OK, things are starting to return to "something" like normal again! That is if you don't look at the state of the spare bedroom that my PC desk is in! I've sort of trashed the place over the past two days!!! I've two PC's on the go - one on the desk, one on the floor - and the whole of the spare bed is covered with cables, CD's, all sorts of packaging and associated rubbish! SORRY LYNDA!!!

So, what's been going on......

New Year's Eve was a quiet night home for us, can't face all the nutters in the pubs these days, with plenty of food, a good few drinks and the TV. Jools Holland's show was pretty good again, some decent music from James Blunt, Kaiser Chiefs and, at midnight, the 1st Battalion of Scots Guards made the run up to 12 o'clock go off OK. Then, as expected, the streets around us exploded! Ever since the millennium I'm sure that more fireworks go up at midnight on New Year that on November 5th! Still, they put on a good free show!

New Year's Day and we were up and about by 9:00am - obviously didn't drink enough the night before - had a quick breakfast and pulled on the walking boots. The idea was to walk from home to Elvaston Castle, walk around the grounds then return home. In the end we finished up walking for over 4hrs! We did get to the castle but sort of kept on going and adding bits on to the walk as we went along!

Having walked through the grounds at Elvaston we carried on towards Borrowash before following the banks of the river Derwent towards Derby. On two more occasions we added to the length of the walk rather than head for home! In the end it wasn't until we reached the outskirts of the city centre that we decided it was time to leave the river path and head back for some dinner! In the end I'd guess that we walked around 9 or 10 miles. In the evening Lynda went to her usual pub quiz whilst I tried to catch up with things on the internet. Sunday night was the final straw as far as the old PC was concerned - it crashed every few minutes and I decided that it's days had finally run out!

Straight after breakfast on Monday we headed into Derby, returned a short while later with my new PC and that's when I trashed the spare room! In the end I'll have a lot more desk space with the new flat screen, it just doesn't look like it right now! I can't believe the difference in speed between the old PC and the new one, it's already making things so much easier here on the Blog and with sorting digital photos out. Then again, with 320GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM it should be a bit quicker than my old system!

That just leaves today, Tuesday. Back at work for the first time since Christmas Eve! In the end it wasn't too bad at all. OK, I'd been left with a fair bit of paperwork to sort out plus one or two "problems" that needed my attention but on the whole a nice steady start to the year! We even went to the gym for around an hour after work! Come to think of it that hurt more than work!!!

New Year walk photos