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.

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 🙂

Sammy Snowman (by sarah)

We are currently snowed in so Jean didn't get to go to Pre-School today. Instead we have been building a snowman - his name is Sammy. Here are the pictures of Barbara and Jean - I'm not sure who was having the most fun!

We then all went inside for hot chocolate with special chocolate cream on top! Barbara brought the sledge round but Jean said she didn't want to go on it so they are currently off building Barbaras fire etc...

Here are some other picks of the water fall - from these you can see that down in our valley here in Gloucestershire we haven't actually thawed out for weeks now!

I'm loving my new camera - though at the mo I only have its memory which is about 10 pictures which is frustrating as is the need to use the Kodak software when uploading the photos onto the laptop :/

Post Christmas Dinner (by sarah)

Today we went to my brother David and his girlfriend Michelles house for a post christmas/new year lunch. There was lots of chopped peppers which Jean woofed down, homous and pizza!!! We were in hevean.

Then there were gifts, we handed over Jeans tea towel with her drawing on plus some bits I'd made. They did something similar and we got an old copy of one of their films as it was in a box set one of them had got for Christmas - this seems a sensible way of doing things to me. They've been having a few issues due to the credit crunch in that David lost his nice manager job just after they had sighned on the morgage. He is now temping at just about anything.

We had a lovely time, mum and dad had got them stuff for the new house which included a gravey boat - most of the pictures I took seem to contain it or David playing with it :/ Oh and yay!!!! I have a camera again!!!! Mum and Dad bought it as a joint birthday and christmas presant and it is twice the resolution of the old one though I am currently running on its internal memory which is a whole 10 pictures :/

But yay!!!! and here are the picks including lots of cute Jean ones and yes she's in her chinese outfit again. Unfortunatly last night we watched KungFu Panda so she now keeps hitting people 🙁

I had to take arty shots I just couldn't resist - sorry!