Almost ‘D-Day’.

 Health  No Responses »
Mar 282008

Not the ‘D-Day’ of old… but a more personal one. Tomorrow is 29th March and tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. is the start of the latest ‘Hills Biggest Loser’ Competition, and I’m in it! Don’t expect to win… but I do hope to get most of this weight off.

Had I continued the diet and exercise regime I was on before Xmas I’d have been down near my ‘target weight’ by now, but that’s water under the bridge. I need to focus on tomorrow and the next 12 weeks.

During the last competition I managed to lose roughly 3 kilos a week. If I did the same *this* time I’d be not only below the ‘target weight’ but well on the way to my minimum weight… but that’s probably a little optimistic to say the least. Since Xmas the condition of my back/hip has deteriorated markedly and I’ve developed a distinct ‘roll’ in my gait so I’m not sure I’ll be able to put the same amount of effort into the gym work that I did before.

Either way, it has to be done… and maybe this time I can stick to the diet after the competition ends! :)

Relevant info, starting weight etc, will be on the other blog from Saturday onwards.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 7:44 am  

Ads with a sting in the tail.

 Health, Society  No Responses »
Mar 272008

We were sitting around discussing the number of legs various animals had, four on mammals, six on insects, eight on spiders etc and the subject of scorpions came up. After checking on Google Images I decided the question was ‘moot’ because although it has eight actual legs, most varieties have two large pincer carrying appendages that whilst clearly not ‘legs’ since they don’t carry the animals weight, still count as limbs. This might have led to a discussion about a differentiation between limbs and their uses… but something else caught my eye. That ‘something else’ was this image.

French 'aids advert'.It’s clearly part of a French anti-aids campaign which includes, I discovered after a few more clicks, several other rather ‘explicit’ images. Not sure what this says to you but until I discovered what its intent was I had *no* idea what message it was supposed to convey!

Ok it’s well done… and once you are aware that it’s part of an ongoing campaign the point becomes clearer. But until you have that essential piece of information this could just be an artwork of ‘advanced’ form. I thought it was all very odd!

By the way, we’ve not yet got round to discussing the ‘true’ definition of ‘leg’, *or* limb. :)

Posted by Welsh Dog at 4:48 pm  

What is it with Heather Mills?

 Entertainment  No Responses »
Mar 272008

Surely being awarded $53 million was enough to last most people for life? Not so Paul McCartney’s ex-wife Heather Mills who has set a team of accountants on the trail of”‘Macca’s missing millions” claiming he was worth double what was entered into court records as his net worth. But why? Invested wisely the money she has would bring her a far higher annual income than she could ever have hoped to earn in her own right?

Heather Mills
Let’s face it, she’s not getting any younger and her days as a model would have been numbered long before she managed to hook Macca! Even the voyeuristic interest in her disability would hardly have made her image more ‘saleable’ so her earning potential must have been very limited?

I’m damn sure if someone gave me $50 million I’d sit down and shut up instead of trying to wheedle even more out of them and wasting the money I’d been given on teams of accountants. Maybe they *will* find Macca has more than the amount he claimed he was worth, but why should that make any difference? Surely the important amount the court needed was the difference between what he was worth when they met and what he was worth when they split up?

Should an ex-wife have a claim on money made prior to a marriage? Maybe yes up to a point… especially where there are children involved and the partner has given up a career etc…. but that point was reached and far exceeded by the divorce settlement Heather Mills got. People in the public eye do themselves no favours when they appear greedy and right now Heather Mills is doing herself no favours.

There are people all over Australia whose income doesn’t reach $53,000 let alone $53,000,000… there’s something wrong with society somewhere.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 9:10 am  

More preventable death on the roads.

 Crime & Punishment  No Responses »
Mar 272008

Was reading a story about a father who arrived at the scene of a road crash where two of his young sons, his sister in law and two of her children were being loaded into stretchers. As he was checking on his 9 year old son, he was informed the 6 year old had died in the back of the ambulance.

The cause seems to be, yet again, a truck driver deciding he had time to run a red light rather than waiting for a few seconds until the lights changed in his favour. I say yet again because it happens here, with monotonous regularity… often with fatal consequences. We’ve seen trucks do it, we’ve seen *buses* do it. It’s an insane way to drive but it seems ‘might is right’ in the eyes of the drivers who know they’ll probably survive any crash.

Not so for the kids who died!!

I know we all whinge about the ‘big brother’ tactics of putting CCTV cameras everywhere, but if ever there was a case to be made for placing them in certain spots, then placing them on *all* traffic light controlled intersections has to be one of the strongest. It’s time *all* traffic lights were monitored and penalties for trucks running them leading to an automatic loss of licence – no arguments.

Full story of crash here.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 8:42 am  

Back again!

 Health  No Responses »
Mar 272008

Back again? No not mine… still the wife’s. She seems a *lot* better today. She’s currently sitting at the computer ‘working from home’ albeit sitting in one of our upright solid wooden ‘dining’ chairs. Not sure if she’ll be travelling in to work tomorrow or not, but if this continues she’ll be pretty much back to normal by the beginning of next week.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 8:16 am  

Skater Boi?

 Home and Hearth  No Responses »
Mar 272008

Up at 4:45 a.m. and out at 5:15 a.m. with both kids and away to the ice rink for the youngest to have her lesson. By 6:45 a.m. she’d had enough she’d fallen on her knees and decided enough was enough. No matter how much coaxing and reminding her ‘champions never quit’… she was too tired to carry on. Fair enough.

A quick visit to Macca’s for them to get hash browns for breakfast and away we went arriving at school *just* in time for the eldest to get to ‘band’ practice. I zoomed off home, got the dishwasher filled and wiped the surfaces then heard the bin-men arriving in the street. Out I rush with bags full of stuff that the bin wouldn’t hold because it wasn’t emptied properly last week.

The bin is emptied, I throw the rest into the back and relax… I hate having bags of rubbish left lying around. Some people seem to be able to cope with it but it drives me scatty! I hate mess. I drag the bin back up the drive, wash it out, water a few plants as I have the hose in my hand… and get back indoors for a sit down and a well earned cup of liquorice tea.

I think maybe I need to learn how to use roller blades… I’d get a lot more done maybe? I wonder if Avril Lavigne would write a song about me?

Posted by Welsh Dog at 8:13 am  

Kids say the oddest things!

 Entertainment  No Responses »
Mar 262008

A few weeks ago the eldest was sitting in the back of the car on the way home singing away as she does to whatever is in the radio. I like the ‘oldies’ so I tune into stations that play those songs.

We were driving along listening to a song by the Police and suddenly she stopped singing and asked “Why has he got a message up his bottom?”.

Took a few seconds to realise she’d misheard the words “Message in a Bottle”! :)

Trouble is that *now* I can’t get her version out of my head. Whenever the song is played I get the oddest visions in my mind… ewwww.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 7:22 pm  

Spam, spam, spam, spam…

 I.T and similar  No Responses »
Mar 252008

I like the Askimet plugin for WordPress (and other) blogs. So far in the current incarnation of the Opinion Australia blog, it’s intercepted 13,537 spam posts since it was installed.

Comment spam is a real problem for all blogs chewing up both bandwidth and time. Askimet is pretty good at doing its job.

Posted by Welsh Dog at 11:06 am  

The wife’s now under the doctor!

 Health  2 Responses »
Mar 252008

In case you live outside Wales and wonder what the hell the subject is about… that expression is a part of Wenglish and means she’s following doctors orders about her back.

He seems to think it’s nothing serious, a plain muscle spasm. He suggests she has a day or two on diazepam and anti-inflammatories and see how she is afterwards. She needn’t take painkillers… unless it hurts(?!?). Ok… to me that sounds similar to the old ‘take two aspirins and call me in the morning’ approach, but what do *I* know? :)

She’s to have two days off to let it ease, but he didn’t make any suggestions about how she should stand, sit, lie or whatever in the meantime. Are there exercises she should/could do? No idea.

She’s got a certificate for two days… and then we see how she is. To be fair she *is* a lot better now than she was when she seized up on Saturday, so maybe those two days using muscle relaxants will see her ok. We can but hope!

Posted by Welsh Dog at 10:58 am  

Vale Neil Aspinall

 Society  No Responses »
Mar 252008

For those of us who lived through the turbulent ‘Beatle Years’ and the ensuing fall out following their… err… falling out… another chapter has closed with the death of Neil Aspinall aged 66, the ‘mastermind’ who pulled their fledgling company ‘Apple Corps’ into a semblance of order after the anarchy that preceded his arrival.

He told the guys we would look at the books and stay a few days to clear things up… and stayed for over forty years. You have to admire that sort of loyalty. :)

Neil died after what was a relatively brief illness, having been diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year. This could well have been just the end of a process started when they smoked ciggies together behind the bike sheds in school all those years ago. He seems to have had a pretty good life though/

Posted by Welsh Dog at 7:25 am  
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