Deverstation City… erm I mean Hedge :( (by sarah)

There has been a bit of a dispute with the farmers who own the land surrounding us and as a result today saw the hedge along the stream being ripped up 🙁

This has made me very sad for several reasons - firstly Barbara has spent lots of time (and lots of our money paying Albert) doing those hedges - they are the type where you weave live wood into each other and yes it wasn't done in a way I liked and yes she had been nuaghty and planted some things the other side of the hedge in the farmers field but the whole thing has been ripped out.

Secondly this is my main suplly of elder berries and rowan berries for the Hedge row jelly I make and force you all to have at christmas and the like. It was also the source of most of my hazel nuts and the sloes for the sloe jin (that vile purple stuff I have forced onto some of you). This will also have large implications for the wildlife.

The farmer says he does want a hedge but he is claiming back land that has been 'our' side of any boundary for at least 30 years. The land being claimed back is not really useful to either party and it has been desided that we don't want to get antagonistic - especially as they have moved the fence behind our house too claiming back quiet alot of land which I had been planing to have the ducks on (when we get around to it). I am concerned muchly over the land behind the house and am also fearing that they might decided to cut the russet tree down or something silly like that.

This all boils down to the fact that there was a 'farmers' agreement between Al's grand parents and the perants f the three bothers who now own the land. The farmer seemed nice enough and agreed not to cut down the tree that Barbara's TV aerial is anchored too (once I pointed this out to him).

He told me lots of funny stories about him and Als Dad when they were young to.

Anyway, I only went up with Barbara as I came to see how things were going to find she'd had a fall whilst putting the bird food out and has hurt her shoulder and stuff. Last time something like this happened it turned out she had dislocated her colar bone and like last time she is insisting on waiting to see if its ok in the morning etc...

I had been intending to make lunch and had been concerned about dad and told him to make himself a hot cross bun to eat. I came back in after dealing with all of this to find him in a coma in the living room.

Dad's diabetic and not very good at controlling it and I went into the kitchen to find all the stuff out to prepare a bun to eat but the bun still sitting there. I was getting absolutely no response so it was sugar solution time and then that didn't seem to be working and I started to think that it was ambulance time but then got enough response out of him to get a toffee into him (whens he's coming out of hypo/going into them he doesn't believe he needs help and gets very cantankerous).

He then came around enough to declair he wanted a burger and that he wanted to eat mini (the black cat). This ment he was on the way out of the hypo but he was shivering very badly and has been slightly shaky for most of the day.

I found today quiet stressful.

Grizzly Jean (by sarah)

Jeany had a big bought of innoculations on Monday morning and she has been miserable ever since - this can apparently last for up to 12 days.

It was boosters and pre-school jab - she's going to be starting school in September which is kind of scary! But I feel good as she is very keen to learn and try new things. She will be the youngest in her class though which might proove interesting.

Unfortunatly Jean recognises 'ouchy' medicine and wouldn't let us take her top off of her. This is becuase dad has to have injections each day and Jean isn't stupid. But she didn't struggle to much and got two sticker which is she was very happy about.

St David’s Day (by sarah)

Dad's being moppy about his welshness so I thought I'd celebrate St David's day with him this year - I made him a bunch of daffs but then forgot to give them to him before he went home :/

I was also going to make him a leek pastry but I was too tired and distracted after Tech Adventure - sigh.

03/03/09 – Happy Square Root Day! (by sarah)

Today is a square root day!!!

Its silly I know but I thought I should mention it!

the next one is 04/04/16 which is a way off!

Apparently you celebrate by cutting your food up into cubes and stuff like that! Especially root vegatables.

Some people have even been posting their favourite formulars on twitter and things 🙂

This is only the third this century! and the first one I think everyone would have been to worse for wear to remember it being New Millenium Day and all although weather 1 really counts at all can be argued but never mind!

Tech Adventure Feb 2009 (by sarah)

Saturday saw us at the 3rd Tech Adventure in Bristol at the Trinity Centre. We attended the last one in the summer which was loads of fun and useful besides.

This one I got up at 6 am for and me and Al were wending our way to Bath by 7 am - why Bath I here you cry when it is in Bristol? The answer lays in the fact we have a van and that we had volunteered to help the organisers this time.

So we arrived after only a minor getting lost incident and begain loading the sound equipment and assortments of other tech gear.

We drove to Bristol with our navigator and then after a quick unload headed off to pick up John Honniball who has an amazing collection of old computers which I somehow failed to take a photo of 🙁 He also had a cool bubble car outside his house!

Oh and I had had to try and repair my glasses and had managed to cover about 30% of my hands with superglue - I was not a happy bunny.

The exhibits themselves where fun and I think I'll need to do some seperate posts for some of them plus I have vidoes I need to sort out of them.

There was a motion sensitive BB gun, with a targeting laser.

Guys with hand controlers that meant they could produce sound from motion resulting in me wanting to play with the concept and come up with a theatre production :/

Me reading Geek poetry and giving away Wiggly Pets to those who counted the correct number of programming languages in my poem.

The cutest robot ever which behaved like an animal, the camera looking like a little hamster nose and which maybe good research for a book me and dad are writing 🙂 Just a little fun fiction.

There was a random pirate duck but then what sort of event is complete without a mascot?

A 3D printer which had me @ndy who we dragged up from London, and Alaric all got very excited about.

Here are some of the things it made! It can make parts of itself too which is kinda cool 🙂 I really really want one for various craft applications.

There was a Wii set up, more old computers with ancient games on, a logic puzzels and game table, a swap shop which seemed to mainly consist of things we had brought with us - of which fortunatly all but one thing went from, DJ dudes, people with guitars and filming equipment.

Of course Andy got roped into cabling without even being asked if he was a tekki!

Plus there was a talk on high performance from computers - by a guy who was there last year - I ended up actually asking questions and talked to him afterwards - I feel this definatly deserves its own post however!

Alaric's Chicken Scheme T-shirt arrived just in time for him to wear it for tech adventure which he was really chuffed with - again somehow I failed to take a photo - sigh!