Failure is the Key to Success

Yesterday Jo-N at Shower Your Children with Love awarded me the Wise Owl award. Thank you. The extra effort to add our names is appreciated. I’m a firecracker! This award was created by Heidi Hyde at Hydes Like Us to show gratitude for those who inspire and mentor us in blogging.

This is now the point at which I should list my recipients for the award, but I’m not going to. Not because there aren’t people out there who inspire me, but because there are too many to choose. You inspire for the breadth and quality of what you blog about, the reasons you blog, the effort that you put into providing regular (and irregular) updates to your lives and experiences. So, this award’s for you. If you read my blog and I read yours, consider me inspired by what you write.

Tags:wise owl award

This afternoon driving home, I got to see something that brought a smile to my face. You know that feeling when you see a bad driver and you fleetingly wish that they didn’t get away with their bad driving.

At the first set of traffic lights coming into Dunstable, a shiny black, new looking, Range Rover Vogue shot down the turning right lane past the traffic queuing to go straight on and then forced its way back in on the junction.

It was obviously in a busting hurry on the next set of lights as well, as the fire engine approaching from the right with lights and sirens on had no impact on his attempts to get over the junction ahead of it. The problem was, traffic was heavy and he didn’t have room to finish what he started, so the fire engine did ultimately have a bigger impact on his journey time.

I didn’t see the actual impact myself as I was behind a large truck, but could see that he must have been pushed sideways quite a bit as I watched him manoeuvre out from in front of the fire engine while it was sat in the middle of the junction with lights and sirens going. They had to leave someone behind to deal with this idiot while the rest of them continued to the emergency they had been called to.

The truck driver in front of me stopped at the fire station (50 yards from the junction) to be a witness to what happened.

I don’t know what it is about drivers these days. There seems to be a much higher proportion that treat lane markings and red lights as an inconvenience to be ignored and don’t have any respect for other drivers or users on the road.

Tags:hit by a fire engine

Tim at The Inflatable Soapbox awarded me earlier this week with the E for Excellence award. Thank you. I hadn’t come across this one before and found it was started by Project Mommy about a month ago.

By accepting this Excellent Blog Award, you have to award it to 10 more people who’s blog’s you find Excellent Award worthy. You can give it to as many people as you want but please award at least 10. Thank you out there for having such great blogs and being such great friends! You deserve this! Feel free to award people who have already been awarded…

So I pass this on to:

jmb at Nobody Important

Vijay at scan man’s notes

Jackal

Carol at My View of “IT”

Jo-N at Shower Your Children with Love

Gary at Azazil.net

David at David Airey

Ilker at The Thinking Blog

Pari

Vikas at Tech Bold

Nen

Tags:blog award

A couple of days late, but I thought I’d update on the replacement oven situation.

On Monday we had a call to say that they would be coming to replace the oven and hob between 8 and 12 on Tuesday. I had Tuesday off work just in case anything unexpected happened, but expected to just do a bit of ‘overseeing’ and generally be nosey.

We had a call on Tuesday from the fitter at about quarter to ten to say that he would be with us in about 15 minutes, so it started well. However, when he arrived and looked at our existing hob and started to um and ah and then get his tape measure out, that quickly changed. It turns out that the old hob we had, fitted into a larger hole than modern hobs, and after measuring, it was confirmed that the new hob would actually drop straight through the hole in the worktop where the old hob was. Luckily, I’m a magpie and had kept the offcuts of worktop from when the kitchen was fitted 14 years ago and now they actually came in useful. I cut out two battens of worktop to pad out the hole by 30mm on back and side, while the fitters got on with disconnecting the existing appliances.

Continue reading » New Oven and Hob

Tags:gas oven

We have known for a while that we were going to need to replace the gas oven. The door on it hasn’t sealed properly for some time and every so often I would have to take the door apart to tighten the handle. The plan was that we would look at replacing it over Easter, but needless to say, it wasn’t going to play our game.

On Friday the fan started making unhealthy noises, so yesterday we went out looking for a new oven. The hub also needed replacing as the seal between the glass top and the metal surround had failed and caused the paint on the metal surround to peal in a couple of places. The existing oven was fitted nearly 14 years ago when we bought our house. It is a single oven as that was the space we had available.

We were looking to get a oven with a separate grill/double oven this time and this proved more difficult than we expected. In the end we found one in stainless steel finish that was available to be fitted next week So on Tuesday, the old oven and hob will be removed and the new ones delivered and fitted. Once the old oven has been removed, I will have to remove the oven housing to take out the shelf because it is too high for the new larger oven.

Tags:gas oven

OK, it’s not what you think, it’s not my blog’s birthday (that’s at the end of July). No, just over a year ago, I joined MyBlogLog and started the more active phase of my blog. Joining exposed me to many new blogs, many of which I still follow. It also gained me some regular readers, even if my posting isn’t regular.

One of the blogs I found on MyBlogLog after a couple of days was a newcomer to blogging. She had just posted about venturing in at the shallow end of blogging and I knew what she meant. I am of course talking about one of my regular commentors, jmb, at Nobody Important who has been blogging for 1 year today. So Happy Blogging Birthday jmb.
If you haven’t come across jmb’s blog, do yourself a favour and check it out, here are some to get you started:

• Chocolate — The Achilles’ Heel of JMB
• Australia — Some Thoughts and Some Introductions
• Graduation Gift — Italy (Part V) Assisi and Umbria

One thing that is noticeable about my early posts is how short they are and devoid of detail. OK, some things haven’t changed, my posts are still short, but not as brief as this one from May 2006:

The shower valve arrived today and is now fitted and working.

Hmm, I really knew how to thrill a reader in those days.

Tags:blog anniversary,jmb