Summer Holidays (by sarah)

I feel I have slightly failed with the school holidays - I had lots of things planned but in the first week the first three things I attempted to do with Jean where grand failures :/

First off I had planned that she could join a library and we would go once a week during to holidays so we went off to Painswick only to see the library didn't open on Mondays (I should have looked closer at this point but I didn't). I thought never mind lets go to the Museum in the Park in Stroud but when we got there it turned out Mondays was like a special club day and it wasn't open 🙁

Me and Jean looked at the swans and ducks on the lake instead and played wind in the willows.

Then the next day we tried the library again only to find that it is shut perminantly due to public health reasons - now I knew it had been shut a while ago but had assumed it had been fixed :/

Mum and Dad rescued this second day of failure by taking us to Pizza Hut.

The third day I took Jean to Prim Rose Vale Farm Shop where I passed out crushing her ice-cream and having to go to hospital before she had gotten even five minutes on the toys :/

We were doing home school which Jean loves but she loves it too much and just got too tired and haven't really done any for two weeks now :/

I did manage to take her to the Wearable Art Parade in Painswick and she went to the Docks with mum and dad and to Tweksberry. But I found that I had miscalculated and we had run out of money so I couldn't take to the cinamar or to any of the museums :/

I have also failed to organise friends to come and play as they have all been on holiday 🙁

She did however really enjoy the Village Feast 🙂 all two days of it! With lots of her school friends about!

We are starting to gear up making the decorations for her party and her cousins are visiting this week which is more the sort of thing I was expecting. We also have the Boundary Walk at the weekend which she always enjoys 🙂

People are now starting to appear to ask Jean round to play which is good - but I do feel I have failed slightly with organising a good holiday for her and she has been bored and I'm afraid very naughty 🙁

July’s Challenges (by sarah)

June's challenges I managed suprisingly easily and now is another month and another set of challenges.

I am setting myself the task of working on a 100 000 word novel for the Terry Pratchett Prize. The plan is to try and write 5000 words a day or at least 2000 words. The second challenge is going to be spending another 30 hours on art - there are several projects that need to be finished off and some fimo stuff I want to start basically.

I also have my paintings going up in Cheltenham this coming week for Art in the Park - which I am excited about 🙂

A Nice Number for a Birthday! (by sarah)

Well if your American at least! My birthday this year according to those from across the pond:

01/11/10

At The Turning of the Year (by sarah)

This New Years Eve sees both a Lunar eclipse which is currently occuring - my camera is annoyingly doing the thing of deciding it's too cold to take photos 🙁

It is also by some definitions a Blue Moon! For real! I'm serious 🙂

The number of full moons in a year alters and if there is more then the 12 corrasponding to our months which all have names etc... the extra moons get the name Blue Moon. So if there are two full Moons in a month one of them gets called Blue!

There are other definitions of this such as the Lent Moon being the Betrayer Moon which sounds like blue in Hebrew or something but still we have a blue moon and an eclipse on the turning of the year and the start of a new decade 🙂

And yes I know that the turn of the year is actually at the Shortest Day but this is the night that everyones celebrating so ner!

The Oozy Decade (by sarah)

So the first decade of the New Millenium is drawing to a close. Due to the the zeros involved in the dates it was dubbed the Nuaghties but I always prefered the Oozies instead.

And that is what this decade has done it has oozed - political wars shifted countries without the general public apparently noticing what the governments had done. Political parties in the Uk at least seemed to all merge into various forms of the same thing - New Labour=Old Conservative etc... Back paddling on polices.

I would say the banks and finiacial industries have oozed as has the printed book industry with plagerists getting short listed for prestigous prizes and those who should be getting the prizes rediculed becuase they are the wrong genre (like genre has anything to do with the power and talent of the writing?).

IT has oozed into all our lives - a process that started more in the nineties it is true but it is now ingrained and with this the degregation of geeks in the mind of the managers begain in ernest.

Spin doctoring has oozed its way into science and academia. And the apathy of the general public has oozed itself into discontentment.

Yes this is depressing but look where we stand at the end of this decade - look at the Copenhagen fiasco and ponder the future! Look to the fungus' and stuff hitting the Asian bread bowls and the vanillia plants due to greedy farming methods and think where we are dragging humanity in this 'New Millenium'.

One of the things I have discovered is that none of this is new - the more history I read as research for the Punk storyline the more I find humans have been oozing in their cesspits of civilisations for... well forever.

But I think it can be changed I think the oozing totalitarism can be stopped and humanity freed. And now the glitz of the nuaghties has started to tarnish perhapse substance will become important once more.