Category Archives: Experiences

As you were.

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We’re back in business.

The tree is up and decorated. Not the tree I bought. That is on the balcony. It’s a new tree. And now he is happy.

And, so, with the exception of the cleaning, Christmas can commence.

In addition, I am so happy because, unusually, at work, instead of spending the last hour standing around at what is known as (but in reality is nothing like) “THE PARTY”, we shall be going home an hour early. I’ve always hated this so-called party thing. I’m sure that everyone is just waiting for the opportunity to get out of there. Instead we stand around, trying to be pleasant with a glass of prosecco and a piece of cake. Every year, I promise (to myself) to be the second person out of there but never make it. This year, at 3.15, I shall be leaving and going home.

And I might make mince pies :-)

And that will certainly make it the start of Christmas.

Not everything goes according to plan.

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Well, that didn’t quite go as expected.

The problem is that I don’t think like him. I mean to say, when I saw him cleaning the place where the tree was to go, I thought, “Oh yes, of course, I could have done that” but, until I saw him cleaning, it never crossed my mind that it would be necessary.

In fact, I would never have thought of it. Nor, in future, will I think of it. My brain just isn’t wired that way.

And, so he got annoyed.

And then, one set of lights didn’t work.

And so he gave up. But all that was after the “getting stroppy” bit which meant that I had already given up. There’s simply no talking to him and, certainly, no reasoning with him once it gets to this stage. He is a practical person and I am a man of words and numbers. It’s really that simple.

So, the Christmas tree is in place with some lights on and that’s all.

The rest will be done when he returns on Thursday. Or, maybe, he will wait until Friday.

I think we do need to have a discussion about how he is like an apple and I am like a piece of rock, if you see what I mean. Even if he knows this already.

The preparations continue

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So, he is very happy. The carpenter guy came round last night and fixed the lamp in the bathroom. Now he can clean it properly and it’s brighter and the mirror is higher and the wires are hidden.

We’re, maybe, almost ready. Apart from the cleaning. Followed by the extra cleaning and the re-cleaning.

Oh, yes, and the tree.

He was going to get a tree from the market (the ones he turned down two weeks ago because a) it was too early and b) they were too expensive) – except that they had no more small trees left and the price of a big one was €120!

He said he was going to ‘phone round’ and see what he could get but me, being me, no longer quite trusted that he would do it. I asked if he wanted me to ask someone here, at work, if there was anywhere to get one. He said ‘yes’, confirming to me that he wouldn’t do it.

So, at lunchtime I went to a place I know and found some. I phoned him to say that I had found one and had bought it. At which point he told me that he HAD phoned and there were some at the place they use for the shop in town.

If I had known I wouldn’t have spent my time driving around at lunch and he probably would have got a nicer one for, although it’s OK, it’s not as “perfect” as the one I got last year from the market. Grrrr

Still, we have it now. I can imagine he will want to decorate it this evening. We shall see.

FYI, my “illness” is proceeding. It will soon not cause me any really bad feeling but just be annoying. To be honest, it’s already annoying.

Ah well.

I’m iller than you are!

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Of course, there is one downside to being a gay man.

This is that your partner is a man.

Men are notoriously bad when it comes to being ill. Italian men worse (imho).

So, here I am, suffering with “man flu” (i.e. a slight cold) and, instead of being able to really suffer, I find myself in a situation where F is “worse” than me.

I have this cold (as it was formally known before all illnesses had to be “the worst thing that has ever happened to you so far”) and F has stomach ache.

Of course, his is worse than mine.

So, he is at home and I am at work because, of course, if one is to suffer, one has to suffer properley. Suffering properley means that one must “soldier on” making sure that everyone knows that you are being a hero whilst, at the same time, trying to hide it. This doesn’t mean hiding it but rather, being subtle about making sure that your partner (and, in my case, colleagues) know that you are being a hero and passing it off as “nothing really”. By being the hero, in the normal course of events, it would illicit messages of sympathy and care but, in this case, I get nothing because he is feeling worse than me and my Italian colleagues have absolutely no concept of this “soldiering on” thing. Bloody Italians.

Bah, bloody humbug.

Of course, my cold is because I went out on Friday night without a hat or umbrella. And it was raining cold rain. So, Sunday morning I woke up with this bloody thing that I now have

On the bright side, it should mean that it is all cleared up by Friday and that I won’t be coming down with any other lurgy for Christmas.

Still, it’s a bit of a bugger that, on one of the very rare occasions that I AM actually a little ill, I can’t exploit it for all it’s worth!

I cut my thumb ……. with soap

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So, I am supposed to be writing Christmas cards right now.

Instead, I am exhausted and spending a few minutes (which is fast turning into one hour or so) relaxing.

Today I have been busy. Following Piero’s destruction blitz that he’s on at the moment, I decided that I would have to bite the bullet and sort out the TV cable. It comes in above the front door, runs along the hallway, into the lounge and then to the bedroom (where the TV is located).

Originally, the TV was in the lounge but when I moved it to the bedroom I had to buy extra aerial cable and, rather than putting it against the wall, ran it in front of the wardrobe. OK, it was because I was lazy.

Then we got Piero.

Piero quite liked the cable that ran on the floor through the bedroom doorway and along the wardrobe. So, after nearly chewing his way through, I taped it to the floor using packing tape.

That was months and months ago.

After the fridge destruction, he found a slightly prominent and loose bit of cable in the hallway. It was near the skirting board.

And his persistence in pulling it (it must have been a great game) even when I had secured it and taped it and various other things, meant that, now, there was only one solution. That was to re-route the whole thing. Which I have now done. Now it goes along the ceiling of the hall, through a new hole I drilled at the top of the doorway into the lounge, across the door frame and through two other holes in the bedroom door frame, into the bedroom.

From there, it is tacked to run behind the wardrobe (where it goes down to the skirting board for the first time) and from there to the TV.

To get it now, he either has to jump about 7 feet or pull the triple wardrobe out away from the wall.

And, to be honest, if he can get it now, I will really give up.

And then I washed my hands. I have a new bar of soap but a small sliver of the previous soap.

The previous soap was rubbish. It was that glycerine soap and created no lather and I didn’t like it, Also, it was heavy and I thought the sink would crack when I accidentally dropped it in there a couple of times.

So now I have this thin sliver of this crappy soap. And, as I was washing my hands, somehow I managed to cut my thumb with this sliver of crap soap and so now have a plaster on it as it bled profusely.

I can hardly believe that with all the drilling, hammering, cutting of cable, fixing of cable, use of screwdrivers, etc. nothing happened until I used the soap!

Now, where’s the justice in that?

Painting at midnight! No, not me, of course.

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Of course, there is a huge difference between me and him and between living with him and living with V.

For certain things, he has to do them NOW!

I’m more of a ‘OK that’s enough, the rest can be done later’ type of person.

He phoned me about 9.45.  He asked if I had taken the dogs out.  I hadn’t.  He had been to IKEA.  The light from the bathroom (if you’re a long-term reader of this blog you may remember the ‘incident’ from a year ago) is nearly falling off.  It needs replacing.  He had bought a new light.  He’s going to get someone to fix it properly.  Plus he got some other things.  It will all go towards making the flat ‘just perfect’ for our visitors on Boxing Day.

He said he was coming with the car and to come down and collect the stuff.  Just after 10 I took the dogs out.  I had been pretty busy all evening, clearing out the cupboard and the old fridge (destroyed by Piero) and reorganising (and a bit of cleaning) ready for the new fridge.

I didn’t put everything away again because I needed to discuss it with him.  I also needed to discuss some other things – like the money I owed him and the fact that I have invited a couple to use his flat over the Christmas period.  I mean, I know he’ll be fine about it but it’s to let him know.

He went to drop off the car at the office and then came straight to me.

He looked at the reorganised kitchen.  The wall behind where the cupboard HAD been was not painted.  He decided it must be painted.  My heart sank.  It was already 10.45 and I really did need to go to bed.  This is the point at which I would have said ‘OK well let’s see what can be seen after the new fridge comes’ – because it is much taller and, I suspect, the unpainted part of the wall will be covered by it.

But, as I know, once he has some idea about organising or cleaning or decorating, it is quite useless to try and talk him out of it.  It’s better to just let him get on with it.

I said that I was really sorry but I had to go to bed.  He understood.  Or, rather, he said he understood.  Telling me to go to bed more than once (whilst I was preparing coffee for the morning, cleaning my teeth, preparing my clothes for the morning, etc.)  He started painting and I went to bed.  I forgot to tell him to leave everything and I would put the cupboard and old, destroyed fridge back in the morning.  I decided that this was not quite the right time to talk about all the other things.

And this morning, everything was clean and tidy.  Everything was done.

Since I started writing this post, the new fridge has been delivered and cleaned by him and he has gone to work.

Tonight, before Christmas cards are started (see the new stamps below), I will put everything back.

And we have a new way of stopping TBP (That Bastard Piero) from getting to the plug and destroying the new one so, hopefully, it shouldn’t happen again.

In the meantime, I must try and remember to tell him about the friends that might come, the fact that I might not be able to get a Christmas tree and some other things like that.

 

Transferring the site ….. and other things

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4/12

Well, it was all going rather well in day 2 of the GREAT MOVE.

I found that, on the new hosting company, I can work on it without it being ‘live’ – meaning the existing one can remain in place.

Except ……..

It seems that the SQL database I am using is, in fact, the existing SQL database!

WTF?

But, it seems a slightly bastardised version of the existing SQL database.

Time for a break whilst work takes over.  And then we shall see.

Update 1:  The support team at the new hosting company assure me that I have must have restored it/transferred the data otherwise, what I am experiencing “is not possible”.

However, I think it may have something to do with the fact that I created an alias in order to set up the blog before cutting the old one.

But, and this is where the really worrying bit comes, am I looking at the old database or the new one?  If the new one, how can the data have come across when I haven’t, as yet, tried to restore it?  If the old database, then how am I able to look at it if they are held on different servers?  And, what will happen when I cut off the old one?  Will the old database and the new database disappear?

And, even more worrying is: How safe is the data if it can “suddenly” appear in the “new” database without me having done anything?

Bugger.

Update 2 – 10/12:

We’re almost a week on from the above.  Nothing has changed.  My blog is still being hosted on the other servers.  However, today I found something that said it would be easy, so I updated the nameservers (pointing the blog to the correct, new servers), killed the database, restored the database from a backup and checked it was OK and, finally, transferred all the WP files from the backup I created.

Perfect.

Except, of course, not quite.

Not quite as in it didn’t work.  I checked all the passwords, made small adjustments where I found errors and ……..

Still problems.

Then, I suddenly remembered that, the reason I was going to do this at home, last weekend, was that home was where the full file download was.  Here, the copying of files kept timing out – at home, it was fine (except for 3 files).

So, now I can do nothing, until I get home.

So, given the fact that it was a long weekend you may ask why I didn’t do it.  Well, Friday, I did other things, including booking the meat for Christmas and Boxing Day and wandering around looking for presents.  Actually, having wandered around, I found some things but, in the end, I didn’t want to buy them because, for me, now, Christmas Eve is the time for these things and I really wanted to come back on Christmas Eve and do it.  Nowadays this is part of what makes Christmas great.

I did pop into Euronics to see if they had a turntable (the main present for F) as I couldn’t wait for Christmas Eve for this.  They didn’t but, whilst I was there, I looked at televisions (F wants to get me one for Christmas) and fridges (as mine is very old and, sooner or later, will die.)

Saturday, during the day, was mostly spent searching for, researching about and phoning around for the said turntable.  The one I wanted which was supposed to be ‘arriving soon’ at a very local shop, was, in fact, not arriving, they told me.  It was not arriving because it hadn’t been ordered.  However, I could have a different one for only a couple of hundred Euro extra.  I told them I’d think about it.

Then, on another site, I found one.  Not the one I had been looking for exactly but, whilst researching, it seemed that Technics was the make to go for and this was a Techincs.  I phoned them.  They had 2.  And, yes, they would be open on Sunday.

Sunday morning came and, after breakfast, I went to get it.  Perfect.  Whilst waiting for the bus back to town, I saw that someone had posted some crap post about me being 40% happy and thought, “You know nothing”.

And then I got home.

I had forgotten to put the chair against the power lead to the fridge.

Piero had part-chewed through the wire and, somehow, managed to short it without killing himself.  So, now I had no fridge.  I told F and we ended up at Euronics where, for Christmas he bought me a new fridge (to be delivered on Wednesday) and we (together) bought a new telly, which we took home straight away.

But, obviously, to put it up, we had to clean behind where the telly is.  And, so, in the end, I didn’t sit down at the computer until about 5.30 – which was too late to do the move.

So Sunday, was, in the end, a mixed day – although I would say that I was still more than 40% happy, maybe I wasn’t quite 100%.

So you still have to wait to read this.  I hope that, by tomorrow, all will be, more or less, back to normal.

Update 11/12

So, now it’s back up and running and almost done.

Of course, it didn’t quite go as planned.  I got home and uploaded the files.

Except, some were missing and I had no idea until I uploaded them.

So then I had to bugger about this morning – uploading new WordPress files, uploading the ones from work that I had deleted and then resetting the config again.

I did think it was going to be a real pain but, in fact, once I’d done that, all was OK.  Now to fix the picture at the top and we’re done.

Thank goodness.  And, just in time for Christmas too.

I’ll be along to view your blogs and catch up as soon as I can.

Ciao

Nearly there, I think …….I hope.

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Of course, it’s not really finished at all. But we’re getting there. Saturday was the lounge. Now, all that MUST be done before Christmas is the bathroom, which is not an easy room to do.

Still, bless him, even if it’s for him really.

The pictures were put back up – but in an order he likes – all neat. It does look better, of course, and it is the kind of thing he does for a living, so it’s easier for him.

But it was the whole day on Saturday. I shall be quite glad when it’s all finished and I can have Saturday’s to myself again.

It would be the main drawback about living together. No real time to myself. And I never thought I’d ever think like that.

But, from something that happened last week, I’m now pretty sure that he has taken to ‘living’ with me and using his place as more of a ‘private studio’. So, if we did move in together, we would have to have at least one or two more rooms.

He doesn’t want to get the tree until about the middle of December. Although he loves the tree and decorations, he doesn’t really like the ‘mess’ that goes with it.

I’m going to cook chicken this Christmas because he’ll eat that (or, at least, he’ll eat the breast). And, assuming that P&A will come on Boxing Day, I’ll do Roast Beef with all the trimmings.

I have to be honest, I am really looking forward to Christmas.

Piero is nearly as big as Dino!

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Piero has grown.

In fact, everyone who hasn’t seen him for more than about a week comments on how fast he has grown.

And he has. His shoulders are now just a few inches below Dino’s. He hasn’t got Dino’s bulk (not that Dino is fat, jut muscled) nor power but he’s working on it. The games of ‘tug’ that they have every night prove this.

Piero is still very ‘cute’ though, even if he is nearly the same size.

And it got me to thinking about whether Dino was this big when he was seven months old. I thought I might have commented on it in the blog so went back a way to see if I could find out. I didn’t find it. Instead, what I found was the end of V and I (Dino was just about 10 months old at the time). I should go back, from time to time, to see what was happening then.

For example, I found the post where I had been to see the flat that I am now living in.

I found some posts that were quite well written. But then, a tortured mind seems to a requisite for good writing. Perhaps I should randomly go back and have a look at some posts I wrote? It’s interesting to see the change from a different year. After all, this blog has been going for nearly 7 years now and a lot of things have changed in those seven years.

Anyway, back to Piero.

He is cute, he is much bigger, he is more affectionate, he is very, very playful and he is a right little bastard.

But wonderful too.

However, Dino is still the best dog ever.

But I love them both, just the same. And, as my friend C, from London, wrote recently, F REALLY loves the dogs. So all is well.

Two dreams

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I had two quite strange dreams last night.

The first involved a famous footballer. Not a specific famous footballer, you understand and, yet, I suppose he could have been David Beckham.

Don’t get me wrong, David is quite good looking but not really my type. And it wasn’t really David as this guy had some hair on his chest. How do I know this, well, because he was naked and lying/sitting on the bed, propped up on the pillows.

But this vision was, in fact, a flashback, whilst I was telling someone about it and insisting that ‘nothing happened’ because I really wasn’t interested which, if you’ve heard David speak, you may understand. His manly frame is not upheld with his, frankly, pansy voice.

Even more weirdly, his wife or girlfriend was also there – lying over the corner of the bed (but clothed, obviously)!

The second dream was, indeed, more weird and just a little horrific and I think it was this one that made me wake up.

I would suggest that if you’re a little bit squeamish or don’t eat meat, you stop reading here.

No, honestly, this is going to be terrible for you.

In fact, this will be quite terrible for anyone.

So, stop reading.

Please?

You won’t like it.

Really you won’t.

I didn’t and it was MY dream!

Well, if you’re still reading it then either you’re mad or you don’t care and can watch the most horrible of horrible of movies.

And so,

It starts with me sitting with an animal (like a baby calf or a baby pig) lying with it’s head resting on my lap.

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