Brummie Blogger

A good post day

is when books arrive and today not one, but three books came via the postman.

Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to buy any more books for a while...

One was a bookring, a book from the 1001 list, and is a gothic novel which looks very interesting. It's called The Monk and is by Matthew Lewis.

One was a pre-order from a while back and is the latest Southern Vampire novel from Charlaine Harris. I may be putting Birdsong on one side for a few hours so I can dive straight into that. And not long until the TV series based on the books hits our screens. Can't wait for that!

And the third book? Oh I just can't wait to read this one either. No excuses for buying this other than it's one of my favourite books with an interesting twist. Just look at this...

 

How could anyone resist it? The famous opening line has been amended to "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."

Oh this is going to be so much fun!

Almost as cute as meerkats

We spent quite some time watching and photographing these guys on holiday last year. They are cute, aren't they. Not as much as Meerkats, who I can watch for hours, but still pretty adorable. I think it's the way their tails wave around when they walk and the way they lounge around. They make for some very scrappable photos so here we have yet another layout.

More Basic Grey, this time Archaic. I'm going to be gutted when that's all gone as it's by far one of my favourite lines. There're a couple of Prima flowers on there and the alpha is QK Frankie. Based on a Becky Fleck sketch from the book.

 

The layout was done before the weekend, but of course I've only just got around to uploading it. I've been rather busy since I broke up for this week off work doing work on the house. We now have a gym set up in the hottest room in the house - where else - but it was a room full of pretty much just 'stuff' a few days ago and now boasts a treadmill, music, and a tv & dvd to distract from the actual exercising. Not to mention the redundant aircon unit from the coldest room in the house (don't ask). I think that's not bad going.

We're currently working on the next room, which will be a spare bedroom. It's now empty of the 'stuff', and it's amazing just how much stuff there was in there. Seven bookcases for starters, plus two built in walls of bookshelves floor to ceiling and both eight foot long. Yes, and just think of all those books I had to sort through and be ruthless with 'cause I did not keep all those bookcases and the shelves have all gone. The charity shop is very happy.

There's just a wee bit of wallpaper to come off then the carpet will come up and we're hoping to be at the putting wallpaper back on stage at some point tomorrow. I'd like to think we might get some floor down before the end of the week but that may be a tad optimistic as we're out for dinner on Friday and I'm out cropping with Chris and the girls on Saturday. I'm very much looking forward to that as I haven't been down to Paperarts in ages so it'll be grand to see everyone again.

June's books

June was another slow month for reading with only 12 books read. Only four of those were from the 1001 list, five were bookrings and none were from the Big Read. Five were teen vampire novels and two were cozy detective fiction so those seven were very quick reading. On the plus side, I did do a fair bit of scrapping but I also seemed to spend a lot of time in bed with migraines so that didn't help...

So, out of those twelve books, nothing stands out and shouts 'fantastic literary experience' but I did really love the new Mary Janice Davidson - Undead and Unworthy. Actually, I've just realised that when you add that one to the five teen novels that means that half my month's reading consisted of vampire novels. Sometimes I just feel like something bloodthirsty, ok?

Those teen books, the series by P. C. and Kristin Cast were really rather good. I started Marked on a Saturday night, finished it on Sunday morning, read Betrayed by the afternoon and finished the third one - Chosen by bedtime. Then I read Untamed and Hunted over the week. Lots of teenage angst, lots of vampirey lore that was shiny and new, and I can't wait for the next installment which I have on pre-order.

The 1001 books were a mixed bunch again this month. Fugitive pieces by Anne Michaels was enjoyable, as much as a book concerned with jews and the holocaust can be, but I really wasn't that keen on Elfriede Jelinek's The Piano Teacher. I found it quite difficult to get into and didn't enjoy it much at all. An artist of the floating world by Kazuo Ishiguro was enjoyable but it still took me quite a while to read. I just wasn't in the mood for it, which is a shame as it was a lovely book. Last but not least is The nine tailors by Dorothy L Sayers. It's a shame there aren't more of hers in the list as this was the one that I most enjoyed reading this month. Great plot and a fab ending.

I must have been in the mood for lighter reading this month, probably due to all the stress at work, as the two cozy needlework mysteries by Monica Ferris were the most enjoyable out of the bookrings. I have several more of those to come as I'm reading them on a spiral so I'm looking forward to getting those. And that's it for the month.

Now if I could just stop buying books faster than I'm reading them we'd be ok, but currently several of my favourite authors are bringing out books that are just screaming 'holiday reading pile' at me. The problem here is that I had enough books to take on holiday several months ago yet still I keep adding to the pile, with three being purchased last week and two the week before.

We don't go until November...

 

Tiger's eyes

Tigers. Can't resist 'em. This one was a beauty, and he was so close. Ok, there was this huge pane of glass between us but you can't see that in the photo so the larger of the two pics looks darned impressive, if I say so myself. I really was only about four feet away from him, and that only because he was on a walkway above my head. Isn't he just gorgeous. We had this love affair going on for about ten minutes, just staring lovingly into each others eyes. I'm pretty sure he was comtemplating me as lunch more than anything but that's ok. It's in his nature...

So, a layout. Yes, I really am on a roll now. I'm reading less and scrapping more. I've even put down my books long enough to clear out the room that will be the gym and later today I'll be moving some stuff back into it as Stephen managed to put a lick of paint round it yesterday. Photos to follow.

Right back to this layout. Here is today's offering. Scrapped last weekend but it's taken me this long to get around to photographing it...

Paper, stickers, alpha are all Basic Grey Granola. Background paper donated by Ang as she knew I'd have some Tiger photos knocking around somewhere. Thanks Ang :-)
Becky Fleck sketch from the book and umm, that's about it really. TFL

Four wheels on my wagon

And I'm still rolling along.

That song keeps popping into my head. Worrying really, isn't it. Do you think the lack of wheels on my own beloved wagon is preying on my mind by any chance? Sigh.

It is now fixed apparently. It's not yet home but is waiting to be collected from the garage tomorrow. Luckily Stephen has another holiday day so I will get chauffered to work at 4.15am for the third day running. I'd hate to have to try and make it in by public transport at that hour...

I've had to have four new locking wheel nuts - v. expensive. A new hub was required - that's the bit that the wheel fastens to, but apparently we got away with needing a new spare wheel - phew. So not as high a bill as I was anticipating but a lot more than I was expecting to pay when all I thought I needed was two new tyres.

Sigh.

And it gets worse...

Qwikfit managed to very quickly remove the stuck wheelnut and fit the driver side wheel with a new tyre. Great. Then all they needed to do was remove the spare from the passenger side, and fit the wheel that had been re-tyred yesterday. Job done. Shouldn't be a problem, right? Wrong. Qwikfit could not remove the spare wheel so Stephen had to go back up to the dealers to find our nice tyre chap.

Sigh. Apparently, if you fit the spare on my car, you're supposed to use diffferent bolts to the ones that you use when you take off the normal wheel. It's not one of these thin spares, it's a normal sized wheel, just not a fancy alloy like the others, so how would you know? So, when Stephen bolted the spare on the other day, he ruined the thread on the wheel and has probably damaged the plate that it fastens onto.

So, my car is currently in the garage being dismantled. It's at least a three hour job at £££ per hour plus parts. Plus the cost of the two tyres of course. Sigh, ever wish a week had never started?

Two new tyres

That's all I wanted. Two new tyres for my beloved car. Not much to ask, is it? You just send the husband to Qwikfit with instructions to get new boots fitted to the front. Easy peasy.

Nothing is ever easy though, is it? Stephen came back looking worried. In his hand was my locking wheelnut removing thingy. This wasn't good. It's supposed to be in the toolkit that lives with the spare wheel in the boot. The spare wheel, should have been safely tucked back into its well in the boot but was still firmly, (I hope) attached to the car.

I should mention that a split had been noticed in my front passenger side tyre yesterday and Stephen had been persuaded that it needed to be changed for the spare before I'd consider driving to work this morning. Today the plan was to get a new tyre for that side and also the driver's side as that was put on at the same time and was looking like it might need changing too.

So, back to the drama. Qwikfit had got my new tyre, balanced it, taken payment for it and got it ready to put on my car. Then they attempted to remove the old tyre on the driver's side. The one that hadn't been removed for about five years. This is where the problems started. After trying for some time they managed to break the locking wheelnut remover thingy so making it impossible to remove that, or any of the other wheels. Problem.

This is when Stephen came home. With one spare and one dodgy wheel still on the car, and one broken wheelnut remover in his hand.

I dragged him up to the dealers where Pete the tyre man attempted to change the tyre over for me. Pete was very helpful. Pete also managed to break a locking wheelnut thingy. That sucker is on really, really tight, I tell ya. He did manage to loosen the other four nuts so that Qwikfit would be able to get the tyre off, once someone could get the locking one off. Pete reckons it needs to be attacked with an air chisel but sadly he isn't allowed one. He'd really like one though, apparently.

So, back to Qwikfit who were surprisingly reluctant to attack my alloys with an air chisel. One of their guys has some special tools at home and is going to try and remember to bring them in tomorrow so he can get this flamin' bolt off so I can have a nice safe new tyre on.

I just wanted two new tyres. That's all. Why is nothing ever simple?

Rhinos and sketches

I do like a good sketch to get me kickstarted into scrapping. Sometimes the resulting layout looks nothing at all like the sketch, sometimes it's a carbon copy, but it always gives me a starting place which is what's needed. I've got books of sketches by Becky Higgins which I pull out occasionally but usually now I look at the monthly offerings by Becky Fleck and the book by her, which I use a lot.

That said, I'm always on the look out for new sources of inspiration so when Louise put some sketches on her site I thought I'd have a go at using one of them. Now I'm not sure if this looks much like the sketch as of course the folder of photos I pulled out didn't have just the right size of photos in it, but it's similar. The main elements are in pretty much the same places which saved me all that tedious moving bits around for hours.

 

I used June sketch No:3 which is here

The title would have been bigger - I did intend to do it on the Craft robo but by the time I got around to that bit, Stephen was in bed and if I tell you that the robo is directly beneath the bedroom, and if you've ever heard a robo, you'll understand why I used my 'bug instead.

Also, I really needed to use a teeny bit of Archaic on there. No layout is complete without some Basic grey. And yes, I could have printed the journalling directly onto the background but I'm a wee bit in love with my new spellbinder dies so I needed to use those.

So, it's similar to the sketch, but the important thing is that I started off using a sketch, thanks for that Louise, and very quickly, with no faffing around, had a completed layout. With actual journalling on it.

Getting to grips with Vista

It's pretty much like XP really, only shinier and that may just be the posh screen on the new laptop, I suppose. So far everything is where I thought it should be and I now have itunes all set up with most of my music library transferred over from the PC.

And boy, wasn't that fun! I'd been using a transfer cable to move stuff between the old XP laptop and the PC but the transfer cable doesn't support Vista. Of course it doesn't. Cue much rolling of eyes. After much internet research I've come to the conclusion that it really is going to be much simpler to transfer the odd bits of music etc. over using a DVD-RW. So, 4GB at a time, an assortment of music and photos have been transferred over. I'm thinking of investing in a small USB drive for moving small amounts of data inbetween the two to save faffing about with discs in the future but that's done the job for now.

I've been testing the laptop just to see what the quality of the video and sound are like, using some music videos - by The Killers, of course. It's not bad, not bad at all. It really is odd getting used to the super shiny WLED screen on it after the matt screen on the PC but videos and photos look very good indeed on it.

And, having set up links to my favourite websites on IE, I'm now blogging on it. I really must get a nice wireless mouse though. I loathe using the slidey thing.

Right, perhaps I'll just watch a couple more Killers videos, just to test this screen a bit more...