Jean Programming Again :) (by sarah)

So I resigned myself to the fact that Alaric would turn the new TV into a giant computer screen.

Of which my main concern is that he will work on it rather than going down to the 'lab' to work, but instead he set things up so Jean could play with Turtle Graphics which is a new version of an old thing he has implemented. Basically she has to actually programme in order to get a little turtle to draw. She has produced me some lovely flowers and a house and things 🙂

The pictures she's created are on Al's laptop so he'll have to pop them on here when he gets a spare moment (haha). She is using Chicken Scheme and using a programme called Simple Graphics which is what Al created initially though I believe it is open source and others have since added stuff 🙂

She also started to 'compose' scenes for photography today - which was a shock to me!

Child Benifit 0.o (by sarah)

Thankyou government for giving me a mini mental break down tonight - the issue is not that our Child Benefit is being taken away, as we no longer need it for food (which we have in the past) but more the complete lack of notice and the only reason we knew was a random thing on the radio sending me into a panic.

So now I have completely mis-budgeted for the year, feel like a complete waste of space, had a worse panic attack that I would be done for fraud as I have no idea what my this and that numbers are and there is now not time to find out.

Another issue is that I now can't afford the child care (that is already arranged) that I need to launch me back into the work space. Poor Jean overheard things and came down to ask if she would still be able to do Ju Jistu and the answer is I don't know.

Alaric has had to calm me down and help me with the form and site as it was the classic dyslexic's nightmare. Now I am sitting here with my decaf coffee, sense of nonentitlement and pain from yet another balls up nhs palava - a cardboard box has been destroyed whilst a string of bad words such as 'I hate F..... Politicians and cr.. how are x, y and z going to manage - they need it for their rent'

I have never before declared that I hate a section of society and this makes me feel bad and worse. 2013 was going well but to be honest tonight I feel like I've just had the rug pulled out from underneath me.

New Years Eve At The Snell-Pym’s House (by sarah)

We were gifted an X-Box Connect for Christmas but did not have a TV ours having died a death a few weeks previously and being an old one just for DVD watching anyway it still wouldn't have been any good. We looked at was best for playing this sort of thing on and I took the money I had been saving for a new camera, my birthday money and Jean's vouchers she had gotten for her birthday - Al put in some money too and we went and got ourselves a new TV from the super market whilst doing our food shop.

Of course we then couldn't get all of us and the TV in the car so I had to walk home (40 mins) - it was tough as I didn't have my stick with me but I managed it! I couldn't talk when I got back but it was worth it! a) this means I am improving again and b) the TV is fantastic!

So we set the X-Box up and WOW! We hadn't really been following electronic gaming as we thought we wouldn't be able to afford a system for a good long time yet so it has been just amazing! It had already been suggested to me that I should get a Wii or something for physio therapy purposes and now I see why!

This is jean on one of the games

We can NOT thank Santa enough for this present!

Alaric spent the remainder of the afternoon trying to extract a half edited novel and a completed poetry book off of one of my old laptops for me - unfortunately it didn't work but he says there are still a few things he can try.

We had a take away Pizza as I am giving pizza up until I lose some weight! And watched Bill and Ted on the new TV and again just WOW! It was fantastic - I sat and knitted and the girls snugged with Daddy and we all agreed that To Be Excellent To Each Other is a good thing to aspire too. Jean's comment at the end when Rufus says they will get better was, 'Well they will, Mummy has' 🙂

Mary was very excited to be dressing up in a pretty dress, the little angel outfit we were given for Jean when she was little.

She is a rougie type of angel, playing rough and tumble with her sister and attempting to steal Christmas Cake!

She ended up being a very sleepy angel

We then all played on the X-Box again after which we played one of my favourite board games Elixir which is about wizards 🙂

At midnight we rushed into the garden and banged our pots and rang our bell and fire works went off all around us and the neighbours started singing in their house - very loud and merry in serbian whilst we shouted Happy New Year and hugged and watched fire lanterns whilst humming Old Langsi.

We then popped the tired Mary in bed and played the board game until Jean was too tired and then me and Al blogged about our year and discussed our plans for the next year. Oh and we had a home made veggi sushi supper and White Knight with Peppermint Candy Cains 🙂

Resolutions, Goals and Hopes (by sarah)

2012 has seen a large number of first for me, from soldering, to poetry slams, to making my own cake toppers to us having our own house, I have gotten off of the crutches and walking sticks and faced a few medical hurdles. We have been to many amazing events and met some great people, had the ability to look back on the past few years and see just how surportive and lovely our friends have been.

2013 I hope doesn't compare to be honest! The year has been fun but intense and I just want to take things a little slower to enjoy them! I am hoping to sort some novels out to send off to publishers and get back to the writing and crafting which was starting to become impossible with the number of other things we were doing!

I also hope to become part of the Art Evolved (dinosaur drawing group), Friday Flash (flash fiction writers) and the Scifi Chatters once more as I've sort of slipped off the radar since having Mary which is almost 2 yrs ago now!

This leads me on to goals:

1) Get stuff published by publishers ( I got a few flash fictions published last year but that was it)

2) Publish and sort previously stuff myself

3) Sell stuff on Etsy et al

4) Make more Art

5) Sort my blogs and websites out!

Resolutions:

1) become healthier - this means exercise and no cake testing! I've found that the medical stuff last year kept setting me back but I still managed to get going with the belly dancing and walking - and now with the X-box Connect I can do stuff on my own as fun games as well 🙂 Food wise I am cutting out sugar and caffine and pizza is restricted to half term outings unless homemade from scratch - holidays and parties don't count you see! I want to chomp on more whole raw foods to help keep the diabetes at bay. So more cooking of the savoury (low salt and fat).

2) To be more organised! Yes I know I am me but I've got to at least try!

3) To learn a new skill once a season and learn/try something new everyday

Ontop of these we are going to be spending large chunks of time on the house and finishing off old projects 🙂 And just being a family and having friends round etc... I am looking forward to getting the garden in shape and hopefully passing my driving test.

The guitar must be practiced daily 🙂

Happy New Year Everybody!

2012 Summary :) (by sarah)

January

At the beginning of 2012 we were moving into our new house, so January was a mix of boxes, crates and buying things.

The cats liked it

January also saw my birthday and friends helping us move.

And Mary's which saw me hosting the first party in the new house!

February

February saw my cousins coming to visit 🙂 And we dressed Alaric up as Gotye and created a spoof video.

It also saw valentines day when Alaric bought me a microphone which has lead to me producing recordings of my works 🙂

and pancake day

March

March saw World Book Day were Jeany dressed up as a dinosaur for the book Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs!

And Mothers Day when we all went off to Gloucester Cathedral to look at some art!

Alaric also upgraded the hardware running our Internet stuff (such as this web site) to a more powerful single box, rather than the previous two-box setup, which has simplified administration. It was a lot of work merging the two configurations, but this means that future upgrades will be a lot easier!

April

April was an excessively busy month and set the pace for the Summer!

There was me reading at Not The Oxford Lit Fest

Jean was in the Stroud Dance festival

April is of course the month of birthdays so we had a BBQ for Alaric, my Brother and some friends who all have April birthdays 🙂

Alaric took a day off work for his birthday, and spent it sorting out his workshop.

Then there was the Cheltenham Poetry Festival!

And as if that were not enough for one month I also won a bronze medal in the Gloucester Creative Olympics for my song Windy Gloucestershire 🙂

Alaric wrote a toolkit for building 9P servers in Chicken Scheme.

Easter

Visit to Petersfield

May

Cake pops! As a moving in present to ourselves we got a cake pop machine which we have had lots of fun with 🙂

We enjoyed our garden 🙂

I read at a National Flash Fiction day event in Oxford

I read at the Stroud Site Festival

We went to the Olympic Torch Relay in Painswick.

Mary's Christening

and House Warming

June

The Queen's Diamond Jubilee - we made cake

And went to Party in the Park in Gloucester

One festival I was performing at was canceled due to the site flooding but a last minute booking was made for me to read at the Stroud Water Festival. It was very wet!

My textural science art was in an exhibition at Centre Arts in Cheltenham.

Fathers Day:

We attended the Cheltenham Science Festival

Our garden started to seriously feed us 🙂

I drew a picture for Mid Summer and we made solar cakes.

We made a Turing Machine cake for the centenary of Alan Turing, the father of modern computing.

Wychwood festival were I was running a workshop making pompoms 🙂 We hung out with same of our friends and had a great time 🙂

Alaric finally caught up on all the overdue financial returns and dissolved our company, Warhead.org.uk Ltd, a lump of work which had been hanging over us ever since life became crazy after The Flood.

Wedding Anniversary we went to Bristol and found a hill to slide down and went on a bridge tour and lots more.

We went to our friends Zaphire's House warming and we made cake pops 🙂

July

I became a poetry installation in a manor house in Oxford for the On Form Sculpture Garden

We all went off to Cornbury Festival as I was running a craft workshop - this time sock puppets and monsters 🙂 Jean beat the IQ elves and as did I so we got a signed photograph 🙂

I drew a picture to mark the 'discovery' of the Higgs Boson

I learnt to solder 🙂 So did Jeany at Bristol Hack Space

I drew postcards for a charity auction

I went to Bristol to perform during Science Show-Off, I knitted a buckminsterfullerene which was nicked by an audience geek!

It was my Dad's 65th Birthday so we organised a Discworld themed party, including a cakes of course and films and books and of course a BBQ.

Alaric took up Krav Maga.

I made bread puppies for my friend Ella's birthday in Bristol 🙂

Alaric wrote a turtle graphics system to help children learn programming in Scheme.

August

I ran Centre Arts an art gallery for 2 weeks - it was lots of fun.

We went to my friend Claire's Birthday and we made English Rose cakes for her 🙂

Olympics

I took part in a wonderful city centre festival called Art Tournament - part of this included the fact that I had been short listed for Gloucestershire Poet Laureate.

Cranham Feast

My friend Buko and her family visited from Australia!

Off we went to the Hullabaloo Festival which had been rained off earlier in the year - it was very wet but again but there was one fantastically sunny day and the ran was fun in the Centre Arts Markee anyway 🙂 We did face painting and a junk music workshop.

We went to the @ Bristol Center to see Robot Football and meet up with my friend Ella - we managed to miss the actual event as we picked the only half day to arrive on but it was ok as we found them testing and repairing the robots outside the centre and the students who had made them showed us how they worked 🙂

At the end of the summer I was too too tired and went for a short break in Essex where we chased ducks round a trout pond and everyone bar me went swimming and we camped and had BBQ's and it was lovely.

September

Jean moved up a grade in Ju Jitsu - she is now a Yellow Belt White Stripe, she also attended the National Seminar.

Jean started Junior School!

Jean's Dr Who Birthday

We went to the 1000 Kites festival.

Alaric's Dad visited from South Africa

Hosted Chicken UK

My cousin Sheila visited from Australia 🙂

October

I released The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry

Took the girls to the farm shop for half term fun 🙂

I performed in my second ever slam which was part of the Cheltenham Literature Festival!

Took part in the first Green Unconference in the UK, I talked about Upcycling and Junk Art and ran a workshop.

We took Alaric's cousins to Legoland as a thankyou for help with the deposit for the house - it was amazing!

Halloween

November

The end of October is a cluster of anniversaries of various types which we celebrated with my Brother and his Wife having just celebrated their first wedding anniversary and it being mum and dads and mine and Al's first going out anniversary. Michelle and David got cake, mum and dad the picture I had returned from the Cricket Club.

Released the audio book of The Little Book of Festive Poetry 🙂

Bonfire Night

The whole family took part in NaNoWriMo and writing fever took over the house; even Alaric did some work on his existing fiction project 🙂

We celebrated 10 yrs of being together by going for a four day holiday in London which was amazing, we saw Gotye at Hammersmith Apollo 🙂

We had a house full of Pudseys for Children In Need 🙂

I went to an improvisation workshop which was lots of fun and helped me with my stage skills 🙂

I went on a one day writing retreat which did result in 10, 000 words of my novel being writing in one day 🙂

Millie came to stay bringing my friend Becca and her sister along 🙂

We went to the NaNo Finishing Party 🙂

December

I performed at the first ever Cirencester Poetry Slam

Mark and Lucy's Wedding

Wrote, recorded and illustrated Percival's Christmas Wish in an attempt to raise money for Shelter and homeless kids.

Tish and Clare's Wedding

Released the e-book of The DoomsDay Collection and celebrated the Winter Solstice marking the dawn of a new age.

Visited all my Essex cousins.

Went to the Island for the Snell Family Christmas Meal

Friends Christmas Party (I forgot the camera)

Had friends over for Mulled Wine and Minced Pies

Celebrated Christmas

Had a belated Pym Christmas

In little dribs and drabs throughout the whole year, Alaric's managed to tidy up his home directory, which had become terribly fragmented after several hurried fresh starts with new computers due to previous ones being stolen over the past few years, with restoring stuff from backups not being an immediate option but happening later. This had led to different projects being in all sorts of different places, so it was good to bring them all together and organise them. As part of this, he rebuilt the Kitten Technologies site, and reorganised and rewrote the ARGON Project web site. And, finally, he continued his part in the standardisation of the next version of the Scheme programming language.

New Year!