marc.vic.max.elliot

… we’re are going to be parents!!!!!!! 

Me – a father! God forbid

We’ve known for a few weeks but we’ve just been for our 12 week scan and everything looks OK so we’re telling the world :vbg:

click the image for a larger version

We have been trying for a little while.  Vic and I stuck to the “average” and took six months to get pregnant once she came off birth control.

The baby is due about the 20th January 2003.  The scan confirmed that it is right on the average size for both length and skull size for it’s age and that the chance of Downs is less than one in 6,000. Phew! – I didn’t think I was worried until we saw everything was OK and then the sense of relief let me know that I was lying to myself.

When the scan first started the little bugger wouldn’t move so the radiologist? was having trouble getting the measurements.  Then all of a sudden it started doing gymnastics! Twisting this way and that – arms and legs going like a little swimmer.

What a feeling! As the father it hadn’t really sunk in until today.  Vic was tired and grumpier than usual but wasn’t showing at all. Today I saw our baby for the first time……….

God – it’s like being on speed (I imagine) I am SO excited!!!

What a great time we had yesterday :vbg:

The super six spent Saturday 6th July in the fresh air drinking New Zealand wines and eating New Zealand foods at ToastNZ.

Toast New Zealand was a food and wine festival that acted as a showcase for NZ wines, food and products.  Over 6,000 people attended and it was held in the grounds of Syon House in west London.

Tickets were a bit steep at 28 GBP (42.50 USD/87.50 NZD) and once you got there you had to shell out at the very least 4 GBP (6 USD/12.50 NZD) for a 150ml (5 oz) glass of wine 🙁 Given the cost of it though a great day was had by all I think.  We got there about noon and nabbed quite possibly the last table available.  This was a great boon as people weren’t releasing tables so if you missed out at the beginning you were screwed.

6 hours of fine NZ wines, mediocre to good NZ food (yay for kumara chips, venison burgers and pavlova!) great weather and a well behaved crowd later we were back on the tube to the hour long trip home.  We had all got a bit of sun and Vic was knackered so we came straight home while the others went out for dinner in Knightsbridge.

At 2 am I woke with a very upset stomach and a pounding headache and needed some middle of the night repairs – painkillers, antacids and loads of water later I managed to fall back to sleep and the slept in until 9:15!!  Most unusual for me……….

Today has been spent chilling out and rushing to get KFC at 15:00 when Vic said in no uncertain terms that she “needed KFC right now!” So now I’m sitting here typing this and feeling slightly queasy.

I didn’t take my camera but did take my clie and there are some lo-res hots of our day here

The rain was so heavy this afternoon that it totally blocked the satellite TV signal.  No pixellation, no picture jumping, no mis-synchronisation of picture and sound – nothing!

Thanks to Rick, the author of pMachine I have been able to import all the entries from my old blog into my new one – YAY!

However… the script has put slashes in front of all the single and double quote marks and not handled some of the links very well (it is after all a beta script!) so things look very screwy in the archives 🙁

I’ll be working on it over the next few days so if you don’t like slashes then don’t go near the archives

Update: Thanks to Rick’s speedy response with providing me with a wee script all the slashes seem to be gone :vbg:  I have also got (I think) all the screwed up links that pMcode broke in various horrible ways.  Please let me know it you find anything that’s not working the way it should.

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After going to the concert last night I thought I’d see what was on at the RAH in the next couple of weeks. Weird mix of things……

July 4-5   Tony Bennett – cool old crooner

July 6      County Music Festival – best not discussed

July 7      Culture Club – tr? 80’s

July 13    Ultimate Fighting Championship!! Burly men in a cage beating the living crap out of each other surrounded by sumptuous Victorian decor!

Told you it was a weird mix

Well I’ve had time to sleep on it and think it over so here are some thoughts on the concert.

First of all I should say that I’m not, nor have ever, been a big concert goer(?).  Not that I don’t like music, ‘cos I do, it’s just that I find it hard to “get into” a concert.

The Royal Albert Hall is an amazing building.  Opened in 1871 it really has that grandeur and opulence that one expects of great Victorian endeavors.  It is almost perfectly round both inside and out and when you were sitting up the the nose bleed seats like we were you really get the feeling of being in a Roman amphitheater.  Another cool touch was the fact that at the very top all the way along you had a standing section.  Kind of the “really” cheap seats I guess

The music started with the warm-up act.  This consisted of young British talent Oliver Darley He did a set of about six songs and it was just him and a keyboard.  Great voice! – powerful and tonally spot on.  Go visit his site – he has some track selections taken from his album.

As for the main act – well to be honest I was a bit disappointed 🙁 Not that the music wasn’t good, because it was, but as I said in my comment on the previous entry it all seemed a bit self indulgent.  Whenever any of the band did any sort of solo all the band would point at them expecting the crowd to applaud (which of course it did!) and for me it just got a bit tiresome.  The band did it at the beginning and I thought they were just using it to introduce the band but no, it kept on going for almost 2 hours………………

BB King himself was amazing.  His music was OK but the fact that a 76 year old can get out and do that show every night is nothing short of amazing (even though he sits down the entire show due to dodgy knees) Another problem was that BB’s (we’re on first name terms now) microphone was set up so that when he spoke (quite often) you could hardly hear him.  Fine when he was belting out a tune but a lot of his tracks involved a lot of commentary.

One really nice thing that he did was spend 10 minutes after the show shaking hands, signing programs and giving out small gifts (couldn’t tell what they were, picks maybe?) to those people that went up to the stage.

So that’s it – I’m glad I went but it was definitely more an experience than a great concert.

Click on the link below to see a couple of very lo-res pictures taken with my PDA!

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Just a quick note to say that Vic and I are off to see BB King perform at The Royal Albert Hall tonight.

It’s two firsts for us as we have never seen BB King perform and this will also be our first visit to one of the worlds most famous music venues.

Should be good!

Thanks everyone – 2222 hits on this page in the last 4 months.  Sure a lot of them are probably me but what the hell