Ideas

I've wanted to show everyone this ad for years. It's in French. The French railway are careful to look after ideas. Those pink things are the ideas, aren't they sweet?

Not liver again!

Me : I’m looking for my liver with sage recipe.
Olivier: But we’ve only just had liver!
Me: It was a month ago.
Olivier: Why couldn’t you leave a ten year gap like last time?

How to find a sponsor

what happens when you can't find one

Blogs and flowers

This has been a normal week in blogging land, Some have good news, some have bad, some leave, some appear… Time marches on and now it is Spring.

I’ve been so busy; preparing postcards, approving blogs, gardening, feeding hungry men, hoovering up spiders - the usual. I’ve been taking my keep fit very seriously as I spend so much time on the computer. I have to go carefully because of my back but I’ve managed to put a 20 minute routine together. (As well as walking for around an hour or more everyday) I lift weights a little too. Normally 4kgs = 8.8lbs, but Olivier had added another two kilos so I thought that if I did half as many I could manage. It doesn’t work like that. I hurt my elbow. It’s settling down so I’ll be able to start again in a couple of days. I think that my clicky thumb might be coming back and the joints of my mouse clicking finger are stiff. The weather might be warm outside but our houses are designed to be cool in summer, therefore they are freezing cold in the early spring. Some days I feel quite decrepit.

Olivier has now put in his ‘wishes’ (yes they really call it wishes in French) for next year. He had his mock baccalaureate results and worked out he’s just about passed with 1 and a bit points to spare. If he put in some work he’d have really good results. Unfortunately anyone who has the bac. Is entitled to a university place here. They have them sitting on the steps in the amphitheatres on some courses. The exams at the end of the first year are really tough in order to weed out the rubbish.

BlogExplosion
This morning I’ve been approving the blogs submitted at the end of February. There are more of us doing the job now and it’s so much faster. If you haven’t heard anything from us it means that your blog has been put back into the queue for various reasons.

The new administrator has been working very hard trying to get everything up straight. He’s even tidied up the Homepage. The forums have been cleared of all that nasty spam and the spammers have been banned. There have been a lot of other problems to sort out. I know he works till the small hours and then goes off to his daytime job. He answers queries patiently and even emailed someone about problems with their mp3 player because they’d submitted a support ticket about it.( Please don’t start sending in support tickets for problems outside BlogExplosion!!)

Thank you Badmin we do appreciate all of the hard work you’ve been putting in.



Here's a weird and wonderful way to waste a few hours. If you can find your way to the garden you can create a flower too!

Pictures of eggs

Rob came home with half a dozen eggs the day before yesterday. Home grown ones from one of his colleagues. They were beautiful, dark brown and speckled. I wish he’d let me use his camera so that I could take a photo*. Just recently I’ve seen a lot of things I’d like to photograph – not just pictures but textures. I’ve been inspired by Caroline’s blog (Scroll down to see her top 10).

I suppose I could get my paints out, but the eggs would be rotten by the time I’d finished. By the way, I had a lovely omelette for lunch

*It’s not as if I’d have to have photos developed nowadays, is it? If they weren’t any good I could delete them all.

An earthquake in a coffee cup

The last time I bought coffee they didn’t have any of my favourite brand left. I usually buy fair trade from somewhere in South America. I nearly got tricked into buying the decaffeinated tin but I noticed the blue instead of green writing just in time. I settled for a packet of fair trade organic fro central America. Just as I was taking it off the shelf all of the packets jars and tins began to wobble. I was the only person in the aisle but I could see an elderly lady at the end looking worried. I didn’t think I was that cross…

BlogExplosion - Good News!

We now have a new administrator who has been given powers to clean up the forums. The spam has gone so if you have a question it is more likely to be seen and answered by someone. Why not pop by and say hello.

The administrator has many tasks, hopefully soon we’ll be able to get more volunteers for helping with approvals, both of blogs and banners. There is a huge a pile of unanswered tickets to deal with and information to be updated. All of this will take time. For more details see the forums. (I know I’m plugging the forums but I’m really proud of what we achieved there.)

Thank you to everyone who took the time to write to the owners. I don’t think we’ll ever know how many letters there were. It’s good to know that people can pull together and obtain results.

Feeding the birds

I’ve been observing the birds that feed on the scraps of bread I throw into the garden. The blackbirds are the first to arrive in the morning and sit on the wall looking down hopefully, reminding me to throw out the scraps. The magpies are quite happy to scare the smaller birds off so that they can gobble all of the bread up. When it was colder the starlings would arrive as a group to feed and to my surprise would not chase the sparrows off. The sparrows are very nervous feeders with the exception of a few greedy ones. Mr Robin arrives on his own and waits to feed alone.

Sometimes I put out stale brioche (a delicious buttery tasting sweet bread) which I’ve noticed get eaten first in preference to the bread. Is it because;

1. It’s easier to spot because it is a yellowy colour and stands out more,
2. It’s softer and breaks up without so much effort?
3. Birds have a sweet tooth – ahem, beak?