I'm convinced that the above line is from a movie, but I can't remember which one. It might be a "Frank Dreben" quote - him off the Naked Gun movies and also Police Squad (the DVD of which is winging its way to me as we speak). Alternatively, it might be something that Steve Martin said in some movie or other. I don't remember. I shall religiously watch these movies until I find out. Google didn't help me this time. Shame.

Today I knew that there was going to be snow. I knew it when I went to bed. I knew that there was actually snow when the alarm clock woke me up with local radio (shudder) telling me of local snow (shiver). Despite this, I still failed to motivate myself out of the bed. I wasn't sure whether it was general morning aching, or a stomach bug, when I felt twinges in my stomach. I didn't want to face the cold house outside of the bed. The bedroom itself, runs a heater on low overnight, so isn't all that cold, but it's still fairly cold. It's the 8th today and the heating engineering doesn't start for another 11 days. I couldn't stay in bed that long.

I could.

But I wasn't going to.

Eventually, after the final involuntary snooze, I emerged from the bed, a little earlier than I had the previous day. Given that I'd been late for work without snow the previous day, I fully expected to be late today. On a normal day, I'd be early, but there was snow to clear from the car and snowy roads to negotiate. It wasn't looking good.

I packaged up two DVDs, both of which I'd put on eBay last night. Following over a year's agonising over Bill Bailey DVDs, I eventually had bought the box set for £10. This contained the DVD I didn't have, and two I did. It also MAYBE contained a slightly extended version of Bewilderness, compared with my existing copy. I had had to watch my box set copy of this show to find out that, yes, it had a SLIGHTLY extended version of the show. Anyway, my plan was to sell my older discs, thus allowing me to recoup some of the cost of the new box set. Plus, it would put the DVDs in the hands of people who might watch them. When I compared this option to the possibility of spending over £10 on just the disc I didn't have (which also came with a copy of Bewilderness that was SLIGHTLY extended), it seemed that I'd hit on a plan. Last night I had just finished putting the discs on eBay when I got an email saying that I'd sold one of them. I will get a little under £5, once I've taken off various fees from the purchase price. So, my box set is half paid for already. If the other disc sells similarly, then my extra disc will have cost a few pence.

So maybe agonising for a year has proved worth it?

Or maybe not. The disc I hadn't seen was good, but not awe-inspiring. Bill has definitely improved since his original one-man-shows.

Back to the travelling to work story. Why is irony so damned ironic? Well, I got to work earlier than the day before. Despite the adverse road conditions.

Not much of a climax to the tale, but at least there's a bunch of words to read on the way.

People have complained that I spend too much time itemising my DIY activities at the moment. I write about what I know/do. At the moment, I'm doing a lot of DIY type things. However, last night I didn't. I'd planned to, though my list of started jobs is getting longer, my list of finishable jobs, shorter, and my list of things I want to start, looking fairly small too. In other words, I wasn't that sure what the hell I should do. I didn't sit down and totally plan the house from the off. Some things clearly needed doing and I started a bunch of them. Largely finishing what I needed to finish.

I can do a lot more in the way of decorating and finishing once the heating and electrician people have been. Plus the new bathroom will give me a lot to do. I still have rubble to deal with and I may as well take out the toilet. By which I mean remove it from the pipes, rather than go on a date with it. Though, it has to be said that my prospects for a meaningful relationship in the short-term are so poor at the moment that I may as well date a toilet. There are many ways in which a toilet can be a good date. A toilet, for instance, will not judge you. It will deal with whatever shit you have going on. Blah blah blah - I can't actually be bothered to write a whole treatise on why a toilet would make a good date, you get the idea.

Anyway, the point is that I returned back to Reading much later than I expected last night, following a meeting at work. Once I'd gotten some food and picked up a box of DVDs (two of which I planned to sell) from my old house, it was too late to start messing about with rubble or plumbing - two of my favourite things to mess with. So, I decided to plan the kitchen and bathroom. This is the one part of the house which has most been worrying me. I used a program called SketchUp. I used a bunch of semi-accurate measurements and estimates of the sizes of various appliances/fittings. I drew the space I was dealing with, in 3D, and started dropping in the fixtures and fittings. I was able to arrange the space and see where I'd need windows, sinks, ovens and so on.

The time flew by and it was very late when I eventually got to sleep last night. I do now have models of both the downstairs space and also the showerroom, I'm presently rubble-ising. I'll post some pictures some other time.