Tweeting & Treats

Today I have been playing around on Facebook and Twitter, it's all part of the world that is my 'business' but I have to say it's taken me a while to work out exactly what I'm supposed to do with these things. People kept telling me it was the 'big thing' and it would increase my business ten-fold. Well, I don't know about that but yesterday I put one short comment on Twitter and within a few hours 5 new people started 'following' my posts there. Whether that ultimately increases business remains to be seen.

The other parts of today have been uninteresting, just general Sunday stuff, tidying, preparing for the week, ironing etc. All pretty humdrum really.

I did, however, find a box of Milk Tray had mysteriously arrived under my pillow....did the chocolate faery come? And what did I do to deserve such a treat? I don't know but although I am delighted (ABSOLUTELY DELIGHTED I TELL YOU!!!) I'm also slightly worried because my clothes are allergic to chocolate - it makes them shrink.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Happy

The sun is shining, the sky is blue, my sister is coming to visit, school holidays are about to start and as if all that isn't enough, yesterday Tom bought me a present....no not diamonds, not a brand new S-type Jag, no....something even better.......

My favourite....Haigh's chocolate teddy bears.....so cute! And yummy! And chocolatey! Jealous? Yes, I know you are M.

Almost too cute to eat.......

....almost.

Insert evil laughter here.

Hiatus...

..we have a child free weekend....excuse me for a day or so while I laze around talking to my husband uninterrupted, drinking wine, eating grown up food (and lots of chocolate), surfing the internet, sleeping late TWO DAYS IN A ROW and briefly pretending that we're one of those child free couples.

Woo hoo!!!

Easter morning

Because my children do not believe in sleeping in any day, let alone exciting days like Christmas and Easter, we were up at the crack of dawn for the annual Easter Egg Hunt. After our heatwave we are now experiencing really cold mornings (lovely) so we were all wrapped up (Hannah wore two pairs of pyjama trousers) with winter dressing gowns and thick socks and Wellingtons. I realise it would probably make more sense to just get dressed but hunting in PJs has become a tradition. The 'Easter Bunny' didn't want to leave the eggs out all night as we have rather a lot of possums and faeries in our garden, all of whom believe that if it's left out it's for them. So he got up very, very early and did the hiding then came back to bed freezing cold - I was not happy. Shortly after that the children woke up and we blearily (the Easter Bunny and I) and excitedly (Hannah and Aislin) went out into the cold morning to gather the eggs.

Apologies for the blurriness....it reflects my energy levels at the time

There were eggs everywhere...

So with the faeries, bunnies and eggs all sorted we went to mass - we like to keep all bases covered in this house.

Some encouragement please....

Ok, I'm counting down (yes, it's about Uni again - shut up it's nearly over). I am really struggling here people, 6 assignments - 4 weeks, then it's done. Despite knowing this I have no motivation. I am currently writing one of the essays and every sentence is like drawing blood. I punctuate the 'work' (ha!) with standing at the back door watching the wildlife, eating, drinking coffee, staring into the fridge for something else to eat (why is there no chocolate in this effing house?) and emailing my sisters. Thank God they're emailing back or I'd be making prank calls to strangers just to have some kind of communication with the outside world. Tom and the girls have escaped gone out for the afternoon to get away from the bitch at the laptop attend a party then visit family.

I’m making very slow progress on this essay, it's not long, only 2500 words. But I hate this one. It’s so boring, it's about evaluation – who cares? But I now have 648 words so I'm nearly a third of the way there - give or take. I'm writing a lot of crap mind you (what's new I hear you cry) but whatever.... as long as I pass (please let me pass).

Sigh, I cannot wait for this to end. After this I have 5 more to do. There are three easy ones and I’m going to try and finish two of them this week, that will leave the 3 others, one easy two hard. I said to Tom today that I’ve realised sitting on the sofa saying ‘I just want this to end’ will not in fact make it end. I actually have to do some work. Pffft to that.

I need a cheer squad.

Yep, that helps.

I'm better now

Ok, please excuse yesterday's little outburst and mad blog fiddling and template changing - put it down to temporary insanity. I'm feeling much better today and managed to complete several little Uni activities, one of which prompted an instant response from my tutor saying 'Caitlin you are doing GREAT!'. That was what I needed, a pat on the head and a little bit of attention. I'm high maintenance that way.

I also felt better after seeing this headline 'Queen star celebrates doctorate'. At least I haven't taken 36 years.

I really don't know what came over me because I realised today that with all the stuff that is going on in my life just now, and everything I'm trying to achieve, the one thing that I (usually) find managable is Uni. I am well within my comfort zone when pondering philosophical questions (define 'whiteness') or writing an essay. Compared to everything else I'm doing that stuff is easy - well less challenging. It makes me think... hard... and in a good way.

The only thing I can put it down to is the fact that I haven't had any chocolate this week. Or wine. This is bad. No wonder I'm experiencing melt down. Hopefully that will be remedied tonight (Tom, bring wine).

One of the courses I'm doing this semester is about e-learning and I today I learned how to do this...

Isn't that cool? And easy too. Who knew all this Uni study would actually teach me something?

Wouldn't it be nice if.....

1. Chocolate wasn't fattening
2. Dogs cleaned up their own pooh
3. Children cleaned up their own everything
4. Dinner cooked itself
5. Web design was easy

Anyway, that was just a few thoughts to get me started. All of these thoughts, I should add, came to me in the 10 minutes it took to go to the Post Office and collect the mail today. No, I don't know what's going on in my head either.

It all began because I felt like some chocolate, but Friday night is chocolate night (well one of the chocolate nights) so I thought 'it's the afternoon, I can't have chocolate now too' (who makes these rules?).

Then I saw a nice dog. I'm not allowed to have a dog (Tom said it's him or a dog...I'm still deciding). This one was lovely, so I wistfully watched it for a minute. I thought about why I'm not allowed to have a dog. It's mainly the pooh...on the lawn.

Then we got home and I looked around the house, I have two children at home today, Hannah is sick with a cold. I don't need to explain this one further do I?

Number four should be pretty self-explanatory as well. 'I hate cooking' will help you along a bit.

Web Design. Hmmm. I can't decided whether to actually blog about this because it makes me so damn mad. I might need a large whisky to go with that chocolate (sorry, bad combination). Note to Tom if you're reading this, get back to work and stop fretting about your Jameson. The short version is my web design people did a crap job. I hate my website. I am not paying anyone else to fix it because I already spent too much damn money on the one I have. I am teaching myself Microsoft Front Page and HTML so that I can fix it myself and never again have to rely on another incompetent human being to do this for me (I want to be the only incompetent human being dealing with my website). But it's excrutiatingly slow and I'm easily bored if I don't see results and achieve stuff immediately. I'm childish like that.

So the thought popped into my head 'here's an idea.....make web design EASY!!!!'. And I mean to mere mortals that don't want to study computer science or web design for years. So, one day, I'm going to make a fortune by inventing a way of getting a website up and running easily - in like, 5 minutes. Sorry web designers everywhere if that gets in the way of your dreams of world domination and making billions at the expense of we website dunderheads. Enjoy it while you can, your days are numbered (probably in the millions).

Interview with a vampire

Heather over at Nabbalicious sent me 5 interview questions which I will attempt to respond to here ...

1) Do you like haggis? My aunt used to date a really charming and lovely Scot, and we were all horrified to learn that his favorite food was haggis. I just wonder -- is this typical?

While it is typical that all Scots are charming and lovely, it is not typical that they all eat haggis, wear kilts, have red hair or say ‘hoots mon’ (whatever that means). I have had haggis in the past, I don’t eat haggis now but may one day if someone creates a vegan version. However, I doubt that will happen. I just can’t see tofu stuffed into a pair of old pantyhose being a suitable substitute for this sheep’s innards delicacy.

2) What has been the hardest adjustment you've had to make to living in Australia when you're from another culture? Or has it been a cinch?

The heat - I actually miss not being able to feel my toes and my pale blue skin burns if exposed to sunlight for more than 30 seconds. I’m a shadow dweller, rather vampire-like in my aversion to the burning Australian sun.

Cold beer - Scotland is cold, we don’t need to be ingesting more cold and so our systems reject it. My (Australian) husband has been known to microwave my beer to approximately body temperature, this is the optimum temperature to drink beer if you’re a Scot (I apologise to any Scots out there that actually enjoy cold beer – freaks).

Apart from that it’s been a cinch.

3) What has been the happiest moment of your life so far?

It’s a toss up between the moment I discovered it was possible to get hot cross buns with chocolate chips in them or the day I found out Haigh’s dark chocolate has no added milk – vegan heaven.

Of course it goes without saying that when my daughters were born and my wedding day were pretty happy too. There is nothing suspicious about the fact that the chocolate came first.

4) What are your all time favorite books and movies? Least favorite?

I always find it difficult to answer questions like this, trying to narrow down favourite books and movies is impossible for me. I also wonder if anyone actually reads people’s favourite book and movie lists, I don’t. Ironically I have a recommendations section on my blog, as if anyone cares. There are many, many books and movies that I like. I will cheat a bit and say the movie I’ve seen that I liked best in the past month has to be ‘V for Vendetta’. The book I’ve liked best in the past month is ‘Spirituality of Adult Education’, and I didn’t actually like it that much, this is sad but true. The only reading I’m really doing just now is for academic purposes so I’m not suggesting everyone rushes out and buys this.

My least favourite in both categories are legion, I won’t start because a rant will ensue.

5) What talent do you wish you had?

I would really like to be able to turn base metals into gold. However I’m led to believe that this alchemical talent is fairly rare and it is extremely unlikely that I will perfect it. It would be nice if I could though.

Update

I forgot to add the rules in case anyone else wants to do this..

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”

2. I will respond by emailing you five questions.

3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.

4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.