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Three Corners– Nostalgia

Posted on January 31, 2009

I had a lot of fun with the theme this month.  As usual I had tons of ideas but never got around to tak­ing them.  The COLD weather kept me inside most of the time.  GO quick check out Corey and Jenty’s sites– I’m sure they found some fan­tas­tic pho­tos that spoke to them of nostalgia.

A question

Posted on January 29, 2009

Last week I watched the inau­gu­ra­tion of the 44th pres­i­dent while sit­ting alone in my liv­ing room.  I watched as peo­ple looked up with hope, expec­ta­tion and joy.  I then spent the next week lis­ten­ing to report after report on how bad the global econ­omy is.  I read arti­cles on the econ­omy, one of them claimin it will be as bad as 1946– in the UK that is BAAAAAAD!

On Monday/Tuesday I watched Pres­i­dent Obama walk­ing the halls and shak­ing hands and try­ing to get Repub­li­cans on board with his eco­nomic stim­u­lus pack­age.  Yes­ter­day I watched the vote count as Repub­li­can after Repub­li­can voted against it.  Now I’m not liv­ing in the US so I’m not com­pletely knowl­edge­able about what the pack­age is call­ing for but it did make so sad that no one sin­gle Repub­li­can voted for it. With the econ­omy implod­ing it’s still pol­i­tics as usual.

I’ve also lis­tened to peo­ple say they don’t want social­ized med­i­cine.  On this issue I feel I am in a unique posi­tion as I am cur­rently liv­ing in a coun­try that has social­ized med­i­cine.  I am a BIG fan of the National Health Ser­vice, NHS.

I sup­pose my ques­tion is, what exactly do you not like about social­ized  med­i­cine?  What do you like about pri­vate health care.  Do you know that the UK has BOTH?

The other day I watched a panorama pro­gram where they showed peo­ple lin­ing up to be seen by a char­ity that was orig­i­nally set up to pro­vide health care to 3rd world coun­tries.  They now spend 60% of their time in the US.  I found myself get­ting angry.  How is it that the rich­est nation in the world allows some of it’s cit­i­zens to go with­out such a basic fun­da­men­tal human right.

I really am curi­ous to hear what every­one has to say.  I’ll put away my pinko-commie soap box now.

Like it’s 1999

Posted on January 28, 2009

How Much things cost in 1999

Yearly Infla­tion Rate USA 2.19%
Year End Close Dow Jones Indus­trial Aver­age 11,497
Inter­est Rates Year End Fed­eral Reserve 8.50%
Aver­age Cost of new house $131,750.00
Aver­age Income per year $40,810.00
Aver­age Monthly Rent $645.00
Cost of a gal­lon of Gas $1.22
Aver­age cost of new car $21,050.00
US Postage Stamp 33 cents
1 LB of Bacon $2.59
Ground Cof­fee per IB $3.41
Loaf of Bread $1.49
Dozen Eggs 89 cents

I’m sooo rock­ing the last mil­len­nium here peo­ple.  I’m (are you ready for it?) using dial-up!  OH MAH GAWD it totally sucks.  Slow con­nec­tions and dropped con­nec­tion being my main gripe.  Slow load­ing pages when­ever I go to a new site– luck­ily for me I’m a crea­ture of habit and that hasn’t hap­pened too often.  I’m wait­ing for my new wire­less broad­band modem (my last one bit the dust) to arrive from BT.  Until then I’ll be here, rock­ing to blink-182 and watch­ing Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer.

We are both sooo happy that Dada is back from his trip.

Mid-winter slump

Posted on January 23, 2009

sorry for the ram­bling nature of this post.  I’m really strug­gling with what to say on this blog at the moment so I’m just going to stream of con­scious­ness write/blog.

Not much to report here.  It’s been really cold, although nice and sunny for a cou­ple of days, and I’ve been stick­ing close to home.  Wal is off on an extended busi­ness trip and won’t be back until next Thurs­day, he left yes­ter­day.  It really sucks when he  trav­els over the week­end but his boss is here and well, you do what you have to do.

I did ven­ture into the vil­lage to run some errands, stopped for cof­fee and then it was swim­ming.  We haven’t been swim­ming since before the Christ­mas break and Squidge did. not.like.it.at.all  she cried the entire time we were there and it pretty much sucked.  I’m hop­ing that next week will be better.

I’m try­ing to force myself to get out and do things but it’s been dif­fi­cult– any­one else feel­ing the win­ter blues??

Ear­lier this year I ordered the aquaba­bies photo of Squidge swim­ming under­wa­ter.  We had the photo shoot a year ago last Octo­ber!!  The photo arrived today and I can’t say I’m all that pleased with it.  The focus on it is very soft.  I’m not sure if that is just how they are see­ing as it was taken under­wa­ter.  I’m also not all that pleased with the order­ing process.  I ordered it from the pho­tog­ra­phers web­site and didn’t receive an order con­fir­ma­tion or any indi­ca­tion what­so­ever that they had received my order.  I had planned on call­ing him last week to con­firm that they had received my order but the time (abject lazi­ness if truth be told) go away from me.  Sud­denly today it arrives in the post.  Oooh kay thank you.

I’ve been work­ing on stationary/posters/marketing/information packs for my pho­tog­ra­phy busi­ness.  I need to get the word out that I’m here and I rock. Does any­one know how to make a water­mark for pho­tographs?  I have a graphic and I want to add to pho­tos but I don’t know how.  I sup­pose I could pay some­one to do it but I’m cheap and I know I could do it myself!!

I ordered some prints from Etsy today and can’t wait for them to arrive.  I noticed last week dur­ing my clean­ing craze that I don’t have any art­work up.  I’m also plan­ning on chang­ing Squidge’s room out a bit.  She still has the clas­sic Win­nie the Pooh prints up in her room and they look just a lit­tle bit baby­ish to me.

Squidge has been really really cute.  She is ALWAYS com­ing up to me and telling me she yuvs me.  She’s a very cud­dly child and I love love love that about her.  I hope that never changes.  I know that I am not very huggy with those that I love and I’m try­ing to change that.  I won­der if I was a cuddly/huggy child and changed when I got all angsty teenagery.

Wal and I (and Squidge) are plan­ning a trip for next month.  I’m soo look­ing for­ward to it.  Wal is vis­it­ing a cus­tomer in North­ern Spain and we’re tag­ging along and mak­ing a week of it.  We’re also try­ing to decide if we should go ski­ing.  What do you guys think?  With the global econ­omy in the crap­per part of me want to be very very cau­tious and not spend the money.  Ski­ing is a fairly expen­sive hol­i­day– at least £3k if we’re care­ful.   What if Wal loses his job.  It’s not in any dan­ger as far as we know but…

Yes­ter­day on Women’s Hour they were talk­ing about fem­i­nism.  I’ve always con­sid­ered myself a fem­i­nist and don’t con­sider it a 4 let­ter word.  While I was lis­ten­ing to it I won­dered what kind of mes­sage my SAHM self is giv­ing Squidge.  Giv­ing up my job after Squidge was born was easy.  It was a hor­ri­ble menial job that I had taken just to get into the job mar­ket here in Eng­land.  I won­der if I had had a job in my field if I would have been will­ing to give it up so quickly.  I think yes because the money was hor­ri­ble although I did love it. Being a SAHM has been dif­fi­cult for me.  I have worked since I was 16 and have always had my own money– it may not have been much but it was mine.  Hav­ing to rely on Wal for money has been tough.  He’s never denied me any­thing within rea­son.  Still I have felt like I was tak­ing advan­tage of him.  Still I do keep the house clean *cough­bull­shit­cough*, cook for him, raise his child and all the other thou­sands of things I can’t remem­ber.  Still it’s a very old fash­ioned kind of exis­tence.  I’m not one of those shopping/lunching SAHM’s.  Well this lit­tle bit is ram­bling AND con­fus­ing so I’ll end it here.

On the 10th I drove down to Cam­bridge w/ Byr­ney and the kids.  A good friend of ours moved down there last year and her daugh­ter was hav­ing a birth­day party.  We fig­ured why the hell not and off we went.  I’m so glad we did.  Squidge had a blast and it was great to see Teddy and the kids again.

I need to call my Mom, I haven’t spo­ken to her in over a week.  I need to call my friends and try to see them more often.  I need to become more con­fi­dent and stop think­ing that peo­ple don’t like me.  I think this is one of my worse fail­ings.  I con­stantly think peo­ple don’t like me.  Some­times I don’t give peo­ple a chance  I just assume they won’t like me so I don’t even try.  Stu­pid, isn’t it!!

I’m hop­ing to orga­nize a Spa day with some of my girl­friends.  I have never ever ever been to a spa.  I’ve never had a facial. I KNOW!! What is wrong with me!  Any­one want to join me?  I know there is a spa right out­side of Knutsford I would like to try.  Julia, have you ever been??

OK I’m going to end this here see­ing as my word count is hov­er­ing around 1100 and that is waaaay too many words and very unlike me!

I’ll be back to nor­mal soon. I hope.

What do you get for 60 quid*?

Posted on January 20, 2009

your com­puter back EXACTLY the same as when you dropped it off.  Ooooh wait you also lose all of your backed up files on your exter­nal hard drive.  I’m soooo glad I spent all that money!  One good thing to come from this entire affair is that my house is CLEAN peo­ple.  CLEAN!!  I actu­ally let a stranger into my bed­room.  I wouldn’t have done that a week ago!  I know you’re won­der­ing who I let into my bed­room.  Com­puter dude that’s who (whom?)!  I get the stu­pid thing home and try to con­nect to the inter­net (oooooh inter­nets how I missed you!)  only to find that I can’t.  So I called him and he came out and fixed my wire­less router prob­lem.  I don’t really know what the prob­lem was but he fixed it and didn’t charge me any­thing so I’m happy.  Well as happy as you can after spend­ing 60 quid for nothing.

So folks I’m off to read blog, catch up on news and Flickr my heart out.

just in case you were hav­ing Squidge withdrawals.

*I use quid instead of the GBP sign because my key­board is a US one and I’m too lazy to look up and remem­ber the ascii code for the pound sign.

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