guess what?

It was worse today. I wonder what tomorrow brings... possibly the four horsemen of the apocalypse and their gifts to humanity.

On a happier note I spoke to the niece today. She had a wonderful birthday and was completely unbothered that I am such a bad aunt and all round idiot that I didn't realise that it was the actual day until I had to sign and date some paperwork yesterday. I am very pleased that I chose my parents, siblings and niece and nephew so well. I think it refelects very well on me.

the pits

Mrs McMuffin and I were standing on the platform waiting for a train to take us into London last night when we happened to notice a big poster with information about where we live, including a list of useful numbers. At the very top of this list was a number for the Samaritans. I think that sums up the attractions of living in a semi-industrial wasteland in the south of England.

three out of three

You'll never guess what we did last night. No, really, you'll never guess. We had drinky poos with Iowahawk and his lovely wife. The time passed so fast in a alcohol induced haze of chatter that I was a bit shocked to see that the evening had ended. I don't know why, but Mrs McMuffin and I were surprised by how much we liked them. It's a pity that they're American. Well, not so much that they are American, but more it's a pity that they live in America. Well, not so much that they live in America. I'm sure that's a fine place to live, and they do have GWB to ease the pain of not being British. No, it's more that they are so far away. It would be good to get to know them better.

That's three bloggers that we've met over the last few months, and they've all been smart and funny, and the kind of people we could probably be friends with. I am still a bit stunned that we even want to meet in the flesh the people we meet in cyberspace. (As an aside, my therapist said this to me the other day and I nearly laughed in her face. What did happen to cyberspace? It always sounded rather futuristic to me.) I always thought that the people who did that sort of thing were either perverts or just a little bit odd. I don't think I am a pervert, but then who does. I don't think I am that odd either, although, if I was being really truthful, then I would I have to admit that maybe I am ever so slighty odd, in a nice way, of course.

There is a lot of talk about the alienating force of the internet, and I guess at some level Mrs McMuffin and I thought we would probably be observing what goes on from the periphery of normal life. The reality has turned out to be very different. We seem to have used the internet and blogging as a way of making contact with other people and not just in cyberspace (I want to reclaim that word). I guess the relationships we develop online are just as real as any of the others that we have in life, but for me the real satisfaction comes from face to face contact.

By the way, Mrs McMuffin has gone out for the night to some karaoke festival or something. I have a bottle of wine, a fine Merlot, if you're interested, some sushi and Spiderman 2. If you've got nothing to do, why not join me.

i nearly have the full set

I have just been checking our stats, again. I was amazed to see that we have been visited by people living in 37 US states. To complete the set I need some visitors from: Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming. That is just too cool.

what i want for christmas

if jesus is my friend...

As Christmas is approaching, I have been thinking about my relationship with Jesus. If Jesus is my friend, right, how come I always have to go round to his house?

coal for christmas, hell for ever

Mr McMuffin is going to hell for Christmas and I might be joining him. After reading his question (which I feared may be quite offensive to people with no real faith or sense of humour) it got me thinking. If Jesus is my friend, then why doesn't he call or write? Ask after my parents? Tell me that the matt mauve lipstick I occasionally wore in the 80's made my teeth look really yellow? I'm sure other people could give me very good reasons for this, but a real friend would tell me themselves.

Anyway, it's time to introduce you to the McMuffin family. We've been very busy over the last couple of days having children and we now have seven. They are called Dasher, Dancer, Prancer (he's only five and he wants to be a designer in the theatre), Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. We think seven is quite enough for now, but if we ever have a 'happy accident' we have Vixen as a reserve name. However, given our low boredom thresholds it's quite possible that we may be tired of them by Christmas and looking to give them away to a good home, or a few not so good homes if we're really desperate. I'd probably keep Prancer though, every girl needs a son to take her shopping.

state of us

Good grief. It's been a good day. Managed to catch a few more Americans. Only have these ones left: Nevada, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont and Wyoming. It makes life worth living.

i don't think i've mentioned...

I've got a new job. I am going to be manager of the place where I work as of Monday. I love being in charge of everything. Unfortunately it does mean that I will have to turn over a new leaf and become a paragon of time keeping and professionalism for my minions to emulate. I'm quite excited about it all.

competition

Karan has suggested that we hold a little competition for the best guess at what our little family for Christmas are looking at. The winner will be the person who gets closest to guessing it right, although the photo is a little surreal and I'd be very surprised if anyone could get it, or for the person who comes up with the best suggestion as to what they should be looking at. The prize? Mmmm...Mrs McMuffin and I will think special seasonal positive thoughts about you on Christmas day. I don't have a closing date in mind. We'll run it until people lose interest. Around here that usually happens in one or two days.

name of shame

This is why one should not comment unless one is sure of one's facts. The humiliated one is none other than me.

Interesting point made by Mr Worstall about the use of surnames as first names. I could find no other real reference to the name of shame being used as a first name by Brits other than my cousin and a Mr Cole of Perfect Skin fame. In an effort to promote the name of shame as a forename, I have decided that little Prancer McMuffin will now be known as Lloyd McMuffin.

I should also share the inspiration for Kirsty's dream, which I found quite amusing:

There are two muffins in an oven.
One muffin says, 'Oh it's hot in here isn't it?'
The other muffin screams 'Aaaargh! A talking muffin!'

As for talking muffins, my own talking McMuffin has become utterly obsessed with blog stats thanks to the service he signed up for and is trying to interest me in who's reading us and where they come from. Does he really believe this will distract me from moaning at him to clean up the kitchen?

the mcmuffins go international

Mrs McMuffin is a bit dubious about sharing the wonderful information that I have gathered from StatCounter because she doesn't like the idea that we might seem as if we've been bitten by the stats bug that seems to afflict so many other bloggers. I don't care. I just love the fact that I have so much information about the people who visit our site. I might even put them up as a permanent page on the site. Anyway, these stats were collected during the week of 27.11.04 - 03.12.04. Click on the thumbnail for the bigger picture.

The McMuffins loveliness truly is international. We have been visited by people living in 57 different countries across all the continents. (I know it's a bit sad but the picture is made up of the flags from those countries.) That's a third of all the countries in the world. Most of all, the Americans love us. We have been visited by people living in 48 states. I just don't know why Nevada and Wyoming hate us, but maybe they will come around to our way of thinking at some later date. There is a chance that we have been visited them already but for some reason AOL users don't always show up in the stats. It has something to do with the way they process cookies.

The other stats are just as fascinating. I have absolutely no idea what they mean because I have nothing to compare them with. I don't know what a healthy number of hits look like. I do know that during last week we got around 3000 hits, of which around 2000 were unique. Unsurprisngly most of the people who visited us were using machines running some variation of Windows. However, I was surprised to see that 11% of our visitors were using Macs, which is about five times higher than Apple's market share would have lead me to believe. I can only guess that people who are interested in blogs and the internet are just a little bit more geeky, or stylish, than usual, and so are more likely to use a Mac. As you can see about two thirds of our visitors were using some version of Internet Explorer with Firefox and Safari users accounting for the majority of the last third. I was amazed at the way in which Firefox seems to have taken off, and I imagine again reflects the slightly more demanding needs of the regular internet user.

Finally, there are huge variations amongst the screen resolution that people are using, which makes designing any site very difficult that's for sure. There is even a few people still using 640x480. Looking at most sites must be hard work for them.

That completes our tour around the lovely people that inhabit the kingdom of McMuffinland here in cyberspace (I just love that word) Any comments would be welcome. And, at the risk of sounding like the stats whore that I have become, any comparisons would be welcome too, but not if they're going to make me feel bad. I don't want to hear about the blogging superstars who get 500,000 hits a week. I already know that's good.

i just can't help myself

statslut

Mr McMuffin has promised me that the previous post will be his last about our blog stats and he will be a chaste husband again.

I have been bored at a boring bloody conference today. I had been quite excited at the thought of going shopping afterwards and perhaps nipping into the National Gallery for old time's sake, but the dreariness that began with Margaret Hodge's speech continued all day and Ms Ginger Cake and I were just desperate to get to our respective homes. Part of our desperation may have been to do with taking the piss out of the final speaker. As we were leaving, I thought I was being quite witty about his 'child protection is an opportunity' speech by adding that it was an opportunity to get my face in the bloody Mail as a child killer. Didn't feel so witty when I spotted him standing right behind us. Ms Ginger Cake then began dissecting another of his phrases, before spotting my anguished face. The sad thing was that he was probably the best speaker all day and we have most likely crushed him with our nastiness. Well, actually I doubt that. You don't get to be chief exec. without doing a little nasty crushing yourself.

I then came home and crushed my big sister during a phone call. I felt awful as she has some real health concerns at the moment and I couldn't believe I'd picked today to tell her about her only real fault. We never fall now that we are adults, so I was really upset and dashed off a quick email to her. She has just replied, we are chums and harmony is restored. It was a good day after all.

it official

Wyoming hates the McMuffins. We have now been visited by 49 states. For some reason no one in Wyoming has visited us. I can only imagine that this is because they don't have computers in Wyoming, and therefore don't have access to the internet. I can't believe that if they had access to the internet that they wouldn't want to come and visit us.

PS I lied

UPDATE: I've done some research on Wyoming. It turns out that even though it is a big state, there are only three people living there, and only one of them has a computer with access to the internet. Apparently, she sometimes just can't be bothered going online because her AOL connection is so slow. That explains everything.

i know, i know...

But it's not everyday that we receive such a witty tribute to our loveliness.

This is Mrs McMuffin just wanting to say 'damn you, evil Iowahawk for compromising our secret identities'. I spend all this time moaning about social work and writing trivia, building cover for our most secret missions and then after a drunken evening our cover is blown. Kirsty and David, I thank you for your discretion and I am sorry that it was wasted. We'll be lucky to get jobs in Tescos now, scanning all those interesting barcodes.

Wyoming is dead to me

Steve Miller (it's sad, but if I don't say it then I'm sure someone will: so that's what happened to him) has tried to make me feel better by sending me this lovely photo, and he even sent me photos of yesterday's newspaper and of some of our more meaty cousins. The truth is that I just don't care anymore. As far as I am concerned Wyoming is dead to me. I was a little puzzled to start with, then I felt deeply hurt by the obvious snub. My heart felt the weight of self-recriminations. I began to think maybe it was something I said. Maybe it was something I did. I've been able to think of nothing else over the last couple of days. But that's all in the past, now I just feel really angry. How dare they treat us, the personification of loveliness, in this way. No, Wyoming is dead to me. From now on there are only 49 states. I have begun the process of erasing that place from the atlases of the world. I have calculated that it will take me 45,321 years, 4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days to complete the task. Oh, I will also need 256,023 red felt-tipped pens, although I may be able to make do with slightly fewer if I make sure that I always put the cap back on when I am finished. I may need some help.

competition...

It was indeed Jack Benny in a Santa suit playing the violin. That show must have a hoot. Anyway, I have decided that there were no winners, but a special prize needs to be given to Chuck who admitted to owning the record. That man must have a very sad life and we owe it to him to try to cheer him up a bit. So, Chuck, Mrs McMuffin and I will think positive thoughts about you for 43 minutes at 9am (GMT) on Christmas day. I'm not sure where you live, but I am guessing that you are American, and you might need to set your alarm very early to feel the full benefit of our gift.

sad lives

We are the sad ones, Mr McMuffin and should be encouraging positive vibes to flow our way, as we went to see Blade Trinity tonight. What a pile of poo. Even the heavy handed iPod product placement didn't raise our interest. We laughed at the script and the antics of Posy Parker (or Parker Posy, I can never remember), who was the only genuinely entertaining and amusing thing about this film. If you had thought of going to see it, save your money.

I felt the same way about The Stepford Wives remake which we hired a few days ago. Why did they bother? However, we did get to see Japanese Story which was wonderful, with a completely unexpected shift of gear two thirds of the way through. Well worth watching.

good grief

I am sitting here at work looking at our site.  I've not seen the new Typepad posting controls before.  They're great.  So, Windows machines are good for something.

warning

We've just seen an amazing TV advert for the new Robert Zemeckis film Polar Express. It actually warned us that the film "contains mild peril". Was that for real? Mrs McMuffin and I would usually find something like this quite amusing but now that we are the proud instant parents of seven we have to consider whether this is a suitable film for our first annual family cinema outing.

help

This will have to be a short one. I'm sitting here in my dressing gown and slippers feeling very anxious. I am being haunted by the biggest f**k-off spider you can imagine. I have found it crawling on my foot three times so far. I want to catch it, but each time I see it my body takes over and I react by jumping up. The thing then uses my panic as an opportunity to disappear again. I don't know how long I can sit here. I'm sure I feel an ulcer forming as I type. This just cannot be good for me. To make matters worse, Mrs McMuffin seems to have lost the spider catcher vacuum thingy.

own up

I's been a tiring weekend and all I want to do is re read Parable of the Talents. I've turned my books upside down looking for it and I still can't find it. I can only assume I've lent it to someone (probably Gypsy Tart as I've still got Parable of the Sower) and I really want it back. Please, Santa, bring my book back to me.

slagging sevigny

Some time ago I was going to share my list of faces you'd never tire of flicking/slapping and naturally it was headed by Winona Ryder. In the top ten was this little lady and I couldn't have explained my irrational dislike of her half as well as this.

I'm going to finish watching Tesis before I go to bed and wake to the living hell that is work. One of the advantages of work related insomnia is watching shit tv. Last night I saw something about the worst jobs in the world which obviously attracted my full attention. I have learned that if you're employed to swim in the Ganges to collect the rotting corpses stuck in it, a tour guide in Chernobyl or you clean the booths at Peepshows, then your job really is worse than mine. I come a close second though.

cairo...

I've always had a fascination with Egypt. When I was a kid I used to be obsessed with the ancient pharohs and their pyramids. It took me many years to realise that my interest was influenced in part by the fact that my grandfather is Egyptian. I've never met him, and I don't even know if he is still alive. My dad could talk for hours about some book or other that he had read about the pharohs and yet never mention that my mum's dad is Egyptian. I come from one of those f**ked up families where people can disappear for no apparent reason. Anyway, this is all an introduction to the fact that I have downloaded the most amazing collection of maps of Cairo. The only problem is that they are all in Arabic. This has been a real labour of love for someone. The 85 images are perfect and they go from street level maps to this fantastic image of Cairo taken from orbit. Why would anyone do that? I think I'm going to keep them as a little tribute to the effort he made. I just know that it was a boy who did it. There is something strangely male about the whole enterprise.

i am testing

This is me testing MarsEdit. This seems like a great little programme. It allows you to post to your blog as if you are sending an email. Very nice and once you work out how to set it up, seems to work very well.

it's very exciting

I am not getting a new iMac for Christmas, but Mrs McMuffin has decided that I can have an Airport card and Airport Express. The only problem is that they don't make the card anymore for my Mac, so I've been visiting eBay. I've found a great package of a card and Airport Express, and so far I am the winning bidder. Only another 18 hours to go. I reckon £150 is probably as much as I will bid, although the cards are now going for £80-90. Why didn't I get a nice new one when they were only £50. Update: I didn't realise that I had to enable comments for every post with this MarsEdit thingy. Still like it though.

i won!

Hey, guess what! I made the winning bid on the eBay auction. I managed to secure an Airport card and Airport Express for only £133. Which seems like a pretty good deal to me.

well done

I can see that once again Mr McMuffin has sourced his own Christmas present. I am very pleased about this as I have been too busy and too tired to do any Christmas shopping and not even sent a single card. I managed to get my secret santa present from Sainsbury's last night, so I haven't been entirely hopeless.

It's all work, work work and I am a very dull girl. I hinted heavily to Gypsy Tart that she may be able to find some lovely presents in Barcelona (she's off again) for our family and I'd go halfers. I may be dull but I'm still cunning. Blogging has taken a bit of a back seat, but I hope to catch up with everyone very soon.

oh dear god

That was almost like a blogging will be light announcement.

oh no...that's gone and done it

I don't believe it. We have been visited by the developer of MarsEdit. I might have to actually pay for it now. How could I indefinitely borrow his work now that I know his name, and he's commented on our blog? Damn! By the way, I know I've said this before, but this really is a nice little app, and it makes posting very, very straight forward.

slinky is the howard hughes of cats

Slinky will only eat Friskies in gravy. No, he will not eat Friskies in jelly. No, he will not eat Whiskies in gravy, and under no circumstances will eat dry biscuit type stuff. The poor cat would rather starve than eat anything but Friskies in gravy. Not just that, but he has to eat it in a particular way too. First of all he has to lick off all the gravy, leaving behind a bowl of the most disgusting looking lumps of grey brownie stuff. He likes to go into the hall and have a good yowl after the first course. During the rest of the evening he will return to the bowl several times and finish off the lumps. The real question is, how long will it take Mrs McMuffin to realise this?

drew drew...

Mrs McMuffin has gone out on the pull tonight. She says she's going to her work Christmas do, but she and Ms Ginger Cake looked a bit too done up for that. All that slinky black. I'll be checking her collar for lipstick when she gets back. I've decided to have a Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler mini film festival. I've just watched The Wedding Singer. It was lovely, and I felt all moist at the end. I also must admit that I quite liked Adam Sandler's voice. It reminded me a lot of Ben Kweller, who also happens to look a bit like Sandler. But the most important thing I want to know is how did Drew Barrymore get to be so cute? Well, I've recovered now, and I'm off to watch 50 First Dates.

pot and kettle

This has been making me smirk for most of the week. When I first heard about the decorations on Radio 4, I was heartened by the listeners' response which chimed with my own. Seems Castro likes Radio 4 too.

Mr McMuffin and I have a lot of work to do this weekend as we are in full on Christmas mode. Mr McMuffin has been preparing batches of canapes, which he's shoving in the freezer without the egg wash (this was an important discussion point earlier today at chez McMuffin). In a couple of hours we are going to clear the shelves and the stalls of everything we need for Christmas eating. I shall also try to get three lots of Christmas presents from our local town, or Chav City Central as we prefer to call it. Perhaps my sister and her husband would like matching sports wear and gold jewellery, it would certainly be a new look for them. I think the classic gold clown necklace look would work very well for them.

The neice and nephew are arriving with their parents today and it will be good to see them again. We're stealing their parents tonight and going to Ms Victoria Sponge's house for some food and tomorrow will be ice skating in Greenwich en masse with the returners from Barcelona. It's nice not to be doing the usual work woe stuff and my new resolution is to let it go the same way as tales of evil bug. We'll see if I can stop myself.

canapes r us

I've just made some lovely canapes for Christmas day. I'm going down the more traditional turkey route this year and I've decided that a starter would just be too much. So, I made some mini beef wellingtons and some goats cheese filo rolls with dukkah, which is a middle eastern thing made from sesame seeds, cummin seeds, coriander seeds, pistachio nuts, salt and black pepper all toasted, roughly pummeled and sprinkled liberally over the rolls. It's very, very tasty. I got the idea for the beef wellingtons from Waitrose when Mrs McMuffin brought back a packet. They were okay, but I just thought I could do them better. Of course, by the time I bought the ingredients I needed they have probably cost three times as much as the Waitrose ones.

ice ice baby

We went ice skating here and it was lovely. The best location yet for a Christmas ice rink in my humble opinion.

bad news and insult to injury

The life of an agency worker is never easy. I can't remember if I told you that I was now the manager of the assessment centre where I worked. I have been in post for three weeks. Today I received an email from my manager telling me that my services were no longer required, and I have to leave by the end of the month. Then I had to tell a couple of people that they had to leave too. Needless to say, I didn't do it by email. As if losing my job a week before Christmas isn't bad enough, after all it is kind of part of the deal that I agreed to when I decided that I would rather have the big bucks than security, but I also had a meeting with my manager's manager to discuss a report that I had written six months ago. There has been some dispute about the way that it was written. I only became aware of this dispute a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, this group manager has taken time out of her busy schedule to read my 60 page assessment report and comment on it in some detail. This is an assessment of six children who should not be living with their parents, and her agenda here is to justify the department's lack of action. I always write clearly, to the point of bluntness sometimes, but she had some comments to make about my writing style. Believe me when I tell you I was bugged, but I kept a lid on it, agreeing with her that maybe I could have said this or that differently. She then came to the best bit. I said in my report:

"When I took her to lunch with her brothers, I was left at the end of our time together with the uncomfortable feeling that if I had suggested to her that she could come home with me, then she would have come. Whatchamacallher is an incredibly vulnerable child."

This group manager actually had the nerve to say to me that 'someone' had suggested to her that this had made them wonder whether I would have taken this little girl home with me. At this point she is actually messing with my livelihood here. The upshot of all this is that she wanted me to rewrite half a dozen sentences in my six month old report. I refused to do this. I told her that it was unethical and just plain wrong. I don't think she like that very much. She then told me that she didn't think she would be able to consider me for other work in the department given that I had just refused to do what she had asked. She even suggested that she would not be able to submit the report to court unless I made the changes that she had suggested. I told her her that I didn't think that involved me and it was a decision for her to make. I don't think she liked that either. The more I think about this the angrier I get.

injury to injury to insult

You will never guess what has happened. Our boiler has just stopped working. That means no heating and no hot water. I just had to go and ask Ms Gypsy Tart if Mrs McMuffin could have a bath at their house. She does like to have a bath in the evening after a long day at work. The good news is that we are having lamb, potatoes with rosemary and garlic roasted in goose fat and roasted red onions for dinner.

lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events

I wish I'd gone to see the happy elf movie. It looked beautiful, and Meryl Streep was excellent, but it just didn't involve me.

the boiler...

I didn't go to work yesterday morning. I had to try and sort out our boiler. I phoned 25 plumbers and only one of them was prepared to come and look at it. Apparently plumbers like to take long, long holidays around this time of year. I am not surprised, really. The plumber who came to our house charged £75 per hour. He took one look at our boiler and decided that 1. "it's completely furred up, an' we don't defur boiler's, mate." 2. "where are the clasps, you know the clasps like they have on a tool box? It's a room sealed boiler, mate. Without the clasps it ain't sealed. It's dangerous, mate." The upshot of all of this is that he offered to replace the boiler for the bargain price of £2200. Even allowing for the robbery premium that we must pay because he knows that we couldn't get another plumber, this seemed a bit steep. I didn't tell him, but of course he knows. How else can you explain that he's the only plumber working at the moment. This must be a very lucrative time of year for him. He probably prefers to have long, long holidays in the summer. He eventually agreed to take £1800 if we paid him in cash.

Mrs McMuffin and I really struggled with this. I hate spending that kind of money without being able to shop around a little bit. We even debated whether we really needed to have a new boiler. Surely, we could manage with the little fan heater and strip washes until the new year when we could shop around? Of course, the other thing that really bothered me is that, by coincidence, the new G5 iMac cost £1800. A new boiler or a G5 iMac...mmmm?

Well, he's coming to fit the boiler this morning. From now on, our heating and hot water will just work. I'll miss the boiler wrangling days, when running a bath might take 45 minutes and you had to check on it constantly to make sure the flow of water was just strong enough to engage the boiler but not too strong or else the feeble boiler wouldn't be able to heat the water as it passed through. Mrs McMuffin became very skilled at this.

Oh, and I should just mention that our electric kettle has begun leaking water.

coincidence?

My manager's boiler went kaput yesterday. The men who came today to replace our boiler told me about a job they did on Monday and it so happens that it was for one of my colleagues from my old team. Seems like the boiler industry is swooping on social workers now, how messed up is that?

Update: Just had a long HOT bath, but was so frightened by the sight of hot water gushing freely from the tap, rather than being cajoled and charmed, that I had to turn it to a trickle to reassure myself that the world had not entirely gone mad.

taking it out on the plumbers

I just had a very heated debate with one of the plumbers. Turns out the b*st*rds robbed us even more than we were expecting. They put in a different boiler, which coincidentally costs £250 less than the one we should have. It was bad enough being robbed, that I could live with, but being robbed and still not getting what you thought you were getting is just too much. Apart from the fact that he has our money and there was no way I was ever going to get it back, the poor man didn't know whether he was coming or going. After professing my ignorance about boilers, I suddenly found myself quoting BTUs at him. He was clearly one of those poor souls who don't quite understand much information is available on the internet. He was stuttering away like a good one, and only the fact that he had our money stopped him from putting the phone down on me. I don't know, what are tradespersons (do you like that?) coming to these days?

Ah, well...it is very small and neat looking and seems to do what it is supposed to. I guess we will just have to live with it, and have one less holiday next year.

who knows what he's on about...

I don't want to brag but I've done all of my Christmas shopping. That is, I've done all of my food shopping and all of my present buying! Please don't be jealous. I'm sure if you had just been sacked you would have skived off as much as I have. Although, having said that, I was at the butcher's shop the morning at 7.45am to collect the turkey. The butcher is a friend of ours. He's the husband of a lovely woman I used to boss around, in a very nice way, of course. We have talked about him before. It was he who gave us our first taste of real, properly hung beef, and now we can't eat supermarket muck anymore.

You know, I've even done some of the cooking. Our pathetic little cooker wouldn't allow me to cook everything on the day. I've made the canapes, the bread sauce, the cranberry sauce and the parsnip mash. I froze them. I love freezers, they are so cool. I still have a lot of cooking to do tomorrow. I just hope Mrs McMufffin realises that, and doesn't expect me to be cleaning too.

Time to place myself in situ. I am sitting at the computer drinking Cointreau. I bought a new bottle, just in case, and there was only a little bit in the old bottle, so I thought I should drink it. I've also drank the best part of half-a-bottle of wine. I feel very pleasantly buzzy. I am sitting here listing to Mary Chapin Carpenter. She has a very pleasant voice. Reminds me a lot of Michelle Shocked, actually. Good grief, I am now playing Anchorage by Michelle Shocked. They could be the same singer. That is spooky.

This is just one big ramble, so I am going to stop now.

wish i could skive

However, the work ethic seems to be hard wired. I am so excited to be off work for five days, although I've got to buy presents tomorrow for everyone and clean the flipping house again. Why can't it just stay clean? Our current boiler and job woes have put my job in perspective and I was quite happy to be in today despite every bloody agency wanting to send us a referral 'just in case'. Ha ha, I put it all back to them and made them take responsibility. I am mean bitch manager these days and I like it.

I am quite excited about Christmas. I've loved every year I've spent with Mr McMuffin and am so proud of the way he works so hard to ensure that everyone has fabulous food and a good time. Let's hope that we don't get my Dad drunk again and hear the crash as he falls over. I realise that as I age I have inherited my parents poor capacity for alcohol tolerance, but at least I don't sweat like a pig after a pint like my poor Daddy. That takes two and I like to think my incoherence is rather charming and offsets the sweat.

Evil update: Mr McMuffin has just described himself as the 'epitomy of stupidity' for putting butter in its FOIL wrapper in the microwave to soften it. It was a fabulous display. I want to do it again, but we can't keep replacing the appliances in Chateau McMuffin, that really would be stupid. By the way I just can't work out how to mock Mr McMuffin's reference to 'properly hung beef' without being too rude, but it's a challenge that will keep me occupied for some time.

Nadolig Llawen i Chi

I'm sure that everyone celebrating Christmas are very busy at the moment, as are we, but I think it's important to take time out to reflect on the meaning of Christmas. I think it's important, obviously, but I'm not going to bother. Oh no, I'm too busy buying rubbish presents, wrapping up said rubbish presents and trying to clean rubbish house (thanks for your hoovering skills, Gypsy Tart). It does all look rather nice though.

Mr McMuffin has been busy cooking all day, in preparation for the lunch tomorrow and he has also managed to knock out our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. He's a demon in an apron, well he would be if he wore one. Sadly, the ebay woman has been too busy to send his present to us, but not too busy to take the money. Let's all wish her and the boiler men a warm Merry Christmas and let's hope that they get everything they deserve in the New Year.

For you lovely people reading this, a heartfelt Season's Greetings to you.

it's christmas time...

Steve has posted a lovely photo of their Christmas tree, and I thought I would do the same. The little black block on the mantlepiece covers up a photo of McMuffin loveliness. Even though it is Christmas, that just seemed like too much undiluted loveliness for us to ask you to stomach. By the way, the blue picture leaning against the wall, is a strange dog or maybe a goat thing lying down by a river...maybe.

more wyoming

On the 20.12.04 some kind person from Riverton, Wyoming, extended the hand of friendship to the McMuffins. They only stayed for 53 seconds, probably just enough time to read the interesting bits of our blog, and certainly enough time to save Wyoming/McMuffins relations forever. I am please to formally announce that full diplomatic relations with Wyoming has been reestablished.

This means that we have been visited by every state in America. Hurrah!

bye bye christmas

Christmas is done. We had lovely food and presents, including a totally unexpected gift of paintballing (to be taken at our convenience) from Ms Victoria Sponge, who delighted us once more by sharing the day with us. I have always wanted to go paintballing and considered it for my 'hen night' celebrations until Gypsy Tart wisely pointed out that large bruises would not be a good look for my wedding day unless I could match them to the bouquet.

After my parents went home, we settled into the serious matter of competetive games. Ms Ginger Cake deserves a special mention here for her skills at Articulate, we never realised that Trotsky was a Russian composer before. As we all began to complain of tiredness we realised that it was almost two in the morning and probably a good time to break up the party. We shall reconvene on New Year's Eve for cocktails.

Yesterday was the laziest day I've spent in a long time and neither Mr McMuffin nor I bothered to get dressed. Perfect. I read, watched tv and ate too much again. Slinky was in cat heaven and couldn't work out which of us he really wanted to drape himself over for the day, so he roused himself hourly to move to another lap.

I am heading off to the seaside today with Single Cookie and Gypsy Tart to stay overnight with a friend with no cake name. Mr McMuffin politely declined the invitation so I offered to stay at home to keep him company. The look of horror on his face told me that what he really wanted was to be left alone to recuperate and watch all the DVD's that I hate. Sometimes the joy of spending time with loved ones can be too much of a good thing.

epitome of stupidity again

When will Mr McMuffin learn not to act hastily? When will he realise that the template he's designing for Ms Ginger Cake should not be published on our site?

i not stupid

It was deliberate. She is a pleb who doesn't appreciate avant garde design. That's my story and I'm sticking to it until I sort the mess out tomorrow.