Brrr, it's cold in here

There must be some Torros in the atmosphere.

I don't even know what that means, but it is damn cold. Woke this morning expecting to be trapped at home by the impending blizzard. Imagine my suprise to see blue skys and the clearest day for about a week. Still mighty cold though (as my ten minutes scrapping ice of my car can attest to). On the drive to work I learnt there was snow in the north, the south, the east on the west. It was just the midlands and the central south region that was clear. So it was good to avoid snow (I don't know what the appeal of snow is really-but Kat is hoping for some).

Learnt a valuble lesson yesterday too. I took the day off work (must work on the weekend this week), and hung out with the kittens. We had a nice little outside adventure in the relative warmth of 5 degrees, and enjoyed a banquet of seafood sticks (Ok, I had a banquet, they got a few bits). Later that night, we were rewarded with the stinkiest cat poo ever...no more seafood sticks for the kittens.

But the other excitment yesterday was the Didcot christmas parade and fair. Good fun was had by all (at least it seemed that way), except for the little girls in cheerleader outfits (didn't the organisers know it was winter?). We even bought some more winter warmers (gloves etc), a series of finger puppets, and yummy fudge and honey comb crumble. Mmmmm crumble. The coolest thing was the falconry stall, where they had several large falcons and buzzards on the yard outside the church. There were even a couple of little owls, which were very cute.

In other news, our former landlady isn't returning our rental bond. She said the house was dirty, and said she would provide photographic evidence plus receipts for getting it fixed. That was several weeks ago, and we havn't heard from her again. Of course, it is only when things go wrong that you look into the rules, and there is no where near the protection you get as a tenant in Oz here in England. She has our bond (not a neutral body) and we have to take her to court to get it back, rather than her having to justify keeping it. Next year, things are going to change to a system more like that in NSW at the moment, but thats all too late for us. So we are in an unexpected position, as she seems to be trying to use us to redecorate her house. We spent an entire day cleaning after we moved out, so we know she is full of it. A complete pain, but in a way working out English laws and regulations relating to this gives me a hobby over the cold winter months.

We are soon to have people over to christen the new house. We have invited my work friends over on the 3rd of December for lunch. I am going to try to make the worlds largest plate of sushi, without eating it all before they come over. It's nice being closer to my work, as it is now possible to get people to come over, where it was too far away before.

Time to get back to work.
Word to getting our bond back.