Okay enough is enough. I am so sick of being sick with these frigging allergies it is no longer funny. I'v lost count of how many packages of kleenex I have gone through but if the massive white mountian in the garbage bucket is any indication I should take out shares in the TEMPO company. The antihistemines I have been on for teh last 5 years don't do their thing any more so for the next day or so I am off meds and then start back on Claratin ( Loretadine). Will take them at night to see if I can actually sleep a whole night through and not wake up with a sneezing fit and a face full of itchy skin to the point that I would cheerfully take a steel wool pad to it if I though that woud get rid of the itch. 

*sigh*

Some weird things that help though are... the Yonka rosmary eye cream ( meant for those dark circles and puffy eyes) stops the itch of my eyes for what ever reason so Rosemary extract..., Peppermint and lavender oil rubbed under the nose and on the roof of my mouth stops that itch and sneeze as well. The relief if temporary but it's relief...   am tryingthe herbal thing, teas and oils etc.. and the stoic DO NOT SCRATCH bit...mind over matter... sometimes it works and sometimes I think that banging my head against a wall would be just as effective.  Allergies suck. I have not had hay fever this bad in years. It sucks!

anyway that's my whine. trouble is the allergies have sort of taken over my life. Makes it hard to write because I can't wear my glasses which I tend to do at the computer, the glasses irritate me. Blah!

apart from this all is well in la la land. M leaves for sicily today for a few days and I can hide under my covers and stay there I guess. The garden is blooming beautifully, the roses growing like weeds, I tried to take a picture this morning but the digi cam decided not to work. T'is the season I guess. I'M falling apart, the camera falls apart...

anway..enough whingeing... gonna my a cuppa tea now...

Until then be excellent to each other...

My SCA friend Gytha lost her battle with cancer this morning and passed away.

Not much else to say really. Life is fragile and short, make the most of it.

until then, be excellent to each other.

So, after hmmming and hawing for ages now I finally broke down and ordered a set of Pilates dvds. Won't say frm where yet till I know how this story ends but this company doesn't have an automatic postage calculator ontheir direct site so you order and then wait for an email to see how much postage is and then you can confirm or refuse ( at least I hope you can refuse) 

The dvds ( 4) cost 39,- USD I thought taht was an okay price for exersize dvds from a company I have had good service from before but today I got the postage cost are you ready ladies and gents?

47,- USD
Yes that is right the postage cost more than the frigging dvds. So I said no way. cancel the order but I have not heard back yet. I am pretty disgusted though and they send their stuff UPS ( which is not mentioned directly on the order page either,) btw if I had seen those three letters I would NOT have even bothered. I LOATH UPS. I have never had so much trouble with a psotal service in my life as I have had with UPS.

So, I wait to see what happens next because thereis NO WAY in hell I am paying more for frigging postage to a company that is terrible to by dvds for Pilates.

Amazon.com rules. I thought their postage was high but compared to this theirs is a cake walk. 

bloody rip off.

will keep you all posted...

until then be excellent to each other and watch out for the small print!

I'd be a gold medalist!

This is a really bad allergy season / year. Everything is blooming at once, grass, trees, flowers.... It may be that mountain air is better for allergies but living in the valley with hills COVERED with deciduous trees that bloom is not healthier! So both of us are in suffer mode. Antihistemines are not strong enough to really fix the problem, but they help and I wish, like L, that I had a share in the Tempo ( tissue) factory. I rejoyed last night when it started to rain but now the rain is done and it will be humid and sunny today... oh joy :(  The problem with allergies on this scale is they make me sooooooo cranky.I am cranky and sore. It's like when the body is irritated so is the spirit!

So I try to take solace in the writing but that's slow going. This book is unveiling its secrets slowly, annoyingly so. Still I spend about 7-8 hours a day working on it, struggling with it cursing it! I suppose that's part of the fun of writing....

Not much else new really. SCA stuff is annoying the **** out of me. And I think that the end of my secnod term as signet cannot come fast enough. No one really seems to care any more about anything. It's hard to maintain any amount of enthusiasm and that coupled with distance and allergies is making me want to throw in the towel now. I will probably start concentrating on the art I am working on for ACER and the people who are interested. At least there I get feed back and will probably get paid for my work. It's rewarding to have my art displayed in the Server Solution Center, and hear feed back on it.

It's Friday! YAY

Okay I am going to go find my antihistemines and see if I can't get this sneezing under control.

Until then, be excellent to each other 

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it was built in 1968 by Ludwig & Otto Willis

My fingers hurt too much to type 2 separate blogs... 

So, for the last few days we have been working in the garden with the in laws. Marcus's dad used to be a professional gardener/tree sales's person. So he brings me rose plants for my birthday, this year it is long stemmed, scented roses, ranging from white through to dark almost blue black. We have been busy digging up yet more of the grass to make rose beds and weeding , of course. Thinning out some of the flowers that grew wild from seeds from last year, there are pansies, small ones everyhere where. We planted three more wine plants as well, to cover the back wall, concrete and ugly. They have the starts of blooms so maybe they actually produce grapes. Now the garden looks amazing. The roses grow like mad down here, it's the prefct soil for them, stoney and kinda rough, with nice warm weather. Roses like wet feet and dry clothes and the mountain soil is thair favourite.

It has been an exhausting but exciting weekend. On top of this I got the news on Thursday that a work mate of Marcus is giving us her Piano ( we have to transport it, which is the catch.) I can't wait I have wanted a piano for ages now, I miss being able to play one ( Not that I am any good at it or anything but I liked the option. I used to be able to read music... guess I will haver to start again, fine beginner's books and learn from scratch once more. I am looking forward to that though. It seemed a bit of a strange coincidence really since I have been telling M I woudl realyl like a piano for ages...

Apart from this flurry of activity everything else is normal. I haven't written anything sensible since Wednesday, makes sense house full of people makes it hard to sit and write for 8 hours.Get back on track after MOnday I guess. Book 2 is turning out to be harder, more annoying that I thought it would, I suppose all bridges are a bit hard to get right.I keep having to remind myself that this is an experiment and not a life or death thing...

anyway today I am stiff and sore from lugging stuff, digging stuff and moving stuff.... Hopefully it will stay sunny and we can have a nice relaxing sunday!

Until then be excellent to each other!!

Yesterday, despite actually accomplishing any thing, time vanished. One minute it was 9am the next it was 1pm etc... and I was at a loss last night to actually say what it was I had managed to get done. I have a hard time processing this. We are already into may and I don't know what happened to the first part of the year... it's so strange.

This spring is slow to come though, okay everything is green but temperature wise, it's cold. Doesn't seem to hamper the plants any, explosion of green outside, looks nice, smells wonderful when it rains, but it's cold. brrrr. This time last year we were putzing around in summer clothes, I am still wearing warm fuzzy sweatshirts.... brrr.

Will be a busy rest of the week. My inlaws are coming for a stay ( 4 nights) and that will be fun, then after that a good friend comes to hangout for a night or so, yay..and that will be fun...good to have people in the house. It also means I have to get my lazy ass in gear and clean up...

Aside from this dull news there is not much to tell. Woked on some comic style drawings with mixed results. Trying to learn the photoshop colourization process, from one of those how to books but the book is in german and my photoshop is in english... this leads to some interesting mixups... thank goodness M has photoshop in german on his system. There was a lot of 'OH is that what that is...' going on.

Actually the process was cool, and I am just touching the tip of the iceberg. My inking needs to improve a ton before the colourization will look even remotely professional but I do see an improvement in my drawings....my artistic sore spot. It helps that there are some great inspirations out there. ( and I have been practicing) Drawing was a skill that I forgot how to use. I stopped doing it seriously after around 1989 or so. Not sure why anymore, but it was like a part of me had died and I just stopped.

Now I am back at it, trying to make up for lost time. Gone through two Claire Fontaine a4 blank books already. (w00t!!) lots of silly scribbles and some nice sketches. It's a process I forgot, the art of just drawing, doodling and practicing with a pencil in hand.

Inbetween I am writing , or trying to. I seem to suffer the spring sleey sickness atm. And at some pointin the afternoon it's like zonk time. It's either  that or I am getting old... *sigh*

Today will be clean house day, or at least get a start on it. House work is not my fav thing to do and I tend to put it off. But on my list of things I need to / want to get done... it's up there along with re organizing my studio room ( art -dance) I reassembled my ballet barre yesterday so now I have something to hang my clothes on ( jk).

Still... all in all cannot complain. Birds are singing, sometimes the sky is blue and the sun shines, the garden is lush and green and life is pretty good.

Hope your spring is coming along nicely...

until then, be excellent to each other!