Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible

This post will appear on more than one of my blogs.

For quite a long time now we framed the scans of our postcards sold on ebay.  It made them stand out and we thought, looked more professional.  We were told that we would have to stop doing this about a year ago; so we stopped.  Now we have to take the remaining frame from cards online.  Several thousand need to be changed before ‘the spring’.  I’m going as fast as I can (re-scanning about 30 a day) but I won’t get them all.  I know that ebay can ‘disappear’ announcements. 

There is a service provided that can make the changes for you, but we can’t afford it. 

So for a while I won’t be blogging or visiting or surfing much.

From this:

To this:

Which do you prefer?

2004 revisited

Looking back on my blog 10 years ago (I do it because I can), I came across a post referring to a blogger who had written  about a letter written by the Smithsonian institute to someone who had discovered a Barbie skull in their backyard.  

I looked the letter up again using Google and discovered that there are now a couple of footnotes to the story….  If you never got round to reading the letter it is a must!

The Bob Dylan dream

A few nights ago I dreamt about Bob Dylan.  We were both young and I had a French accent (!).  He was very thin and we were cuddling which was nice.  I was caressing his hands, they were very bony and the skin was soft and smooth.  I was feeling for the calluses on the tips of his fingers.  There weren’t any.

Yet another birthday

Olivier came home this weekend to celebrate his 23^rd birthday.  Christian was 4 years and two weeks old when Olivier was born.  Struggling every winter with two indoor boy’s birthday parties sometimes had me asking “Why me?”  Fortunately, today they are both grown up enough to sort out their own celebrations.

I can’t believe that February is on its way out already.  Like almost everywhere else we’ve had non-stop rain.  Though we did have a couple of days of sunshine, but usually with a cold wind. There are one or two violets in the garden and around the village quite a few daffodils in flower.

Just before Valentine’s Day I had my monthly Glossybox with a rather interesting make-up pencil that I never thought would have such an interesting effect.  Those who have followed my blog for a while will know that my eyebrows dropped out about 7 years ago.  I learnt how to draw them in, but they do tend to look as if they’ve been drawn with a crayon.  I had a clear wax crayon which normally you use to slick down your natural eyebrows.  I was a little disappointed that it wouldn’t be much use to me… or so I thought.  A little bit of wax picks up and emphasizes the one or two hairs that I have and makes the overall effect more natural.  So now you know.

A bit older than 6, but still a birthday

Happy Birthday to Christian who is 21 years older than this picture of him on a birthday long, long ago...

My new toy

Our beloved HP PSC 2350 died on Wednesday.  It was with us for over eight years and only started causing problems since the New year.  

I installed a brand new HP deskjet 1510 yesterday evening, all by myself, except I couldn’t work out where the downloads were disappearing to.  Rob showed me, I must look and see how many other lost downloads are lurking there since I had this computer in 2011.

The new machine scans really quickly which is just what I need for eBay.  I’ve also written to my Mum and Olivier to check how it prints and that is fine too.  I’m so glad I haven’t had to learn how to do things differently, it’s the same and in the places where it is different, it’s easier.

Image taken from the HP site

Good news for ordinary shaped women

This is how the deed is done

It looks like the French government is looking into banning images of women that have been airbrushed to make them look “perfect”.  There will also be investigations into the thin-ness of models on the cat walk. 

The other day I was looking at some magazines on display at the newsagents.  One of them caught my eye and I was reading the titles trying to find out what was wrong with the poor woman on the cover.  Then I realized that she was modeling clothes that were to be featured in the magazine.

It’s the little pleasures…

…that make life enjoyable.  We met these two on a walk, they were a part of the Christmas decorations in the next village.  Pity we couldn’t wait around to see them lit up.  Is that the Robot from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in the background?

This weekend has been all about communication.  I’ve had contact with all of my children.  Dom is still enjoying clement weather in Glasgow.  She’s created a program from scratch to deal with statistics and it works.  She’s never done anything like that before so she’s very proud of herself.  She’s enjoying exploring the shops, art galleries and whatever else Glasgow has to offer.

 (Caroline: have you got any of your work exhibited in Glasgow?)

I was very surprised to have a phone call from Olivier.  All is going well for him.  He did come home last weekend so I knew that he hadn’t starved to death. He didn’t bring any dirty washing with him – yes you did read that right. 

I phoned MIL and we spoke for almost an hour.  We don’t always have so much to say, but for some reason today we talked about lots of things

Optimistic

I cleared away the Christmas decorations this morning. Always a little bit of a sad task for me. Now it’s time to take the New Year by the horns and look forward to a great year.

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?