Lucy’s dead. :(

No need to worry too much, Lucy was never a living being,,, Lucy was my TomTom.  Technically she’s still my TomTom, although she’s not doing much at the moment, apart from being dead.

Yesterday for the first time in 2 months I actually entered the world dressed as a human being.  I’m still not well.  On my third course of antibiotics (fingers crossed for this one), doped to high heaven (I think I might have fractured a couple of ribs, normally they should have healed by now, but I heal very, very slow), but the good news is that that carpal tunnell isn’t bugging me anymore.  😀  Sadly the same cannot be said for the arthritis – blooming weather.

Anyway, dressed in actual clothes, as I had to go to a meeting, on my way there… and then to turn on Lucy in the hope to get some guidance on where to go… and she does this:

Yup – that’s her turned on.  And she then refused to turn off.  So there I am, supposed to get us there safe and on time, and Lucy’s refusing to do anything apart from making me want to kill her… which would have been kind of pointless, as she’s as dead as dead can be already.

I’m not used to figuring out where to go without her guidance, I’m too dopey (don’t worry, I wasn’t the one driving!) to figure out what signs I should follow…  my side is hurting, and I’m all over rubbish thanks to the antibiotics (luckily it wasn’t a day I needed to constantly run to the loo)…  but my other half is clearly a genious… I’m there sinking into total depression, an he says:  “Oh for goodness sake – just use the satnav on my phone!”

He’s got a satnav on his phone!  How could I not have realised that?  It is one of those song and dance phone that can do anything and everything… but myself having a phone that’s not been working since Christmas (goodness knows that’s wrong with the fecker… even got it a new battery), and when it was working the most exciting thing it could do was to take grainy pictures.

Is this the end of satnavs?  If so, I will miss them… I liked dragging them out and pushing in where to go.  I liked the annoyance of having to wait until they had a sat to get in contact with.  I liked the annoyance of new roads having made and Lucy shows us as driving through a fields whilst calmly telling us to “turn around”.  I bet these phone satnavs just get updated by themselves.  😦

So, even though Lucy is dead, I will eventually get around to find our old satnav… One that’s been resting for 3 years somewhere, finally getting a chance to annoy me in the car again.  😀

Sweet dreams, Lucy.  You did us well for 3 years.

This and that, and a welcome. :)

Above is a pic taken of Ms Monkey-pie over the weekend… posted just beacuse she’s the coolest kitty ever.  😀

Although I think she might need to brush her tongue.  😀

 

Secondly – a big welcome to the world to my little grandson!  He decided to arrive yesterday, a few weeks early, so he’s still not allowed home quite yet:

 

And then a rant… there’s generally two postmen that delivers my mail.  One is what I refer to as “the surfer dude”.  He’s always got a smile, never in a rush, and generally seem to love his job.  He’s awesome.  My doggies love him too.

The second one I refer to as “that fucking bastard”.  Yup… as that’s what he is.  Last week there was a knock at the door, by them time I’d hobbled downstairs that fucking bastard was down the street, with my mail!  And my parcel!  No note left to say there was a parcel for me, nor did he bother to stick the rest of the letters through the mailslot.

Today that fucking bastard did bother to deliver the mail… but what he didn’t do was knock and get a signature, as one of the letters had been sent signed for (it was gift vouchers).  Of course I instantly sent off an e-mail to the company that had sent the vouchers and informed them that they had arrived, incase they wonder why they had never been signed for, and might have gone missing… but the thing is, I shouldn’t have had to do that!  The company had paid for a service, a service that the fucking bastard chose to ignore.

In their eyes…

I was enjoying reflections last night… with the gorgeous Ms Monkey-pie laying on my tummy and doing pushypaws up on my neck, in in her eyes I saw her white paws pushing like crazy on top of my robe… made me think of the red and blue pill in The Matrix.  😀

But, no pics of that, wasn’t gonna disturb her, so here’s a pic of my beautiful Pot instead, with a reflection of me taking a pic of her as she’s on my lap.

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Posted for the Weekly Photo Challenge:  Reflections – http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/21/weekly-photo-challenge-reflections/

I want to win a new shed…

I do have a shed, I got a very nice shed indeed.  I got the shed shown above, by my gorgeous feline girl (sweet dreams).  However, it is a work shed.  It’s filled with saws and tools and various sorts of crap I wouldn’t have a clue what it’s being used for.  It’s got a 3 meter counter running at the back, and there’s not a space on it for a fly to rest.  I have to say the shed looks prettier in summer (pic was taken in spring) when there’s flowers in the window boxes.

So, due to the shed being used for wood and stone work, and all the various tools that comes with that, we have for a few months been talking about getting a new shed, a new one for gardening tools.  One where we can store the rakes, the seeds, the leaf blower, the lawn mover, and all the various other stuff that we use in the garden.

But, as most things go, we still haven’t gotten around to it.  Lack of dosh means we would have built it ourselves (just like we did with the work-shed), but lack of time, enthusiasm and bodies that aren’t falling apart means we’ve still not started.

 

So imagine my joy when I spotted *drumroll, please* that there’s a shed up for grabs!!!  Oh, yes, please, I do want a shed!!!  But… and here’s the big but… most companies want you to praise their product to high heaven, and they’re also looking for a marvellous story of what you will do with your shed.  Hmmm… I don’t intend to make it into a something exciting at all.  I want to store my gardening shite in it.  And as for praising – it’s a butt ugly shed!!!

Yes – as you can see… it’s exceedingly ugly.  I shudder with the thought of something like that in my garden… but its got potential.  😀

A lick of paint, some fascias and window frames, stick on a door handle (no, doesn’t need to be functional – but it’s amazing what a simple handle can do to a door that’s lacking one), a welcome sign on the door, and a flower box under the windows – and suddenly you would have transformed a butt ugly shed into  a charming little hut for gardening tools to live.  😀

Well, no matter what – I still got my fingers crossed for a new shed… or B&Q vouchers!  😀

And if you want to enter – hop on over to Beast Sheds Blog for more details, or if you want to buy a shed, hop on over to Beast Sheds.  Comp open to Uk only, closes 30th of April.  Good luck!!!

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Update:

I did not win the shed – it went to someone with thousands of twitter followers, who just happens to write gardening books.  😉

Not that I thought I should have won – someone wanted to use it for a BBQ shed – which I thought was a brilliant idea.  Sorry, got no idea who won the B&Q vouchers.

But – I got my shed anyway!  And as this post seems quite popular with google searches, I thought I’d update so you can see my new 7×8 foot shed that ended up costing me a measly £58 altogether!

New shed

 

 

Hi!

Well here’s a slightly bizarre picture of Pot, when she was goofing around on the garden bench.

Not on on here too much at the moment – so hope everyone is alright – as other half has two weeks off.  I’m still falling to bits, with side still hurting (I take forever and a day to heal… just a little cut can stay for months), carpal tunnel still in place (but my kick-ass brace ordered online has arrived, so I can now use the fingers on that hand again!  Yay!), and tooth still bad.  Doped up on pain killers, and gone cold turkey on the pepsi max… now on forth day with no caffeine.

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Posted for the One Word Photo Challenge:  Red – http://jennifernicholewells.com/2014/03/18/one-word-photo-challenge-red/

Costly dyslexia

Now, on the contrary to what you might think at times with my appaling spelling, I am not dyslexic… with me it’s purely lazyness… the head can spell, but the fingers seem to have a life of their own, and I can never be arse to re-read what I’ve written to check for mistakes.  🙂

However, my other half is dyslexic.  And it’s something he prefers to ignore.  I deal with any correspondance, whether it’s text messages or e-mail for him.  And I don’t mind… I know it’s a struggle for him.

However – he’s decided to take charge.  He can read and write, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a slow and agonising process, with him getting frustrated as he gets stuck on words.

To me reading and writing has always been a joy… I don’t read letter by letter, I generally don’t even read word by word, unless there’s a word that’s not common to me, I read sentence by sentence.  Of course I do happend upon a word now and then that my brain don’t instantly recognise by just glancing at it, and occasionally a word I don’t know, and then I’ll eagerly check it out via online dictionary, feeling like I’ve just been handed a nice treat (I love learning new words, and I still do, English is after all not my mother tongue).

But, spurred on with the other half wanting to improve his reading and writing, I took to google.  He used to have a pair of tinted reading glasses, but the’d gotten lost, so until he can get another eye test, I figured there might be something useful online.

First thing that greeted me was an ad to buy a font that supposedly makes it easier for dyslexics.  But you know what – some pretty cool person has made a similar font completely free!!!  So now I have installed OpenDyslexic as an add on onto other halfs Chrome browser (he normally uses FF, but now he has the option of using Chrome, where all websites will show with the special font).  Dosh saved!  Big thank you to OpenDyslexic.

Then I figured a game would do him well.  Might as well start re-learning the basics, as he was labelled “stupid” in school (and he’s as far from that as you can get), and never got the support he could have greatly benefitted from.  So, I search to see if there’s some games for kids that can help teach from scratch.  Yup – there is – for £100!  This actually made me really upset, as with all the car troubles this past month, there is no where in hell I’d be able to afford that… this month is a total no-go, and next month will be catch-up due to the expenses this month, which means I wouldn’t be able to get it until end of May.  *sigh*  So I check e-bay tosee if someone’s selling it second hand (it can be bought on disk), but no luck… and after many a click hopping from website to website, I finally find a similar game – for free!

Why the heck is this game not linked from all the places I visited regarding dyslexia?  It’s free!  It’s fun (if you’re 5… probably not so fun if you’re 50, but hey-ho)… and did I mention it’s free?  So – now the other half will have an extremely childish game to play… and I know he’s gonna love it.  If he one day can read a book himself without throwing it down in frustration after 3 pages, he’ll be just about the happiest man in the world…

And here it is – completely free – a game that will start with the very basiscs on learning how to read a write:  Teach your monster to read

So… maybe being dyslexic doesn’t have to be too costly afterall.  😀  Now all I need is to get his prescription for new glasses, and then I’ll order them online for a fraction of the price.  😀

Stock photo experiment

Today I got the last few e-mails in my stock photo experiment.  😀

It was fun as an experiment, but not something I would be interested in… however, after checking out 8 sites, if I were to put some time and effort into this, first choice would be Shutterstock… although I think it might be an issue with getting 7 out of 10 pics accepted… and then onto the second choice, which would have been Bigstock.  This is however based on how user friendly their pages are… I like things that are easy to understand and use.

I got no idea how many visitors they all get, nor did I bother with checking out percentage of sales, nor how much each pic sells for, I was just wanted to see how it worked, and what sort of images got accepted.  😀

 

You can read more about my experiment here – but here’s a quick breakdown:

• 8 sites tried
• 3 images (the same images) uploaded to all sites
• 1 site none uploaded
• 1 site only two uploaded
• Pic A accepted on 3 sites
• Pic B accepted on 5 sites
• Pic C accepted on 3 sites

It was quite fun to do.  So if you got tons of decent pics, and don’t mind what they get used for, and you got plenty of time on your hands to upload them and filling their details in, it might be a thing to do on an evening when there’s nothing on telly.

I might have been a little harsh on my judgement on having pic C accepted.  I enlarged the image huge, and asked the other half if he could spot the colour differences in the background, and he couldn’t.  I can however, but then again I know it’s there.

Inside a niche

Bust of Earl Patrick, inside a niche above the door at Glamis Castle

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Posted for the Weekly Photo Challange:  Inside – http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/weekly-photo-challenge-inside-2/

Wordless Wednesday

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Wordless Wednesday

Aaaaargh – blooming ear mites.

Well, my boy’s managed it yet again – catch earmites.

Considering how much he hates his drops with a passion, you’d think he’d learn not to fight with strange cats.  *sigh*

Luckily it was spotted early (only one ear), and all the other four legged ones are in the clear.  The good thing about it being the boy catching them, is that chances are the other’s won’t get it (as he prefers not to socialise with them).

He had it last year too, but before that he was in the clear when it came to ear mites for quite a few years.  Little bugger must have been scratching in secret, knowing the drops would come out… but I spotted it checking him over today.  As he’s not the most cuddly cat ever, I always take the chance once a week, at a point where he is feeling loving to give him a once over, feeling for lumps, and checking the ears.  Only thing he won’t ever let me check is his mouth, so I always to to get a good peek when he’s either biting or yawning.  😀

He’s had his first drops, and my hands got the bite marks to prove it.  In a couple of days time my hands will look like mince.  Hamburgers anyone?

Chilling out in the garden today… showing off his good ear.  😀  Not that his other ear is bad, but I spotted the tell-tale signs taking a peek inside.