Today was one of those stupid days where nothing goes right.

You know the movie Clerks? "I'm not even supposed to be here today." Someone convinced me to swap shifts with him. I'm sure he was lying about why, he claimed the road had been messed up and they had given him an extra day, but I know he's a Hull City fan, and it turns out they were playing at home today. I bet he spent an nice sunny afternoon at KC Stadium. Never mind, I suppose on the upside I wasn't stuck watching football all afternoon! :)

I only get one day off this weekend now, and my mum and sister (and nieces) are heading to Cleethorpes for a day on the beach, so that's not something I can ever turn down. It may be a stereotypical English seaside town, but I spent most of my childhood summers there, so I will always love it Plus, penny falls that still take 2p coins...

Monday I have to go to Sheffield for the course that I missed out on in March when I was with the stupid bronchitis/laryngitis combo. I'm convinced I still have the same bug now, but it's mostly on the way out, despite the ears thing that's till happening.

It's annoying really. I've driven to Sheffield once or twice before, it's not that far away, and it's where my mum is from, but I'm not confident at all driving in the city, and I have to get to Sheffield United grounds by 9am. Any other day, my mum would be able to take me and then spend the day with her cousin, but because it's that particular day, her cousin is out of town and I have to be a grown-up and drive myself.

The football grounds is about a five minute drive from where my nana and granddad used to live though, so I was thinking that before I head home, I might go there and have a look around, see if it still looks the same. I've not been there in about 25 years, but on Google maps it still looks the same. I'd be interested to see it in person.

On Saturday next week, I'm back in Sheffield again to see Bryan Adams. Funny how things happen all at once.

I think I sleepwalked last night.

I'm not 100% sure, it's never happened before, as far as I know, but it's the only explanation I can think of.

So at some point in the middle of the night, there is a loud crashing sound. It's me, I've knocked a bunch of stuff off my desk. So I kneel down and start groping around on the floor in the pitch dark thing to pick it up. Eventually, I realize that I can't see anything and I don't even know what I'm looking for, so turning on the light might be a good idea.

So I feel my way over to where the lightswitch should be, skillfully avoiding the box of work uniform I've had on the floor for the past three weeks. To my consternation, the wall with the switch isn't where I thought it would be. So I move closer, singing my arms around. I find the shelves to my right, no lightswitch. Instead, I climb over the end of my bed and crawl over to the pillow end and switch on the bedside lamp.

It is at this point that I realize I am in my bedroom and not the spare room. Why I thought I was in the spare room, I have no idea. I never sleep in there. Having figured all this out, I switch the light back off and go back to sleep, leaving all the stuff all over the floor, for me to find the next day.

That is how I know the whole thing happened at all. Well, that and my sleep cycle app recorded activity at about 3am. The only thing I can think of is that I was sleepwalking, and the crash of the stuff falling on the floor woke me up.

Hopefully it won't happen again, even though everyone did think it was hilarious when I told them the next day.


In other, non sleepwalking related news, Civil War is awesome. I would ramble on about it, but I'm going to try to get an earlyish (the right side of midnight) night, because I still have the cold of doom, and still can't hear out of my left ear, and my right is wonky too. Which made work interesting today. Hopefully sleep will sort it, as long as I don't spend the night stumbling around the house knocking things over.

I'll ramble about the movie tomorrow though, no doubt!

Three days ago, I was randomly added to a Facebook group called "Show us your hardest face". I was baffled. But it turned out to be something a couple of friends of my brother had made because they'd been talking about how he liked pulling stupid faces. So they created a group and posted pics of themselves pulling faces like they were about to beat someone up. It was pretty funny, so I stayed in it, and even posted one myself (it's not very good though). But since then it's kind of taken off. People added their friends, who added their friends, you know how it works. And today someone from the local paper contacted them to ask if they could write an article about it.

It went up this evening, and prompted a whole load more people to join. Now, I'm really not a fan of the Hull Daily Mail. It's generally badly written, badly researched and they put all their articles on Facebook, prompting uneducated morons to say awful things that they don't seem to bother to moderate. When Matthew died, they wrote an article about him, which was okay, actually, but the comments on it were horrible. But this is actually pretty funny.

My picture didn't make it into the article, luckily. But then, I doubt they'd use such a rubbish one anyway. The ones they did use are good :-)

http://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/hardest-face-Hull-s-latest-Facebook-craze/story-29194086-detail/story.html

This cold I have is kicking my ass. And I still have the stupid cough left over from when I had bronchitis a month ago before Disney. And it's actually a month ago now, so this is getting ridiculous. And now I have a headache as well.

I'd love to say I'll have an early night, but it's already gone midnight. Tomorrow. I'll have an early night tomorrow. But yeah, sleep time, I think.

Okay, so this is seriously the headlines on the local newspaper's website today. What the hell is going on?

I've been rereading some old comics, taking advantage of the last of my days off before I'm back at work on Monday. I came across this today. I'd seen it before, but it really seems to do a great job of giving a visual representation of how Matt 'sees' the world, much better than the radar sense panels you get more often. Not that I dislike those of course, though I'm not a huge fan of the radar sense - I much prefer the way Matt seems to experience the world in the series. They do mention the radar sense a few pages later, and there are bits of it here too, but mixed in with everything else, which is nice. I think this is kind of an intro to the character for people new to him, and a reintroduction for people coming in from the previous series.

For context, this is from a short, extra story in Daredevil 1 (2011). This is the series that followed the one that ended with Shadowland, which was very dark. Matt has come back determined to be happy and optimistic, and Foggy is... unsure about it.

I love this because there's just so much going on there, the birds wings, the sound, and/or perhaps scent of the woman's hair, the fumes from the car, the smell of the dog mess, people talking, the (pizza?) on the back of the motorcycle, music from someone's iPod... It just seems like a nice representation of all the stuff he is constantly aware of just in his everyday life.

I'm back from Center Parcs. I know I've been going there since I was about 10, but I think it's still one of my favorite holiday locations. I love how the wildlife comes to your door to be fed. When we arrived we had three ducks come up to the back door begging for food, we were visited by squirrels and swans and all kinds of birds, and at night a bunch of mice came and cleared up the leftovers. And the pool at Sherwood is just so awesome, especially the slides and the Rapids, which I must have been down about 50 times. Poppy is old enough to go down the more gentle first half now, so she just kept insisting I go with her again and again. My favorite slide is the bid tube slide though. It's supposed to have little LEDs above you all the way down but it was broken this week so it's pitch black the whole way down, which you might not think is good, but is actually really is because it makes all the twists and turns much more unexpected.

I'm covered in bruises though, mostly from the Rapids. We call them Rapids wounds and they are kind of a mark of honor, in a silly, jokey way.

I also kind of love how inclusive the whole place is. Like most of the restaurants have vegan, vegetarian, gluten free, dairy free etc menus, which is massively refreshing after the choice of vegetarian food in Disneyland! (mostly a choice of vegiburger and chips or margarita pizza) Also, little things, like all the maps placed around the village are also tactile maps, and everywhere is set up to be helpful to people with kids or breastfeeding mums, like it's easy to get prams everywhere, and they actually have sheltered buggy parking outside everywhere. Not I need those, but it's very nice that it's there for people who do. It's also lovely that there are no cars in the village. Even if you do get a bit wet when it rains, it's nice to go for a walk and not see any cars, just hoards of people walking and cycling around. So yeah, definitely my favorite holiday, at least within the UK. I'm not saying I'd choose it over a fortnight in Santorini, but for somewhere an hour and a half up the motorway, it's seriously awesome.

I do however always return absolutely exhausted because it's a pretty active holiday. Luckily I'm not back at work til Monday, so now I get to rest up and write some fanfic and catch up on some comics on Marvel Unlimited for a few days. Well, after the laundry is done!

Greetings from Center Parcs.

I's amazing how things have moved on since the first time we came here. Back then we had no mobile phones and we had to rely on telephone boxes for communication with the outside world. Then a few years later we has a brick-like mobile phone and the only place you could get a signal was standing in the top of one particular little hill, meaning that there was a queue to stand there a lot of the time. We didn't come for years after that, then when Poppy was born we started coming again, and found there was still no mobile phone signal but Wifi in the village, which was kind of amazing but did mean that you had to walk down there to get online. Then last year, miraculously, there was a phone signal here. This time, we have wifi in the villa. It's amazing, it's like actually being in the 21st century!

This also means that as I have my IPad and my keyboard with me, I might even get some fic posted. We'll see...

We've been in the pool today, round the Rapids quite a few times, played a bit of catch in the pool, and convinced Poppy to go in the plunge pool a few times. Been on a few water slides too. Annoyingly, all the hair dryers were broken, and only worked for a few minutes before stopping. I got one that kept working but was cold. As a result, my hair looks hilarious. I'll need to fix it before we go out to eat!

I'm back home.

Disneyland was kind of awesome, in a loud, child-oriented and absolutely exhausting way. I had fun, but now I'm home I feel like I need to sleep for a week to recover. Poppy had a great time, but I think she feels the same way. We went on a lot of rides though (Ratatouille was my favourite), and the hotel was really nice, though for some reason they have the heat turned up way too high everywhere, so you can't put your coat on in your room then walk to the exit without feeling like you're going to melt. Ditto eating breakfast, you have to wear as few clothes as possible or you wind up feeling ill. Even in the room, it was impossible to turn the air conditioning down to a comfortable level, so we had to leave the window open every night. Very strange, but never mind. The pool in the hotel was really nice, and it had a good waterslide.

On the last day, we went on Crush's Coaster. We hadn't done it any earlier because we thought it would be too rough for Poppy, but then we saw a video of it on the TV in the room and it didn't look that bad, and she really wanted to try it. When we got there there were warnings about it being dark and drops and sharp turns etc, but she insisted, and we thought it can't be that bad. It actually was. I know I'd have hated it when I was five. After you get through the underwater scenes it goes really dark and starts whipping you around, going up and down and you can't see what's going on at all. I was sure she would hate it, but when we got off she said she wanted to do it again. Apparently it's her favorite. This is the same kid who won't go into a cave with a fake dragon in because it's too scary. She's an unusual kid.

Security there is insane, by which I mean really good. Everyone gets scanned walking into the Disney Village, any bags have to go through an airport-type scanner. Walking into the hotels you have to get scanned by a guy with one of those metal detector wands, and there are security with dogs and sniffer dogs walking around everywhere. It's weird though that they don't scan the kids. Like, walking into the hotel they didn't check Poppy, and one day we got the bus from the hotel so we had to go through the main security, my mum took my bag so Poppy and I could go through the no bags line and go get a fast pass for something while she queued to get the bags scanned, they don't make you walk through a metal detector in that queue, you just get scanned by a guy with a wand thing again, and again he didn't check Poppy. Surely having observed this, some nutter could have their kid carry their weapons in for them. I thought that was a bit worrying to be honest.

But yeah, lots of fun. Lots of walking though, seriously, my watch records my steps and one day I did over 20000.

This is weird though. Because it was me and my mum taking my niece without either of her parents, and having heard stories about people being stopped at the airport and missing their flights because security don't believe you have a right to take the kid out of the country, we decided to take a letter. Because my mum is paranoid about things going wrong, she paid to have the thing notarized. This involved official documents signed by Jennie and Martin, witnessed by the notary public, copies of everyone's ID, official stamps, the whole thing is bound with ribbon and wax, it's insanely posh. On the way out, nobody even questioned us, despite Poppy having a different surname to both of us. Then on the way back into the UK, we were stopped. It was fine, because we had the most official document ever, but it seems very odd to stop us on the way back into the country. To me, it would make sense to check stuff like that before someone took a child out of the country, because if you were bringing them back home presumably you're not up to anything nefarious, you're just going home. It's leaving that you are more likely to be up to something. So we asked the guy, and he said that it is one the way back you'll get stopped. On the way out, the airline should check but they don't always. Isn't that a worry? I mean, if someone steaks a kid, they are okay to take them out of the country with no issues, it's only if they try to bring them home they face issues? Seems totally backward to me. So next time if we ever do it again, we probably won't pay to get the documents made official, because once you've had your holiday, who cares if you get a little delay on the way home while they ring the parents to make sure the non-oficial letter is legit? OTOH, you can guarantee that if you don't do it, you will get stopped, can't you?!

Anyway, I now have a day to recover from Disneyland before we're heading off again, to Center Parcs for a few days. I have no idea how things ended up being so close together. Its with Poppy being at school now and us having to plan things round school holidays, I suppose. I think I'm going to sleep all day tomorrow!