Birthday Blues (by sarah)

I wasn't going to do anything for my Birthday but Al wanted to do me a meal and so Fondue was settled upon and then we invited Barbara and I thought it would be nice if I could have a friend there. So I texted my friend Andrew who lives in Cheltenham on the off chance he'd be about as he tends to go home to Essex at the weekend.

He didn't respond which was fair enough as it was short notice but the thing is I almost texted Alex I had some how forgotten. I've been so busy the last few months and then I felt bad and cried.

Jean and Al spent most of the day at one of Jeans little friends parties and so I spent the afternoon photographing boots:/

Barbara then forgot that it was my birthday and thought Jean was being silly when she said it was mummy's birthday. She then disappeared just after cake (taking the cake with her) to watch TV.

Al had got me lots of yummy things for a chocolate fondue and I thought Yay! But he doesn't eat chocolate and I discovered that chocolate fondue isn't that much fun unless your sharing it.

I then realised that I've been here for three birthdays and I know know one my age, Andrew is planing to move away and Alex is gone. I've made friends but there not the same age as me and though it may seem mean I need people who are the same age as me - people who have the same type of worries and the like.

I'm sure were I've gone wrong.

Sorry I will do a nicer post about my birthday tomorrow.

Sledging and the end of Chistmas (by sarah)

I ment to put these up sooner but forgot - Jean was finially coxed onto the seldge. Here are the photos of her being dragged around by Barbara.

After that it was time for the decorations to come down, Jean helped me until she decided there was enough tinsel to make a nest out of and went to sleep!

I think Jean enjoyed this Christmas. This was origonally supposed to go up on the sixth so no panicking out there!

Web-Empire (by sarah)

As some of you may know I have being doing my MRes at college part time but I have also been attending business courses and mentor sessions set up for me by the Prince's Trust and as a result have steamed ahead with my business idea.

I am now officially a Web-consultant and designer and thanks to skills I learnt or at least found out about during my undergraduate and my Masters I have discovered I am better (To my horror) than alot of the compertition. If one more person asks me if I use dreamweaver I may just scream!

Ok so I know I am lucky in the fact I have the techno guru at my disposial if I ever get stuck but to be honest it is all alot simpler than I thought it would be.

So here is my Website, the business is called Web-Empire and is a unique blend of art and technology just about right for my skill set I would say. You see I've had a eureka moment in that I feel alot of technical and sciencetific stuff is inaccessible to people mainly due to artificial barriers of what people expect things to be like - I will no doubt do a longer post on this at some point (if I get the time with all those nice new customers I'm hoping to get).

I want to make things accessible and I want people to lose this concept of dichotomy which allows dangerous psuedo science to slip in.

I'm hoping that web-empire will be a nice approachable business which will help its customers 🙂

I hope you all like the web-site feed back is always appreciated. It also has a blog where nice little articles on the world of the web will go, along with book reviews on web, business and art stuff. Not to mention I am constructing a hopefully useful glossary.

Information Request II (by sarah)

A little while ago I requested information on cooking and recipes this time it is of a more technical nature - infact what I would love very much is information on the history of computing, electronics or anything loosely related to them 🙂

I want to make Web-Empires blog and glossary a proper useful resource for people to use plus it is sort of related to a novel I am writing!

I hope this isn't me being too cheeky!

If any one can recomend some books I could read as well that would be much appreciated 🙂

Worried (by sarah)

Today mum is in for another lot of radiotherapy and within fifteen minutes of her appointment starting dad has to go in for an emergancy colonoscopy.

I am concerned as his father died when he was about five months older than dad is now - of stomache cancer. Dads been suffering stomache cramps and problems for about 9 months now. His family are prowne to having weak stomaches and he kept saying it was food poisoning and stuff. Plus stress tends to have them doubled up but this has just gone on and on.

He told the doctors when we finially got him to go a few months ago that he had only been sick for a few weeks and so they gave him antibiotics but didn't even take any samples which I felt was remiss. Some food poisioning can lurk and needs special treatment. I can only think he was playing it down.

He hasn't lost drastic amounts of weight but he's got that grey look to him he had just before the heart attack and he is really run down to the point of catching colds and stuff which have been developing inot chest infections. This is not good as a) it is weakening him and b) mum is supposed to be avoiding contagious people 🙁

Mums energy levels were also not good over christmas when we saw her.

On top of that mum and dad are relient on the wages we pay dad but we are up against a wall and the person I have been working for has pretty much stabbed me in the back so once again we are trying to muddle through 🙁

There are other medical issues as well which aren't helping the situation leading us to feel we have more than one child to look after and not enough resources to go round.

I was hoping 2009 was going to be better, I was hoping we'd get out of debt and the like but the noose seems to keep tightening.

All I can do is work away and hope some new work comes up until then I am going to continue on my own projects in the hope that google ad revinue will keep us afloat. I'm not hopeful but never mind.