Operation Ship-Shape

Happy New Year! We took Chinese and Thai food round to Adrian and Sara's last night, then played a charades-style game called Masquerade that Rob won - just. It was really difficult! It wasn't just a case of mime the title of a well-known TV show or film - it wasn't even a case of mime a well-known phrase. These were just sentences, that made only grammatical sense - Rob had '101 ways to cook a halibut' and I had 'A frog getting legless in France', for goodness' sake! It was good fun, though - we'll look out for it next time we're shopping.

Having spent more than half of December away from home, and the rest of the days preparing for Florida and/or Christmas, the house was left in a fair old state, and it was all waiting for me when we got back yesterday :). This is what it looked like the day we left for Christmas, and it looked even worse this morning, if you can believe it. All the space you see on the floor in the living room was covered in bags we brought back from our travels. And it didn't stop there: there was laundry still in the dryer and pizza boxes in the kitchen from 2 weeks ago, the dining room was filled with wrapping paper and other Christmas-related stuff, all the bedrooms upstairs were a mess (but two of them have never actually been tidy since we moved in) - I was actually quite looking forward to being able to start getting it all in order again. I did the living room, dining room and kitchen today, and made a start on the enormous pile (actually two piles) of ironing that's built up since the beginning of December. Tomorrow I'll make a start on the upstairs.

I also have a list of other projects, some larger than others, that need doing at some point, including: -

• Re-decorate downstairs cloakroom, including new toilet and sink and new flooring, as we took the old carpet up a few weeks ago when the radiator leaked all over it
  
  
• Sort out main bathroom - there are toiletries on every surface and loads of empty cupboards
  
  
• Finally get round to sorting out the two spare bedrooms and putting away all the clutter
  
  
• Sort out the office - this is subject to our getting furniture for it. We ordered it ages ago from the same guy who furnished the company's office in Chilworth and he told us it would arrive around the end of November, but we haven't heard from him since...
  
  
• Take car to garage to sort out dubious sound to exhaust
  
  
• Fix broken slats on our bed
  
  
• Get living room carpet cleaned
  
  
• Clean or replace carpet on stairs and landing - another radiator-related incident
  
  
• Clearly the most important at the moment: get plumber to sort out central heating system
  

Good job I've got the rest of the week off to make a start on the list... :)