Golly! This is my 501th post!

Fancy that!
And I'm spending it the same way I did the 500th...swivelling between laptop and pc. but I've got them closer together tonight so I can type the wrong things into both much faster!

Barney came in just now, looked horrified and said "Are you using two computers at once now???? I'm going to watch my programme!". and went before I could start explaining.

Well I'm not exactly using the other one...more like, it's using me!

Anyway, yesterday, as I arrived home, I glanced at my favourite view and saw a dozen or so deer grazing there. Last time this happened, I was too slow and they all fled just as I got there with the camera so this time I screeched to a halt and leapt out, camera in hand. Took dozens of pics, creeping down the field as inconspicuously as one can when wearing bright blue, and the deer were very co-operative and left in ones and twos as I got closer and closer. (not actually very close....it's all quite open and they couldn't fail to see me squelching creepily and brightly blue, across the field).

Great! Only the last thing I did before leaving Newbury was something with manual focus. So what with the anxiety about missing them altogether, I didn't. focus. at all.
So unlike Thursday's wonderful shots they are all very small and faint and blurred. But they were wonderful!

Oh well. As I was trawling through files of photos to save to DVD, I came across one called London Wetlands. Happy memory. Must go there again :)

Umm. It seems to be 02.19 and I haven't sent Barney to bed. I am a bad wife, leaving him asleep in front of the telly while I play with my two computers. Usually I wake him up, give him a cup of tea and assure him, as patiently as I can, that he really does want to wake up, go to bed and go back to sleep right now! At a fairly reasonable time.
So I've done that and now I may be on the last disc for 2006.
Sorry...still no photos tonight...But when I've finished backing up, got my printer working, slept for several days and taken a big breath and deleted all of 2006's photos from the PC I shall be new woman. Or something. I think I'd better have another biscuit (give that woman a biscuit someone) Oops, I nearly trod on the cat. Bring on the midnight cavalcade and let the horses of the apocalypse roam free. (I made that upon the spur of the moment and through a mouthful of biscuit...do you think it means anything? I watched Hogfather the other night, I think it went to my head)
My backing up has got to 'Christmas day' and 'the last rainbow of the year'. I'm nearly there!!!!!
I thank you all for being around while I saved all my photos from 2006...it would have been really boring (though maybe less grasshopper-ish) if I'd been all on my own :)
Well. just one faint blurry picture of deer then :) Leaping deer even!

Ooh! My feet are killing me

Is what old ladies used to say. And d'you know, I think they were speaking the literal truth! See, if your feet hurt, it's hard to do excercise, so you can't look after your heart and lungs. And it's hard to keep your weight down so excercising gets even harder. And then you get tired sooner so it gets even harder etc etc. So look after your feet!
Take teeth now! If your teeth hurt, it's really hard to eat all that good, crunchy, healthy, fruity, nutty stuff. I expect you can guess where I'm going with this?
And then there's your back. It's the bit everything else hangs from and balances on top of. Without a good back, you can end up wondering how you're going to get the shopping (with all that good healthy, crunchy, fresh stuff) back to the bus stop or the car or wherever.

Of course it's very important to look after the other bits too...but it's much easier to do that if you can move quickly and eat comfortably and don't need to stop and lie down and take your shoes off every five minutes...
Look after your feet, your back and your teeth and it'll be much easier to look after the rest.

Umm! Right. And look after your thrice dammed computer. Doing this could save hours of stress and high blood pressure and serious anxiety. Actually I think making rescue discs and backing up a lot might be the main things. I'm just alternately backing up several months worth of photos and blogging on the laptop!

Oh and the monitor came...I can look at pictures without crouching down and peering up and they look even better than they did before. So now I'm really wondering what they look like on everyone's different monitors! Since, over the last few weeks I've seen four quite different versions.

Until I've finished backing up, I feel constrained not to put all my Lancaster pictures on the pc. it's a sort of incentive to keep backing up until the job's done. It's a bit of a pain though because everything looks so much bigger and better and brighter now, I can't wait to see what they'll look like. Almost as good as getting a new hair cut...which I really need soon. I'm beginning to look like a mad haystack in a high wind....and it's getting in my eyes and up my nose again too.

Oh and would you believe...as soon as I got the new monitor working (not without a struggle I might add...well I will add...it really was quite infuriating to find it just didn't like the usb port I'd plugged it into) the internet speeded up and the laptop connected itself again. This surely must have been a coincidence? Surely the old monitor wasn't somehow slowing down the internet and stopping the laptop from connecting?
It's all a mystery to me.

Sorry this is so disjointed and woolly...I'm wandering back an forth between laptop and PC stopping to collect wine and ciggie and lighter and sometimes typing, sometimes writing labels and sometimes getting them all the wrong way round. This has got to be good for making the brain younger? Speaking of which, I suppose we all ought to be looking after our brains...if you can't think, there isn't much point in being able to trot around briskly, eat sensibly and stand up straight!

It occurs to me that if I stayed up all night I could get all the backing up done.

Then I could sleep all day tomorrow? Not really.

I'd better stop drinking wine though.

And now I'm hungry...really I ought to be able to manage this sort of thing better! It's really hard to keep backing up in a sensible order and thinking of random things to say when fresh bread and soup keep floating through my mind.
Right! That's it. No pictures tonight. But I tell you, what the computer is doing is making me think a glass of wine and some pink elephants would look more normal. Than it does. (it's a new DVD writer...I don't know how it works yet)

Sleep well everyone.

Titles are off today.

Somewhere in here there's a nice little gel wrist rest. I can't find it.
When I disconnected everything to take the machine up North, I strewed the dining room with stuff that lives on my desk (and some stuff that was attached to the computer) and made a mental note to leave it all there till the computer was working again. Properly.
Mental is it!
There's a list here that says
tobacco
beer
fiddle
loo roll....
All crossed out.

Then there are some more bits underneath that which say
phone pocket pc people about vista
upload vista updates for printer
phone canon when updates don't work
phone hygenist
scream at Dabs
install monitor


NO IT HASN'T COME YET!!!!!

Anyway, you can tell what gets done around here and what gets hung up till Father Christmas comes. I suppose tobacco, beer, fiddle and loo roll will help. (How interesting...windows knows how to spell loo roll).

Well, a few weeks ago, I went to help Youngest with her art appreciation assignment for the OU. (We got 17 out of 25 for that one. Could have been worse :) And on the way home I discovered a lake..several lakes in fact...and in spite of a howling gale the sun was trying to shine a bit so I had to lurch around the lake a bit taking pictures. I've just remembered some of them :)

And there was a nice little graveyard
And a pretty house
With which I shall leave you.

I hope they look ok...on this monitor I really can't tell...do you notice a difference since I came back from up North?

Good night. Tomorrow I shall visit, but slowly since it's like wading through treacle getting pages to load at the moment...I don't really see how that can be related to the monitor or vista. Perhaps it's just a coincidence?
(But if it's a coincidence, with what is it coincidental? Is is anything I can fix or is it something happening out there, where the little wires go into the wall and off to wherever the internet comes from? I don't know!)

Deep breaths...

I am going to have a small screaming, stamping and rolling about on the floor drumming heels tantrum OK?....hang on.....

That's better, hope I didn't disturb anyone.

Just computers you know. Lovely when they work and ...well lets leave the rest to your imagination.

It was jolly cold in here today (Barney said it was mild...possibly, outside but here it was freezing) So I lit the fire and later went off to some warm shops. Came back with a nice tin of Heinz spag bol but no beer. Poor Barney...but he didn't need any comfort food as he wasn't wrestling with a devil in disguise and all its minions (Dabs.com, who haven't processed my order yet due to a security issue and therefore haven't sent my new monitor today. Bah Humbug). And he wasn't cold.

Anyway, enough of that. The car's fixed. I can drive normally again. It's nice.
And here are some magpies from Leeds...I can't remember if I posted them before or not. No time to check since instead of blogging tonight I read the whole of 'Confessions of a bad mother' by Stephanie Calman. I am proud to announce that I was a bad mother too. (Obviously, since it was given to me by Youngest for Mother's Day :) And here is a periwinkle. Or whatever it's called. All sensibly curled up since the weather is going from quite damp and gloomy to extremely cold and chilling all the Magnolia flowers which have gone brown overnight. Oh and Mother's day was great, Eldest suddenly said to me, in the middle of the night, last Thursday "Happy Mother's day...er...on sunday :)", Frangelita and HF came and brought half of lunch and flowers and were lovely and Youngest brought new partner and all three children and made broccolli soup...delicious.

Oh and Thursday and Joe Brown came too which was extra specially lovely...as always :).

Got to go now... I got up early to receive my monitor which of course didn't come. Who knows, maybe it'll come tomorrow. Got to get up early again :) I wonder if I'll get a refund on my next day delivery charge.
I wonder if the old, clunky, flickering monitor will last until the new one comes. Indeed, I wonder if my eyes and/or my brain will.
Goodnight :)

Consider water

I am. I'm drinking some now* and since the droughts last year or so I keep noticing how much I throw away. Trying to think of a use for all the left over water while outside rivers run high and water falls constantly from the sky.
I am experienced at profligacy so I know that all this water floating around and falling out of the atmosphere is a temporary richness. Come summer we may all be dry in spite of the floods and overflowing cups at present.
So consider water. Consider it well and lovingly and thriftfully...and if you think of a good use for it when the garden is already sodden, let me know!
Another reason for considering water is that it's soothing and refreshing to the mind, it sings and we are full of it. If we don't drink enough of it, our brains shrivel! And it's never boring...almost never. (Well sometimes it's boring to drink but you can always spill some and play with the puddles :)

*wine is nice but it's not really an adequate substitute. One would hardly say of the drought starved masses as Marie Antoinette might have done, "let them drink wine"!

Computers rule? OK?

???
No not really.
The trouble with them is, the mysteries of their inner workings are so much larger and more mysterious than those of other things that go wrong. Like cars for instance. Who'd a thought I'd ever say cars were simpler than something else!
Tomorrow I'm taking the car to have its innards inspected...throttle control sensor or idle level something. See? Two little parts, either of which may be causing the car to drive itself along even after I've taken my foot off the accelerator.
One local mechanic, one Ford garage, two mornings and a service....nothing to it, relatively speaking. (Of course, that's assuming the Ford garage do in fact find out that either of the little things is causing the problem)
Computers now...one two hundred mile trip to the far North, five frantic evenings, four new bits of software, several hours of raised blood pressure and overheating of the human part of the equation, more money spent than I care to think about and I still have to spend many hours re-installing programmes that vanished when the machine stopped working, several of which claim not to be compatible with Windows vista. (Including my printer software which is a bit of a blow).
Oh and I still have to replace the monitor which may or may not have been involved in the original crash...who can say? I'm using the old clunky one with a wearying flicker and decidedly dodgy colours. And I haven't got Photoshop on the laptop because I'm not sure it'll fit.

Meanwhile either or all of both the various internet connections are behaving a bit randomly...the laptop keeps saying the wireless something is powered off, would I like it powered on? Well yes of course I would! Why won't it stay powered on? It hasn't made that clear to me yet and I don't think it ever will though I did come across a small setting somewhere which might be related to this. Or it might not. Barney's email sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.....

I could go on a lot longer about computers but that would even bore me and I might confuse myself some more which would be a BAD THING.

But WHY ON EARTH does Picasa think I would want to 'hide this file on disc' just because Picasa had a problem loading it?

Well I've had enough. I shall try not to be boring about the computer but since I seem to be spending every hour of the day arguing with it it's getting a bit like one of those difficult relationships that people have to talk about all the time. It's become a great big boiling thing which needs to be tamed and tidied and coerced...How did I get into this? All I wanted was to play with a few pictures and write a bit of music and send the odd email!
Tomorrow I shall get the car investigated and hope that I can book it in to be fixed.

Pictures tomorrow? Maybe. I have stacks on the laptop which need to go on here and then I'll feel tidier again :)
Here's one to be going on with
Boiling clouds and untrammelled growth. (though the clouds were sunlit and the growth is honeysuckle...can't be bad really :)
It's a new week...have fun :)

Aha!

I noticed the pictures were coming out too big to fit on the screen. May have found a solution...some experiments about to appear!
Rochdale Town Hall, seen from inside a warm, dry cosy pub!

Yep. That works!
So, these steps leading from the Town Hall up to the parish church were the backdrop for many a drunken, merry exploit in my college days! Also featured in several pintings I did after leaving. They made an impression which became more and more fantastic, in memory, until the pictures were quite seriously, artistically licensed. The photo has taken very little licence.
minimal sheep, somewhere around Caton. (just outside Lancaster)

Now I have to go and find out if my first backup to the new hard drive has worked.
Goodnight :)

busybusybusy and.........swooooop

homeward down the motorways.

Yay, I'm back, with working computer, far too many pics and a younger brain.
This last is all due to Eldest's little game for brain training...when I started on Sunday night it mournfully declared that my brain was performing about as well as an average eighty one year old's but by this morning it had become about 48!
So I felt quite prepared to spend the evening crawling about under my desk, brandishing handfuls of leads and plugging things in every which way but apparently the right way, mostly, because the computer still works! It has new software and new hardware and no doubt feels very pleased with itself. However, Windows Vista (new software) has known compatibility issues with my printer software and has unknown issues with my little pocket pc. And since Norton has vanished along with other programmes, I can't spend hours chasing windows workarounds till I've sorted that out. Still, I have a bright shiny new Vista to explore and all my settings were just where they should have been and I even have email on the laptop which is still temporarily protected by Norton..can't be bad.Now I'm going to switch everything off...from being a deprived dependent I've become computered out.

just thought I'd show you two rather magnificent windows from Rochdale Town Hall.

This blogging pictures direct from Picasa isn't very straightforward. Has to be done one at a time for a start.
Which means I get to here thinking "and then I'll post another picture and say whatever...only it'll appear before this bit.....This is not the end!
Of today's post! The end will appear later. But first.

Oh well I expect you can work out what I mean. If not don't worry...it's not at all important :)

A real northener don't you think?

Here today

Somewhere up in the hills above Lancaster.

And who knows where tomorrow.

I am a maid of the North country

This is not strictly true, though I was for a few years.
Currently, neither a maid nor of the North, but definitely in it!
For what seems like ages but is probably only two days, I've not been able to connect. Eldests wifi worked and the lap top asured us that it was connected and then blithely pointed out that it couldn't find any servers anywhere. Suggested that I might be firewalled. Well I might be! I suppose I am? One mostly is.
Whatever. Eldest told his router to trust me and apparently that was all that was needed.
However, the computer is seriously unwell (thank heavens for laptop). It's busily baffling eldest and eventually we decided that some shopping was required and the temporary use of a beta version of windows vista. (temporary I hope since no one seems to like it...does anyone?). i have a horible feeling that I'm going to be sent home with a jury rigged windows and incomprehensible instructions.
We'll see. My visiting plans are in chaos (must ring sister and friend and sister in law tomorrow) but the upside is I got spend a whole, gloriously sunny day trailing around the wild north country snapping like mad.
The swans were taken in newbury before I left and I may be able to upload a separate picture from the hills above Lancaster...who knows :)
Now I am going to sleep cos tomorrow I must shop, phone, possibly go to IKEA and take more pictures :)

Travel prediction: Near future.

I thought I'd try copying text from a draft into a picasa 'blog this' post. We'll see if this works!

So here's the picture....

Daffodils and flood water in the park.

And here, maybe, is yesterday's text.


I've arranged to visit eldest and since he said, "just bring the computer" maybe he can fix it. Wonderful boy :)
I've kept forgetting to arrange to visit elder sister. Must phone.
I've arranged to visit Sister in Law.
I've nearly arranged to visit friend....must phone.

Why the failure of computer to work should inhibit me from using the phone I don't know. But it does. My wires seem to have got tangled...I have computer dependancy. Laptop is doing its best (which is pretty good at the moment) but the colours on the screen are different and I don't know if my photos are also different or if it's just the screen.
Also, if I type @ I get " and vice versa. I wish I knew how to fix this.
Also, I have no access to all my address book stuff. Paralysis!
I can't seem to remember anything!
(yes, I know, I ought to have it all on hard copy. I will as soon as the machine's back)

Anyway.
Busy busy busy panic stress.
Have disconnected the computer and the monitor and labeled a lot of wires...so I can put them back when I get home! But we have a gig tonight so I can't pack my bag....I use the same bag for travelling and gig stuff. As we have a gig tonight, I can't put the computer in the car (we use the same car for traveling and gigs :)
Barney's doing stamps on the table downstairs so I can't lay out all my bits to it ready to pack.
And anyway I haven't got my list of stuff I always take when going away...more computer dependency.

GAAAAHHH.
Such an old stick in the mud...I can't get my act together.

Update: I phoned sister and friend and it's all cool.

So today it's all different. The sun's shining and I managed to get most of my stuff in little heaps ready to pack this morning. Barney's gone to a stamp fair and I can spread out all over the house without having to sidle round his personal space! (Which is large a he has long legs and a lot of stamp albums and things).
The gig went extremely well and unlike the week before (when the organiser didn't know they had to pay cash on the night and had to rush off with spouse to ransack their personal accounts to pay us....why the committee person didn't give organiser a copy of the contract I can't imagine..the organiser didn't even know we wanted to be paid on the night never mind cash!)
Anyway unlike that occasion, cash was handed over in a small envelope before we'd even started and the band was introduced and applauded just for being there. over a hundred people, all dancing all night and quite a nice sounding hall. All good.

Got to go and finish packing and getting up now. Eldest has wifi so I should be able to post tonight. If I'm not too exhausted after sorting out computers and things. If, indeed they all work!

Hope you are all enjoying the weekend.
Bye :)

Wel, perhaps just a quick one

Though really I ought to be going to bed.
I do so go on about that don't I...it's just that bed time keeps coming and sneaking past and here I still am.
I talk too much is what.
If you were all here, we'd be drinking wine and coffee and tea and laughing and talking and possibly eating. There'd be a moon rising and going over the horizon and if it was a good one we'd all go out to look.
As it is, I think of you all doing the things you talk about here and wonder how you are all coping with whatever we talk about on our blogs. Hope you are all doing well tonight, that things have eased off and are giving you all a break. Wish we could be together for a while and kick some ideas and ass about :)

Now...I haven't tried this on the laptop before but, computer being out of commission, I did load some pictures onto laptop. Who knows but I may be able to get them on the blog:)

Yes it seems I can! they may be huge and take half an hour to upload though! I usually make the file smaller before posting but laptop doesn't yet have a programme that will do that.

Pussy cat pussy cat where have you been...following the dog? And a bird?

Goodnight :)
Update: it seems blogger resizes automatically if I use the 'blog this' approach.

Once more unto the breach

Long pause here to make coffee....................
But while the coffee's brewing,
I had a list written this morning; fairly short but very much to the point. It went:

Go up to attic and find old monitor
Extract monitor and convey downstairs(hooks and crooks will be needed)
Disconnect current monitor, connect old monitor
Start up computer

(lots more stuff in brackets...since this may have been the point at which a flow chart would have diverged. I like flow charts, they give an illusion of likely progressions for confusing events)

pause to finish off coffee making.............................

Ahhhh! Coffee :)
And a fag.

You may have guessed from my preramble that now my dining room/computer room is littered with monitors, leeds*, stuff off the desk, cleaning stuff (it's amazing how many spiders and how much dust there are behind the average monitor(How about that grammar? I couldn't be bothered to work it out)) and aged instruction manuals. Wires crawl out form under every cupboard and shelf and then crawl back again in an embarrassed sort of way. As well they might. no use to me!
The computer and my list have inevitably diverged. Amazingly, the old monitor is prepared to give things a go but all it could tell me was that windows (apologetically) couldn't restart normally. A recent hardware or software change might have caused this. (Oh right!!!!Like the monitor not working all of a sudden)
I've tried the whole of my repertoire of things to do when the computer says it's not working normally and reached the point where a flow chart would say "NO? go back to last known good configuration (that's turn computer off again and look at it sadly. Mutter a few choice words)
The one really good thing to come out of all this is that it now seems the laptop is prepared to connect to the wireless router. It wouldn't last night but actually some little lights on the router were different from normal and now, though I don't know why and have no confidence that this state of affairs will last, they are normal and the laptop is talking to you even though the computer is turned off! Wow or what!!!

Oh No! my coffee's finished. Must make more and pursue computer expert enquiries.

Till next time I'm able to connect.** Be bad, wicked and have fun for tomorrow your computer may die!

*O well, not Leeds of course...even in my dining room that would be excessive, and the roads in Leeds are not easily navigable, having them all here would mean I might never find the computer again; or indeed the front door!
**It may be that I am unable to connect again till the computer's fixed. Don't hold your breath....I may need you to resuscitate me as I am holding mine!

I've been procrastinating

Over things that one I love believes I should have been doing.
As a result, I haven't been indulging in things I believe I should be doing.
Which is another way of saying I've been sulking.
And now I've got over sulking, I've made some plans, tidied the house (thanks also to Thursday and Joe Brown for making this both necessary and satisfying) and fianlly felt I was allowed to spend an evening visiting.
Wow! I think I can even find time for a quick post. There's still a mound of procrastinated stuff to deal with but I think I can handle it. Just about.
So there was an eclipse of the moon. We saw bits of it thanks to our caller...we were doing a barn dance that evening and she announced to the crowd that there was an eclipse so after every dance the hall emptied and everyone rushed out to see how it was doing. Which also meant that we didn't have to play tunes during every rest between dances. Good, because me and Barney were still a bit hung over from a farewell party the night before.
Meanwhile, the hares in the field out the back have been behaving, well, oddly. No boxing to speak of but they gather in little groups and do the brown lump thing. Then suddenly two of them get up and one chases another round and round and back and forth and in figure eights between the others. The two running ones do it nose to tail in perfect synch until I am ready to fall over...quite hypnotic. It is like one of those computer game animations that happen while the game is waiting for you to start playing. After a while they suddenly stop and turn back into brown lumps.
Hares are weird.
And annoyingly, distant. A photo wouldn't do it justice.. You need animation to get the full 'if-they-do-this-much-longer-I'm going-to-fall-over' effect. Sorry.

But here is the moon rising, all un-eclipsed


And in the middle of the barn dance, shadowed slightly by EarthGoing

goingAnd back again, much later... haloed by clouds.

I've really got to go to bed again.
G'night.

This is an in-between post

I forgot I'd saved it as a draft but I did it so here it is...unfinished but not quite a symphony.
Today (which by this time was sevearal days ago) was a very important day for Frangelita who appears to have said nothing at all about it yet. (But of course she couldn't as she will still be at work)
Well all I shall say for the moment is that I went to Oxford for the day and spent several happy moments in various bookshops being a very proud mum.
As well as visiting bookshops, we bought a present for someone, had a very nice pie (well, 2 pies, one each) and then visited the Beep who was as charming as always. And also gave me some very good advice about getting a stall on the market (pictures, cards etc for the selling of...you see, I'm mowing that grass which has been growing under my feet since I stopped work and getting the old self out of pasture to attempt the world of commerce and gainful employment yet again. Not to mention making plans for idle hands. No devils here Oh no indeed not!!!) and offered to introduce me to the chief man around the market when I'm ready to attempt it.
A thoroughly decent chap, the Beep, as well as being lovely to talk to and having a very nice stall. But sadly no tiny salt spoons. Oh well, you can't have everything :)

Then Fran went to work and I started to walk towards bus stops and wondered about walking all the way back to her house since it was a lovely day and there are many beautiful places to pass and also very nice shops. Only my intermittent foot fault returned with a vengeance. When my feet are both working, I can walk quite long distances, quite steadily (though other faults, probably smoking and eating related, make it preferable not to walk up hills) but when the foot fault happens I can only walk about two paces at a time. Stopping or sitting down relieve it for another two or three paces. As you can imagine, this makes walking a time consuming business for which I haven't the patience. Actually it right royally pisses me off. and causes me to mutter F words and sometimes more complicated and colourful things under my breath. Often! Well, every two or three paces.
I would take it to the doctor and say doctor doctor my foot wouldn't work yesterday...but he'd only say bring it back next time it doesn't work. Me and the car and our mechanic have been playing this game for several months now.
So I caught the bus and then went to a useful shop of the kind where you can buy Chilli pickle, gram flour and proper poppadums as well as sensible bags of spices (as opposed to ridiculous little supermarket jars) and if you feel strong, giant sacks of rice.
By the time I'd got back to the car with my pickles and spices and poppadums (but no sacks of flour or rice) I was ready to brave the A34 (currently suffering an attack of major road works) if it would just please get me home to a cup of tea and a loo.


Some hastily uploaded pics of Oxford.


And when I got home

If you look here, you will find the source of my proudmumness :) Notice...'a selection of the best' :)

just so you don't think I'm ignoring you

Blogger's not letting me comment. (even on my own blog) Could be it's having a funny day, cos it let me this morning.
Back to try again tomorrow!

Update: And now it is letting me, but I'm going to bed. Never mind :)