Today I have been mostly...

Being a bit distracted. I've been working from home and just found it really hard to get into the groove today. I've done some good stuff, but none of it came easy. What did come easy was:
- sneaking a peek at twitter
- joking around on email with the Jumpers For Goalposts super-team
- making cups of tea
- watching tv for 10 minutes too long after lunch (damn you Come Dine With Me!)
- making "to do" lists so I could tick things off
- popping out into the garden.

It was while doing the last one that I took a few snaps and found a new friend... a teeny tiny baby frog! He's super cute, about the size of a fingertip and we've christened him Bruce. Here are a few pics from the garden, and a blurry shot of Bruce:

Can you spot teeny weeny Bruce on the last one?

Bed time now. Don't forget, it's Jumpers for Goalposts @ The Alley Cafe tomorrow. Live music & craft fun.

See you there!

Bex

Morning!

It's a grey day today, but after the lovely weekend I still feel all full up of sunshine. Spent most of the weekend working in the garden, and managing not to get sunburned, which is a first for me! I switched some bluebells from the front garden to the back, potted up some cuttings from my herbs, trimmed the hedge, did some weeding, painted the fence, tidied up and began a war against slugs and snails. Now, we're an organic garden, so what to do? Obviously I don't want to stand on them because that's gross & mean, but I also don't want them to eat my newly bought & installed beautiful plants right down until they are nothing but stubs in the ground. [So far they've eaten at least £20 worth...and counting...]. So, I'm trying various things.

First off, coffee grounds, which didn't seem to be effective in the least, but which I've since figured out is at least slowing them down! Thanks to the Little Deli in Carrington for their kind provision in one day of more coffee grounds than we could manage in a week! I've since been recommended digging a plastic cup of beer into the ground and giving them a drink before they (unfortunately) die. For a while we did try taking them round to the park, but apparently they have a homing instinct which works for up to 4 miles, so that's not going to be any use at all! [This instinct has been contested by Joey Chickenskin and apparently I have to put a dot of nail varnish on the snails and see if they come back, if I get round to doing that I'll let you know how it goes!]

Anyway, garden pests aside, it's really nice to work in the garden, to plant stuff and see it grow (or not), to figure out where you've made a mistake and fix it for next time, and then at some point to end up with a bunch of flowers for the bees, seeds for the birds and vegetables for us! It's also really nice to listen to the blackbird who has taken up residence nearby, who Anders described as being "The Police Academy Guy of birds" because it makes all different noises like alarms, bells, beeps and whistles.

I did actually mean to write a whole different post today, but it seems that's what's on my mind, so there we have it!

bex
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General Ramblings

Hi,

Thought I'd pop a few thoughts up while I'm finishing off my lunch on this sunny Friday.

Firstly, who watched MasterChef this season? How great was it?! I was totally hooked. I haven't been that into it for a couple of years, but I really enjoyed this one. Particularly how John had gotten all slim and cool in his cardigans, instead of his 80's blazers. Did anyone else spot the winner really early on? I thought I was a genius, but it appears lots of people knew, so maybe I'm only half a genius.

Secondly, who watched the new Dr Who? LOVED IT. Can't wait for the next one tomorrow!

We saw Kick Ass the other day at the cinema. Have you seen it? It's a strange film, enjoyable but kind of like it's two films squashed together. There's a super-violent/bloody Tarantino/Japanese style super hero revenge flick combined with a 'nerds at school get cool' film. It was good, but I expected something very different. By the way, if you have seen it, the guy who plays the main character is British, weird right?!

Popped to a little art auction at BackLit studios on Wednesday and accidentally bought two pieces. Well, I say accidentally, it's not like I sneezed and he counted it as a bid or anything, but I wasn't really planning to go hog-wild and buy two things. I love them both though, will try to pop up pictures of them another time. Really i just wanted to mention the studios as I haven't been before but they have lots of exhibitions and happenings, well worth checking out. Apparently there's a facebook group for those of you on there. They are in Sneinton somewhere, just off Carlton Road.

If you're free next Thursday we're doing Jumpers for Goalposts at the Alley Cafe, as we do every 3rd Thursday of the month. If you haven't been before, it's billed as Nottingham's finest, funnest, free-est felt-tips n folk night and basically involves the following elements:

• a live act (usually one person and a guitar, but in the past it's hosted keyboards, synths, washboards, melodicas and even a double bass)
• DJs (not making you dance or anything, it's a bit small for that, but offering a fabulous soundtrack to your evening)
• a craft competition (there are rules and craft materials provided for you to explore your creativity and use your nimble fingers to invent a beautiful miniature artwork. Or you can just put glitter and googly eyes on some bits of old cardboard... it's up to you)
• "mega prizes" TM. (I'll let you decide if they're mega or not when you win one)

In general it's one of the nicest, friendliest, happiest evenings of the month. You can have a lovely organic cider, drink a cup of tea, hear some wonderful music and make a magical/shit creation. All for free too.

This weekend we're at the big Hello Thor / Fists EP Launch Party at the Rescue Rooms tonight (incidentally I dreamed about this last night and Barack Obama turned up. He's so cool.) and then just doing general hanging out and relaxing over the weekend. I'm hoping to see Whip It (Drew Barrymore's film), because I HEART Drew.

Right, better go crack on with some work now. Lunch technically finished ten minutes ago.

Love
Bex
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busy-ness

Things have been busy lately, right? The sun makes me busier too, because I don't want to do boring things while the sun shines. One brilliant thing about the sun shining though is "Summer Tea", which just involves sitting eating our food on kitchen chairs in our little garden. It's brilliant.

Fun things over the past couple of weeks have been:

- Seeing Fists play in Sheffield. It's really great to see your friends doing something they are really good at. It just makes you see them as something else besides your friend who you've known for ages and have lots of fun memories with. I think seeing them play in Sheffield did this x2, because in a little room above a nice pub there was a bunch of strangers really loving them and their music. It makes you sure that you don't just like them as a band because you know them and reminds you how good they are.

- Playing SingStar R&B with my friend Abi. We already owned SingStar Classics and were pretty high up the score table for Depeche Mode, but SingStar R&B is a different ball park altogether. I have a new respect for R&B singers... their songs are HARD! It has also introduced me to Teardrops by Womack & Womack, and I'm very pleased about that.

- Making a draught excluder snake. He's lovely. He's called snakey and so far hasn't been used to exclude any draughts.

- Seeing our veggies growing really big in the garden. We are going to be overrun with beetroot soon.

- The guilty pleasure of the BGT final last Saturday. Oh dear, what have we come to? Loved Britain's Got Talent all week through the semi-finals, felt slightly tarnished and ashamed as soon as the final had finished.

- The Tether Art Crawl. Truthfully I didn't actually crawl. But me and Abs met up at the Ropewalk with Anders who had been leading a group round the various venues, teaching them about the history of Nottingham and sharing some of his favourite stories. Go Anders! Everyone involved was really nice and I wished I had booke in time to do the full crawl. We went on from the Ropewalk back to Tether where the Tom Tomas Club performed a "greatest hits" set after a painfully protracted set-up which involved boo-ing random people (including Dan Toporowski) as they came into the room. The TTC were as terrible/amazing as always. The room at Tether was mental, it was like a cardboard igloo. I don't know why, but it was warm and oddly comforting.

- Planning our website at work. I work for my family firm, which is mostly a little bit dull. At the moment though I'm beginning work on setting up an ecommerce website for us. This is a lot more fun. The internet is fascinating. Last month something like 70% of everyone who went online visited Facebook. It's huge.

- Looking up stuff about CUBA! Me and Anders are going in July. Can't WAIT. If you know of any "must do" things please let me know!

Hope you've been having fun in the sun too.

Bex xx
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