To and from Russia with love

Dominique has been invited to speak at a conference in Moscow in the autumn. She’s had a bit of paperwork to fill in as you can imagine. She needed to know the exact dates of her last visit to Russia. It was a school trip back in 2004. I received a message asking if I knew the dates (I don’t even know what day it is most of the time). Fortunately, I remembered blogging about the trip, so I told her to look it up. As it happens, I had blogged about taking her to the bus at the start of the trip and I blogged about collecting her at the end. I was really pleased that I could be of help.

If she’d have asked for dates from the last couple of years I’d have been no help at all.

2017 seems to be seeping in too

Christmas and New Year sort of slipped by a little too quickly – they get faster every year. Happy New Year to anyone who reads this; I hope that 2017 is a good one for you.

We had a quiet Christmas: Olivier came home for a few days and then went off to spend New Year with friends.

The good news is that Olivier will be starting a new job in February – in Prague! As his mum I am a little sad that he is moving so far away, though I’m really looking forward to going to visit him in his new country! All of this has brought back lots of memories of when Rob and I gave up our banking jobs and moved to France, 32 years ago.

We had sad news at the beginning of the year; Rob’s mother died at the age of 94. She had been more or less asleep since mid December, so it didn’t come as a shock, it’s still upsetting just the same.

I only wrote 21 new posts for this blog last year. Hopefully I’ll do better this year. The best year was 2005 with 336 posts – almost 1 a day!

8th May 2003

… Was the date of my very first blog post. Blogging has come a long way since that date 13 years ago. I didn’t understand anything at first and relied a lot on the help of my children.

 Archives had to be added to a blog manually and comments were added from a third party. A lot of early bloggers had broken hearts as comment’s sites disappeared or merged and comments were lost forever.

I learnt to make alterations to my blog by using HTML. I’ve still got my little.internet.guide to HTML, but I haven’t needed to use it for a few years. Widgets were invented so lots of bits and pieces could be rapidly added at the click of a mouse. Even I could do that.

Blogging has slowed down quite a bit these days as people post to Facebook; even I’m guilty of that. I still love my blogs – all 6 of them!

Here is what my blog looked like in March 2004, thanks to the Wayback Machine.

In competition with myself

I decided that this year I would try to blog more than last year. The results so far are:

January; 1 less post than last year, February; 1 more post than last year, March; 5 more posts that last year! April; 2 more posts. May last year only had one post (where I met Holly the cat), so I’m already equal. On the whole I’m winning, but as they used to write on the school reports “Could do better.

Facebook is very good at mopping up spare time, so I’m pleased that I haven’t lost blogging altogether.

Thanks to LinkedIn

I found a missing blogger.

Renewed resolutions

A year ago I wrote:

“I wonder how many people like me have decided to lose some weight this year. Millions, judging by all of the advice that is cluttering up my email box. I’ve read a few (100 or so) ideas and surprise, surprise, I already carry out a lot of them. I drink water, don’t take sugar in tea or coffee, eat breakfast, eat plenty of fibre, don’t snack between meals, dessert at lunch time is always fruit and so on. I know what my problem is – portion size. That’s another resolution for the list, reduce portion size. 

 One useful tip I did pick up: Just aim for a 5% weight loss and then take it from there. A lot of health websites tell you to aim for 10 %. 5% seems more obtainable to me. 

 I’ve also decided to exercise for at least 10 minutes 3 times a week (as well as the normal walking I do). I accidently discovered something to help. Just now, I thought I’d start off with 5 minutes to music. I put on Boz Scaggs; an old friend of mine for exercising to. 6 minutes passed without any effort at all! I hadn’t realized how important a good tune was to get me moving. 

 I’m also aiming for more blogging. I’ve been rather slack over the past year. I’m also going to try to make my posts more interesting. While I’m at the keyboard I need to write more fiction and poetry. Hopefully I should have slimmer fingers at least from all of the typing.” 

Well – how did you get on Anji? 

Weight: I’m the same weight as I was at the beginning of last year

 Exercise: flew out of the window that one did. I’ve started again and Rob and I have decided to find the time walk more…

Blogging: Unfortunately there were even fewer posts on this blog last year. 2004 was my most prolific year.

The nice thing about resolutions for the New Year is that you can start afresh every 12 months – how’s that for optimism?

2014 Tiptoes in...

Gosh, it’s over a month since I’ve written anything here. As I said in my last post, I’ve been really busy. M-I-L was let out of hospital after about a week. She enjoyed her Christmas and New Year. It gave her a change from her usual routine.

We had a very quiet Christmas and New Year. Olivier was the only one with us this year. We drove him to his new apartment on New Year’s Day as he was starting work on 2nd January. His apartment is amazing. In an old building which has recently been renovated. He has a fantastic kitchen area and a washing machine to die for! It’s so much nicer than the gloomy place he had in Bordeaux. He lives about two and a half hours drive from here. Our journey back was awful, lots of rain and wind and it was dark. Fortunately there wasn’t much else on the road and no trucks as it was a holiday. We stopped at a McDonald’s for something to eat and had the place to ourselves, the roads were so quiet. Unfortunately the music was turned up rather loud which spoilt the effect.

Olivier now knows how to tie a tie.

Dom is now in Glasgow for a month – at this time of year! She arrived yesterday and e-mailed to say that it was wet and windy (surprise, surprise!) and that her room is cosy. I had a look at the part of the University where she will be working using Google Earth. It looks very impressive.

Thank you to everyone who continued to visit despite not having anything to read. I couldn’t even face looking at my blog list at one point so I trimmed it down from 100 to 85 blogs. I will try to make an effort to start visiting again.

Now I’ll wish you all Happy New Year à la française, as here we have until the end of January to wish everyone Happy New Year.

 Happy New Year!

My very first post

Ten years ago!  You'll see that I hadn't quite got the hang of it.  I've arrived in blog land.

Doesn't the time go quickly when you're enjoying yourself!

Careful how you comment

There was I gleefully leaving a comment on Kath’s blog about how good the flu vaccination is…and I was struck down. We’ve all heard about the dangers of viruses over the internet, but the flu virus spreading online? Hopefully Kath is now recovered from her bout of flu and mine seems to be clearing up okay-ish (very tired if I try to do too much at once).

It seems that 75% of the children in our village (ages 3-11) were absent from school last week because of flu. Someone mentioned that this year’s vaccine here wasn’t quite the right one. Rob’s next.

I apologise in advance for typos and sentences that go nowhere.

Dream time

Rob’s computer died on him last weekend, so we’ve been sharing – he’s also had a few days holiday, so I haven’t had the time on my computer at all. Our postcard business has to come first. We have managed to have some fun just the same. Christmas shopping, going to see the lights in town one evening, walks between downfalls and generally getting ready for Christmas. The presents are all bought and now need wrapping up.

I thought I’d better post as I had a rather strange dream about blogging last night: I was reading a cookery blog, which came by post in the form of a magazine. The problem was that the pictures were taking a long time to download. When they did they were like videos. The blogger was making whipped egg white with canned peach slices. The slices were very small and fragile and a lovely orange which went well with the egg white.

Funnily enough, I knew exactly why I’d had this dream as soon as I woke up. The Saturday supplement which comes with our newspaper was running a feature on a French blogger who writes a cookery blog and takes lots of photographs of everything she makes. The white whipped egg white came from some eye shadow I received in my latest Glossy Box. It was described as mousse and is white, when applied to the skin it gives a golden sparkle. (Will go very nicely with my little black dress on New Year’s Eve – not).

I wonder what peaches and egg white would be like…

Happy Blog anniversary to me!

My very, very  first post on this blog was on the 8^th May 2003. 

How the world has changed in the last 9 years…

Stop Press

There are extra credits and cash bonuses when you surf on ExposeYourBlog! Come and check us out if you’re looking for new visitors for your blog, or new blogs to read.

ExposeYourBlog !: Contests !

I’m going to be boring and post this on all of my blogs. As we approach the second birthday of ExposeYourblog!, we’ve re-launched both the surfing and referral contests. All you need to do to win credits surfing is to be amongst the top five surfers of the day. Credits awarded are based on the percentage of blogs surfed, so the more you surf the more you can win – daily and weekly! The referral contest means that you can win credits for referring more members than anyone else daily and weekly. New members must activate their account by surfing and adding their blog. To get links, go to your “Tools” page and click on “My Downline”, scroll down and you’ll find banners and links that you can use to promote ExposeYourBlog!. Or you could write a post about why you enjoy surfing on EYB! and include a link in your post – just like I have.

Don and I are really proud of the blogs on EYB! There are blogs to suit all tastes and you’ll find excellent writing, art and pictures as well as members who interact with each other. We’re building a very special blogging community and hopefully members feel as it EYB! Is being run by real people who care about their members – which is true.

As always Don and I can be contacted via a PM in the forums (don = “Admin”, to contact me “Anji”), via a support ticket or email; forumadmin@exposeyourblog.com . We’d love to hear from you, feedback and ideas are always useful.

In which I sit and talk

I finally got round to making a video of myself. I’m sorry about the quality of the image and the sound. Any tips on how to improve it will be gratefully accepted.

ExposeYourBlog

For the past week I’ve been working on a little project with some of my friends from BlogExplosion. We have been so disappointed by the lack of response from the owners, LiveUniverse, that we decided to create our own blog exchange ExposeYourBlog! I’m hoping that you’ll see this and if you’re interested come and see what we have to offer. The big launch is tomorrow 1st June. Remember we really are at the beginning of this. I’ve been testing the system along with the other members of the team and we’ve ironed out the lumps and bumps to bring you the best we can. If not, I can assure you that any support tickets will be dealt with.

We have a brand new forum ready to go and we’d love to have feed back and suggestions from you – see you over at ExposeYourBlog!

Read to the end before clicking on the links...

I have eaten horse meat.

As an ex vegetarian I think that if you are going to eat one animal, then why not another? We had horse steaks while visiting friends in the North of France 25 years ago. They did ask us if we minded first and as far as I remember I’d rather eat beef. When we first came to live in the village there was a horse butcher who came to the village on Saturday mornings and the local supermarkets sold horse meat too. Then a lot of people became ill after eating diseased meat. The problem being that in France people prefer their meat underdone. Someone is supposed to have calculated you could get 1000 portions from one horse (different cuts of meat, sausage, offal, black pudding and so on) Since those days the horse butcher stopped coming round and the local supermarkets stopped selling the meat too.

I though that the practise had died out… This afternoon I was shocked to read A Taste of Garlic which contains a link to a post about the way that some horses are treated. I’m not sure whether they are all bound for the abattoir or not. Do not follow the link from his site if you are easily upset.

I’d just like to point out that most French people are just as horrified at the ill treatment of animals as everyone else.

A Taste of Garlic

My blog has been reviewed! Just as I remembered that I’ve recently passed my 7th blogging birthday. A Taste of Garlic must be the ultimate collection of blogs written by ex pats living in France. Here’s the review of my blog if you’d like a well researched summary of what I’ve been up to over the past few years.

As I’ve been asked very nicely a couple of times, I’ve now added one of those blog follower widgets to the sidebars of my blogs so that I can see if I have any fans.

BlogExplosion logging in and surfing - or not

**Update**
Perhaps I was too quick off the mark. It seems that the problem has now been fixed by an administrator. It will be interesting to see what happens next…

***

If you’re reading this chances are that you’ve come through Google or book- marked my blog for future reference. As I write some members cannot log in and if they do they are unable to surf. We are trying to find out what is going on, but as there is no administrator it’s very difficult. You should be able to log into the forums and even if you can’t log in, you can read the threads. We’re trying to keep them as up to date as possible. Please DO NOT send in a support ticket - there is no one to deal with them.

The good news is that, by chance a few days ago, I managed to find the names of some of the people at LiveUniverse that we wrote to last year. I’m not sure how many of them are still there. As some of you know as long ago as last September there were reports that LiveUniverse were unable to pay some of their employees. I’m going to try sending messages to them via LiveUniverse

I think it goes without saying; don’t buy any credits or banner impressions for the time being. If you paid using PayPal and want to get your money back you probably can – it certainly works like that on eBay.

What you can do to help

Spread the world! Post on your blog about what is happening, you can copy parts of this post if you like – I don’t mind. Ask other members that read your post to spread the word too. I’ll try to keep you updated on my blogs and the forums should be pretty active if the last few hours are anything to go by

Hopefully normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

BlogExplosion update

For those not involved with BlogExplosion sorry but this isn’t an interesting post.

A lot of us have been trying to get in touch with Live Universe who are the owners of blogexplosion. We’ve tried telephoning (not ringing), contact forms (no replies so far) and emails (no replies so far). We know from different sources that Live Universe haven’t been paying their employees either. If anyone still has the list of contacts we used last year to pester them please could you post them on the forums.

There is no one in charge of administration at the moment. The last administrator disappeared, possibly because he couldn’t get back into the system. There are still a few of us approving blogs. Unfortunately as I write we’re back to 6 weeks wait. 90% of the blogs in the queue shouldn’t be there anyway.

On behalf of those of us left approving please could anyone else who has access find a few minutes to approve 10 or so blogs from time to time. The more of us there are the easier it is all around. I know that a lot of you would like to help too, but we don't have a way to let you in to the system.

If you have time a word of support on the forums would be lovely. If anyone can think of how we can contact Live Universe we’d be grateful

To finish on a positive note, there are several members who have made it known that they’d like to buy BlogExplosion. Hopefully soon something will start to move again and the mess can be sorted out.

The nastiest kind of spam

This afternoon I received an email from a blogging friend that I’ve known for a long time. He often replies to my comments using his iPhone (to show off) so I’m used to hearing from his email address.

He said that he was in London, he’d been mugged and that the police and American embassy weren’t being very helpful. He was being kept at his hotel because of a very big bill so please would I send the money and he’d pay me back when he got home. Can you imagine how worried I was?

In this day and age money can be transferred from any where in the world almost instantly, so it seemed strange that he should ask me for a loan. He doesn’t sign his emails with his full name either. So I emailed his wife just to check and she confirmed that they’d been hacked.

Well Mr Hacker you just hacked a very good lawyer with three savage dogs. His wife is pretty handy with her cane when she gets cross, so watch out.