Gah!

I've just realised that my blogger profile wasn't showing my blogs!!

That will teach me NOT to mess around with my settings in an attempt to be clever!!

So...I apologise to everyone that tried to track me back through my comments in the last week or two!!

Ladders and Dads….

….don’t always go together!! Dad very kindly agreed to come and paint my upstairs window frames this weekend just gone (he’d painted the downstairs ones sometime in the summer).

Firstly we had to buy a ladder and Dad said that he would do that on Friday morning while I was at work. However….I had a missed call from him round about 10:30am and so I got worried that he’d fallen off the ladder or something. So, I frantically got a colleague to call him back only to find that he wasn’t able to buy the ladder because he’d put the wrong pin number into the card reader thingie! So, I went haring off to the DIY store and paid for the ladder, so I am now the proud owner of a very long ladder.

Anyway – I had not realised it, but Dad is not very good with heights (!) and yet he still managed to do three of the window sets. The fourth one he just could not do because the angle of the ladder was different due to it having to reach the window over the front door overhang and that really gave him the heebie-jeebies.

And that meant this….

Yes, that’s me up the ladder painting my window frames so that they are ready for the winter!

I wasn’t certain that I’d be able to do this, which is why I called on my extremely helpful Dad!! (Thanks Dad!!) But now that I have done one window I know that I can do it again if I need to; in addition to which, the next time the guttering goes funny, I will be able to get my ladder out and shimmy up for a look!

Saturday Sundries

I don’t seem to have a single topic or thought today so I think that “sundries” will suit this post right down to the ground.

• How difficult can it be to find the hoover you need!!? I have been looking for a Miele Cat and Dog that can cope with all the hair the cat seems to shed! First I spend ages trying to decide which hoover is best (there is such a thing as too much research!) and then I can’t find it. But – it has now been ordered from the little independent shop in the high street.
  
  
• I am always surprised by those people that manage to talk without moving their lips!! I attended the first evening of an Alpha group on Wednesday and really struggled to lipread one of the participants – oh well – I shall have to see if he attends next week and whether I may get better at lipreading him or not. (I can see why some deaf folk have lipspeakers!)
  
  
• Dad really really doesn’t like to hear his one and only daughter swear!! ;-) It wasn’t even what you’d call properly blasphemous – it was just a “bo11ocks"!” cos I’d made a mistake with the shoe rack that was I was building. But you should have seen the glare he gave me!!! (tee hee!)
  
  
• It’s definitely getting colder now – I had to go put a jumper on earlier today. It looks as though I will have to start wearing proper shoes soon and I just know that wearing socks/tights is going to feel very very strange!

And I think that that is enough for now – if I can maintain the habit of semi-regular blogging then I should be able to keep going!!

Irked!

You see this book?

It’s the book that Mum and I have been waiting for for ages and ages (no exaggeration I promise!). It’s the next instalment in the saga of Claire and Jamie written by the fabulous Diana Gabaldon.

It was published today. So why does that irk me….because it was published today in the United States, but is not published here until January 2010. At least it’s not January 2011 I suppose, but still – that is truly rather irksome.

Why on earth do publishers decide to publish in different countries at different times? What could they possibly gain from it? Oh well, I suppose it will have to be an exercise in patience unless I can find a generous American friend - ha ha!

Cycling holiday

A little while ago Mum and I went on a cycling holiday around Suffolk. We chose Suffolk because it is a relatively flat county and as we are not expert cyclists a flat place is what we wanted!!

It’s not completely flat, there were enough hills to make our thighs groan and us having to get off the bike and walk up. We drove to Needham Market where we left the car for the week as we cycled from B&B to B&B in a circular route back to Needham Market. Of course, this meant having to carry our luggage with us, but we packed as little as possible and let the bikes take the strain!

Seeing as we have had a rather wet summer, it was a lovely surprise to get a week of hot sunshine with only a smidgen of rain. We cycled from place to place enjoying the views and checking the map as frequently as possible!! (we never did have to turn back on ourselves after making a mistake!)

Dad even surprised us one day by driving the few hours from home to join us for a days cycling, which was great – not just for the pleasure of his company but also because it meant that we could get a photograph of the two of us cycling down the road!!

All in all it was a lovely holiday – we visited Aldeburgh (the carnival was on!), Orford Castle, Lavenham and Framlingham Castle.

and saw many pretty buildings along the way. We mainly stuck to the small roads and managed to avoid getting run over!! We did have one or two near spills though – particularly as we cycled down a few byways that had mostly sand for a surface. This meant that the back wheels had a tendency to slip and slide – neither of us quite went all the way over but it came very close indeed!!!

Occasionally we ended up collapsed in a little heap as you can see. We did tend to revive after a good nights sleep and a hearty breakfast!

Filing

I got thinking about paperwork and managing the mounds of paper that we all seem to collect from every part of our life when I read the latest post at Magneto Bold Too.

Even though it's just me and the cat at home it sometimes feels as though paper just accumulates even when I don't give it permission to do so (and I dread to think how much more paper would pile up if there was a whole family living here!) Despite having signed up for a "no junk mail" thing at the Royal Mail, I still get paper I don't want shoved through my door. I've tried cutting down as much as possible by reading bank statements online or paying for most of my bills through direct debit.

However, my biggest issue with the paper that I do collect is the fact that I don't deal with it properly when it comes in to the house. Like many people I have a recycling box and so this is naturally the most appropriate place for my oodles of paper! Do I put it in there though? No is the short answer because what I do when I come in from work is feed the cat and that takes place in the kitchen....which means that all my paper ends up on the kitchen surfaces until I get fed up with it and sort it out!!

The silly thing is that most of it could be dealt with there and then, but once I've put it down I tend to forget about it until it gets in the way! So, it is all about changing the habits of a lifetime and keeping on top of the paper that I pick up from here there and everywhere!! I have to physically remind myself to deal with the paper there and then - I am sure that it would help to have the recycling bin in the kitchen, but there is just no room in the kitchen for anything else. (it does have the shredder in it though!) and so the recycling bin is in the cupboard under the stairs which is not ideal but it is easy to get to.

The other thing that helps with keeping paper is not giving yourself the opportunity to collect it all!! I have a two drawer filing cabinet that up until last weekend was just chock full of paper both new and old. I decided to put it to better use by storing my craft paper as that was piling up too!! ;-) So, I ruthlessly boiled the two drawer cabinet's worth of paper right down to a small concertina folder - because the folder can't hold that much I just cannot keep the levels of paper that I used to. I mean, for goodness sake, I found paperwork relating to my first flatshare which was about 13-15 years ago!!!

Unfortunately it is harder to crack the habit of leaving paper in the kitchen, perhaps I do need to get a small basket where I can just chuck paper and then check that on a weekly basis or something. Anything that is really important like the visa bill that arrived this week along with the car tax demand (!) tends to get stuck to the fridge so that it is in my face every time I get some milk for a cup of tea!! But ultimately I need to be aware of simply handling it all better in the first place - crack that and I've cracked it all.

What do YOU do to keep on top of your paper mountain!?

Study update!!

I have just realised that my first (possibly only!) post about my study for a Masters was written exactly one year ago today!! Before I even realised the serendipity of today I had decided to tell you about my progress so far as I couldn't think of anything else to blog about - but seeing as I need to work on this blog I thought that I had better write about SOMETHING!!

Anyway....I had two bits of good news the other week; the first, and most important really, was that my employers had agreed to fund my second year of this part time course - clearly they're hoping that by my studying for a course entitled MSc Leadership and Management in Health and Social Care they will end up with a better manager than the one they currently have to put up with!!

The second bit of good news was the information that I had actually passed my first year of study!! It really was quite a relief because of of the four modules that we had taken we still didn't know the results of the last two. In fact, it was becoming rather a long time in between handing in the third assignment and finding out the results - some of my fellow students were getting a bit noisy about having to wait so long!!

The bigger relief though, was the fact that I had actually passed the portfolio part of the course where we had to do a lot of reflective study and I knew that there was a good chance that I might have to re-do the portfolio because I hadn't given it the attention that it deserved. :-( So, scraping by with a 56% result for that particular assignment meant that I was a very happy bunny, even if I didn't deserve it!! (perhaps I should point out that my marks for the other three modules were somewhat better than that!!!)

The second year starts on the 8th October when we all attend the first workshop of the portfolio element of this year - so I am going to have to much better on that this time around!! At least this time I will have a much better idea of what is involved and how I should prepare the portfolio - but I tell you - it really was agony waiting for the results when I knew that I had quite likely failed! However, I know exactly what my problem is. The problem is that I tend to leave things until the last moment and a reflective portfolio just cannot be dealt with that way as it involves having to follow an issue from start to finish and examining each bit for how you approached it, acted on it, moved on from it.

Oh well - like I said - two pieces of good news - funding and a pass!!! That will do for me!

Darkening nights

For some reason I happened to discover today that sunset this weekend is at 7pm – this threw me into a tizzy because it cannot possibly getting dark that soon just yet.

No, autumn has got to be further way that that!!  As much as I like the change of the seasons, they always seem to take me by surprise.  In Spring it seems like the trees will never burst into leaf when all of a sudden everything is green!

Summer (no matter how wet it is sometimes) always promises that there will be more sunshine and more long hot days where I can sit out in the garden.  So when I discover that the nights are drawing in I begin to realise that there will be no more sitting out in the garden in my t-shirt and shorts until next summer.  That is, unless I like to freeze!!)

There is something a bit sad about knowing that things are changing again, but there is also the anticipation of knowing that summer will come back again next year.  Although next year I think that I will go on holiday abroad to get some properly hot sunshiny weather as I don’t think that I could cope with another wet summer!

Blogging

Besides entertaining topics and good writing there is something else that makes certain bloggers famous....regularity! Yes, they blog on a very regular basis, every day even; which is not something that can be said of me!!

Of course, I am not famous, witty or have anything interesting to talk about, but I could at least be consistent!! If I can't be consistent then I don't deserve this blog despite what my little badge way down on my sidebar says about "blogging without obligation" as I think that has more to do with not feeling under pressure to blog every day and less to do with not blogging for weeks on end! ;-)

So, I am going to try again to do my best to blog rather more regularly!! I blame facebook and twitter, not to mention my feedreader - I am so busy chatting on facebook and tweeting and reading the umpteen blogs that I subscribe to that I forget that I have my own blog and then I wonder where all my comments have gone to. Naturally, I am not going to get any comments if I don't blog, so I really must pull my socks up and get on with it!!