Term finished last night with the Christmas House Supper: an evening of food, booze and schmoozing. Rob got to sit with me and my tutor group, who didn't succeed in embarassing him, and only managed to drop me in it once - it was a good evening, I think, and Rob's still talking to me now, so hopefully that augurs well.

Much of this morning was spent sleeping, in typical "first day of the holidays" style, and since falling out of bed around midday I've cleaned the bathroom and mooched around tidying the flat - I'm just soooo rock and roll! Tomorrow I'm off for a haircut and some shopping. I hope that the holiday gets more exciting as it goes on, or it's going to be a boring few weeks. Harrumph.

Now off to lurk through the Confetti message boards laughing at the bridezillas whinging about their weddings. It keeps me amused, anyway!

Picture the scene: Rob and I sitting on the sofa, Your Cat sitting on Rob's lap.

Me: Ooh, My Cat licked Your Cat's bottom today!
Rob: Well, that's what you get... [pause to stroke Your Cat affectionately] ...when your bottom tastes of STRAWBERRIES.
Me: [gobsmacked] Strawberries?!
Rob: Oh yes, I lick it all the time.
Me: I can't believe that you've just said. I am SOOO going to blog it.

It's been a stupidly busy week at work, what with end-of-term report deadlines springing up every day. School have, this term, converted to an electronic reporting system, which is causing no end of teething problems, not least because there are only 8 general-use computers in school that have the software, and the system crashes the moment anyone tries to do something complicated. Still, new technology is by definition new and therefore better, or so they say...

Thursday saw Julia and I heading off to the local riding school to claim some horse muck, and digging is progressing at a good rate. Photos via the dirty hoes and on flickr. Needless to say, I feel a little achey from the digging but happy from being out-of-doors and not writing reports.

Friday was my birthday, so to celebrate we took the Guides to Birmingham to visit the Christmas market. We travelled by train, which is always amusing, and took so many parents with us that the ratio of adults:children was 1:1 - the girls headed off with their families and us leaders got to wander around with no responsibilities... that's the sort of Guide trip I like! We then headed to the pub (hurrah for its late licence) and ended up looking like this:



Now, though, there are just three days of term left, all as busy as the week just gone: I'm just looking forward to sleeping on Thursday!

I went to string orchestra this evening, for the first time since February. In fact, it's the first time I've played my viola at all since February. And we were playing Bartok, which had lots of notes, and now my fingers ache.

In other news, I have new wellies for digging, although it was too wet for digging today.

'Tis the season - one of my favourite things about Christmas. Read and enjoy. Just don't have a mouth full of drink.

Gardening needs appropriate footwear, and ebay's come up trumps. I don't think they'll arrive in time to do exciting digging this weekend, but soon I'll be happily wallowing in mud in new blue wellies. Whoooo!!

The garden man (a.k.a. the parish vicar) was more than happy to hand his vegetable patch over to us ruffians. This time next year it'll be sprouts on sticks all round. You have been warned!

Off to see a man about a veg patch.

Well, it snowed today, but sadly not heavily enough to stick. It didn't stop a man reversing his car into my (parked) car. Luckily he was driving o-h-s-o-s-l-o-w-l-y, there's no noticeable damage, and I was standing on the pavement next to the car chatting to my head of department when it happened. I tapped on his window and said, "Excuse me sir, I think you've just reversed into my car." He replied, "Surely not - I just went back until I hit the curb." Given that his car was a) a good foot away from the curb; and b) resting with its back bumber against my front bumper, he could do little other than apologise. Doddery old drivers!

In other news, we think that we've got a vegetable garden to look after. We've been on the hunt for an allotment for a while, but there's a waiting list as long as My Cat's girth, and we stand no chance moving up the queue - I've only lived in the village for five years, so I'm still a wet behind the ears interloper. The vicar, however, prostitutes out his veg patch to anyone willing to dig it and pay him a tithe in vegetables. Rob is already planning vegetable rotation systems; I'm thinking that it may be time to add gardening tools to our Christmas and wedding list. At the moment, the most spade-like implement we own is a tablespoon... there's a bit of catching up to do in the digging department, methinks!

Bad, naughty Emuss. Have been playing along with a nice-sounding man who phoned to ask if I wanted health insurance. I even asked about underwriters, and made encouraging sounds while he desparately persuaded me to hand over my bank details. It's a shame he put so much effort into such a lost cause. Mua-ha-ha!!!

In other news, I have been offered a place on a GOLD trip to South Africa next summer. I'm VERY excited. Now all I have to do is raise the dosh...

The worst week in the whole history of bad weeks has finally drawn to a close. Things all went a bit belly-up for a while at school, including a weekend in which I got about 5 hours off; the loss of my self-appraisal form; and failing to complete over 70 internal reports by the deadline, just by thinking that Thursday was Wednesday. To say that it was fraught is a little bit of an understatement. Now, though, it's finished, hopefully never to return.

There were good moments of last week, including the House charity dinner, where I got to take more photos than is possibly healthy. I only hope my dad isn't right when he says that digi-cameras are only able to take a certain number of shots before they break: Rob and I have mananged hundreds already. Rob's photos are far better than mine, especially this one and this one. Even so, I'm still pleased with these shots from the house dinner:



I know that the background isn't great, but I just love the expression on her face.



Some of the band, including Richard's wig!

Please stop the world, I want to get off.

Ebay parcelly goodness day! My postman must hate me! :-)

Digi-photos spew forth relentlessly: so far I've taken 103, of which the grand total of five are worth even thinking about keeping. My cat is now looking like this when I go near her:



That's one mightly unimpressed cat.

Things have been busy here, so alopogies to Charl who has been trying to avoid writing essays but has had no new bloggage to distract her. The last week has consisted of school, marking, socialising, co-cooking a mighty fine roast lunch, and discovering ebay.

I've lurked through ebay occasionally, but have never picked up the nerve to hit the Bid Now button. The impending nuptuals (tee hee!) have, however, necessitated a bit of camera-buying-goodness. There were a few moments of nail-biting worry as I faffed about with bank verification, but the sale went through without a hitch and the camera arrived yesterday afternoon. I speed-read the manual last night and took about a bazillion pictures of My Cat to try out the different functions. It was all hampered a bit by not knowing what an aperture was, and having no clue about shutter speeds, but a quick session this afternoon with one of the art teachers has helped a lot. The cat, however, keeps running away when I get the camera out, so I think I'd best find a new subject. Luckily Rob's home from work soon.

The worst thing about buying the camera is that I am now hooked on ebay which is BAD and they take the money straight out my bank account which is BAD but there's all sorts of random things for sale which is GOOD and I've already bought a new jug that matches our plates which is GOOD. Overall, the goods and bads seem to balance themselves out, so I won't stop using it just yet. As an economist might say, I'm indifferent, but since when has indifference stopped something so pleasurable? After all, I nearly bought an aga over the weekend, and was outbid at the last minute today on a Sultans of Ping CD.... who knows what crap I might have accumulated by the time I get hitched?!

HURRAH, HURRAH AND THRICE HURRAH!! What better news could greet my return from an exciting SAGGA theme weekend?! Bless.

I'm sitting in bed surrounded by cats, books and paperwork. It's very comfy, and slightly purry, but the one thing I'm lacking is motivation. Sigh.

After a lovely week spent eating my way around England, I'm now back home and appreciating having broadband access again. Geek, moi?!

It was great to get away last week: Rob has written about it at great length, so this is the picture book version. On Saturday I tried on wedding dresses with Wendy and Amy, who both have far better dress sense than me, so were eminently qualified to accompany me. I like to think that we brightened the shop assistant's day. Pictures of this bit of the holiday are banned, so readers aren't put into therapy by pictures of me in a dress. (Actually it's because of copyright, but that's far too mundane a reason).

On Sunday, we did some walking in the Cotswolds...


...on a pile of logs...


...by a lake...


...and then watched a film about a rabbit, and heard a man talk about some food. Top day.

We went down south on Monday to eat stay with Rob's mum. We ate lots. We went to the sea
(Rob complained that I cut the top of his head off in this photo. I think it's just coz he has a tall head)

From Deepest Darkest Devon we headed up to my parents' house for a few days, where the Mad's-Mother-Cutting-And-Sticking-Machine went full speed ahead making wedding invitations:
This picture shows that the the invites are being made VERY VERY quickly.

The first 50 to be finished. Rock and roll.

And now I've got a week at home, pottering about and generally doing all the things I should have been doing all term instead of planning a wedding, along with reading this with baited breath. Blimey.

Rob's latest cookery adventure has been the creation of samosas. The first time, he made them all alone and I just got to eat them. This time, I got to make them myself. Well, "make" is perhaps too accurate a term. Here is Rob's attempt:

And here's mine:

It's been re-names the Poo-mosa, because it looks like poo, especially compared to Rob's expert efforts:

Pah.