It's been a bit quiet around here lately due to business being exceptionally busy. A quick job has turned into a major job plus I'm also trying to continue to co-ordinate other work going on between the various people concerned. So work is a bit stressful right now, I've been working around 8-10 hours each day and then all my spare time has been taken up with various events going on each weekend.

At the start of June we headed up to Preston to visit our ex-housemate and his girlfriend, as they were having a BBQ. We stayed up in a motel for the night up there but unfortunately by the Sunday evening Dave was suffering from mild food poisoning and was then wiped out for the next 2 days, leaving me to do his job as well as mine! Thankfully he got better towards the end of the week, certainly not something I'd recommend having!

Last weekend it was my great Aunt's 80th birthday so my parents came up here and we all headed over to Manchester where her daughter lives and was throwing the party. A lot of my Dad's family were there, a mix of Irish and Manchester accents everywhere. Most of these people I'd either never met before or I was too young when I did meet them last, so it was nice to put faces to names I've heard in the past.

Then this past weekend was our long weekend away that I booked last month, being paid for by my bingo win. We had 2 nights at a guest house in Bowness on Windermere, in the Lake District. It was a nice place in a very peaceful setting. We headed up on the Friday, checked in and then my first port of call was the flagship store of Lakelands, a shop that sells a lot of handy kitchen equipment as well as other home stuff and garden bits too. We bought a few things we'd been needing or meaning to get for a while. On Saturday we went to Milom for the morning, an RSPB area. It was a nice enough place but there wasn't much to see there. Then in the evening there was a big show going on in Bowness so we saw a human mobile consisting of drummers suspended from a crane, plus a fireworks show. Photos to follow!

Then yesterday we drove up to a little place called 'Twice Brewed', a village by Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland. We were going up to visit someone we know off one of the forums we frequent who runs a guest house up there. We also went to look at Hadrian's Wall (well part of it, it's quite long!). Then today we headed back after a morning looking around a Roman Excavation place near by where we stayed. However now I'm feeling a little rough (too much good food and drink methinks!) and need a holiday to recover! Unfortunately I've got a very busy week ahead, so much so I've taken the rest of the week off from my contract job to allow me to concentrate on everything else! Hopefully after this week things will calm down a little and I can get back to my normal routine.

Photos to follow, just have to process them

Been a bit swamped with work round here lately. We took on a new client in the form of an agency last week and seems like they're going to have plenty to keep us occupied! Plus a couple of ongoing sites too so it's all go here. In between work I'm still trying to put the finishing touches to a new plugins site that I'm setting up with a friend, one I'm eager to get up and running and get more plugins written for.

However, I've managed to finally get all of my photos from Rome on Flickr at last. I'm quite chuffed with some of them, the beautiful blue sky and weather out there helped!

Also, don't forget you can get a nice code filled post on WordPress coding over at Blogging Tips every Sunday, or keep an eye on my own Blogging Tips Posts page which lists the posts I've written. Anyone who isn't scared of a bit of code and uses WordPress may pick something of interest up here

I know, it's Thursday, a bit late in the week for last weeks roundup. You're probably thinking I've been spending all of my time out playing with my new lens but alas that's not 100% true! Things have been a bit manic this week which I'll explain below. However, back to last week.

Last week my small win (small compared to what could have been, but big to me!) cleared in my bank account so on Wednesday I had a nice old spend online. I spent about £700 within the space of an hour! My first stop was the camera lens that I'd been wanting since the start of the year. I couldn't justify the expense up until now but with unexpected money I figured it was time I spent a little on myself for once! Whilst I was looking at the lenses I knew I'd need a better tripod for macro shots, as you just can't get away with hand holding the camera. My current tripod is quite large and isn't easy to carry, so I got myself a new compact tripod that's pretty sturdy and still opens out to a fullsize tripod. It comes in a shoulder bag too so it's easy to carry around.

Next on the list was a long weekend away. We've not been away since Rome in January, and even then I didn't get to rest and take it easy. So I booked us in for 2 nights in Bowness by Lake Windermere. It's quite a plush hotel, my parents have stayed there before and they liked it. I'm hoping for two restful days of lazying, taking a few photos and not doing much at all. On the Sunday we then head over to Northumberland where we're stopping for a night at a B&B run by someone we know.

So that ate about half my winnings, but after a bit of thinking I also decided to get us a dishwasher, as we don't have one here and neither of us enjoy washing up, plus it's more hygenic in my opinion. We can fit a slimline dishwasher in the gap we have next to the washing machine, and the plumbing is already there. Annoyingly though, this arrived yesterday but the top was cracked so we have to wait for a replacement to come on Saturday now

My Tripod and Lens both arrived last week and I've grabbed a few photos with them. I've yet to leave the house with it though! It's a fabulous lens in my opinion, the detail it can give is so amazing. The tripod is pretty cool too, I just need to buy a small ball head to go on top of it, probably with a quick release plate.

This week has been extra manic with work. On Monday we had a meeting with a new client which has resulted in new work and a potential source of future work as they are a web design company who just need to outsource once in a while. Monday evening our wireless connection went down and as I could connect to the web directly via the modem (through a cable) we assumed the router had died, but the next morning even I couldn't connect. So after calling NTL (our ISP) we had an engineer out about an hour later who fixed everything (something about too much power coming in to the modem from outside, couldn't cope with it so it kept dropping the connection). Not bad customer service really, first time we've had to call them and it was fixed on site within 90 minutes! However it did put us back somewhat. I've now got more work on my hands plus the new work starting next week and an existing client informed me they had just bought a new company and needed a website for that too! No rest for the wicked I guess!

Besides all that I'm eager to get a couple of my own sites finished and up and running but it's just finding the time and energy right now. We have a bank holiday weekend coming up so I may be able to spend a few hours doing my own stuff, despite having Dave's sister over for the weekend. I just also need to find some time to get back to my Wii fitness too! Busy, busy, busy… roll on the weekend

It feels like it's been a long week this week, but not in a bad way! We kicked off the week with a day off on Monday as it was a national bank holiday, it was also my birthday (21 again!). I had thought about going out down the beach or for a walk along one of our many beautiful walks around here, however by late morning it had clouded over and I also didn't feel too well so I spent part of the morning taking macro shots of some flowers indoors, and we just stayed on the sofa and watched TV in the afternoon. By late afternoon I'd woken up and we went out for dinner at Kuki's which is a mediterranean restaurant over in West Kirby, a town that looks out onto the River Dee. We'd been there before but were a little rushed for time so this time we could take out time and relax a bit more. Dinner was great, their food is so nice, and the servings are so large there was no room for dessert!

After dinner we took a walk down to the Marina and around the Marina (photos). West Kirby is a gorgeous place and the sunset there is amazing. My photos don't do it justice but we only had our mobile phone cameras on us for once!

The weather this week has been gorgeous. Clearly our summer is here, similar to how it was last year, I give it another 3 weeks! On Wednesday we had to pop out so Dave could go to the doctor's and I had a quick think and figured why not take the day off. We hadn't really gone out on Monday, so we drove up to Formby Point where there is a Red Squirrel sanctuary there (red squirrels are almost extinct in the UK due to the grey squirrel). Unfortunately we only saw one squirrel and it was too fast and too far away to get a photo of it. The weather was quite warm so no doubt it was too warm for the squirrels to show their faces. We'll no doubt return soon but either on a cooler day or earlier in the morning when it's maybe a little quieter and there's more chance to see them out.

We then took a drive up to Southport where we got some lunch and took a walk along the pier there. Not really a traditional seaside town though. Then we drove back down to Crosby beach where Anthony Gormley's Another Place can be found. 100 cast iron statues dotted across the beach. I've seen plenty of photos of these on Flickr but it was quite a surreal feeling to stand on the beach and just see the statues all over the place and disappearing into the distance. Some were partly submerged by the Irish sea, some were clear and we could walk over to them. All in all a wonderful day out

Saturday we drove down to my friend's house as she was having a party of her birthday which is next week. An afternoon/evening of drinking Pimms and Lemonade, playing on her new Wii Console and Wii Fit at midnight (the hula hooping gets funnier after a few drinks!). We drove back today in beautiful sunshine (thankfully the car has air conditioning), yet arrived home to grey clouds and shortly after we had a thunderstorm! Ahh the typical British summer!

It's been a couple of weeks I know. Last Sunday I had to get my Blogging Tips post written and then we went out to a friend's for a 'decking warming BBQ', and didn't get back in until late and I just never got time to write up a post.

It's been a mad two weeks in some ways. Work has been interesting, trying to tie up 3 sites to work with each other for a client, a bit of brain racking needed at times. That plus a few bits at work have kept me quite occupied plus I've now got other work building up again.

We've also been having fun and games with our Electricity and Gas supplier. Being billed for charges that were caused before we took over the house we're now in, after (finally) getting our prepay meters switched to contract we were in credit and we were told this would be credited to our Landlord (yet ummm it's our money!) and plus losing our direct debit discount as they messed up (to which they had replied by letter – oh sorry about that). Finally I found someone who looked into things and offered us £20 back on the direct debit discount we lost (it's not much but it's not nothing either), then after digging deeper they found another £12 they owed us. Imagine how many more people they owe?! This is how these companies make their money. So that's £32 owing to us, it's the cost of electricity for a month at least.

As mentioned, last Sunday we headed up to our old housemate's new home with his girlfriend for a decking warming BBQ. He'd spent the past couple of weeks redoing the garden and laid out a nice little decked area in the back corner. Despite the pouring rain at times, the BBQ was great and it was nice to get away for the evening and catch up with old friends.

This week I've spent half my time trying to find somewhere with the new Wii Fit in stock. I'd already preordered it from Play.com but despite accepting my preorder they didn't have the stock to fulfill the order which didn't make me very happy as it meant I didn't bother to look or go anywhere else. As it happens if I'd realised this I could have easily gone to the local supermarket on Friday and probably picked one up seeing as they hit the shelves at midnight. Plenty of people bought straight off the shelves on Friday and Saturday. Poor service on Play's part. I kept an eye on some forums and by Thursday I could have ordered online but being the impatient sod that I am I didn't want to wait another week for it to arrive. So on Friday I dragged Dave out of bed (poor sod) and we hit the town. On the second shop we tried they had them in stock! Yesterday my second remote also arrived which means Dave and I can play the sports together, either in partnership or against each other. It's been very funny and hey we're exercising and getting fit at the same time!

The Wii Fit is fantastic. I'm so glad I've got it now. Not only does charting everything help, the exercises are great and some are quite tough believe it or not. I've read some people saying 'what happens when you've completed everything' or 'what happens in a couple of months when you're bored of it'. Well it's not a game for a start, it's a fun way of exercising. You wouldn't say to a gym goer 'what happens when you get bored of those 10 minutes on the treadmill every time?'. I see this as an exercise regime and plan to stick to at least 30 minutes a day if I can. I'll keep you updated on my progress

Anyway, I'm off to enjoy the rest of our may day bank holiday weekend. Day off tomorrow and it's gonna be a good one