Sunday, October 31, 2004

It seems that we've managed to escape from the evilness that is Trick or Treaters this year in our little corner of south west Leicester. Over the last couple of years the number of kids trolling the streets in pursuit of chocolate and sweets has slowly decreased; this year no hordes ring our bell at all. It is probably a good job as we didn't bother to get any sweets in and I don't think the Treaters would have been satisfied with a small handful of carrots.

Posted by Antz at 11:30 PM | Permalink | | |

My email account seems to be filling up with hundreds of exciting offers of Rolex watches for around $150. Many of these emails even make it obvious that the watches are fakes. Did I miss the news that there was currently an EU fake watch mountain? Have Asian faux horologists (that's the classy name for watchmakers) had a quiet few months and need to get rid of some stock super-fast using the power of the interweb? Who can say? It's just odd that suddenly I'm getting so many offers at the same time. Incidentally it appears that i've also applied for over 140 mortgages during the last few weeks as well. Funny, I don't remember doing that.

Posted by Antz at 10:03 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, October 30, 2004

It's now four days since Abercrombie vanished and he hasn't come back. I wanted to post a picture of him so you can all see what a cute pussy he is.

Posted by Antz at 3:17 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, October 29, 2004

Well it's the end of a very hard week at work; too many very long days. Sadly I've got to make the trek into work tomorrow too.

What makes it worse is that young Abercrombie still hasn't returned home from wherever he's wandered off to. Fitch (his sister) is acting very strangely which is understandable as she's never been apart from him. David and I are both missing him terribly.

I phoned the local council to see if any dead cats had been found on our local roads and luckily they hadn't picked up any matching Abs description. (What a job that must be.) I've also printed off 100 flyers which David is going to put through our neighbours' doors tomorrow when I'm at work.

It's amazing how much we're missing him. It's like this huge dark cloud hanging over our heads. David woke up several times last night and had to go and check downstairs when he heard the catflap opening; sadly, it was only Fitch coming and going. I just hope that our flyering tomorrow does the trick and someone finds Abs trapped in their shed or garage.

Posted by Antz at 9:07 PM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, October 28, 2004

Abercrombie (our male cat) has gone missing. He wondered off some time on Wednesday morning and we haven't seen him since. We've stood outside randomly calling out to him all evening and the neighbours probably think we've got mad. They'll probably think we're even madder at the weekend when we're going to put notes through all their doors asking them to check in their sheds and garages.

You don't realise how much it's possible to miss a little bundle of fur until he's wondered off and you have no idea when (or if) he'll come home. Fitch (his sister) is looking very confused as she doesn't have any cat-like family to meow to... when she doesn't have her head in the cat food that is.

If you happen to live in the South West of Leicester and bump into a cute cat answering to the name of Abs please let me know.

Posted by Antz at 11:57 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

My bestest friend Robsta has taken the big brave step of committing himself to running the Nike 10k Run London event on the 28th November. Obviously all his gym-bunny antics will have set him in fine stead for pounding the streets on central London during the night time run.

He's decided to run the 10k for charity and his employers (Unisys) will be matching all the sponsorship money he raises for his chosen charity; The Stroke Association. If you happen to know young Rob you might want to sponsor him through those lovely people at justgiving.com.

Posted by Antz at 12:41 AM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, October 24, 2004

Chris and Rob came to visit for the weekend; with David having booked Chris's skills to help him build the greenhouse. Luckily for Chris (but not for David) the weekend's weather was mainly wet and windy and not really the kind of conditions that were ideal for building anything in the garden.

The main attraction of the weekend was our friend Tam's birthday party at a great restaurant in a small village a few miles out of Leicester. She'd gathered together 20 of her closest friends to celebrate the big ocassion and David and I as well as Chris and Rob were invited. David and I had been to the restaurant a few times before and simply love it.

The party was a great success though I have to admit I tended to spend most of my time with Chris and Rob as I found being with a pretty large group of people I didn't know well pretty intimidating. Believe it or not small talk isn't my strong point and I've always found it tricky when faced with people I don't know - remarkable considering it's nearly impossible to shut me up when I'm with people I know.

Posted by Antz at 11:57 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, October 22, 2004

Every so often you realise that you've got to make a few changes to your life so that you can move on. For some time I've been aware of two things; firstly I've really got to give up smoking (again) and secondly I need to lose some weight.

I've given up smoking a few times during the last fifteen years; twice for quite long periods of time, and I think now is about time I gave it another go. Smoking is such a stupid thing to start in the first place and, of course, is so very difficult to stop once you're hooked. As you can imagine after 15 years I'm pretty well hooked.

Last time I gave up for a decent amount of time I used Alan Carr's book on how to give up the evil weed. It was a truly amazing read and did the job back then, however living with a smoker caused me to (stupidly) start up again. Maybe it's time to find that book again.

With regard to my weight it isn't that I'm fat as such, however I'm certainly heavily than I used to be and also heavier than I'd like to be. Of course the years of clubbing certainly helped me keep the weight off but those days are (sadly) long since gone and so my weight has crept back up.

I'm not going to attempt to lose weight and give up smoking at the same time as that would completely stupid. I'm going to start off by working on losing a few pounds and then give up smoking as my new year's resolution. I guess it's time to wave goodbye to chocolate and biscuits for a while.

Posted by Antz at 8:48 PM | Permalink | | |

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

I know you've all been gripped with the ongoing saga of the greenhouse that we've been moving from our friend's house recently so I thought you'd like an update. Having managed to blag the use of one of my work's vans for the evening David and I shot over to Pat's in best White Van Man mode and collected the last few bits of it which we couldn't carry in the car.

The garage is now full of hundreds of bits of metal and glass, all lined up and ready to be assembled at the weekend by David and his glamourous assistant (on this occasion played by Chris). Will the excitement never end? Probably not.

David is promising photos for the blog as soon as he's got it up (!!)

Posted by Antz at 11:40 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

David and I made the effort to go to see possibly the oldest woman in comedy, Joan Rivers, live in Birmingham last night along with our friends Chris and Rob.

You kind of know exactly what to expect from seeing Joan Rivers. You just know that she?s going to upset people and generally mouth-off about all that?s wrong with the world. Which is, pretty much, what she did. The only thing is that after a while her jokes got a bit tired and one or two of her set-pieces didn't go down as well as she might have hoped. Joking about how it was fine to wear fur didn?t go down well with most of people in the theatre.

You can?t forget of course, that the woman is over 70, and while the bodywork is great there are one or two minor problems with the engine. She shuffles round the stage and at times it was a bit tricky to understand everything she said. That said, however, she is that she is still capable of having an audience in stitches.

The warm-up for the show was an act called Kit and The Widow, a pair of queens with the ability to make you piss yourself with their satirical musical numbers. They also spent much of their routine taking the piss out of Ms Rivers and her reliance on plastic surgery. Seeing them support Ms Rivers has made me want to go see them in their own show.

Posted by Antz at 6:23 PM | Permalink | | |

Monday, October 18, 2004

David and I had the pleasure of spending most of the weekend at our friend's home in Nottingham this weekend. Having met a year ago Tam and Mark have set up home in a lovely cottage near the mecca that is Ikea. During the last few months they've pain-stakingly done-up the whole house, including installing a new kitchen and an en-suite bathroom.

It kind of puts my DIY exploits to shame. In the time it has taken them to buy and do up complete house I've managed to install a new garden fence, gravel the front garden and remove half the wallpaper from the dining room. Obviously I need to get a little more focused on finishing off some the home improvements I've been putting off for some time.

My defense, however, is that our longer-term plans for the house (which involve expanding the kitchen and turning the guest bedroom into a large master bedroom with an en-suite shower room) kind of stop you wanting to do other short-term things. Or that might just be an excuse.

At least my friend Andi has kindly replaced the wallpaper striper which oddly vanished from his garage a while back. I suppose there's no excuse for leaving the wallpaper half removed now.

Posted by Antz at 7:15 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, October 16, 2004

I know for a fact that I'm not the greatest person at spelling in the world... It's the creative side of me that gets in the way when it comes to getting the exact letters in the exact order, however you'd imagine that one of the 32,000 visitors who have visited the site during the last few years might have noticed that I'd spelled 'Ninety' as 'Ninty' on the menu and title of the 90 Facts page. After 3 years someone on OutintheUK.com mentioned it to me today.

Posted by Antz at 5:32 PM | Permalink | | |

Everything's a little quiet at the moment. Let's face it a blog is only interesting if there are really exciting things going on; sadly there isn't. I could lie and tell you about having visited the moon or found a cure for something previously thought incurable but you'd probably guess. David has been working in London for the week (again!) and should have been back last night but was caught up in an emergency clubbing situation so only managed to crawl back to Leicester this morning. He's now making up for all the lost sleep on the sofa.

One thing I did stop while I was wandering around the net-of-inters was this rather cool redesign of a keyboard which was 'drawn' by Rob at Hotlush.com.

Posted by Antz at 3:56 PM | Permalink | | |

Friday, October 15, 2004

Sometimes I just can't think of anything to write about, so i'll just ask this question. "If you have infinite vision could you see the back of your own head?"

Posted by Antz at 10:05 PM | Permalink | | |

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

The Guardian has launched a unique experiment to enable people from Basildon to Botswana to campaign in the US presidential race. The idea is that each UK Guardian reader can have the opportunity to personally write to an undecided voter in Clark County, Ohio with the intention of pursading them to vote one way or the other. Just think; with a little help from the folks in Clark County, Ohio, you might help decide who takes up residence in the White House next month. Full details can be found here.

Posted by Antz at 11:55 PM | Permalink | | |

The ongoing drama with the hotel reservation that never was managed to have an impact on the anniversary itself. The hotel and the booking agents are still arguing about the reservation being made for the wrong day and so I've ended up having to pay for the night we didn't want while it all gets sorted out. Not an ideal situation by any means.

Reservation issues aside The Hempel itself was an amazing hotel. The lobby was a truly incredible minimalist space and the corridors were almost space age in their style. Because of it being our third anniversary the hotel upgraded us to one of their best rooms. The room was a beautiful space with incredibly high ceilings and a bathroom to die for. Sadly, considering it is a five star hotel, there were a few little details that let it down. Not having a bottle opener to open the drinks in the room being one of them. Sounds like we're moaning but when you paid as much as we did for one night you'd hope for it to have been perfect.

To celebrate our big day we went into the West End to see a slightly unusual choice of play; The Mousetrap. It seemed a very appropriate choice as we both have a serious soft spot for Agatha Christie. Definitely transitional British theatre at it's best. We were both kept on the edge of our seats right until the end.

David recommended eating at Wagamama on Lexington Street; which he thinks is the best noodle bar around. The food was great and I don't think I've ever had my order taken using a Bluetooth networked PDA before.

We finished the evening by propping up the bar in a couple of bars in Soho and found ourselves chatting for hours to two Aussie girls called Jo and Emma. Considering I don't always enjoy the whole bar scene these days I had a great time chatting and knocking back the cocktails.

All that was left to do then was to catch a cab back to what turned out to be one of the most comfortable beds in London.

Posted by Antz at 6:01 PM | Permalink | | |

Tuesday, October 12, 2004

It's three years to the day that David and I officially started going out. We met on Gaydar.co.uk and, to be honest, weren't really looking for long term relationships at the time. This might explain why we often describe our relationship as the "One night stand that never went home".

Three years down the line and we're still going strong. I still love David with all my heart. Here's to the next three years.

Posted by Antz at 2:30 PM | Permalink | | |

Monday, October 11, 2004

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago David and I are pushing the boat out and are spending our anniversary at The Hempel in London. I booked the hotel through an American website as I got a much better deal than I could get through a UK one.

But there was one problem... I decided to call the Hempel today to check that everything was in order with the reservation and discovered that they didn't have one for us tomorrow. You can imagine what was running through my mind... Blind panic.

The reservations manager at the hotel called me back and said that while they didn't have me booked in tomorrow they DID have me booked in today. Great I thought. I faxed over my booking confirmation and they sorted it out for me on the spot; although there is going to be a site in the US with a bill from the hotel for one day's stay.

Sometimes I'm not surprised that people are worried about using the net to order products and services. I spend my life online but I still feel the need to check by phone that my reservations actually are right.

Posted by Antz at 11:14 PM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Spent the best part of a lovely Sunday grappling with a 20 year old greenhouse in our friend, Pat's, garden as she no longer wanted it. David has had his eye on the house-o-glass for a some time and as soon as Pat gave us the go ahead we arranged to go and dismantle it. Have you ever taken apart a greenhouse? Probably not. Me either. It is a lot harder than it looks.

It took far longer than I'd imagined; but we did manage to remove all 53 panes of glass without breaking any (although a couple were damaged already). We even managed to move all the glass and most of the frame back home without doing any further damage to the now-mobile greenhouse.

We'll be putting it all back together in a couple of weeks once we've sorted out the base for it to go on. David can't wait to get pottering about in it; although I'm not sure if he really wants to do anything more than sneak in a comfy chair and watch the world go by from the safely of the greenhouse.

Keep your eyes open for more greenhouse action soon.

Posted by Antz at 11:30 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, October 09, 2004

I've finally taken someone's advice and downloaded Firefox for Mac. Ever since Apple created Safari I've been doing my best to get on with it as my browser of choice; however I keep finding myself drifting back to Explorer (hisss) because Safari falls down on loads of sites I seem to use regularly, plus, at work we often need to download images from our own websites and Safari doesn't let you do that easily.

So I've bitten the bullet and am giving Firefox trail run. So far it's fantastic. Page downloads are SOOOOOO fast and so far I haven't found a page it has a problem with. Plus, as an added bonus, Blogger's spell checker works with it too.

Posted by Antz at 11:46 AM | Permalink | | |

I've definitely been feeling very lethargic this week, although I'm not really sure why. It could be the calm after the storm of several very hard weeks at work working solidly on one of our site's real-world catalogues or it might be the onset of some horrible life-destroying sickness. Okay, probably not the latter.

But at least it is the weekend and so, hopefully, it'll give David and I the chance to spend a bit of free time together and also sort out all those things we don't get the chance to during the week; especially now it's dark in the early evenings. For a start there are things to stick in the ground so that the garden will know when spring has sprung. Plus we've got a greenhouse to go an dismantle for a friend at some point.

Sadly, of course, the weekends don't last long enough and before you know it it'll be Monday morning again and time for work.

Posted by Antz at 10:47 AM | Permalink | | |

Thursday, October 07, 2004

At 22.15, without any real fanfare, AntzOnline 2.0 went online. The arrival of 2.0 also means that this weblog (after six weeks of behind the scenes blogging) finally can be seen by the internet's population at large. It'll be interesting to see what reaction, if any, it gets.

Posted by Antz at 11:37 PM | Permalink | | |

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Well possibly 'terror' is a bit of an over statement but it certainly caused me a major headache today when the change over from AntzOnline Orange to AntzOnline Grey took place before I was ready.

Probably a bit of background information would probably help you out on this. The Orange site is hosted by UK2.net, where it is happily sat for the last four years. The Grey site (which at the time of writing is still being tested by a select band of friends) is hosted on a brand new server with Graphicjunkie Hosting.

The plan was that in a couple of days the domain registrar would swap from the old UK2 site to the new Grey version; however this suddenly happened at 4pm this afternoon and suddenly the new incomplete Grey version replaced the Orange version. The trouble was that while I knew this had happened I was at work so there was really nothing I could do about it. Total panic.

I did manage to put up an index page that said the site was down for emergency maintenance. This at least removed the Grey version from public view.

As soon as work finished I bombed back home to quickly load up the Orange version of the site onto the new server so that people again could visit the site and put the Grey version back in a secret location for testing. I'm sure no one noticed a thing.

Posted by Antz at 7:23 PM | Permalink | | |

According The Guardian the Pink Paper has finally decided to call it a day and cease publication after 18 years of providing news and information to the gay community. It's obviously a shame for one of the UK's key gay publications to shut down but I guess it never really stood a chance against the ever growing power of the internet.

The full story can be found here

Posted by Antz at 8:02 AM | Permalink | | |

Monday, October 04, 2004

My plan to keep the identity of our mystery anniversary hotel a secret seems to have failed. After i'd explained that we were staying in a very smart hotel David suddenly asked "Is it Anouska Hempel's hotel?". Obviously after three years we know each other too well.

Posted by Antz at 4:56 PM | Permalink | | |

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Next Tuesday will be our (David and I) third anniversary (although it seems that David thought it was next Monday) and we had been planning to head off for a very long weekend to Bilbao to celebrate what is nearly 21 years in 'straight years'. Sadly, because of various stuff going on at work, David can't manage to squeeze a few well-earned days off and so we've put our plans on hold until a little bit later in the year.

David not being able to take some time off won't stop us celebrating however. I've arranged for us to have a romantic night in a very smart London boutique hotel (I can't say where as it's a surprise for him) as well as us seeing a show and dinner. Hopefully it'll be a better celebration than last year's. I just hope that the hotel turns out to be as nice as it appears to be online.

Posted by Antz at 9:28 PM | Permalink | | |

Saturday, October 02, 2004

Despite working for an online business every three months we produce a paper catalogue for one of our brands, grindstore.com. The complete production takes a month and I have to dedicate two weeks to pulling the whole thing together and getting it ready for press. This explains why I haven't had a great seal of time to spend blogging during the last weeks. The catalogue is now at the printers and so, hopefully, i'll get to spend a little more time on the blogs.

Work on the new version of AntzOnline is just about complete and i'm pretty pleased with the results. As i said a while ago I decided to evolve the old site rather than scraping the old version together - after all there wasn't anything wrong with the current site except I felt it needed a spruce up. There are a few new features and some of the more pointless bits have bitten the dust. I'm going to ask a few of my friends to have a play with it and see what they think before making it public. Of course if you you are reading this then the site has passed their inspection. Phew!

Posted by Antz at 6:16 PM | Permalink | | |

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