blogging – Page 3 – University & Unicorns

2 November 2009

Fun Monday – my first.

I was this on Wendishness’s’s’s’s’s (sorry, lol) blog and thought I’d have a go.

Here’s the deal. There is an exercise involved, as follows:

(1) Share something which you wish your readers would know about you. It could be something you feel you might need to clarify/ share, etc.

(2) Ask three questions to your readers, and I mean all readers, whether participants of Fun Monday or not. The questions should be generic so that all your readers can answer them and that it will help you get to know your readers more.

So here goes…

1) I have an abhorrent fear of escalators. Yes folks, you read correctly, escalators! It’s something that’s manifested itself later in life and I’m not really sure what brought it on. Perhaps it started when I used to visit my brother when he was working at the NRMA offices in Sydney (nearest station is Wynyard which had a VERY tall wooden escalator). I used to take the escalator out of Wynyard station and because it was such a TALL escalator and I’m acrophobic, it used to unsettle me a little, but I was okay.

Then I heard about a fire that happened at Wynyard station. Just looking now there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for one. But I’d heard there had been one, on the escalators (and if you look at the Wikipedia entry here for escalators, you’ll see Wynyard still have the original Otis wooden tread ones, the ones used at King’s Cross station in London where there WAS a fire in 1987, killing 31 people). From then on, I really started to dread taking the escalators. When I’d arrive at the station on the train, I’d take the escalator up to street level (sometimes), but when I’d return to the station, I’d ALWAYS take the stairs.

My fear is so strong, I actually PREFER lifts! I would gladly take a lift any day over having to ride an escalator. The longer and higher the escalator, the more scared I am, as it then combines with my acrophobia to make me have panic attacks. Just looking at some of the images on the Wikipedia entry for escalators was enough to have me panicking.

London is the worst. Travelling the tube is a NIGHTMARE for me. The escalators are SSSOOO fast, and that is another element of the fear – the faster the escalator, the harder I find it to get on. And if the escalator is going down, and is tall…I just see myself trying to get on and falling all the way down.

It didn’t help things that on my wedding anniversary in 2008, I DID have a fall down an escalator. It wasn’t a very tall one either, but it was fast, so it just helped to heighten my fear.

I can’t describe to you how fast the ones on the tube go. Imagine standing there in front of a an escalator and every time you go to step on, you’ve missed the step. A step goes by within two thirds of a second, and although granted, the steps stay flat for about one metre, because my fear is SO heightened, I just don’t believe I’m ever going to get on a level step quick enough. Then add the element of endless passengers stepping on/off the escalator, people beside you clambering and running down them to the left of you (something I could NEVER do, even for a million pounds). Most of the time I have to wait until the masses leave so I can try and get on myself as many times I have to abort my attempts and that would be nigh on impossible with a crowd behind me. I let Em go ahead and sometimes when I abort my attempts, she comes back down the stairs to help me.

My favourite tube station is Covent Garden as there is access via lifts and stairs only. The stairs are spiral, and I’ve been down them before, and vertigo sets in…but I *STILL* prefer that to the escalators!

I wish I was healthier, as I’d take the stairs more often. But some of the tube stations are SO far below ground, the stairs would be 100 metres long. I’d never cope!

The WORST is “down” escalators that aren’t working. I had that just recently when we went to Weymouth. We were at Victoria, having something to eat before getting the coach home, and the small escalator inside the food hall had stopped. Luckily it was a small one, but I still very gingerly made my descent.

Enough of escalator talk (before I have a panic attack).

2) Gawd, I’m not sure what questions to ask.

*What was the best thing you did yesterday?
*Who is your hero or the person you most admire in your life?
*If you had the opportunity, would you move from where you live now, and if so, where would you move to?

PS: Whoops. Think I lost the premise there…FUN Monday…oh, well.

12 September 2009

Apathetic Lethargy.

I haven’t been spending much time on the Internet of late (as you might have been able to tell). I haven’t even updated my blog too regularly (oh, the irony) recently either.

I’m just counting the days until Weymouth. I didn’t realise until I booked it just how much I’m longing for a trip away. I feel like I’m sort of on hold until I go. Apathy and lethargy (well one could argue I’ve ALWAYS had the lethargy) are setting in and I don’t really want them to.

I suppose the non interest in the Internet is sort of spurred on by my “nothing to report” status. I haven’t really updated twitter or Facebook much lately. I’m just at home all the time, lulling about, doing not much. Maybe I’m just a bear readying herself for hibernation?

The weather has turned quite cool in the last 48 hours. You can feel autumn in the air. I’m really not ready for it this year! It doesn’t feel like we’re going to have any kind of Indian summer, so it’s going to make the autumn and winter a LOOONG drawn out season to go through. Any other time I’d cope, but this year was such a non-start with summer, I don’t think I’m going to cope well with a long drawn out winter.

Even the things I normally look forward to, my birthday, Guy Fawkes night (November 5th), are filling me with dread this year. I’m going to be 39. Not much to cheer about there, and with no car to get us to a display, fireworks on November 5th are hardly going to cheer me up. This year it feels like the death knell.

Anyway, this has descended into something quite dark (for me anyway) and I just was writing to say I was alive (in theory) but that there were not many creative juices flowing in me lately and that our time in Weymouth just cannot come soon enough!

13 July 2009

Photos From The Archives – The Gremlin from The Kremlin

Chrissy046, originally uploaded by Larelle_M_R.

This is my favourite picture of Chrissy as a kitten. I think we’ve had her only a few days when this photo was taken. The photo would date around mid February 2000.

I’d been in the UK seven months. I missed my Oz cat, Tiger, like crazy and *SO* wanted to have a cat here. Obviously being in a rented property we were not meant to have pets. But I worked it all out and ‘gently’ persuaded Em to take a chance on us getting a kitten.

Early in February (the 10th, to be exact), 2000 I was at the local laundrette doing some tumble drying. The local rag was there to read and so I looked in the classifieds section to see if there was anything under pets. To my joy there were some kittens listed for sale in the nearby town of Dunstable for £10 a pop.

I had my mobile with me, so I called the number there and then. The lady said she had one female (Chrissy) left. I asked her to please keep her for me and I would pick her up that evening.

That night we went over to Dunstable to collect Chris. She was sitting on the ladies lounge with her mum. There were 3 or 4 of her brothers all around in the loungeroom. They were all playing while she was sitting contently with her mum. I remember seeing her and falling instantly in love with her. She was gorgeous!

We paid the £10, thanked the lady, and were on our way home with our new bundle of fluff. I was in raptures.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Chrissy will be 10 on December 1st, 2009.

7 July 2009

Photos From The Archives – A Day at Wild Britain – nr Bedford

Click the image of the butterfly to see the whole album.

A beautiful butterfly in the butterfly house at Wild Britain. It was formerly known as Bedford Butterfly Park, but it wasn’t just butterflies!

Em and I took a visit there on August 31st, 2004. I remember it being a nice sunny day, but it wasn’t overly warm for a late summer’s day. But the butterfly house was stifling! What is it about flutties and humid conditions?

It was lovely seeing all exotic kinds of flutties. And there was a petting zoo there with pigs, goats, bunnies and other small animals.

One of my favourite sights of that day was seeing all the owl butterflies having a feast on the rotting fruit left out for them to gorge on. There were about 6 of them on the feeder.

I do love butterflies. It really *IS* an amazing aspect of nature that just a few months, even a few WEEKS earlier, a lovely butterfly would have been in a chrysalis, and before that would have been a caterpillar munching away on your cabbage leaves. They really are something to behold. I can’t believe there are people that are scared of them!

There are other photos from the day to view. You can see them by clicking the butterfly photo.

2 July 2009

Photos From The Archives – Cockington Green

Cockington Green, originally uploaded by Larelle_M_R.

I thought that when there’s not much doing and I’m looking for a topic to post on my blog, I’d pick a photo from Flickr (where this particular post is being written from) and talk about. Give a background behind the photo. What happened on the day, etc.

This photo was taken in April 2002 (can’t remember the specific date). Em and I had returned to Australia for a holiday. I’d been very ill leading up to our departure but I wasn’t going to be put off from going home. I had been diagnosed with a chest infection by my doctor here in the UK.

Once in Australia, I got progressively worse. I’d have coughing fits and wouldn’t be able to breathe. We’d been in Oz about 3 or 4 days when I had a coughing fit in my mum’s kitchen. I couldn’t breathe and then lost consciousness and passed out on her floor. When I came round it was apparent I needed to go to the doctors again.

I saw my mums doctor and he diagnosed Whooping Cough. It was confirmed with a blood test. I was given strong anti-biotics and was given asthma medication to help my breathing.

Towards the end of our stay, even though I was by no means 100% better, we decided to have a few days in Canberra and to take mum with us.

On our last day in Canberra we decided to go to Cockington Green, a model village based on a village in the UK called Cockington, near Torquay in Devon.

The picture is of myself and my mum leaving the entrance to the model village. I’m carrying a souvenir mug in the plastic bag. Mum is to the left of me.

It was a lovely little place and it was akin to being able to take my mum on a tour of England. It was really nice.

If anyone reading the post has any plans of visiting Canberra, I highly recommend going to Cockington Green.

28 May 2009

Would YOU give 1000% to something?

Are you THAT committed? I’ve just been reading an article from the BBC News – Magazine section on their web site, about the death of using the term “giving it 100%” to signify you giving something your all. It’s not enough to say 100% any more. You have to say 110%, 150%, some, in the American version of The Apprentice are now using the over-assured 1000%!

I was trying to put this into context. Say you’re applying for a full-time job and you say “I give everything 1000%”. Would the employer snap you up on the logic that if you give “everything” 1000%, that perhaps you’d work 1000% MORE? Say the job was for 40 hours per week, does this mean you’re willing to give your employer 400 hours a week of work? There’s only 168 hours in a week?!

I’m really committed to finishing the post now. I think I’ll give it 99.99%! lol

To read the story, click the link below…

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The death of 100%

6 May 2009

Nothing Doing.

Just thought I’d stop in and have a little talk and update. Sitting here listening to Barber’s Adagio for Strings at the moment. The only piece of classical music I truly love, that actually tugs at me emotionally. Probably because it’s used in Joseph Merrick’s dying scene in The Elephant Man.

I’ve been going through lists of new release albums in the UK and sampling them on Spotify, and this adagio compilation was one of them. Classical is the one genre of music I’ve never really given enough time to. I’d like to change that if I can. I sampled several albums yesterday, but only really liked one other, from Duke Special. I could listen to that again.

I’ve been listening to “Tonight: Franz Ferdinand” for the last few weeks on Spotify and had reserved the album at the library, now it’s finally become available, yay! Now I’ll be able to stick it on my X-Fi.

I’ve been doing a bit of bird watching too. At home in our garden and via a webcam watching the peregrine falcons nesting on Derby cathedral. All four of their chicks have hatched now. I was watching them being fed yesterday and you can see survival instincts kicking in already. Two of the chicks were at the front of the queue, the other two behind them. The two at the front were getting the bulk of the food. I don’t hold out a lot of hope for all four chicks to live to fledge, but I hope I’m wrong.

In the garden we had two baby blackbirds hanging out with dad yesterday. Mr B is a very good daddy. Even though these fledglings were adult size, with fully formed tails, and even displaying foraging behaviour, he was STILL feeding them periodically. Bless him 🙂

We’ve been being serenaded on and off for the last two weeks by a chaffinch (as I’d mentioned in a previous post). Well, I actually got to get a fleeting glimpse at him on Monday! Em even saw him, but it was STILL too brief to get a picture.

Lately I’ve been doing a bit of telly catch up too. Em got all of season three of Dexter for me, which I just finished watching. I never thought after the first season it could get any better, but they just seem to be able to build and build on the plot. I am LOVING Dexter. It’s my fave US TV program at the moment.

I’ll have to finally get onto season three of Medium. I bet season five has been and gone in the US now! Season four has already aired here, but I had trouble recording some and got lost with it, so I’ll have to get season four on DVD now.

I’m watching The Mentalist as well. I wasn’t too impressed with the first episode and almost gave up on it. But I stuck it out and it’s slowly growing on me.

The thing being raved about over here for last few months, even though I think the series has been and gone in the US is The Wire. It started being shown on BBC Two a couple of weeks back. All of series one, now series two started airing as of Monday night. I think the plan is to show the whole thing for the next however many weeks it is to get through the whole run.

Apart from that, I’ve just been surfing, tweeting, etc.

5 February 2009

99 Things – It Was Meant To Be 100, but the last was for tagging.

You know I’m a sucker for a list. Saw this on Facebook, wasn’t tagged to do it, so thought I’d do it here instead.

001. Real name → Larelle Read (ne McInnes)
002. Nickname(s) → Loz, Lozzy, Teds, Teddy
003. Zodiac sign → Scorpio
004. Male or female → Female
005. Elementary School → Busby Infants School
006. Middle School → Busby Primary School
007. High School → Miller Technology H.S./Hoxton Park H.S.
008. Hair color → natural brown, atm
009. Long or short → v. short
010. Loud or Quiet → (in ref to what? My hair? My state of mind?) Quiet
011. Sweats or Jeans → Sweats at home, jeans when out.
012. Phone or Camera → Camera phone
013. Health freak → No, but trying to improve my health.
014. Drink or Smoke? → Drink on the rare occasion. Smoked in the past, but not now.
015. Do you have a crush on someone? → Yes, but he’s completely unobtainable.
016. Eat or Drink → (Pardon? What? As a vice? What do I prefer in general? Who asks these stupid questions?) Both, in moderation…
017. Piercings → 2 in left ear, one in right – all closed over now though.
018. Tattoos → 1 of a rose bud on my left shoulder.

HAVE YOU EVER?
019. Been in an aeroplane → Hell yes, too many times!
020. Been in a relationship → Yes
021. Been in a car accident → A very minor accident – no one was hurt.
022. Been in a fist fight → A very, VERY long time ago.

FIRSTS:
023. First piercing → Ears when I was around 7/8 years old.
024. First best friend → John and Louise
025. First award → Can’t remember
026. First crush → Only remember his first name – David
027. First big vacation→ A trip to Perth, WA to stay with my Uncle in the summer of 1979/1980.

LASTS:
029. Last person you talked to → Em
030. Last person you texted → Em (again)
031. Last person you watched a movie with → Em (yet again)
032. Last food you ate → Cinnamon grahams for breakfast.
033. Last movie you watched → Lars and The Real Girl
034. Last song you listened to → Love Shack – B52’s
035. Last thing you bought → Clothes for Em
036. Last person you hugged → (erm) Em

FAVES:
037. Food → Thai
038. Drinks → Pepsi Max (which I hardly ever have now), milkshakes – proper ones
039. Clothing → Jeans, long tunic tops, cardigans, cotton clothes.
040. Flower → Gerberas, Hyacinths and Frangipani
041. Animal → Birds, big cats and British wildlife (hedgehogs, badgers, foxes)
042. Colours → Pink (I do choose it a lot for things), pastels, and black
043. Movies → Anything really, but mostly comedies, rom coms, zom coms/horror and dramas.
044. Subjects → Science (biology, chemistry) and history

IN 2008….. I

045. [x] kissed someone
046. [] celebrated Halloween
047. [] had your heart broken
048. [x] went over the minutes on your cell phone
049. [] questioned someone’s sexual orientation
050. [] came out of the closet
051. [] gotten pregnant/got someone pregnant- lost it
052. [] had an abortion
053. [x] done something you’ve regretted
054. [] broke a promise
055. [] hid a secret
056. [x] pretended to be happy
057. [] met someone who changed your life
058. [] pretended to be sick
059. [] left the country
060. [] tried something you normally wouldn’t try and liked it
061. [] cried over the silliest thing
062. [] ran a mile
063. [] went to the beach with your best friend(s)
064. [x] got into an argument with your friends
065. [] hated someone
066. [] stayed single the whole year

CURRENTLY:
067. Eating → Nothing
068. Drinking → Tea
069. I’m about to → browse about and check online orders
070. Listening to → Nothing
071. Plans for today → web browsing, tweeting, hopefully knit a little, watch TV, etc (it’s an exciting life!)
072. Waiting for → more online shopping to arrive and the snow to melt

YOUR FUTURE:
073. Want kids? → no
074. Want to get married? → already married
075. Careers in mind → pipedream – vet or vetinery nurse

WHICH IS BETTER WITH GIRL/BOY?
076. Lips or eyes → eyes
077. Shorter or taller? → taller
078. Romantic or spontaneous → romantic
079. Nice stomach or nice arms → not fussed about the arms, don’t want abs either, as long as there’s no beer-belly.
080. Sensitive or loud → sensitive, mostly…loud can be annoying
081. Hook-up or relationship → booty call!!
082. Trouble-maker or hesitant → hesitant (not when it comes to the booty call tho)

HAVE YOU EVER:
083. Lost glasses/contacts → yes, sunglasses
084. Ran away from home → yes, in a very crap way, when I was 10yrs old.
085. Hold a gun/knife for self defence → no
086. Killed somebody → no
087. Broken someone’s heart → I think I have
088. Been arrested → no
089. Cried when someone died → yes (you’d have to be one cold, heartless bastard if you didn’t – I’m sure I know a few ppl who wouldn’t)

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:
090. Yourself → no a lot
091. Miracles → maybe, I think
092. Love at first sight → No, lust is what it is, not love.
093. Heaven → A kind of heaven
094. Santa Claus → Yes!
095. Sex on the first date → Hell yes, if they are fit and all, and willing…
096. Kiss on the first date → Yes.

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY:
097. Is there one person you want to be with right now?→ yes
098. Are you seriously happy with where you are in life? → not really, but who is? I know it could be worse. I’m not complaining…
099. Do you believe in God? → no

I’ve left 100 off, ‘cos it wasn’t a question, it said “tag 10 ppl”. I’m not tagging this time.