Meanderings of a Monkey Juggler

An awfully long time away from the site.  Why?  Stuck in Bulgaria away from net access; that's why.

A generally stressful trip about sorting out our house and then looking after my folks on their first trip there.

People

• Nikolai and Zoya : lovely people who picked us up at the airport despite it being 1.30am.  Best news of the trip too; she's well up the duff.
• Police : Mental levels of road blocks stopping all and sundry from driving between towns.
• Tzetzko and Katya : Still lovely and he's looking more hippy like than ever.
• Maiko : I knew she occasionally got a bit stressed but the way she nearly burst a corpuscle just because my folks were coming was not nice to see.
• K : Nearly went as mental as her mum.  Worryingly poor at communicating at all through most of the trip.  Really don't know why. 
• Denchu and Ivanka : The previous owners of our house.  We really did manage to give her 2 days of extreme hypertension and him a mini-stroke.  The dark side is strong in this one!
• My parents : Seemed to enjoy their holiday.  I think they were surprised by some of it; non-plussed by others and fed-up with all the waiting around we had to do.  Turns out my dad doesn't eat cucumber - a mild inconvenience it's true as the staple diet of the bulgs is cucumber.
• Totevi : useless tosspots the lot of 'em.

Weather

• The weather was astonishing.  Mainly extremely hot (well into the 30's), 2 days of ridiculous rain; one session of huge hailstones and lightning above the Tsaravets light show.  K got burned!

House

• What a mess!  Needs an awful lot of work.  Needs furniture.  Needs the previous lot to actually shift their crap.
• Previous lot were nice and "whitewashed the walls for you" and managed to get it on everything else that really didn't need whitewashing.  Messy!
• K spent the trip trying to get someone to help out or do the whole thing for us.  Managed to get one person's number but he then managed to avoid answering his phone; then didn't respond to messages and then switched his phone off.  So how exactly are we going to get this house ready for guests in August?

Animals

• Dogs are happy and I like them a lot.  Aaahh.
• Cats are cats.  Still trying to sneak in the house and one went mental when trapped in the house with me and realised he was in awful trouble.
• Snake, snake ooohhhhh a snake!  I saw my first real life wild snake. And not just a dinky one neither.  This fellow was about a metre long.  It was also not out in the wilds but in K's mum's garden.

Places

• Dryanovo is still lovely.
• Tsaravets is still impressive.
• Tarnovo is still a nice place to visit.
• Hotel Yantra had a Jeckyll and Hyde persona.  We went in the first week and had a lovely time with ace food and a stunning view.  The next week we went with my parents and we had a good view of the citadel but as the night wore on (and it was hot) they opened the bloody windows.  Cue vast swarms of flies, midges and mozzies around us and in the food and our hair.  My mother has never been so emphatic in her life when she said "Never bring me here again!"

Food

• Lots of restaurants. An oddity noticed before but really obvious on this trip is that all the restaurants are exactly the same.  Well not exactly but their menus are.  Imagine every restaurant and caff in the UK doing the same menu.  How would you choose which is the one for you?  I don't know.
• We did try a different place that was officially a chinese restaurant but they didn't really want to serve us.
• Still no Indian places.  Boo.
• Still no western crap fast food - yay!

Travel

• Chavs on the plane.  Travel is clearly too cheap at the moment.
• K driving, yes driving.  An experience to be sure but not one I'll impose on possible future guests quite yet.  Did manage to hit the gates of the drive when trying to reverse out.
• Lots of driving done in ancient Lada and hired car (a well knackered Vectra - but still plenty better than the Lada).
• Lada died on main road.  Cue lots of K blaming me for "not knowing how the car works". I blamed a knackered 27 year old Lada that hadn't been driven for 2 years.  After rescuing the car the mechanic said that the fuel pump had died.  After replacement it worked fine.  I thank you!  Perhaps a dead fuel pump is a symptom of not "knowing how the car works".  But probably not.

Oddments

• One day I was woken up by an all mighty rumpus outside.  Opened the window to see a startled cow running up and down the drive.  K's mum eventually got a chain round its neck but this only led to the spectacle of Maiko "water skiing" behind a cow.
• Had an eye test and turns out that my eyesight is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago.  New pair of glasses ordered that will be quite nice for driving with.  (How middle aged do I sound?)
• Party for 6 that ended up with 11 guests.  Cue more frantic doings by Maiko and K going mental over preps.  My folks did get to hear Tzetzko and Sashu doing their music thang though.  That was fun.

Oh there was probably more but that'll do.

Have fun.

Wow I seem to have got suddenly very popular!

My traffic stats for May include 45Mb on the 3rd and 46Mb on the 27th.  Anyone any idea why?

Still I'm not complaining.

Have fun.

I just got the photos back from the developers.  I've put them on my photo page but I'm not sure if they worked 'cos I still can't get my home PC to see photos on that page at the mo.

Anyway hope you like them.

Have fun.

Food was ate last night.  Stacks of it.  Terracotta is the place - a lovely all you can eat Chinese place.  Colleagues were all invited but they couldn't make it.  So that meant the only properly sensible person there (besides K) was Steve (sadly minus Albena this time).

Me and K walked down there via the PB's place where I was gifted 2 lovely presents (many many thanks for Animal Crossing you 2 - I need a good town name to use before the end of today!).  Incidentally the love of my life and my betrothed singularly failed on 2 counts yesterday.  First no prezzy and then even no card!  Honestly!  Disgraceful.

So to the restaurant.  Phil and Camille wound up late (odd for a german) but the banter was good throughout and I think everyone had some measure of a good time.  I certainly did.

Many thanks to all for the lovely time and to K for paying for my dinner (doesn't negate the lack of prezzy tho').

Off to Bg tomorrow for 2 weeks so I'll be quiet for a bit.  I may get some time in the hol to come and post something but I woudln't expect it if I were you.

Have fun.

We were all gonna be famous last night but the camera crew never showed up.

I'll explain more.  Jon is now BYJOTY and somehow (probably from his mum) "East Midlands Today" got wind of this.  They said "Can we come and film you?" He said "If you must.  I'll be at the club on Monday."  They said "We'll see you there then."  He said "OK".

So we're all there and doing some great stuff but no-one showed from the beeb.

Ah well I suppose we'd better do some juggling anyway.

Me and Bear got well into our patterns and were managing good runs of 7 clubs in numerous patterns, we had an ok run or 2 of 8 clubs and we managed both patterns wot Sam showed us in B'ham at the weekend.

A bit later I had a pass with Jay and we managed the transition from 7 clubs on 2 count to 4 count.  A little clunky at first but doable.  More practice needed with Clurb I think.

A productive night's practice.  Yay.

Have fun.

Grumpy people complain about "List-shows".  You know the sort of thing.  "50 Greatest ever haircuts" etc... 

I watched one of these shows last night and it was pretty good.  This one was "50 Greatest One-Hit Wonders".  What was surprising was how good many of the songs were.  The voters had generally avoided novelty songs although both versions of Axel-F were played.  The artists were some talented folk as well but for some reason they hadn't managed to get around to following up their initial hit.

Minnie Ripperton was on (Loving You - you know with the high note) and she only didn't get any further hits 'cos she died.  Richard Harris was on with "Macarthur's Park" (Someone left the cake out in the rain.  I don't think I can take it, 'cos it took so long to make it and I'll never find that recipe again); he didn't follow up 'cos he couldn't sing (damn fine actor though).  Neil Innes was on with the Bonzo's and they never had another hit because they didn't really want to. Her wot did "Hey Mickey" was on and she's now a choreographer (she did the Gap ads as well as freaky dance stuff for Talking Heads).  Him from the Buggles (Video Killed The Radio Star) is now a well respected musician/producer.  Even Jaz-Man (SpaceMan) runs a record company now.

But then we got the crappy stuff like Chesney, Shampoo and the Baha-Men etc...  Sort of letting the side down somewhat.

I had a great 3 hours re-living many moments of my youth because of this show; and somehow it's "lazy programming".  Sigh.

Have fun.

Review for D

s'awright.

Review for everyone else (who can read)

Nice trip in with Philip and Camille.  Arrived and had Tempei charging towards us.  Ooh fame!  Well for Philip anyway.

In the day me and Bear managed some good passing stuff and pwned a few patterns notably 7 club 3 count.  Didn't try 8 clubs for some reason but we did have a natter with Sam who showed us a couple of new 5 and 6 club patterns which will need some work.

Played a few DS games with Barnesy but sadly didn't get round to having a multi-player go at Mario Kart.  He's got the swanky black DS Lite too. Snarl. 

Tried to buy some thuds but nobody at the Beard stall seemed to want to sell me any.

Ate in Philip (the other one) and after that and the BBQ the other night I really must give them some money for my keep.

Clur got to snuggle a fluffy dog dog called Marmalade. 

Games: Philip won the 5 club endurance, again.  The Derby lot won all the games involving unicycles.

Met Tom aka Lemon-key (as Clur would of it) and learned him some passing patterns and nattered for a bit.

Nattered with Sharon too.  She has now ordered 9 Plumsies (his second order of the day apparently)

Shows: Most of the Leicester lot buggered off before it as they are all grumpy narky types.

"Renegade" - Hmm?  Some poor stuff, some cool stuff and an oddly flat audience (and a flat LP dying on his arse).  The bit I liked best was the 2 young lads doing a diabolo/staff double act.  Imagine man with stick doing diabolo patterns.  And it was funny.

"Main Show" - Enjoyable.  Man juggling basketballs including a stack of 3.  Tommy Baker managing Brunn's impossible trick (again) and then wrecking any goodwill I had toward him by mercilessly plugging his own wares at the end of the show.  Crappy poi boy.  Sean with Diabolo.  Very nice contact act by someone (Matt Hennam?) and a couple of others that don't leap to mind at the mo.  I liked it a lot.

Fast drive back with Phil and C.

A good day.

Have fun.

Pwned! Oh that was enjoyable.

Have fun.

Once on the show "Genius" someone came up with the rather sweet idea of stopping war by only making guns that fired puppies.  The downside to this was he started wittering about making the puppies then explode when the enemy were all doing their "aaahhhh" noises.  Well I've just seen another story about this sort of thing.

It seems the Japanese are taking to giving teddy bears at weddings.  So one mad Jap inventor has come up with a gun that fires teddy bears.  But wait, there's more.  Not only does the gun fire teddy bears.  It fires teddy bears with parachutes.  So you can shoot over the heads of the wedding party and have your gift of a bear gently float down on the breeze into the bride's hands (or in Clur's case, down her cleavage).  Can you imagine?  I'd like to see Pee nearly choke on that instead of confetti.  Or Clur squirting teddy bear straight into his face.

Have fun.

There's a "Talking Point" on the beeb about babies again.  You know the sort of thing;  "Why are Brits not having enough babies?"  and someone wrote the best typo I've seen in ages.  In full it reads

"I earn more than my parents combined income but am straddled with student debt, high rental rates and as such am not in the position to own my own house let alone raise and provide for a child."

Magic!  If that person has student debt then they deserve a good kicking for not paying attention during english lessons.

Have fun.