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Pizza Pizza!

Posted on September 30, 2009

A cou­ple of week­ends ago I was invited to Piz­za­Ex­press for a mini blog­ger meet and great.  I packed Squidge up in the car, pro­gramed my Tom­Tom and hit the road.  The meet up was in Pre­ston and we arrived with time to spare.  I strug­gled to find park­ing but finally found some­thing, searched for money for the meter and real­ized I didn’t have any change.  I asked some­one if they had change for a £5, she didn’t but she gave me 50p.  Great! I thanked her and headed to meet the other blog­gers think­ing I had an hour on the meter.  I didn’t, I had 30 min­utes and when I came out to feed the meter a £50 was wait­ing for me– joy!

Ok so back to the rea­son I went to Pre­ston– FREE PIZZA!!! I had only ever been to Piz­za­Ex­press once before, din­ner for a friend who was mov­ing to Wales.  When I arrived Sandy of Baby Baby was already there.  We decided to wait a bit until the oth­ers arrived. Good think too as we didn’t see the wait­ress again for a good 30 min­utes.  Once every­one arrived we caught the wait­resses atten­tion and ordered our meal.  Piz­za­Ex­press has a nice kids menu but I was sur­prised when the meal arrived– very kid unfriendly.  My main gripe was that the drinks were adult sized and in very trendy glass cups.  I was think­ing greasy pizza and tall skinny glass of juice.  I spent a lot of time watch­ing out to make sure she didn’t have an acci­dent.  So now that I have my gripes out of the way I can con­cen­trate on the good bits.  The food was YUMMY!!  I love a good thin crust pizza a Piz­za­Ex­press deliv­ered on that front.  I didn’t try the new Leg­gera just because I don’t eat salad at restau­rants unless its a chicken ceasar salad– I know I’m weird!! I’m usu­ally dis­ap­pointed w/ restau­rant food but I am happy to report that I left very satisfied.

I had a fan­tas­tic time meet­ing the other blog­gers.  Sally from Who’s the Mummy and her daugh­ter Flea and Sandy from Baby Baby and her son Pres­ley are really nice and friendly.  I also met Yummy Mammy who was excited to share her good news– ex-husband had agreed to let her daugh­ter move to Eng­land.  So it was a bit of a cel­e­bra­tion too.

Over­all I enjoyed Piz­za­Ex­press, all they need to do is sort the kids drinks and have more staff on for lunch!  Thanks Sandy for orga­niz­ing it and Piz­za­Ex­press for the fab pizza!

Whoa!

Posted on September 28, 2009

I love this pho­to­graph!

Expectations

Posted on September 21, 2009

On Sun­day Wal, Squidge and I went to Der­byshire.  We took pre­cious moments away from the bath­room remodel to look at a loca­tion for our wed­ding.  We had booked a table for Sun­day lunch and were look­ing for­ward to it.  I think we all had dif­fer­ent expec­ta­tions of our after­noon.  I was look­ing for­ward to show­ing Wal the  beau­ti­ful house and talk­ing about what I wanted. Wal I sus­pect was look­ing for­ward to a tra­di­tional Sun­day lunch.  Squidge was dream­ing of run­ning around and play­ing hide and seek.  All of our expec­ta­tions were met yes­ter­day.  It was a glo­ri­ously sunny after­noon.  The weather could not have been bet­ter and Cress­brook Hall shined.  Lunch was fan­tas­tic, starter, main and dessert– nom nom nom.  We ran around a lit­tle bit w/ Squidge.

We chat­ted about what would hap­pen, where it would hap­pen and when I couldn’t answer some of Wal’s ques­tions we spoke to Bobby who owns the Hall.  She made Wal com­fort­able and answered all of his ques­tions.  We ten­ta­tively reserved the date with promises to call Bakewell Reg­is­trars office to book them.  After book­ing the reg­is­trar we were to con­firm our reser­va­tion w/ a deposit, Wal was OK with this.  We went home and about an hour after we got home Bobby called.  She called to say that her daugh­ter had taken a book­ing for the day we wanted…sorry…unfortunate…better to tell you sooner rather than wait until tomorrow…blah…blahh. blaaaaah…

To say I’m dis­ap­pointed would be an under­state­ment.  I almost cried.  My reac­tion to this set­back pissed me off.  It’s just a feck­ing wed­ding.  Wal and I have been together for a while. We have a child together.  We want another child.  We’re plan­ning on buy­ing a new house.  This whole marriage/wedding thing is not going to fun­da­men­tally change our lives.  I don’t have any idea why I’m allow­ing myself to get sucked into this emo­tional roller­coaster.  There are other dates avail­able.  I’m going to talk to Wal tonight and see what he thinks.  If it begins to get all weird and bridezilla-ish well just for­get all about it and con­tinue to live in sin.

While we were up in the Peak Dis­trict we decided to do a lit­tle ‘splorin.  It really is pretty up there when the sun is shining.

the one where I’m reminded I love living in Manchester

Posted on September 15, 2009

Wal has been up and out of the house at the ass crack of dawn this week.  His boss is over from the US so he’s stick­ing closer to a nor­mal sched­ule this week.  A con­se­quence of his visit is that he has the car all day.  After Sun­day night’s puke-fest my inten­tion was to stay close to home but well I changed my mind.  By noon I was going a bit stir crazy and needed out.  Squidge was fine and the weather was dry so off on an adven­ture we went.  On Sun­day we had walked 1/2 way home from the Man­ches­ter Aquatic cen­tre (where Squidge is tak­ing swim lessons) and walked passed the Man­ches­ter Museum.  MM has a Dar­win exhibit on at the moment. We know this because a dis­play win­dow has a GIANT crab on dis­play.  Squidge was fas­ci­nated by it when we walked by on Sun­day so I thought it would be fun to go have a look.

I had never been to the Man­ches­ter Museum and was really look­ing for­ward to it.  One of the best things about liv­ing in Man­ches­ter is the many muse­ums dot­ted around the place.  The sec­ond best thing is that almost all are free, in fact I haven’t had to pay an entry fee yet.  We packed up our gear and hopped on the bus.  Have I ever men­tioned how much Squidge loves rid­ing the bus??  She always heads for the back and begs to go up if it’s a dou­bledecker.  I always say no to the top.

To say that I enjoyed the museum would be an under­state­ment.  The Egypt room is fan­tas­tic.  I had never seen a real mummy before, so cool and creepy!  The hiero­glyphic! The masks! The sar­cophagi! Any­one inter­est­ing in ancient Egypt will love it.  The we headed to ancient Greece, it was good but no where near as cool as Egypt.  You can’t beat a crusty old mummy can you?!? We saw stuffed ani­mals of all shapes and sizes.  More birds, bird skele­tons, and eggs than I can recall.  Lions, tigers and bears, OH MY!!  Not to men­tion stoats, kan­ga­roos and red pan­das!  Squidge loved every last minute of it and I enjoyed watch­ing her enjoy her­self.  They also had some live rep­tiles on dis­play and that was a big hit too.

If you live in and around the Man­ches­ter area you really should drop in for a visit.  The ‘main’ build­ing is Vic­to­rian and you can still find lots of the orig­i­nal fea­tures as well as some pretty mod­ern addi­tions.  I think the ori­nal fea­tures makes it a more intense expe­ri­ence.  When you’re walk­ing down the Vic­to­rian stair­case into a room full of stuffed wild ani­mals it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.  I don’t think you would  get the same feel­ing if it was a totally mod­ern room.

We also had lunch at the attached cafe.  It was a bit pricey but well worth it. When you con­sider the free admis­sion to the museum the cafe is really a bar­gain! They try to serve locally pro­duced ingre­di­ents when­ever pos­si­ble so a pretty green experience.

Bemvindos

Posted on September 14, 2009

To my very first post at my brand spank­ing new bloggy home.  I’ve been toy­ing w/ the idea of short­en­ing Chron­i­cles of Squidgy­boo for a long time.  When I got noti­fi­ca­tion to renew the address I just decided to let it go bahbye.

Strug­gling w/ a post today so I’m just going to bul­let point it w/ some pho­tos. Things here at Casa de Squidge and click­ing along as normal.

We’re still work­ing on the bath­room.  We had to undo last week­ends work because the adhe­sive had turned to dust and the tiles were lift­ing.  It took all day Sat­ur­day to chip away at the adhe­sive that was stuck to the tiles. Yes­ter­day we re-tiled and it’s  now back to where we were the pre­vi­ous week­end.  Wal has his boss from the US here all week so noth­ing will be done this week.

Squidge got her hair cut again.  I was very unhappy w/ her hair­cut and had been strug­gling try­ing to fig­ure out why I didn’t like it.  Finally decided that it was the fact that she had 2 lay­ers of hair.  One layer was shoul­der length and the other was mid­dle of her back.  Com­bine that w/ the fringe and she looked odd.

Almost like she has a mul­let– lol or so Byr­ney said.  I don’t know if it was a really a mul­let but it did give off mul­let vibes depend­ing on how the wind was blow­ing!  On Sat­ur­day morn­ing it was CHOP CHOP!! It made me a lit­tle sad because I want her to have really long hair.  Hope­fully by this time next yr it will be long again.

Poor Squidge was ill last night.  I went in to check on her and there she was sleep­ing amongst her upchucked sup­per.  It was pretty dis­gust­ing but it only got bet­ter.  I woke her up and took her into the bath­room and started run­ning a bath.  She looked at me coughed a lit­tle bit and turned into Linda Blair.  She pro­jec­tile vom­ited all over the floor and on me.  BLECH!!  I dropped a towel over it and got on w/ the job of giv­ing her a bath.  When that was done I deposited her on my bed and she watched Way­bu­loo while Wal and I cleaned up.  Wal cleaned up the bath­room, god love him, and I cleaned up her room.  I think I got the bet­ter deal!  Then it was back to bed, she was look­ing a bit green under the gills but fell right back to sleep.  When I went to bed I took her into our bed, mostly to make me feel bet­ter.  She slept through the night and is feel­ing bet­ter this morn­ing.  I’m plan­ning on stick­ing close to home today just in case she has a relapse.

Wal and I man­aged to get tick­ets to see the Patri­ots play at Wem­b­ley Sta­dium in Lon­don. If you fol­low me on twit­ter or Face­book you’ll know I was in a bit of a tizzy over buy­ing the tick­ets.  Wal had a meet­ing and couldn’t do it so it fell to me.  Now the only time I have ever used tick­et­mas­ter was to buy con­cert tick­ets.  The type of tick­ets that sell out in sec­onds (or so it seams) so I was a bit stressed.  In the end I got tick­ets w/out a prob­lem.  We are very excited and can’t wait for 25 Octo­ber.  I thought this was an exhi­bi­tion game but have found out that it’s a proper reg­u­lar sea­son game!!  Yay!  Look out for us– I’ll have to insert a dia­gram of where our seats are so you can look for us.  It will be the 3 of us as it was going to be a bit of a has­sle to find some­one to watch Squidge.

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