Hard work makes me Lawn

Well it has been a boring couple of days blog wise - I spent them mostly editting but I am quite pleased as I managed to finish this job in just three days and, unlike the previous one which took two weeks and I loathed every aspect of the finished product, I am really pleased with this one.

I did take a couple of breaks though - yesterday I weeded the area where the pond used to be, clearing away the weeds that came across with the bags of soil from her new garden. Today about 5.30 I decided to tackle the lawn - 6.50 I finally finished. In that time I uncovered 5 lots of dogs poo that had hidden in the masses, 2 dog toys, one empty packet of crisps that I suspect Thai nicked from the bins and hid out there, 1/2 of a pool noodle, emptied the grass collector 18 times and sweated approximately 20 buckets of moisture!

But as you can see, before it was a long untidy lumpy mess...

so the short untidy lumpy mess that it has become is quite a relief.

Sherb particularly likes it as now when I throw the ball, it lands and either rolls or bounces, instead of just stopping dead as it was doing.

It was such hard work, it turned my feet green.

We have apples on our apple tree at the moment - best keep an eye on them or the monster will eat them and then it ain't pretty.

This would have been a picture of a bee, but Thai had other ideas.

I also had a couple of good bits of news today - the cheque came through (minus excess) from the car insurance and as of friday our mortgage will move to our new mortgage company. Yay!

A good turn

I bit of a disorganised day today - I had intended to work all day but I slept in late (for once the monsters didn't bark - actually they have been doing well on that front all week). I then walked the monsters and saw a gorgeous heron by the pond - I tried to take pictures but sherb was doing his best to be a pain so they weren't great. It was quite an overcast morning - grey skies but no rain.

It was very quiet down the park, even the ducks were sleepy.

I then had to go and get a new keyboard as I killed yet another one by knocking my drink into it. I got a "spill-resistant" one so hopefully this one will last longer.

I then headed to asda to replace the trousers that I broke the zip on the other day (long story) and the stopped at KFC to grab some lunch. As I was headed back to the car there was a young asian guy in a red car that wouldn't start. I mention the color cos I know JJ will ask me what type pf car it was and it was the RED type OK?. Anyway, as our car history is spotty at best I know well the sound of a car with a dead battery, so offered to give him a jump. To my intense enjoyment, he had never jumped a car before so didn't know how to do it - for once I was able to tell a man about cars! Not the easiest thing ever as the battery in the van in under the drivers seat, so we had to roll the car back a bit so that the leads would reach.

Once we got it going we soon realised that his battery is completely dead was I re-jumped it and sent him on his way. As I drove off, it sounded wrong and I realised that I had left the side door open a little - I had major problems opening it as the door panel had popped off the inside and stopped the door from closing BUT I also couldn't open it properly so it took ages to get it sorted. Once I got home, I had cold KFC and wilted salad - it was still quite yummy though as I was starving.

I had thought to hook the new wireless keyboard up to the laptop as the power cable is dodgy and the battery died years ago and so I wanted to be able to sit the laptop on the table beside me and type and use the mouse without the laptop dying every two mintues. However, the software wouldn't work as the laptop didn't have service pack 2, so it took an hour to update to the latest service pack and then another 1/2 hour to install the software. THEN I hook the USB thingy up to the USB port and the bit inside the USB port snapped off. This seems to be what my life is like at the moment! So I then hooked it up to my computer and ti works and it is great!
Anyway it is now 5.00 so rather than start so late I hung out the washing (the weather is gorgeous this afternoon - really sunny) and sat down to watch Dick Tracy which I haven't seen before. It is amusing but not brilliant, however I just LOVE Glenne Headly - her voice is just adoreable! Anyway, I am still waiting for JJ to call - he rang earlier when I was walking the dogs and I haven't heard from him since.

As an aside, Unca Ghastly has put out a new vid on youtube - it made I larf.

Disgraceful behaviour in public

Spoke to JJ several times today - he is a having a miserable time in switzerland, but spen tthe afternoon shopping so perked up a bit and his Dad is giving us a DVD player that he doesn't want - we wanted to replace our cheapo one as it doesn't have multiregion functionality and a lot of our DVD's are from the US.

I editted all day and I think Mum and Dad are concerned that I am wasting away without JJ so Dad suggested we go out for Chinese food. After a huge debate about where we would meet and go we decided to the chinese in Godalming. We phoned ahead to book and had no problem getting a table and it soon became obvious why - their diary was open and we were the only booking for the night! There were about 5 tabes full the whole evening - a shame as the food was great. I disgraced myself by dropping my bowl towards the end of the evening. Dad amazed us all by knowing who pinky and the brain were (K protested this fact for ages) and general hilarity was had (much, I think, to the disgust of the other people in the restuarent). All in all, it was a really good meal.

Eventually we headed home.

A long day

This morning JJ flew out to Frankfurt. We left early to get him to the airport through the rush hour traffic, only to get there very very early for his flight. We dropped his bags and had a very pleasant breakfast in the airport before sending him through the security to see his Dad. We are slightly worried as about a week ago, his Dad called, explained he wanted to give JJ power of attorney over his accounts, but wouldn't say why. We suspect that he worse (he has been ill for a while) and has been told to put his affairs in order but for some reason won't tell us.

Later K turned up and we watched a film (it was so unimpactful I can't remember what we watched) and then we went to see the new Harry Potter film. It was brilliant, far better than the book which was one of the weaker ones I think but there were a couple of things I didn't like. Poor Cho didn't get an apology which seemed a bit harsh and also they never explained the arch that poor Sirus fell through which, as it had been quite a while since I read the book, was a bit hazy for me. Also this seemed to make Sirus definitely dead, when the book seemed to leave the question of if he was really dead open. I also didn't like the final confrontation with Voldemort, it just seemed spectacular but contrived and false, for example, conveniently the rest of TOOP conveniently didn't seem to notice the battle going on in the next room, despite having yelled after Harry as he ran out, until right at the end.

But all in all, I really liked Luna and if I weren't straight I would jump Tonks bones right this second! And watching the film now knowing what happens in the last book adds another layer of poignancy.

Volvo revisited

Good news! The insurance people have let us know how much money they are giving us for the volvo and it is pretty exactly double what we had bargined on so, after buying the van, we are only about a grand down now. Come then everyone HAPPY DANCE!

I took the monster to Lily Hill Park which I haven't been to in AGES. And they have added a bunch of sculptures to the park which I haven't seen before. Sherb posed.

Getting home I realised that one the sunflowers that Ryan (my nephew) had given me, was flowering! Amazing bearing in mind my ability to kill plants just by thinking about them. And it is a wonderful red color, I haven't seen a red sunflower before and didn't believe him when he told me!

When John got home he was desperate for something sweet, so under the pretext of spending some quality time with me, he opened the chocolate scrabble. I won but there was some dispute, that took a while to sort out.

The chocolate was disappointingly cheap so John gave it to me and, hey, chocolate is chocolate.

Mourning

OK - it took me longer than I thought, as we had people over all weekend and I couldn't ignore them, but I finished it. That is right. The last in series. Over and Done. No more Harry. No more Hermione. No more Ron.

AND IT ROCKED!

BEST book of the series - had me sobbing uncontrolably while my hubby looked on a bit bemused and I am going to read it again ASAP BUT I think this time I will read the previous 6 books first in a Potterathon.

Having said all that, I am truely heart broken that the series is finished. JK Rowling deserves every penny of the money she got for this truely splendiferous series.

Rain and Cars

We have had a bit of tooing and froing with the volvo, first being told it would be written off, then told they would repair it and finally yesterday they told us they were definately going to write it off which is a result as we have already bought the VW.

It has been raining for ever (or so it seems) - certainly the only good weather that we had was the weekend of Tewkesbury, which is now pretty much cut off by flooding. Today the rain finally eased off around lunch time and the sun came out and it was gorgeous so I set out for the park with the monster. When I got there, this is what I found:

So once Sherb had ambled round the park, and pootled in the shallows, I headed back to the house to get Thai and grabbed my camera. Thai LOVED it and dashed around like a maniac while kids played in the water too. At one point we wandered along the tree line and Thai fell in the ditch and, despite the fact that her head was above water, she began to panic. So I had to wade in and rescue her and I ended up SOAKED.Luckily the weather was SO gorgeous it wasn't cold and I wandered round for a bit longer before finally ambling home. It was one of those werid occurances that was just magical and the lake was gone by the next day.

Sherbie recovers

Sherb had his stitches out today and I have to say that it is AMAZING how well he has healled this time round. There has been no redness very little swelling and he has had very little discomfort compared to the previous instances - I am a very happy bunny. Even the vet was impressed by how well he had healed and how good he was looking. He likes Sherb and always says he is one of the few German Shepherds that he would trust to take out stitches without muzzling him and Sherb has never so much as nared his teeth at him, despite being in huge pain in the past with his bottom.

Dissapointing end...

We had arranged to meet Ben and the kids and go on the battlefield walk in the morning, but we over slept and my head ache was still there so I opted to go get some breakfast and then head home. This decision was augmented by the fact that my shoulders and face could been seen from space as a bright shining red blaze. Firefighters kept being called in to try and put me out. So we drove home and, despite a small detour, we had quite a good run - very little traffic unlike the other direction. When we got home we split the stuff in the van between Kris's car and the house and then she headed off, while I slept on the sofa curled up with my hubby.

SO Tired

OK Carrying on some time later so this may not be very accurate as my memory is appaulling though I'm sure my sister will let me know if I get it wrong. Next morning we felt better despite appearances...

... and the most uncomfortable bed EVER!!!! We vowed to put the inflatable mattress on top of the futon mattress for the next night.

We pop on our jeans and popped to the pub that we were camped behind for breakfast. They did a very passable cooked brekkie and we felt a lot more human after it. We vowed to drink more water today and filled bottles with squash and then got changed.

We ambled round to meet Cas, Ben and the kids and wandered via a shorter rout than last night, up to the field. I had wanted to hear the druid blessing and the fayre opening but they hadn't finished eating breakfast so we missed it. Kristy gave the girls a masterclass in poi'ing while we waited for the washing up to be done.

We ambled round the fair looking at the stalls and at some point got parted from Cas so it was just Ben, Me Kristy and one of the kids. Kris bought a basket for a pittance - it needs cleaning up but looked nicely authentic.





As you can see, Kris was wandering round as a lady of the night as I had her Coif and she was going to buy a new one but didn't see one that she liked unti the second go round.
Having had a quick look at the stalls we headed to the beer tent and watched the dark morris for a bit before entering the tent for a quick cider. Kristy carried on teaching poi's to the girls.
This is the only photo I manged to get of the girls poiing as they were very camera shy.



Finally we managed to find a coif for Kris - not one ofthe more expensive ones but far better quality than most and we sat at the "druid's garden" - a bunch of pots and a fence with flowers and dreamcatchers woven in.




After another wander around, and Kristy whinging the whole time about how it wasn't as good as last year and not really wanting to do anything, I insisted we go see the battle. I really enjoyed it, though it did go on a bit and would have been far more enjoyable if the tannoy had been working properly so we could have heard what was going on! I took loads of photos but this is just a few :

It was unbelievably hot and so we wandered back to the van to rehem the damn kirtle and get kristy some trousers for under her skirt and then headed to see the "beheading". Unfortunately, I had got the time wrong and they had already left so we decided to wander down to the town to see if we could catch up and see the medieval compline in the Abbey. When we got to the Abbey there so no sign of the angry we mob and it wasn't long until compline started so we decided to go into the abbey and wait. I am so glad we did - it was calm and cool in there and you could definately identify with a medieval peasant, awed by the magnifacnce of the Abbey. I had a slight probably bought on by heatstroke as both Kristy and I were looking a trifle pink, despite the sub screen we had slathered on previously. As we sat, resting our poor feet and fighting against dozing off, the sun began to set and turning the whole church and particularly the church ceiling, the most gorgeous golden hue. In the peace of the church we heard the hue and cry outside of the beheading (must have been round the back of the abbey) and then medieval peasants and lords quietly filed in, filling the abbey.

Very soon after, the monks filed in and then compline began. It was beautiful, the golden glowing abbey combined with the serene singing was enough to move me to tears a couple of times. Almost enough to inspire me to religon, but I think god himself would have to put in an appearance before that happens. Having said that, Kristy and I before felt both physically (due to the sit down) and spiritually refreshed when the service finished and we almost relucantly left for the walk back to the field for some food.

On the walk back, we spotted what looked like a shrew in the bush - I tried to get my camera off my belt to take a photo so we could identify it, but I couldn't undo the knot quick enough and a few people came along on their bikes, scaring it off. We wandered for a bit to get some food and got a text from Cas saying "We are at ades tent - got chocolate cake. We didn't know who Ade was so sent one back saying we were by the beer tent, eating, and when would they be down? Having finished our jackets pots etc I suddenly realised that ades uses the same keys on a mobile as beer so we had a quick wander round and soon spotted them. Luckily they had kept us some chocolate cake and we sat and drank lots of fuilds, in Kriss case cider in mine water as my headache was getting worse. The bands weren't very good (it was open mic due to some contraversy regarding the band from the previous year) so after a while, when it was getting dark, we headed off home to Ben's tent to chat - my headache was awful but it didn't prevent me from trying the strawberry vodka and vowing to make my own on the way home.

We headed to bed to try and sleep off my headache.