New Year’s Eve

I went to see the practice nurse today to get my blood pressure checked, and was very relieved that it was a much more normal 140/86, rather than the 139/106 that it was when I went to give blood on Christmas Eve. It’s still a little high for me though, so I have to go back in a month – but I’m not at all worried now, and hopefully I’ll manage to give blood again in a week or two.

I’ve also added a link (on the left hand side) to one of the many organisations collecting donations for the Tsunami appeal in Asia. I can’t even begin to imagine what life must be like for people living in that devastation at the moment.

Newt and I aren’t doing anything spectacular for New Year’s Eve – we’ll probably just open a bottle of wine, and watch a film, at the moment School of Rock is favourite.

Hope you all have a great New Year!!

Christmas report

All in all I had a great Christmas. For the first time ever Newt and I were together on Christmas day, so that was nice. We went to my parent’s on Christmas Eve, and came home the day after Boxing Day – so we were with them long enough, but not too long. Much more than that and we would all have started yelling at each other.

Christmas Eve we all went to my Grandma’s after tea, and spent the evening as ever – chatting and playing cards. Canasta to be precise, and getting thoroughly trounced by my Grandma. Ignore that ‘little old woman’ exterior – it’s all a facade, she wins every single time!

Christmas Day had a nice leisurely start. My mum was very, very excited about the snow. My Grandma came over at about 12pm, then we had lunch and then opened presents. I’ve never seen so many presents in my life!

I got:
Set of pans – shared with Newt, stainless steel with copper bottoms. I’m actually surprised at how excited I got about them.
DVDs – Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban; and Dirty Dancing
CD – Hayley Westenra – Pure, special Christmas edition
Poison perfume gift set
Photo frame
Scented candles
Various bath goodies
Book – What you wear can change your life by Trinny and Susannah; Delia’s Chocolate and Soup recipe books
Cut glass crystal hi-ball glasses – they match some other glasses that I’ve already got.
Bottle of Vodka
Bottle of champagne and truffles
Chocolate orange
Green and Blacks chocolate

We spent the rest of Christmas Day eating, playing cards and watching rubbish on TV.

Boxing Day was much of the same – my triumph being that I finally finished ‘Cat’s Paws and Catapults’ – a book I’ve been reading for AGES. It took me so long because I know less than nothing about physics or engineering, and it was rather more biased in that direction than I thought when I bought it.

We finally came home on the 27th December. I couldn’t believe how busy it was on the roads. The entire population of the North of England seemed to be heading to Ikea! Aarrgghhhh.

The less good parts of Christmas – I couldn’t give blood on Christmas Eve because my blood pressure was high (I’m sure most people’s blood pressure is high on Christmas Eve), so I worried about that for days (and consequently probably made it even higher). I’m getting it rechecked tomorrow. Then my MIL decided that she was annoyed with everyone for not visiting her over Christmas (even though she was fine about this in November) and decided to unplug her phone. It’s now the 30th December and she still hasn’t plugged it back in. But what can I do? I refuse to chase halfway across the country because she’s in a huff.

More blog messing

Have spent faaaaar too much time today playing with Blog. I was determined not to be beatedn by BookQueueToo, so I upgraded to the latest version of MovableType – version 3.14. That took ages because I kept having to reload files, and my normal ftp program wasn’t working, and all that jazz.

Once it was uploaded – major disaster! Nothing worked. But this time I’d backed everythiing up – or so I thought. But I’d obviously made a dogs dinner of that as well, because my backup file was empty. Anyway, after some tinkering with file permissions I got MT to work. No BookQueueToo (or old BookQueue or any plugins for that matter). More tinkering, and MTAmazon and BookQueueToo appear in the right places. I think I’ve permanently broken the old BookQueue, but that shouldn’t matter any more.

I open BookQueueToo, I can see the sidebar – but nothing happens when I search. So I get new Subscriber ID as instructed (but can only get this from Amazon.com). Still doesn’t work. I’m guessing (because I don’t really have a clue what I’m doing) that it’s because I fudged MTAmazon to make it work on Amazon.co.uk rather than the US site. Anyway, I’ve sent an email to the guy who wrote it (but I’m sure he’s sick of me by now). But really, I MUST write this essay, and as my blog does at least work, I think I’ll have to leave any more tinkering until after exam time!

On a more positive note, I added a little weather picture from Weather Pixie, and I really like that. Oooh – and I’ve just noted some new cool buttons on MT for inserting quotes and uploading files and stuff. I’ll have to try that out.

BookQueue Too

I spent a good portion of yesterday trying to get a new plugin BookQueueToo to work – without success. Which is a shame because it looks like a really cool plugin – like BookQueue, but better. The interface looks nicer, but more importantly, you can add lists of CDs, DVDs and the like. I just wish I knew what I was doing with this Blog stuff so I could get it to work. It’s very frustrating, because I can see the screen to configure it, I can even get into the main interface – but one of the side bars is missing for some reason. All credit to the guy who wrote it though, I posted a comment on his site for advice, and he got back to me straightaway – so hopefully he’ll know what stupid mistake I’ve made, and then I can get it sorted out.

We no longer have a rat!

Ages ago, some of you may remember we had a rat in the kitchen. I thought it was a mouse – it definately wasn’t. The longer version of the story is here – BBC’s Rat Adventure.

Anyway, after that incident I called environmental health to see what I should do about it. The man on the end of the phone assured me that the best rat deterrent is a cat that catches rats. So we should be OK then.

No. A few weeks ago I started to hear the familiar scritchy-scratchy rat noises coming from the kitchen again. I called environmental health again, to ask them whether those ultra-sonic rat deterrent devices actually work. (I’m too much of a softy to put a trap down – plus Tiswas is stupid and she’d probably get caught in it!). Again, they assured me that I didn’t need an ultra-sonic thingy, and that the cat would sort it. I was a bit perturbed as to what I was supposed to do in the meantime while I was living with a rat, and the cat hadn’t got round to catching it, but the woman on the other end of the phone didn’t seem to think that was a big problem.

So, fast forward to last night when Newt is in the bath, and I’m in the bedroom. I hear a cat trotting up the stairs. Nothing unusual in that. Then I hear that telltale muffled ‘maiow’. I look round, and yes, you’ve guessed it – BBC has a very large, very live rat in his mouth. He’s clearly very pleased with himself, and clearly loves me very much, because he wants to present me with said large, live rat. I’m less keen. I scream. Newt splashes water everywhere. I demand that he gets out of the bath and deals with cat and rat. Quickly.

So Newt gets out of the bath, and wearing only a towel and armed with a dustpan and brush chases BBC downstairs. Plan A is to get BBC out of the house with the rat. BBC isn’t having any of this. He caught the rat, he wants to give it to me, and a semi-naked man with a dustpan and brush is not going to stop him!

Finally, the poor rat is deemed to be dead, and Newt manages to persuade BBC to part with the rat, scoops it up, ties it in a plastic bag, and shoves it in the bin. BBC spends the next half hour looking for the rat underneath the dining table.

I have to say, this time it was a lot more dignified than last time. But what I really want to know is why BBC always waits until Newt is in the bath to catch the rats?

It’s finished!

Through a Mother’s Eyes is finally finished!!! I finished it late last night whilst watching the Horse of the Year Show. I started it way back in May 2002 when Newt and I got engaged, with the main aim of finishing it by the wedding in September 2004 to give to my parents as a thank you for all their help with the wedding. However, I’m slower than I thought, and University got in the way, and it’s only just now finished.

Unfortunately I haven’t got time to get it framed before Christmas, but I intend to do that in early January. I just hope my parents like it now!!

Started essay!

It’s not much, but I have made a start. And I’ve sent my very brief essay plan to my supervisor, so hopefully I’ll find out whether I’m on roughly the right lines or not. I’m now feeling much better about it, because I think that it’s the first few paragraphs that are hardest. Once I get started, I kind of get into a rhythm, and it doesn’t seem so hard!

But that’s me done for the day, so now I’m going to wrap some Christmas presents.

Lovely meal

Had a really lovely Indian meal last night and caught up with my friend whom I haven’t seen since the wedding. All in all had a really great night.

Unfortunately I didn’t actually get a great deal of work done yesterday. I did start writing stuff, but then my computer crashed, and I took that as a sign that I shouldn’t be working, and so I watched TV instead. That does mean that today I really need to get my act together and make some progress with this essay. Why do I always do this? Procrastinate so much that in the end I have to write the whole essay in 2 days? But I’ve got mu trusty kitchen timer with me, so I’m going to do one hour’s work, and then reward myself with 15 minutes on the net or whatever. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Feeling a bit more normal

I was soooo tired last night that I went to bed at 10pm – just couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I got up today at the much more respectable time of 9am. Not too late to have wasted the whole day, but not crazily early either. Perfect.

I didn’t actually get anything of my essay written yesterday, but I did review a lot of the literature that I’ve got, and configured my new copy of Endnote so that my references will be just how University want them. I copied the guide they gav us to the letter, so if I get even the tiniest red mark against my references, I will not be a happy bunny!

I also had a major breakthrough with Through a Mother’s Eyes – all the cross stitching is finished, so I now only have the backstitching to do. Granted there’s yards and yards of this, but I can finally see the end approaching.

Today, I’ve written Christmas cards, and I really am going to do some essay writing. Then this evening I’m meeting a friend for a meal and a natter – which will be lovely.

Sleep

My sleep pattern is completely up the wall since I did my nights. Normally, I’d get straight back into a routine, and I’d be fine; but this week I’m just writing an essay and getting ready for Christmas and stuff like that, so I don’t actually need to get up if I don’t want to. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a certified night owl, and that I love my bed and hate getting up in the morning. So what on earth am I doing being up and raring to go at 6am for the past two days!!! I’m confused, the cats are confused, and Newt is very unhappy about his ‘bloke time’ being disturbed.

Well, by being up at this hour, there’s really no excuse for me to not get on with writing my essay. Today’s goal: get something (anything!) down on paper!!