My wallow day seems to be going a bit wrong…

Some poor excuse of Akra Jr having the ‘flu and Li’l Bhaji having been sick all over the kitchen this morning. They seem to think they need the sofa more than ME!

Kids today… huh.

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Now the idea of a Worldwide Wallow Day tomorrow really appeals to me.

The idea is simple, 29th of February is an extra day anyway, doesn’t really exist so we should make the most of it by doing as little as possible. The instructions on full sofa wallowing are quite detailed, so you really should click through to check that you plan to do it in a proper manner.

The only problem I have is that currently my sofa is occupied by a grumpy, sleep-deprived, flu-ridden six year old who is being mean to his brother and saying “what…EVAH!” to anyone who attempts to reprimand him.

Should I just tip him off of it in the morning? Or does rolling a child off a settee constitute using too much energy?

I think it’s no secret by now, that Hotel Chocolat are possibly my favourite chocolate producer of all time. I was completely won over by their Signature Egg they sent me for review last year.

The best thing about a Hotel Chocolat Easter egg is that the shell is so substantial – completely unlike the mainstream chocolate eggs which shatter if you so much as breathe in their direction.

I’m hoping to get one of their extra special, Extra Thick Easter eggs for review very shortly, but in the meantime I have a great competition for you to win one of your very own!

To enter, click here and simply answer six questions which will take you on an Easter egg hunt to find the secret code. Once you have answered each question, use the first letter of each answer to reveal the secret code. If you have found the right answer you stand a chance to win one of Hotel Chocolat’s stunning Extra Thick Easter Eggs!

One lucky UK reader of the Prattle will win an egg, so get cracking (boom boom tish) and enter quickly. The closing date is the 18th March, 2008.

Next week I am going to be in deepest, darkest Wales – miles away from a decent broadband connection – to help my mother convalesce from an operation.

Akra has the week off to look after the kids here and mum is getting loads of nice easy food in from Waitrose. All I’ll have to do is do a little light cooking, a little light cleaning and stopping my mother from going completely insane.

Two of those three tasks should be relatively easy, so it’ll be a holiday and there’ll be plenty of time to catch up on reading, writing and generally being a layabout.

So I’m busy arming myself with supplies – books, knitting, ipod (and charger), book tapes, DVDs and an old laptop dual booting into Linux (Ubuntu)/Windows XP. I’ll be away from my beloved Mac OS X for a whole week (and will have to remember important things like what the Start menu is for, and that the little X actually closes the whole program down … tricky).

So I’m now looking for suggestions of nice things to download now that are free and don’t require the internet to run: games, killer aps, useful utilities etc for Linux or Win XP. Out of preference for games I prefer simulation/strategy/RPG style but not totally adverse to the odd puzzle. And I’m really hoping that you, dear reader, know just the thing.

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope…

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Well, I haven’t done a lot of blogging this last week, have I?

Partly due to a slight relapse in feeling grotty from the bug we had over half term. Partly due to the fact that Akra Jr is now ill and our sleep has been disturbed. And partly because I haven’t been arsed to do anything above the bare minimum all week.

The weird thing is that I’m bored of doing nothing, but can’t seem to get the momentum going to stop doing nothing. There’s probably something deep and psychologically significant there somewhere. Or I could just be a lazy git.

Still, I am enjoying Twitter immensely, especially in combination with Twitterrific so I don’t have to sit on the Twitter website. Microblogging has a lot less resistance mentally than coming up with something “proper” for the Prattle, plus I’ve had some nice mini-conversations going. Definitely not bored with it yet.

Anyway, as a bonus for your patience and for those of you who, despite being on the internet for a while, still don’t know what FTW means… this video is for you:

How To Speak Geek

I’ll do better next week. Promise.

One day, I’m going to be an organised person.

I aspire to be efficient and methodical.

Some of my readers may be surprised by this as on the surface I seem to plan things very well, but those who know me better will know how much more I enjoy the planning and the list-making rather than the actual follow through.

So the Get-It-Done Guy – Quick and Dirty Tips podcast suits me rather well. It’s a short weekly podcast – only around five minutes long – so you should be able to find the time to fit it in somewhere.

The host, Stever Robbins, has a beautiful dry sense of humour with perfect comic timing – he presents a quick dose of wisdom in an effortless and captivating way. At the end, I always find myself more motivated and thinking of ways to apply the tip to my own life.

Recent topics have been: asking yourself “why” you are doing what you are doing, how to take great notes, how to say “no” to overcommitting, filing across multiple media so you can actually find stuff again, and how to motivate your employees to be more productive.

Yes, it is business orientated but at the same time the advice is broad enough that it can be applied across many life areas – and even if one topic isn’t directly relevant, he’s funny enough that the podcast is still worth listening to.

I think it’s fair to say that I missed the internet far more than it missed me…

Still, we had a nice low-key day. It would have been easy to have gone out and do something special as a distraction, but that wouldn’t really have been the point of the exercise. So we had a nice normal day pottering about, just without any screen entertainment.

Akra Jr has even told me to keep hold of the signs in case we decide to do it again some day.

TV still went on the moment he was back from school today, though! Oh well.

I’ve set up a flickr set of our day, and it can be found here, for those who are interested what we got up to (and how Akra evilly cheated).

It has been a week of sickness and lethargy. Which has meant excessive TV, gameboys and Nintendo Wii use.

Despite making sure that some fresh air and daylight was had, it became obvious that we’d gone a bit overboard this afternoon when Akra Jr had a complete meltdown due to R2D2 getting stuck on some steps in Lego Star Wars.

Violent sobbing and frustration ensued and it took me a good few minutes to calm him down enough to be even semi-coherent.

Me: Well I think this has at least proved that we’ve over-dosed on screen time. That’s it, I’ve had enough … tomorrow will be a totally screen-free day.
Akra Jr: NOOOOOO! You’re just being mean!
Me: No, I’m not. I mean it. We’ve all become grumpy, obnoxious and argumentative and I’ve had enough. It’s just one day. You’ll cope. [pause] I’ll do it too.
Akra Jr: remember, mummy … that means NO computer for YOU!

Argh. What have I done?

Somehow, Akra has declared himself exempt. Some spurious excuse of a major deadline looming.

But for the rest of us, tomorrow the computers, television and gameboys are banished. A whole 24 hours where we’ll have to make up our own entertainment and rediscover our imaginations.

It’ll be good for us, honest.

We’re doomed.

See you Monday.

(The ipod doesn’t count as a screen…. right?)