The Clan of the Cave Bague

Our 2 week old washing machine is broken. We have to wait till after the new year until the parts arrive and are fitted. Doh. I was standing at the sink at 11 o’clock at night last night washing a sink full of clothes. Not good.

I have to say that I admire the women of the 1950s for their ability to keep up with the washing when they had large families. It must have been so hard because as far as I can understand it they did all the menial household chores on their own.

Im just amazed at how sore my back was whilst washing towels in the kitchen sink. Those 1950s women must have had chunky muscles!!!.

I am looking forward to having my washing machine working again. We have a very good friend who has let us do some washing up at his house and is going to do us the same favour tommorrow night so I can get a bit of a rest then.

— Debbie —

Some of you might remember that I’ve written a bunch of freeware video games – remakes of old Speccy and C64 titles. Out of interest, they’re available on http://www.yoyo.org/~jmd/games/. Anyway, it all started with a truly awful Repton clone called Lizards which I wrote in 1995 or thereabouts. The game was pretty bad, but did eventually become part of the standard Slackware Linux distribution (along with a giant security hole). Anyway, Lizards eventually evolved into Gemstorm on the PC – not very good and 3D for the sake of it. Well, I’ve decided that the time is right for a definitive version of Lizards, running under MacOS X. I’m having a play around with some level editor code this afternoon, to see what the mac is like for coding on.

Ten to Five they were up. We didn’t get to bed until 2:30. Gahhhhh. I have a meal to cook. The children are in a playing frenzy I had a brief moment of calm at about six thirty – the central heating had packed in during the night and I as out fixing it. Once I got it up and running I stood and looked at the stars for a wee while and gave a silent thanks for getting us to another Christmas. 2003 is almost over and I can’t say how glad I am.

D’oh! Tristan, Matthew and Harmony are growing increasingly excited and the likelihood of them being asleep before 9pm is reducing in direct proportion. Looks like a late night of wrapping for us. The plan was originally to do the wrapping on Monday and Tuesday evenings, but Debbie and I are full of the cold and just not in the mood. Still, we have a fair amount of nice pressies for them, with a couple of notable exceptions. Matthew’s copy of Mario Party 3 (from ebay) hasn’t arrived, and the two Pokemotions we ordered from Hong Kong haven’t appeared either, despite being shipped on the fourth of december.

Our two week old washing machine also decided to give up the ghost today. I’ve been lugging emergency washing up to a friend’s house all day cos the engineer won’t put in an appearance til Saturday. Bah.

My Maw and Paw were out visiting yesterday as well. They’ve decided they like my soup

It started snowing about two hours ago. We now have a four inch deep white carpet and a dirty great snowman in the orchard We all went charging out in the dark and had a good old play while the snow was still falling. Needless to say, they all came in freezing and were greeted with mugs of warm milk and a hot bath. Things don’t get much better than this.

As of January the 12th, I’ll be working with a company called navyblue. I’m doing a bit of everything this time round – UNIX administration, some database stuff, some programming in various languages. I really hit it off with the guys who run the company – they’re a fantastic set of guys – very excitable and visionary – a bit like my old mate two-trees. Sure, they’re in direct competition with Dowcarter, but then a little healthy competition never hurt anyone. So, I have a nice christmas break which I plan to spend playing lots of games with the kids and poring over books on various subjects. I’m glad the whole employment thing is sorted out – it was pretty tough being out of work, homeless, and planning for christmas all at the same time. 2003 has been an interesting year. I now know what ther japanese curse about “interesting times” means.

Well, we re back in our house. Its a bit surreal living here again, but its so nice to have light around us in the house that has so many memories.

Little Matthew played the Innkeeper at the little nativity play they had in class today and he enjoyed every minute of it.

We all had fun putting up our christmas tree this afternoon, with new little baubles Harmony made at playgroup and Tristan made at school. Im sure there will be one to add for Matthew but the joy he had on his face while putting on the tinsel was priceless. He wanted to put up the tree a couple of weeks ago a la the shops but obviously we were waiting to get back here and actually buy a tree !!!

We re still trying to unpack and have to go back to the rental house over the weekend, which we are dreading, to pick up the bits and bobs we left there the other day. We need to go over it with a fine toothcomb to make sure that there are no wee toys under the furniture and in the wee cubby holes. Dont know how the kids ll be having to go back there with us but we dont have anyone to babysit them.

Best get off and try and organise those cupboards. — debbie.

I’m writing this at my nice new shiny desk on my nice new shiny iMac while waiting for a curry I’m building to cook in my nice new shiny kitchen. The garage is stuffed full of what few possessions we have, but we’re back in our own house and that’s all that counts.

I’m writing this at my nice new shiny desk on my nice new shiny iMac while waiting for a curry I’m building to cook in my nice new shiny kitchen. The garage is stuffed full of what few possessions we have, but we’re back in our own house and that’s all that counts.

Well, we’re semi packed and getting ready to go. We’re moving back to our house tomorrow, whether they’re finished or not. We really can’t wait any longer – we can’t get anything done in this house. I need to look for a permanent job, Debbie needs to get painting again, and I need to get writing again. Being here is like floating in limbo – we need some closure and we’re not going to get it till we’re back in our own house.

Of course, even moving home has its dramas – there was a wailfest this morning when Tristan discovered the GameCube was packed Poor wee soul. Anyway, the painters should be in today giving downstairs the final coat. Only goot three more bookshelves to build and that’s the furniture organised. That in itself is a drama, of course – every single sodding one of them has a couple of small items of hardware missing, so I’m having to build them by an, er, alternative method. Not to worry, though. We still don’t have any books to put on them anyway.