Wellsy's World

So when it snowed the other week I was driving back into the carpark at work and hit a patch of ice under the snow. I was only in second, not going very fast but slid into the fence post by the gate. In the old days when car bumpers were made of metal I think I would have gotten away with a dent in the bumper and nothing else. With modern cars and their plastic matching bumpers though it’s a different matter.

I ended up sliding into the post at an angle catching the corner of the car (Ford Focus, 2008 model) – it ended up trashing the bumper and the fog light which is mounted in the bumper then stopping the car by hitting the wing which deformed it slightly. Even though this was at low speed because of the angle I ended up doing quite a bit of damage so although there was no structural damage it was going to be quite expensive to fix.

The first thing that most people would do is ring the insurance company and get them to fix it, however to keep my insurance premium below £1000 a year I had opted for a £500 excess. That with the loss of two years no claims would mean that an insurance fix would end up costing me around £650. That’s a lot. I figured I could get it done cheaper without involving the insurance company. Something that worked out quite well as in the same week my neighbourgh but the same thing and the insurance company shipped her car off to a garage for nearly a month – at great expense to her ultimately.

Anyway, I could have gone to a garage privately but since I like doing mechanical stuff I thought I’d give it a go myself. I started by hitting eBay and seeing what I could get. I basically needed a new bumper, wing, fog light and then getting it painted the right colour – Sea Grey. The best bit was the bumper. I found a guy selling Focus 08 bumpers in various colours so I contacted him and asked if he’d got one in grey – it is a popular colour for the new MKIII Focus. I’m guessing he has the bumpers in stock and sprays them on request as next morning he put a Sea Grey one on ebay for me. The fog light wasn’t a problem either but the wing I could only get primed in black ready for painting. Still – I got all the parts I needed for under £200. Having the wing sprayed will cost me a £100 at a Ford dealership so if you exclude my time then I will have saved over £350 by doing it myself.

So, putting it all together. I set aside last weekend to strip it all down and put the new stuff on. I spent most of the day on Sataurday removing the old bumper and wing and was just managing to get the wing on as it was going dark. That just left Sunday to put the rest of the wing on and then the bumper followed by the trimmings like radiator grill and fog lights. It’s not as hard as I thought it was going to be – most of it is clips holding the bumper in place with a few bolts here and there. The wing was most difficult but still easy enough to do yourself if you were considering it.

All I need to do now is take it into the Ford dealership for a spray one day and it’s done. Here’s a quick shot of what it looked like Saturday afternoon.

I was following a new Ford Ka in green this morning and thought “Hang on, that looks familiar”. Then it struck me – it looks like an ood from Doctor Who. Just imagine it with it’s boot full of spaghetti…

The other night I was invited out for a night with the ‘girls..’ I told my husband that I would be home by midnight, ‘I promise!’ Well, the hours passed and the margaritas went down way too easily. Around 3 a.m., a bit loaded, I headed for home.

Just as I got in the door, the cuckoo clock in the hallway started up and cuckooed 3 times. Quickly, realizing my husband would probably wake up, I cuckooed another 9 times.

I was really proud of myself for coming up with such a quick-witted solution, in order to escape a possible conflict with him. Even when totally smashed… 3 cuckoos plus 9 cuckoos totals = 12 Cuckoos (MIDNIGHT!)

The next morning my husband asked me what time I got in, I told him ‘MIDNIGHT’… he didn’t seem pissed off in the least.
Whew, I got away with that one!

Then he said ‘We need a new cuckoo clock.’

When I asked him why, he said, ‘Well, last night our clock cuckooed three times, then said ‘oh shit.’ Cuckooed 4 more times, cleared its throat, cuckooed another three times, giggled, cuckooed twice more, and then tripped over the coffee table and farted.

Here’s a prime example of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus” offered by an English professor from the University of Colorado for a class assignment:

The professor told his class one day: “Today we will experiment with a new
form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair
off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right.

As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short
story. You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to
me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph
to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first
person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth.

Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the
story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails
and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is
over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”

The following was actually turned in by two of his English students:

THE STORY:
(first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now
reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he
liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off
Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too
much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the
question.

(second paragraph by Bill )

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now
in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the
neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had
spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,” he
said into his transgalactic communicator. ” Polar orbit established. No sign
of resistance so far…” But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam
flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The
jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the
cockpit.

(Rebecca)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one
last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever
had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless
hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. “Congress Passes Law
Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,” Laurie read in her newspaper
one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared
out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly
and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from
her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. “Why
must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?” she pondered wistfully.

( Bill )

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of
miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership launched the first of its
lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the
Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth
a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to
destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the
Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to
pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly
initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the
atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine
headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam , felt the
inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing
partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

( Bill )

Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose
attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. ” Oh, shall I
have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F–KING TEA??? Oh no,
what am I to do? I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle
Steele novels!”

(Rebecca)

A$$h@le.

( Bill )

B*tch!

(Rebecca)

F*** YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!!

( Bill )

In your dreams, Ho. Go drink some tea.

(TEACHER)

A+ – I really liked this one.

This morning I ended up playing two games with my little girl – both of them disasterous. The first was “I spy”. Fine – except that she can’t spell yet. She knows what some of the letters are – she stopped calling the letter A “the triangle” a while ago but apparently doesn’t know that fridge begins with F. I don’t know where she picked this game up from (probably my Dad) but it didn’t do well – she just looked at me as though I was dribbling on the carpet for most of it.

Next was Hide and Seek. She knows how to play this one. I counted to ten and then pretended to find her – she always hides in the same place. After that she told me to hide and counted to ten. I went and hid in the airing cupboard upstairs. After a good 20 seconds of looking for me she got bored and went and did something else. Two hours I was in there!

We had Holly’s christening at the weekend. Usual affair but after everyone had gone Lucie was playing with her Little People – various people, animals and buildings – and she was just rambling on about things that had happened during the day as she usually does. After a while Kirsty noticed she was calling one of the people Wellsy – not surprising as there had been friends around who had been calling me that all afternoon.

Kirsty went to see which of the figures she was calling Wellsy – the fireman? The farmer maybe? The train driver? Nope. The little girl in the yellow hat. Great.

An unnamed woman in our office has been sending out boxes of brochures to various hospitals around the country and sometimes they get refused by the postroom. One got refused and the delivery guy put on the delivery ticket “refused by Joe Grayoldman”.

So Sian rang them up to find out why they wouldn’t take it and asked for Joe Grayoldman. The person there said in a slightly confused voice, “we have someone in the postroom called Joe, and he is a gray old man”…

Classic!

My family has got bigger…the latest addition is Holly Marie who was born on the 26th May; 4 weeks early.
With the biology lessons and the birth scenes in TV series I thought I knew what I was letting myself in for but nothing prepared me for when I saw them deliver the placenta. It looked like a red jelly fish like something you would see in a sci fi show. Holly who is only 3 weeks old is already causing mischief every time I change her nappy I end up covered in urine. Just when I thought that stage was over as Lucie is now out of that stage, except for puddles on the carpet, the joys of potty training.

Lucie has taken to her little sister like a duck to water, wanting to help change nappies etc. The funniest thing was she had got a large Tigger and Pooh Bear, I could hear her running about upstairs so went upstairs holding her Pooh Bear to put her back into bed. She came to the gate holding her tiny Pooh Bear and said “daddy need big Pooh” at first I thought she wanted her nappy changing so said “come on lets change your nappy”. Her response was “no daddy,big Pooh” pointing at the Pooh Bear that was in my hand.

Last night Lucie went to bed at the normal time and I could hear her running around her bedroom playing for a bit as she normally does until she’s tired enough to go to sleep. After about 20 minutes I heard her crying and she shouted “Daddy! Covers stuck!”. I went up to see what she was doing and she was trying to pull her dovet over herself but couldn’t for some reason. I went to tuck her in and found out the reason was because she’d gone to bed in her wellies again!