Barbie visits Amsterdam

So, I figured it was time to catch up on some of the stuff I've been up to in recent months. Whilst I was off work I did a bit of travelling with the lovely Mr B, it was great to be able to really kick back and relax and one of the places on our hit list was Amsterdam.. so we did.


We stayed in a great hotel, which was just a short wander away from some open parkland with geese friends

We saw a lot of parks...

And canals..

And bikes..

More bikes

Obviously we had to visit the sex museum, it was a good giggle - once we convinced the guy on the front desk that Mr B really was an adult (long story - but needless to say he was a sharp dude with a very dry sense of humour).  I especially loved the reactions of the other visitors, from giggling groups of girls to a young guy in the over 18+ section who was really quite shocked!

This toilet seat is broken...

Like the new punch bowl?

 Overall, we had a really great time, we are already planning another trip over in the coming months.  I'll try and take more photos next time (of everything, not just the sex museum!) 

Streamworld

No, it's not a new place to visit.  Recently (thanks to Mr B) I have been watching quite a lot of streams. 

Our platform of choice is Twitch, and there are lots of options there.  Like I said, lots of gamers for all types of games - some awesome ones and some not-so-awesome too.  There are some massive streamers out there who EVERYONE has heard of (the likes of Shroud and Ninja) but its fun to watch the smaller guys, who are working themselves to the bone to build up a fan base and entertain people. some of my top picks - in no particular order - would probably be these...

Jimb0 - plays various games and has some brilliant effects that chat can play with

Rovefogle - PUBG gamer who really should be better known than he is 

 ^^^^  this dude is an awesome shot!

RTGameCrowd - Insane guy who loves making his Sims miserable.  Simply hilarious!

Mostly people play games n stream, but there are some other channels too - its a little amazing what people put out there.
There's a whole selection of IRL streams - mostly people chatting/opening new stuff/chilling in front of a webcam...

IRL stream selection 

These guys are streaming breakfast. Yes, breakfast.

 and of course...there's a Bob Ross channel

Bob Ross - the legend!

What you can't really see in the photo above is just how many people were watching when I took that shot......

7pm on a Sunday and 1,725 people are watching a Bob Ross Marathon.  That number in grey is total views.

So next time you're bored of watching the same old TV, or you're looking for some inspiration why not go and have a peek at the wonderful streaming world you probably didn't realise was there.

Twisted Barbie: Karaoke Queen

I love singing.  It was my ambition to be fully professional when I was younger.  Unfortunately it didn't quite work out how my young brain had planned so the best I managed was a few support gigs and some local pubs - I still love to sing though. 

The only opportunity I get now is at Karaoke.  It's a marmite pastime, some love it some hate it, but thankfully I have a few local friends and a world full of fellow ninjas who also love it!  I occasionally drag along poor Mr B, who seems to enjoy the atmosphere but wouldn't get up to sing if I held him at gunpoint!  He claims to not be able to sing...I know differently, but to get any better he actually needs to do it more often!

Everywhere I go there seems to be karaoke arranged...

Ninjas in Berlin

Dentists in Hong Kong

Proof the Mr B does come along!

The home of Karaoke...

Proof that I do get up too!

One of the things that I enjoy about it most is the look of surprise on the face of people who don't know I sing.   I must have a terrible speaking voice as people do seem awfully shocked! The group in Hong Kong are even demanding my return simply so they can get me on the mic again...maybe I shouldn't give up on that dream after all...

Nostalgia strikes

I had a very short conversation with B-Man today about Dick Dastardly and Muttley trying to catch the pigeon...it was very short because he has no recollection of the cartoon and thought I was losing the few marbles that I have!

So to prove that I'm not completely insane and just watched some very dodgy TV when I was young here is Dick Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines...

Camp Blood 2010

For this years annual camp blood camping trip we had another victim...uh no, attendee... along...Sarah!

it was her first trip with us wild camping, and she handled it really well, (I totally understand that wild camping really isn't something many girls are up for - thankfully Sarah is almost as much of a freak as me ;))

After a trek around several places that Gurn had chosen on a map we eventually settled ourselves in a totally different spot and set camp. All was well....until dinner time. Gurn decided that he would make "cheese and beef" (cheese and spiced mince beef in a wrap - like a burrito I think!) with the fire burning he cooked them up, then we realised that we had forgotten something...Plates!! so, being the resourceful lot folk we are we quickly "invented" Hobo Plates! (previously known as bits of torn up cardboard box!)

After one too many marshmallows, and even a few melted haribo, B-Man and Gurn threw some poses for the camera...

The real Gurn...


B-Pob...

and B-Man joins the cast of Harry Potter...
The next day we made a visit to the Forest Adventure Theme Park. We had been there two years before and figured it was worth another trip. Obviously, most of the park was the same as before, with some log flumes, and tree walks. To our surprise however two new attractions had been opened...a roller-coaster, and a visual fun house. The roller-coaster was amusing, although tiny. Its size however was greatly overshadowed by its fantastic sign...

Which seems to ask you first and foremost not to dance. (Or turn into a sex doll in the final request!)


As we got off the roller-coaster I spotted another sign, illustrating the life of woodcutters in the past, showing their "floaters"..

Ok, I know. I'm a child. Its an awful pun.

In the funhouse I finally got to get my revenge on B-Man...


**Disclaimer** No B-Man was hurt or injured in the making of this post

Solstice 2010

Its that time of year again. I normally visit a roman hill fort on solstice as its deserted and has great views, this year however I couldn't get a car to drive up and taking the bus would have meant having a fairly long uphill hike. Thankfully B-Man had a brainwave and suggested we try a local piece of coastline...I've never been there before but after a short bus journey (at 03:15!) we settled ourselves on a bench looking out across the sea (ok, its actually an estuary - I'm sure someone will point that out!). Sunrise, as usual, was beautiful and we shared our offerings of strawberries and apple juice with the local seagulls...

Pre-dawn...

Peaking over the horizon...

Radiating...

Find the odd words out...Sexy Hotness Sleeping Bag...

As you might know from earlier posts I love camping. One of the facebook groups I am in shared this link this week to a review in Backpacker Magazine about the Sexy Hotness Sleeping Bag. Its a sleeping bag (obviously) with some added benefts like the ability to zip together with another sleeping bag, a toe-to-belly zipper front through to back for um...easy access...and karma sutra positions printed on the inside!

Just two sleeping bags...together. If you don't camp with a partner who has one, you might just have to hope to get lucky!


Depends how flexible you are I suppose, or how quickly the blood rushes to your head...

Rainy days can be taken up learning your positions. (Full instructions not included.)

I would be tempted, but honestly, as we go wild camping in locations with no showers or toilet blocks theres not many people willing to get that close! (and B would hate to have a pink sleeping bag!)

A little pink too far

On my way home from work today, I was chatting to B on my phone when I spotted out the window a lady wearing possibly the pinkest pair of shoes I have ever seen! Unfortunately because I was using my phone I didn't manage to get a photo for you all, so you will have to trust me on this one...but they were roughly these shoes...

See!? They were even more noticeable because the lady was wearing all black. I'm still not quiet sure whether I love them or hate them really! I'm not one for pink much (I know its Barbies colour, but Twisted Barbie is more of a purple girl! - can you not tell??)

The amusing end to this however was that I told B on the phone when I spotted these shoes and the lady sitting in front of me on the bus whipped round laughing and told me she was thinking exactly the same thing!

Lesson for the day: However quietly you speak on the phone on the bus the person in front is probably listening!

Barbies bad news

OK. I've not been posting much the last few weeks, my reason? I've had some tough news that took me away from home. My Grandmother died the second week in January which I feel quite justified in describing as a shock to say the least.

I'm not someone who really finds dealing with death difficult, I view it as part of life, and a natural conclusion, but this time I admit did take it quite badly. Its the first bereavement I've suffered since I've lived away from my hometown and the distance from my family when it happened suddenly felt far greater than it normal. The funeral wasn't held until the first week in February, so at least I had some time to get organised.

I was dreading the trip, my Parents were over and a number of the distant family were making the effort to attend too, so it had the opportunity to be difficult. Thankfully I was pleasantly surprised by the whole thing...

We hired a car and drove the 370 miles to Norwich, Arnold Clark had kindly given me a free upgrade on my hire car (from a Kia Picanto to a Peugeot 207) which made the trip a huge amount more comfortable. Arriving late afternoon on the Saturday there was some commotion among my friends about going out. It didn't really take much persuading to be honest as the club I used to frequent often was having its 10th anniversary so I felt compelled to go for nostalgia's sake if nothing else. I'm glad we did as I had a fab time, and got to show B-Man what the Norwich alternative scene is like in comparison to Edinburgh. (I think he was impressed, at least with half of it!) I did however mange to slip over on the ice and bang my head! Thankfully, I got a little bruising and swelling but no black eye!

We had a few days to spare, so did the obligatory family visits, and even managed to squeeze in a night round at an old friends before the funeral. (note: when I say old friends, I haven't seen Jerry and Jo for about 5 years now so you can image the look on their faces when I walked into their front room unannounced!)

The funeral itself was actually lovely, my Nan would have been so proud of all the commotion caused in her name - she did love a big show! There was a horse drawn hearse, four funeral cars and a massive trail of followers on the way to the crematorium. It took over an hour to drive just 6 miles! After the ceremony my parents had organised for a white dove to be released which I think possibly made Grandads year as he is a huge bird lover, and he got to hold it before setting it free. Afterwards there was a reception, and it was really nice to catch up with some of the family. Especially my cousin David who moved to Australia 20 years ago (although I could have done without being reminded that at the age of 6 I had a massive crush on him!)

Its so true that it takes a wedding or a funeral to get people together, but it does remind me that I do actually have a big family out there who care.

Stuck in a World of Goo

As promised - Maybe a little sooner than you expected eh? - Info on one of my many current addictions...World of Goo.

This is a fantastic indie game made by 2dboy that B-Man gifted to me - He realised its addictive potential maybe and decided he wanted some quiet time - Its a puzzle game where you have to use Goo balls to build structures to achieve the levels goal and continue with the storyline...sounds easy?

Oh no its not.This has to be one of the most infuriatingly brilliant games - you die over and over yet have the constant urge to go back for more punishment of your goo balls splatting against spikes, or being sucked into the wrong tube, or simply collapsing because you forgot to add a vital ball-strut near the base.

Thankfully the developers allow players to skip levels! I'm still spending time going back to those and trying to figure them out.

I'll just carry it then...

Last month B-Man and I held a game night at our flat, we play board and card games quite often but we struggled for space a bit when there was a few of us so in advance of the evening we decided to buy a table. Our flat is, well...small, so we needed a table that ideally folded so it wouldn't be in the way. After looking at our options in my beloved IKEA and finding that the ones I liked were waaaaayyy out of our budget we decided to give the charity shops a look. After some well timed luck (as we were paying for one table the (almost) perfect one got wheeled in the door so we swapped!) we found ourselves on a fairly busy city street with a wheelie table.

Its not huge so we figured to get it home we would try for a bus. It was fun navigating it across the road through traffic, but we survived... The bus arrived quickly and we let everyone else get on first then lifted the table up. The driver didn't seem very impressed with this idea and promptly informed us "This is a bus not a bloody van. " I have a feeling I knew that...as I was reaching for my bus pass. We climbed off the bus and were standing deliberating about how to get home when a second bus came along, This time thankfully I stepped on and the driver was fair enough to stand it in the buggy seat.

I'd forgotten all this until I was on another bus the other day and noticed this...I wonder how many buses she had to ask before she got on...

Resolutions? ....Shmeh

I don't do New Year resolutions. I figure that you never stick to them and then just feel bad about it come the end of the year. I have decided to make a couple of changes though, the timing is just a coincidence...

1. Stop wearing clothes that are too big for me
Its a bad habit that comes with low self confidence - trying to hide myself behind big clothes in a useless effort to look smaller. It doesn't work, it just makes me look bigger (and therefore worse) so the spring clean is going to involve any clothes I own over my actual size (except the expensive ones that I will alter) going in a big bag to the charity shop.

2. Be better at doing my "chores"
B-Man puts up with my messy kitchen and piles of washing up, but I think he really shouldn't have to so I'm making a concerted effort to be tidier. I'm also a bit slow at getting stuff (it took me at least 4 months to order some hoover bags!) so I plan to try harder at that too!

Halloween

As I mentioned earlier we were invited to a Halloween party this year. Fancy dress of course. It took a while to find and finally order costumes but they arrived on the day *phew* BMan opted for The Mask and I went for Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz...(theres no pics of me yet though)

BMan (The Mask), Katherine (Woodland Fairy), Sarah(Bad Fairy), Annabelle(Princess Fiona from Shrek) and Katie(Zombie)

Maria(Crazy danish lady...oh no, Nun)

Grrr Ryanair strike again!

I mentioned back in June that I had booked a holiday to Barcelona for B Mans birthday. An extravagant gift I know, but I had managed to get it all for a pretty cheap price, £98 for the flights from Stansted, £380 for the hotel, and £40 for a coach to the airport and back. Everything has been booked and mostly paid for, and today I got an email from Ryanair telling me of a change to our flight times...they have moved it forward from 12:15 to 06:50!! This wouldn't be too much of a problem if we were flying from a local airport, but the overnight coach to London (which we are booked onto) doesn't even arrive in Victoria until 07:30. Hmmm...that just doesn't work.

Ryanair have offered a full refund and to be honest we are considering taking it. We don't really want to cancel our holiday but getting to catch the flight is now going to be a major (and costly) problem so the temptation is there to scrap the whole thing and book/plan a bigger better holiday in the early part of next year instead.

I'm pretty pissed off with them right now as you can imagine.

Not a good start

Following from the post below...Virgin media came and fitted our new line and broadband today.

As you may have guessed the broadband is working...but not quite how we would like...

First thing the engineer does is fit the phone line, simply plugs into the old Telewest line and hey presto! magic.

Next we wanders off to fit the broadband. (He has been asking some odd questions up to this point and seems to not understand the concept of a network with cables...)

Whist he is banging on the wall outside extending the line or something I got proactive and plugged in the phone. On testing the line all I could hear was a terrible connection and constant crackle which I promptly pointed out to him (I'm getting better at complaining it seems) he went away again but came back to inform me that there seems to be a problem with the network and he wouldn't be surprised if the whole street has the same problem as the box is damp, but he will have to report it as a fault and send a service engineer round.

So off he toddles "my work here is done" (or that's what he would have said if he had any form of eloquence or could even string a decent sentence together...) I venture out into the hall where the modem is...and its just a modem...no router. Bugger.

I hastily plug my network cable into the modem and hit the net to check that we were supposed to get a free router...yup. Ok not a good start then eh? faulty line and no router on day one, so I phoned Virgin media and explain the problems. I have a service engineer coming over Tuesday (almost another week) and I am informed that the router doesn't get fitted by the engineer, but has been posted out to us today...well at least its on its way, but its really no use that its not already here.

I thought this was ok...but I called BMan up to tell him how its all gone and he promptly called Virgin again to get it sorted. That was about 4:30. its now 6:30 and I've just had a text to tell me that he is still on the phone. I can't wait to find out what on earth has been going on but so far its BT -1, Virgin -1.

Sounds like its going to be an ongoing saga...

BT = Bloody Terrible or "Why I have had no internet for a week"

Oh dear here I go again....Another regretful business deal with a "service provider" When myself and B Man moved into our flat he already had a contract for Sky broadband so to keep it going we had to have a BT line. Neither of us were very happy about this as we had both had previous bad experiences with the notorious BT, but it had to be done (Its the only way you can have sky broadband for those who are blissfully unaware) So we had the line fitted and from day one have had constant hassles and problems, including a fault that took about a month to fix and again ended with us having no net connection for a week.

This time however the problem was dire, BMan got a call from his sister who had tried to call the home line but couldn't connect to it. This lead to us testing the phone and finding out that whilst we had a dialling tone we couldn't call out. So on the mobile I hop to BT "Customer services" I am initially told by the first advisor that I had a type of account that she couldn't deal with so I was transferred. A nice man in the billing department looked at my account and informed me that my line has been terminated..."Oh? I haven't had a bill" "hmm well the system is showing that you did not pay your last bill and you have been cut off. " Oddly he asked me when I noticed and was surprised when I said "about a day ago" so it sounds like it was cut off a good while before.
He checked the account and agreed that there was no outstanding amount (I had just made a payment for the month after the apparent "fault" prompted BMan to check the account online)
The nice man in billing then says - "well I can put you through to services and they will be able to reconnect you, just explain our conversation to them." Ok cool...easy to sort.

No.

I was then transferred to another man who instantly said "I'm sorry but I can't help you right now, our system is down so I cannot see your account." ok...but the last guy could...why can't you? "Its a different system, I can't see your account please call back tomorrow."

ok.. I'm baffled but I'll do that.

They were unfortunate, I didn't call them back...BMan did.... the end result was that they had disconnected our line for non payment (even though the bill was paid before it was actually due) the problem arose from a credit that was put onto our account that the highly sophisticated computer system had listed as unpaid (even though that amount had been credited...) and in order to reconnect us they wanted to credit check BMan again and sign us into another 12 month contract. He told them in no short order where they could stick that plan. They then had the audacity to inform him that a final bill with a disconnection charge would be heading our way, they were also told where to stick that and exactly how far... We should now be expecting a credit for the bill paid.

But this left us with no BT line...oddly the broadband was still working however so neither of us were very fussed.

The next day BMan gets home to find out that the broadband has also ceased to exist. So as an act of desperation we are now Virginmedia customers...

Another trip down south and yet more apprehension

The last trip I took down to Norwich in March went well, I didn't kill anyone, my friends loved BMan, and my family started asking leading questions about him by the time we got home (which means they approved). Soooo... its my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary in August so I'm expected to turn up to their party. I booked train tickets a while back and now the trip is looming in the near future like a train coming through a tunnel towards me...and its making me nervous already! I can't believe it! The only difference from the last trip is that my parents are going to be there too (as well as several other random family members who I hardly know). My parents are probably the scariest thing I ever have to deal with because I just don't seem to be able to stand up to them, they nag and criticise me and treat me like a child and I seem to be helpless to their power.

I'm on an assertiveness course a few days before we leave (for work really) but I'm hoping I can improve on my coping skills...either that or I'm just going to let BMan have at 'em!

Thrill of the camp...Part 3...

Day 3
I slept far better the second night and actually felt awake. We had spotted the Landmark Forest Adventure Park on our initial trek to find a campsite so decided to go and check it out. The place is primarily designed for kid but hey were not THAT old...Gurn made use of his student status to get a discount and I think the older lady manning the reception desk took a shine to BMan as we didn't seem to pay the full price either.

Some of the areas really didn't interest us (mainly the shows about cutting down trees and turning them into logs...) but there was a big water slide at one end which kept us amused for a while and there was plenty else to do too..

A big walk round feature about Microthings, mainly it involved looking at things through microscopes...including Gurn and BMan..

The Flumes...
Tractors!(They haunt me!!)...

A cool tree walk assault course thing which made me face my fear of heights
There was Lex, who pulled logs about all day, but seemed quite contented when I scratched his nose. BMan pointed out that only a bumpkin like me would wander straight up to a horse and rub its nose without hesitation..
I liked his sign though.

There was an odd area of some woodcutter huts..
Including the most important outhouse, complete with crapping man...

There was a Fire watch tower, which provided a better workout to climb it than a gym visit...

The boys declared themselves World Class Loggers...
BMan didn't want to go home...
We left in the afternoon when it decided to rain. Heavy. It was so bad that we knew there was no chance of getting a fire going so drove into Aviemore and had dinner in what seemed to be one of only two pubs there. The food was good and I ate too much but after the drenching it was nice to stop somewhere warm to dry out. We headed back to camp once the rain stopped and played cards for the rest of the night.

I realised that I am crap at remembering the rules to card games!