Make your lives extraordinary

I’m sure we all get that feeling of being stuck in a rut and after another weekend nearly over with me doing very little (or at least it feels like very little) I do wonder if I am living life to its full potential?

Of course when not it work it is nice to just be able to relax and people can relax in many different ways – you don’t have to actually do anything. I think my problem is that I have once again set myself a routine (every Sunday I sleep later than normal and when I wake up I will do some cleaning and take the rubbish out, then a spot of shopping and to my mothers for dinner).

Nothing wrong with this but sometimes it can be nice to just be spontaneous. I was driving through Llanelli yesterday and could see clearly over to the north Gower coast, part of me was thinking of stopping somewhere so that I could take some photos – I did not stop as I figured I would stop another time to take the photos but what if tomorrow never comes?

I have take a copy of my outstanding 101 things and will be looking through that and making an effort to finish off that project – more than TWO years after it should have ended!

Thought for the week:- carpe diem

My 33rd Birthday

I am not sure how many people would choose to spent their birthday, I decided to climb a mountain and not just any mountain but the highest mountain in Wales – Mount Snowdon.

Set off from Carmarthen at 6.30am for the journey north and arriving in Llanberis at around 10.30am. The original plan was to use the Snowdon Mountain Railway to travel up to the summit and to take in the views get a few photographs and have a bite to eat before beginning the decent down on foot.

When we got to the station in Llanberis they had just put up a sign to advise that all the trains for that day were fully booked – if I had considered this that I might have pre booked some tickets. With no chance of being able to get on the train if there were any spare seats we decided to walk to the summit.

The walk from the train station to the start of the Llanberis walk (which is the longest but easiest) was easy enough then the ascent began and not being the most healthy person in the world I will readily admit that I found the going tough – this when still walking on tarmac roads. We soon turned off the road on to a path and the ongoing walk upwards.

As I was walking up I could see the trains going past and how I envied those lucky people being carried up to the summit. A lot of the way I was actually staring down at my feet as I walked as I found I was able to travel more ground instead of actually having to look at how far I had to go.

Stopped for a break at the Halfway House (halfway point) and was told that the ascent was a lot tougher at this point, and that it would take another couple of hours. I had also in the distance seen the trains going up the side of the mountain and the path that I would have to walk on to get to that point, However I pushed on hoping to get just a little further up Snowdon.

Summit of Snowdon

What seemed like a nightmare I pushed onwards and upwards, my friend way ahead of me and I am not sure if this was a good thing or not – sometimes you can cover more ground if you have someone to talk to on your journey.

One thing I will say is just how friendly everyone was on the mountain by offering words of encouragement or just a simple smile.

I did not make it to the summit due to time constraints and the fact that I was mentally and physically exhausted, today while typing this with my sore feet and legs I feel dreadful that I could not push myself that little extra to get to the summit but I know that the 20 minute walk would have take me at least an hour.

After resting for about 30 minutes the decent began and my idea that this would be easy was soon forgotten it actually felt that the journey back was longer – of course it wasn’t but this time I was racing racing against the setting sun to get to the base before sunset. This meant that there were no real rest breaks on the way down.

We started the trek up at 11am and got back to the base at 10pm!

What people need to consider is that this a mountain and can be very dangerous but it appears that because it is such a well know tourist attraction people come here unprepared.

Vultures Circling

Focus the DIY store has recently gone into administration, I had heard online that they had been unable to sell the business as a going concern so all the stock was to be sold off.

Focus

Since they announced the start of the sale the car park at my local store has been jam packed, I noticed the car park at the Focus branch in Pembroke Dock was also full. Out of interest and to see what sorts of bargains they had I called into the local Focus store a few days ago and the store was just as busy as the car park.

The reductions were from 10% to about 30% and having a quick look around the shelves even with the level of discount the items were still available elsewhere cheaper.

Yet the checkouts were busier than I had seen in a long time and it is a shame that those bargain hunters had not supported the firm prior to them going into administration – it reminds me of the days when Woolworths vanished from our high streets and everyone picking at the bones.

Technical Problems

It had been about a month since my last entry and since that time the system I used to write these entries has been updated twice – during one of these updates I lost the ability to post anything. This effected all my sites which incorporate WordPress and it was only yesterday when I went to post an entry that I noticed the problem a quick search for a solution did not find anything so I took the decision to delete the database and start again.

It has worked and has also corrected the problem with the other sites, this leads me to believe that the problem was caused by the size of the database. As such the majority of the old posts held on this site will be consigned to history.

When is a bargain not a bargain?

When you buy two apparently!

I saw an offer for the 500ml bottles of Pepsi for £0.39 at my local B&M over the weekend and being such a good price I called into the store to buy a couple of bottles before heading down to the beach. On the shelve I notice that they have an offer on for two bottles for £0.80 or £0.39 each – this happens with special offers all the time in most of the major supermarkets, there would not have been a problem if I was only buying one bottle but as I was purchasing two they charged me £0.80. I was half expecting this and when I queried this price I was told that the computer systems recognised that two bottles had been scanned would have over ridden the price and in this case added an extra £0.02 on to the cost.

Surely the store could sort out this problem, how easy would it be to have the till software run a query to check which offers the customer the best deal. Or at the very least switch off the multi-buy offer for the duration of the promotion.

£0.02 does not seem a lot but if you consider the number of people who go into the shop on a daily basis and potential buy more than one bottle you can imagine the extra money being made.

In my case they cancelled the sale and had to put each bottle in separately, so that I could pay the £0.39 each. I did enquire how often this happened and was told that most people don’t notice or don’t want to cause a fuss or delay others who are queuing.

So my advice always check you are paying what you should for goods.