Ginger DJ Rob

Very bored today hence two blog entries. I must also be missing our old cat to have come across these videos. Watch them in order from top to bottom.

Image by Ginger DJ via Flickr The excitement of the Peru holiday has been very low on my radar due to a couple of things. I've been working a lot of evenings to get a major project finished - a new Content Management System for the Institute. This has possibly been one of the most stressful things I've done and it felt like putting years on me with the decisions I've had to make along the way. Bonus is that I've somehow built up enough time in lieu to take 3 days off in May. Whilst all this has been happening we've been struggling to come to terms with the decision of whether to put down our furry best friend, Sasha. The vet couldn't really say exactly how long he had but quoted weeks. The worst was he looked and acted almost normal so it just seemed wrong. But after a few more days did we start to see him change. Apparently cats have a high pain tolerance - so he's one hard b*stard. So, on our last day we fed him a sedation pill to calm him down for h...

Image by Ginger DJ via Flickr ...and not having that much fun at the moment. The general feeling is rushed madness and sadness with only a couple of weeks to go for our Peru holiday. I'm working evenings to try and finish a website launch for 2nd April which is about as stressful as you can get with loads of problems along the way - will be glad to see the back of it. On Friday evening, we received some sad news of my cat, Sasha. The lump on his neck is a High Grade Spindle Cell Sarcoma - basically a cancerous tumour. The vet said that an operation was very high risk and if a specialist was to operate it would cost at least £1000 due to complications of the location. The op wouldn't even guarantee the tumour to be fully removed. Its now a depressing waiting game of weeks or months until it gets too uncomfortable for him to eat etc. The thought of putting him down brings a lump to my own throat. The question is how long exactly, will he still be well enough after the holiday?...

Another trip to the vet, another sting in the wallet and the second time Sasha, our cat has been shaved. He's had a large lump on his neck for awhile about the size of a small squash ball and the visit was for a biopsy to find out what's causing it. The results are due on Friday. Since he's come back he's a completely different cat having more energy, sleeping less, playing more and wanting more attention. He's also attacked Kerry with a couple of bites and swipes of his claws.

Image by Ginger DJ via Flickr Working at home is not good for me as there are far too many distractions. Although this helped ensure the boiler got repaired, the same day we had our new wardrobe and drawers delivered (a half-priced, ex-display Habitat bargain bought the previous weekend). The problem was that the delivery men couldn't lift it anywhere near our front door as it was too heavy. Whilst one of them had to deliver something else, his mate and I dismantled the wardrobe on the street. This took nearly an hour though once in, I was constantly moving the parts upstairs and putting them together again. By 5pm I had completely put the mammoth wardrobe (big enough to house the whole of Narnia) together with very little progress made on a major project I'm doing. Not strictly working from home, but that was the excuse, was a trip to the vet the next day. Sasha, our feline friend has developed a lump on the side of his neck. Its the equivalent to a human having a growth t...

Be prepared for quite an ordinary entry as I summarise a quiet week. You'll be glad to hear that Sasha the cat is back to his normal food-pestering, cupboard-love self and the limp has almost gone. The vet, who's made enough money out of me this year, wrote to say they have a free 'senior' check-up service. He's not quite ready for geriatric care yet. My mum's house is nearly ready for the new tenants but I won't be seeing any profit just yet with the gas engineer finding a leak and the electrician recommending new earth cables. A scary estimate of £300 plus VAT was downgraded to £80 for the gas side - apparently its been leaking about 4 units a day! Finally saw The Dark Knight last night. For nearly 3 weeks old and on what should really be a quiet night the cinema was quite full. Its a bit of a marathon to watch and some people (like Kerry) will get bored towards the end. However, there's some amazing set pieces, Heath Ledger performed well, all the c...

I have to admit it but Friday was a bit of a doss (sorry boss if you're reading this). I blame it on 1) having a bar in the building, 2) having a bar with a large TV and 3) the opportunity to see the Olympic opening ceremony. Quite a few others had the same idea as the bar attracted other summer working students and staff. I left after an hour but with no boss and only another team member in the office we set up another PC with the BBC live feed to see the rest. Loved the scroll idea and aerial running man to light the touch. When I got home I was reminded that the students next door had warned us of their house party which had already started at 4pm. They were quite polite and good-natured even at about 8pm when they spread themselves out to the back and front of the house, introducing themselves and moving cars for us. I predicted with the amount of booze and early start they'd be wasted by 2am but from the look of their eyes they'd already necked a few cheeky ones (if y...

I knew it was too good to be true. Having checked my holiday leave entitlement, HR had fudged up the numbers and I was now in minus figures with the Glastonbury week off and proposed week off for DIY. Instead I have three days off to do the laminate flooring and prepare the new extended room for next week's visitors. Glastonbury has also been cut short of it's recovery period The local B & Q and Jewson store's' profits must have jumped this month with me buying all sorts of tools and materials. By the end of the day we'd leveled off the front room floor to match the dining room floor height plus a hatch cut out ready for the electrician to change the socket. Sasha, my adopted cat was taken to the vet for another whoppingly high bill. Pure little geezer had been squeezing out blooded poos which meant a blood test, injection, pills and poo analysis. £172 later the vet announced that the blood test revealed a clean bill of health, surprising for an old man like him...

Tuesday evening we picked up Sasha from the vets after his operation which was to clean and extract some teeth, and remove a lump from his back. I didn't realise he needed stitches to repair the hole where the lump was so it came as a surprise that the bill at around £270! Mark, my wedding's best man has offered me a business deal for my mum's house. He's promised to renovate the house, paying for his time and material costs for half the profit after current valuation. With the plans he has in mind we could get £165k in May/June. Otherwise we've been amusing ourselves with a couple of games lately. Unchartered: Drake's Fortune on the PS3 is impressing me with some of the best graphics and quite fun shooty bits. A cross between Resident Evil 4 and Tomb Raider. We also downloaded a network demo version of Lost Planet . It's not brilliant but I'm impressed by the speed of playing online.

Our post-Valentine's Day evening out went well on Friday. We booked a table at Shanghai Blues in Holborn just round the corner from The End. The food and service was really good but a bit pricey. The music was a little annoying with some jazz vocalist be-bopping and scatting. For some reason the toilets, looking like a posh opium den, had better music. Chinese gnomes The British Museum was also very local and we were lucky to get tickets to the First Emperor exhibition for the terracotta army. It was still busy even at the strange time of 10:30pm but a better set up than the Tutemkamon event. Going to museums isn't exactly the sort of thing to put on Facebook as a hobby but just seeing the roof was worthy of a mention. The Chinese over-sized gnomes were really impressive and beggars belief that the tomb had over 100,000 clay statues as an army, admin staff, entertainers and animals to accompany the emperor in his after-life. The curators had even mocked up what colours the st...

Sasha, our adopted cat is doing well though has had quite an eventful month. After a week we discovered how bad his flea infestation was with Kerry suffering bites and leaving weird black dandruff (dried blood from fleas eating him) where he's slept. Vet bill = £36. We already knew he doesn't travel so well from bringing him down from Norfolk but just going a mile he'll crap himself. The vet also showed me how little teeth he has left advising an operation to clean them. The poor blighter has just two front fangs on his bottom jaw just like Sweetums from the Muppets (pictured left) plus one or two back ones covered in a hard sludge of brown. Vet bill = around £160 + £40 with drip. It certainly hasn't put him off his food. Everytime we go near his bowl he's expecting a feed. We've since discovered a Senior version of cat food = £4 a week. With our Venice trip booked for our anniversary, March 10 or Mario day (MAR10) , we needed a cattery to look after him a...

Kerry spotted this 'art' in the Guardian and, with a bit of research, discovered a bit of local history which is no longer available to the public. The news-story was the seller's claim that Bonham's refused a £1m bid from Damian Hurst for a piece of Walter Potter's work. Shame we moved here too late to see the stuffed animals in Victorian past-times . If anyone's seen this or know where any of the pieces can be seen please tell me! Tonight I'm taking part in my employer's (real) pantomime. Apparently its a long institute tradition where I have a non-speaking/singing part. Full report later.

Getting used to Brighton life and rather bemused by the type of locals we have here. No longer do we have to put up with fu$&-wick chavs, old-dears and Poles and a visit to the local Sainsburys has cool people, hippies, drunks and lesbians. With Kerry battling a bad cold we stayed in Friday night and joined a 24 hour video rental shop. It uses touch-screens to make all the transactions and choice, with quite a good choice of films, PS2 games and even porn. If you return it back within 6 hours a film is only 99p. This gave us the chance to catch up with Science of Sleep directed by Michael Gondry. Loved the homemade style to it. The plot does wear thin towards the end. The DVD extras featured some New York cat sanctuary with some random bird singing to her ‘kitties’ which slightly did my head in.