One of those ferrets is snoring again. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear that they are just not happy unless they're disturbing my rest.
I wonder what he's dreaming about.
I wonder if it involves being woken abruptly by an ice-cold shower.
Because that's what just may happen to him at any moment.
Well, the outstanding furniture has finally arrived.
Of course, when I say outstanding, I am referring merely to the furniture that I had not yet received, and not anything of any remarkable quality or design – we are talking cheap flat-packed tat again, after all.
Even so, I had ordered everything in "beech", hoping that it would all match; but I noticed that it wasn't all quite the same colour.
My friend's comment on the subject?
(Very profound, it was.)
"Yes, well, one man's beech is another man's… not beech."
Beautifully articulated, I'm sure you'll agree. Fortunately, he's a lot more gifted with power tools.
Whilst channeling hopping this evening – and having just caught the last ten minutes of Muppet Treasure Island – I found an old Sherlock Holmes movie starring Christopher Lee and Patrick Macnee.
Now, I must confess that I do find it a little difficult to believe in Christopher Lee as Sherlock Holmes – he'll always be villainous characters like Dracula, Saruman and Count Dooku for me – but there was one line of his in this particular film that will stay with me.
Watson [Macnee] was asleep (and snoring) whilst Holmes (still awake for some reason) discovered that a wild big cat had been intentionally let into their quarters (presumably to eat them both whilst they slept). Oh so very casually, he tricked it into running through a door, which he was then promptly closed behind it – thus adeptly disarming the furry fiend.
Only a little bit cheesy at this point, I agree. But it gets much, much worse.
Right on cue, Watson then woke up and asked Holmes what he was doing. To which he calmly replied:
"Just letting the cat out."
It's a worry. It really is.
So, another Saturday evening rolled around, and I had no plans. Male Housemate decided, therefore, to challenge me to a game of SingStar.
And, yes, cider may have been involved.
Now, apparently, he's amazingly good at this game; and was threatening to trounce me with his dazzling musical performances. I confess, however, that I was quietly confident.
The outcome?
Well, perhaps he's not quite as good as this game as I had been led to believe. Either that, or I am considerably better than I had previously thought.
Either way, I am now the proud owner of a memory card save featuring Male Housemate singing along to Sophie Ellis Bextor's Murder On The Dancefloor, whilst sounding alarmingly similar, in both voice and pitch, to Miss Piggy. And, as if that wasn't pure comedy gold on its own, it's also followed by an exasperated and beautifully enunciated "F–cking hell!" over the fading music at the end.
I'm still deciding what I should do with this. Your thoughts?
Apparently I've done a bad thing.
I have just changed the bed covers and now – by total coincidence – have been Googling superstitions in light of an amusing conversation I had with friends earlier today.
Unfortunately, I've just found this:
A bed changed on Friday will bring bad dreams.
Might be a good time to road test my coffee maker.
As I understood it, my bedroom is next door to the hot water tank.
That is fair enough.
In reality, however, I think that what I'm next door to is actually an industrial furnace.
I shall await the summer with much trepidation.
I have finally been given a date by Argos for the delivery of the remainder of my furniture!
*does celebratory song-and-dance number*
It's coming next week. And to think I only ordered it well over a month ago.
Let's just hope that it all fits together properly this time, shall we?
Not that I'd ordinarily watch this nonsense, but Female Housemate was watching Home and Away earlier.
Now, I admit that I used to watch this soap opera religiously when I was a child but – really – what a load of old drivel!
Maybe I just caught the script writers on a particularly bad day, but I don't believe that conversations with members of law enforcement agencies do generally go like this:
Police-type: Sorry, but there's nothing we can do.
Regular cast member: But—
Police-type: Oh, alright, then. But just this once.
OK, yes, so I will admit that wasn't quite how the script went – it is a very, very approximate rendition, based on a complete lack of interest at the time and a failing memory – but I'm sure that really was about the size of it.
If I used to avidly watch nonsense like that as a child then, frankly, it's a wonder I turned out normal.
It must be a conspiracy.
In fact, I rather suspect it's a pea-related conspiracy.
Not content with trying to catch me out with random mine-like legumes in surprising places – and clearly unhappy at my subsequent Internet outburst on the subject – they're now trying to poison me: they've started to flavour their pastry.
With what can, frankly, only be some kind of solvent.
Yes, I have been eating the pasties still. But only because they had generally been quite nice up until now, and I know now to be ever-vigilant for peas. It's a habit I think I'm going to break now, however; my lunch today smelled like marker pens.
And, yes, you may well think that I'm imagining it or simply being dramatic, but I even offered the pasty to somebody else to make sure I wasn't just being mad. They completely agreed with me without provocation; I didn't have to threaten them, or resort to violence of any form.
This can all mean only one thing: I am at war with the pea-lovers.
I've just been to investigate noises from the ferret cage. It seems my boys were having a bit of a ruck.
Ordinarily, this wouldn't be interesting or unusual in any way, but today I'm rather amused by the large bit of fluff that had stuck to Hiccups' ear. It was almost as big as the ear itself, and gave me a wonderful insight into what Lieutenant/Commander Uhura would look have looked like had she been a ferret.
Unfortunately, before I could get the camera, another full-on assault from his brother resulted in the fluff being dropped again.
Never mind. I'm sure I've got some Superglue somewhere.
Another important lesson was learned today about ferret ownership:
If you are keeping ferrets near to where you sleep, always remember to remove any rattly toys at night.
I discovered this last night.
*rocks back and forth in chair*
Upon hearing a squeak of distress from one of my little guys tonight, I immediately raced to their aid, prepared to defend them at all costs from all manner of unspeakable evil.
I found them both sleeping soundly.
Now, I'm curious as to what Squeaky Ferret was dreaming about.
I'm also hoping that it didn't involve my nose, feet or any other extremity in any way.
I noticed today a sign on a water filter:
The gaz used in the filter does the harm the ozone layer
Bloody nice of this Gaz to restrain himself like that.
In fact, the next time my father is out in the back garden, spraying aerosols into the air and screaming, "It's not hot enough yet!", I'll know that – somewhere out there – there is a Gaz who would condemn his errant behaviour.
And so it would seem that an unfortunate side-effect of keeping any dry-food-eating pet in your bedroom is the horrible crunching noise that you have to endure whilst you are trying to sleep.
And, yes, they probably are trying to keep me awake on purpose.
In fact, they are both a bit disgruntled at the moment, as they have hardly left their cage in some time. I was hoping to have been able to let them out before now, but the room is still is such a state that I really can't risk it yet. So, in a moment of rebellion earlier, Biscuits decided to knock one of the litter trays over, into their bedding.
Yes, that really showed me.
I hoovered up most of the litter, but left them lots of crumbs to enjoy while they were trying to sleep.
Heh. I'll fix their wagon.
Apparently, my local supermarket loans out "fish kettles".
I feel like I should know what one of those is, since people supposedly feel the need to rent them.
Any offers?
I passed a road sign today that warned:
Concealed site entrance
What's the point of that?
Why go concealing site entrances all over the bloody place? How's that going to help anybody?
I note with interest (and increasing annoyance) that some of my desperately-needed furniture still has not arrived.
And, considering the fiasco with the bookcase, I'm now quite worried about what will eventually turn up anyway.
So, in summary, I would like to say that – unless the question is "what is an incredibly annoying, frustrating and unnecessarily complicated way of furnishing a room" – the answer is most definitely not "mail-order flat-pack".
Apparently, there are things more embarrassing than breaking down at three o'clock in the morning with a flat car battery.
Apparently, there is breaking down at three o'clock in the morning with a flat car battery right outside your friend's mum's house, and having to wake her up and let her come outside in her dressing gown and slippers to help you jump start your car.
I long for the day when stupid things like that don't happen around me, but I fear that I'm the common denominator, and that they therefore won't.
So, after moaning about the posh (and expensive) supermarket at Christmas, I now find myself living across the road from it.
Now it's far, far too easy to go there. Why take the car to a cheaper supermarket, when this one's only twenty paces away?
A friend has told me that this is karma. Personally, I just call it irony.
It just doesn't seem to matter where put things or how I rearrange them, there is just NOT ENOUGH SPACE TO MOVE! ARGH!
I am covered in bruises. I can barely move for boxes. The boys cannot come out of their cage to play.
Frustration is not the word for it – in fact, kill frenzy seems to be slowly working its way to the top of my list of things that seem like a really good idea right now.
Woohoo! I've finally got the consoles hooked up.
Admittedly, I could probably have found something a bit more impressive-looking to play on my sexy new television than Oddworld: Abe's Exodus, but I have no regrets.
It would seem that one of my housemates loves to sing. And he seems to know the words to everything.
I have no idea what was going on, or what he was watching on the TV, but I definitely heard him singing along to Bette Midler's Wind Beneath My Wings while he was in the kitchen earlier.
I keep trying to think of a good excuse for that, but I just can't and it frightens me.
I went out with a friend for cocktails this afternoon. There's a bar we sometimes go to where they sell them with a "three for two" offer.
The usual outcome of this is that I choose a cocktail, my friend chooses a cocktail and then we decide on a third, which we share.
Today my friend picked one to try, which had Pernod in it. Unfortunately, it would appear that she doesn't like aniseed and didn't realise what quite what she was getting.
Credit where it's due, however, the offending cocktail was not wasted. She polished it off very quickly, and then immediately followed it with a further cocktail to take the taste away.
Are there any plans to included Competitive Cocktail Drinking in the 2012 Olympics, do we know? If there are, I reckon I've found a dead cert for a gold medal.
There have been further ferret disasters. Tonight, I was alerted by heart-wrenching squeals of distress. I rushed to the cage, to discover Hiccups with a claw caught in one of his blankets.
The thing is, it is actually fairly easy to untangle him. Well, it would be, if he didn't seem to think that a really good idea when he's got his claw caught is to roll over and over, making it tighter and tighter, and then try to fling himself off a great height, hoping – presumably – that his entire foot will come with him unscathed and the blanket will remain behind.
The scary thing is that I'm sure this can't only happen when I'm around. They must do this to themselves where there's nobody there to help them.
Frankly, it's beginning to look like a miracle that they've both still got all their toes.
I do keep trying to explain the physics to them, but – well – you know ferrets: they just won't listen.
I had to have a cold shower this morning. I was most disgruntled.
It would appear that somebody kindly turned the hot water off yesterday and it was not turned back on again.
And – as part of a cruel and unfortunate coincidence – I decided to take the stir crazy ferrets out into the back yard for a bit of fresh air this evening. Unfortunately, for all involved, I realised after a few minutes that the place was caked in ant powder.
As were the ferrets, by this time.
Naturally, I rushed them inside to clean them, but the hot water still hadn't been turned on (and I don't know yet where the switch is), so they also had to have a cold shower.
And I thought that I had been cross when that happened to me – I now have barely any skin left on my forearms.
I have no Internet.
I have no Internet.
I have no Internet
I have no Internet.
I have no Internet.
I HAVE NO INTERNET!
How am I supposed to live like this? I'm actually having to borrow from friends and family until I can get the installers out to my new place.
It's like a kind of torture that doesn't leave visible scars.
