Swords And Mirrors (by sarah)

With the realisation that we have almost been here a year and that our sword was still not mounted on the wall we thought we would get a wiggle on and start doing all those niggly little jobs we didn't get time to do though out the year - we also needed to put hooks up for Christmas decorations etc...

We also mounted the little butterfly that Jean made me two christmasses ago! It wont sit in my preferred orientation so I may have to take sugru to it.

Here is Alaric preparing the way to drill.

The funniest bit about this though was that the sword was down off of the mantle piece and the girls were both instantly drawn to it! I love this pics and will be creating a story about them on the Wiggly Pets blog.

Cirencester’s First Christmas Slam (by sarah)

I had a great time on Friday at the first Poetry Slam to be held in Cirencester. It was organised by the fab Marcus Moore and Sara-Jane Arbury and was lots of fun. Of course I did not score very high but that is not why I go to them - this was my third Slam and I think I have drastically improved from my first one.

I performed Mummy's Socks from The Little Book of Festive Poetry and even sold a copy! Which means I have enough money to another book for the school library!

Here is a picture of me mid sock swing.

I had a great time catching up with old friends plus it was my first time out in not completely flat shoes since Mary's pregnancy. So it was win win and yes I had to use the walking stick to get back to the car but that was due a) it being cold, b) having stood around chatting to people and c) having parked far away from the venue as our sat nav doesn't understand Cirencester!

Once again I got to perform with Breda Reed Brown who is The Gloucestershire Poet Laureate, Joy-Amy, Cloe who I normally see telling stories rather than reading verse! and The Luchador Poet. Plus the lovely Tommie who I met at the qualifier for the Cheltenham Literature Festival Slam.

This time I also had Alaric with me which was lovely as we got to have a meal together as well 🙂 Just a shame he has a cold at the moment so wasn't feeling to hot on the night! (hence no video!).

However there is a video of me performing the poems at The Brewery in Cheltenham last year!

And you can go and listen to nice recordings of the poems and my christmas story at my Bandcamp.

Sarah’s Christmas Collection – audio book (by sarah)

I have spent the last week sorting out this audio book / album - it contains The Little Book of Festive Poetry, a story about a mouse and Jean and Christmas during the flood era and a song. You can listen to it free on my Salaric Bandcamp.

Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to embed it at the moment and also Bandcamp have decided to make the song the main thing so it always starts with it - this is what they've put into there home page and stuff but I can't currently unselect it. So to actually listen to the thing from the beginning you have to either download it for £3 (all profits are going to buy books for Jean's school library) or you click the back button to get to the first track. A bit annoying I know and I'm sorry about that but thought you would all like to hear it rather than me continue to faff ad infinitum.

Santa’s Little Helper (by sarah)

Last year our friend bought Mary a lovely little outfit which too our surprise fits again this year! It has a little hood as well but she wouldn't have it pulled up over her head (at least not whilst I was trying to photograph her!).

She is really excited about Christmas and it is making us all grin!

Mary is developing in leaps and bounds at the moment - she is trying to potty train herself which is being interesting. This has resulted in frustration for her as she forgets to pull down her trousers or lift the lid on the potty or both!

She likes to have snugs whilst drinking milk still and we have to watch Gotye first thing - she points to the music video and says 'Daddy toot!' meaning Daddy's foot - I have actually tried showing her both the music video and then our spoof to show her it's not actually Daddy but I think this has confused things more :/

Our spoof

The first video is Daddy Toot the second is Daddy Bubba (baby). She is very waily as babies go but also very easy to entertain and make giggle. She tries to do a magic trick of making her arm disappear up her sleeve which is really really cute! And she is too rough with the cats and sulks when they get put out at night or when we are about to go out.

She can ask for 'Roe Roe!' Row Row Row Your Boat. And she has problem solving skills that are doing my head in as it means I take something off of her and she works out how to get it back no matter where I have put it!

She loves play dough and music and drawing with Jean. She bites Jean and Jean is too soft on her. We are looking forward to Christmas Day and her and her sisters interactions 🙂

I need a holiday! (by alaric)

This year, I've been alternating between bleak depression and enthusiastic elation.

Luckily, it's easy to see a pattern - the elation is when I let myself get distracted by interesting things; the depression is when I have to tear my attention back to what needs to be done rather than what I feel like doing!

It's been a funny year. On the one hand we've moved into a much larger house, with much better facilities, that's warmer and easier to keep clean and tidy. My work is great, and I've managed to catch up on some things that have been hanging over me for years - tax paperwork, terminating my limited company (that had become nothing more than a thorn in my side since I stopped freelancing), simplifying and upgrading my server setup, tidying up my home directory and organising my life. On the other hand, I've been so busy that the new home has mainly been a place to eat and sleep rather than something I've had much chance to enjoy, and I'm behind on the (small, reasonable) list of projects I wanted to do this year - with no year left to do them; I've so far spent only a handful of days on my own projects in the entire year.

I spent a whole day sorting out my workshop on my birthday in April, and ended that day with a few little things to finish off - which are still waiting for me. I've not finished the ring casting, which should only take a couple more days, nor rebuilt my furnace, which should take a few days more.

I've done a bit better on computer-based projects as I can do them wherever I have my laptop; I've done some work on my fiction project, and made progress on my organisational infrastructure to convert a huge pile of "things that need investigating to even begin to decide what needs doing about them" into a tractable TODO list, and done some writing for the ARGON project web site.

But, with my ability to concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing rapidly waning, it's clear that I need some time off. So, I've booked the week before Christmas off of work, and I hope to:

1. Do what I can to fix the roof in the workshop.

   • It leaks. This will be hard to fix properly, as it'll require spending lots of money on materials; and possibly can't be done until there's some warmer, drier, weather to dry the decking out. But I'll see if I can improve on the current bodge somewhat, at least to give the decking a chance to dry properly without regular re-soakings.
   • There's great big gaps in the eaves, all round the walls, varying from a centimetre up to about twenty centimetres, through which an icy wind blows. All the warm air from the heater disappears, and ivy creeps in. I need to seal them up (minus a controllable air vent to let out humid air and fumes from welding - perhaps an air vent plus an extractor fan with a fume hood would be the way to go in the long run). I plan to saw some strips of wood to length so they can go between the rafters, nail them in place, and use judicious amounts of sealant to keep the tenacious ivy at bay and to account for my general inability to cut wood to exact lengths properly.

2. Run Ethernet to the workshop so I have an Internet connection there. This will involve spending some money on outdoor-suitable conduit and fittings, and trunking for the interior runs, then drilling lots of holes in walls and running cables through and sealing the gaps. But the result will be that I can actually do computer work at a desk with a comfy chair, rather than hunched over a laptop on the sofa with children tugging at me.

3. Start building the computer infrastructure in the workshop. I'm looking at a battery-backed low-voltage power system feeding a Raspberry Pi (which I already have, waiting - Sarah got me one for my birthday), bristling with sensors. Because sensors are fun.

4. If the weather and time permit, work on my ring casting and the furnace, although that somewhat requires dry weather. We'll see.

5. Chill out, play computer games, write fiction and ARGON prose.

6. Order the bits to build a chord keyer - I doubt I'll have time to build it by the time they arrive in the post, so I'm saving that for a project I can do at Bristol Hackspace in the new year.

But I need to take care that next year isn't like this one. Taking on so many responsibilities that I struggle to maintain my productivity means I get less stuff done, not more, and makes it hard to prioritise my effort sensibly. I'm going to book three weekend days each month, in advance, for my projects or simple relaxation, rather than just thinking I'll do them "when I get a free day" only to find that all of my weekends are booked up months in advance. I'll be open to rearranging them in order to fit around the days when Sarah or the children need me, or we're visiting people for events - most of the time, it doesn't matter what actual day I do things on. Sometimes this will involve getting a whole weekend, and then just a single day at the other end of a month; that's fine, just as long as it lets me keep making progress on my projects, and giving me a chance to unwind from the stresses of constantly doing what I must do, rather than what I want to do.