Race For Life (by sarah)

As many of you know there is an event called Race For Life which is designed to raise money to 'beat' cancer and our friend is going to be running and is looking for sponsorship!

You can sponsor her here.

It's quiet a run anyway - the sort of length you really need to train for plus she is offering to crochet thankyous for people which is an excellent idea!

Cancer touches so many of our lives and in developed countries is a big killer - my first contact with cancer was my granddad who had asbestocise which led to mesophilioma (have no idea how to spell either of those but basically the fibroids fromthe asbestosis cuased cancer), he died shortly after I returned from Kenya and in fact my perants weren't even there to pick me up as they were at the hospice.

By this point my friend Amber was also sick with luekemia a cancer of the blood. She went in and out of remission and had various things happen to her like a stroke due to the treatments and stuff - she dies whilst I was in Kin Lochleven in Scoutland during a field trip. I missed her funeral for which I am still sad - she actually died of pnumonia and was in remission but was just too weak from all the treatments.

Her illness was found as she came with me to give blood on my 18th birthday and she phoned me on my 21st though was too tired to come to the party - a year younger than me she died not long before her own 21st birthday - she was one of the nicest and most intelligent people I knew and asked me about Imperial lots.

More recently there is mum's breast cancer so obviously I feel very strongly about events like this - hence the hair dyeing and things in the autum.

So please if you can sponsor 🙂

And I hope this wasn't too morbid.

Getting Lost With Dad (by sarah)

Today me, dad and Jean went out to find an oil filler cap for his car and do other sundry errands. We got abit lost around the village of Staverton and Dad was panicking abit so I took over the navagation and between the two of us we found our way.

Dad hates getting lost and was actually panicking but then we found this lovely church and we stopped to take photos and look and the map and suddenly it turned into a lovely outing.

The sun was shining and there was lovely blossoms on the trees and lots of flowers - orange tipped butterflies and the like. We did our chores and then decided to head to Gloucester docks for an actual outing.

Jean loves the boats and spent an age just walking around looking at them all - dad carrying my lavander sparkly tote bag which caused lots of hilarity in the shop were I bought him and Jean an ice-cream (I'm still too sick for things like ice-cream). We sat watching the ducks whilst they ate the ice creams with Jean changing her mind every few minutes as to which seat we should be sitting on!

Jean got a bit upset that the ducks would 'full over' the stuff in the water - this was the litter that people had dropped in the water - she was most indignant about this 🙂

We watched one of the narrow boats in a lock that was filling very very slowely - the men looked grumpy and didn't wave at JEan though she was proclaiming she wanted to live on a boat!

We then went into the antiques place where Jean decided she only wanted to look at the Dr Who stuff! Though we found a 'pretty light' in a room full of stuff that looked like I'd been let loose with ceramics! Jean loves all the old furniture and was more interested in going in and looking at the 'pretties' which were all chest and things than looking at the dinky toys or the ty toys with dad which was a suprise.

And then I made a mistake - I wanted a cup of tea and JEan asked for something to eat and selected a packet of quavers - sure if we share them I said and we did and Jeans mood changed to one of complete horrible small whirling dervish! I was so embarressed as she shouted she wasn't stupid and stuff and ran off.

We left - Jean in disgrace and me vowing to check out exactly what is in quavers and feeling slightly guilty that I didn't check the ingredients when I know that one of the red food colourings is bad for her behaviour etc...

On the way out though we saw a youth-dude hanging upside down from the ancient crain - so I tried to take a pick but he moved as I was getting the camera out!

I was a sad that Jean's behaviour had deteriated so much we were going home as punishment when we had been going to go to a country park for her to run around and stuff - never mind though it was a nice day over all.

I Believe I am Not a Writer (by sarah)

At the writing classes I used to go to we did a combination exercise - we had to write about how we viewed our selves as writers starting with I believe. I found out some very interesting stuff about myself during this excercise and it was part of the realisation that I really want to be writing pop sci and bringing knowledge to the masses via scientific poetry and art if nessascary. (please not I am not talking about the psuedo science that I hear spewed at alot of peotry evenings)

I believe I am not a writer

I believe I am a story teller

I believe I am an information conveyer

I believe I am an ideas creator, cemetor

I believe I am a scientist

I believe I am rationally irrational

I believe I am a frontier Finder

I believe I am an explorer of words

I believe I am a bridge between

I believe I am an embodyment of the duality of science and art

I believe I am dyslexic

I believe I am frustrated

I believe this leads to creation, adaption, and the sideways evolution that is known as lateral thinking

I believe I am bound to the earth in its intercasies of systems I love to explore

I believe I am cut free and floating in celebral space where the concept of super novae roam

I believe I am the colour purple, unique in my colour spectrum, 2 colours superimposed

I believe I am hurtling through life faster than I can handle

I believe this is inspiration

I believe I am a contradiction

I believe I like this

I believe I am jack of all trades

I believe I am more than the sum of these words

Bad Luck Field and Incompetance (by sarah)

Ok so Monday night Mum, Dad and Jean headed to Essex, Dad to have a tooth out, mum to go to Aunty Lizzies and Jean for a bridesmaid dress fitting.

I descided for many reasons that I would stay here - not least of which was to get some college work done and tidy the house up after the continual stream of visitors I've had for this month.

I waved goodbye to them at about 9 and then realised that for the first time in my life I was actually on my own - I mean really on my own - Barbara was at the Opera and the nearest neighbours are not in shouting distance.

Of course I used to do the sercurity partols around Thriftwood but there were campers in the woods. And more importantly I had a radio and some how that ment that I wasn't alone. If anything happened I could just radio in and be garenteed assistance within ten maybe 15 minutes.

But here I realised there was nothing. I didn't freak out as much as I thought I would - there were cats and so I suppose I wasn't entirely alone - what I did discover however is that every single horror movie I have ever seen or book read - filtered though my mind - so every activity was associated with some gruesome story.

I made myself some tea to drink and considered having a bath, ignoring the over active imagination that renders my stories so real.

I decided that a bath probably would be a bad idea if I was feeling a little bit spooked and so I when and hunted through Jean's films for something fun to watch. 80 days around the would - my brothers - opps I thought we'd given it back.

Before I could put it on there was a knock at the door - fortunatly I checked the time and realised that it was Barbara coming back.

I said goodnight to her assuring her I was fine and then went up stairs to watch the film. And I thought do some reading for college.

But I felt odd, feverish, ah miss judged and the period I had been waiting for for a week finially turned up. With bad cramps and then - just becuase this was my first time on my own - I threw up - violently - through my nose and everything.

And then again and again and again.

My insides felt like they were swimming. I was not happy. Then I got more ill and discovered you can't through up into the sink from the toliet and so knocked aload of stuff into the bath - which I then threw up on.

And so the night continued and so did the next morning - hot cold hot cold.

Finially about 3 pm I got some sleep having managed to keep the pain killers down. Barbara kept offering me eggs to eat and things and drinks but I really could not even abide the thought of it.

Last night I managed some crisps and toast - the toast sent me over the edge again. I was also gratefull to find I had some camomile and lime flower tea which thanks to a suggestion on facebook I sipped and stayed down much better than water.

I spent the day watching films on my laptop and sulking that I had planed to do so much work and just couldn't - the pounding headache that formed with it - mainly due to dehydration I think ment that heavey lunar mineralogy texts were out.

I devoured a point horror instead.

I had been hoping that mysterious cities of gold would arrive as I thought that would be a great tonic but instead a printer arrived - which I stupidly took off of the delivery person making myself sick again.

I failed to get the fire to relight as I was too weak to put coal into the fire place when I should have done it first thing in the morning so it just went out when I tried later on.

Its just so annoying that I got sick when I was on my own and that I had to unblock the sink and everything myself - this is also the first bad bad period I have had since having Jean - its odd but the pregnancy seemed to cure the stupid periods I used to have - maybe it was just becuase it was late.

Then to make things worse I have been trying to sort things out for Scouts today - now becuase of the shingles thing I was supposed to be taking a break but it turned out that they still wanted me to draw up all the plans and activities for the kids and get back to them within 24 hours of an email and phone call to Alaric for me to get cover.

This obviously did not happen so I have no cover for scouts - I explained before that its the paper work etc... that I find exhorsting not the going and being skip for 2 hours - I swear people don't believe me when I say I have problems filling in forms - even when I explain I'm dyslexic which I really hate doing, it makes me feel pathetic and it doesnt seem to be taken note of anyway.

I still have no assistant which is really starting to annoy me. I love the kids and doing activities with them though so I dont really want to give it up.

Anyway I emailed last night to explain that I really couldn't do tonight due to throwing up and the person who I would have thought had a whole network he should be able to phone just said he couldnt cover - well I wasnt asking him specifically - he is in charge - he should be able to arrange cover!

So the burdon once again fell to our new group leader - who is brilliant and though she is still doing her training she managed to sort things out by having a system to phone around. Thnak goodness - but I do get really peed off that its just me running the Scouts.

(before anyone panicks yes I do always have another CRB'd adult about but I need another warrented leader).

Oh and of course though Dad was coming back last night/this morning its Davids birthday so now they are all going out for meal instead - I had asked about that when I was deciding weather to come down or not and was told he wasnt doing anything for his birthday :/ This means I'm on my own again all day and stuff - and theres supposed to be a meteor shower tonight that I've been looking forward to for ages.

Twitterization (by sarah)

There was a RT (retweet) on twitter with this URL its I found myself writing a longish response to it as I was already planning to write a post about something similair. Anyway here is the response I wrote:

A new interface, a new language, a different way to form thoughts and therefore have thoughts formed - this equals more diversity and possibly leading to new innovations. Weather that is good or bad is like saying is an emotion good or bad - they are amoral it is how you choose to react/use them that holds the good or bad and as with any new system things are likely to act in a chaotic/stoccastic way leading to behaviour we can not yet predict. (At least not fully)

It is also yet another system, more information needing to be processes/learned and therefore risks ostrasization of those who can not pick it up. Then the question becomes one of accessiblity and how far should we 'dumb things down'. What I was thinking was of interest is that with the hash tags and the like it becomes easy to trace the path of memes to see how they evolve and their migration. From a sociology point of view I think that would be quiet an interesting project though it could turn into a nasty can of worms.