Not so stationary...

This weekend I renewed my Young Person's Railcard. Not so remarkable in itself, until I realised that this would be the 8th such railcard I have held... and that of the previous 7, they just so happen to have been renewed at 5 different stations!
2001/02: St.Albans
2002/03-2004/05: Reading
2005/06: Newport, Gwent (Wales)
2006/07: Scarborough
2007/08: York

So, this weekend, since we were in Macclesfield to visit Michael's parents, I decided to renew my railcard a day early and thus at yet another different station.

I couldn't begin to guess how many thousands of miles that short list of railcards covers! I wonder if, in those 7 years, I have travelled the equivalent of circumnavigating the Earth by rail (~24,000 miles). I may well have done!

Excusez-moi, monsieur?

I don't know what we're doing wrong.

Sometimes, Michael and I go out for dinner. That, I believe, is not unusual.
We arrive. We are shown to a table and are given menus to peruse. Usually, then someone comes to ask us if we're ready, to which the answer is usually 'Can we please have a few more minutes?'. We subsequently order and receive appropriate courses in a timely fashion.
Then... and here's where the problem arises... nothing happens. We have clearly finished. Empty dessert dishes and coffee cups are cleared. And then the 'how do we get the bill' dance begins. There follows several minutes of trying to catch the eye of a waiter, putting a wallet/purse on the table, etc... and still no bill. Other tables receive their bills, pay and are off into the night. Not us. Eventually we end up practically grabbing the sleeve of a passing waiter to request the bill, at which point they seem totally surprised to see us still there and go to get it. It seems that eating a nice meal renders the pair of us utterly invisible.

I don't know what we're doing wrong. Any ideas?

Yellow ribbons

On walking back from the station on Sunday night, I walked past a tree outside the Catholic church in the town centre. It was Remembrance Sunday and looking up, I saw what appeared to be a hundred or more yellow ribbons tied to the tree. It seemed an appropriate and beautiful thing to do on such a day.
Except, they weren't yellow ribbons. They were simply yellow leaves. Not one orange one, green one, red one, brown one. All bright yellow.
Walking beneath them, they almost seemed to be nature's way of mourning those who are gone, but not forgotten.

[I once again apologise for the gap in posts. I will try to catch up a little, but I make no promises!]

Ah, that's better...

As of Monday evening, I now have internet access which works reliably (and for which I am paying!). It's nice to be back online. As someone recently said "How.did.I.ever.live.without.Google?!". My to-do list is seriously long, as there were so many things which I couldn't easily do without the internet - book train tickets, get pictures for kids activities, browse/research purchases, get new recipes, etc, etc. But now I am back and some of those things have got done.

In other news, Michael is away at the moment, has been for about 1½weeks, will be back in 1½weeks. Boohoo! *pout* Last week he was helping out at a church holiday club in his parents' parish, this week he's co-running the kids activities at a Christian family holiday thing (not exactly sure what that is *blush*), next week he's on a cathedral singing course in Ely.
And the week after that is the holiday club at St.Luke's. I seem to be somewhat managing the 3-5yo group, of whom there may be about 30. There are 4 or 5 other adults in that team, so it should be ok. I have so much prep still to do though!
Last weekend, I did get some of it done though. I need to make 4 large cutout figures of Bible characters (similar to the ones you get advertising DVD's sometimes). Well, adult size would be too big, so I asked if I could borrow 'Little Miss J' - my friend Susannah's little girl, who's 4yo. This was agreed and last Sunday at church, Susannah asked if I would like to come over for lunch and get the drawing done. I readily agreed, and to cut a long story short, the afternoon turned into a barbecue in their back garden with another couple of families and I didn't get home until just before 10pm! It was fantastic afternoon, sitting in the sunshine, watching Little Misses J & S and Babies S & E (Baby S is Little Miss J's little brother - E & S are both a little over 1yo), drinking Pimms and chatting. Very, very nice!

Oh, I got a new job! From next week, I will no longer be working in the X-ray office. I will be working in MRI. This time, it's a permanent position (as opposed to agency temping, which is what I've been doing for the past 10 months), with somewhat better pay (not hard!) and better holidays (even easier!). I'll be booking in patients, answering phone calls, making appointments, etc. I think I'm looking forward to it, although it's a little daunting.

Apart from that, I'm glad the weather has cooled off a little, and I'm looking forward to 'Greenbelt '08 - Rising Sun', where we're working in the Children's Festival (can you spot a theme yet?!)

I think that's all for now. I'll be back when I think of something else.

Internet Outtage

I have now been without the internet at home for nearly 2 weeks, but I should be reconnected on Monday. My housemate moved out and took the connection, which was in her name, as she is fully entitled to do. So, I have spent a goodly amount of time this past fortnight getting a new BT line and a new broadband connection. Should be up on Monday.

At the moment, I'm piggy-backing on a neighbour's unsecured WiFi (don't know who). The signal is bad though and I have to sit very still or it kicks me off.

That's all for now, methinks. More interesting (maybe) update will follow.

The Prince and the Paw-Paw

Tonight's Dinner:
Main course
Steak and chilli bean wrap with chunky guacamole and sour cream

Dessert

and

Both delicious. One less than a tenth of the price of the other!

Results

The blood test came back "entirely normal and so no further action is needed". I think that's good!

I do however need a new inhaler to get my asthma back under control. Stupid rain/pollen!

Strawberries & Passionfruit

I have started a new blog.

This one will continue to be for the fluffy/everyday stuff.

Over there will be where I talk about more serious stuff.

It's at http://wayofmicah.blogspot.com.

I don't like needles

But that didn't stop a lady using one to pinch some of my blood this afternoon and taping a little bit of cotton wool taped to my arm... although I guess I did ask her to and she was a phlebotomist.

After several people in the past week have mentioned having issues with their thyroids, I thought I would look up what that meant. And the symptoms were rather familiar, so I concluded that I wouldn't lose anything by getting checked out and if I was right then it might explain why, among other things, I am *always* tired, even when I get a decent amount of sleep.
So, I was at the GP this afternoon (4:10pm). He said he thought it unlikely, but he sent me for a blood test anyway to check - for TSH, kidney, iron, potassium, sodium, liver and full blood count. I guess he thought while I was there we may as well look at lots of things to check those too. I had to go to the hospital for the blood draw, but they were open until 5 so I thought I may as well go tonight and then I'll get the results back sooner (about a week).

I'm not too worried. I've been tired for nearly as long as I can remember, so if it's simply that I don't get enough sleep then that hasn't changed, and if there's something wrong, it can be treated/fixed, etc.


And Stephanie... Here's how I did my favicon:

• First I made a 16x16 pixel image. The maker I linked before is good for doing that.
  
• Then I saved it as favicon.ico. I put mine in the images folder of the website, but you don't have to.
  
• You then need to insert the following code into your Header section of the website:
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="images/favicon.ico" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon">
  <link rel="icon" href="images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
  where the green bit is the location of the picture.
  I'm not totally sure how or why those work, but they do. I think you need them all because different browsers work in different ways.

Hope that helps.

Still Here

I have once again left this blog abandoned for far too long! Life has been just a smidgeon hectic of late though!!

I last blogged just after getting back from St.Albans for Easter. Since then, I have spent a week in Mallorca with Michael's family, staying in a village called Fornalutx (near Soller, NW-ish of island). The week was lovely (~20'c for most of the week) and the house was amazing. (I've not got long, but I'll try to post pictures another time).

The following weekend, we went to Hob Green Hotel (kinda near Harrogate) to celebrate Michael's brother's 21st and his maternal grandad's 80th. I'd met some of them before, but some of them I hadn't. They're all really nice people and I had a fab weekend.

This weekend just gone, Mum, Dad & Tim were up visiting. Many yummy meals and a visit to the Minster were enjoyed by most (Michael & Tim went to watch Man Utd v. Chelsea in the pub instead of the Minster trip because they've done it before. A really, really wonderful, relaxing and silly weekend.

Oh, in other news, I doubt I will be working at the hospital for more than another week or so, as the films are being moved to off-site storage, so there won't be a job for me to do. I don't know what I will be doing next.

Life looks like it *might* be letting up a bit... we'll see.

(And Stephanie, I saw your message - I will post here about that, hopefully soon, too!)