My word I've been busy over the last three weeks! Since my last blog, I've played my first hockey match in 2 years (we lost 4-0), handled over 250 nominations for an awards ceremony, put together packs for the judges and worked a 17 hour doing it, bought some carpet, found out about getting a wood burning stove fitted in our living room, completely emptied the office at home, fitted above mentioned carpet in the office, put all the furniture back in and been to Chatham to visit one of GG's friends and her new baby. So all in all, I've not been up to much!!

This morning started ok when I went to the local sorting office to pick up a present for my brother and his girlfriend for when their sprog appears sometime in December (forward planning is the name of the game!), but then got decidedly worse when I went to the dentist to have a filling done. I should have known it was going to be unpleasant when the doctor asked me if I wanted an injection before he started! Maybe I should have said yes.

So I approached work with a sore face and a bad mood, and then had to have my exit interview with my boss - 5 weeks before I leave...huh?! But that went ok. I got a few things off my chest, mentioned a few issues I've had with my line manager, said what things had been positive about the place, and she said I was a valuable, reliable member of staff who would be missed, but they knew they wouldn't hang on to me because I'm over qualified for the job I'm doing. So at least that's something positive to take away.

Right, back to the carpeting. We went to see my folks on Saturday morning to collect some duvets for our house-warming party guests this weekend, and for a cuppa as we'd run out of milk :-(, and then we bimbled up to Heathfield to go to a shop that sells wood-burning stoves. We've found one that's a nice size, and not too hefty a price, but we have to get our current gas fire taken out before they can come and have a look to give us a quote for the entire fitting/tiling/ redecorating extravaganza. Tricky. So next job is to find a CORGI engineer. Anyway, I digress.

After visiting the stove shop, we were walking back to the car and saw some tall carpet offcuts outside a shop. One of them was a very nice pale beige 80% wool twist, 8' by 13' (the room we wanted it for is 7' by 9') for £50...so we bought it, squeezed it into the car diagonally and drove all the way to Chatham one in the back, one in the front!

Having got it into the spare room when we got home, I then realised people would be sleeping in that room this weekend, so really we needed to fit it! So Sunday night, all the furniture came out and on Monday night the carpet came up, as did the nasty green powdery disintegrated underlay, and the gripper rods, newspaper layer and underlay went down. Not a bad start.

Then we got the overly large piece or carpet into the relatively small room and started trying to lay it out flat. We managed in the end to get one corner in flat with the carpet folded up the walls on the opposite sides. GG then started stretching the carpet out from the centre towards the walls using a rolling pin (in the absence of a proper knee kicker thing!). She got about a metre out from the corner in each direction before our tiredness got the better of us and we decided to call it quits for the night.

Tuesday evening when I got home from work, I battled with the cutting for a little longer before phoning my dad for some tips - it's amazing how dads are useful for that kind of thing! He suggested that instead of trying to cut the carpet along the skirting board in position, I should guestimate how much carpet would be needed to get into the right angle and tuck under the skirting board, then pull the carpet back and cut through the underside using a stanley knife and a piece of wood to lean on.

This made the whole process much quicker and easier and after negotiating my way past the phone socket, radiator, plug sockets and doorways (long story short-ish), the carpet was laid! After dinner we put all the furniture back in and put the computer back together, then GG went downstairs and did homework while I moved everything else back in. Job done!

Think I'll leave the bigger rooms, landing, stairs and in fact anywhere else we want new carpet to the professionals!!!

Phew!

Again, apologies for the length of time between blogs. My current employers know they are losing me in about 4 weeks and are getting an awful lot for their money in that time, and my new employer has scared the whatsits out of me by showing me some of the stuff I might be working on this time next month!!!

But no matter. The title of the blog relates to everything ticking along quite nicely in terms of the house (I've recently erected a fence, I'm in the process of planing a new interior door to fit in our hallway, we've bought the railway sleepers for the next level of terracing, and I think I've found a plumber/CORGI engineer to come and quote for installing the dishwasher and removing the gas fire), and just at this moment I have a funny tic thing going on in the back of my left arm/shoulder (it keeps moving).

The BOO part refers of course to the fact we're approaching Halloween, and I keep expecting local rugrats and their parents to come knocking on the door wanting my sweets!!! MINE! GG got quite grumpy with me earlier because I told her not to turn on the light when we got in because there was a gang of yoofs at the top of our garden path, and I was worried they might be trick or treating!!!

Now I'm on the sofa, blogging instead of reading up on some stuff for the new job, frankly because it scares the hell out of me!! That and I won't get much else done any night this week or next because I'm doing a show in East Grinstead (about 45 minutes away) for the next fortnight - it seemed like a good idea at the time when I said yes!!

Oh, and I played hockey again last weekend - had a really good game in the middle of midfield. Made some good interceptions from reading the game, had a few good attacking forays up the pitch and was instrumental in the build up to both goals in our 2-0 win...yeah!!