So today my wife gets the keys to the cottage that will see us no longer staying in hotels and eating out every night in the week we're away. It's going to be great! The place is ideal, in the village we are looking to move to when we eventually sell up. And perhaps most excitingly, it doesn't come with a TV which means I finally get to buy a big screen LCD TV! So a 32" Panasonic is on the agenda for tomorrow which will then be plugged into the Wii for some big screen Mario action!

I see that one of the North Koreans has been stripped of his medals at the Olympics for failing a drugs test. Which made me wonder - what drugs does someone who won medals in air pistols need to take?!? I assume it's something to stop him getting itchy trigger finger but the last time I did air rifle shooting I was awesome and hit anything and everything I was aiming at, so how hard can it be!!! And it was snowing, with gloves on, so hardly ideal conditions. Olympics? I could have been a contender ;-)

Fuel

So with the increasing fuel costs I've been keeping track of my fuel usage (ah, spreadsheets :-)) for the past couple of months. It's interesting reading, as it calculates average MPG and miles per tank. On average, I put in 48 litres per fill, and get 338 miles from that, which works out as an average of 33.9MPG. Not fantastic, but for a large fast coupe it's almost respectable! Not that long ago 30MPG was considered excellent! What is scary is that since the 14th June I've paid out £580 just on fuel, most of which I recover from work as I do very little private miles these days, but it makes you think.

Of course, I could change the car and get a diesel, however no amount of MPG improvements will get me in one as I'm just not convinced that they are any better for the environment than petrol as the particulates are just too unknown. Plus, the additional cost of buying a diesel car and the extortionate cost of the fuel itself would mean any savings are pretty marginal. As such, I'll take a car that sounds great, gives me reasonable MPG and drives better - who wants to change gear at 4000rpm anyway?

In saying that, I'm driving my car a lot more considerately recently, and you know what? It makes nearly no difference to the MPG I get! How crazy is that? Madness to me....

So, I've not posted on here in a long time, sorry but things have been manic!

Summary since April? Well, got married (all went really well, had a brilliant day!), went on honeymoon (which also went really well, amazing scenery and animals in Botswana, and amazing food and beaches in Mozambique), went back to work and all back to normal!

Been keeping busy at home with some DIY as the aim is to still move away from London, but the current economic climate may make that tricky, so will see what happens. However we've managed to do all the little jobs to the flat that we've been putting off for a while, so it's all good really.

Family - not seen my folks since the wedding, so we're planning a wee trip up there sometime, soon hopefully.

Work, well it was all going well but the project seems to be taken over by accountants and as such, isn't the place it was. There is a very weird atmosphere at times and it's not conducive to what was a very enjoyable place to work. It seems client knowledge isn't valued anymore, and some very good people have left the project, which is very disappointing. It will be interesting to see what happens, as I'm only covered for another 3 weeks. Can't really say too much more, but work itself is a bit of a disappointing place in general which is having an effect on morale.

Anyway, will try and keep this going again, since I got my new phone (Sony C902) with a cracking data deal, I should be able to do it remotely!

Right, back to the grind...