Out Little Vet

Emily dressed as a Vet for Xmas day

Somehow the box was more interesting -:)

Oh dear not her best side ...

Well here it is

Merry Christmas, everybody having fun?

This week I have survived the office party (just), been a teeny bit embarrassed to be mentioned in the Christmas Speech by the VP as being the latest "graduate" to Citrix and won a lovely Kellogs Hamper (thanks notsupermum)

as well as having dinner at Frosts Garden Centre with a visit from Santa!

Today I get a rest, well not really, as I still had to do the usual sorts of things like washing (erm because someone leaked tattoo ink onto the bed sheets - picture of tattoo will be shown another time), picking up a parcel, getting Emily's hair cut, quick visit to office to grab books, reading material and course work, along with digging up slightly frozen potatoes, carrots, parsnips, leeks and brussel sprouts for dinner tomorrow. Not too sure about the carrots and parsnips but the other veg looked good enough to eat.

Well we wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year for 2011!

Wooo I got educated

This morning I received my exam result email from the Open University, probably the last time I see one of these (*grins*) but after three years, only 1 month off from studying and overlapping two courses for 5 months - double ouch - I was (un)officially awarded a BSc(Open) - that means I now have a Bachelor of Science Open degree - the Open part means I haven't followed a particular Open Uni course path but rather chosen what I've wanted to study all within the realms of the IT courses.

But what's best of all is that I actually achieved a Grade 2 (72%) in my last exam -the last exam that I thought I had failed (I even declared to the world that if I get 40% I would be happy because at least that was a pass) so anyhooo I've managed to outdo myself with this one, I have no idea how I achieved such a high score on an exam paper that I thought was a downright biatch. Go figure or is that Woo Go ME!

My gown is booked, the ceremony is booked at the beautiful looking Ely Cathedral for the 4th June 2011 and my allocated 3 guest places have all been booked and paid for - so there's my xmas money already spent :) easy come - easy go.

I'd like to say a big thank you to all the brilliant and amazingly talented brainy folk I work with at Citrix, for pointing me in the right direction when I could not see the trees for the forests, for my friends for supporting me and for my family putting up with the fact that I turned into a horrible ogre (well most of the time!)

I now have the next 9 months off from studying, and I'm now looking forward to starting a Masters next year.

Beauty and The Beast

this week we are reviewing Beauty and The Beast on blu-ray. The first thing Phoebe said when she saw the film was "brilliant this is my favourite film!" I was amazed as she hasn't seen this film since her early childhood, I on the other hand couldn't remember if I had seen it at all.
Anyway we finally sat down today to watch the special edition of the film. What a brilliant film! It's been a long time since I've sat down and watched a really good film that not only had a great story, a great ending and made me cry. Belle spurns the affections of the arrogant Gaston, frees her father from imprisonment in return for her own freedom, and then falls in love with the Beast - aka The Prince (the hunk) :)

Official website: http://www.disney.co.uk/DisneyDVDs/DVDs/beauty-and-the-beast-dimond-editition.jsp

Blu-ray bonus features

• Backstage Disney

- Beyond Beauty: The Untold Stories Behind The Beauty and the Beast

- Broadway Beginnings

- Composing a Classic: A Musical Conversation with Alan Menken, Don Hahn and Richard Kraft

• Deleted Scenes

- Alternate Story Open

- Belle in the Library

• Family Play

- Enchanted Challenge: A Disney Quest Game

- Bon Jour, Who is This? A Disney TelePlay Game

• Disney Channel Music Video

· Classic DVD Bonus Features

doing nothing

finally after doing too much my body has told me today to rest. I woke up with horrible pain everywhere - every joint and muscle was screaming at me to stop. My throat had that feeling that it was a bit sore or in the process of developing something slimey to cough up. We shall see what develops.

so in the meantime some piccies to show you our pumpkin art, later some photos of what we made out of the pumpkin flesh - *muwahahahah *

i am so tirrrrred

since September -
ordered my own 40th birthday cake
I've sat my final Open University Exam - it was not a good exam (sighs)
turned 40
spent 2 days in Dublin for training
learnt to make some fine cocktails - shame I got too drunk to remember how to recreate them
danced the night away(and my feet didn't hurt the next day)
re-kindled my love for my allotment - though at the moment it resembles a weed patch
carved pumpkins
eaten pumpkins
made pumpkin cakes
made banana and choc chip muffins
(I won't list the house work and stuff as that would bore you tremendously)
started to tidy out my clothes storage (or lack of it!)
organised to do a sale (to declutter the house/attic) - then realised I wont have a car to transport my stuff - doh!
had a deep tissue massage using odd looking glass suction cups - but it was awesome and left me with some odd looking bruises and marks
re-acquainted myself with the gym - ouch
spent a day riding to London and back to test ride a ninja 250R - whoosh that was fast
went for my first run in 2 years - double ouch
.....
next I shall be making 8 cushion covers and a taggie and spending a week in a rehab centre - well I need a holiday and this one is free :)

Part-two

wow sorry left it so long before talking about our second day at Disneyland. We visited the Studio park on day two of our trip. I've not visited this park before so this was going to be a treat for me, oh and Emily.

We got there early just as the gates were about to open so we quickly navigated our way to Toy Story PlayLand and took our first ride of the day on the Slinky Dog, brilliant! We both thought that that was a great ride, excellent for the very young kids. Next we had to queue a little while for the Toy Soldier Parachute Drop - Emily loved this one, I have to admit I didn't like the feeling at all (see reason for not flying - as this was what this ride felt like). Three of you sit in the row - biggest person in the middle, and it takes you high up and then drops you - you know that feeling when you are in the plane and the plane "dips" a little and you get that feeling in your tummy? Well yeah I DON'T like that feeling.

Next we took the Studio Tram Tour and that was a pretty good experience and quite interesting to see some of the work behind the scenes of a "set". Be prepared to be roasted and soaked on this one ;)

We had to walk past the Twilight Tower of Terror - it looked like an awesome ride - sadly Emily was too small for this one.

Next we took the Armageddon Special Effects - where they theme of the experience is "your in a real set preparing to shoot a new scene" . Bit of a long winded start to get the audience warmed up, and I was quite surprised that even after all the signs saying that if you have small children who don't like loud noises then this may not be suitable.. blah blah... that some couple took their loudly crying and obviously upset small (yes younger than Emily) on this one!! I mean come on - the kid cried during the introduction, the guy leading us through this event kept saying "you know not suitable for people with nervous dispositions..." . Still this set of parents were adamant that they were going to subject their son to this. I'm just glad that it was so noisy inside that even if he was screaming , we didn't hear it! (is that bad of me?)

After we found the Stitch Live show and this had to be the best of all! We entered an auditorium where there were some benches to sit on and a large area at the front where the young kids could sit. Emily was more than happy to sit right in front of the large screen. The show started like a film but Stitch was talking directly and live to the crowd. I have to say we laughed and laughed through this one - it was really brilliant. Stitch was interacting with the kids and adults, making us chuckle as he took the mickey out of one parent, and then made friends with another girl, took her photo and then showed us the photo - how brilliant! Oh and then he swallowed the camera. Excellent - I'd give this one 5 stars.

By this time we were feeling pretty tired with the heat, so Emily played in the CineMagic area - recording her voice singing a Disney tune, playing with sounds and colouring in some of the characters.

Our last ride of the day, or last two rides, were on the Flying Carpets. I managed to quickly get a fast pass (only some rides offer this feature and is well worth doing early in the day as some get booked out pretty early on in the afternoon) , and we decided to queue for the ride in the ordinary queue anyway. Brilliant idea as we managed to get two rides out of it in the space of 10 minutes by joining the fast pass queue after our first ride!

After this we headed back to the hotel, picked up our cases and went to wait at the station for our first of 3 trains back home.

Oh boy we both were exhausted. I think its taken Emily a week to recover :)

Disney Daft

You all must think I've gone a bit mad recently - well yes the overwhelming pressure of constantly studying for the last 3 years has had it toll on me - but I'm Disney Daft for a reason. You see I've just spent the weekend at Disneyland Paris! It's an awesome place to visit, and I know there is probably a bigger and better one in the States, but for someone who doesn't enjoying flying visiting the one near Paris is a far better option for me.

I last visited Disneyland with Phoebe oooh about 5 years ago. This year it was Emily's turn and at just being 3 years old I thought we could try a weekend away just the two of us. First option was how the heck was I going to get there without flying? ooh let me see - what has many wheels, some tracks and can travel at great speed under the ground? That's right Eurostar!!!

I booked tickets for travel (luckily Emily is under four and therefore didn't have to pay for a ticket for her unless I wanted to book a seat for her). The journey was was pretty good, catching an early train from our local station to Kings Cross and then walking across to the St Pancras Eurostar station, took only 5 minutes. We found a beautiful station with lots of lovely shops - so sorry I didn't have time to stop and check some out, perhaps next time. We checked in, went through security and passport control, grabbed some magazines from one shop and sat to wait for our train. Getting on the train was easy and straight forward - not like travelling by aeroplane that's for sure. I'd definitely say this was a more relaxed way to get there. The journey itself only took about 2.5 hours and it was lovely, arriving just outside Disneyland itself - what a hoot. I would recommend that if you get the Disney direct train to grab yourself the Disney Express service which checks in your bags for you, as they give you tickets to the park so you can just hop off the train and get straight on with the fun. We didn't do that so instead we waited for our coach to pick us up and we dropped off our luggage before heading back for some dinner at the Disney Village.

Our hotel was the Radisson Blu at the golf "area" of the resort which actually made for a nice quiet hotel (unlike the Kyriad I stayed at last time - noisy screaming shouting kids till very late at night). We had a great room - a large double bed for me and a sofa bed for Emily - though she took to hogging my side of the double bed. Room was very spacious, with not only a TV but a PS2 with its own screen - that if I had known the room had one I would have brought some films for Emily to watch. Our bathroom was lovely with double sinks - one for me and one for Emily.

After a nice nights sleep, we got up early, had a nice breakfast and then headed to the park to pick up our 2 day passes that let us visit both parks.

Our first call was to the main Disney park where we had our first ride on the Carousel-de-Lancelot followed by the Dumbo the flying Elephant, Peter Pans Flight, Alice's Curious Labyrinth, "It's a small world" which is a bit surreal. Next we took a stop in the Discovery Land but there weren't many rides that Emily wanted to go on, we did take a quick shot at the Buzz Light Year Laser Blast - which was pretty good. We then headed to Adventure Land and Emily wanted to explore the Pirate ship but sadly that was shut so instead she had a play in the Pirates Beach and the Adventure Isle.

By this time it was late afternoon and Emily was getting tired, so we made quick trip to Adventure Land but nothing tempted her there so we headed to the main street to watch the parade. Emily almost fell asleep on the pavement whilst we watched the parade - time to head off for bed.

Part-two tomorrow...

Film Review

you all must think that all I do is watch films - well yes that is partly true, but I don't get the chance to see all the films I want to - for example I've been trying to find the time for the last 3 weeks to go and see Inception. We turned up at the cinema on one of the films last few weeks of showing , on orange Wednesday night and gah it was sold out.

Anyway what films I do get to see I like to talk about, for example I get to review Disney films which are fantastic - if you have kids plus a blu-ray player then any sane parent must buy these films. I have lost count of the times my youngest as put them on and sat through the films again and again. Best of all is that they come in dual format - Blu-ray and DVD - which is mighty handy for those long trips that the kids have to endure when they visit the relatives in Scotland (it's about a 10 hour trip split over two days - "Mum are we there yet?" - know what I'm saying?).

Ok so back to the subject in hand, this time I'm reviewing The Princess and the Frog
What I liked about this film was that it wasn't the typical fairy tale story - you know the one about poor girl makes good and her princess saves her. This was more like poor girl who has a dream to make it big, becomes a frog, has adventure with prince frog, then they make it big! I wont give too much away about the story but it was most enjoyable film I've seen in a long time and more in keeping with todays "fairytales"!

Fright Fest Virgin

I have just spent a whole day sitting in a cinema watching 6 "fright" films. Fright Fest is a yearly 5 day festival celebrating new as well as classic horror films. And as a fright "virgin" Saturday the 28th was my official induction - and it was awesome. Our first film started at 11.00 am and we were treated to the Cherry Tree Lane - which was a tense film about a group middle age couple whose evening meal is interrupted by 3 teenagers looking for revenge on the couples son after he snitched on someone. On a low budget and short filming time they made an amazing film that had me feeling anxious and tense about what was going to happen.

Next at 1.15pm we sat down to watch The Tortured - which was quite gorey in the torture scenes, loved that, but sadly was a tad corny in their lines and acting.

3.15pm was 13 Hours - nice up to date UK take on the old werewolf theme. Can't say too much about this one as it looked good, but the baldcaps kinda ruined it for me, get the clippers out next time.

6.30 I Spit on Your Grave - was a quite disturbing story reminiscent of that film (which I cannot name - but lets say hillbillies, banjo theme tune and a fishing trip going wrong) . Yes I was disturbed by this film, my heart was beating, the adrenaline was pumping around my highly sugared out body so much that my blood almost turned to syrup. But the ending scenes were truly awesome and I have never ever heard an audience grimace, laugh and generally praise the originality in the thinking behind those scenes!

9pm saw us sitting down (did I say that our bums still felt fine at this point? comfy cinema seats make so much of a difference !) to watch the Monsters . A beautiful film, beautiful locations and so well put together - I definitely recommend watching this. Not so much a fright film but almost like Close Encounters of the Third Kind film - know what I mean? I don't want to give too much of the story away but see this one when it's out on general release.

Finally, 11.30pm, onto some Japanese gore - and boy these guys know how to make it! Dream Home - supposedly based on a true story is about one persons frustration on trying to buy a house to please her hard working but poor parents. This was gore, gore, gore and pretty darned good gore too.

I'm tired now - only got three hours sleep before my youngest monster decided to wake me up. That will teach me to come home at 3.30 in the morning from London.

Yes I did buy this

Yes this is officially my first bike - Honda CG 125. Nice little runner :)


And this is now officially Drew's new bike which he gives a :) :) :) :) :) (5 smilie rating)

My next bike... well let's just say it's going to be a Monster :)

25 - it's a magic number

Today I donated my 25th pint of blood - so that's taken me approximately 9 years of regular donations!

The allotment is still doing very well - courgettes are turning to marrows. No pictures but for the first time ever I grew cucumbers - yeah go me! A bit tough skinned but actually quite nice. Phoebe on the other hand has been getting creative making Pandora style bracelets and now wants to sell her wares :)

A jolly nice person

I had a rant at the ever so un-helpful post office staff this week. I got some passport photos printed for Emily but after getting the passport documents through the door with the leaflet of rules and regulations on how the photo should be presented I thought I'd go for some advice - and who would be better than the people who check and send. Ha I thought wrong. The late opening (yes they finally opened at 9.05 am rather than 9am - grump 1), next they didn't smile or say good morning (is a friendly hello these days too much to ask? - grump 2), I then asked if they could advise me about passport photos and if the ones I had were ok to use. All I got from them was "for £8 we do a check and send", I explained that I could check and send my own form and all I wanted to know was whether the photos were suitable or not. So she chatted with her boss, came back and said again "for £8 we do a check a send service". I explained that I was more than capable of checking and sending forms, all I wanted was a yes or no answer on these blasted passport photos. GRUMP3. She said no after I repeated my question again, so I politely said that their customer service was awful and they should be ashamed to be called a service of any sort. Grump 4

I then popped into Boots store and asked a nice gentleman at the photo counter what he thought. Gladly he obliged in measuring the photo and said that he didn't think that they would be suitable. I thanked him gladly for his advice, popped across the street to a photographer and had more photos taken (and a tad cheaper than that god awful un-usable badly designed user interface of a photo booth at Tesco - passport quality my @rse)

I then thought hey - it's not often I get a nice caring person in a shop who actually gives a darn about you and goes out of their way. So I popped Boots a nice email saying "thanks for employing people who care". And the lovely people at Boots send me a nice box with 4 eyeshadows - coolio. I'm going to start emailing more companies to let them know if I get a good service from their staff. Ahem not that I'm after freebies, but heck they are nice to get :)

Hero of the Week

I haven't blogged about anything significant for a long time. But after watching The Cove this evening I've been in tears. Watch baby dolphins being separated from their mothers, and callously slaughtered - all in the name of food - highly poisoned food, food so laden with mercury that it causes severe deformities in the unborn.

Richard O'Barry you are a hero

Green things part 2

ok since I last posted pictures of the allotment here's an update. Now I'm praying for rain as my poor potatoes are looking a bit yellow and wilty :(

Laughing cat says

CHEEZE!(ps no animals were harmed in this production. Cat bed proudly sponsored by Catit Design Senses Play Circuit - yes its a toy not a bed and he sleeps in it!)

What a difference a day can make

I forgot to take the camera with me to the allotment this morning, but I did take photos of the 12 courgettes we harvested this morning.

I managed to fob off 8 of them to a couple of my neighbours. Whilst using a couple more for making some gluten free chocolate zucchini cakes and muffins.




Next year I need to remembner not to plant so many courgettes ;)

Brassica section

Parsnips and carrots

Tomatoes

Potatoes

Strawberries and rasps

Peas and Beans

Corn salad, lettuce, leeks and flowers (edible flowers) cabbages

Spinich

Cucumber house (loofas too!)

Radish