Ok so I'm supposed to be taking it easy and cutting down on the stuff am doing - but I am BORED!!!! and I still only know about 5 people in the village - so me and Al thought how am I going to make more local friends?
Oh look they are having a Scout open day as they are reopening the Scout groups here after over 20 yrs of absence even though the County things are here :/ we could go along suggests Al and maybe you can help out a bit as you miss Thriftwood so much. Yes I agree. So we went - this was Sunday afternoon - it was nice weather - we chatted we played giant connect a four, we baked dough twizzle things on an open fire. Somehow my interest in helping had been turned into 'wants to be a leader come along on Thursday'. So I went along last night - and well erm.... I've said its only temporary but I appear to now be going to be running Beavers and Scouts - MEW!!!!!
They are on the same night though so not too bad - Al thinks this will actually be good for me as I tell other people to carry the heavey stuff and appart from a bit of organising and the like I'll be doing the sort of thing I love - the sort of thing I did full days of at Thriftwood. Of course I have to do some training but that doesnt look to bad either - especially as I wanted to redo my First Aid anyway as I think it expired about a month ago!
I have to learn knotts but hey that should be fun - at the moment I know about five - all of which are climbing ones plus the handcuff not which I'm sure I learnt on route to some 'firemans' sling thing - honest guve!
I've made sure they know about the medical situation and stuff as well - so hopefully it should all be fine.
Sigh - I've already started thinking about what I am going to do as activities :/ I think I might be being too uber keen here.
So I have just increased my sadness quoter by about 50% but hey we had our wedding reception at a Scout Campsite - so I think I'm already tarred with that brush - what with being a Geek/hippy/goth/erm dont put me in a box person through my youth (I think I still just count in their groupings as youth - being 25!).
Oh Lordy - ok Sarah don't panic - panic is the mind killer - erm I think I've writen a post like this once before - oh yes just before everything went pear shaped - oh well lightning doesnt strick twice does it? Oh dear it does doesnt it - ok ok just flow with it and see where it takes you!
p.s. I forgot to mention the cute baby piglet!!! It was there on Sunday - it was just hrs old and being hugged in a blanket fed milk - the kids werent petting it before people get stressed it was there as its mothers ill and its siblings had all been still births and one of the organisers happens to be a farmer and she couldn't really not come and it doesnt harm the piglet it was warm and being fed and kids are less noisy than piglets. Did I mention its cute? And large!
Ok I know I promised ages ago to show you all some of my art work but I havent got round to the scanning etc... I have some shoddy pics here I took with the camera of my doodles in a little A5 note book I have - these really are light doodles though so dont expect anything good!.
This was me trying out ideas for webcomics - but found something too similair since 🙁
Ok I was thinking of gothulu and the like when I drew this - this all started cos a gothic horror/dark sci fi and fantisy inprint is looking for pictures.
More of the same.
This one is based on a dream I had - the style is me mucking about with ideas of how to illistrate something for Al.
Erm.. I was bored?
Ok this one again was working on styles for Als thing.
In desperation with the fact that I appear not to be able to draw anymore I went hunting for a book - becuase of the specific project I'm working on I was excited to find a book called Anatomy for Fantasy Artists - I copied this from just inside the front cover - 1st time I've done a copy like this in 4yrs :/
I was attempting to manga/cartoonise a photo here.
This is another one from the book - its supposed to be the barber's daughter - the book makes a big point on how difficult it is too draw children and how right they are - I was copying and have managed too draw her older sister who is blatently a teenager!
Floatling heads - I was just trying slightly different styles.
Yes well it was late ok.
I was crossing over styles with this - just doodling really as they all are!
Again just trying out different styles.
Ok I was trying to make someone look ill - and the pen slipped but its a nose bleed ok!
Well we called for H last night and she didnt come in - perhapse shes asleep in our bedroom then - we thought. This morning ni sign of the normal playful hungry kitten so out side plate of food in hand calling - nothing - no flash of black and white fur as there should have been.
We began to get really worried - then I heared very faint mewing - I searched the coal 'bunker' where it sounded like it was coming from - Perhapse she was stuck in the cattle grid or something - no - still the mewing. I turned and lo - there she was mewing at me from the window of the little garage 🙁
Poor thing - I went in there early yesturday morning - Al says he hasn't been in there - all I can hope is that maybe Babara thought it would be a good idea to let her in there whilst we where out (as if its daytime we let the kittens roam outside). But unlikely meaning the poor thing was in there for ages but I'm sure we fed her dinner :/
Still she's back and safe and her sister kept mewing at us last night - in hindsight she was trying to get us to rescue H - oh well.
On the topic of cats - Minni keeps making a disturbing clanking of jaw and salavating sounds and motions as she watches the birds feeding at our bird table - her tail goes flick flick flick!
Ok Al decided he would help more with the house stuff as I'm supposed to be doing less - he's done the last few turns of washing and just to be sterotypical couple - he put the lovely white crocheted blanket and the some of the fleece blankets in a boil wash 🙁 the fleeces are sort of ok but the blanket is ruined - Sorry Aunty Lizzy and Lillian I know you put alot of work into that blanket :(.
Poor Al is devastated.
This is what happens when posh boys schools think that Home economics isnt a subject worth teaching to the boyz! I should have checked or at least reminded him - sigh.
Grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!
I subscrib to a Writers Newspaper and a Writers Magazine to my horror I keep coming across articles saying things like 'if they can't even spell basic words correctly then they can't have done any research' or other such comments some worse some better - all implying that the person who has mispelt something is thick or lazy or both!
Now whilst I advocate intensive spell checking and proof reading I should think the odd thing will still sneak in especially when like me you start with ~every third word mispelt! It is absurd however to suggest that someone has not researched a topic becuase one typo or spelling mistake has sneaked in and some of these people weight the person on the spellings in the emails! Al thought I was paranoid about the spelling issue until recently now he frowns, looks sad and seems to repeatedly be saying 'why is there so much discrimination over spelling?'.
Recently someone said to me on a forum that I should not have my degree due to my spelling and that it was a disgrace of our education system that I had achieved my 2:1 - I have a BSc!!! for goodness sake - if it was a lit degree then maybe but for science? Thats what drafts and supervisors are for with papers - they are checked by you, by peers, supervisor and then the editing team and the journal (or maybe this is just me as my spelling is sooooo bad). Why should people with valid points and the brains to do the research be swept aside becuase of a few transpotions of letters which like so often in DNA actually has no effect on the meaning of the peice written?
People look upon spelling as fixed these days too - this my friends is a relatively recent occurence hence half the problems with the natural 'vandilisation' of our language - its could evolution - each set teenagers/the young and happenings has its own codes, its own special words - a cool black and white film about some guys working to update the dictionary sums this up bueatifully - its a comedy mind, wish I could remember what its called :(.
People tell me I cant be a good writter with my spelling - of course I realise it will just mean more proof reading than most but what has that got to do with the content? I realise that stories need to flow - so I work on the language specifics afterwards - no one has said Will Shakespeare is a bad writter and he couldn't even decide on how to spell his name! People have got PhDs out of going through his work trying to make the spelling uniform - otherwise it looks alot like Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg have been doing the writting!
The other thing is it seems to me that editors have gotten lazy - I know they probably have a hundred and one jobs todo - all of which are probably needless paper work that has nothing to do with actual editing or sorting out proof readers for large amounts of text - this now seems reserved only for large techniqual books that institutes are likely to buy on mass and therefore carry a high risk of suing. An old lady who had written books in her youth was horrified that fiction writters had to do all the proof reading and such them selves - even those with commissions - 'thats the editors job' was her definate answer - unfortunatly they seem more interested in cutting out the dros by using pre selection techniques! This is like throwing out a UCAS form of a student wanting to study science cos they have mentioned Terry Pratchett on the form 🙁 (this happens scary I know).
Anyway this is a rambling post now - mainly I am peed off that people - a large amount of people still seem to think that the ability to spell perfectly is some how realated to intelligence/hard work - it is not!
Peoples brains work differently - alot of the most itelligent people I know cant spell - to an extent that I notice!!! We have pooters with spell checkers now - its like people thinking someones no good at maths cos they struggle a bit with mental arithmatic - now as alot of maths peeps have told me - doing sums in your head like that has very little to do with maths and how it works and many of the people with maths degress... well lets just say its a nightmare if you go out for a meal with more than one of them (unless they want to be accountants!).
Erm, so yeah - Dyslexics rule!!!! KO!
p.s. I do not spell check my blog enteries as I consider them informal
Sarah | sarah | 
Fri 15th Sep 2006 11:09 am | 
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