Two In The Bush

January 11th 23:15 Saturday.

Today I went out for a meal with my family, to celebrate my Dad's birthday which is tomorrow. Earlier in the day I had gone out with him to take his computer to Novatech to upgrade the memory.

His computer was beginning to struggle a bit, Windows being the memory hog that it is, as well as all the other crap that your PC loads up these days. To be fair, he has had it years, and he is still running Windows Vista, and until today only had 1 gig of RAM. I've gotten this upgraded to 4 gig for him, I did offer to get the hard drive done at the same time, but he said there was plenty of space left on it.

He did say that he was getting annoyed with the wireless keyboard that he has as it keeps running out of battery power just at the wrong moments and he has to change the batteries. With this in mind we also picked up a new keyboard and mouse.

Felt quite the role reversal, me taking his computer to be worked on, and getting his (combined Christmas and birthday) present. Although he was good, I didn't suggest that because of this he can have an ice cream.

With the arrangements for the meal out today being made the day before, I had asked my daughter if she would want to come up early so that she could come, and she had agreed to do so. This was a pleasant surprise. After all, hanging round with friends is the thing that most fourteen year olds want to do the most, for her to change her plans to come out with us is just really nice. We had a good time.

We went to the 'Bird In The Hand' in Lovedean. The food was bloody amazing. Lots of it (although to be fair was not cheap) - it was worth the money though.  You really did feel that you got what you paid for.

Everyone enjoyed their meal too. Even Chloe, who at times can be a fussy eater, although she has gotten better in the last couple of years. I think going round her friends, or going out with them has given her a chance to explore different foods that she may not otherwise have tried.

I know it sounds mushy, but I am really proud of my daughter. She's going through that horrible teenage stuff, all the pain and stress of school as well as growing up, and she's still a reasonably well rounded and sensible person. Sure she has her moments, but I know I can count on her to do the right things when it really counts.

I have some overtime tomorrow, to bolster the post Christmas paypacket. I also need to get my arse in gear learning lines of Prime Directive, the second act of which we start filming next week. Eeek.

Learnt my lines ? Don't be ridiculous.

Sundays are such interesting things. I got an invite late last night to have roast dinner at my mum's this evening. If there's one thing I can't turn down, it's the opportunity of a roast dinner I don't have to prepare.

So, after dispatching Chloe (well, I took her home) and bouncing some ideas around with Alec to help with the current series of The 9th Man, I went round my Mum & Dad's.

Really good to see them again, haven't seen them in a week or so (if you don't count me waving out the window to my dad when he is having a smoke in the garden).

Also good to see my Sister, and my nephews. Bless them. When they're not trying to kill each other.

I also received a reply from Helen, to agree to arrange a meet up. We need to meet face to face to sort out our issues. All this sending messages back and forth just isn't working.We need to have 'the talk'.

A good old family weekend, with some creativity mixed in, and the cleaning too. Am I good, or am I good ? No Tardis, no screwdriver, three minutes to spare. Who da Man ? Oh, ok, I'm never saying that again.