Today I was due to give a talk to 250 14 to 18 year olds with the view to encouraging them into setting up in business for themselves. My advice? DON'T DO IT!

I set out to make the 15 mile journey before 11am but hit this just 6 miles from my destination:

There was already a diversion in place before I got there and I was sandwiched between three lorries in front of me and one directly behind me down a wee country road. One of the lorries in front was a car transporter and had about 8 cars on it. I swear it grazed the telephone wires that were strung across the road at one point.

The journey into Newry was tortuously slow. "Bumper-to-bumper" doesn't even begin to describe it! Thankfully I had the number for the girl who had asked me to do the talk and was able to text her and let her know what was going on.

Finally the convoy wound its way into town and I made it to the hotel an hour late.

Have you ever seen 250 14 to 18 year olds? That is a scary sight. I was on right after a motivational speaker for crying out loud - I was never going to be as funny or as captivating as him, was I? The first thing to throw me was my name and company on a screen behind me in gigantic lettering. I have never seen that before and I must admit I stood and stared at it for a full 3 minutes before some embarrassed coughing reminded me I had another 12 minutes to fill with vocal drivel.

I managed to do just that and finally left the podium with a round of applause - which WAS for me - and then sat beside the motivational speaker. He was really nice and sat chatting to me for ages until it was time to go for something to eat.

I was very good when having the meal. There was a 50 something woman beside me who is a Business Studies tutor at a local High School who was asking ME advice on how to get her new business off the ground! How bizarre is that?

Back on the road again and it took me about 30 minutes to get out of the city centre to head back to work. It was still closed. I hadn't read the above at that stage had I? I think I did about a 35 mile round-the-world-for-a-short-cut-trip back to work and by the time I got to work I was dog tired. I so didn't need to be sitting in a car all day. It added ages on to my day. Tut.

Lot of fuss about nothing if you ask me. All this 200 metre exclusion zone. Bunch of wimps the lot of them. Definitely a case of Health and Safety in over drive. In the days of major disruptions on the Westlink on the way to work we used to drive past abandoned cars, one rather badly parked stolen gas delivery lorry, suspicious packages and un-exploded bombs and there was never the hint of a 200 metre exclusion zone then. Tut. They obviously just have a surplus of POLICE tape they need to use up before the end of the financial year!

Don't they know who I am?

Don't they know I was hurrying towards my name in big letters?

# 8 Why is it that I can't set mouse traps in my own house but I can in someone else's?

#9 Why is it that when the peanut butter gets smeared all over the pin that it gets very greasy and too slippy to handle?

#10 Why is it that when a trap goes off and jumps out of my hand it scares the absolute crap out of me and makes me jump a mile and all I can think of is the old Tom and Jerry cartoons where Tom's tail or finger is caught in the trap and starts to throb for about 5 throbs before he screams and hits the roof? Thankfully I didn't get any digits caught although the spring scraped my finger on the way past! You think I need that Rabies shot yet? ? ?

#11 Why is it that when we catch one in a trap in my house I leave the country until it is safely removed but I can do THAT in someone else's house too?

#12 Why is it that no one loves me enough to pay £160 for Snow Patrol tickets? :P

#13 Why is it I am talking about mice here instead of the absolutely beautiful, moving, thought provoking, humbling, insightful photographs I saw this evening at Gordon's exhibition? They are well worth going to see and if you are in Belfast and it is nice from my point of view to see that Gordon is mentioned in that link above Paul Seawright - but Gordon is so non-egocentric that this fact would not impress him at all! TIP: If you have 30 minutes to spare in Belfast - go to see that exhibition. I'll perhaps write more about it at a later stage when I am not so dog tired.

It has been a long day with another long one ahead of me tomorrow.

Today is David's tenth birthday. We had a party for him and a few of his mates from school. It was grand fun and everyone behaved beautifully. We went to the IMAX, the Ten Pin Bowling and then had some food. Can you believe I had no proper cameras home with me and only took some video footage of the bowling on the camera phone.

David got lots of money and gift vouchers and the iPod Nano from us which he was very happy with and then a digital camera of his own from Nanna and Papa and a big tub of K'Nex from Aunty Lesley. He is delighted with the camera and has already put a request in for a larger memory card as it only came with 16mb! How skimpy is that?

I cant believe that ten years ago I was doing this:

David was the most handsome baby ever and, as I have said before, complete strangers used to stop me in the street to congratulate me on such a beautiful baby. Even the Health Visitor assured me she never told Mum's lies and that he WAS gorgeous!

I distinctly remember having a very wobbly moment one day when Aunty Lesley came round to see David when he was a couple of months old. She asked me about my hopes for the new baby's future. . . what I thought he would look like when he was ten. . . I looked at her, with all the trepidation of a new mummy, burst into tears and replied that I just hoped that he lived til he was ten and that I didn't kill him before then.

I know that sounds really strange now but when you are new to it all and hear stories of parents accidentally killing their children with overdoses of salt, or not hearing the baby choking in their room in the middle of the night, or their toddler hanging themselves by accident with their dressing gown belt, not forgetting outside dangers. It was only a couple of short years before that James Bulger had been kidnapped and killed and I was pregnant when the horrific massacre happened at Dunblane. It is very scary to be a new parent. We were never too sure that we were doing it right.

I remember when David was still in the Moses basket on the floor beside our bed (he was under four months old cos he went into his own room at four months) and he had a stinking cold. I had a packet of Karvol and before going to sleep that night I popped one out of the blister pack to pour the liquid on his pillow but dropped it. I was going to leave it and pop out another one but something made me turn the light on and search for it. It was balanced on the baby's cheek. It could so easily have fallen into his mouth and choked him. Every time I see a packet of Karvol I think about the night I nearly choked David. . .

Today I looked at how tall he has become. The joke is that he is nearly as tall as his Nanna but really, it wont be all that long before his is as tall as his Mother. There will be no mission of discipline THEN! He is maturing quickly as you can hear in his confident speech patterns and use of vocabulary. God, I wonder what I am unleashing on the world at times.

I'll never forget giving that answer to Lesley and for the last ten years I have been holding my breath, ticking off the days to his tenth birthday and hoping that one day soon we will know what we are doing.

Well, we made it. We didn't kill him and so far he hasn't killed us either, try as he might. We are still winging it. We still haven't a clue what we are doing and still reckon we are playing at being grown ups.

Sometimes I can't believe they allowed immature people like us to breed.

Isaiah over at Your Head has been at it again.

I don't know how he churns out all these fantastic plugins but he has another one about to join the attractions at the fairground! Carousel sounds like it ought to be fun to use and if it is in any way as useful as his Blocks then I shall be a happy girl.

If you love RapidWeaver then head over to his site and take a peek at the new stuff - including the new forum!

Jessica has a flair for drawing. She is much more comfortable with it than David ever was. She drew this for us the other day. It depicts us as a family out for a walk. I asked her who everyone is. She named herself, David and me (from right to left.) I asked what the brown animal was. That is a kitten which "started to follow us."

I asked why Daddy (you can ALWAYS recognise Daddy when EITHER of the children draw him!) was on a hill and quick as a flash David said "To make him look taller!" This lead to all sorts of hilarity in our kitchen for a while. Seemingly some cheeky bitches reckon he isn't tall enough!

It is because she accidentally drew him too far up the page and then knew she had to give him something to stand on. Did you spot the bunnies? She's really into bunnies at the moment for some reason.

Did you also spot both me and her with long hair? Well that all changed today when we went and got our hair cut. Hers was away down her back but today she agreed to having a whole pile chopped off and it is a neat wee bob again. Mine is a good lot shorter too - short is good - the shorter it is the longer before I have to go back to a dreaded hairdressers again!

This evening we headed out to have a look at a car that the lady owner *sold* very well over the phone to Iain. It was only one of four he was interested in that wasn't already sold despite the Auto Trader only being on sale today. He hates looking at cars in the dark but took the big torch just in case.

We arrived at the house and the kids and I sat in the car while Iain went to speak to the owners. It wasn't long before he came back shaking his head. The car was declared a "dog" and an "absolute dog" at that. He reckoned the lady driver parked by touch, judging by the four corners of the bumpers looking like the Dodgems at Barry's. It also carried the reminders of every single car park she had ever visited down the doors and wings. The alloys were scraped and the interior looked quite posh but was covered by a fine layer of dog hair.

At least he tried.

We headed to the three car sales yards we had been meaning to go to for a while. The first one had quality cars which were all too grand for our pocket. The second one was closed. At the third one we allowed the kids to get out of the car to wander round and be a little more involved. We walked around with coats on and hoods up and hands in pockets - I had no fewer than four hands in my pockets at one point! Work that one out! The wind was bitter cold and there was a sting of rain every now and then. It started off well, we looked at a Scenic. I used to have a Scenic and have to say I loved it. Of course they are a lot older than the one I had and ew - that one has a rip on the driver's seat - that means it has done a lot of miles. Sometimes it is hard work being married to the man who knows every little thing to look at in a car. Like the mat wear matching the clock, the accelerator not being too worn etc. . . .

We wandered around the yard on our own as the owner was too cosy in his portacabin chatting with a potential customer. Then we started to notice the little things. There were quite a few cars there with at least two tyres flat. One Volvo had all four tyres with no air in them at all and it was the one closest to the gate - a great first impression! There was a Peugout with two tyres flat and I swear there was some form of lichen growing round the windows. There was a 406 that had had an accident, had a door replaced and not aligned properly - you could place your fist down the gap between the front and back door (no NOT really!) and the front door was scraped where it was banging against the back door when they were both open. . .

There were cars with obvious accident damage and one with a bumper a whole different colour to the rest of the car.

There were no professional looking price signs in place but some poor child must have sat with every colour of highlighter they had in their pencil case and made out signs for some of the cars. Ages ago. Cos they were all faded.

It wasn't until I walked round the other side of the cars that I got a flashback of looking at a Lancia at that place years ago. I arrived, all eager, wanting to buy my Lancia, willing to put up with anything in order to have a Lancia badge in my drive way. Anything. Except sitting in a puddle on the driver's seat. My jeans were so wet I had to change when I got home. The (same) guy told me it was because he had left the window open but you could actually see the water dripping from the sun roof.

The car yard is in a prime location - you couldn't get better. It must have one of the best sites in the town. Yet the owners do nothing to clean the cars up and make them presentable. How on earth do they pay their rent - some of the cars must have been there for a year.

It wasn't a car sales yard, it was a scrap yard. You don't buy cars to transport your children around in from a scrap yard. We wont ever be back there.

Oh by the way - the sign says they are Specialists in Jaguars. I think Jaguar may have something to say about that.


(I didn't take any photos tonight so here is one from the archives, this is Jessica driving the Renault on the beach last year. She was quite literally MAD!)

I have just watched a very interesting video of how a girl sold advertising space on the front of her new MacBook Pro - to fund the purchase of her new MacBook Pro!

I WANT!

I think this is a really cool idea and am very enthusiastic about getting one done for myself now. The machine I want is a mere £1899.00 so can someone work out how many adverts I would need to sell and for how much cos I am not very good at the "two and two" stuff.

*grinning all the way through my address book of interesting and influential people and companies*

You would have to be the first to approach the companies though - imagine 54,000 people walking around with Flickr etched on their laptops. . . they aren't going to fall for that trick too often are they? The way she then put the cover on the internet is great too - you would have to copy that and provide links through - look - the whole thing is might damn impressive and I am drooling at the whole idea! Could I be the first person in Northern Ireland to have a fully-funded-through-advertising-and-beautifully-etched-MacBook-Pro?

The girl doing this worked at the place that etched it for her - I wonder are they taking commissions? If I sent them my machine I'd want the video of it being etched too - how much for the full package - there is a whole wee industry there for someone to cash in on.

Shopping List:

One Etcher.

Lots of Insurance Cover.

One camcorder.

Go and watch the video and tell me you didn't grin as her baby was born. Were you as excited when it got cranked up to "12x" as I was?

There has been a lot of talk in my life recently about mice. The rodent kind. Not the computer kind. Not only have we some residents in our attic currently but also a friend is having her first tussle with them in her house.

We are rather blase now about them - they are a nuisance and we know how to deal with them - stick down traps and check them every day to re-set them. We caught one just the other night but I am awake more often in the middle of the night than Iain is and I know there are more in the attic just waiting to nibble on the chocolate that we give them as a last meal.

We do have a fairy sensible attitude to them. We are in the country (well, one house away from it anyway) and it is cold out there! They prefer to be warm. But we don’t want them eating the stuff we have up there in storage and really, they aren’t meant to cohabit with humans - so - traps are set.

All this has reminded me of the first time we had mice, in our first house. I remember the first week we had them. I don’t think I slept for that whole week. I was well and truly freaked out the whole time. Mice and their noise and the catching of them were never far from my mind the whole time.

We lay in bed at night listening to them running around in the attic and wondered to ourselves why on earth people say “as quiet as a Church mouse” because we were fairly sure there was a herd of elephants up there. There was nothing quiet about the variety we had. They certainly had never been to Church in their lives.

Anyway, freaked though I was, I couldn’t find it in myself to kill the little darlings. I thought it was horrible. How could you kill them. They were cute.

Huh uh.

I can assure you that by the time you come home from work and find mice droppings on your pillow you no longer think of them as cute. You may have stomach wrenching spasms as you boil wash your bed clothes but you do not think of mice as cute.

By the time they had made it down from the attic to the bathroom, to the bedroom and then to the living room, we knew it was time to do something about them BIG time!

I will never forget how we had traps on either side of the fireplace and kept looking at them every three to five minutes to see if they had been sprung. It wasn’t long before we heard a distinctive SNAP over the sound of the television and looked over to see a dead’un lying there. It was a mixture of happiness that we were starting to win the war and total freak-out-ed-ness that ew there was a dead mouse over there *points and screams.*

We caught a few in traps and Iain disposed of them. As men do. I think we actually put them on the compost heap - you gotta think green huh?

Iain then discovered a fantastic substance called Expanding Foam! I think he had a bit of a fetish about it at one stage. We had it squirted everywhere. He went around the house outside and sealed up every hole you could ever think they could possibly squeeze their little quarter-of-an-inch bodies through. The yellow stuff came out like mousse but then hardened to fill all gaps. We found a massive hole in the boiler house that needed sealed. Obviously the mice were just using that as their private tradesmen’s entrance. The pipes from there would have gone all the way to the bathroom where there were more holes in the skirting board for them to get out into the house. If you have ever watched a house being built you know there are plenty of ways for them to move around inside walls etc. Ever seen The Borrowers?

We had our fair share of humane traps. Before we had the house sealed there was no point in letting them go again as they would just make their way back into the heat. I distinctly remember me having to release one in the back yard, in the general direction of the garden. I literally bent down, opened the trap, jiggled it a little so the darn thing had to leave and danced madly as it turned, looked at the open door and scooted between my feet and ran straight back in to the house. About the only thing it didn’t do was close the door behind itself and stand holding it’s belly laughing at me locked outside.

Never one to let an opportunity pass me by, one day when I was out shopping, I ran into the pet shop, picked up some mouse food, a cage and one of those wheels. I think I even splashed out on a water bottle for it too.

The next mouse I caught in the humane trap was released in the mouse cage. I shut the door and sat back to admire my new *pet.*

My new *pet* didn’t last long. It ran around the cage, climbed the bars and squeezed itself through them and disappeared into the cloakroom to start nesting in there.

I think the second mouse escaped into the cupboard under the stairs.

By the time the third one was caught we had obviously fed them better by then because it couldn’t squeeze through the bars. We kept him and called him Speedy because of the speed at which he could make that wheel turn. If we could only have connected the wheel to the National Grid we would still be using the power from it! So much easier to install than Wind Turbines!

Well Speedy was with us for ages. We kept him on the bay-window-sill. I had him long enough to have to change the bedding quite a few times. Boy he was a smelly creature. We never got on to petting terms with each other. He ran to the opposite end of the cage when ever I made advances.

People came from far and wide to view him. We had to restrict visiting hours because he was becoming fatigued from all the performing he was expected to do for his public. Friends brought THEIR friends with them and no one could quite get into their heads that I had saved all of £2.50 by not buying a mouse in the pet shop. I think they thought it was rather bizarre actually. Not sure about that - but that is the impression I got anyway.

One day I had to take him out to clean his cage. The other mice had all left home by now and he had no one to talk to during the day. I think he was lonely.

I caught him but rather than holding him in my loose fist he wriggled and got his head out. He sank his teeth into the fleshiest part of my index finger and exerted so much pressure and pain I thought I was going to pass out. I lifted my hand and tried to shake him off. He was having none of it. He was holding on and making sure he got his pound of flesh!

I shook and shook and still have the vision of his wee body, attached only by his teeth to my finger, swinging through the air several times before he made a (dizzy) bolt for freedom in the direction of the fireplace.

The fire wasn’t lit but the grate was still warm and he ran in to the pan, danced about like a firewalker and exiting pretty smartish across the hearth, leaving tiny dusty foot prints right across it. He disappeared behind the video stand and wasn’t to be seen for a minute or two.

These adventures always seemed to happen to me when Iain wasn’t around and I knew that if I could just get him back in the cage before Iain came home he wouldn’t need to actually know about the throbbing in my hand and wouldn’t insist on us going to Casualty to have a Rabies shot. . .

I pulled the video stand forward a little and with a torch could just see where he was. I blocked the end off with a video and gathered my resources as best I could. In other words I picked up another video. As he scooted back and forwards I was witness to some fine acrobatics. Never underestimate how high one of these blighters can jump. For some reason I picked up the end video - perhaps it had fallen, I can’t remember why I picked it up but I had it in my hand as Speedy saw light and made for it. Anxious not to let him escape into the rest of the room I dropped the video back into place.

And on to Speedy’s head.

He looked up at me.

He shuddered twice.

He looked at me again.

He said “You keeled me Amigo.”

And Speedy died.

I think we still have the cage in the attic if anyone needs it. . . .

I think that is why Iain prefers traps rather than the humane ones. I think he fears that some day he will come home to another *pet.*

Jessica was talking in Pizza Hut yesterday. She was thinking about people with lots of money. Other people - not her.

She reckoned that if a person had lots of money they would be able to buy lots of houses. Castles even. Lots of castles perhaps.

We agreed with her.

It got to about 6 houses and three castles.

Oh. . . and some food. They would need to save some money for some food.

I nodded at the food part. Food would probably be important if you had a lot of houses and castles.

David piped up with some information about a book he has just finished where one of the characters is so rich he had about SIX castles and SEVENTEEN houses! WOW!

Jessica looked at me and said "Do you think there would still be money left over for some food?"

You got to hand it to her - she will look after the practical aspects of our money . . . when we win it . . .

Today has just been ridiculous. It started off bad, got worse and is now at the most ridiculous ever.

We had to spend 25 minutes beating the absolute crap out of the car this morning to get the fuel pump to un-stick and get working again. Seemingly there is nothing wrong with the pump - it works fine - it just sticks in an OFF position which means err that err the car doesn't start. That means to me that the car is unusable and needs a new pump? Nah - a new pump would be £2-300 and we just don't have that sort of cash . . . . Huh? No pump = no car = no work = no income. Seems fairly logical to me. That was headache number one.

By the time we got into work I launched myself into processing some photos. I have a pile of work, a pile of orders, a pile of photos to process and none of it was done over the weekend so I HAD to get it done today.

I started on one photo in particular at 10am. I still haven't done it. Photoshop crashed three times and I never actually learned the Apple-S lesson.

I had a friend of a friend coming in today for a shoot with her two children. Actually, the kids were lovely. The two year old was gorgeous and a cute wee man, the eight year old was a wee poser and brought about three dresses with her to change into.

Imagine my absolute horror when I picked up the camera and found my battery was nearly empty! Unbelievable. That just never happens to me - I am so good at keeping the batteries charged. Before the shoot started I asked Iain to run out to the car and bring in a spare battery I keep in the glove box.

It was empty too.

I took as many as I could explaining to the girl that it could run out at any point. She seemed fairly laid back about it all. *I* wasn't!

I took loads of photos and while the wee lad was getting changed into his builder's outfit, complete with Daddy's drill, I took more of the wee girl and the battery died. Dead.

I knew it wasn't possible that there were only two batteries around the place and rooted around in my bag and found a third one. It didn't have a great amount of juice in it but it would get me out of trouble. Happy days! What relief!

We were able to take more photos but I was careful not to over do it. When the Mum mentioned another change of clothes I stopped shooting so I could concentrate on catching the last outfit. . . the battery lasted about another 6 photos.

Today goes down in history as the day three batteries drained in front of my very eyes.

After that family left I had the pleasure of another family. A mother and her 6 month old baby came in to chat with me. Obviously that is what I am there for but when their opening words are "I have been in here lots of times and you are never here" it tends to get my back up.

Iain had already told her about my system. I have a sitting fee of £50 which gives you a dvd mini-movie of all the photos I take in the sitting. I don't give proofs. If you don't have a dvd player I invite you to watch the movie in the studio. If you don't like the fee then I invite you to frequent any other photographers you care to frequent.

This lady thought my fee was too dear. I blinked a little and thought "Today is not the day to be arguing with me. I am beat. I don't want to ever see another customer in my life."

She continued to push the pram back and forward allowing the rain-water to drip off the wheels and into my carpet. And chew her gum.

She only wanted two photos. She didn't need a whole sitting. She only needed two photos taken. Big ones. Like that size (indicating the poster size). How much is that then? Oh. Really? THAT much. Ok. Perhaps a smaller one.

She wasn't listening to the *sitting fee* part so I re-enforced it a little but she just kept pushing and pulling the pram. And chewing her gum.

Finally she decided to let the cat out of the bag. She had tried to get her baby's "photie-tuk at that Pixie-Photo place" but she wouldn't sit still. I decided to be patient and explained that the Pixie *elves* only have a limited amount of time to do each child and only take a few photos, you don't get proofs and have to choose there and then. . . etc etc . . . didn't wash with her though. She just needed two photos, don't forget. We chatted some more about the price of the smaller photos and I knew I was losing her - my prices are actually very competitive compared with any other professional photographer in the area and I have a damn sight more patience with children and babies and mothers too!

I decided to let her go about her business when she told me once more that she only needed two photies-tuk - one of the baby in her Liverpool outfit and one of her in her pink dress. Six months old. Liverpool outfit.

Sigh.

At least we had a lovely pork roast to come home to tonight. It was already cooked. All I had to do was cook the potatoes, carrots and peas. Yum.

I boiled water and started to cook the potatoes and steam the vegetables above them.

Then the gas ran out. I am not kidding. The gas ran out. I blinked at the potatoes et al and blinked some more. They were already started otherwise I would have just run out for a chip. Everything had to be microwaved to within an inch of it's err life. . .

I never actually liked the Threadless t shirt I used as the icon here today. But tonight, I totally understand it and if I had it I would go and put it on right now.

I think I'd like to go to bed now please. What else could go wrong between now and when I fall asleep?

We headed to the Odyssey today to suss out a few pointers on Birthday parties for David at the Ten Pin Bowling and the IMAX. We have booked for the IMAX, Ten Pin Bowling and a meal for him and a few of his friends now and he is really excited.

While we were there we nipped into Pizza Hut for a very successful meal. How many times have you ever heard me say that? Every one polished off their food and both the kids declared their pizzas "the best they had ever had." WOW!

Under the heading of "How Totally Random Can I Make My Questions?" David came out with "What is the Queen's second name?" Good enough question I suppose - if you are a youngster and have only every heard of "The Queen" and haven't the depth of knowledge I have on the subject.

Quick as a flash I came up with "Windsor."

Iain looked at me with total scorn, "Don't be silly! Windsor is where she LIVES! Her second name is REGINA. David, your Mother knows NOTHING! Don't listen to her."

They then spent the next five minutes making fun of me and my quaint thoughts! David even suggested that I could have said that her name was "Buckingham" as she sometimes lives THERE too!

Well, I will have you know that the Queen's second name IS Windsor as according to Wikipedia. Regina shows she is Queen - it isn't her NAME you fool. Why would they argue with me? Why would they?

*still shaking head*

ANYWAY. . . . Looking for something else to do I suggested the cinema. Iain said he didn't think there was much point in us going to the IMAX two weeks running and fancied just staying in the Odyssey. . . I said . . "Cha! The Cinema." He looked at me blankly. He had no idea there was a cinema at the Odyssey. That is terrible. How many times have I been to the cinema at the Odyssey with friends and he has a. never been there and b. never caught on that I went to a cinema there . . . .

We headed over to the ten pin bowling again and had one and a half games (an hour's worth). I think the kids really enjoyed it all. You can judge for yourself here:

Watch out for Iain's style, David's unique "drop and hide" technique, my strike(s) and Jessica progress from the helper unit to throwing the ball herself. Ok, I know the film is 8 minutes long - I don't really expect you to watch any of it!

(I just told Iain about the Windsor thing - that it is in Wikipedia and that I was right. His reply? "Don't believe everything you read on the internet!" OMG!)

This is terrible! Who would have thought that cones would be used in this way? This puts a different perspective on The Killer Cones group on Flickr now. . . .

We were driving along this evening when we went past a cemetery. David piped up "Mummy, you know how Nanna and Papa go to the cemetery all the time? Who are they going there for?"

Rather than try to work out which grandparents were in which cemetery I just replied "Daddy's Grandparents."

Jessica was obviously not too sure about this because she asked "ARE THEY STILL ALIVE?????"

Let's hope not. . . .

Have a look at this - it is funny. It took 4 hours to put together!

I have watched it a couple of times and haven't spotted a Threadless shirt - please feel free to prove me wrong! Watch as the shirts with the motifs fade away as the shirts get bigger and bigger (up to 10XL). I think this shows that fat people don't get much choice in design for their t shirts!

Anyway - there's a Guiness World Record for the Most Amount of T Shirts Worn At One Time. Don't tell me I don't bring you new and exciting and cultural things. . .

We bought a cheap refurbished 2gb black Apple Nano from Apple (as opposed to PC World etc). It arrived the other day and it will be given to David in the guise of a birthday present - but you know it is really all because other people got new Shuffles and I really just wanted to be able to take UnPacking shots for Flickr!

I opened it late one night. Plugged it into my laptop. (There is no point in formatting it for his pc because he wont have it long enough I mean he has no music on his pc and I have almost 60gb worth.) I didn't have to load iTunes because it was already there on the Powerbook.

It took approximately 3 seconds for iTunes to recognise it. I named it David's Nano - gotta let him think he owns it for a while huh? and then iTunes told me there was a newer version of the software for me to download which I did. It took a minute or so for that.

I then created a playlist on the laptop for him, only because it is nice to have a playlist there should anything go wrong and then dragged the playlist to the Nano.

I then unplugged the Nano, inserted the head phones and listened to the first couple of songs on it. All sweet as a nut.

NOW!

Go and read what these poor sods are having to put up with in comparison. Poor people. Poor poor people . . .



Muhahahahaha

CAUTION: CONTAINS MATERIAL OF AN UPSETTING NATURE TO ME!

IF YOU DON'T LIKE MICE OR RATS - LOOK AWAY NOW. . .

This morning I had a weird morning.

I woke, looked at the alarm clock but couldn't see it as Iain had placed something in front of it. Why should I wake up properly to move it? I woke him and got him to do it. HA! That'll learn him!

Remember that he keeps the clock something like an hour and a half fast? I can't remember what the clock said but I reckoned it was 7am in the real world.

I lay. Eventually it occurred to me he hadn't wakened yet. I took my phone and looked at the time there. 7.30am. That was about half an hour of lying awake. I lay longer. Then realised that phone's clock hadn't been put back the hour so it was really 6.30am. I had been awake since 6am because of his stupid system.

I was not amused.

I didn't get back to sleep at all.

Apart from the time that it took to dream this. I don't mind if you don't want to read this - it wasn't very nice to dream either but I have remembered it in mega detail!

Iain and I were in *our* kitchen. I was opening a Pot Noodle and found a long white hair in it. I pulled it out. There were more. And more. And then they became matted clumps of hair. I pulled them all out and decided to complain to the company about this after I had my Pot Noodle. (Nothing much puts me off my food. . . )

The kettle boiled and just as I was about to pour in the water I realised there was a hole in the side of the pot and a dead bird on top of the dried noodles. I have a thing about feathers and birds *shudders* and this was enough to make me throw the whole lot in the bin.

Then I became aware of *the mice* playing in the ceiling and it was freaking me out. I told Iain to get rid of them NOW. He just laughed and said they aren't as easy to get rid of as that. I moved from one side of the kitchen to the other and from my new viewpoint I could see 6 mice and 2 rats playing on my kitchen floor. (I counted them. Between screams.) I told Iain to DO SOMETHING NOW,

He ran about picking the mice up gently in his hands and putting them outside safely. Of course they just ran back inside. He must have picked up the rats too because I saw them sitting on top of the hamster cage in the garden (hamster cage????) looking at me through the window.

Our garden suddenly was long and triangular (I used the word triangular many times yesterday when doing my write up for college) and there was a fence between us and our real-life next door neighbour Yvonne. Yvonne was in the garden with really long blonde hair and her family were playing football. Her dog barked incessantly. I freaked, shouting at Iain that if Yvonne saw the rats she would have Environmental Control down upon us faster than we could say Jack Robinson. Those were the words I used. Iain finally decided to do something so he came in to the house with Blacksmiths' Pinchers and started to bang on the back wall. Because the mice were in the back wall by now. This is where the dream began to be a tad surreal!!

I watched Iain hit the wall many many times as if it was a speeded up film. He banged and banged and the plaster started to flake off the wall. At one point he was flailing so fast it was a blur. But I still saw the blood splatter when he hit a mouse. He couldn't stop until all the plaster was off the wall and we had an exposed brick wall underneath. At least he got one of the blighters.

I can't remember exactly where it fitted in to the dream but I know that I could smell something foul in the room but can't remember what it was now. I don't think I have ever smelled anything in a dream before.

After he finished the wall off, we spotted a mouse's tail hanging down from the hole in the ceiling. Iain said "they are in the ceiling now!" I looked at him and said "I KNOW! THAT IS WHAT I HAVE BEEN TELLING YOU!"

That is about all I remember. I know there was more but that was the vivid stuff. I'm afraid to shut my eyes now!

What on earth was that all about then? Anyone have any ideas? I sure as hell don't!

I woke up at 8am then, not remembering having been able to get back to sleep after the 6.30am point and it wasn't until I was in the car that all of that came back to me.

(Wasn't I good not putting a photo of a mouse or rat in here?)

I can assure you, no rodent was harmed in the making of this dream!

NOT tagged!

1-Do you like the look and the contents of your blog?

Yes, for now. Til I whip Nik into shape and he gets me a new look. (OI! What happened to "before 8pm tonight" ???)

2-Does your family know about your blog?

Yes and No. Most do. My Mother doesn't. I hope. It has been VERY useful bringing further family members together.

3-Can you tell your friends about your blog? Do you consider it a private thing?

I tell everyone I possibly can! And more than I should.

4-Do you just read the blogs of those who comment on your blog? or you try to discover new blogs?

I stick with the same ones for a while, then add more. I seldom delete from my list but some stop posting. I read plenty who don't know I exist.

5-Did your blog positively affect your mind? Give an example.

I have found it makes me a lot more interested in what my children say and do - so I can put it here to share. I know that sounds silly - but it makes me take more notice at times.

6-What does the number of visitors to your blog mean? Do you use a traffic counter?

Mean to me? A lot. I spend a lot of time analysing and being tickled by the stats. Yes I use Site Meter.

7-Did you imagine how other bloggers look like?

Umm . .. I suppose not. I know some of the ones I read. I see the smiley faces of others in Flickr etc.

8-Do you think blogging has any real benefit?

Most definitely.

9-Do you think that the blogosphere is a stand alone community separated from the real world?

Not in MY world nope.

10-Do some political blogs scare you? Do you avoid them?

I tried political for a while but don't bother with them much now. I ignore them rather than avoid them.

11-Do you think that criticizing your blog is useful?

What? MY blog? What is there to criticise?

12-Have you ever thought about what would happen to your blog in case you died?

Yes! Funnily enough I have. I wonder how long it would be before some people would notice - if ever. I wonder if anyone I ever read has died and I just thought they stopped! Or I lost the RSS. . . . Perhaps we don't die. Perhaps we just lose our RSS feeds. . . .

13-Which blogger had the greatest impression on you?

Impression? I don't know. I know who got me into it and showed me the way. Is that the same?

14-Which blogger do you think is the most similar to you?

No one comes close.

15-Name a song you want to listen to?

What has this to do with blogging? You're Still The One by Shania Twain.

We sold the BMW last week.

The couple and their children came to view it on Sunday and put a deposit on it before they left. We had a great afternoon with them talking Mac - it took me about five minutes to sniff them out as MacHeads but they have more Macs than I have and that upset me greatly. I will rebalance that as soon as possible I hope when I get my three iMacs! Muhahahaha.

They also come from my home town and I was able to talk Memory Lane with them and Paula and I realised that we were both in the same year at the same school but we don't remember each other. Small world huh?

I have to say they have the quietest, most well behaved children on this earth! I kept forgetting they were there! Poor things - I am sure they were bored stupid having to sit and listen to me go on about PowerBooks and Flickr and such like.

Iain agreed there would be one small part fitted before they came to pick it up again so that gave us something to do while we waited for their cheque to clear. He booked the car in to have it fitted but when he rang to see if it was done on Friday night the guy didn't answer the phone. We made the way down to his garage to find he hadn't even started the work yet and it would be Saturday 6pm before we could collect it. As Donald and Paula were picking it up at 6.30pm and Iain wanted to wash and hoover it before they came - things were a tad frantic on Saturday!

Finally it was time to hand it all over. At the last minute I had a change of heart. I don't really want to let the car go. I love the car. I want it baaaaack. . .

Thankfully, I got an email postcard from it this morning to say that it had made it home ok last night and was all safely tucked up for bed. HeeeEee - the new owners are as mad as us! Look at the photo - doesn't that look like the recent backlit Macs that have been on Flickr? I think it looks mighty cosy there in it's new home.

It's gone now. And of course that means that we are now a one car family until Iain finally gets another car sorted. We may have to put up with a run-around for a couple of weeks until he gets something better sorted.

We woke up this morning knowing we had nothing to do. No car to polish or clean or hoover or T Cut or . . . any of the other things that Iain is obsessive about when he has a half decent car to do these things to. He decided instead to drive round to get milk from the shop.

But the Renault wouldn't start. I sat listening to him trying to get it to start. Then I heard him thumping the fuel pump but that didn't work. Thirty minutes later he gave up and came in to the house and handed me the RAC card to call them out.

How embarrassing for me when the RAC man actually recognised me and was able to tell me all about our last meeting! Fecking man - hasn't he got a life? How could he remember all that? Well - he got one thing wrong - he said that he had been to our house before to Iain and a Proton. I can assure you we have never had a Proton and if he has been to our house it was before our time! The last thing he told me to do was to have the fuel pump replaced but we had never gotten round to it! Busted!

He got the car going again in much the same manner as he did last time, and in much the same time as last time too - two swift hard kicks to the fuel pump. Iain said he had loosened it up for him. Huh uh.

We are back to being a one car family again and can cope with that ok. It is just really scary when all of a sudden you are down to Shank's Pony. There isn't much we can do here without a car! You can't even go and view cars without a car. . .

"Hello? I am interested in the car you have for sale. Can you call round and pick me up for a test drive?"

I received this email through Flickr this morning and for the first couple of paragraphs thought it was very clever spam. It wasn't until they mentioned my Smarties photo that it clicked with me who the person was. They had asked me for permission to use a photo of mine as a background. I always say yes but ask that they add a screen shot to a Delicious Desktops group on Flickr with a link back to me. No one has yet!

This person came up with a "I am not going to post it til I get my new Mac sometime . . . ." and I reckoned I would never hear from them again!

Hello again,

I finally got my Mac, this past Sunday I went to the apple store and purchased one. And all I have to say about Mac is.......SMOOTH!
Everything's so smooth and nice, it just seems to be made with so much Quality. I must say that it lives up to everything longtime Mac users have said about it. What surprised me the most was the Boot up time. On my old PC it took forever to Boot, at least 15 minutes! I'm just so happy about my purchase, I should've brought a Mac a longtime ago!

But on the down side, I still have to use Windows because I have to use Microsoft Access for school. So I setup Boot Camp. And for the past couple of days I've just been messing around with it(Mac), getting familar with different programs.

As of now I have your Smarties pic as my background. I wanted to show it to you first. I'm still trying to decide to post it or not. Because I'm new to the screenshot thing and from reading some of the comments on here and other sites, people can be pretty critical about screenshots.

So here it is!

As you see from the screen shot I was messing around with Quicksilver and Stattoo, I love those programs and I even brought Stattoo.

Thanks again for the great picture and you were right Mac is GREAT!

Isn't it great to spread the word? Why would anyone DOUBT the greatness of Mac? Poor chap, shame about the Windows thing huh? Aw well. . . .

I should've brought a Mac a longtime ago!

I had a fair few moments yesterday sitting blinking at my iPod. After updating to the new iTunes a few days ago this was the first time I had synched it for a while. An error message came up to say there wasn't enough space left on the iTunes Library and did I want to save a list for blah de blah de blah. . .. Who reads those error messages anyway?

Seconds later I had a Playlist looking at me on iTunes and the iPod had less than a gig left on it. Huh? Last time *I* looked there was like 15 gb left on it. Something was up. Must have something to do with that Playlist then huh? So What's a girl gonna do? I deleted the play list and in under .0003 of a second managed to delete EVERYTHING off the iPod. Just like that. All gone. Can you imagine me sitting there blinking? Just before the cursing started?

It took me quite some time before I realised how it had all happened. Basically I have 10gb in a playlist on the Powerbook and there was already 49gb on the iPod - well under the 60gb. After adding a couple of new purchases the other day to the Powerbook which must have just tipped the scales there just wasn't enough room on the ipod for both.

Thankfully, I only just re-formated the iPod a while back and ALL the songs from my external hard drive were neatly in one playlist waiting to be added again (thanks Mate!) and it only took a few hours working away in the background before I had the whole lot back on again. I took the opportunity to FINALLY take off a whole load that I know I will never ever listen to and with un-ticking the Powerbook's own playlist I now am well back under the 49gb mark again.

Panic over and back to normal.

All day yesterday in work Iain and I checked and double checked prices for Shuffles and Nanos for David's birthday. I like the idea that the Shuffle is so cheap but Iain thought the Nano would be a less-likely-to-be-lost size. Finally I realised the Nano has a screen that the Shuffle doesn't so Iain won that argument. We were all settled on the older 1gb Nano for £80 from Argos until the Google Queen checked online and found PC World had older TWO gb ones for £80. After tea last night I flew down there (taking the BMW for one last spin as it is now sold and being picked up on Saturday SNIFFFFF) but no 2gbs left in stock there, in Currys or in Argos!

In Argos I spoke to a very nice man who explained that there was a new Shuffle out (huh uh?). We got on to the capacity of iPods and how he had NEVER come across anyone yet who had actually managed to fill their players.

I whipped out mine from my pocket, held it up and said "You have now!"

I have just been looking at two bad websites - neither of which were done through RapidWeaver!

Nik and I were chatting about annoying sites and I came up with a professional site I go to every now and then. The web site actually put me off joining the association for two years! With my limited levels of concentration, I don't think I have ever managed to read all of that first page - never mind get any deeper in to the site. There is just too much going on!

Nik's offering was Borat. Love him or loathe him, his site is marginally less annoying than the SWPP. Borat's site uses many of the same techniques. Overcrowding, flashing, bright colours in the wrong place. . . but it is used there to highlight the tackiness!

The sad thing is, someone spends lots of time and effort on the SWPP one. It is, no doubt, their pride and joy. They need RapidWeaver!