Monday, October 29, 2007

There's a hole in my ceiling dear liza, dear liza...


I went upstairs yesterday to be greeted with the smell of TCP. Then I noticed that the landing light wouldn't work, or the bathroom or the office. Doh! Fuse gone i thought. Matt was on the phone to his mum so i left him to it for a bit.

When he'd finished on the phone I let him know and we went to look. We could hear dripping but thought it was the tap. We didn't know where the fuse box was so Matt went looking. In the meantime I thought i'd turn off the dripping tap... then my feet were wet... and then my head was wet... Arghh...

We used a table lamp from the bedroom and discovered that the lampshade in the bathroom was full of water!! EIk! Water was coming along the electrical cables and dripping in to the light! Not so good.

By this point it was 11pm but we called the landlord and I made Matt turn off the electricity. He said he'd send someone out in the morning.

I was a little concerned that if the lamp got any heavier it would pull the ceiling with it but I wasn't going to let Matt unwire it with the water still there... so we left it. The landlord seemed to think it could wait until morning so I put a bucket under the dripping lamp and we went to bed with a candle.

An hour later Matt sent me to look to see how the bucket was doing. It had about 1/4 inch of water in so not too bad - should be ok until the morning. For some reason I decided to turn back and go into the bathroom (torch in tow) and then the light gave way and the water crashed to the ground. I screamed and went running into the bedroom shouting "it's happened! It's happened!" (After the event Matt thought this was hilarious me screaming and waving a torch hysterically in circles "It's happened!!!") lol.

Anyway the long and short of it is... we have a nice dripping hole in our ceiling now... where there was once a light a light. No one came today to sort it as the electrician got tied up so we're waiting until tomorrow. We've managed to isolate the lights circuit so we at least have the sockets but no lights. lol We'll be seeing by the power of bed side tables this evening :)

Fun Fun Fun ! All because we need to find a new tenant! lol

The weather has been particularly violent this weekend so I image that is what has caused it. The sand was being blasted all over the place and the garage roof sounded like it was about to take off at some points lol.

Here's hoping it's sorted soon though. What spiders lurk above that hole and how long will it take them to discover the bathroom??? eik!

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The clocks have fallen and sprun again...

And that means the usual bought of confusion for all concerned ;p


Ok so here it is.

There is now a 10.5 hour time difference between Adealaide and London. This means that as long as you call before 12(lunchtime) we'll be awake. It also mean that if we get up early enough we'll be able to catch you in your evening time. So... Mr Bogus.. when I get to work and I see you on GMail it won't be 1am anymore it'll be a much more reasonable hour so I probably can't shout "Go to bed" at you anymore :(

If you want to know what time it is with us use this simple formula:

Take away 1.5 hours from your current time and then go opposite. So... if it's 4pm with you then it's 2:30am with us.
We're not just 2 hours behind we're 10.5 so you have to swap am for pm and vice versa.

Take 1.5 off and then if it's am with you its pm with us.

If all else fails you can check the time on here or left click on us in Skype (when we're on) and it will tell you our time there too) ;)

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The House is up for grabs...

Anyone want to rent a house by the sea?

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The world is full of HDs

I decided to be curious and instead of googling people I thought i'd conduct and experiment to see who had the most of them on facebook

LOf was confident that he was king when we found 95 people baring his name. Then we typed in Spans.... 285 of them!!! No Dunks (which is odd as he's in my friends list - so he currently seems to have the most exclusive name. Only one LOm (double NN and then as in weight)No Span LOm crosses either lmao (Although there are 180 LOM Span crosses) One Moch -LOF cross lol

All fun! ;)
What a waste of time!!! LMAO!!

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Facelift


Don't panic mother! Yes this is my Blog.. and yes it does look different ;)

I've updated it and changed it's appearance a little that's all! ;)Believe it or not the blog is not in it's 3rd year and I hadn't yet taken the plunge to upgrade it to the new blogger. Now I have and I've also edited the template a bit more (now I know a bit more about the code) so that it's a bit more me :)

So bye bye old blog style and hello pink and black :)

Mr Dzeryn's trip to Australia.

When we picked him up from the airport 10 days ago he walked straight past us in a daze. His eyes were hazy and he looked like he hadn't slept for days. He hadn't! After trying to stay awake and failing by lunchtime, and after having 10 days to finally get used to the time difference and sleep through the night he's just got back onto the plane to jet back off towards England again; poor bugger!

We've had a busy 10 days and have sailed, driven and walked all over the place in order to get a real sense of Australia. lol You've already seen the extensive photo collection from Kangaroo Island and have suffered the 20min commentary on the pictures that goes along with it. Needless to say we did have a good time. However, it was FREEZING! No one told me that the island was so cold! It must be about 5/6 degrees lower. I only took my flipflops and I seriously regretted it! I did get to see some cool penquins at last and it was good fun :)


Mr Bogus and Lof really enjoyed their random 'conversations' which meant absolutly nothing to me - or anyone else for that matter. For example, If one of them said "Captain" it would make the other burst into fits of hysterical giggles for ages... mmmm crazy.

Apart from Kangaroo Island Mr Bogus also got to visit Cleelands Wildlife Park where we made sure that he got up close and personal to a Koala and some Kangas. A visit to Australia isn't complete without looking at the wildlife which Mr Bogus proclaimed to be "strange".





We also took him to Harndorf where, of course, it is OCKTOBER FEST! This led to all sorts of hilarious consequences as the gents hit the pub before lunch and began sampling the beers. I almost convinced Bogus to by a Digeridoo for Dunk but didn't quite manage it :( Was really funny though. I am certain that LOM will be itching to visit and sample some of the Schnitzle (How ever that's spelt)


After drinking the beer and visiting the knife shop - I know... why?
We then decided to go and visit the local chocolate factory. I was told it was really exciting.. Perhaps I've been spoilt by cadbury's world but a large warhouse full of sweets on sale with rooms to the side where someone might be making something but weren't on that day isn't anywhere near what any of us expected to find. I was amused by their signature chocolates though. For example, the chocolate cowpat - one of which Bogus devoured in the car on the way home. There was even a "Hereford"
cowpat. It was milk chocolate with a dollop of white chocolate ontop lol.

He also got to experience Australian cinema and "frozen coke" and a "spider" when we went to the SA museum to see the live redback. A spider of course is also a drink...
Here's a yummy one I ate. Lemonade, lime syrup and a dollop of icecream :)




We got some really ace pictures on our travels. Especially of the spring animals and babies. You can check out the kangaroo Island ones here and the others from Ants visit here :)

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Opportunity


It seems to have been sometime since I sat down and wrote a lengthy blog entry that might be worth reading. I don't know what that is but I now have the urge to talk. lol ;)

Things have been really busy here for me. Teacher technologies and my training courses have been a big hit. I've been running courses all over the shop and have even started to work with the local university. I've just been asked to do a lecture/workshop in the lecture theatre at Flinders uni! and I'm writing a book for teachers too Crikey! Seriously though, this year has been really good for me in many ways.

Before I Left Birmingham I could never see anything else that I'd like to do for a living other than teaching. Things have changed a lot this year and although it was very hard to be pulled away from a job that had clearly become a rather large part of my life, I am glad that it happened and that i didn't simply subsitute my UK classroom with an Australian one. From what I have seen and learnt so far about the Aussie Education System that wouldn't have been all that happy a situation for me anyway - I would have been most confused with the lack of structure and planning that I seem to thrive on in the UK. To hear that you can ask a teacher what they are aiming to achieve in a lesson and they have no idea is rather terrifying to me and raises all sorts of questions!

Having had the opportunity to develop my professional skills and confidence has done me the world of good. I now understand that I have a lot to offer where as before i was always suspicious that I wasn't good enough and that people were seeing things that simply weren't there. I have learnt so much about new technologies and my IWB skills must have sky rocketted - When i look at flipcharts I used to use in the classroom I now see lots of holes and plenty of potential where I used to see a completed activity - It will be very interesting to see how this new knowledge presents itself when I return to full time work in my old position. Perhaps I have simply lost track of what it's 'really like'. I do know that I have to be careful about my time upon my return.

The interesting thing is that now I can see me doing lots of different things. There are far more doors open to me. I'm not just talking about a door to Australia from the UK. That is a decision that is yet to be made but I actually mean a much smaller one. What will I do for a living in the future? Don't get me wrong, I love teaching and it is very important to me. I will always be a teacher. I hope I will always be teaching students too but I have to admit that I also enjoy teaching the teachers and sharing my knowledge and expertise.

I recently recieved two emails - both from good friends - one informing me of an opportunity to earn £500 a day consulting for a large organisation and one informing me that 16 people need to be cut from the workforce of my UK school due to falling roles. In the past these emails would have afforded a rather different response to the one I felt. Instead of seeing the consultancy option as an immediate dead-end ( How would I get time off from teaching to do that?) and fearing the idea that I might lose my job with cutbacks, although I am pretty sure that my job will be secure for as long as I need it, i saw opportunity.

I have realised that I actually capable of a lot more than I thought and i am curious that the opportunities that have opened up for me here might also open up in the UK. With a gentle knock who knows what might happen?

Monday, October 08, 2007

Kangaroo Island

There's a reason why Photostory should be kept away from people with beer...

Thursday, October 04, 2007

We have the wedding bands...!!!



Here they are! The actual wedding bands that LOF and I will be wearing as of August 22nd 2008 :)

We picked them up today and they are beautiful and lovely :)



How very exciting!