So, apparently people in the Swansea area of Wales no longer have an analogue terrestrial TV signal! All channels must be viewed via either Freeview boxes (or integrated units in newer sets), satellite boxes (obviously mostly Sky STBs in Britain) or a cable box. Mum and John have a Sky box, a Freeview box, a Freeview recording device and Freeview built into one of their tellies, and of course a modern high gain aerial, however some sort of technical hitch means most of the televisions in the house aren’t currently showing what they should be capable of. If it isn’t sorted by next February/March, I’ll hopefully figure out what has gone wrong for them.
The picture below? Taken from a strip at AbstruseGoose, it shows what any aliens would be watching right now, if they happened to be monitoring our transmissions. Obviously the further away from our planet they are, the ‘older’ the signal would be that they could pick up right now.
This was recorded on the 22nd of March in Clydach, with Anna reacting to John’s funny noises. Can’t quite decide if she was tired or just busy filling her nappy.
Skipping forward a little, this camcorder video was shot on the 22nd of March, meaning Anna was now one month and a day old. Seb had come over ( 🙂 ), and we decided to have a walk along Port Talbot beach, so he, I, Irina, Anna and Gwen all piled into the car, and drove down a few junctions on the motorway. It was a pretty good day weather wise, considering it was a) Britain, b) Wales specifically and c) Only March!
Seb found some driftwood to take home (the Mondeo obviously wasn’t full enough yet!) for Mum and John, and we all managed to get some fresh air and I think we even squeezed in a quick fish’n’chips shop visit.
Oh the ‘depends if there are any dogs around’ was a reference to letting Gwen off her lead. She is only a little dog, and wants to make friends with everyone/any dogs. Some dogs get a bit aggressive and she doesn’t defend herself very well.
Also, please excuse the wind on the microphone, didn’t have a sponge to stick on it sadly.
OK, so I can’t figure out right now exactly what relation Alan (Dana’s son) is to Anna officially, but I’m hoping they’ll get to meet again soon. This video was again shot on the 5th of March, when Anna was just under two weeks old. Irina and I were speaking to Dana via Skype, and decided to place ourMum’s webcam over Anna’s cot, as she seemed a much prettier subject 🙂
As I write this post, Anna is again asleep in a cot, looking a lot older, bigger and more ‘with it’. She is however in an identical hands up/surrender pose during her slumber 🙂
Hmm, I should probably check with Irina what was being said in Russian, to ensure nothing private/rude has been published…
Shot on March the 1st 2009, Anna is now eight days old. She is sat on the sofa with Aunty Chris holding her, and you’ll see Irina, John (Aunty Chris’ John, that is) and Mum towards the end of the clip.
I should point out the raspberry sound is me attempting to get Anna’s attention, not anything she produced personally 🙂
So, today found me combing through the contents of our bathroom cupboard, trying to translate Russian pharmacological terms into English, and creating a stockpile of ‘goodies’. Why? Just trying to fend off the worst of the cold symptoms (note I didn’t use the word flu or even man-flu – I know what the flu is like, and a simple head cold for a few days isn’t the same as being unable to get out of bed and feeling like death warmed up). I was sure we had a few different remedies, and in conjunction with the lemsip like powder Ira’s mum gave us, I seem to be over the worst of it by a long shot. Luckily Anna and Irina don’t seem to have picked up my bug, and after this afternoon’s vodka and ground pepper (I was feeling cold after taking Anna for a walk in the park) everything seemed rosy. Now I am sober, so thought I should get back to posting.
There, managed the whole post without referring to Smart-Es or ludes 🙂
I am pretty sure he will not see this post in time (as Jan is taking him to Prague as a present), but happy 60th birthday Dad 🙂 We all hope you have a brilliant day, and know that you are in our thoughts over here.
As you may have guessed from this post’s title, it is also Babushka’s (Ira’s Dad’s Mum’s) birthday today. We aren’t 100% certain how old she is, as her birth certificate wasn’t created until a little while after she was born, but we hope you have a great day with the friends you have coming over, and that you’ll enjoy your birthday meal with your family this weekend.
This time we’ll have the videos first, and the photos later. I was previously posting both media types in the same post, where appropriate. However, this caused problems with duplications on Anna’s site, so they’ll now be split – whenever practical. Anyway, this was shot on the 13th of September 2009, at Irina’s parents’ house.
The first couple are of Anna playing with one of her teething rings and a ball.
The next is of Anna playing pass the ball with Babushka (her Babushka being Irina’s Mum. Babushka is grandma in Russian).
The last two are of Anna playing/rolling on the floor, on the same day.
OK, so this one is out of order compared to the other Lucky21842 videos I’ve been catching up on, but I wanted to embed it now in case I forgot and closed the tabs down in Firefox on Monday when we return home. So, if you haven’t already seen them, there are a lot of YouTube videos that feature elite vehicles and excessive car accessories, parading up and down (and occasionally crashing) Almaty (& a couple of Astana) streets. The video below is a sort of antidote to such clips.
If you click the video, you’ll be taken to the proper page for it, where you can check out his other videos and see the comments left by other YouTube videos. I can understand where 777kuku777 (and indeed Jason/Lucky himself) is coming from when 777kuku777 says
Wahaha, you are so right about the Almaty cars, personally I don’t see the point of those videos. If it’s your car, then do whatever you want with it, make a video for you tube and what-not, otherwise, waste of time. P.S. Dude you being a gangsta is priceless though! Oh and next time for your version of almaty cars use some local songs would be even? funnier:)
However, if I was aware of the sort of media attention that Kazakhstan attracted in some of the tabloids abroad, and I felt proud of Almaty/Astana/Kazakhstan as well, I would want to make sure that people understood that cars were not pulled by donkeys, and that in all likelihood, there were more über-expensive dream machines parading around Almaty (at least) than in the European/American city of your average YouTube viewer…
Yes, I could have just left this as a comment on the video, BUT… 1) I’m currently signed into GMail. Which is tied into my old banned YouTube account. I’d have had to sign out, delete all Google related cookies, sign into YouTube, leave a comment, then re-sign into Gmail (I haven’t yet set up a separate FireFox profile on Ira’s Mum’s PC). Unless you have a banned YouTube account, you have no excuse – go check all the videos out, leave comments, and if you like Lucky’s output as much as me (you there, stop sniggering at the back), consider subscribing …. oh and 2) I ramble too much. Youtube comments are restricted to around 1000/1500 characters? I normally exceed that length. It is a miracle of modern science/txt speak & deliberate lazy spelling that I ever manage to convey anything in a single tweet!
