Fire and Ice

Yesterday we went to a pantomime. For those outside the UK this may bring images of non-speaking actors with white faces but it's nothing like that. Pantomimes are a very British Christmas tradition - they are fairy tale plays with music, lots of silliness and audience participation. Nearly every town has one and the bigger pantos sometimes have famous people in the cast. The scripts are totally silly, the costumes incredibly over the top (especially for the men that are dressed like women: the panto dames) and the whole thing is harmless fun for everyone but kids especially seem to love it. We went to see Cinderella at our local theater and while it is put together by amateurs, the evening was very entertaining and I even got a little emotional when the Fairy Godmother turned a pumpkin into a sparkly coach and turned Cinderella's rags to a poofy ball gown. It was very, very sweet. I think Samuel even enjoyed some of it! Another British Christmas tradition is holiday TV. There ...

I haven't done much scrapbooking lately. I think that it's a combination of having too much on, not enough inspiration and, quite frankly, that I've been spending my time on other things (like running and messing around on Facebook). But I have been writing on my journal, which I hadn't really done in a good loooong time. I often wonder if it's worth still keeping a journal when almost everything I do these days is documented in blogs, in scrapbook layouts and even in emails. If scrapbooking is about leaving a legacy, then I definitely have that covered! I like to believe that in some distant future someone will sit down and read all my journals and albums and be able to put together a great portrait of what I was like, what my life was like and what I was all about. So yes, sometimes I think it's time to ditch the journal and move on to all the other media I have embraced. But then I take out the book, the pen and something happens... I open my soul to a blank...

This year seems to be flying past and we’ve only got a few more days left before we change over to 2008 – and I inevitably mess up a few cheques because I’ll use the wrong year on them. As it’s traditional, this time of year people will make well-intentioned resolutions and I am no exception. I still don’t really know what I want to promise I’ll do but I have a few days yet to come up with something. Before I do, though, I want to look back on last year’s resolution – it was only one and I only came up with it sometime in mid-January but it still counts. Amazingly, I can still remember what it was and even more impressively, I have pretty much kept it. I’m talking of course about my running and the marathon coming up in Jan 08. I can still remember the moment when the light bulb went on in my head and I decided that this was something I wanted to do. I had little idea of how much work would go into it but I had tons of determination. If there is one thing that I am, that is stu...

After thinking about it for a while, I've finally moved my blog to here. It wasn't that I disliked the old place but, like often happens, I've outgrown it and need some more room to move about, store my junk and be able to relax a bit more. So here I am now on Blogger - welcome to me. Christmas is now over and I'm still taking some days off until the new year. It feels so weird to not be at work: I've never had Christmas off so I'm not actually sure what to do with myself! Samuel is off with his grandparents, David's working so I have the house all to myself and it's a weird experience. So instead of doing what I always do (scrapbook and clean the house) I decided to spend the time migrating my old blog posts to my new site, get it all clean and ready for the thousands (yeah right) of visitors that will be interested to read what I have to say. So while I'm destined for unrivalled success in the blogosphere (yeah right AGAIN) I won't let it go to...

Gosh – has it been nearly a month!? As my three readers know, things have been a bit hectic lately but at least now my OU course is finished so that’s one less thing to worry about! I have, however, less than a month until the WDW marathon… yikes. Training has been going well, at least until about two weeks ago. I had been managing to put in the 4 to 5 runs a week that I needed to do and my longer runs were getting longer and longer. Then a combination of poor weather-workload-life got in the way and I’m now lucky if I get in 3 runs a week. But, I’ve been training diligently for nearly a year now so a few missed runs, in the grand scheme of things, are not a huge deal. Sure, I feel terrible because I ought to be trying my hardest to get these runs in but in reality I’ve done the bulk of the training and other than one very long run, I’m nearly at the taper. There have been times when I question my sanity in running 42km, usually when I’m in the middle of a ridiculous 20k run in the ...