Well two good things today - My sister got her first ever A in an exam so happy dancing all round. And then she came over to see me and we carved pumpkins - I did a silouette of zero (from the Nightmare before Christmas) flying past the moon and kristy did a funky face.
Well my sister, K, and I just had the BEST day our EVAR! We went to Thorpe Park earlier in the year and they had a special offer that if you paid £10 at the time, you could get in again another day. We were running out of time before the end of the season and we also had to take a picture. This particular picture was in honor of my cousin in Oz's wedding which most of the family can't make it out to. My mum thought it would be a great idea for us to all take piccies holding best wishes signs and make it into a poster to send out with my Nan and Grandad (who fly out soon to see them). So my sisters inspired idea was to take signs on a ride and then buy the picture. And here is our effort:
And the finished item:
Anyway, it was the best day out I have had for a long time as the kids were back to school so the longest we ever had to queue was about 10 minutes (annoyingly for the crapest ride) and most rides we walked straight onto. K will tell you, I was completely pathetic on the Slammer ride - basically a giant seesaw affair which goes all the way over the top - and was heard to say "I don't liiiikeeee thiiissssss" while on it. (It was horrible because it is quite slow so there is no centrifugal force to press you back against your seat so you are basically hanging against the restraints. I don't mind speed but I don't like having to rely on the safety processes as the whole time my brain is going, "what is there is a bolt loose? It was constructed by humans and they are ffallible")
Anyway, all in all and great day!
OK for some reason I can't add photos today - I will add 'em later!
I forgot to say in my last epic post, we had a bit of good news. The planning application for the peice of land behind our house has been turned down again. Good news as it means we won't be going from being overlooked by nothing to being overlooked by 6 windows and 8 balconys! Also, one of the objectors to the plans wants to buy the plot and restore the house that is already there so hopefully that will happen instead of a block of flats being there instead. Of course, we just have to find out what happens to the appeal for the original planning permission now.
OK so yesterday evening was just plain strange. We didn't go to bed untilt he early hours of the morning as John has holiday at the moment. I went to bed first and read my book for a bit (Terry Jones Barbarians, in case you are interested which is very good) and John stayed downstairs reading and watching TV for a while. Eventually I yelled down the stairs threatening him with nasty things if he didn't come to bed and, after popping the dogs to bed, up he trudged. I waited while he pootled round in the bathroom etc. and then he ambled in and said "I just saw a ghost".
I was a bit taken aback at this for two reasons - firstly neither him nor I believe in such things (though I will be damned if I will walk through a graveyard at night) and secondly, I was expecting him to moan about being made to come to bed. So this is what he told me...
He was coming up the stairs to bed and saw something move in the bathroom, heading behid the door. He thought it was he hiding waiting to jump out on him (something that I am known to do at regular intervals) and so when he got to the door he said "HA" and pushed it back hard to squish me. At that moment the resistance gave way and the door banged against the wall. The resistance had been created by the stool that we keep in the bathroom and it had popped out from behind the door when he pressed harder. John was convinced that he saw something in the bathroom before he got to the door though.
Of course this morning in the cold light of day he insists that he never thought it was a ghost and he is likely right as behind our house there is a street light which shines through the trees and so casts shadows into the bathroom and it is most likely that was the movement and the increased pressure on the door popped the stool out. Also, this is upstairs in a relatively newish house which, to my knowledge, has never had any deaths in it (unless Iain and Michelle next door need to come clean to us) that is sited on land that (again to my knowledge) was part of a large estate which hasn't been built on before, which was not a cemetery or in any way hauntable (except maybe by the spirits of squirrels). This however did not stop me sleeping with the duvet tucked right up round my ears though...
... and this leads on to the second werid things of the evening. Due to being WAY too hot while I was sleeping, I had the weridest, most vivid dream.
It started that Mum, Dad, my sister, my fiance (who was a man I didn't know) and I were doing a fete stall so we turned up at a big hall with our stuff and on the wall was a diagram saying the position of each stall. However, our stall isn't on there and, when we find the organisers they say if we aren't on the diagram we will have to set up in the garden. So we go out in the garden and it turns out to be my Mum's garden and we start to set up our stall. Sherbert is there but he is tiny, the size of a cat, and curled up in a ball like a fox. And while we are setting up a big, bullet-headed man comes over and starts hassling my sister, the whole tap rapping instead of talking. Eventually he starts to slap her around so I step in and start to fight this man and he is rapping the whole time. I then, during a pause in the fighting, and compliment him on his rapping, telling he should be doing it professionally cos he is really good (I don't remember if he was any good or if I just was trying to appease him). With that he says "Do you really think so? Right you are going to marry me" and grabs me and marches me off across the fields and a river to a train station (none of which are near my Mum's actual garden) and my fiance follows. We get on the train and the carriages were only seperated by curtains.
Now the man is making polite conversation and I am going along with it, trying to keep him happy and each time I annoy him for whatever reason he slaps me. My fiance put his head through the curtain and mouths at me to run and he will stop the man holding me. But it doesn't work, my fiance is a bit useless and misses and the man grabs me and ties me up then goes into the next carriage and kills my fiance.
We are going through amazing scenery with lots of people around us -sometimes we are going past a giant mine with lots of people working it by hand and there are lots of people around and I think they were slaves but I don't know how I knew this. I knelt up on the seat to better look at the scenery. As I do I realise that an asian woman and her daughter are in the seat in front of us and I lean over and start tracing letters out on my hand asking for help. The asian woman is sypathetic but doesn't seem to realise that if she talks the man could hear here so I keep on having to shush her up. She leaves the carriage to phone the police (for some reason the cutains are soundproof) and the mans phone rings. It is his pysciatrist and he talks to him for a while and then hands the phone to me saying he needs to talk to me. The pysciatrist is a recorded message repeating things with very little meaning and there is no sense to what he says and he hangs up mid sentence.
The asian woman then returns and asks what the pscaitrist had said and also lets me know that the poice will be waiting at the station. The station we are going to is called the pier and it is in the middle of shops. As we pull up, there is a kind of cut scene and suddenly I am in a room that is dark with electricity arcing and a contraption which is loads of thick wires that plug into the back of one a mans skull. He disconnects it and I suddenly realise that there are eight people in the room, all dresses like Switch from the matrix but with fur coats. There are 4 in white, 4 in black and each member of the black team is a clone of their corresponding member in the white team. The fourth member of each team is like a living, organic version of the anubis guards from stargate. The leader of the troup grabs a tablet from the machine and swallows it, saying that he now knows the plan - they are to approach the train and let the man holding me see that they are coming, he will react violently and in the firefight this will give them a chance to kill me.
I am then back on the train, but I have changed - I have red frizzy hair and makeup like Pris from Blade runner (do you think I watch way to much science fiction?!) and in a white PVC raincoat which came down to mid thigh and red high heels. We are getting off the train and I see the people walking towards us through the crowd and all hell breaks loose when my captor sees them. I manage to get behind a pillar and then sneak off while they are dealling with him - I am almost past them when they spot and surround me. I suddenly have two machine guns and I spin round in a circle shooting them. Two are too fast and dash off to make a sandwich and then come back (while I am still shooting) and kick my leg (I don't know why I am standing on one leg) causing me to bite on the wodden dowel that I suddenly have in my mouth. I swallow a chunk of it and they laugh saying that it will sufocate and their work is done and they leave.
I crawl away through the shopping center and into the Royal College of Surgeons. There are hundreds of doctors dressed in period dress sat on really long pews in a huge cathedral like room. Stephen Fry runs up and says, "Oh my dear, what have you done?" I tell him what happened and that I am sufocating and ask if he can heal me but he declines to help saying he isn't a doctor. Then Peter Davidson comes dashing round the edge of a pew and, once he is filled in, tells me to lay down on the pew and he will help. He then tries to put me under anethestic by hitting me on the head with a walking stick but Stephen stops him and suggests hypnotism. So I am wake and aware but not feeling pain when he removes the wooden dowel. He then checks me over and finds I have a cracked skull so cuts open my scalp and pops a bit of metal that was in his pocket in to reinforce it. He then sews me up which for some reason makes my hair longer.
As I am coming back to full awareness another doctor wanders up and says that she has called my captors psyciatrist to let him know that I am there. I scream at here and tell everyone to leave because they will be coming to kill me and them and then...
... John nudges me to tell me to wake up.
Bleeding annoying as I would love to know what was going to happen!
So we have just finished watching season 2 of Lost. We were a little behind everyone else as, having bought season one through NTL so watching the whole lot over a couple of evenings I was loathe to watch the second season once a week. So finally the DVD set came out last week and we have watched them all, finishing finally tonight with the bonus features.
All I can say is "Wow!" maybe mixed with a bit of HUH?! We have gone through various theories - my favorite was purgatory however apparently the creators have debunked that. The next theory is aliens being involved and possibly this is supported by the four toed statue or colossus. Some of the backstory has been filled with the "Lost Experience" but I wasn't aware of this so missed things unfolding. Youtube and wikipedia however have nicely filled me in though. The thing is it not only answers some questions, but it raises SO many more!
I am sat here trying to update this, while John sits beside me making farty noises on his chest - I am soooo blessed!
OK so firstly I have not posted in ages - I keep on meaning to but then someting will come up and it just gets pushed to one side. So anyway, we have only played two games of scrabble since I last wrote, one which John won (after much cheating) and one which I won (despite John's cheating) so the status quo (this was one of the cheaters words) is maintains. If you are interested in the actual scores so far, you can see them at Johns site.
In the meantime I have been knitting up a storm and have a number of completed bits and still more WIP's on the needles. My latest finished project is a dinosaur/dragon for my sister. I started with Jean Greenhowe dinosaur which the plan was to add wings from her terodactyl and the dorsal ridge of her other dinoasaur and then TA-DA there would be a dinosaur. However, this did not go exactly according to plan. First og all the initial pattern I started adapting I *think* that the pattern for the leg is wrong but I can't say for sure as I am not a great knitter. I then try again with a different pattern and it knits up fine. I make it up and them sew the face on and was a little disappointed as I realised, in the middle of the dino's back, there was an error (I think I increased one too many times) so to cover this up I made a little man, a dragon rider if you will, based on the little cavemen that Jean Greenhowe designed to go with the dinos. I then put the face on the dino and it ended up looking a little... um... well not right. BUT I soldiered on and sewed the dragonrider on to the back of the mentally challenged dragon. It wobbled.... I gave up and put it to one side in digust and vowed never to mention it to my sister.
Until...
... on friday Kristy, John and I went to Jongleurs (just getting there is a story in itself) and we got a tad tipsy while wathcing the comedians and eating greasy food. (As an aside, the first comedian started badly but got better, the second wasn't really my cup of tea, and the final was very good). And, once I had got my reprobate hubbie and sloshed sister back to the house, I, in a moment of stupidity say "Look what I made for you!". Kristy agrees that it doesn't look like the brightest dragon ever but seems to like it so all is OK and then I show her the book I got it out of to show her what it should have looked at and she falls in love with the frogs. Next morning, we are eating our hangover cure fry up and so I quickly knit her one, so then she wants it sewn onto the dinos head. So we now have a mentally challenged dino, with a frog on his head who is the brains of the outfit and a weeble on his back. Weridest cuddly toy I have ever seen.... Anyway, here are some piccies of Randolf the frog, Bog the dragon and Root the weeble. Oh and Kristy...
John and I have just watched a program by Danny Wallace called "Chimps are People too" looking at the similarities and differences between Chimps and Us. It was typical Wallace fayre - good but not brilliant and amusing rather than educational. Having said that, I really enjoyed his books "Yes Man" and "Join me" which were hysterical. Anyway (I seem to be rambling somewhat) on the related website there is a test to see if you are 99.4% chimp or 100% human and I came out chimp! So no suprise there then...
Finally, here is a quick piccy of my gorgeous boy, as I rearranged the lounge the other day so that his den is away from the radiator as he gets too hot over the winter when the heating is on and he was a bit disconcerted by the change.
