Returning to College (by sarah)

I wasn't looking forward to tonight I hadn't managed to contact anyone at the college about the money situation due to the internet issue so I had to go and find someone.

I tried the admin office first but unfortunatly it has a tendency to close slightly early and lo it was closed so I headed for the corse coordinator and almost cried whislt telling her and was to my horror shaking - she said we can try the hardship fund but it obviously depends how they actually assess weather you need it.

Plus I feel stupid - this is a compound error - first off I miss judged how much JEans nursery was going to cost becuase I listerned to the government hype about what they were doing with 3+ children and education and didn't read the fine print.

Then I lost my gaurnteed work etc....

Then I wasn't expecting to have to pay for this years tuition fees as I had payed up front before but unfortunatly due to the way that has all be hashed up I am now being asked to pay a resit fee of HALF the origonal - this makes me angry as I was sick and didn't just drop out.

I now can't register until I pay this resit fee and until I do that I still have no libary access or access to the online facilities.

And then the guy I wanted to talk to about my minni project wasn't there when I had finished talking to the corse coordinator but was when I walked passed to go to my lecture but wasn't when we went for a break nor when we had finished the lecture so I haven't got that sorted yet either.

On the plus side there was only two of us on the computers and I learnt how to try and make word do useful stuff and discovered I know more about how to make a page look on a website than I do in word :/

So far I am the only person who has attended every lecture - but I'm very worried about how I'm going to pull this one off. I have alot of work to do this term:

7000 words 5000 words 3000 words plus actual lab and meeting time plus background reading

I also need to finish off the business course stuff for the Prince's Trust whilst trying to build the business which is now more urgent than it was supposed to be :/

Deaf, dumb and blind (by alaric)

The scene: I'm happily working away in London. Sarah is at home, and finds that the Internet connection is down. So she resets the wifi AP and the router and so on, but it doesn't get better. So she rings me.

I can't ping the router from afar, and a traceroute ends at an address that I don't think looks like the last hop before the ADSL link from memory, so I file a ticket with the ISP and get on with work.

But there's no reply to the ticket, so I ring, and sit in a queue, which eventually hangs me up.

So I google and find:

186k, Elite Internet, Mailbox Internet Services Go Bust?

Ah. Apparently my broadband ISP has become one with the Force. So Sarah can't get any work done at home, and I'll have to figure something out so that I can get some work done when I go home, and we'll need to join the queue for a MAC code to migrate to a new broadband provider, which we'll have to choose. And I doubt we'll get back any of the money - we paid a year in advance...

Bleargh...

Jean and her guitar (by sarah)

I dug Jean's guitar out of storage - Barbara thought it was new but I pointed out she had it before the flood - Barbara thought this was odd and that I was 'assuming' genius as Jean wouldn't have been old enough to hold it properlly etc... but thats not the case.

Jean at the time would not leave my guitar along - I could not practice for little chubby hands trying to join in so I found a small cheap guitar and got it for her - at the moment it is annoyingly holding tune better than mine :/

Jean was excited to get her guitar back and we 'played' a few tunes - she now knows what the different bits are called anyway!

We also have a music corner in the bedroom which has Seths drum and other sundries like my recorder etc...

Information Request I (by sarah)

Ok so I realised that I hadn't actually remembered to put this public so yes request one is now after request II - sigh!

As some of you know I have a cooking blog which I have been neglectful over telling people about!

I am looking for recipes for it, I would especially like all those ones that people don't really think about you know - grans chicken soup that sort of thing. Becca, @ndy and Ella have already contributed. Which is cool.

I am veiwing the cooking blog as a sort of research tool and store of recipes. Any interesting food facts are welcome too 🙂

When I say cooking I mean everything form how to make a sandwitch to making preserves to making wine, butter etc... The blog still need some work as it was sort of abandoned with all the flood stuff and the posts that are live aren't even edited yet but its getting there 🙂

Also any cool food websites you know about - let me know - if you have a food bit on your blog let me know etc...

I still have like a hundred recipes to type up from when we lived at Barbaras for it as well.

My 28th Birthday (by sarah)

For my 28th birthday Alaric made me a butterfly cake out of the left over swiss roll and chocolate from christmas!

I'll be posting about this over on Salaric cooking for those interested in how he did it 🙂 But there was a lot of chocolate involved and Jeany got to lick the pot out - eek!

After she was hyper from that we sent her off to a place called Magic Land in Cirencester for her friend Jame's birthday. She had a great and exhusting 2 hours jumping on soft play kits and the like. Al had forgotten the camera so I photographed my boots and things - I love having a camera again. But I was sad as I thought I had lost all the cool pictures of Jeany sledging as the camera was only showing 2 pictures but it wasn't - it was becuase Al had put my birthday presant in the camera - an SD card that has like 1600 picture capacity on it!

The camera was only showing me what was on the new card and not what was on the internal memory!

He also got me a card reader so I can extract not only these picks easily but all those that are traped on the cards of the old cameras!

I had a nice long bath with defoliating face scrub whilst they were at the party too. Then they came back and Jean had more things than she went with!

Each child had got a presant and Jeans was this book of paper dolls you construct and then dress up - we sat infront of the fire on her road map mat and made the two princesses from it! I'll do a bigger post about them on Salaric Carft along with the lovely Japanese stickers Andy gave her which she decided to stick half of in my diary as she knows I love stickers 🙂 We also made some pictures out of them that are now on the fridge - I'll put these on Salaric Craft too 🙂

Al made me a cheese fondue with crusty bread and raw cualiflower, he didn't get time to cut the other vegtables up but there turned out to be just enough for the fondue dipping anyway!

Barbara came round and we opened a bottle of fizzy wine we'd got as a christmas presant (the fondue was made with christmas presant wine too).

I got out the fluted glasses from the wedding as I now have them back in the house and no longer in storage!

Andy also sent back a birthday presant with Al for me which was four lovely slate coasters which come from the same place as our slate place mats and that we got as a wedding presant. I was so excited about this I decided I should lay the table with the slate stuff purely so I could use them! I also got out the four butterfly napkin rings my brother and his girlfriend got me last year!

Al bought the butterfly cake out - me and Jean blew the candles out and Barbara took her piece over to the Mill to eat but even though I warned her the candle holders where still on the cake she managed to chomp one of them up which she duly returned as her TV wasn't working and she needed Al to go and fix it for her.

Me and Al then put Jean to bed who had had two party loads of cake and sugar and was very very tired! We then played chinese checkers - or attempted to work out from the rules how to play, I eat some chocolate fondue that had ment to be desert to the meal and went to bed.

the end