Happy Birthday To Me!

Birthday today… but it’s a working Monday… bugger.

 

But still, I had a good weekend… and a big surprise this morning when Niki & the girls woke me up at 5:30am this morning with bacon & eggs for breakfast!  I had my alarm set for 5:15, and when I instinctively hit snooze, Niki grabbed the phone, woke the girls and they made me breakfast before I had to get up and have a shower.  So there I was in the dawn light with Brooke dozing beside me, Niki looking sleepy and Kate wide awake bouncing around whilst I ate my brekkie!  However, they all soon crashed when I did get up and when I checked on them later, Niki, the girls, Zoe the dog and Charlie the cat were all asleep on the bed.

 

For pressies, I did very well as well.  Mum & Dad bought me a brand new 19” widescreen monitor for the PC!  My old 17” flat screen got fried in a storm some time ago and I had been using a 15” CRT in its place, but now I am looking at 19” widescreen!  Very impressive!  A huge difference.  Thanks mum & dad, it’s a beauty!

 

Now the rule I have with birthdays is that I like to get things that I don’t need… I don’t like to get shirts or socks and those sort of presents.  If you need clothes – buy them, but gifts in my book should be non-essential nice to haves.  However this causes Niki all kind of angst as she says she cant buy me music or DVD’s because I download them, she was going to get me an iPod, but I bought one in Singapore, and she has no idea about my gaming hobbies and knows that most of the stuff I get comes in from the US or UK.

 

But she told me she went down to the local gaming store – The Tin Soldier at Penrith – and she was very worried about it.  I wasn’t and nor should she as she and the girls gave me a miniature painting workstation and a magnified desklamp with halogen lights!  The workstation was flat pieces of 3mm MDF that had to be put together with glue and I was up until midnight putting it together and whilst it doesn’t look as neat as the ones on their website I put together the corner unit and one of the paint racks and now I have somewhere to store all my paints and brushes etc.  The lamp is great as well as I always paint hunched over under a 75W bulb and get sore eyes…

 

So all up a great set of presents that fit my criteria of “fun stuff” and whilst today is a work day, I will be heading home as early as I can today….