So, did you remember to put your clocks forward this morning (or last night, whichever)

I can’t believe it’s already a week since we came back from the Lake District. It’s been a busy week, and full of crap weather which hasn’t helped (Snow over the weekend, and then it seems to have pissed it down constantly since Easter) but still it just doesn’t quite compute that it’s only seven days since we came home.

Psycho Cat is still deeply unamused at the entire haircut thing – and even less amused since Herself decided (rightly) that he was getting too cold, and so bought him a couple of little baby t-shirt things to cover him up. He looks utterly ridiculous (and deeply comical) and it took him a good couple of hours to get used to it, but he seems to have relaxed a bit now – and at least he’s warm. I’m not going to mortify him even more by putting up photos (well, not today anyway) but suffice it to say, he looks really bloody funny.

One of the things I really liked about the cottage we stayed in when we’re in the Lake District is that there’s no coverage for our mobile phones, and no internet access. It means that while we’re there, it’s very hard for us to be contacted by work- or by anyone else.

In particular, I like having no internet access. I know that if it were there, I’d be using it – I’m a sad and simple geek, and I’d make use of internet access if it were available. When on holiday, well, it’s just a lot nicer to not have the tempation there in the first place. Yes, it means that I’ll have a whole bundle of emails to deal with when I get home (and I didn’t bother this time with an out-of-office message for my email) but I think it’s a worthwhile price for a peaceful week.

As always, if anyone had really needed to get hold of either of us, they could have called and left a message. (And in fact several people did exactly that, including a couple of agencies with possibilities of work for me) It’s not an ideal system, but it does seem to work, and people seem to understand that when I/we call them back – particularly if I explain that we’ve been in “the land of no-coverage”.

And now we’re back with all the communication devices. It’s been a nice week, but in a lot of ways it’ll be good to be back with ‘normal’ communications. It’s still good to have days or weeks where those things don’t exist though – it just means it’s a proper break, with no urge to stay in touch. No bad thing at all.

Well, Psycho Cat is back – and wow is he fucked off.

We’ve said before that perhaps shaving him like a poodle might be the way to go, that it might shock him into being decent and tidying himself up rather than go through this again. This time, the vets seem to have done pretty much that – although probably not with the same end goal.

Hound has just about choked herself laughing.

Once more, it’s the time of year where Psycho Cat goes to the vet to get all his tangled matted fur cut out/shaved/dealt with. We’ve worked out that it’s actually all his winter fur coming out, but rather than falling out it gets tangled in the new fur, and just leads to him looking utterly manky.

Apparently it’s a fairly common issue with long-haired cats, although our case is a bit extreme because he’s a mucky little git and doesn’t clean himself properly. (Something I’ve never seen with any other cat, and due (I suspect) to being separated from his mum too early, before he learned about proper grooming, although that’s something we’ll never know for sure due to Herself only getting him when he was “about” eighteen months old)

So he’s off today to the vets (in about half an hour, actually) and he’s already not happy. Because he’ll be under a general anaesthetic, he’s not been allowed to have any food since half nine last night – and he’s currently stalking round the house, yelling that he’s hungry, and that we’re all rotten for not feeding him. He’s even less impressed now I’ve brought the carrying basket for him in from the garage – now he knows that something is most definitely Not Right.

He’ll be happier once he’s back from the vet, although it’ll probably (as usual) take a couple of days for us to be properly forgiven for taking him there. But once he’s tidied up and not so godawful matted he’ll be happier – he doesn’t actually like it when he’s in this state, but he does fuck all about it, which is why we have to go to these lengths to get it sorted.

Regular readers will be amazed to know that while we’ve been away, I’ve completely stopped drinking Diet Coke. Coke and Diet Coke have always been my major addiction really, and over the years my intake has gone up and down, but never really cut out completely. I know I drink/drank way too much of it, and then a while back Herself issued me the challenge of cutting it out completely while we were away.

In light of knowing that I’d be foul if I went straight from my normal levels of Diet Coke to zero, I cut my intake way down in the month or so before we left for our break – and that was probably one of my smarter moves of late, if I’m honest. It meant that once we got here on Friday, I just cut it out completely, rather than needing to reduce the intake before dropping to zero – and it means that I’ve now not had any caffeine or Diet Coke for a week.

I’m not cured of the addiction, I’m sure – it wouldn’t take much at the moment for me to just go back to the pre-holiday intake, if not the pre-reduction intake. So it’s still something I’m going to keep on working on, and drinking other things rather than Diet Coke, and just seeing how it goes.

Along the way, it also means I’m drinking more water, and using fruit squashes and the like. No bad thing at all – I can’t deny, the range of fruit squashes and so on has increased massively since I were a lad, and that’s definitely a good thing. So it means that I’ve got a lot more variety in what I’m drinking, and hopefully increase the healthiness (to some degree) of my liquid intake as well.

Time will tell, obviously- but I think that with other thoughts and plans that have been started while we’ve been away, it makes sense to reduce both my intake of caffeine and artificial sweeteners (Aspartame in particular, having seen the reports that Pete linked to a while back) and the evidence of the last week or so that I don’t actually need that caffeine and Diet Coke in my life to keep me going (which I’ve occasionally thought I do) then that’s a good starting point, and a good motivation for the future.