29 January 2013

Coming out of the Closet

Shocked?

So I am not coming out in THAT way...I am putting my hand up to being a Michael Bolton fan. Why the big secret some might ask.  Well growing up, liking this guy was the height of uncool...probably still is actually. Now that am I am older, wiser, and tbh couldn't give a flying fig what people think I thought it was long past time I put it out there.  I will admit that I have been a crap fan in the last 15ish years; hiding away to watch You Tube videos and only putting CDs on in the car when I was alone, and hadn't really heard any of the more recent material until recently.  What prompted this somewhat public declaration? 

I was surfing You Tube, as you do, when I came across this video and I was lost..again.  Now I will put a warning on said video because it does have some explicit content, so if you're going to watch it make sure you don't have anyone with impressionable ears in the vicinity.  I have to say, IMO, Bolton makes a very convincing Jack Sparrow.  Plus, I have been reminiscing about my childhood on You Tube recently (can anyone say Voltron, Thundercats, or Dungeons and Dragons) and it reminds me of some great times, and some not great times too.  Seeing Bolton was something my dad and I used to do together, actually it was one of the few concerts we'd go to as an entire family.

So there you go..one of my 'dirty little secrets'.

27 January 2013

Happy New Year

So I figured since we are well into the new year, and we now have bandwidth again, that I should probably do a blog of some sort.  I've been meaning to do it for weeks, but with school holidays and not having any idea what to say, I just haven't gotten around to it.

The school holidays have been a very hit and miss affair as we haven't done nearly as much stuff as I envisaged and it's been too easy to fall into the trap of just 'vegging out'.  Nothing wrong with vegging out of course, but I reckon doing it for most of the holidays would bore most people to tears.  The last couple of weeks have been full of stuff to do though.  There was the annual Capital E Scavenger Hunt in town which James had a friend tagging along for, and earlier this week we went up to Hastings and Splash Planet for the day.  I had my doubts about such a trip in one day, not least of which because it was 4 hours each way but the boys were great and it was a fabulous day out..even if a very long one. 

I've been trying to do some more digging into my family tree, and came across some new, and slightly unexpected information.  Turns out that my Great Grandfather, on my mother's side, spent a month in jail for assault.  Having seen a copy of the actual record, most of the people in there with him were done for drunk and disorderly..and to be stereotypical I suppose I shouldn't be surprised seeing as it is Ireland after all. Sadly, any other attempts to discover new info, has hit a brick wall.  So I am going to go and ask for help at one of the local LDS centres, in the hopes that they have some actual records I can trawl through.  I must say that tracing the English branch of my family has been relatively easy in comparison to tracing my Irish and American branches.  Hopefully I will get the job I interviewed for this week, and then I can get an Ancestry membership and stay up till all hours getting frustrated at not finding stuff instead of trying to grab 15 minutes at the library every so often.

So here we are, in the last week of school holidays.  James and Alex are both hanging with friends this week, we'll probably hit Te Papa on Thursday and we'll have to find other ways to fill our days that don't involve sitting in front of screens all day.  Thankfully, we're supposed to have glorious weather so that should make that agenda all the easier to accomplish.