Whilst I don’t have any problems changing between the Canon camera and the Nikons, when I try to take a photo on the Fujis it just never seems to turn out quite as I was expecting it to. Oh, the menus are different for sure but the cameras are basically set up for point and shoot so you’d think that would work quite well. Still, at least it makes Wendy’s camera hers and mine, mine

These days though the likes of Mopar performance parts offer a massive range of surprisingly affordable parts for lots of cars. The scrap yard option is, of course, still there but realistically I suspect that most people just find it a depressing waste of time these days.

These days, of course, office furniture is much more varied and generally needs to be updated too which is a nuisance. Not so long ago everyone ran with desktops so “computer desks” needed somewhere to put that tower not to mention a monster of a monitor. These days many people stick to laptops even in the office but even for those that don’t the towers are a whole lot smaller and that monster monitor is now an even larger flat screen.

There’s not even so much need for those filing cabinets these days as more and more documents move online. So, for example, the human biology course that I’m currently doing comes with course books on paper but also downloadable copies of them (how long will such dual production continue, I wonder?).

You still need that nice chair though. Probably a heavier duty one as we’ve all become a whole lot heavier over the years!

What’s maybe a little more surprising is the sheer number of sandles, shorts and sunglasses that you get through over here. The snag is, of course, that these things aren’t usually designed for long term wear so you end up having to look towards more sturdy items such as Dansko sandals rather than the usual cheapo makes that everyone buys.

A bit of a nuisance in some ways but a nice indication of the weather that we usually get over here

Just a few months ago Circuit City added its own name to that roll and with it disappears 60 years of trading history. Unfortunately, in todays economic climate it proved to be just too difficult to maintain its own unique brand of trading and despite massive efforts to save the business and to sell it on, it’s gone from the highstreet.

However, with each substantial loss comes gains for others in the same areas of activity and whilst there’s no obvious highstreet chain taking up the slack some of the internet retailers have tried to pull in business that would previously have gone in the direction of Circuit City.

Although it’s good to see that others can benefit from these losses it’s still sad to see so many famous names disappearing.

However, the toys that they see on the adverts themselves aren’t the only thing altering their desires in terms of toys as many of the programmes themselves are end to end product placements and merchandising. Probably the worst of these at the moment is Hanna Montana which is probably the largest advertisement that the world has ever seen. I can side-step that particular one as I’ve just got boys but given the success that it’s seen I’m sure that there’s a similar effort planned for little boys too.

What you do need of course is a balance in the toys that you get. Thus you don’t want to be ending up buying only computer games for example. Ideally you should end up with a mix of indoor and outdoor toys, a mix of educational and purely fun ones, etc. Hard to achieve certainly but it’s worth keeping that idea of a balance in your mind when you’re out looking for them.

A few years ago that would have been a sign that the shops in question were just pulling your leg and that there wasn’t a proper sale on at all but these days running a sale seems to be the only way that many shops can find to really pull in the customers. And they need to these days as the normal volume of goods being sold just isn’t enough to keep many shops going.

All to the good for us consumers, of course, but ironically one of the best signs that we could all have is if the number of shops running sales went down as that would be a good indication that we were starting to pull out of this recession.

As always they’re promoted very heavily online and you’ll find loads of outlets looking for your custom this year. If one outlet doesn’t have availability for the specific tickets that you’re looking for then check out some of the others as the allocation of tickets available to each outlet varies.

However, that difference also exists in junior vocabulary too thus whereas we’d be looking for Scalectrix cars, the larger marketplace over there means that there are many trade names so it’s necessary to give the things a non-trade name and ask for Carrera slot cars for instance to cover the various trade names on offer for the things.

Although the adult vocabulary is largely converging between the two varieties, one suspects that it will take a while before the junior words and phrases converge as there’s currently next to no crossover in the advertising for them outside the big names.

We’re in the unfortunate situation of needing to move to a smaller house in the not too distant future (almost any house would be smaller than the small hotel that’s our current “house”). That means that we’re going to have to tackle several of the mountains of toys that have accumulated over the last five years that this has been our home… not something to be undertaken lightly!

Of course, there’s our own stuff that’ll need looked at too but I suspect that the mountains that junior 1 & junior 2 have created whilst we’ve been here. As with all parents, there’s a lot of stuff that we’d notionally consider them to have outgrown but as with all clear-out operations I’m sure that we’ll find a lot of favourite toys that they still can’t do without!