her way, "Well, there doesn't really seem any point."

Oh well. It's kind of a shame, but I'm not unduly bothered. Whatever helps her get through it, I guess.

Anyway, the sale was completed on Friday.

They've just received the cheque, and she'll be zapping across the amount upon which we agreed to my account once it has cleared. (Without going through official-dom, we agreed a split which equated to roughly 50/50 of major assets that I'm happy with).

And that, as they say, is that :)

Jedi by Night

So, Quna and I were out last night when all of a sudden, much to our astonishment, we witnessed a Battle of the Jedi:


Well, ok, I thought it looked a bit like that anyway :) It was actually fireworks, of course :)



I was pleased that I managed to find a display that was on last night. I'd assumed that they would be fairly well balanced between the 3rd and 10th in terms of proper displays, but actually it was a real struggle to find one - fortunately, my boss knew I'd been looking for a display, and happened to speak to someone else who was attending one on the Saturday, and then txt'd me with details :D

So anyway. I'd wanted to go to one because a few weeks ago Quna had asked if she could come to a fireworks display with me. Unfortunately, we were both busy last week (remind me to to blog about that if I don't do it within a couple of days...), hence the reason for looking for one this week.

So, Quna's been over this weekend. Meanwhile, I've been so busy at work recently. I just seem to be running around all day on a hundred different things. It's kind of nice ;) On the other hand though, I have been there until 7/8pm a lot recently, which makes the evenings very short (Again, contributing to my silence).

My most sincere thanks goes out to all of you who have kept checking for updates and giving me a poke in the comments ;)

Thank you for sticking with me :) Sorry I'm not all caught up on reading other blogs yet, but I do try to at least read them if not comment on them.

-Me :)