Wife, mother, Civil Servant and geek! I love Linux, especially CrunchBang Linux, geocaching and aikido!
Exciting developments today in CrunchBang Towers; Philip launched his brand new website, Technology Served. This site will hopefully be the platform from which Philip can launch a successful career as a freelance web designer/developer.
I wish Philip good luck in his new venture 
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We moved into CrunchBang Towers (as I like to call our house) just over a year ago and pretty much have done nothing to the inside of the house or outside in the garden for that matter! I reasoned that we needed a year to get to know our house and garden, and to see what decoration of the previous owners that we could live with, and what decoration we couldn’t. You will see from the photo below that the previous owners had very unique tastes in decoration. This is what the ceiling in Emma’s room was like – a fully gloss-painted map of the solar system, including suns, moons and planets.
We promised Emma a make-over for her room, something more fitting for a young lady but on a budget (Philip is now self-employed, after all!). Emma went all Homes and Gardens on us, and chose to have a complete colour-scheme change including a brand new carpet, a papered feature wall, and new textiles to match her chosen theme of Ubuntu Aubergine!
Philip and I are very happy with the finished result, and Emma is ecstatic. Not bad for a couple of computer geeks who detest DIY, though worry not, the rest of the house is safe as we’re not in a hurry to start any more decorating any time soon!
TAGGED WITH: decorating, life | No Comments
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So, after much deliberating between us and canvassing others opinions at Ogg Camp, Philip finally did the dirty deed today and handed in his resignation notice. Yes, that’s right, you read it correctly – Philip has given up a well paid, full time job to go self employed!
I have always had more belief in Philip’s abilities as a web developer, programmer and sys admin than he has, but he has finally listened to she-who-must-be-obeyed and agreed that now is the time to see if he can make a go of it on his own. I even managed to blag him his first job today; giving a talk about CrunchBang Linux to Hull LUG on the 6th September. Just a pity I forgot to negotiate a rate of pay!
Philip has my full support and backing, and I wish him the very best of luck as he strikes out on his new venture. Exciting times ahead and here’s hoping for a long and successful career for him as a freelancer.
TAGGED WITH: crunchbang, life, Philip, work | 13 Comments
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So, they say that for something to become a habit then you have to do it at least 30 times. There are 30 days in June, so I am intending on creating some new habits during this month!
One of them is to definitely drink more water, preferably a glass before each meal. The other is to do some form of exercise each day. I already go to Aikido on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I am intending to go running with Daisy the dog on the other days. Not too far, but enough for me to get a good sweat on and for Daisy to have a good run.
Hopefully I will get the support and encouragement from Philip and Emma, as I have a feeling that I am going to need it! 
TAGGED WITH: life, running | 2 Comments
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My clock says it’s 6:20am but my body is saying that it is really 5:20am. Why? Because the clocks went forward by an hour last night here in UK.
I love this time of year; to watch and hear the birds nesting and singing; to see the buds of flowers and bushes blooming; to take advantage of the lighter evenings and to feel the warmth of the sun as it finally shows its face after several months hibernation. I feel refreshed, invigorated and full of energy and then Spring goes and takes away an hours worth of my sleep!
I’ve taken this week off of work to sort out the garden, clear my allotment and get ready for running the Lincoln 10K next Sunday 3rd April, Mothers Day. Since my last blog post and dents via identi.ca, I have had to increase my charity donation target twice thanks to the generosity of friends, family and complete strangers who have just happened to find me on the interweb. To all those people who have donated – I say Thank You
Seeing as I am up so early, I really should take advantage and go for a gentle jog in preparation for next week, but what I’m actually going to do is sneak back to bed to find that missing hour that The Sandman has stolen from me without my permission! I’ll go running later when it’s a more respectable hour of the day
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I received some most excellent news from my work on Wednesday which was made public amongst my department on Friday, so I can now share that from 17th January 2011 I shall be managing the jobcentre in Boston, UK. I am so looking forward to be working in Operations and dealing with Customer Service again, and am thrilled to be working with the staff at Boston. I cannot stop smiling
Woke up to a Winter wonderland today which has put my carefully scheduled 10k training plan out and stopped me from doing any geocaching this weekend. Week 1, day 6 and I was supposed to be power walking for 5 mins and then running for 1 minute (repeat 5 times). Unfortunately, the snow has fallen and then frozen solid on the paths so I really didn’t fancy risking a slip and injury. The weather also isn’t appropriate for finding Tupperware boxes with my GPSr which is a shame as I have a trackable geocoin that I need to move on. Hopefully I’ll be able to get out tomorrow after I have gone with Emma to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1 at the local cinema. I am a bit of a Harry Potter fangirl having read all of the books several times, and I have been salivating over this film coming out! Philip is just grateful that I’m taking Emma and not dragging him along
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So, Philip decided that my blog theme needed a make-over. I disappear upstairs to get changed and when I come back down, he’s designed me a banner with some of my favourite photo’s of us all. He’s so kind and helpful, and I love him to bits, but I just wish he would move into his “colour” phase so that not everything in this house is monochromatic!
Ready to scare the villagers!
I’m still training for the Lincoln 10K. Day 3 (yesterday) saw me power-walking non-stop for 30 minutes, and I managed to cover 2.2 miles. Thursday is always my piano lesson night, so I mapped a 2 mile route to power-walk to my piano tutor’s house. Not bad, considering she only actually lives 500m away from my house as the crow flies! I’ve seen parts of my village on tonight’s walk that I never knew existed. Philip captured me in all of my finery before I set off into the freezing night. Daisy is in the background getting excited as she thought she was coming as well.
I’m hoping to convince my friend from work to run with me, but she has just had a baby and may not be up to it. Whether she runs or not, I will still raise money for the charity of her choice.
Rest day tomorrow; looking forward to that!
TAGGED WITH: 10K, life, Philip, running | 3 Comments
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So, it’s been a while since I have posted on here and lots has happened since 4th June 2010.
As the title of this post mentions, I gave up smoking on 29th June 2010 after being addicted to cigs for 27 years (I started smoking young, at 14 years old!). It seems really bad to see how long I have been smoking written in black and white, but I am so proud of myself for stopping especially when you consider that Philip is still smoking! His continued smoking makes me more determined to stay off of them
Whilst giving up, I didn’t put myself under any pressure to watch my weight aswell, and I gained over 2 stone because I substituted sweets for fags! Luckily I am tall and can carry a bit of weight gain, but this was too much. I weighed myself on 6th September 2010, coming in at 92.8kgs and decided that I needed to get back in control of my diet. Philip agreed to accompany me on the self-imposed health kick as he had gained some poundage too.
We are now 2 months in and Philip has lost over 13kgs. He looks and feels fantastic Me on the other hand, I’ve only managed to shift a few kgs so drastic action is now needed to support the diet change. Therefore I have grandly announced to everyone that I am going to run the Lincoln 10K on 3rd April 2011. Shit, better start training then – 130 days to go!
Week 1, day one (Monday) is a rest day and I weigh 89.5kgs. Now that wasn’t so hard! Day two (today), walk for 30 minutes at a brisk pace. I-Pod on and off Daisy and I went. She got a nice walk out of it and I have felt invigorated all evening. I even came home and cooked quiches from scratch; played a few tunes on the piano and cleaned the oven.
I’m loving being a reformed smoker – so much energy!
TAGGED WITH: 10K, life, running | 5 Comments
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Hello again from a very sunny Lincolnshire. Well it has been 4 weeks today since we moved into CrunchBang Towers and time that I updated my blog.
The move went smoothly and we even managed to get the beds made up to collapse into Friday night. Saturday dawned (our 1st wedding anniversary) and Philip decided to accompany me food shopping (he doesn’t normally bother!) I got all excited thinking he was going to buy me some flowers, but no, I was dragged off to view TV’s instead. Unbeknownst to me, Philip had already spied the TV he wanted and was now trying to convince me that we should buy it jointly as our anniversary present to each other (he is so romantic). So buy it we did, all 40 inches of flatscreen in glorious HD only to get it home and find that it didn’t fit into the space that Philip had measured for it! After much discussion we decided to place it on the mantlepiece, only to discover that it was too big to go on there too. His face was a picture when he realised that it may have to go back! Philip finally got it mounted on the wall above the fireplace – he doesn’t normally do DIY but when faced with returning a new tech toy, then he will turn his hand to anything given the right motivation!
We also treated ourselves to a Virgin 50mb broadband connection. Our old house only had 0.5mb connection which got really frustrating at times. Thanks also goes to yamatt, who let me know that O2 Jogglers were back on sale at £49, so I ordered Philip one. Tech is slowly taking over the new house, and I know there is more to come. Philip is already dropping hints on the CrunchBang forums that he wants a Samsung netbook. Guess I should start looking for a bigger house already, and I was just starting to get used to this one!
TAGGED WITH: life, moving, tech | 4 Comments
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Tomorrow is the BIG day!
Not only will we see whether the UK will get a new government and Prime Minister, but it’s also the day Philip and I say “goodbye” to rented accommodation and “hello” to a 25 year mortgage. We must be mad!
As we will have such a long, busy day ahead of us tomorrow, we offered Emma, our daughter, the option of skipping school and helping us move instead. “Fancy a day off school tomorrow to help us move, Emma” says Philip.
“No chance, I don’t want to miss German, plus I will just get in your way” replies Emma!
OMG, when did she grow-up and get all sensible and responsible? At her age I was wagging school at any opportunity (I never went to geography for 3 months!). Philip was just dumb-struck by her response. I think we both expected her to say yes – parents are supposed to know their kids, aren’t they?!
It seems that change is definitely in the air, and I for one can’t wait. Tomorrow is the start of a new adventure – bring it on!
TAGGED WITH: election, Emma, life, moving | 4 Comments
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