Cast your mind back.......

.....if you can, to let's say three years ago, when if you where lucky your, state of the art, pc boasted a Pentium 3, 700mhz processor, 128 SDR, a 32 meg graphics card and a hard drive that at 20 gig you felt you couldn't possibly manage to fill!

Cast your mind back too, are you still with me?, and recall too what accompanied these er.... stunning machines....... the dialup, oh wonderful thing that it was. Those who were lucky connected at something over 45kbps those that were not so lucky envied such a speed, email was restricted to small files, or interminable waiting times, a single music track took 15 minutes to download, assuming of course you could maintain a connection long enough, lag was a pain in th butt and IRC and I.M conversations were cut instantly, always at an inappropriate moment, short by being 'booted' courtesy of the 2 hour obligatory cutting of the connection.

Remember all of those delights do you, cringe at the memory?

Welcome to my world!

Yes, living in our beautifully idyllic field, surrounded by all that nature has to offer, may have it's positive side but it certainly has one big negative to those of us very slightly addicted to the internet...... no broadband! Three years we have waited, three whole, slow years, we have entertained satellite connections, download only connections, various bits of useless software all to no avail, we are still stuck with a dialup, and I might add, one that rarely connects above 42 kbps! It has been a trial, we have even considered moving. Gradually every town an village within the vicinity had acquired the magical connection but no, not us! We in our field have been just out of range each time.

So in the days when the average pc is boasting a Pentium 4, 3000mhz processor, 512 DDR, 128mb graphics and at least an 80 gig hardrive, yours truly is still suffering the archaic 42 kbps, the booting and the half hour waits when some kind soul forgets...... and sends a 4 meg mail.

At last things are set to change, our three year wait is nearly at it's end, ok, so maybe I am a little premature in my celebrations but we have but 10 weeks (er...not that we are counting) left before we finally join the rest of civilisation and can enjoy the high speed connections that most now take for granted. 10 weeks, just 10 weeks! Yayyyyyy.

PG I think, will any day now begin counting the days on a graph, modems will be ordered doubtless well in advance, the laptop will be networked in readiness for the end of the 'who can have the connection' fight discussion and hey, we will even have a viable phone line once more. On second thoughts maybe that's a down side, we hold a 24/7 dialup, we never get hassled with phone calls.....no one can get through! Yes of course there are our cell phones but double glazing sales teams don't call those :o)

So it's ten weeks and counting......and counting........

:o))

Meet Jaydon

Jaydon & PG 30.03.05

Meet the new arrival, Jaydon, two days old, nicely un-wrinkled and extremely cuddly!

This afternoon we visited the proud parents and sister for the first time. I am amazed, as one who has never been through all this 'baby business' how cool 'Mum' is. Believe me, only a day after a reasonably difficult birth I would be 'convalescing' and in a state of complete disarray.......not this mum, nope, she is looking good, things are back to normal, the house is tidy, and the baby is contented. Barely a murmer did he utter.

PG was worryingly taken with this "wee man" and barely did I have him in my arms (after a little persuasion....well they are so small and seemingly breakable when one is unused to them) than he had snatched him away and was happily cooing in a corner at him.....and this is the guy who says he doesn't want kids! Hmmmmm.

In memory of Karine

Myself and Karine's good friend Charmaine have decided that we would like to send flowers for Karine's funeral as a small show of our sympathy and we wondered if any other of her 'blog friends' would like to be included. We are for various reasons unable to attend in person but would like to do something to show our support to her family and in her memory.

I am currently making the necessary arrangements. We will send a bouquet, something reasonably bright, Karine would not have wanted anything sombre.

I do not want for anyone to feel pressured and therefore ask that if you would like to make a donation and be included that you email me from the link below rather than leave a comment. You can of course leave a comment if you wish.

Mailto: say-it@gemmak.co.uk

"No"

Why is it that in the face of certain situations and certain people I am so pathetically un-assertive?

Work called me earlier today asking me to help them out and work tomorrow, my line manager has been taken into hospital and they are short of bodies. I hate that, I know I have a right to a life, as it happens PG and I have a day off together and have plans for the day, but no, instead of just saying "sorry I can't," what do I do? Turn into a gibbering idiot is what I do! I have a horrible habit of rambling on making my excuses in an attempt to justify something I know I shouldn't feel it necessary to justify in the first place.....and doubtless sounding crap into the bargain! All I am doing is providing an opening for persuasion and argument!

Why can't I just say 'no' and be done with it....I know the rules of assertiveness....Goddamn I have to learn to apply them and subsequently not sit here feeling guilty for having a life!

Must practice "NO", must practice "NO"..........

A happy event

At 17.10 yesterday our close friends D&W became parents again for the second time and provided their daughter, the light of PG's life, with a baby brother!

'Jayden' finally wieghed in at 8lbs 1oz, having taken his time somewhat, in deciding to enter the world.

Mother and child are both doing well........more after we visit the hospital this evening.


~ Congratulations to D&W, the proud new parents ~

A typical bank holiday

Statiticians and those that have the dubious task of providing us with all those odd facts and figures on how we live our lives never tire of telling us that in the UK at least, shopping is the single biggest leisure activity, a situation that I find quite worrying and sad but regardless it is a fact.

Sad it maybe that we have become a nation so obsessed with the great Gods that are money and possession but is it any wonder perhaps when I look out the window on yet another typical bank holiday Monday. It is cold, the rain is coming down like 'stair rods' and at 7.30am it is still relatively dark. I know that is in part due to the shift to British summer time (there's an irony if ever there was one) but it is unusually dark. The birds are twittering their displeasure, huddled and bedraggled on overhead cables and under eaves and everything looks set for a dismal day, meteorologically at least!

PG has hobbled off to work, leg strapped up and looking none too fit for the job to be honest and I'm about to do the same. My day at work should be a reasonable one and pass quickly. The weather will at least ensure that Joe public will not defy the statiticians and find something interesting to do but will run true to form and hit the shops with vigour, making my day a busy one that is over in a flash.

Every cloud has a silver lining as they say :o)

Where did today go?

What happened to today then? Can anyone tell me where it went?

One minute I was looking forward to it and the next it is almost over! What makes it worse is I have done nothing, absolutely nothing to speak of. I fiddled with a little HTML for someone, made a loaf of bread and that was about it.....and I might add that the bread making exercise is not what it seems, all it involved was tipping a few bits into a machine and pressing the 'on' button.

I was thrown at the first fence, we staggered into bed at about 4 am this morning which resulted in my over-sleeping, I never wake late but today it was 9.30 before I saw daylight and then horror of horrors, my first, yes really, realisation that we had hit BST at some point and I had lost another hour. As if 9.30 was not bad enough 10.30 was most certainly not good! Had I been due to work I would have been woken by someone telling me in no uncertain terms that I was late.

I never quite recovered, I always have a 'thing' about losing that hour, I want it back, it's mine!! Why can't the clocks go forward one hour in the middle of a Monday afternoon I wonder....... that would far more civil.

And so the day passed me by somehow, I admit to returning to my bed for a small siesta but where the remainder of it disappeared too I have no idea!

Happy Easter

To you all.




Easter, like Christmas has a way of making me feel kinda guilty, though I admit only slightly. I am not a religious individual, at least not in the traditional sense. In the past I considered myself to be atheist, as I have got older I would have to say I am an agnostic if I had to categorize myself on the question of my faith or lack of it. I suppose I feel there must be 'something' greater and more powerful than ourselves but whether that is a God in the traditional sense I just don't know.

It is as a consequence of these thoughts that I feel a little guilt for celebrating events in the Christian calendar such as Easter and Christmas but along with most others, celebrate them I do. I detest hypocrisy in any form and I suppose I feel a little hypocritical myself in my enjoyment of festivals that in reality are not about giving presents and over indulgence but about something so much more important to so many people.

Despite all this Christmas and Easter are special though for me in maybe a less profound manner. They are days when I hope we have time to think of those we love and can spend at least one day relaxing and enjoying their company, being with family maybe, with friends or in the community doing something in some small way for those who are less fortunate.

My Easter? Well for me, very selfishly, it is special in that it is the only day in the year that the law forbids my place of work to open and hence the only day I am guaranteed to be able to refuse to work. Many years the store still runs a shift for those that want to work but it has to remain closed to the public. This year my boss has amazingly decided against even that, so the pressure one usually feels from above to *have* to work is not there. ......yayyyy for the boss.

Add to that, every cloud has a silver lining, PG, still suffering with his leg (though it is improving) is still off work so this will be the very first Easter day we have had off together since the beginning of 'gemmak and PG'. I doubt we will do anything special, the weather is it's normal damp, yukky English Easter self and we didn't hit bed until very stupid o'clock this morning but we will at least get to spend it together chilling.

So, whatever today means to you.....have a very happy Easter.

The bag anti-meme!

In a weak moment I promised to join in this 'anti-meme' on 'Elephants and Dragonflies'. Last time I did this I was only required to list the contents of my bag....this time I have to photograph the bag, it's contents and list them! Eekkkk.

Here goes:

The bag: A tula, boring and black but I love it, it was a 40th birthday present.




It's contents:




Purse.
Locker key for work.
Lighter.
Inhaler.......perhaps I shouldn't have listed that directly after the inhaler :o/
Keys.
Swiss army knife.
Maglight.
PDA.
A blue er....frog? from a cracker I pulled with my mother on new years eve!
An acorn, picked up out walking with my parents last year sometime.
My right arm......no sorry that's my cell phone.
Pen.
Breath fresheners.
'Tums'.
Driving licence.
Misc. underground tickets from days out....I always keep em.
RAC membership card.
Lip gloss.
Body shop lip salve.

There ya go, make what you will of that lot, heh.

Sharp perspective

This week has been one of the most horrible I remember for a long time, I'm not easily reduced to an all pervading feeling of negativity but since Monday, each day seemed to bring yet more difficulties or upset.

It began with PG further injuring his leg, having just the day before seen the doctor and been told it would take a while to heal completely, he fell on it again and rendered it useless. It has since begun to repair itself yet again but he has been in a deal of pain and been unable to go to work. Work was the next problem, on Wednesday it was looking like he would lose his job, thankfully that disaster seems to have been averted though we are not yet 'counting our chickens'. Thursday passed without incident but yesterday felt like the final straw.

I had barely been in work for half an hour when the next un-wonderful incident occurred by way of it now being my turn to injure myself. Please don't laugh, for in retrospect the scenario seems quite funny! Ok.....well laugh then, after the last few days anything funny is better than misery.

There I was, minding my own business in the process of pushing a heavily laden shopping cart to the opposite end of the store to deposit it's contents, when suddenly, quite literally without warning this trolley caught a wheel, upended itself at speed and catapulted me at high velocity into the air, depositing me finally in an ungainly heap on the floor some distance away and with what had been it's contents of something brick-like ontop of me! Feeling utterly stupid I gathered myself up from under the rubble and hobbled inelegantly to find a first aider.

It could have been a lot worse, I was lucky, my injuries are superficial but I too now have a leg that does not wish to be walked on and an array of bumps, bruises and cuts that hurt like hell. I wonder what the mathematical probability is that PG and I should both be hobbling and both have injured the same leg at the same time? What a pair, the two of us together don't amount to one operational individual right now as we limp slowly around wincing when bits hurt!

I limped on at work for a few hours and then was dispatched home to rest my leg. My arrival home bought the terribly sad news of my friend Karine's death. The positive me gave up at that point and I sat like a fool unable to stop snivelling. We knew of course that we would lose Karine but I had not expected it to be quite so soon and I had not expected it to hit me quite so hard.

This morning the positive me is creeping back, it is not my feelings I should be selfishly considering but those of her husband and son whose loss is so infinitely more acute than mine. She taught me to put my life into sharper perspective and to make the most of it, she retained her humour and pleasure in life throughout and to complain and winge at my current troubles is to do her a dis-service....... I am humbled greatly, my problems are nothing!

And so, it's back to work today for me, hobbling maybe but with my positive head back on and a smile on my face. Yes I am of course very sad, I could happily cry all day but that is most certainly not making the most of my life and nor is it a fitting way to remember or honour a lady who showed such massive courage and strength in the face of real adversity.

"Be happy Karine, you made such a difference to so many."

The saddest of days

Back in January you may recall I posted about a lady called Karine, the author of the blog 'Graybar'. I know some of you since then have visited her blog regularly.

This morning I received an email telling me of the tragic news that Karine died today.

I didn't know Karine for long and only via her blog and email, I never got a chance to meet her but I felt I knew her. She was one of the most truly inspirational people I have ever and I suspect, will ever, know. In the face of an illness that most of us would find hard to bear she remained courageous and strong, though she herself would typically, probably deny that. She embraced life and all it had to offer with a passion rarely found and always, even in the dark moments, retained her wonderful sense of humour and spirit.

In a few short months this lady taught me a great deal about life, love and humility and made me rethink how I live and view my own life. I will feel forever privileged and lucky to have known her.

My thoughts and deepest sympathies are with her husband and young son at this sad time.

Wherever you are now Karine may you be happy, you were truly one in a million...... you touched my life.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

'Ping'

Am I the only one having problems 'pinging' blogroll the last few days? It will just not 'ping', instead I get an error message that appears to be written in a language yet to be discovered by man! Help anyone?

Great balls of fire

(Click to enlarge)


Sunset 24.03.05


Sunset 24.03.05 (1)

A quick update

Yesterdays anticipated difficulties and problems did not materialize in quite the manner we expected, they still exist but things could be a lot worse. A small sigh of relief could be heard in gemmaks-ville at round about 17.00 hrs as news was received that the impending trauma had been averted somewhat. It is, it seems, an ongoing situation that cannot be completely resolved immediately but for now things are looking up.

Today should be a better day. Today is the 'official' opening of the store in which I work. There have been mail shots, a television and press advertising campaign and we are all ragged from preparation but it should, with luck and a prevailing wind be a fun day..........if knackering! I won't bore you with the anticipated rise in takings and customer flow but expect me to be at least an inch shorter by this evening! We have of course the company of the boards hierarchy, how lovely (not)..... best behaviour everyone please...... but we also have one or two good things going on throughout the day. Yes, I think today will be a better day :o)