This year's going to be pretty busy with settling into the new home, but I have a few projects.
Finish the ring casting I nearly finished before the move. That's a priority.
Resurrect my aluminium foundry. In particular, it's our bronze wedding anniversary, so Sarah's going to design a pattern for a sundial, which I will cast in Aluminium bronze, a nice alloy that I can make myself from my scrap aluminium and bits of old plumbing...
Continue with minor stuff on Ugarit, but as a milestone, build the distributed storage backend, which will rock.
Work on my wearable computer project. No specific milestone for this, as it's currently a long drawn out research/prototyping phase as I sort out many details.
Wish me luck... I usually suffer from "all my weekends getting eaten up", but as my New Year's Resolution has been to spend at least one day every two weeks doing something fun with my children, I'm going to be booking weekend days in my calendar in advance through the year for that and my own projects. Before they get filled up!
Mary has been imitating sounds for months but as expected of a bilingual baby she hasn't really produced words with meaning they are just copies of what we are saying. She like Jean has been raised with baby sign as well so there is no real incentive to talk early.
But as we home in on her 1st birthday she has started to point at the cats and say yip! we'd say cat, she'd say yap. And then today she came out with "There's a cat!" no a word but a sentence - true she does not pronounce a hard T on the end of cat but it doesn't stop there - she then went on to say "Oh dear!" when she dropped her bottle.
Then we got the classic "NoNoNoNooooooono!" and so forth - so I have a baby that has gone from just babbling and copying sound (though in fairness she does 'sing' alot) to on that is stringing words together! I have no idea if this is advance or not - Jean did something similiar after her initial imatation of the word hurrah! She then didn't say anything until the January after her first birthday when I bought my red glittery shoes home - but again she went for a dramatic no talking - babbling sense.
Sometimes I do find myself wondering what would have happened if Alaric hadn't given up the syntherziser and focused on just programming or had taken it back up instead of metal work - as it is he is talking about maybe getting one for the music room when we have more money/one comes up on Freecycle.
Well a few days ago a friend posted a link on my face book saying doesn't this guy look alot like Al. And I got a glimpse of that other world - well if Alaric was Australian and had stolen Phil Collins voice but still liked all the types of music he does and had me make the videos (in this parallel world I'd have done my back-up career and ended up as an animator/special effects bod).
The guy is called Goyte and it is very surreal for me to watch this - its a spot the difference puzzel! Watch this video
As it is I feel very tempted to make a parody of a bits of this guys songs including my little Wiggly Pets sitting in tripods holding passport photos of Alaric out in front of them. What this video to see what I'm talking about.
So we have finally achieved the third M = Mortgage which I suppose makes us proper grown-ups or something?
It is not what we had envisioned with the move to Gloucestershire but those plans weren't working anyway and this house seems like it was almost made with us in mind. It is everything we need.
There is a summer house a.k.a Alaric's workshop
A little patch of decking that we can have as a Toddler play area
An area for grass with allotements just round the corner
An attic room that is perfect for an art studio and storage or workshop materials etc...
A lush kitchen with a double oven of the type I've been after for an age with a 'breakfast room' off of it which is perfect for a family dinning room - there is a breakfast bar too!
The 'dining room' is going to be the Library and Music room / study. There is an area just right for having a BBQ in etc... just out side the kitchen.
It needs some work but we were more than happy with the structural reports and Alaric is still going on that we are technically now Lay Rectors. We think we are very lucky as the place cost less than my friends one bedroom flat on the edge of London. Having said that we can only afford it due to a) Alaric's new job and b) the generous loan of a hefty deposit from Alaric's family.
We picked the keys up today and rushed round there but the family was still moving out so we went and got some lunch and then went back - they had left us a lovely card saying they hope we'll be as happy as they've been there
I did some assessing of where we will be putting the washing machine etc... This feels right unlike our previous move which was all done pretty much with out me. I am hoping we can get things back on track - there is belly dancing within walking distance of the house that is affordable - this is important for my pelvis and mobility so Im very pleased with this. I am hoping to some how fit in the ducks and bees don't think goat will happen now though
We decided to leave our mark on the place - so here is our rainbow swerl rug that me and Jean made whilst living in the Mill during the flooding episode.
This is a video of me reading The Little Book of Festive Poetry which I wrote a few years ago as part of the PiBoIdMo challenge. I was asked to read at The Brewery Cheltenham as part of a fund raiser for Winstons' Wish organised by Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
In the video Jean is inching her way towards me to join me on the stage - as were several other children The coughing is because Alaric is recovering from having fluid on his lungs - not sure he should have been outside but he was bored of resting!
Alaric, Electronics, Metalworking, Scheme | alaric | 
Thu 26th Jan 2012 5:09 pm | 
Comments (2) 
Subscribe