Happy New Year & Happy Birthday to ME!!!

Happy New Year to everybody out there in internet land, I hope you are all off to a great party and have pain killers ready for the morning after!

......and for those of you who don't know its also my 29th birthday today (31st Dec), so yay! me. I'm guessing your card to me is in the post because I have not got it yet?

Beeeeee Goooooood.

I once had an ugly ET birthday cake many years ago but the picture is back in the UK, so here is one I found on the internet..... sadly this one looks much better than mine did! :/

Peace and love for 2010!

Only a few hours until Santa gets here!!!

So its almost Christmas Day (yay!) and we are getting into the mood here in the Groves house hold, the Trees are up and twinkling, gifts are wrapped and the log fire is burning. Bring it on!!!

Me and Fee don't like to share space under

the Tree, so we have one each.

Mmmmmm warming.

The inlaws (The Lee's) have imported some goodness into DK for us to enjoys over the Xmas period, there is not enough room on this blog to show you all of it but here are a choice few pic.

Can you guess what it is yet?

It's a Duck! or it was at some point.

I tell ya, it would be impossible to be Vegetarian and married to a Chinese person!

Somehow the Lee's got this packaged and into DK without any problems, there was also some roast pork (my favorite) and some dried mushrooms and some Dumplings. Nom Nom! They also got some Bisto Gravy over to us....i'm not a fan but Fee is loving this.

Its like instant coffee granules....but meaty and brown.

In some other news, I did get some ink done the other day (yay!) but no pics just yet. I'll get some pu in the next few days, just need to figure out how best to take the pics (i'll explain all when the time comes).

Have a great day tomorrow everybody out there in internet land!

Merry Xmas!

Lots of pics but no ink.

So this should have been the post with pics of my new ink and teeth....but it's not thanks to the snow that is covering Denmark right now.

I left work early on Wednesday to get to the Dentist for my brace adjustment, sadly they called me to cancel my appointment just as I stepped off the bus! So not adjustment of wire fix until January 2010, Bugger!

So I had my ticket booked and was up early on Thursday morning ready to head off to Copenhagen on the train, sadly there was soooo much snow in this part of Denmark that my train was canceled. :( I hung around he station for over an hour while they kept delaying trains, then finally they canceld everything because the snow was really falling hard. So the snow foiled my plans again.

Outside the station in the morning.

See that big white strip of snow? Thats not road, thats

where the train tracks should be.

So after an hour + of standing in the freezing cold and having no trains I decided to head home, there were ways of getting to Copenhagen but it would have taken me hours and I ran the risk of getting stuck there. So I decided to call it quits and get warm before I lost my toes to frost bite. I called Judd and we re-arranged for the 22nd Dec.

The snow was starting to fall hard now.

The Vejle town hall and Xmas tree about to

get another layer of snow.

Cow-man feeling the cold.

Thats a nice thick frosting!

This is the view from the study room.....nice.

A little tractor arrived to help clear the street.

Even this guy's wheels were spinning

around on the ice!

Some nut-case busking in the snow!

Me attempting to get something out of the car.

Apart from the snow, me and Fee have been super busy sorting out, tidying up, moping and cleaning the whole apartment. Its been a busy and stressful two days but the place looks and feel great, so now we can relax for Xmas. :)

So Fingers crossed I will get to Copenhagen ok tomorrow (there is more snow predidcted!) and get my Cherry Blossoms filled in. It will also be my chance to give Judd and Marija their Xmas/thank you present.....a LEGO tattoo machine! (what else is a LEGO designer going to give them?) :)

It's pretty much 1:1 scale, and is rather stable to handle.

Side one.

Side two.

Marija and Judd in Minifig form with their

inks and giant machine.

Snow day!

What a day!

I guess if you live in Denmark as I do, you would have woken up to snow this morning....thick, white, cold snow covering everything. Fee's car pool buddy Carl pulled out to work from home, and so Fee decided to do the same. This turned out to be a very good idea as the roads were still un-salted and rather dangerous. There were lots of car sliding around and wheel spinning their way up hills as I walked to meet Joakim for the drive to work......and we didn't fair any better ourselves. We were stuck in a traffic Jam and it took us almost TWO hours to get to work!

Fresh think snow in the car park this

morning...no time to make a snow man, blast!

The street is now full of salty brown sludge, but it was

rather nice this morning.

So we finally get to work just about in time for our 10am meetings to find that the other attendees cant get in and the meeting is canceled. NOOOOOOO! Plus, I had to leave at lunch time to go to the dentist, so it was a rather long and wasted morning. I was as productive as I could be within those few hours but I had to run to get the bus at 12pm.

Me and my big boots in the snow.

The bus stop is basically on the edge of the forest, so you can see the

trees and plants bearing the extra weight of the cold snow.

No idea where this goes, but it still looks cold.

"Thats one cool bike"

Get it? No? High five?....to hell with you then!

While on the bus I got to thinking "who design's the textile pattens for the seats?" because they look like they got it from some kind of tropical fish that grew some fur and was then shaved for it's pelt?!?. Not the best thing to be looking at while on a long bus ride.

Yuk!

So, we are just about to pull in to Vejle when my phone rings and it's the dentist to tell me they have to cancel my appointment because my guy cant drive in because of the snow. NOOOOO! (again) So the whole morning was a bit of a waste. :(

There was however an upside to all this, I got to have a nice lunch with my great wife and chill at home a little earlier an normal....'every cloud' :)

A nice piece of graffiti I saw on the bus ride home.

Awwwww.

Mo's and Cheesecake.

Hello people of the internet!

Been trying to blog more frequently but I have been working my ass off for the past few weeks. I also needed to put in a few extra hours because it's the two days of pain coming up! I have the Dentist on Wednesday and another tattoo session on Thursday so that means time out of the office.....but you will get some pics of teeth and ink. :)

Moving on....

I totally forgot to tell you how Movenber went! It was a great success and we (the LEGO Mo-bros) raised over 6000dkk to help research into curing Prostate Cancer.

That is sooooo worth 6ooodkk!

Desparetly trying to find some time to wrap up gifts and post them to the UK, but time is running short and me and Fee are super busy. Eeek! On the upside, we are really looking forward to the Xmass break. Cant wait to chill out in-front of an open fire and eat great food with my Wife. :)

Vejle town hall in all's twinkly glory.

We visited our friends Sanne and Simon on Saturday night, not seen them in a long time. They have two very young boys so its hard for them to pop out and see the gang, so we figured we would invite ourselves over and catch up. We were in charge of desert so I knocked up a cheese cake! It was Lemon and Vanilla cheese cake (not too much Lemon, just a twist) with a creme fresh toppin that I added Hershey's Chocolate syrup too. :D

This was goooood. Nom nom.

Well thats all from me for today, keep your eyes peeled for inky Tattoo pics coming this way. But just to leave you on a happy note, here is a picture of a very cute and perfectly formed Orange that I saw at work today.

I wrongly assumed it was fake.

Sorry!

Sorry for the lack of blogging, it been MEGA busy here in the land of Nik. I'm on no less than 3 projects at the moment, so my brain is a little all over the place.

I've got a big model review (thats when me and some other designers build though the model to make sure it's up to LEGO standards) coming up on Thursday, so there is a lot of prep work that needs to be done. So much so that I stayed home today to go though the model and practise the build without people bugging me to do other stuff, which was a very good idea indeed because there is A LOT of bricks!

Big bag-o-bricks!

That may not look like much to you (thats deliberate, your not allowed to know what it is yet!) but thats a bag of over 2000 elements that I have to remember how to build. So a little practise helps when it come to the big day. Still going to be a long day Wednesday, but I hope the extra effort helps.

In other news:

The teeth have been giving me some issues, well not the teeth as such, more the rubber bands pulling them in all directions! My teeth hit each other as I bite which is damaging them, so they need to pull the bottom row in and the top row out using the power of rubber.

Look at that monstrosity in my mouth!

It's a pain (in every sense of the word) because I have to take them out every time I want to eat something, plus I have to change them daily because the bands lose their tension......but they are doing the trick because I now have an overbite. :)

Never been able to do that before!

Not much news on the Tattoo front, it's all healed now but I had to cancel my bi-weekly pain session because of the upcoming model review. My next dose of ink is on the 17th.....and yes, that is the day after I visit the dentist.....again! Another double shot of pain please!!

The wife's favorite blossom, now heal and a little hairy.

While reading the latest internal magazine at LEGO I came across some other tattoo related news which was rather unexpected. A guy by the name of Egon who works in the product safety department went and got some LEGO ink.

The artical....it's rather short at a whopping 3 questions.

There's the tat, i'll keep my opinions to myself. :/

There's the man himself, look at his happy little face.

Have to say, not seen a LEGO tattoo yet that's made me think "wow, thats cool", got some ideas for a LEGO tat myself but i'm not going to rush into anthing soon....got plenty going on as it is right now. :)

Well I best be off, lots to be getting on with....like sleeping, but just to leave you on a happy note, here is a shot of our christmas-y street as seen from our living room window.

Looks likes Santa's landing strip!

Ok, just to give you a little back story....

Tesco is a supermarket chain in the UK and it huge! They are all over the place and plan to take over the world. Denmark is next on the list.....as this film shows. :P

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfSi0D7KESk

British nom!

So we heard though the Vejle grape-vine (thanks Tamsin!) that Super-Best was selling British and American products as some sort of special promo. I deicided to pop down after work today and see what treats could be had......and I was blown away with excitement!

This is the glitzy set up for the international section in Super Best.

Classy.

Salad Cream: Not had this in a long time...nor salad come to think of it.

Hellmann's Mayo: GIVE ME A SPOON!!!

This ones not to hard to find in DK, but it's a little hit and miss so I grab it when I can.

Heinz Beanz: add toast or baked potato....nuff said.

Ambrosia Custard: Yes I can make custard, but this is a real taste of my childhood.

Branston Pickle: You CAN NOT have a cheese sandwich without it.

Cadberys Fudge: Not something I would normally buy, guess I just got

whipped up in the buying frenzy....but still tasty. :)

Cadbery's Fruit & Nut: I would fight you to the death for this.

Tetly Tea: I'm an English man...what more do you want?!

Dont get me wrong, I'm not one of those English men who go to another country and not eat their food. I like lots of Danish food (Cake!!!!) but you can't beat a good taste of home every now and again. :)