A Photo laden update

ARGH! I first wrote this update on the 20th of March, finished it and accidentally closed the window while I was trying to get it to talk to blogger so the first paragraph was all that remained, so here we go again...

I haven't updated recently with photos so here goes. Firstly, here is a picture from my sister's birthday shopping trip - we went to Old Orleans for lunch, and, realising the table clothes were paper, being messy eaters, and having a pot of crayons at our disposal, we became a little artistic.

K is just coming up to her A-levels, so if having to make decisions about university, which means having to go on Open days. Foolishly, she asked me to go with her, so off we trekked, at some UNHOLY hour of the morning, to Bangor. The trip started in fairly leisurely fashion (after we got past the closed section of the M42) and we quickly stopped for breakfast and, more importantly, coffee, as K, who was driving, has been working long hours and has started out to pick me up in the middle of the night. We stopped for coffee a few times, and, at one service station we found this ginormous hammer that had been used to construct the motorway.

Nearby, there was a circle of carved benches and a horseshoe mosaic, with a lump in the middle and I was king of the castle until deposed.

We eventually realised that we weren't going to be there on time so K then decided to drive like Evel Knievel we hanging on for dear life beside her, managing to snap a couple of piccies of the magnificent countryside.

Once we were got there, K went off on a tour of the mountainous campus and I stayed for a finance lecture which was thrilling. Once K got back, we had a presentation from a lovely New Zealand Psychiatrist, then had a coach tour of the campus housing. We then decided to amble down to the town center and see what there was to see and what there was to see was a gorgeous old pier.

We then headed home, by a different route than we had arrived by, through tunnels

and eventually decided to pull off and get something for tea in Chester, however, we didn't realise how far it was and that during the week NOWHERE was open. We ended up, in beautiful, cultural Chester, having to eat overpriced, fairly poor food in the Slug and Lettuce. Then, when we reprogrammed the garmin to take us home it took us via the longest route down tiny back roads and we of course got stuck behind a few lorrys and a hay wagon too so we didn't get home until late.

On the 3rd of March, Mum, two of my aunts and I went to the stitch and knit show. We was a little disappointing - mostly papercrafts which none of us were into, but my mum did get a great throw and a length of organza for a stole, I got some wool for my sisters blanket, Jan, a sari and Ann, cool hat. When I got home, it was a beautiful day and so I took a couple of photos which look far cooler bigger.

Couple of days later, I took the monster to the vets for his vaccinations and then headed to the post office to get a stamp. When I came back, I was greeted by this... I should really have used the polarising lens to minimise the glare but He hopped down too quick.

John has been designing his own studio lights. He completed his first prototype on March 9th and it has to be said that it isn't bad. There are a few design flaws that need to be ironed out, but all in all a good first attempt.

With light:

With Flash:

As you can see the flash gives a much flatter, more boring picture.

Can't remember where we were coming back from, but took some sunsets on the 12th.

Then later that evening...

I have tons more photos to add, but they need to be uploaded so that is it for now...

Bad but impressively epic dream...

So last night I had a nightmare that was so awful I woke up crying and it has sort of stuck with me all day. So in an effort to get rid of it before I go to sleep again, I am going to pop it down here...

It started with some giant disaster (I think it was a comet hitting the earth) where loads of people died. I dashed home to find JJ and K dead in the lounge. It had obviously happened quickly as K still had a book on her lap and JJ had the TV remote in his hand and the TV was still on, but they looked unmolested.

I thought that I would have to check on Mum and Dad, so jumped in the car and headed over there but the roads were largely blocked with dead people in the cars, so I had to walk all the way. When I got there, pretty much everyone in the village was dead except Mum, Dad and Chris (who in my dream still lived next door to my parents even though she moved our years ago). On the TV they said that the impact of the meteor (or whatever it was) was causing the atmosphere to boil away into space and that, over the course of the next 24 hours, everyone who had survived the initial impact would slowly suffocate. Chris was so upset at this and the loss of the boys that she went next door and took sleeping pills to kill herself and there was absolutely nothing we could do to convince to not do it.

While we waited to die, a bunch of about 8 or 9 astronauts walked towards us. They had worked out that, the International Space Station had enough air and supplies for 2 years and were gathering additional supplies before going back up (why they were gathering supplies in deepest darkest Surrey, god only knows). After a couple of years the world would recover and they could return. While we stood talking to them, two of them who had gone further afield for supplies were killed by something, freeing up two places on the station. They said that two of us could go with them and Mum said she didn't want to do it and would take sleeping pills like Chris to avoid the suffocation. So Dad and I sat with her while she took them and we talked to her while she fell asleep. We then put her in bed and left her to go to the station. During the launch, something happened to Dad and he was screaming and yelling and I was strapped in and I couldn't get to him, no matter what I tried, though when we arrived he seemed ok.

We had not been there long before it turned out that a lot of the food supplies had spoiled and we would have to go out and find the bodies of astronauts who had died and eat them. Dad went out on a space walk to start gathering bodies and, while he was out there I realised we had not given Mum enough sleeping pills to kill her and she would be waking up now and then would have to slowly suffocate (it didn't occur to me that she could just take more pills). I went completely berserk, screaming that I had to go back and that is when I woke up and sobbed all over a poor confused and half asleep JJ for about 1/2 hour.

There was another dream, part of the same sequence, but I have no idea how it fitted into the rest of the dream - I was in a large loft apartment with about 50 lesbians dressed as WWII wrafs, and they were script writers for the bbc and were discussing how much they liked Stephen Fry and one was saying how, when she was alive, she made a hole in the riser of the staircase so that she could watch womens ankles as they went up the stairs?! Bizarre.

Anyway, hopefully that is the end of it and I can have a good nights sleep tonight...

Doggy Calamity

Poor Thai has had a bad time of it recently - she and Sherb had a spat the other day and Thai ended up needing a stitch in her ear. Although she had to wear a cone, it was a cut off one, just to protect the back of her ear from scratching.
After a couple of visits to the vets and extending her antibiotics we then went in for what I hoped was having the stitch out but, over the weekend she had cut her foot while dashing round the garden - not bad enough for a stitch or so I thought but it wouldn't heal.

So we left with the stitch still in an a spectacular bandage on her rear foot.
So today we went back to the vet and this time the stitch came out and they rebound her foot with the prettiest bandage EVER!

How cute is that! And she has to have a proper cone on now.

The weather has been weird for the time of year - clear blue skies and very warm with frosty mornings - more like early autumn weather really. Any way it has meant some great light etc and very very early flowers budding and blooming. My Mum was saying that she used to collect daffodils for my Nan's birthday in March but she has never known them to be out before her birthday (end of Feb), let alone, K's birthday (early Feb)!

And of course we can't leave out the monster...

Or JJ, particularly as his contract has been unexpectedly suspended (council not paying their bills basically) so he is no longer in Birmingham and instead he is messing up the place...

A delivery and getting lippy

I waited today for quite some while for the rudest delivery man I had ever met. He dropped off our new kitchen cupboard doors whi are splendiferous. Our old kitchen cupboards were not to my taste at all so a few summers ago, my sister and I painted some of the doors on the back lawn with some special silver cupboard paint. Unfortunately, it got dark before we had finished and eventually we gave up with the weather and remounted all the doors and would finish them later on. So for the last few years, we had a somewhat patchwork kitchen effect. Now, normally this would be a source of annoyance for most people but I wasn't too bothered as it soon became evident that the cupboard paint was about a robust as a chocolate teapot. The closeup of the handle is of a top cupboard so saw little wear and tear compared to the bottom cupboards, which were bashed by big dogs.






There were 29 boxes that were delivered - of that 29, the delivery man carried 7 on his sack trolley and I carried all the rest. And he refused to bring them into the house as there was one step - I was not best pleased.

But it has been one of those weeks, the women in my family have not faired well this week. Poor Thai had to have a stitch in her ear over the weekend. She then cut her foot in the garden and, as I cleaned and bandaged it, she nutted me and split my lip and gave me a blood blister.



When my sister rang to say that she had got the flowers that I had sent for her birthday, I fully expected her to tell me that she had accidently stabbed herself with them. She is suffering - she has an exam tomorrow and so much coursework on her plate that she has put off her birthday celebrations until next week, however she deigned to allow Mum and Dad to cook her pancakes tonight. We are putting off the pancake day in our house until John is home - no fun having pancakes on your own...