The Way of the Badger

I passed my karate grading on Saturday, so I'm now a green belt (the order of grades is: white, yellow, orange, green, purple, blue, brown, black). And not only did I pass, but the examiner told me afterwards that I'd done extremely well. Not sure who was more pleased by that, me or Sensei!

( grading... )

After the grading we had time to chill out for a while before the Christmas meal (held at The Grove, a pub in Walthamstow). ( meal... )

And finally, a LJ quiz which is actually relevant for a change!
( Samurai quiz result )

What I did at the weekend

Friday (a.m.):
Worked at Oxfam for the morning as usual; but this time I actually got to price some books! It had been decided that I knew more about computers than any of the rest of the people working there (scarily, this is quite probably true) so I was told to do the best I could with the ever-growing mountain of computing books. These ranged from a 1978 book of games for the microcomputer, to a 2003 book on C#. In the end I texted sion_a to ask for advice on when books on C, C++, Java, XML and Python stopped being useful -- thanks to him for some very handy hints!

Friday (p.m.):
Got my Christmas shopping more or less finished in the afternoon; then worked at the Carlton in the evening. It was pretty quiet for a Friday night, but apparently this is the calm before the Christmas storm. I got my first tip (even if it was only 60p's worth of 'keep the change'), and my first Creepy Bloke chatting me up and making paper roses for me out of napkins. Icky tacky creepy beardy NO NO NO! Hint: don't try to chat up barmaids while they're trying to ring up a round consisting of about 10 different things on the till.

Saturday:
Karate grading, and Christmas meal (see previous post). Didn't get back from London till about 1 a.m.

Sunday:
Spent the day aching a lot, pottering around the house tidying, and counting the hours till the evening when hoiho was due to arrive. In the end he turned up an hour early, which was great but also meant that he arrived when I was still trying to turn my bedroom from what looked like an explosion in a laundry basket into something resembling human habitation... fortunately he already knows I'm an untidy badger. Tidying was abandoned in favour of B33r and STEAK at the County.

Monday:
I'd taken the day off work, so was able to spend the whole day with hoiho. Which was lovely, and we spent most of the day grinning at each other like loons. :) Pottered around town together in the afternoon before going for MORE B33R at the Pickerel. Decided against MORE STEAK though when we went for dinner at La Margherita later (there is only so much STEAK that one small badger can eat).

Today:
hoiho had to go home. I thought about kidnapping him & locking him up & keeping him in Cambridge, but we decided it was a teeny bit impractical really. Then I had to go into work. <sigh>

Postal

I am cross with Amazon. Okay, at least they did email me this time to let me know that my credit card hadn't worked again, but sufficiently long after I'd changed the details that I'd thought it must have worked this time. I tried to enter the card details again from scratch, but it wouldn't let me; eventually I gave up and changed to my Mastercard, and that seems to have worked, but now the projected delivery date is 02/01/2004, which isn't much use for Christmas presents. By changing the delivery options so that individual items get delivered as they're ready, I've got the delivery dates for some of the items down to 22/12/03, which would be just in time. Of course, this means I lose the free delivery that I should get on that size of order; also, well, I'll believe the delivery date when I actually see the goods. It looks like some things I ordered for sion_a won't turn up in time for Christmas though. :-(

I'm also irritated with Scotts of Stow / The Original Gift Company. While they did say "may take 28 days for delivery", what they didn't say was "First, we will get your credit card details wrong so that the 28 days start two weeks late; by then we will have discontinued two of the things you ordered. The rest will be sent out one item at a time, over the course of 28 days, and the most time-critical ones will turn up last." Though I suppose a single disclaimer along the lines of "Sod's law applies" would have done.

Say it with...

THANK YOU whoever has sent me flowers! I only managed to pick up the parcel from the PO depot at lunchtime today (I wasn't in when they tried to deliver, & I didn't realise it was flowers or I'd've picked up the parcel yesterday -- I hope they've survived...) and I'm at work so I haven't actually opened the box yet because if I did I'd have nowhere to put 'em & they're probably safer in the box for now. So I will open them tonight & say thank you properly then.