Books and Clay

I can't believe I've just written my first Christmas card today - where has the year gone? Of course, I'll have to do the rest so this year those abroad may actually get their cards on time for once! Panto season is away to start and it's been a wee while since I last went but I'm going twice to see Aladdin in Arbroath. I'm going to a preview, never been to one of those, with some of my workmates and then with the Rotary. Add into that the Christmas Tree Festival, staff meal, singing group and a show this weekend, December is looking to be fairly busy which is how it should be. So I've got a couple of days off just now with most of December off. I'm back at College and have to fit my holidays around the classes so I think I'll only be a work for about 4 days in December. I'm currently designing and building a website which is interesting and am using Dreamweaver and Photoshop and trying to learn CSS at same time. Added to that, I'm bus...

Well, it's been raining most of last week - again. Today is lovely in comparison. On Wednesday I went back to Uni in Aberdeen for the day on a cataloguing course (of all things!). I must admit I never thought I'd hear the name Lubetzky again. Robert Gordon's (RGU) moved to Garthdee a year or so after I graduated and apart from being at an interview at the time, it was the first time I'd been in the new campus. What a difference. Everything is ID controlled, masses of students everywhere as there are quite a lot of departments under the one roof. It was nice though, loads of rooms and toilets on every floor and it was spacious. We were linking up via video conferencing with folk in the Islands and the technology didn't work most of the time. The sound failed due to the RGU network apparently so all the folk saw was the tutor waving his arms now and again! It reminded me of the time we spent waiting in primary school for the teacher to figure out how to put t...

On Thursday I got to out of the office (yipee!) to visit Heelix Binders inFalkirk. Pauline, one of our staff, also came with me so after dealing with the mobile drivers we left. I'd packed the flasks and she brought the biscuits (essential!) and we stopped in a layby on the way down and way back. We found a lovely restuarant just 10 mins from Falkirk and also went over the new bridge - there was only us and one other car so it felt a bit strange but you got a good view. We spent three hours in the bindery and were shown everything from start to finish. We even saw some of our books at stage one. I fell in love with the glue machine - it's just a roller with glue constantly moving and the buckrum is rolled between and hey presto! one side is covered in glue! After the visit, we headed straight up the motorway and timed it prefectly by hitting the Broxburn roundabout at Perth at the start of rush hour. I'd visited the bindery 10 years ago but the company has since spl...

It's commonly known that the British love to chat about the weather - in fact, it rules our lives. Well, this weekend will keep us going for months to come! It started on Friday night when my roof decided it was going to leak again. It's been fine for the last 6 months or so, but not on Friday. It seems that the wind has to be blowing in a certain direction, at a certain speed. Of course, it generally doesn't leak during the day when I'm not there (but the buckets are) but at night, so I spent the night on the sofa bed. I can sleep through many things like fire engines, but not drip, drip, drip. Saturday was lovely and so warm I actually walked around town with a summer top on and sun glasses. With the clocks going back last weekend, it's dark going to work and dark coming home from work so seeing the sun was nice. But yesterday was wet. It basically rained from early morning through to early this morning. The roads were fine when I went up to Aberdeen, alo...

My friend Joelle and I finally managed to meet up on Saturday so hit the shops in Montrose. I managed to make a good start on my Christmas shopping which was great and then we headed back to mine and walked out to the lighthouse to build up an appeite for tea. We had an Indian takeaway (and alcohol of course) and watched Shrek the Third as she had never seen it. It was a lovely night and nice just to chill. It's hard nowadays to meet up due to the different hours we work. I went up to Aberdeen yesterday to give Maria and Bryan the blanket. Owen was awake and is soooo lovely. It's amazing the way babies stare at you - you have to wonder what they are thinking. The cats said hello as well though Benson (the fluffy one) decided to wait until I was leaving - maybe it was cheerio?! Anway, as promised, I've uploaded the photo of the blanket. You may think it's the same as the last one but it isn't really. It's the same pattern but the colour scheme is differ...