We went to Marwell Zoo on Saturday

and I took lots of piccies.

These are the ones that turned out best.


Wouldn't you just kill for eyelashes like that baby giraffe??

"Why is mum blendering bog roll????"

(is blendering even a word???)

This month over at the Green Pepper Press street team, the Crusade topic is paper casting.

This is something I have never tried before, but I will definitely be doing it again. It's fun of the highest order.


And it's hard work, but worth it, to keep a straight face as your teenage son and three of his friends look on incredulously as you merrily tear a toilet roll into little strips and run it through the blender :)

(My smoothies have tasted a bit odd ever since.... :D)

I made this huge job lot of casts in one night - some were made with moulds, the rest by pushing the pulp onto an upturned rubber stamp (I think the harlequin stamp could have done with a clean first!).


They took about 48 hours to dry, but once dry they were rock hard and ready to use. And a great thing about these paper casts is that they are really lightweight - so this is a great alternative to clay for projects that you don't want to be too weighed down.

And use them I have - on Little Boxes, of course :)


By the way - that one with the heart and wing? See the background? That is proof positive that you don't need a die cutting machine to use the Cuttlebug embossing folders - I did that with a rolling pin and good old fashioned muscle power :)

I is for Inked

I'm a bit behind with my A-Z journal - we're supposed to be doing 'K' at the moment, and I was only up to 'H'... so I thought I'd better play a bit of catch up today.

I'm a bit stuck on what to do for 'J' - but 'I' was a no brainer, seeing as I'm in the middle of getting my backpiece done...

You look at my skin
Outside not what's inside you will see
That I'll never change for authority
'Cause my ink's my mark on society
Read between these lines and you'll understand
That my ink is with me 'till the end
I'm inked 'till the end.

(I LOVE that show!)

This page came together nice and easy. The main photo is me getting my orcas started off, printed just on plain copier paper and cut out.

The main part of the background is a photo of a backpiece I liked torn out of a tattoo magazine - if you look carefully, it says hardcore, which is kind of cool. Not that I am very. Hardcore that is :)

The music is sheet music for a hymn that goes:
Wash me in the blood of the Lamb And I shall be whiter than snow
Which seemed appropriate in a wholly inappropriate kind of way

Oh and up in the top right there is a little bit of old book page - just because I had a gap there.

The background was lightly gessoed, and coloured with yellow and orange distress inks and then left to dry

Then I stuck my photo over the top, and sprayed the whole thing with matt acrylic sealant.

Over the top of that went the scroll and 'forever' rub ons (Hambly and Creative Imaginations respectively) - the forever rub on was open text so I coloured it in with a red sharpie just to add a bit of colour.

The barbed wire in the bottom right is a Viva Las Vegas stamp, embossed in silver.

And the letters for the title were stamped onto clear shrink plastic, then shrunk and glued on. I wanted to use the same lettering that I had used on letters 'A' through 'H', but they were too big to fit in the scroll - hence the shrinky.

I think that's everything. Still no idea what to do for 'J'... I might have to do 'K is for Kes' first :)

Blimey, I haven't blogged all week, at least here's my Friday Fivers.....

Been busy busy busy busy!!!!

hlog's five:

1.) What is the best summer job/internship you've ever had?
Well, I only really had one... I worked during my gap year, and all my university breaks, for IBM. I really enjoyed working for them, they taught me so much - and the pay was good too :)

2.) Who did you look up to as a kid?
My dad, John Lennon, Tony Benn

3.) Thoughts on a Dancing With the Stars dancer becoming a recording artist?
No idea what this one is about - I guess it's America-specific

4.) Do you collect anything?
I used to collect snails - pottery ones, ones made of glass, toy ones etc etc. I have quite a collection, but they still live at my Dad's house as I left them behind when I went to Uni and have never gotten around to collecting them. My poor mum had to dust them for years!

5.) What was your first car?
The world's cutest bright orange VW beetle. It had a black bonnet with a Hawkwind logo on it (hand painted by me), and one green wing. I loved that car - at least until it tried to kill me by rolling itself on the motorway on the way home from Glasto one year.

the Fiver:

1. Last laugh?
This evening when I was discussing with my 16 year old my plans to become a pony and move to Ponyville. The conversation got quite silly and we both had a giggle. (I still want to do it though - does anyone know where I can get any pony hormones? I figure I should start taking them...and live as a pony for a while....before I go under the knife...)

2. What do you love?
My family and my ratty girls, chocolate, crackle paint, music, Inked on ITV4, my new tattoo, my Canucks and my Wildcats

3. Gold or silver?
Definitely silver. I have never been keen on gold. Always preferred silver and copper. But then again, I adore my orca ring, and that's gold....

4. Who do you hold hands with?
Connor, because he's still young enough to want to hold hands with his old mum. Long may it last. And Ian, whenever I see him, because we are still at that lovely lovey-dovey touchy-feely stage - and long may that last too :)

5. Friday fill-in:
There's no time to ____. do even a fraction of the stuff I want to do.

and they're all made out of ticky tacky

It was raining this afternoon, so I took Connor to the local soft play centre, and while he ran around for a couple of hours, I made my first Little Boxes.

3 down, 18 to go :)

The three were all made roughly the same way. For each one, I cut a house shape out of a thin piece of mica. You can't see the mica at all on the pics unfortunately - but it has that lovely sepia tone and shimmery finish as you move it about...it's one of my favourite things to use.

I stamped an image on the front of the mica house with black Stazon (all three are Stampotique stamps), and then painted them with acrylics on the reverse...so it didn't matter if I went over the lines a bit :)

Then I cut the same shape from a background piece of card - the boy's background is a spin-art piece made with Daler Rowney fluid acrylics, and then sponged over the top with distress inks - and the girl and the spider are over an old piece of sheet music stuck onto plain cardstock, with mica flakes added, which has been coloured with pink and green Stazon.

I made a window for each house out of an old postage stamp - the windows are cut right through the background card, so all that is covering them is the transparent mica.

And finally I stuck the 2 houses - mica and background - together, and then finished off with a border of thin copper tape.

These were a lot of fun to make - and I'm looking forward to making my next batch when I get the time.

Friday Fivers - 16th May 2008

Traditional Fiver:

1. Are you a good worker?
Well, I always thought I was. But I got a bit of a bollocking at work the other week for not working hard enough, so maybe I’ve started to slack off a bit in my old age......meh....

2. What do you carry?
Plenty of excess flubber. But not enough, it seems, for me to motivate myself to do anything about it. Cake is just way too nice to give up in pursuit of the body beautiful.

3. Do you know your neighbors?
Only one one side – a nice couple who breed Bengal cats - but I don’t know them that well, just enough to have a brief chat every now and then and swap Christmas cards.

4. Where do you like to go for a day trip?
I’m a bit of a roller coaster fiend – so somewhere like Alton Towers is right up my street – but only on a non busy day, otherwise you spend more time queuing than riding, and that’s no fun

5. What is at your feet?
At the moment, my Canucks messenger bag (and if you want to know what’s in it, see last week’s Fiver :))


hlog five - which actually is five this week :

1.) Do you wear sunscreen?
Very rarely – I don’t tend to burn in the sun, I’m more likely to go straight to tan. I’m not usually outdoors for long stretches anyway, and I don’t take sunbathing holidays

2.) What is your favorite thing to BBQ?
I’m not much of one for barbecues, being veggie and all, but I have done veg kebabs on skewers before, and bananas wrapped in tin foil are nice on the barbie too

3.) Do you find yourself driving less with higher gas prices?
Nope – I have to get to work, and there is zero public transport out here in Deliverance country. And I also visit a lot of friends who are far enough away, yet not on an easy train route, that driving is the only option really

4.) If this coming weekend were magically to be a three day weekend, what would you do?
Oh, I wish! I’d set aside a day just for arty pursuits and make 2 t-shirts, the journal for my upcoming tattoo CJ, and all 21 of my Little Boxes

5.) What kind of computer do you have?
At home, a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop. At work, also a Dell, but a desktop.

Rally call - do you like making ATCs? do you love house shaped stuff? read on....

I am chuffed to have been given the go ahead by the lovely Angela Cartwright to run a (primarily) UK-based version of the Skylines and Skyscrapers swap that you may have seen featured in Somerset Studio magazine.

Our version is called Little Boxes (on the hillside).

Read all about it, and sign up to join us if you wish, here.



----------------
Now playing: Pendulum - Mutiny
via FoxyTunes

3 and three quarter hours of agony...and it ain't even finished yet :)

But boy it’s going to be fab when it is.

Yes, yesterday was tattoo day.

And my post title isn’t really accurate, the first 2-3 hours were actually surprisingly bearable, but by the last hour or so, I was really feeling it, ow ow ow ow ow ow!!!

Before you read any further, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that the dark shadow in the bottom left of the main photo of the tattoo below is just spare ink which I have since washed off. It’s not dirt :) Or fat shadow :P But that’s what it looks like at first glance, ewwwwww.

Once finished, my tattoo will look like this:

So far, Mike (Hervin, from Skin Graffiti in Swindon, who is a very nice and very talented chappy) has done the first coat of the majority of the blackwork. I’m going back in 5 weeks time for him to finish off the black, and add the red and blue.

He had a hell of a job getting everything positioned right to avoid all my moles :) Which is why the baby orca is a little lower down on my back than in the original picture. But he sorted it out perfectly in the end - even capturing one of the moles in the baby's blowhole lol

Despite having signs up everywhere promising all sorts of devilish punishments for anyone caught using a camera on the premises, Al the piercer was kind enough to take a couple of pics for me of Mike at work on my back, it’s the ex-scrapbooker in me – I might not scrapbook any more but I still have an over-riding need to record everything in photographs :)


I must admit, a long tattoo sitting like that is a whole lot different to a quick one-hour jobbie. I have never felt disoriented after a tattoo before. But after this one I was all over the place. I was attempting to chat to Mike about cameras / photography etc – he has a Canon EOS 400D and wanted a few tips on best use of all the different settings – and I just couldn’t get my words out. I couldn’t even remember the words for aperture and shutter speed etc. Total brain freeze. I guess it’s the brain’s response to that low level but constant pain over a long period – it must release funny chemicals that stop you functioning normally.

I wasn’t ready to drive home straight away – but a quick walk around town in the sunshine – and a trip to Boots to get my bepanthen cream – cleared my head and I felt all normal again.


And now I feel fine – my bra strap was a bit annoying this morning (felt like wearing a bra over a sunburnt back, a bit) – but I seem to have got used to it now.

Roll on June 24th – I can’t WAIT to see it all finished :)

Rhomany you are a genius :)

So, there I was yesterday morning.... in a total panic..... due at the tattoo studio at 11am for work to start on my backpiece....

….got to have a bath, don’t want to be all smelly for the nice man….check
…. bottle of water….need bottle of water, going to get thirsty….check
…. scrunchy to hold my hair up out of the way…. check
…. what else……???

aaarrghhhhhh – what am I going to wear??????!!!!

It’s an open plan studio with big windows – I can’t wear a top, obviously, as the tattoo is taking up my whole back, near enough. I can’t even wear a bra! The straps would get in the way…. What do I doooooo?????

Then I remembered this blog post from just a couple of days before…. The lovely Kat Von D merrily chopping up t shirts, brought to my attention by Rho…..

At the time I watched the Kat vid, and commented on Rho’s blog, something to the effect that the stringy sleeves were a nostalgia trip, as I used to do that to all my t-shirts back in the 80s – but that I had never done the tie back thing as I was never brave enough to go backless & bra-less :)

But as I sat there – with about 10 minutes to go before I had to leave for my appointment – I remembered there was a link on Rho’s post to make a halter neck. A halter neck – perfect!

So I got out an old Buffy t shirt (see before pic above) and some sharp scissors, and set to work. The bottom of the t was a little on the baggy side once it was done so I threw in a bit of Kat-style tie backs for good measure. And in less than 5 minutes, I had a perfect top to wear while I was being backpieced :)

So thanks Rho – your immaculately timed post saved me showing the whole of Swindon my boobies :)

And this is the last ever photo of my naked ink-free back.

See the next post for what it looks like now :)

One for sorrow

Sometimes it's time to take a break from all the CJs and swaps and challenges and make something to keep.

That's what this is.

It's to remind me that everything gets better eventually, no matter how bad it feels at the time.

I'm putting last year to rest. Good riddance 2007.

---

[Background canvas washed over with Ecoline inks and stamped all over with GPP corrugated cardboard stamp. Drybrushed around the border with black gesso. Three torn sections of loose canvas were also coated with black gesso, and once this had dried, white absorbent ground was applied with fingers to cover most of each canvas piece. The AG once dry, was coloured with water soluble crayons and more ecolines. On each piece a bird image was embossed in black, and pale blue pearlescent ink was sponged around a mask to frame the bird(s). Words were added using a Dymo labeller (and at the bottom of the canvas, handwritten with a brush pen)]

Friday Fivers - 9th May 2008

hlog's five is 4 again this week:

1.) Beach or mountains?
Ummmm – tough one. I love to swim in the sea, and walk by the coast, especially along a cliff top. But I can’t stand just sunbathing on the beach, lying there on a towel for hours, bores me rigid. And the sand gets everywhere. And mountains are beautiful. And they overlook my boys in Vancouver. Yup – seems I have made my mind up - mountains please.

2.) Which newspaper(s) do you read? (Either online or in print)
I only really read a real printed newspaper when I go to visit my Dad, I haven’t bought one in years. I’m not good with distressing news (murders, wars….) which, along with the indiscretions of celebrities, is all the papers seem to report anyway. So I tend to limit my news-gathering to what I hear on the radio on the drive into work. I do read lots of sports news, though (which can also be pretty distressing at times!) – I subscribe to Powerplay magazine which is the UK version of the Hockey News, and I regularly read the Vancouver Sun and Province newspapers online.

3.) What do you plan to do during the hockey off season to keep yourself occupied?
Sulk. Sigh. I’ll survive it, I always have a to do list longer than my arm anyway, so keeping busy isn’t really a problem. But I do miss my hockey so badly already. I am utterly lost on Saturday evenings without a trip up to the Link to cheer on my Wildcats. And I haven’t really been able to get excited about the Stanley Cup playoffs since the Flames and Caps went out, because there’s nobody left in it that I have that much affinity to. I’m still watching, but I have this sinking feeling that the Flyers are actually in with a chance, and I tell you, if they win, I shall cry me a river :(

4.) Favorite form of procrastination?
Faffing about on the net, the devil’s own tool for ensuring that nobody actually gets anything done anymore.

And here's the original:

1. Who do you adore?
Strong word, that. Going to take the fifth.

2. Who adores you?
I'm not convinced anyone does. There are lots of people who love me though. And that'll do me.

3. What's in your pockets?
Right now, I'm wearing something pocket-free. I could do my bag instead...let's have a look (god knows what's in there).....wallet, car keys, tissues, pay slip, neurofen, a postcard that says "I wish I was in Canada, eh", a little Canucks keyring that I haven't put on my keys yet, a Flames zipper pull that fell off Connor's hoody, a lovely old book from 1914 that is due to be altered for an upcoming round robin, flyers for local amusement parks that I have zero recollection of picking up, 4 sharpies, a comb, and a tutorial on CSS (cascading style sheets, a web design thang) that I downloaded from the net and printed out. All vital stuff :)

4. Who can you talk with for hours?
Anyone, really, I'm a chatterbox - the other person always runs out of steam before I do :) I prefer to do my chatting online than on the phone, though. I can multi-task better that way. I really miss MSNing with my best friend for hours every day - we never ever ran out of things to say - she has been in hospital for months now, and can't easily be contacted. I see her for a couple of hours every other week, but that is nowhere near enough. We will have SO much to catch up on when she is home....

5. What sounds great today?
On my way to work this morning the one song that had me whipping the volume up was Propane Nightmares by Pendulum. Looking forward to seeing them at Bestival.

I won! I won! I won!

Ooh ooh oooooh!!!!

I am this months Top Hat pick at the GPP Crusades!!!

yay!!!!

*dances around the room with gay abandon* :)

I even get my very own Michelle Ward graphic, as she would say, HOW COOL IS THAT???

Seriously - I have enjoyed this month's crusade so much that it's been a prize in itself. I LOVED the stencil making and can't wait to cut more. The whole house has got into it - my eldest son has already made a couple of t-shirts and they came out great.

In fact the stencil burner has fast become the most fought over tool in the house :)

So to win the draw too is just fab - a wonderful cherry on top of an already delicious cake :)

Looking forward to Crusade #20....

Yes!!!! it worked!!! check out my t-shirt!!! :)

Oh wow this was so nervewracking!

I had to wait for the paint to dry completely before I could peel off the stencil - and I really had no idea if any paint might have bled under and ruined the design completely.

It felt like forever.

But when I took off that stencil and saw the PERFECT result, I whooped out loud :)

Ignore the shiny bits you can see around the design - that's residue from the temp glue I used to hold the stencil down tight on the shirt while I was painting through it. That will just rub off but I want to wait till the morning to make absolutely sure I won't smudge the paint.

Can't wait to wear it :)

(and yes, it's supposed to be off-centre!)


Inge asked for a tutorial.... but there isn't much to tell really. It was amazingly simple.

I lightly coated the back of the mylar stencil with zig glue and let it dry completely for a few hours.

Then I ironed the shirt (which was an interesting experience, I don't think I have used an iron in over a year - apart from the little craft iron I use for ironing distressed tags!! :)) - and laid it flat on the table with a big bit of cardboard inside, just in case the paint leeched through onto the back of the shirt.

Next it was just a case of sticking the stencil onto the front of the shirt, being extra careful with the little detail bits. And then I used a sponge brush with a dabbing motion to apply Lumiere fabric paint all over the design.

I waited an hour or so till the paint was dry, and then peeled off the stencil. And whooped :)

Tomorrow I'll need to iron it to heat set it, and then it will be washable and all finished.

This is the first of many t-shirts for me, that's for sure. I already have a couple more stencils cut, but they are for pressies, so I can't show them on here....

Oh, and on a completely different subject - here's Cons yesterday when we went caching in Chiseldon:

oh I am SO hooked!

You remember the stencil I cut a week or so ago for the Green Pepper Press "cut it out!" crusade?

Well I wanted to do some more, specifically for stencilling onto t-shirts with fabric paint or bleach, but didn't think I would have time during April - but then Michelle went and extended the deadline, didn't she :)

Perfect!

So I went and ordered a whole heap of plain t-shirts, and fabric paints a-plenty, and a stencil cutting tool, and got busy in Photoshop designing stencils.

And here is my first attempt with the hot cutter...

I am SO pleased with how this has turned out!!!!!!! (even if I did burn my hair.....must remember to tie it back next time)


This is the paper rough draft, I will bite the bullet (and my bottom lip) and try the stencil out on a t-shirt tomorrow - wish me luck!

This t-shirt will be so special because it will be TOTALLY unique, and TOTALLY made by me:

• I took the photo (in Calgary during the anthem before the Canucks/Flames game I went to in March)
  
• I converted the photo to something stencilworthy in Photoshop
  
• I painstakingly cut the stencil out by hand, and
  
• I used (or will do tomorrow) the stencil to create a one of a kind, unique piece of wearable art

And yes, I call it art, not everyone would, but I am prouder of this than almost anything I have ever made, and to me it's art. So ner :)

Here's the original photo:



I'll report back once the t-shirt's done....

Can't wait to make more stencils

Hooked, I tell ya :)

This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area we call the 'Twilight Zone'

Yet another stamp CJ - yet more fun - I enjoyed this one with bells on.

The stamp this time was a little frame - about the size of a passport photo:

I had no clue what I was going to do with it - I have had the journal for a couple of weeks and kept taking it out and staring at it blankly, waiting for inspiration to strike.

Then a knight in shining armour came to my rescue - Sir Timothy Holtz of Rangerland - with a little post on his blog for National Scrapbooking Day in which he reprived his foamcore niche technique from his first DVD.

The frame would be perfect to surround a little niche, I figured.

So I got out my foam board and made an alien world, and a little niched window through which our intrepid explorer Theo can stare in wonder....

I honestly can't think of a more fun way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Well, other than watching Vancouver lifting the cup, or having a private Chilis gig in my back garden, or wandering around the Tate with my favourite person, so ok, there are lots of other things that would be more fun - but this was right up there, really :)

How-to:

The sky was first. I stamped various stars and planets, some with Brilliance ink, and some with Ranger acrylic dabbers, onto smooth mid-blue cardstock. Once the paint was dry I oversprayed with distress reinker / perfect pearls mixtures in dark blue, purple and red. The stamped images resist and show through the spray, but the background takes on a lovely dark shimmery finish which looks suitably outer-spacey to me.

I also sprayed some self adhesive cork with the red spray and a touch of orange, and left it to dry for later.

Next, the landscape:

I cut it from foamcore, and fingerpainted it with various shades of Ranger acrylic paint - Butterscotch, Terracotta, Copper and Gold. I also added patches of Distress crackle paint in yellow, orange and red (I can't remember their proper names - something to do with mustard, marmalade and the red was Fired Brick).

I overstamped in places with pearlescent beige ink using a GPP corrugated cardboard stamp for texture, and that was the foreground done.

Additional mountains for the background were cut from the cork we prepared earlier (Blue Peter eat your heart out :))

The alien guy - one of my favourite Third Coast stamps - was embossed with dark brown EP and then painted lightly with bronze acrylic.

Over on the right hand page, I cut out the niche for Theo, and backed it with a silver vortex stamped on black card.

I stamped, watercoloured and cut out Theo himself and then covered him with a light layer of microglaze so that his colours wouldn't run under the Glossy Accents later.

I filled the bottom half of the niche with glossy accents and added some tiny blue, green and purple microbeads. Once it had partially set, I popped Theo in and then added more GA over the top of him - so he seems to be behind a window.

The frame was stamped and embossed in copper onto dark blue cardstock and placed in front of the niche.



The page title:
Finally. After years of searching. Theo found it. The window to another world.
was added with a Dymo labeller - and that was it all done.

I like this one so much I want to keep it. That's the only downer about CJs.

I hope Theo's final recipient likes it as much as I do :)

I just finished my favourite journal entry ever ever

but I can't blog it because I am waiting for some Glossy Accents to dry.....which apparently doesn't hurry in proportion to the intensity of my stare...

grrrrrrr

so, while the shiny stuff dries in its OWN SWEET TIME

a sneaky peeky:

Thanks Jo for the company while I splidged paint around with my fingers and generally made a mess

I had a really nice day today, we should have 2-person mini crops more often :)

Friday Fiver x 2, May 2nd 2008

I’ve decided to play along with the hlog (Hockey’s Ladies of Greatness) Friday Five each week as well as the traditional one – purely because there is usually a hockey question or two in there – and I need some way to get my hockey fix over the summer….

So from now on you’ll get to find out 10 exciting (or more likely, spectacularly uninteresting) things about me every Friday, not just 5. Lucky youuuuuu :)

Well, this week, it’s 9 – because this week’s Friday Five at hlog has 4 questions….. but you get the general idea….

Friday Fiver:

1. Describe where you grew up

I lived in the same house from birth until I left home at the age of 18, and my Dad still lives there now. It’s a 3-bed semi in an East London suburb called Buckhurst Hill - a quiet little place that’s technically still in Essex rather than Greater London, just, but its position on the Central tube line makes it very much London overspill. It’s a pleasant place with lots of greenery – we were a stone’s throw from Epping Forest, which was always nice for early morning walks - but nice and accessible for the big city for gigs and stuff. With hindsight it was a great place to grow up, but of course at the time, especially in my teens, I thought it was dullsville :)

2. Do you wear any jewellery?

Tons! Well, not like Mr T, but yes, I like jewellery and am rarely seen without at least a couple of rings, a couple of bracelets and a necklace or two. My favourite pick-me-up treat is to buy something beautiful and handcrafted from somewhere like Etsy – like the moon collage pendant I purchased from Ingrid Dijkers last month as a birthday pressie to myself. All my jewellery has meaning to me, I don’t just pick something because it looks pretty, which may well be why a lot of it doesn’t really look as if it matches :) I wear silver, copper, gold, glass, precious stones, plastic, wood, all together – and I could tell you at great length what each piece signifies, if you had a spare couple of hours to listen :D

3. What do you have too much of?

Scrapbooking supplies! I actively scrapbooked for less than a year back in 2005, but during that time I bought SO much stuff. I have managed to re-purpose a lot of it for the sort of papercrafts I do still enjoy, like visual journalling etc, and I have given LOADS of stuff away. But I still have a fair bit, either stuff that I think I might be able to use one day (but I bet I never will), or papers/embellishments that are SO old fashioned or naff that I am too embarrassed to even give them away :S

4. Who is a fool?

According to my 5 year old, everyone. He has just started calling everyone a “FOO” in true B A Baracus style whenever they annoy him. It’s actually very rude of him, and I should tell him off, but it’s kind of cute, so he’s getting away with it for the moment.

5. What's your nickname?

I have had a few over the years, but the main two are Topsy, which lasted from childhood to Uni days (I was a geeky kid into dinosaurs, Sarah => Tri-Sarah-Tops => Topsy), and Flo, which I picked up about 7 years ago, when I needed a screen name to grant me a little anonymity on the eBay powerseller forums, so that I wouldn’t get any hassle from my ex. My ebay ID at the time was “thebradleybunch” (my partner’s surname was Bradley – lots of kids between us – pun on the Brady bunch), and so a pal christened me Florence after Florence Henderson, the actress who played the Brady mom in the original series. Florence got shortened to Flo over time.


Hlog Friday Five:

1. How many pages was the longest paper that you ever had to write?

Probably not many – I was lucky enough to do my degree in Maths, a subject in which we are encouraged to find the concise and elegant solution, not waffle on for 1000s of words and waste a ton of paper :D I did do an ‘A’ level in Politics & Economics though…plenty of rain forests slaughtered for that one.

2. Who is your favourite French-Canadian NHL player?

I’ll go for Alex Burrows – he has been whipping it up a storm on the shutdown line this past season with Kes. It has been great to see him really come into his own this year. The kid’s got a great sense of humour too.

3. What is (are) your preferred pizza topping (s)?

Goats cheese and red pepper ….. or just a grand pile-up of veggies (but hold the mushrooms and olives)

4. How much water do you drink a day on average?

If I am at work, tons – maybe 15-20 glasses. Purely cos I get bored sat at my desk all day and so I break it up regularly with trips to the water cooler. Plus it seems to be a very dry environment. At home, or out and about, I drink less because I’m usually rushing around busy, and eating/drinking properly is often way too far down my list of priorities.

Everybody's happy nowadays..... :)

Well I am anyway

Remember these guys?

Back in the mid 80s, I had a data entry temp job to get me through my first summer at Uni. It was, hands down, the most boring, monotonous, tedious job I have ever had. The only thing that kept me sane was a borrowed walkman, and a cassette of these fine men.

Went to see them last night, had a good bop about, got a pint of VERY COLD lager spilled down my back, 'twas fun :) I can still remember all the words, it would seem, from those long, long hours spent listening to that cassette while typing up telecommunication engineers' timesheets.

And actually, despite my blog post title, Everybody's Happy Nowadays is the only hit they didn't play... we decided it's because that one's a bit high pitched for Pete Shelley now his balls have dropped :)

But we got the full force of Autonomy, What Do I Get, Ever Fallen In Love, Promises, Love You More, Harmony In My Head, Oh Shit, Noise Annoys, Why She's a Girl from the Chainstore, and lots lots more (the beauty of a band whose songs are all 2 minutes long, is that they fit a lot in to a set) - yeah!

And of course, Orgasm Addict, part of which I filmed very badly on my phone:



I was in a total strop for most of the day yesterday (cold sore, broken nail, messy house, bleh), but was grinning like a loon by the time the 'cocks were half way through their first song. Live music (and good company) is medicine for the soul.