Pottery

I forgot to put these up as well… It’s the pottery Amy and I made for Snookums for his birthday. First is the espresso cup and saucer I made for him, and then the front and back of the goblet Amy painted. Yes, that is supposed to be a portrait of me and him. No, I don’t think that the breast size is very accurate.

Espresso Cup and Saucer   Goblet Front   Goblet Back

Photos

I recently cleared out my digital camera’s memory card and here were some of the gems I found:

My sister with the little birthday cake Rodd got for her at Tesco. Yes, that’s a tea light on top. We didn’t have any other birthday candles. And please disregard the large bottle of Gordon’s Gin on the table beside her. I, uh, swear we don’t drink a lot. Or something.

Amy's birthday cake

Do not stare directly at the German’s legs! Blindness may ensue. This is my friend Christian, who Snookums and I call Sid (for various geeky reasons). He apparently lost some bet and as punishment had to wear this kilt all the way across London to pick up a girl. As compensation for embarrassing him, here’s a link to his extremely helpful PHP website.

A German in a kilt

Front

Back

Here’s my hair following the first of the “Intense Red” dye jobs. I get it done about every six weeks, although I really should get it done more often these days (my hair grows fast). Reds are also very tricky to maintain, as they tend to fade quickly and the color can wash out. I finally wised up and got some expensive yet effective color preserving shampoos. It was so funny when I went home in June, because half my family didn’t even recognize me.

There’s my sister again. This was from our ill-fated trip to the UK Blogger meet-up. See, I told you we were there!

Saturday in the park with Amy

So we dodged another dreaded computer virus. Nice. I’m afraid I have to object, though, to the picture Yahoo! includes with their ‘Code Red’ article. Why a shot of little Chinese kids using a computer? If you didn’t read the accompanying caption, you’d probably think these were the miscreants responsible for the worm. Very manipulative, that.

Ack! It’s 9:15 am and I’m still sitting here unshowered. The ADSL is up, though, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to do my first supa-fast blog posting. We think BT might finally be fixing the damn thing, seeing as how we’re finally getting about 60% uptime as opposed to the 5% we got the last few weeks. Of course, it dies every time I get near it so we’ll see if this post goes through or not…

Yoga

Did I mention the yoga? Okay, so last Friday it’s “Customer Appreciation Day” at my gym so I drag my sister along for a yoga class, which neither of us have never done before. Here’s a minute-by-minute recap of my actual thoughts during the experience:

  • 7:55 pm Okay, I can do this. How bad can it be, right? There aren’t any weights or steps or machinery. It’s just your body. Dude, this is gonna be cake.
  • 8:05 Hmmm… the stretching is interesting. I’m enjoying it so far.
  • 8:10 Ooh, this child’s pose is pretty nice.
  • 8:20 Dammit, man, I have no balance. It is physically impossible for me to stand on my tippy toes with my arms in the air and then lower myself to my knees while balanced en pointe. Man, this is hard.
  • 8:25 No. No friggin’ way. I can’t remember that! There’s, like, 17 steps in that sequence! My back feels like it’s gonna break every time I try the cobra. And I can’t hold the damn downward dog for more than 2 seconds without nose-diving onto the mat.
  • 8:30 Oh God. Another hour. Please go faster. Why can I suddenly not stand on one leg?
  • 8:45 I’m sweating bullets. I’m in serious pain. My sister is laughing at me. I HATE YOGA. Only 45 minutes left to go.

I’m pretty sure that this is the point when I blacked out.

  • 9:20 Ahhh… Now this is the part I like. Lying in the dark and listening to white noise. I might fall asleep.
  • 9:30 We’ve been lying here for 10 minutes. I’m so bored I could die. Even the relaxation in yoga is difficult. I’m never doing this again.

I dunno… maybe I just dislike all organized exercise classes. Sorry, B. I gave it a shot.

Training Over! I am now an XML/XSLT goddess. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

Disconnected thoughts:

  • Happy birthday to my Snookums. I’ll be making him Bruce Bogtrotter’s chocolate cake tonight.
  • I’m on the third day of my four day training session. Normal blogging will resume on Wendesday, probably, unless BT get off their ass and fix our home ADSL line.
  • It’s too damn hot. I just spent my lunch hour traipsing around Hammersmith in search of an electric fan, only to discover that the tiny supply was been completely wiped out by the overwhelming demand. The Internet is my last hope of surviving this heat wave.