Yeah, yeah, yeah. No updates here tends to mean no news. But I'll write something anyway. M****'s now on maternity leave. The other day, M**** said she saw this magpie hopping along the window ledge outside the bathroom. Yeah, right. The following day (Wednesday), she reckoned the magpie had been in the bathroom as that seemed the most likely explanation for the small scale disruption that had occurred - shaving brush was in the sink (usually firmly attached to this silverly shaving brush holder thing, itself firmly attached to the wall) and various tubes of things were on the floor or in the sink. Odd. Somehow I find it hard to imagine a dirty great big magpie in my bathroom. You probably would too, but that's probably because you have to imagine my bathroom on top of having to imagine the magpie there. That's a lot of imagining. Cool - the spell checker works. That was easy. I like that sometimes about Linux. It complains that something is missing or something ain't working, so you do a quick Google search, work out what's missing, install it and a few minutes later - problem fixed. I've needed a spell checker for ages, as you're probably all aware. Right. So where was I? Magpies in bathrooms. Yeah, so there's this magpie in my bathroom, yeah. Oh, I think I had finished that story. It wasn't very interesting anyway.

Matthew (friend from secondary school) e-mailed recently and part of his message included a link to Ange's web-site. I really don't think I know Ange. Matthew said she was at his wedding (I was at the reception), but I just don't know. I just don't know. Is it okay if a put a link here, Matthew? I enjoyed the web-site, you see.

Erm . . . spent a while up at the Clarendon Wing last night. Just for a laugh. Nah. Not really. M****'s been on these ferrous sulphate pills for the last week to try to up her iron levels. They were only slightly below the recommended level in the first place anyway. Still . . . erm . . . so, sometime yesterday afternoon she didn't feel too well. Pains above the bump. Nausea. That kind of thing. Thought perhaps this was a side effect of the ferrous sulphate. These pains were still around when I got home and throughout the evening. We rang NHS Direct ("Oh, just have a dry biscuit . . . it will pass") who were "perfectly useless", as I think M**** put it. So then we tried the Clarendon Wing, our assigned chunk of Leeds General Infirmary. They said we could pop over, let them do a few tests, see what was up, that kind of thing. They didn't sound all that bothered, but recommended a visit, just to be on a safe side. So that's what we did. After battling through the group of obligatory smokers blocking the entrance, almost insisting that we share their foul second-hand smoke, we walked (lifts were broke) up to the C-floor (the delivery 'suite'), saw this nurse, explained the problem, and were assigned a bed. The nurse had to change her top as it was covered in some gunk, but a couple of minutes later we got a machine that went 'bing!' . . . only it didn't. It was a glorified sound amplifier. A blue, circular microphone was strapped around M**** so as to hear the baby's heartbeat and another pink (?!) one in order to . . . erm . . . I don't know what the pink one was for. M**** was also given a button to press every time there was an 'event' (the baby moving around). There were lots of events. The baby was moving around like crazy. The 25 minutes of monitoring flew by, the heartbeat averaging around 140 bpm. So that's about 2 heartbeats for every one of mine. But it was fairly relaxing sitting (or lying) there, listening to these strange subterranean gurgling sounds. Occasionally our baby would twist around, and the microphone and accompanying machinery would lose his heartbeat . . . but this would only last a few seconds. I said to M****, "Wouldn't it be freaky if he started shouting towards the microphone and we could make out words . . . 'Jason, it was Jason. Jason did it' something like this. That would be odd. Who's Jason?" Who is Jason? I don't know why I thought of Jason. Shall I stop saying Jason now? Yes. So, anyway . . . 25 minutes of baby monitoring later and everything was fine. A doctor then came to see us, Paul someone, and said it was probably some dodgy food working its way around M****'s squashed up digestive system. Oh, and to stop with the ferrous sulphate for now. And that was that. We can't have been there for much more than 40 minutes, if that. We felt kind of sorry for the couple in the bed next to ours (curtains drawn). They had to wait ages for someone to see them, give them a machine, and we got one straight away. The woman there was complaining of seeing strange bright lights in her vision (hmmmm, sounds familiar), was 39 weeks pregnant, felt sick and had really high blood pressure. Ah well. So that was our exciting evening. Nothing much else happened.

No updates, really. M****'s been 'nesting', I believe the term is. This involves cleaning things that I would never have thought of cleaning, like curtains, windows (no, that's a lie - I have thought about cleaning windows before, but could never get anyone round prepared to do the job), skirting boards, cushion covers . . . stuff like that. I've been helping when I'm around and moving objects around the house, clearing out the first floor bedroom and throwing away all this junk we've got lying around the house (four 15 inch CRTs, anyone? Nope, didn't think so). Everywhere I turn there seems to be an ancient piece of computer equipment. But anyway . . . the cot's been constructed now, so that's good.

Took the day off work today. Slept in late this morning and then, after breakfast and stuff, I think M**** and I went to this Carrington's place in Horsforth . . . looking for curtains (hence the picture of the rug - I was hoping we could compare the picture on the camera with the curtains. Yeah, right). Something like that. We had lunch at this cafe thing and then went to Homebase for some plants . . . and a quick look at their curtain rails, but they were no good. So we came out of Homebase with a little bay tree, a lot of outdoor plants, weed-killer and some terracotta plant pots. Back at home, I weeded the garden whilst M**** sorted out the plants. I wonder if anyone's still reading this? Hello. Hello? Right, okay then. Where was I? Getting bored of this anyway. It was a fairly lazy day, you see. I mean, I weeded the garden, replaced some door-handles, put up some curtains (the old ones, just for the time being), pushed the piano back against the wall, but that was about it, really. We had this huge list of stuff to do, and it's still pretty huge. Anyway, must do some university work now.

I e-mailed a company asking about a DVD they sell. I think people forget that the V stands for versatile. Those freaky silver discs can hold data that represents all manner of things. But anyway . . . so I e-mail them asking what operating system the disc runs under (presuming that it contains some kind of software; it may not, of course, but given the nature of the DVD, that would be very strange were it not to . . . it contains a database, put it that way). So, you would think that would be a simple enough question. However, the reply comes back:

So what does that mean? Anyone? How can such a simple question provoke such a strange reply? Hence, I replied:

So yes . . . not much going on right now. M****'s due on 3rd July (or 5th . . . whatever, it's around then) so it could be any time around now. But, on the day, don't expect some kind of "Okay, M****, I'm on my way home now. I'll just need to update my web-site, though, so that everyone knows," kind of scenario.

No - M**** hasn't given birth yet. It's due some time this weekend. Meanwhile, I have a university assignment to complete. Move along, move along.