Goodbye summer - hello autumn!

The schools starting back after the long summer break really signals to me the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, but this year it seems that that mother nature agrees with me, with tree leaves turning red, conkers falling and the blackberries nearly over!

Summer holidays invariably reduce my stress levels enormously (despite the stress of packing!) and the ensuing four weeks, with less hours at work, really make me relax and go with the flow. Notwithstanding the need to go slow, I managed to pack in rather a lot this summer, with a visit from a nephew, numberous trips to the cinema, several museum trips, a number of visits to swimming pools, a couple of concerts a few meals out etc..

Now I find myself home alone (sob!) I've managed to have a spring clean, learned how to create a customised search engine using Google and added it to my iGoogle page (thanks to my ten-year old for help with customising my Google page) and added another book to my librarything catalogue! Wow! Cataloguing, blogging and now using Google creatively - whatever next! Better get on and update that wiki next!

See you round!

Eventually ...

Well, the holiday has long since been over, and life has returned to normal for the time of year! While it seems the rest of the country were suffering heavy rains and flooding, I enjoyed a fantastic time with quite reasonable weather in Cornwall. Did the usual things like swim in the sea, walk and read, and also did some differnet things!

Went to the cinema three times; the Harry Potter film was a hit with the whole family, Shrek 3 was quite amusing, and everyone seemed to enjoy the Simpsons. Talking of Harry Potter, we also queued up at midnight outside the local bookshop, with a lot of other people, to get the new book as soon as possible. Not somehting I would normally do, but we were on holiday and there was no pressure to get up early the next day!

We finally made it to see a production at the Minack Theatre, http://www.minack.com/ . On the most blisteringly hot day of our holiday we went to the matinee performance of Fanny Burney's play "A very busy day"; really quite funny and fabulous costumes! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Burney

We also went to two productions by the fabulous Kidz R Us company: "A slice of Saturday night", which was absolutely fantastic (and surprisingly we could remember what it was like to be teenagers!) and "Oliver". Kidz R Us is a fantastic organisation which encourages children to sing and act. http://www.kidzrus.net/

Coming back home and going off to work was a real shock to the system after such a good break, but, as they say, life goes on!

And counting ...

Holidays are looming! Looming only in the sense that there is the stressful act of packing to go through first before the relaxation of the holiday. And, all that work to do so that one can disappear off for a couple of weeks with a clear enough conscience that everything that needed to be done has been done and that nothing, but nothing can possibly go wrong while you're away!

I'm hoping when I get back that I will have a bit more time to catalogue my book collection on www.librarything.com . So far I have only managed to list 3 books from my vast collection, but finding the time to do it isn't easy. Also, I'm hoping to develop the work wiki a bit more. Strangely, that only has 3 pages on it at the moment. I say strangely, as 3 seems to be cropping up rather a lot at but I'm sure I have no idea if that's significant or not!

Still not quite decided about the purpose of this blog, but I'm sure I'll get there in the end.

stjerome

I can't believe I'm doing this!

Well, I can't believe I've just gone and created a blog! Three reasons really:

i) technically - call me a technophobe if you will, I would probably agree with you!

ii) why? It's just not like me to jump on a bandwagon and just what exactly do I think I have to contribute to the internet that is going to interest anyone other than myself?

iii) just when exactly do I think I'm going to have time to scribble about my innermost thoughts, my daily life, my working life - see also ii) above (once a cataloguer, always a cataloguer!)

So, I suppose that's it. My five minutes of fun is now over, as I trudge back to work, minimising this screen and maximising the office one!! Not sure when I get my five minutes of fame though; not even sure I would want it anyway!

See you soon,

stjerome