Ouch!

[00:00:00.14] QuickTime Player: I got headbutted in the nuts by a dog this morning. That's how my day's going.Musicoutro music Welcome all to the new year. I know I said that last week. However, this is the actual first recording of the new year. Like I said last week, I did record that previous episode before the new year, before Christmas, in fact. Bizarrely, it was weird recording a new year episode before. Christmas had even happened, but it worked. I was three weeks ahead of recording, I am now back to the point where I'm recording the same week that I'm releasing. I'll probably get ahead again at some point. I did say previously that I want to try and be ahead, it's not always going to happen, but I'm going to try, see what happens. I'm also making a bit of a change to my editing this week as well. I'm gonna stop editing as much as I do. I don't do a great deal of editing but I don't like to keep all the little tiny mistakes in, you know, where I've I've said something wrong and go "oh no I said that wrong let's go back and say it again" I'm gonna just start keeping a lot of that stuff in because why not? only way to get better at thinking about what I say more and not just diving into a topic which is usually what I do when I speak in general. I think the best way of making sure I do that is actually keeping it in there and making me think about it. So yeah if you spot any little mistakes in the podcast they were there on purpose I just didn't remove them that's all. So how's the week The week has been a bit boring really up to now. Not much has happened. It's the new year. New years are always a bit slow to get started. I find that January in particular is a month where not much really tends to happen for me, even though it is actually quite a busy month. My son's birthday is on Friday, so that'll be exciting. I'm working because I couldn't get the time off work, but never mind, it happens, he's not having a full party this year because he just wants a few friends round for tea on Friday nights so he's doing that instead. Other than that, not a great deal happens in the month of January or not that I can think of anyway, I always feel like it's a bit of a slow starter. to that a little bit more detail in a little while in the gripe of the week section, because believe it or not my gripe of the week, spoiler alert, is actually going to be January this time around. I'll explain more later. But yeah, the most exciting thing that's happened is I've changed broadband providers. I've switched from BT to Virgin Media. I say switched, the switch hasn't fully happened yet. In fact, about one minute before I pressed record to start recording the podcast during setup, the router arrived in the post, so there's a box sat on the table next to me waiting to be opened and installed. They haven't given me a switch on date or anything yet. It all just seems like I should plug it in and it'll work, My previous experience with broadband tells me that that never actually happens, so I'll probably be reporting on that next week and see where it's up to. So that's something to look forward to after I finish recording, I suppose. On the subject of switching broadband, actually, the reason I switched, I wasn't dissatisfied with my current provider. like I said, is BT. However, I basically got an email from them saying it's due for renewal and that my contract is ending. So I was like, "Okay, let's have a look at the contract." And I've been paid £60 a month, which is a lot. I know it's a lot, but I just couldn't be bothered fixing that or getting it changed. Also, they seem to be the most reliable service in the area. Um, I've, I've, when I've been to friends houses who live nearby and things like that, they've always had trouble with so many of our providers. So I've always just stuck with them because it's been pretty consistent. Apart from one time when there was an issue with the actual mast and they had to rewire the entire thing. But I think that was more of a street wide problem. than me. I think I was just the first one to report it, that's all. Because they did eventually replace the entire mast. Yeah, so it was £60 that I was paying, and then when I looked at the renewal, it said what you can do is you can either move to a different provider or you can just continue and pay sort of out of contracts, if you will. But then it was going up to £80. pound. It was like £77.60 or something stupid like that and I obviously didn't want to pay that much for the broadband that was on so I did a quick comparison on the comparison website. It was probably compare the market because I like to make apps so yeah I did a comparison and I found I basically I get through BT about 35 up, no, not 35 up, 35 down and about 8 up, it's not that great, and it's discovered with Virgin Media I can get nearly a gig down. It's yet to be seen, but that's what they're claiming I can get. So... I decided to go for that and it's only £35 as well compared to what I was being charged by BT. So yeah, that should be interesting. I'll probably tell you more about that next week, we'll see. If it's interesting, I'll tell you. If it's not, I'll probably not say a word. So I thought for like this main topic section I would... I will give you a couple of stories of stupid things I've done, because everyone seems to like those stories, so why not, right? One of them was over Christmas. So we were in the church for our kids' school. Well, I say "we", I was in the church for our kids' school, and it was the Christmas Carol concert, and there was a couple sat behind me who I know for one of my daughter's friends' parents, and they were talking to me, you know, we're chatting away, but she's recently had a new baby, so I knew that she was, well, she was feeding the baby, I could tell that she was breastfeeding, basically. So I was trying my hardest not to, like, make eye contact. be the person that looks like you're looking, even though nobody probably thinks that. You just get it into your head. As a man anyway, I don't know if it's the same for women, but you get it into your head that, "Oh my god, if I even glance at the baby, they're gonna think I'm trying to look at the boobs and I'm not." So I was doing that thing where I don't even look at them. I was talking to them, but I was kind of looking around as I was doing it, and... It felt awkward for me. It must have felt awkward for them. They must have been like, "Why is he not looking at us when he's talking to us?" and things like that. So, anyway, I carried on, and we were talking for about 10 minutes before the show started, as it were, and then it was time to stand up because the kids were going to sing the first hymn, and we all sang it with them. them and as she stood up I realized she was holding a teddy bear she wasn't actually breastfeeding at all so I felt a bit stupid on that one. I just, I got a fit of the giggles though so I'm laughing away at myself like uncontrollably unable to stop myself from giggling in a church full of people um and I was well on my own essentially my wife wasn't she was at work, so it was just me giggling away in the pew while doing the Christmas Carol concert. So yeah, I looked a bit ridiculous there, but that was a bit stupid, and then, this one is from when I was a lot younger, I was a child. I was around the time when, you know, when your parents first start letting you cook things for the first time, so it must have been, I don't know, maybe like six or seven? I'm trying to think now. We let the boy cook his own food. Well, some of his own food. He makes some mean scrambled eggs, apparently. I don't like eggs, so I don't know, but apparently everybody likes his scrambled eggs. I and I was making, on this occasion, I was making beans on toast. Now, for context, the house that we lived in, the kitchen was a bit weird. It was all of the cabinet space and the worktop space was on one side of the kitchen, and all of the cooking appliances were on the opposite side of the kitchen. There was no worktop space over there. We had one of those, like, three standing cookers that you used to get, you know, with the grill on top, so you'd slide the grill out from the top. I miss those actually, I feel like that'd be better for our house where we are now. Anyway, doesn't matter, does it? So yeah, we had one of those cookers, and I'd basically, I'd, oh actually, for even more context, we had a little dog, a little Yorkshire Terrier, and not going to tell you the dog's name because she was my first pet and we know what that could lead to. So she was this little dog, we had final flooring, we had the freestanding cooker and I was making beans on toast. Okay, I think you caught up now. Right, so I empties the can of beans into the pan because we didn't have a microwave to warm the beans up so I was warming the beans up. the stove top, which I probably would still choose to do. I'm not a big fan of microwaves really, so I would still do it that way now. So I put the beans in the pan, I turned around to walk towards the stove, and as I did, I discovered that the dog had done a little pee. I stood in the pee, I slipped, I managed to smash the pan onto my head. So I'm stood in the middle of the kitchen with a pan stuck on my head, and the juice of the beans slowly running down the side of it, down my face, down my neck, down my back, and under my t-shirt, and I just, I didn't know what to do, I was probably, like I say, six or seven. remember doing is I cried and I went, "Mum! I need some help!" My mum came into the room and she just looked at me and she just went, "How? How have you done that?" I was like, "I slipped in some wee!" And so she came over and she helped me get the pan up. but of course the only way to get the pan off my head was to twist and turn it. It was proper stuck on. It was really stuck, and she twisted it and she lifted the pan off and of course all the beans then fell onto my head. It was like a proper full-size can of beans as well. So yeah, beans on my head. I've got the giggles again. they're absolutely covered in beans. That was, um, that was a lot of fun. Obviously it wasn't. I suppose it is now. All right, let's move on to the AI question of the week for this week. I generated this question about a week ago. I've been thinking about it because I had, as usual, I had an answer pop into my head and I've changed my mind on the answer. But yeah, so here is the question. If you could experience life in any city in the world for one year without any financial constraints, which city would you choose and why? what aspects of its culture, history or lifestyle attracts you the most? So the first thing that popped into my head was New York because I've never been, I've always wanted to go to New York and I've always wanted to spend some time there. Slowly over the course of the week my mind has changed on that. No. I think the reason being, so what I thought is the whole no financial constraints part. Now, great, yes, absolutely it would be wonderful to live in New York with no financial constraints, but the culture is pretty much going to be the same as what it is here in England. Like, I know there's going to be differences, but there's not going to be that many differences. It's the same kind of food. Again, there probably are areas of New York that have different cuisines and whatnot, but it's not a different culture, and I think if you're going to spend a year living somewhere without any financial constraints, it'd be silly to not choose somewhere that's a very different culture to your own, and I thought about it and thought about it, and I decided in the end that I... what I would probably choose would be Tokyo. Completely different culture to what I'm used to. Food that I'm not really used to as well. I'm very picky when it comes to food. I'm the person that when you go out to a restaurant, say you go to an Italian restaurant for example, I'm the person try and find the English food or the closest to it, or I'd pick meatballs or a pizza because I don't want to get something that I won't eat. Enjoy, and then regret. I worry about that too much. I go out with friends for food, the first thing they do is look at the menu and they go "Oh they've got a burger for you!" I have tried in recent years to get more and more adventurous with things like that, but yeah I've got to admit it's still something that I do and I'd love to change that. So I think if that opportunity was something that came up, that's probably what I would do. do, I would go to somewhere like Tokyo. If for nothing else, and obviously this is from only what I've seen on TV, but just for the lights at the night, that seems like an absolute amazing photography goldmine. I'd love to get to photograph somewhere like that. So yeah, that is where I... would go, I would go to Tokyo. I'd be interested to know where everybody else would go, so feel free to leave a comment on the website, which is thatsafreebie.com. Like I said last week, we are now on YouTube. I always say "we", I am now on YouTube, so you can see the podcast on there. comment on there as well. You can send me a message on pretty much any social network, and that's a freebie on all of them. If I'm not on there, message me on a different one and tell me to make an account on the social network that you like, and I'll see if I can join it, because who knows?MUSIC PLAYING Getting back to what I was saying earlier now about the gripe of the week, this week, my gripe of the week, is actually the month of January. Or more specifically, if I'm being honest, it's starting things, or starting new things, or just starting new things. anything right it's it's a chore and January to me start of the year it's the time when everybody is like wants to do something new you know like at work it's like oh well these are the focuses we need to focus on or you know here's this project that I want you to work on uh I mean it's not much it's not actually that that much like that for where I work, it's not too bad for that kind of thing. Um, but I'm, I'm talking in general. Uh, I fight like at home, there's things that we want to get done in the house and it's just starting things. It's just the most painstaking thing in the world. Like I haven't got the motivation to do anything right now. got to go and install this broadband that's just arrived after I've recorded this and I actually don't want to even though it's going to improve my life it's going to improve the speed of the internet connection here it's going to make things better I just can't be bothered and that's why I pick January as the gripe of the week because January is the time where everybody wants to start new things they want to start a... a new year's resolution or summit. They want to make a change and I just haven't got any energy. I don't know where people get it from. This week's pick of the week is actually something that I absolutely love. Now, for Christmas, one of my friends bought us a... bought us a family gift, as well as getting us like individual gifts, probably because she realized just how much I would like this thing, and how much the kids would like it. My wife has liked it as well actually, so we all like it, we all think it's great, and it's called a crimpit, now it's a C-R-I-M-P-I-T, couldn't remember how to spell it then. Crimp-it it's called. Now, there's two versions of it. There's a Crimp-it that works with thins, you know the like Warburton's thins, the bread things, and there's a Crimp-it that works with wraps. Now, we've got the one that works with wraps, which I think if I was choosing which one to buy, this is probably the one I would have bought. It's an amazing little thing. So what is you get a wrap, you put it in this this crimp it that folds in half, you put a filling inside the wrap, you close the wrap up and you use the crimp it to crimp the edges of it and it basically makes a calzone out of the stuff that you've put inside the wrap. You can put anything in it like you could do a pizza one which we haven't done yet, surprisingly. That is what I thought would have been the first thing we'll do. In fact, you know what? I think I've just decided what the kids are having for tea. They're having crumpet calzones, or pizza crumpets is probably more accurate. Yeah, there you go. They'll like that. You can put cold fillings in there or hot fillings. So up to now, Sausage and beans and cheese, trying to recreate the Greggs pasty, I think it was better. We've had, what else have we had? We've had chicken, rice, guacamole, crushed up nachos, salsa. Basically we made a burrito, we've done tacos as a crimpit. I've not yet had a cold one, weirdly enough, because I just haven't got to that point yet. But basically, yeah, you fill your filling in, you fold it over, you crimp it, and then you put it in the air fryer, or the oven, or under the grill, whatever you want to do, cook it for a couple of minutes, and it's great. It's absolutely wonderful. So I absolutely would. recommend that to anybody. I'll put a link to it in the show notes just in case you can't tell what I was saying when I was saying crimp it. You may recall in last week's finale to the podcast, I asked the question of when you pour milk into your cereal. Do you swirl the milk around or do you keep it in one spot? So, the resounding answer is that you keep it in one spot. No, actually, that wasn't true at all. The resounding answer that I got from people was that you swirl it around. Which makes sense, I swirl it around to answer the question for you. I like to make... sure that I get milk underneath every little bit of the cereal that I can. A few people did say that they keep it in one spot, which I found was interesting. I think you're savages, those people that do that. But, you know, I'm not judging you. It's just what I think. You should definitely swirl the milk around. which it has actually led on to another question. I brought this topic up at work as well, which then obviously led on to even more questions. It was interesting actually what the answers were. Again, I'll follow up with this at the end of next week's episode. But when you make your cereal, do you use warm milk or cold milk?MUSIC