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06/10/2006: "Popping in"
Hello there to anyone who still reads. I've been sitting at the pc this morning for ages, catching up reading other blogs and realising I really miss writing here and reading friends sites. I keep thinking in "blogging" tems and find myself writing little excerpts and observations in my head but never getting time to get them here. Things have been so busy I just don't seem to have found time to do any work on the site and my futile attemps at changing colours have been both sporadic and fairly disasterous as is blatantly obvious 
I'm really stuck on the colour of the links - can't get rid of the orange despite trying to change almost every single colour code I can see on the template. It must be embedded somewhere and I just can't find it. In the meantime, I think I managed to change archives to fairly unreadable colours. Sometime I will try to sort it.
Meanwhile, it's been really hot and sunny here. In the garden, the daisies are longer than the grass and covering it like a beautiul white lace. It does need cut but neither SO nor I have had the time to do it. SED and SYD have finished all their exams and SED only has a few more weeks left at school - with nothing yet planned on what she's going to do. I worry. SYD goes off to France on Sunday for a school trip....I worry!
Work is busy, stressful, full of hassle and at times I'm not particularly happy but I'm still there....for the time being and I'm still saving for the things I want to do.
Art work is giving me a bit of concern I've had to cut out several modules this year (because of work pressures) and have a submission in a few weeks for a module I seem to have virtually no work for and even less sketch book work. I did ask to defer until Summer but that was met with the usual "try and get it in". So of course I will, but I need to work so hard to pull something together. Part of the module has been digital drawing and that's been harder than I thought it would be. I've never used a Mac before and find I sit awkwardly infront of it, not knowing how to even get the screen to show what I want or how to find files etc. I feel like I've never used a computer at all, when in reality I've been using one every day for over twenty years! But never a MAC. I hadn't even seen one before this course started. We use Photoshop which I'm not picking up well. I thought I'd really find this bit easy but boy was I sooooooooo wrong. Think it's true what they say about old dogs and new tricks! I also have no ideas for a project to work on and anything I do looks like.......well, it's not good! So a few little worries there.
We go on holiday in a few weeks but we haven't managed to organise anything. The plan was to go to Paris for a week and then somewhere in West France but as time ticks on, I'm really not sure that is going to happen. SO and I never seem to be in at the same time or when we are, neither of us feels like sitting online to look for a holiday. Maybe today....after I do some work and SO finishes watching Rugby.....
On the greater things in life, we managed our first munro of the year last Saturday Stob Binnien. It was a great day's walk. Very hot and sunny to start with by by 3000ft we were in mist cloud and looking at snow and lochins with ice in them. Unfortunately the cloud cover meant no view at all from the top although even more frustratingly when we were halfway down the skies cleared for about half an hour over the top and the views would have been spectacular had we timed it well. The steep descent at the end didn't do much for my knees and they were a bit sore for a couple of days after. The week before we'd climbed Ben Venu, which we've done before but this time SO wanted to do it without the blisters he had last time! That was another lovely day and the views down to Loch Katrine were lovely.
We saw Roseanne Cash in concert this week - front row middle, less than four feet away from her. It was a great concert and despite knowing how fantastic she is in her own right, I couldn't stop thinking what it must have been like growing up with such an awsome father. What I hadn't known before is that she has traced relatives back to Falkland in Fife......so we're probably practically related 
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On the home front we've decorated the bathroom but are still waiting on flooring and a new bath panel. The heating broke down just as the weather hit a cold spell a few weeks ago. My car windscreen washer has stopped skooshing water so I drive through a dirty, sticky haze unless I remember to throw water on the windscreen. Plans to fence off the garden and give us some privacy are still ongoing......and probably will be for years to come. At a garden center the other week I spied a garden office which has sparked off a new dream. A studio at the bottom of the garden, where I can work, store and create wonderfully creative things.....well probably a pipe dream but a nice one to aim for and until I can afford a house cleaner, a dream of a space of my own which no-one else can mess up!
Generally I feel fairly content today, and hope to fix the site soon and start writing more regularly again. I've missed being here. With age and a failing memory against me, it's the only way I can remember and record what I've done!
