Bone Scan (by sarah)

Yesturday Mum had a bone scan - so is currently still radioactive! It's to check that the cancer hasn't got into her bones but we wont have the results until the 16th 🙁 The scan however has shown up a definate bone problem around her shoulders and bad hip which isn't brilliant but probably not anything to do with the cancer.

Six Halloweens (by sarah)

Wednesday saw mine and Alarics sixth Halloween together meaning we have now been an actual couple for five years!

This seems like a life time even though it may seem an encrediably short amount of time to some poeple. I thought I'd just review what we have done on those Halloweens just for ourselves really:

Also this is going to be stuff that was generally happening around the time that affected it etc... I don't remeber specific dates well so.....

Halloween one: I turn down the chance of a party in order to meet up with Alaric on something I was not sure was even a date! We had the space time corrodinates of South Ken tube station at 6:30. Alaric was late as he was too excited and got on the wronge train but thought he'd got away with it as I was 'late' but I had been there since 6:15 and had thought once it got to 6:45 that he might have been waiting the other end of the tunnel or up the steps etc... so had gone to look for him.

We then walked around aimlessly talking until we realised we were hungry and went to a Pizza Express where I insisted on paying half and we had dough balls for a starter which we shared. I had no idea if I was on a date still at this stage as Al had worded thgings ambigously incase I wasn't interested in him :/ I had spent the afternoon showing his email to people asking what they thought it was. Interestingly male friends said he only ment as friends and female friends said he ment a date.

We then walked some more and ended up at the river discuessing plots for Scifi stories we wanted to write and how we had percieved mirrors as children. My back started to be a nuicence and we sat and eventually at 11:30 kissed - the lights all went out along the river which was a bit freaky and there was a sort of hazyness that made some of the buildings look like space ships! Poor Al had to get the night bus home - I waited with him at the bus stop 🙂

Halloween two: I was being paid double to work at the Union as they had a Super Heros fancy dress thing going on. Al went out for Mikes Birthday and came to meet me after the shift and we got the night bus back to Romford together (I think its actually two night buses we had to get but it was somehow great.).

Halloween three: Uncle Benny died due to various cercumstances that still has on going legal reprecussions, we stayed at the hospital all night and then I went shopping for a costum and went to two parties - it was an odd reaction and Al was concerned.

Halloween Four: I was still on crutches and Al still not driving so my perants came down and we all went for a meal at Pizza Express with Jean in her 'Little Pumpkin' outfit!

Halloween Five: We'd organised a party for the weekend but my friend died so it all got a bit canceled though two people actually came and we played board games late into the night. Jean had a Spider outfit. And we went back to Pizza Express.

Halloween Six: We were running the Scout and Cub groups and had organised a party for them but the village hall was broken into so we had to relocate at the last minute to the school. We were going to have a picnic after the meetings at Barrow Wake veiwing point with Jeany but after tidying the school we were too exhusted! Jean was a pumpkin.

As you can see not all the Halloween anniversaries of our first date have been happy but there is one vitial factor to them - we were together through them and it is a date that marks us as a couple and therefore we felt it important to document what we have done each year. Five years! Six Halloweens. We've had a baby for three of those Halloweens now 🙂

We are hoping for many more Halloweens together - you now may all go and throw up!

Apps as containers (by alaric)

As I have mentioned before, it annoys me that many applications try (subtly or otherwise) to appear as the 'containers' of your data; they are both editors of a particular type of object, and a browsing/management interface for that type of object. The insidiously widespread case being applications that have 'Open' and 'Save As' menu items that pop up mini filesystem browsers, only showing the types of documents that application cares about and hiding others.

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Fireworks (by alaric)

Last night, we went up to Barrow Wake Viewpoint, which looks out over Gloucester from a hill, to see all the fireworks displays (public and private!) going on over the city. Jean loved it, and called them "pretties". There were a lot of families up there - somebody even had a barbecue going...

Then the next morning, the air outside at home smelt crisply of nitrate combustion products 🙂