Silvershed Blog

EPiC fail

mim — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:56:53 +0000

This is getting beyond a joke now. After weeks of not hearing anything from my estate agent, I went and had a look at my house on Rightmove to see if our new pictures had been put up as promised.

(Hey, we’d not heard anything but what’s new? It was worth a go)

So I nearly fell over when I saw that they’ve suspended all viewings while they sort out the EPC. The EPC which they saw right back at the beginning. What on earth are they playing at? And more importantly, why haven’t they decided this is worth mentioning to us?

I appreciate it’s hard out there, very hard, but TALK TO US.

The house has been on the market since December 2007 and I’m getting very very bored. I want to move on. We’ve identified the vague area we want to move to down here, we know what our budget is likely to be. Everything’s set except the small matter of the NorthHouse.

ProjectMim – again

mim — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 20:56:35 +0000

A few years ago, I looked at how unspeakably lardy I’d become and resolved to do something about it. What was going to be difficult at 30 was going to be far harder at 40 and impossible at 50, so I needed to get my finger out and stop eating the pies.

If you remember that far back, it ended up with me losing 30kg. I didn’t feel like I looked particularly different, but I did notice I had a lot more energy, and I was able to buy clothes from normal shops for the first time in years. My weight bounced back a little, but nothing particularly worrying. I was happy, and got on with my life.

Which is why I didn’t count on the goalposts shifting. For some reason, being smaller than I was is no longer enough. I’m not sure if it’s being down in London. where there are a lot more Beautiful People, or if it’s that my eyes have reset to something approaching normal, but where I am isn’t good enough any more. I’m still right at the top of the sizes in the shops – OK, it’s just that the shops I’m going now to have a considerably smaller spread of sizes, but that’s not the point.

We were at a friend’s BBQ this summer, and I was horrified when I saw the photographs. In my head, I remembered how much I’d lost and thought as myself as OKsized now. And yes, compared to how I was, I’m in great shape. But, I’m still lardy and oh, did those photos ram that home. BetterThanItWas isn’t good enough. Now I want RightWeightForHeight, which means losing 15kg.

We’ve been on holiday this week and eaten a hell of a lot of lard. That stops NOW. And it’s back to the gym to try and finally get myself running for more than 1km at a time. Wish me luck. I suspect this time is going to be hard.

The best supermarket cheese

mim — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:25:08 +0000

Although we love going to Borough for really rather wonderful cheese, it’s not an every day thing, especially when you consider just how expensive it can get. But I reckon we’ve come up with an alternative that’s every bit as good, maybe even a bit better.

So, here’s the trick to Mim and Minty’s Supermarket Fine Cheese:

Go to your local co-operative food supermarket, and buy their Truly Irresistible Parkham Farm Cheddar. (although I do suspect it’s made by these people, because I’ve seen Tesco variants…)
DO NOT OPEN IT. If you do, you’ll have some nice, but ultimately forgettable, plastic Cheddar.
Continue to ignore.
Wait until the useby date has expired. A month is a good starting point.
Eat. Enjoy the stingy taste. Perfect.

I’ve tried leaving it once I initially tasted it, and I just got slightly blue tasting supermarket cheese. But leaving it sealed so it can finish off maturing, and it really is a thing of beauty. WHY supermarkets don’t dare sell us things in this state in the first place, I do not know.

We now have about three blocks in the fridge at any one time, maturing away. Works perfectly. And best of all, it’s cheap.

Darnit

mim — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:15:18 +0000

So I worked out what the underlying issue was that was preventing me uploading images, and so all my historical stuff is fixed. And then, in a fit of being clever, I added a broken link checker.

All _my_ links are pretty much OK, but the internet has moved on and all _their_ links have changed. HOW DARE THEY!

I realise from looking at my tag cloud that I’m spending more time whinging about being nerdy than I am talking about my life. But that’s about right, I guess. What’s my geek ratio? 3:1? More?

Itchy Feet

mim — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:14:16 +0000

We’ve had our house on the market for 2.5 years now, and sold it twice, and yet we’re still not out of there. It’s getting really hard to have ties in two cities, and we just want to move on and get on with being Londoners.

Looking at the land registry, nothing has been selling on our estate. So would dropping the price make any difference? Are we at the point where we’d let it go for pence just to get our deposit out of it so we can get on with our life? If we could stick on to it as an investment we would, but in the meantime we’re living in a damp basement flat with a neighbour who’s a nice guy but likes sticking on dodgy RnB at weird hours of the morning.

In an attempt to make things feel more like home I’ve been making window boxes for our wall. It really helps.

Things that make me happy

mim — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:11:33 +0000

A clean, crisp page in my notebook, and my favourite fountain pen. Perfect for new ventures.

Soundcloud

mim — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:50:50 +0000

Soundcloud is all sorts of awesome, but I want it to scrobble, dammit. I love Spotify, but sometimes you don’t want established music, you want to see what people are doing on their own. And last.fm joins it all together … Continue reading →

Oh blimey

mim — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:16:05 +0000

I’m at work, and was in the process of creating a new document, when it asked me if I wanted to post on my blog. “That’ll never work” I thought. It’s slightly scary that it does. Genuinely not sure about this joined up computing lark, the distinction between private and public, official and unofficial is just getting too blurred.

Or, if I embrace the joined up, look! It even has my categories! But where are my tags, eh? At least do it properly.

Another step closer

mim — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:59:59 +0000

So I’ve taken down the old blog, and now I’ve just got to move over the pictures and sort out some file locations. Easy. Remind me why I do this again? Wouldn’t giving up and using a hosted service be … Continue reading →

the more it snows

mim — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 23:08:41 +0000

the more I want to stay inside and play with geekery. Nearly ready to replace the old blogger blog now, just want to check some new bells and whistles actually work. Today, I am mainly checking my facebook widget.