Monday, October 20, 2003

 
Yawwwwwn
I had a lovely bath at 11pm and was all curled up clean, snug and warm by quarter to 12. I laid there thinking of nothing in particular, and laid there, and laid there... By 4am I was hit with the thought that I really needed to fall asleep. I guess I did fall asleep eventually, not sure when, but the next thing I knew, it was 9:10am and I had 5 minutes to dress and drive a mile and a half to the stop where I catch my bus into work. It was a nice walk in this morning...

Ouch... Whoops...
DIY lesson #1: The saw is your friend. It's hundreds of sharp teeth glide through wood effortlessly. When cutting with a saw, ensure the wood is secure and all body parts are a safe distance from the teeth.
Anywayy..... Once I had laid the loose bits of skin back into something resembling my left thumb and wrapped it with a bit of tissue and tape, I was able to carry on boxing in some pipework. I should be ready to start building the frame for the track to sit on this week :)

Words of Wisdom
Some children just sit there and whine "I caaan't do it"(said in a whiney voice) and they should try, shouldn't they? by Junior aged 4 (a boy who himself occasionally requires a little verbal encouragement).

Fire!!!!
We have a water shortage on the Isle of Man. Clean drinking water, that is, because living on an Island, there's obviously loads of water around us in the form of sea water... Typical then that this is a good time for a gorse fire down south. Stavros has posted some ground level photos on his website and brought it to public notice on Manx.Net Forums. And luckily a passing satalite also took a photo which you can see here.


posted by Mark 12:01

Thursday, October 16, 2003

 
Pardon??
A word that should hopefully be used less now... Junior had his first visit to hospital as a patient yesterday for the insertion of grommets (excluding his birth and the earlier hearing test). All went well and in less than 20 minutes of waking up from the general anesthetic he was playing happily with lego on his bed. He's had the day off school today (by advice) and returns tomorrow. When asked if he could tell there was a difference, he said yes. Even whispering his name from behind received a responce, something that he didn't do up before yesterday.

posted by Mark 19:57

Monday, October 13, 2003

 
Hello again :) The attic is taking a little longer than planned. All the upstairs lights are fed from the attic for obvious reasons. Often the sockets are fed from below, but not in my house. Nearly every wire was in the way and needed relocating, as well as the new wires for the bathroom lights and the shower (to be installed later). Glad to say that the floor is now complete and I can turn my attention to the sides and ceiling which will maintain access to the loft areas behind. Junior is going to have to concede 3 foot of the room thus giving him 9ft x 9ft, although I have devised a devious way to reclaim a couple of extra feet at the far end so the layout will be slighty T shaped. I needed to do this as two of the trains will require a minimum of 60" of platform.

Other news: I yielded to my urges and bought a Digital Camera Junior has sussed out how it works already and takes a pretty darn good photo. His subjects are not always the first thing I would photograph, but he knows to keep still and make sure the cat, his blackboard, the back of my head etc. are in the centre of the view finder. I hate having my photo taken (receding hairline, big ears...) but I must admit that one of the few photos of me that I like was taken by Junior.

School: Big building, full of kids... you know the kind of place. Junior loves it, he just needs to learn that when the teacher reads a story, each page shouldn't involve a 15 minute discussion as they do at home. I am aware that he occasionally gets bored easily and requires to focus more. Last week he relearnt the letter "e" a year or so after he first learnt it at home. No doubt, given time, he'll have regressed enough to fit in with the cirriculum.
Some things he has learnt... "so what?", "I didn't do it", and how to pull a sulky face and cross his arms. Would you beleive me if I said that at nearly 5 years old, I've never seen him do the "sulky action" until the past couple of weeks?




posted by Mark 12:37