Gigs

The year that was 2009

Thursday, December 31st, 2009 | Life | No Comments

So that was 2009… well I guess I should do my final update on my 2009 continuations, you can read about them here if you like but I’ll summarise it all any way. If your really that keen I did a couple of updates through the year that you can also have a browse through.. April 2009 update and September 2009 update.

So firstly a continuing theme of seeing more live music.. Really enjoying this and plan to carry it on through 2010, I’ve already got a few gigs lined up most notably and excitingly is the wonderfully talented Norah Jones! To see what I’ve done this year and in previous years and also what I have planned for 2010 have a look at my Gig list.

Simplifying and de cluttering… it’s happening…It’s a long arduous process but I’m getting there, this shall continue. The table and beer fridge are still hot spots! The endless cleaners and toiletries have been whittled down, but I still have a mountain of moisturiser to carry me through 2010!  I almost failed on the not buying any new footwear but the lovely boots I purchased didn’t fit quite right so they were returned.  However 2010 will see me buying some wellington boots!

Another of my goals for 2009 was to clear my credit card debt.. de cluttering and selling stuff has help me on my way and in September I managed to clear all my credit card debt.  I’m continuing to save my £2 coins and I have an estimate £170. I decided not to open the tin as it wasn’t full so I will continue to save until it’s full up.

Small change, while I have collected my small change the tin is no where near full, in some respects I should be disappointed at not collecting more, but lets face it if I’m not spending I’m not getting any change so that has to be good right?

I’m loving the old style life, cooking from scratch, growing my own fruit and veg, using natural cleaning stuff, mending and for Christmas making various hampers for family.

I’m doing so much cycling and my kickboxing class, but my mentality is “if I’m exercising I can eat what I want” this doesn’t work in the long term goal of loosing weight. Now while I have shifted a stone this year it’s really not as much as I had hoped and wii fit didn’t see the light of day!

De cluttering my computer files is still on going, but a lot of duplicate files have been eradicated.

So that’s about it for 2009… I feel overall it was a successful year

Oh actually I failed the 250 in 365 challenge… but it was fun when I had the motivation.. watched some good movies I hadn’t seen before and watched some old favourites again.. This will feature in my 2010 continuations.

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A new year

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008 | Life | 1 Comment

So as a new year fast approaches it’s that time to make your new years resolutions. This year I’ve decided not to make any new year resolutions but to continue with things that I have already made a start on.. I mean why wait until new year to do things!

Last years resolution was to go and see more live music, this year I shall continue with that as it’s great fun and my first gig will be Hayley Angel on the 15th January. If you’d like to see what gig’s I have planned for 2009 check out My Gig List for 2009 I’ll be keeping it up to date as I find more gigs to go to.

On my list of other continuations…..

Simplify my life, I’ve not really talked about this so far as I’ve been in the developmental stages for quite some time, just doing a little bit here and there which hasn’t seemed worthy of it’s own posts just yet.. watch out for my simplifying posts coming soon.

Tying in with simplifying is de cluttering. There are several hotspots around the house which seem to collect all manor of stuff so I shall continue to sift through all the stuff and either ebay, freecycle or dump the unwanted things and *try* to keep these hotspots clear. Just for reference my hotspots are: dining room table, top of fridge freezer, beside the microwave, on top/beside the beer fridge.

Continuing on the old style path I have been meandering down this year. Growing my own fruit, vegetables and herbs. Cooking from scratch and batch cooking (which makes for a simpler life as well) getting rid of, once used up, all the chemical cleaners and using more natural methods. This also ties in with simplifying in that I wont have so many household cleaners hanging about the place.

Paying off debts and money saving, I have been doing various things to accelerate the paying off debts. Collecting £2 coins in a sealed jar, collecting small change in another sealed jar. The best thing though and the thing I think is really going to make the difference and I’d urge anyone in debt to give this ago, is making a payment a day to whatever it is you owe money too. In my case it’s credit card. I don’t make a daily payment direct to the card as it’s interest free so I make my daily payments into an online savings account linked to my current account. How it works for me is that I sweep any odd monies up to £5 in my current account over to the savings account every day leaving my current account at a round figure. For example if I have £398.54 in my current account I will sweep across £3.54 to my savings account leaving me with £395.00. This lets a nice amount build up and earn interest until I have a lump sum that I can then use to pay off the card. Obviously you still have to make a payment to the card every month, but it just gets you there a bit quicker and you really don’t miss the money!
Physically saving money at the moment is a bit pointless when I have debts, so my money saving is concentrating on not buying things I don’t really need. Cutting down costs by not using expensive chemical cleaners, batch cooking food, making sure food doesn’t get wasted. Sorting out my things and selling on stuff that I really don’t use any more (I have so much stuff I hold onto thinking it might come in use)

Everyone seems to have the obligatory new year new me… loose weight get fitter etc… well for me it’s not just for the new year it’s been ongoing but does require a little more effort if I’m serious about hitting my target in April and I really really do want to go on that hot air balloon ride! My eating is pretty good, well Christmas aside, so It’s the exercise side I have to work on… time to make more use of wii fit and maybe look into getting the new wii My Fitness Coach – it is supposed to have “more than 400 unique exercises” we shall see!

I think that’s it for now, but I may be back to update… oh yeah and there is the de cluttering of my computer. I really need to sort out what I have on my almost full 500gig external drive…. a lot of which I know is duplicated stuff and the rest is programs that are probably out of date and photos that I really should back up to DVD as well.

I’ll also be cutting out the dead wood from my phone book, both on my phone and my hard copy address book.

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Katie Melua @ O2 London 08-11-08

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 | Gigs, Music | No Comments

Well what a gig and what a venue! First time visiting the O2 for a gig. I was already impressed with the O2 facilities in terms of the variety of bars and restaurants available having been there before on a non event night. There is every kind of food you’d want, in all honesty a bit spoilt for choice. Due to time restrictions the Chinese buffet was chosen – no hanging around waiting for your order to be taken, help your self, and when finished just get up and go pay. None of this trying to catch the waiters eye etc…

The O2 Arena is huge, We had seats in the 100 blocks and we were to the right of the stage as you look at it, pretty good seats I think considering. There was a pretty good mix of people at the gig, something we speculated while eating, the foursome at the table next to us in the restaurant were early 50’s and were going to the gig too. There were also some young children accompanied by their parents and even a few babies in arms. Plenty of of the 20-30 somethings too so I didn’t feel old, which is quite often the case for the newer up and coming bands.

Katie was amazing, the stage was amazing too. She started the gig solo and was then joined by her band via images on an electronic screen, I thought this was pretty cool as they performed “My Aphrodisiac is You”. Later the screens were lifted to reveal the band – nice touch!

Having been concerned about the size of the venue and the kind of music, in that it might feel like it was a little lost, I am really please to say that the arena really does justice to Katies voice. It was also fantastic to hear her playing Piano. I was pretty fixated with the amount of jigging about Katie was doing, it was the first time I’d seen her live in concert so I wasn’t sure if it was the norm when doing live shows as I’d only ever seen her on TV standing in the same spot singing before.

Now you wouldn’t normally associate Katie Melua with trouble, but there was a bit of a scuffle during “Spider’s Web” over the other side of the arena, not sure what it was all about but it ended with some fella being carried away up the stairs by security and a lady following on very sheepishly.

The only downside was that Katie didn’t sing “what it says on the tin”, which really wasn’t so much of a downside except for the fact the merchandising stands were selling t-shirts with the song title on them so it kinda got the song in your mind.

Great night with a little unexpected excitement too!

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