Category Archives: Life

Life observations

Are Wii Fit Yet?

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I have spent the last three years trying to eat healthier, to lose weight, and to get myself fitter, so imagine my horror when I got on the scales last week for the first time in several months and found that I had put on 10lbs.

YES TEN POUNDS!

I put a lot of this down to it being Winter, and with the dark evenings, the cold and ice of England, or if not that the rain.  Combining these together make it very unpleasant to take a walk after work, or even at the weekends, and what’s worse, the cold weather makes you want to eat more wholesome food, like stews and steaming hot dishes with lots of gravy.

The weight gain is also partly due to my new lifestyle, since I started a new job three months ago, and now instead of walking at lunchtime, as I used to do when I lived in Florida, I usually spend my time on the computer and write articles – like this one…

I am guilty too of having been addicted to Evony (which I wrote about in another article), and for the last six months of last year I spent far more time sitting at the computer playing an on-line game than getting out and exercising.

Well, it’s now 2010, today is the 1st February, and I want to lose those 10 pounds and more and to return to being a bit fitter again.

My fiancee bought us a Wii for Christmas, primarily so that we could use the Wii Fit package, but we haven’t really used it until the end of last week. She registered on Wii Fit and tried it out, and on Saturday I thought “Right, it’s my turn to try and do something about my situation!.

So on the Wii Fit Board I get, and go through the registration process and tests. My balance has always been fairly good, although I couldn’t walk along a narrow beam to save my life, but imagine my surprise when the results showed that my Wii Fit Age was 38! Not bad since I am actually 55!

I thought it best to start with Yoga, since stretching and pose are good for you, but I quickly found out that this is not really my thing. I need to get into this later as I know it will do me good, but when your body is stiff and overweight, it’s not exactly easy.

So I moved onto Muscle Toning, and this seemed just as bad as Yoga. By now I was getting a little frustrated, and so I moved onto Aerobic Workout, and here I found I could have some fun. I started off by heading Soccer Balls, which took some doing, since I was leaning towards them with my upper body and not changing my body balance. Doing the Hula Hoops is not something I can do well in real life, but I quickly mastered this on the Wii, even though my fiancee was laughing hysterically at my movements. I think she got almost as good a workout as I did from just laughing!

Off now to do some Step Exercises, which not having done this in real life I found a bit hard, until I was shown how, and then I was off. I think of all the Aerobics exercises I enjoy the Hula Hoop and Step Aerobics best, since they are not too strenuous, but you can feel the effects.

Finally, I moved on to the Jogging, which again is something that I have never been good at. Having been overweight all my life and not having the greatest knees in the world, this is quite strenuous on my body, but off I set, jogging on the spot in the middle of the living room floor, and the way that my legs were kicking out had my other half in hysterics again. Even on the lowest level, by the time I got to the end of the course my legs had turned to jelly, but I could feel the benefits as I was puffing and panting away.

“OK it’s YOUR turn I said”, knowing that my fiancee isn’t any better at exercising than I am, and so she logged into the Wii Fit program and set about doing the Hula Hoops. Well, I practically got the camcorder out it was so funny to watch. I wish we had both videoed ourselves, as we looked ridiculous.

She then tried the jogging, and I could tell by the time she got halfway through the course that she was puffed and about to give in, but she didn’t, and kept going right on to the end, but like me it left her out of breath for ages.

I will keep you up to date as we progress, and I know that this will help us to get fitter over time. It’s still not the same as being outside in the fresh air though, and fortunately the days have started getting longer, and it’s possible to start going for evening walks again, which we both really enjoy.

Do you have a Wii and use it for keeping fit? I would love to hear how you are using it and what success you have had, so if you do, please leave a comment and let me know.

The Snow Returned

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If you have been following the saga of the bad winter weather here in the UK through our blog, last night when I returned home from work, I was able to shovel the melting slushy snow and ice off the back path and steps up to the house with little difficulty.

I had hoped that the snow they forecast for southwest England overnight would miss us, but it didn’t, and we had between one and two inches fall by the time I woke up at 6:30am and looked out of the bedroom window.

Where I had cleared the garden path the night before it looked more like an inch or less, because the temperatures were slightly above freezing, and the snow was already a bit slushy.   However on the roads it was still deeper, where it lay on the previous compacted snow and ice.

The car was covered with about two inches of snow, which was easy to brush off, and the windows were not frozen, so I was soon able to start my journey, deciding to leave for work at 7:30am to try and beat most of thr traffic.

Our road, which is on a steep hill, was very slippery, and the main road just around the corner which goes up a very steep hill was slick, but fortunately I had enough traction to keep going, albeit slowly, and got to the top of the hill and over the other side.

It was then I hit the first problem, a solid queue of traffic towards the bottom of the hill, waiting to cross the bridge at Wood Mill (see below – click on the picture for a larger image).  

Wood Mill Bridge, Southampton. Click on the link for a larger image.

Wood Mill Bridge is only a single lane of traffic, with a double bend in the middle of the two parts of the bridge.   Normally, three cars will go from one end, stop in the middle section, where it is wide enough for three to four cars to pass each other, and then drive on.   If people adhere to this policy of only three cars at a time, then the traffic flows pretty well.

However, since the end of December there have been temporary traffic lights on either side of the bridge, and they keep jamming up, so that only one side shows green.  I am not sure if that is what happened this morning, but the traffic was already backed up to half a mile my side of the bridge at 7:30am.

For me to get to the last section of the road that runs past the park and leads to the bridge, I have to cross two mini-roundabouts, and the road coming from the right onto the first roundabout has priority, so if only one car moves forward at a time, invariably another takes it’s place, and my stream doesn’t move. 

This time of the morning, in the rush hour, there are very few cars going south across the bridge, most of the traffic heading north across the river.  Under normal conditions, the flow is constantly moving, albeit at a slow pace, but this morning it took me 35 minutes to get to the bridge, which is only a mile from home!  

The traffic lights were eventually working, letting about ten cars across from each direction at a time, but with a huge wait time in between, so most of the time the bridge was actually empty.   Oh the frustration, since the next bridge to the east is out of my way and usually very heavy under normal conditions, and the next to the west is blocked northbound for a few weeks as they work on it.  So I don’t really have any choice but to take this route to work.

Once across the bridge the traffic was light for a mile or so, until I came to Burgess Road, which runs west past the University, and this was by the time I got to it pretty heavy.  I decided therefore to not continue along there, but to take the back roads through “The Flowers”, a section of back roads that are named after flowers, and which are narrow but cut out a lot of the traffic.

Well these were slippery last week, but this morning it was like driving on a skating rink, with compacted ice under the wheels.  I drove very carefully around the bends and down a hill, but going up the otherside of the hill my wheels didn’t want to grip the road and I was sliding all over the place.  The car in front had managed to climb the hill ok, but I didn’t get enough grip at the bottom to take a run at it, and practically crawled up it, however fortune was on my side and the car kept going to the top.

Once there I hit the next main road, which only had light traffic, and zoomed onto the next hold up.

The last stage of the journey was also very slow, because the road that our office is located on is a two lane road, but there was a queue of traffic on it going in the opposite direction to me for most of the mile to the office, and I got stuck behind a cyclist who was struggling to keep the bike going at a horribly slow pace, and since he could not ride right close to the kerb, there was not enough room to overtake him, and so a stream of traffic just crawled along yet again.

At work there was a group of people shoveling snow off the driveways so that delivery trucks could get in and out.  The road goes all around the offices and warehouse, to the staff car park on the far side of the building, and even the ramp up to the car park was closed as it was too slippery.  I had to drive past the ramp, and up the down ramp to park.

I finally got to work five minutes late at 8:35am, the eight and a half miles having taken just over an hour to complete.

Whether I should have taken the back roads through “The Flowers” is debatable, however just before I arrived at work, they announced on the radio that the road which I would otherwise have taken, “The Avenue”, was partially blocked with a tree branch that had come down.  So, if I had taken that route, I would maybe have taken another 30 minutes to get to work.

Oh the joys of driving in England in the winter lol :)

Is The UK Winter About To Get Better Or Worse?

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As usual the weather forecasters in the UK have got it wrong again in the last week, with the many inches of snow that we were forecast on the South Coast for the weekend not appearing.  Well maybe a dozen small flakes, but that was all. 

Instead of heavy snow, all we saw was sunny blue skies at the end of the week and most of the weekend.  Unfortunately the sun is so low in the sky that the warmth was not enough to melt the now compacted snow and ice on the roads and pavements.  It just helped turn the snow and ice into a smoother slicker version that is now very dangerous to walk on in places.

On Saturday morning, since it was bright and sunny, I decided to go outside with a shovel and try to break up some of the snow and ice from our road, since it’s on a steep hill and has been difficult to drive on.  Where some grit and salt had been put down, or where the sun had warmed the road, I was able to chip chunks of ice away to uncover the road, but for the most part attempts to chip at the ice did little, the ice being practically welded to the road surface.

After about an hour of doing this, intermixed with meeting various neighbours who were walking to the shops instead of driving, I realised that I had a sore on my thumb.  I know this is the price you pay for not wearing gloves, but I really find it hard to work with gloves on.  Well looking at my right hand, I found another three sores, each of them larger than on my left, and the skin hanging off!  Ouch!   

So I headed back indoors where Debbie said “why didn’t you wear your gloves”,  and tried to not feel the pain as I washed my hands in icy cold water and then she helped to put some band aids on them.   Of course when you get blisters from working, it’s always on the pressure points that you use to do practically anything, from opening a jar to getting dressed and tying your shoes, so I have been struggling ever since with trying to not have anything touch them. 

We were supposed to have more snow last night, and the whole day yesterday was so dark and gloomy that you would think we lived in the Arctic!   But, no more snow, just temperatures that were marginally above freezing, and perfect for making the pathways even slicker than they were.

The back path that slopes down to where I park the car in the alley at the back of the house was rather slippy yesterday morning, and this morning it was even worse, looking really glassy and shiny and very hard to walk on.  As I navigated my way downhill to the car this morning, Debbie poked her head through the bedroom curtains to see my literally clinging onto the garage walls to try and stop myself from slipping on the last few feet, where I could not walk on anything but ice to get to the back gate.

Today has also been several degrees above freezing, and still no more snow, and I wonder when I get home if anything will have melted, or if it will be worse than this morning.   If it does snow overnight I am sure things will be chaotic tomorrow, since nothing has been salted or gritted for days.

My plan for tonight is therefore to try and use the shovel on the back path to see if the ice has come lose enough to chip it away, otherwise tomorrow morning is going to be fun!   Of course it might just snow…

Just heard from Debbie, who went shopping and of course the supermarkets have no salt either.  She brought two small packets and they went nowhere.  Oh well…  It you don’t hear from me for a while, I might be lying on my back recovering from a fall…

Winter Hits The UK Hard

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Debbie and I returned home at the weekend from our Christmas trip to Florida to see my daughters, and I consider us to be very lucky, since the northern part of the UK  had already been hit by sub-zero temperatures and record amounts of snow.

It didn’t take long however for Old Man Winter to move south, and by Tuesday we had snow in the south of England.  Fortunately going to work on Tuesday morning it wasn’t as cold as expected, so I didn’t need to scrape the ice off the windows of the car, just use the regular wiper to clean the windows.

Tuesday night we were threatened to have up to a foot of snow, but when I left work it was just light drizzle, and I made it all the way home in almost record time.  It wasn’t half an hour later however when we saw heavy snow falling, but fortunately we only got just over an inch, far less than the forecast said.  

Wednesday morning I set off for work early, expecting to have to have a major scraping job on my hands, and also to have to wade through deep snow, but it was already melting a bit, the car windows were not frozen, so I just had to brush the snow off the car, and got into work 30 minutes earlier than usual.

When I got to work I found that several people who live a bit further out of town and where the snow was falling earlier, had been forced to abandon their cars as they couldn’t get home.  One of them left work at 5pm and didn’t make it home until 11pm, and this is less than ten miles from where I live.  I guess I ought to be grateful that I live where I do.

We had a bit more snow during the day and it was threatening more for the evening, so I decided to leave for home ten minutes early to beat the traffic, and had a good journey home, that is until I almost got home. 

We live halfway up a steep hill, and I managed to take the turning off the main road onto our access road ok, drove the two hundred yards or so along there ok, then made the sharp left turn to go up the hill, and didn’t get too far.  The road was covered in snow and ice, and was too steep for the car to get enough grip to drive more than 20 or 30 yards up the road.   Frustratingly, this was only 20 yards short of where I needed to be to back off the road and down the alley at the back of the house to where I park.  

Well I tried and tried, reversed down the hill and around the corner, tried again, but the car wasn’t going to make it, so I parked at the side of the road and walked the last 1/4 mile home.   I then got changed, put my boots on, grabbed the bucket of salt/grit that we saved from the week before Christmas when we had the last freeze, picked up a garden shovel, and headed back to the car.   I spent a while shovelling snow and ice away from around the wheels, cleared ten feet behind the car and about 20 feet in front, sprinkled the grit down, and tried to get up the hill.   It took me 2 or 3 attempts, including a second round of shoveling having reversed down the hill a few feet, but finally I slithered up the hill and was then able to reverse into the alley.  Phew!

I then took my now empty bucket to the grit bin at the top of the road, hoping to refill it for the next time, but was dismayed to find that the bin was empty.  Not more or less empty though, I don’t think there was enough grit to even fill the palm of my hand.   Oh well…

More snow was forecast Wednesday night, but I woke up this morning to find that nothing had covered my footsteps of last night, however it was bitterly cold, and the snow out the back was crunchy underfoot.   The car windows took forever to scrape as the ice was really hard, and shovel in boot (trunk) I started my way down the alley to the road.

The road was still covered in snow and ice, and there was a car and a van close to the bottom of the slope, both obviously couldn’t make it up the hill the night before.   I turned into the road, then slowly worked my way down the hill, hoping not to slide into either vehicle (which were parked on opposite sides of the road), or to fail to stop and run into the line of trees at the bottom of the road.    I made it, then turned left into the access road, which was really slick and slippery.  At the end of the access road the road turns sharply right and goes downhill, then immediately onto a main road, with traffic that comes around a bend fast.  I decided to go really slowly down the last bit of the access road, because if not I could end up not stopping on what looked like a skating rink, and didn’t relish the idea of sliding into the main road and oncoming traffic.  Luckily the main road was clear, I slithered down the last section of the access road, put my foot down on the accelerator, and started up the main road.  Another sigh of relief…

The main road of course immediately goes up an even steeper hill than where we live, and this is one long haul of a hill too, up one side and then down the other.  Fortunately the road was clear enough, and the rest of the journey to work was uneventful, and also done in practically record time.

Although more snow is forecast and it’s still bitterly cold outside, the sky has been blue all day, and I am hoping that this will be enough for the snow on our road to melt enough for me to get up the hill and home ok.

I emailed the city this morning using their Actionline link to see if we could get more grit in our grit bin, and got a response to say that they would answer my inquire within three days.  Oh joy – maybe we can go shopping on Sunday!  Or maybe not as more snow is forecast for the weekend, and the freezing temperatures are set to continue for another week at least.

As for the two people who didn’t make it home on Tuesday night, neither of them made it into work yesterday or even today.  While the main roads are mostly clear, the side roads after the partial melt and the severe freeze last night have turned them into slick skating rinks, and it’s practically impossible for anyone to go anywhere.

This is so different to my experiences while living in Indiana, where the city had so many snow ploughs and salt trucks, plus a number of other people had pickup trucks with blades on the front to plough side streets and car parks for shopping centres and businesses.  In addition many people shoveled the snow from their own sidewalks or used snowblowers, yet here in England that rarely happens any more. 

Do you have a snow day story to tell?  If so, please leave a comment and let us know.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

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Debbie and I are off to Florida for our Christmas and New Years to see my daughters, so this might be the last post on Delovesto for 2009.

By the time we get back, our blog will see it’s first anniversary, as we registered it at the end of December 2008. Things have come a long way in the last year, with our dreams of living together finally taking shape as I moved back to the UK at the end of July.

2009 has definitely seen a lot of changes for us.  My moving over to the UK is no doubt the most significant, but Debbie becoming a Grandmother for the first time in July was also a major event, as was our moving house in October and my finally finding a job in October.

The Delovesto memberships have been growing, and 2010 will I hope see an explosion in the amount of traffic that we get to our site, as well as the number of articles that we write on various topics.

My latest project on here, unknown to most visitors so far I am sure, is to start creating a series of Shopping pages where people can access sites that we ourselves use, both here in the UK as well in the USA to buy things online.  By shopping using the links on our pages, not only can you be sure of buying great products at great prices, you also help to support us as we earn a small amount of commission on each order placed.

Debbie and I both wish you all a Very Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever holidays you are celebrating, and wish you a very successful and profitable New Year for 2010.

Traffic Chaos For Christmas

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british-airwaysI suppose that we should be grateful for some things when it comes to travel, especially at Christmastime.

When I booked our flights to Florida for Christmas some weeks ago, there were no direct flights to be had from London, well at least not for the sort of price that anyone but the most desperate would be prepared to pay.   Two weeks ago I just happened to look and see what was available, and for the same price, there were direct flights from London to Miami and back with British Airways, leaving at a better time and best of all arriving in Miami 5 hours before we are due to land, which makes a big difference when travelling on Christmas Eve.

So I was a little frustrated to find that we could have had better flights, especially for the same price, but then yesterday the news was filled with the story of British Airways staging a strike for the Twelve Days Of Christmas, which is going to cause traffic chaos and grief for many thousands of travellers worldwide.   I am just so grateful now that we are traveling with American Airlines, who seem to have had few strikes over the years, and on all the flights that I have had with them, which some years were as many as 80, I rarely had a problem.

The news last night was full of stories of people who were set to fly with British Airways on honeymoon, or to see family and friends for Christmas, or who booked other once in a lifetime holidays, and now those dreams have been shattered, thanks to the thoughtless employees at British Airways.

I do sympathise with the fact that the employees have grievances, but I am never sympathetic when anyone does something that inconveniences thousands of people.   I know that if I suffered with cancelled flights due to something like this, I would be highly unlikely to travel with that airline again, so to add to their financial problems, I would imagine that British Airways are going to feel the pinch a lot more in the coming year, as passengers switch to other airlines.

So far our plans for Christmas are going ok, but we are both still concerned about getting through immigration without a problem, after Debbie’s experiences last time, and of course with it being winter you never know when old man weather is going to play his trump card either.

Do you have any travel experiences or horror stories to share?  We would love to hear about them…

Wardrobe Malfunction

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wardrobe_malfunctionBefore you get to assuming anything from the subject of this post – it’s not anything like the Janet Jackson fiasco at the Superbowl several years ago, this is a wardrobe malfunction of the furniture kind.

When we moved house several months ago, it was necessary to dis-assemble our wardrobe, which had already been assembled and dis-assembled several times before.   As anyone who has worked with home assembly furniture before, especially items made of chipboard or fibreboard, they are really only meant to be assembled once and then left for eternity.  Neither the fittings nor the materials are meant to be put together and taken apart multiple times.

Well here we are several months ago, trying to assemble the wardrobe, and several of the bars that go across the bottom at the front and back that help keep the wardrobe upright had the wooden dowel pins broken or missing, so they had to be left out.   This left only the hardboard backing on the wardrobe in reality to keep it rigid and upright, which is not my preference, but the best that we could do at the time.

The wardrobe has worked well enough for about six weeks, but then several weeks ago I noticed that where we had been using force to move clothes to the the right in order to make space to hang something else, the strain had caused part of the backing of the wardrobe to pop off, and it was starting to get a little more wobbly than I liked.  I feared especially going up to bed one night and finding the wardrobe about to collapse, and having to do something about it urgently, when all I really wanted to do was sleep.

And so on Saturday, while trying to get my clothes together for our trip to Florida over Christmas, I noticed this increased fragility, and we decided to bite the bullet and try to fix the wardrobe.

The first task was of course to empty the wardrobe of clothes, and since we only have one wardrobe right now, it’s extremely full!  That left the bed absolutely covered in heaps of clothing, and little room to move.  I ought to note that fixing the wardrobe hadn’t been on Debbie’s agenda for that day, so by this time she was already pretty frustrated and frazzled.

Since we couldn’t move the wardrobe very easily, for fear of twisting it and ripping the connections apart, I thought it would be easiest if we tilted it forward and laid it on it’s front.   That way, we could position the back on properly, and I could use the staple gun (an invaluable addition to my toolbox) and make sure that it was secured on properly this time.

Naturally the wardrobe wasn’t going to lay flat on the floor with the doors still on, so I had to take those off, and I just hate those fiddly adjustable hinges that take forever to try and adjust so the doors are level too.   So off come the doors, lay the wardrobe on it’s front, and there are 2 shelves inside that want to poke out the back.   Ggrrrrrhhhh!   Stand it back upright, try and take the shelves out, but there is also a wire basket that is almost impossible to take out, and this is preventing me fron tilting one fo the shelves enough to get it past the brackets so I can take it out.  The brackets are also screwed into the side of the wardrobe, and I don’t feel like unscrewing these, besides which the atmosphere in the bedroom is getting rather tense by this time.   Matters aren’t helped by the fact that with my eyesight going, I get extremely frustrated at not being able to focus on things properly without my glasses on either.

I decide to give up on trying to take the 2nd shelf out, lay the wardrobe down on it’s front again, and the shelf insists on pushing out of the back, so that the backing board will not lay level for me to staple it on.   After several goes at this, I decide to give in and do things Debbie’s way, standing the wardrobe upright, and wiggling it so that we can get behind it and position the backing board in place.

With that done, I then proceeded to use the staple gun on it, giving it a staple at least every inch all the way around, but without being able to lay it down, the board isn’t perfectly straight, however so far it’s holding in place, and we are being careful to not put any unnecessary strain on it.   After Christmas when we have a bit more money, we plan to get a second wardrobe, since we desperately need the space, and if we put this alongside the first, it ought to help hold it upright, which should make it last longer without giving any more problems.

Needless to say, it was early afternoon by the time we finished this task, wiggled the wardrobe back into position, and then put everything back into it.  The atmosphere didn’t really clear all day either, not helped by the other task that I hoped to do, fitting a new security light out the back, since I couldn’t reach up enough to take the old one down that isn’t working.  Sunday was a much better day, which say me clearing up leaves in the back garden, and fitting the bird and squirrel feeders up.

Well that was our frustrating DIY weekend.  I am sure you have your own great stories about construction or maintenance projects that went wrong.  If so, we would love to hear about them.

Movie Night Blues Revisited

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For those of you who read my post about our Movie Night Blues and the problems we were having with our DVD Player, I have some updates.

A week ago I ordered a DVD Lens Cleaner Disk from Amazon, and today I plugged the old DVD Player that was giving problems back in, to see if the cleaner would fix the problems that we had been having.

Well, I inserted the disk, and would it load?  Nope!  So determined not to give up, I tried again… and again… and again… and on about the fifth or so attempt it actually loaded.  Great I thought, at least we are making progress.  Without being able to load a DVD, you never know if the problem is a dirty mirror, mis-aligned laser, or any other type of fault.

I ran the cleaning disk 3 times, then inserted a movie, crossed my fingers and… would it load?  Nope!   I tried to load the movie 4 or 5 times, but no luck.

Ok, back to the cleaning disk again…  Would this load?  Nope!   Hmmmm… Getting kind of frustrated now as you can imagine…

Finally I got the cleaning disk to load, and just sat there for the next 15 minutes running the cleaning cycle over and over to see if it would do any good.  I tried to load the movie again and YES it loaded!

Right then, the next test was to load the Genesis Live at Wembley Stadium DVD that the DVD Player had stopped on before when it was halfway through.  YES it loaded perfectly this time!

I decided that a good test was to play the disk the whole way through, and as I had hoped but not expected, it played perfectly.

So now the original DVD Player is back and working, hopefully for a long time, and I can also watch my Region 1 Movies from the USA that I brought back with me when I moved back to the UK a few months ago.

If you have any DVD problems I would be pleased to hear about them, and if there is an interest I could post a list of sites that discuss DVD problems and how to fix them.

Movie Night Blues

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dvd-playerNeither Debbie or I have had any time to sit and watch movies since I returned to the UK from Florida at the end of July, most nights we both sit in the living room with the television on, but are both busy working on our laptops.  So, last week we decided to make Wednesday night Movie Night, since there isn’t really a lot to watch on television.

In preparation, on Sunday I tried some DVD’s in the DVD Player, to make sure it was working properly.  With not watching DVD’s a lot, I hadn’t bothered to check the connections etc since the Sky Technician came in to install the satellite dish a month ago (which is when we moved house), and having also just located and unpacked my collection of DVD’s from the USA, I wondered whether any of them would play or not.

The first thing I discovered on Sunday was that the DVD Player was not plugged in.  So with a struggle I managed to get the power plug out the back of the television cabinet (you almost have to be a contortionist), connected the Scart plug (UK standard television connector as against S-video), inserted a DVD and BINGO – it started to play fine.   I then tried various DVD’s from the USA (Region 1 encoded), and they played fine.  Ripped DVD’s and even a VCD I had purchased in the USA – also fine.  Brilliant!

Sunday afternoon I sat down to work on the laptop and thought some music would be nice, so I loaded up my DVD of Genesis Live At Wembley and settled down to reliving a great concert.  Got about 1/3 of the way through, when the picture suddenly froze.  Would the DVD player do anything?  Nope!   Opened and shut the drawer, and would it load?  Nope!   Well I gave up at that point, assuming my DVD was corrupted, even though it had only been played maybe 3 or 4 times before.

Fast forward with me to last night - Wednesday Night – Movie Night…

I came home from work, Debbie had dinner ready, we ate, and then I went to make sure the DVD would load.  Of course it wouldn’t, would it!   I tried 3 or 4 different DVD’s.  Every single one took 3 or 4 minutes of loading followed by the word Err0r on the display.  I unplugged the player, did all but shake it and kick it, but no joy.

So rather disgruntled, I went upstairs to get another low end DVD player that we have, pulled the old one out, plugged the new one in, and hoped that would work.  Now the new one is not quite as slimline as the old, so reachign into the cabinet to push the power plug out the back was almost impossible, but I finally managed it, and crossed my fingers.

Oh joy, this one powered on ok, started to load, but what’s this?  No front panel display at all!  Hmmm… It’s always nice to have a front panel display so you can see what’s happening.

Well the DVD loaded ok, so before we started to watch our movie, I decided to see if my DVD’s from the USA would load.  Well what do you think?  Of course they wouldn’t – not a single one of them, whether Region 1 encoded or Region free.   I was so disappointed…  The old DVD player, despite having only been used maybe a dozen times is past it’s warranty period, so there is no way to take it back.

However, the good news was that the movie we wanted to watch was working, and so we settled down together on the couch, turned out the lights, and started to watch.  Not even 10 minutes into the movie, it pauses for a few seconds, then skips back to a point about 5 minutes before.   I try to fast forward, hoping it’s a one-off glitch, but since it’s dark and I am unfamiliar with the buttons on the remote, I somehow stop the movie.  

So up I get, put the light on, hit the Menu button, skip forward to the correct scene, and start to watch again.

A few minutes later, the movie skips back a couple of minutes yet again.  Damn!  This time I know where the Fast Forward button is, zoom forward, and luckily this time the movie doesn’t skip back.

But only a few minutes after that, here we go again.  The movie freezes for several seconds, then jumps forward, we don’t know how far.   This was repeated at least a further ten times before the movie ended, with either pauses and jumps forward, or pauses and a jump back.   We really were getting frustrated, instead of enjoying a relaxing evening watching a movie.  This was after all a brand new disk that I had opened yesterday evening, so there is no reason to expect it to fail.  I suspect it’s having a cheap DVD player that is the problem.

So on my list for sometime after Christmas, when we might have enough money to justify it, we will be looking for a decent DVD player.  It will be sure to have a decent warranty period, maybe an additional warranty, especially since none of the DVD players that I have owned have lasted very long, and I see that as well as up-scaling for output to a High Definition Television (also on our wanted list for next year), many of the better DVD Players now have a USB port to accept input.   Since we have out home movies on the laptops and external Hard Drives, this seems like a good feature, saving us from having to burn the movies to DVD.

Well that is the story of our almost failed attempt at having  a romantic movie night at home.  I am sure many of you can relate to an experience like this.  Debbie and I would love to hear your stories.  Please feel free to leave a comment.

Our Christmas Trip Is Finally Coming Together

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If you are a subscriber to our blog or a regular reader, you will know that whan I moved back to the UK from Florida at the end of July, I had to leave my two daughters behind (with their Mom), and since I am missing them terribly, like all Dads do, we decided to try and spend Christmas in Florida to I can at least see them for a week.

The problem with going to Florida over Christmas though is that this is high season, the time when flights and accommodation are at their highest prices, and also at their scarcest.

In the wintertime, South Florida is full of people from the East Coast of the USA and Canada, the “snowbirds” as they are known.   Some snowbirds spend a good three months in Florida to escape the bitterly cold winters up north, while others just visit for one or two weeks.  If you go to the beaches in South Florida over the Christmas period and look at the licence plates of the cars, at least 2/3rds of them if not more are from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and in the Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale area too from Quebec and Toronto.   Just listen to the conversations on the people on the beach too, and the all too familiar Hispanic voices are replaced by New York twangs and even more so by Canadian French.

Last week after much searching for a decent route at a decent price, we bit the bullet and purchased our flights.  The price was high, but not as much as we could have ended up paying.  It was actually cheaper than it cost to get Debbie over to Florida for Christmas two years ago, but we also don’t have direct flights, which I hope is not going to be a problem.   When taking a multi-leg flight, you need to allow for delays in schedule, and inbound to the USA as well for delays in immigration, where Debbie has already had issues, her last trip to Miami resulting in her being stuck in immigration for 15 hours!   But hopefully we will be ok this time, since we have a 3 hour layover in Raleigh/Durham before catching our flight down to Miami, and I also now have my USA Passport, which ought to help.

Last night we also bit the bullet and booked a place to stay.  It’s not a luxurious hotel or resort, it’s a typical family owned motel on Hollywood Beach, and although it cost a lot it will hopefully work out best for us.   The few reviews that we managed to find for the motel sounded more good than bad.  There is no pool or hot tub, it’s above several restaurants so it could be noisy at night, but it is right on the boardwalk and we will be able to eat and walk along the beach at night, instead of being stuck in a hotel away from the beach in the evenings.

There really were not many choices for hotels unfortunately, since prices are sky high, and most places are already fully booked.  Left are the hotels close to the airport in Fort Lauderdale, those on the interstate, and some high and low end places that are either too expensive or in a bad neighborhood.  Of the three places on the beach, one was $250 a night, way out of our price range, a second was $100 a night but in the middle of being renovated and with some horrible reviews.  The place we picked was about the only choice.

My biggest fear is that because we don’t land in Miami until 9:30pm on Christmas Eve, is that everything will be closed, and it will be 11pm at the earliest before we get to where we are staying.  Since few places open in Florida on Christmas Day, we could end up without any essentials like bread, milk, juice etc for a day.  However staying right on the beach, there ought to be some shops and restaurants open at least.  It’s going to be a different Christmas with no turkey and trimmings I am sure, but hopefully a good one.   Getting up on Christmas Day is going to be tough, since by the time we get to bed it will already be 5am UK time or later!  Probably a good day to just spend relaxing on the beach or the terrace.

Now we need to find a good deal on a rental car, which I hope is easier to sort out.  There appear to be plenty of choices at least from all the car rental companies, but even that is expensive.  I must remember to use my AAA (equivalent of AA/RAC in the UK) discount to save some money, but since we will be taking the girls out we need to have transport.  

I doubt that we will be spending many days on the beach, but at least we will be right there in the evenings, plenty of opportunities for walking, either on the boardwalk (promenade) or along the waters edge.

So wish us luck!  Hopefully the flights, immigration process, accommodation and weather all work in our favour.  Will post updates and photos later, also a video or two maybe…