They being very spoiled dogs, whenever I've gone away in the past I've always had someone they know come and live in my (their) house so they have very little disruption. Asking my parents to actually move home for a while to look after my dogs when I'm away seemed a bit much so I thought, in order to satisfy my own mind, I'd let Mia and Chloe go and stay at my Mum and Dad's house for a 'test' run.

We set the date.

Mia came in season.

Mission aborted.

Waited for Mia to come out of season….set the date….

….Chloe came in season.

Those two dogs – clearly – understand what's going on and they're deliberately scuppering all attempts for this mission to be a success! ]]> http://www.ryanomeara.com/the-downside-to-owning-female-dogs/feed/ 2 http://www.ryanomeara.com/id-like-to-have-a-loft-conversion/ http://www.ryanomeara.com/id-like-to-have-a-loft-conversion/#comments Sat, 31 Jul 2010 20:39:09 +0000 Ryan http://www.ryanomeara.com/id-like-to-have-a-loft-conversion/ So we recently had a bit of a clear out and a tidy up and that lead to me having to put a load of old paperwork and files up in the loft.

Normally I’m only ever in the loft to get down or put back the Christmas decorations and I find I’m either too excited or too depressed to really notice what’s in my loft or how it spans pretty much the entire area of my house. On this recent visit to the loft though, I had a good look around and thought how cool it would be to have a really stylish / trendy loft conversion.

I absolutely LOVE the open brickwork type conversions but saw this image on south london loft conversions that looked like some sort of medieval castle type affair and thought how cool it would be to have a normal house, but a stairway to the loft, unveiling a totally different style of room – like something out of a Knights of the Round Table era castle.

I absolutely love the Kindle. It’s so unimpressive to look at, but it’s awesome.

I have long since believed the Amazon Kindle will do for books what the iPod did for music – it just makes too much sense that there will be a digital revolution of the written word the same way there was with sound.

To order the Amazon Kindle in the UK, you actually have to go to the Amazon website in the USA. But don’t let that put you off!

This widescreen Kindle is going to be distributed in the United Kingdom and if you haven’t yet taken the plunge, this would be the model to go for.

I honestly can’t say enough good things about the Kindle (it’s got a good competitor in the B&N Nook e-Reader – you can find out more about buying the Nook in the UK) but for me, Amazon’s range of books is such a strong selling point that it’s impossible to ignore.

Go get your own Amazon Kindle, you won’t regret it (I promise!)

I go in to training for Christmas. By that I mean, I start to dramatically reduce my food intake and increase my exercise in the run up, purely and simply because I intend to indulge.

When I see a bowl of sweets, I’m grabbing a fistful. When I see a plate of mince pies, I’m having two. Hell, I’ll even eat Christmas cake and I don’t even like it.

Any way, here is my patented Christmas over-indulgence recipe.

I think I shall call it my Christmas Coronary Concoction.

You get yourself a large (very wide) wine or brandy glass. It needs to be big.

Squirt a hearty dose of chocolate sauce in to start.

Next, you get four After Eight mints, place them in the chocolate sauce and smash them up in to a goo.

Next you load in your ice cream – I pick a high quality vanilla but NOT Hagen Daz, no thanks!

Don’t fill to the top with ice cream, you need to leave room.

Next you get four Oreo cookies, smash em up and crumble them on to the ice cream.

Handful of M&Ms (the nut ones) – but you can sub with Smarties, if you like.

Now, the kicker…

Get two brandysnaps – insert a finger of Twix in to each (Twix fingers fit perfectly in to brandysnaps, it’s like they were made to measure), plonk your brandysnaps in to the icecream and eat.

All in all, probably too many calories to measure – but so what. A couple of thousand extra press-ups and sit-ups in New Year will remind you how good it was.

They are, to my mind, in the must read category and should be compulsory reading for young people as soon as they’re ready to understand the principles. My only regret is that I didn’t read them earlier.

1) The Richest Man in Babylon by George. S. Clason.

The take away:- Take 10% of EVERYTHING you earn (everything, no matter what your financial predicament at the time) and make it work for you. If you read this book and don’t take away that single, powerful message – ask for a refund for the book shop, because they gave you the wrong book!

2) The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham.

The book that the world’s most successful investor cites as his favourite book on investing shouldn’t be ignored. So I didn’t. Once read, I completely changed my strategy from trading to value investing. Is it paying off? I don’t know, I’ve not even looked at my portfolio for a while! Which is, kind of, the point. I’m in for the long term rather than the zero sum game of wins v losses. In 10 years, I think I’ll be up

It was such a big deal. Like, really a big deal.

It didn’t fall short either. The hype was worthy.

But how, in these days of media saturation, overnight celebrity and more brand launches in a week than you used to get in a year, could someone replicate the buzz, the anticipation and the execution of something like the Thriller video?

When you can go online and literally see ANYthing, from real human executions to skateboarding dogs, is it ever possible to have something truly massive, momentous and awe inspiring in pop culture in this millennium?

No matter what I can think of, regardless of how far I allow my mind to stretch as to what someone could try to do to blow my mind, I keep thinking ‘meh’.