So busy!

"Only good girls keep diaries. Bad girls don't have time."  Tallulah Bankhead.

It's been rather a long time since my last post, largely because I've been busy doing things!

Some of the many things which have kept me busy of late include (in no particular order):

Visiting The Chocolate Story in York & Trying an unusual flavour of chocolate there!
Visiting the last manned Light Ship
Going Punting on the Cam
Seeing the original of Newton's Principia Mathematica
Visiting the Cutty Sark
Visiting Melford Hall
Throwing a clay pot
Making a glass sculpture
(Other things at Maker Faire, such as seeing Mitch Altman and Cory Doctorow's talks!)
Going on a Badger watch
Tour of the Northumbria Cheese Company.
Playing a clarinet (albeit briefly!)
Trying a Papaya and Sharon Fruit
Visiting the Trincomalee in Hartlepool (I has a stall at the Steampunk Convivial Tiffin on the Trinc there :) )
Performing a Pagan Handfasting for two of my friends.
Sitting in KITT!

Which brings my total of things done already to :

Scuba Diving
UrbEx
and nothing else from my original list... but I've also done:

Making a snow dragon
Making napkin water lilies
LARP
Omnomberry cake
See a concert at The Sage
See Noctilucent Clouds
Sitting in a Box at the Theatre Royal

and the list above....
makes it:

At least Twenty!!!  And two months before my birthday, means I've technically finished my Challenge.  However, I'll still keep doing things & adding to the blog, just 'cos it's fun!

I'll catch up with proper blog posts on what I've done recently, but for now, I'll just leave this here as a reminder to myself to get on with writing it up!

Smorgasbord!

Again, it's been a long time since my last post; but that does mean I've had lots of time to do things. Some of them were on my list, others weren't, as usual.

On 28th of March, I went to the Sage Gateshead for a concert for the first time.  I've been there before, for the Antiques Roadshow a few years ago, but I'd never seen a performance there.

I saw Morris Offspring & Faustus. They were fabulous!  I'm sad that it was Morris Offspring's final show, but I'm so glad that I did get to see them.

On the way to the Sage, I'm fairly sure I saw a fairly rare cloud phenomenon: Noctilucent Clouds.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get a photograph of it, but it was a really magical sight.

I'd ordered a coupon for a Scuba Diving session, to try to get me over my slight fear of being underwater for any length of time... whenever I'm watching someone do a deep dive, or even playing a computer game which involves swimming underwater I tend to hold my breath!  I was hoping that this would help.


On the 3rd of April, I tried it.


There were a few technical issues (the jacket was too big for me, the mouthpiece was broken, I got water in my mask; that kind of thing).  I gave up after about half the time, as I couldn't suppress my Lizard-Brain which kept thinking it was drowning :(  I tried using the snorkel instead & could just about cope with that.

However, I can't see me doing it again, and I think I'll still be holding my breath when I dive in a computer game!

That was a busy week, as two days later I went on a Guided Tour of the Theatre Royal.  A guided tour with a difference.  Dr Mullins Anatomy of the Theatre Royal.  Splendid!  Jo & I got into the mood of the thing, engaging in in-character conversation with the actors doing the guiding (the actors were wonderful, by the way - really bringing to life the Victorian Theatre!) I think the highlight for me was sitting in one of the boxes - I've never done that before, and given the prices, probably never will again! so this was rather special!

(I did get 'trolled' by one of the special effects... there was a door in one of the rooms, behind which was supposedly the 'theatre's cat', as one of the actresses said when she opened it.  I opened the door "to let the cat out", and a tiger roared!  I shut the door and fled, giggling with Jo!  Later on, someone else opened a similar door to the tiger's roar, so I figured that the first one just hadn't worked properly for the actress but that didn't make it any less scary at the time ;) )

Last week I was in Colchester with my German friends Karin & Karen (K1 & K2!) and their school group, but I think that's a job for another post!

Water-lilies and other things

I've done some other new things since the post in (oh my!) October!

We visited his family for an early Christmas celebration, and Sam decided that she wanted napkin water-lilies for decoration.  Himself being clever-like-that Googled for the instructions, and Sam handed him a napkin saying 'you're good with your hands!' However, napkin-origami is not one of the things he's good with :(

I picked up a napkin, fully expecting to make an equally disastrous mess of it, but instead, I produced a fairly respectable-looking water-lily.  This of course meant that I was then on napkin folding duty, and made about a dozen in all!

Since then, I've started with a LARP (Live Action Role Play) group called 5000REM, a post- apocalyptic scenario, based on Roadside Picnic/Stalker, Metro 2033 and other similar things.  I'd tried LARP once before, and hadn't really got on with the system,  but this one is really fun! (However we're planning another trip out this Saturday, snow and all, so I might change my mind on that!)

A few weeks ago, Himself found a recipe online for an Omnomberry Cake.  This is something which is in the game we play online (GuildWars 2) and someone has 'translated' it into a real-world thing.

The way to make Omnomberries is apparently to soak blueberries in purple food colouring and Chambord raspberry liqueur!

It was indeed Omnomnom delicious!  

The Omnomberry cake was not a lie!

The green leaves were supposed to be mint, but we didn't have any normal mint, so we used catnip instead....

Kerryl, investigating the cake.

Sliced to show the delicious layers!

Snow Dragon

I haven't felt like posting in a while, as I thought I hadn't actually done much since the last post, but looking back, I've got several things to add!  However, last things first....

Yesterday, he & I went to see The Hobbit.  On our way home, the snow was perfect snowman-making snow (he checked!) and he mused as to what to make this year.  (Previous years we've had typical snowmen, a snow bunny, snow bear, snow alien, several snow mutants, and so on.)  However, me being me, and with Smaug's glowing eye still fresh in my memory, I jokingly said "Snow-Dragon!"  

The lesser spotted Honesty-Wing Dragon

Next-door's snowman had solar lights for eyes,
so we decided to follow the trend!

Well, of course it breaths fire, it's a dragon!

Not a Pyro, honestly! 

A  Fire Breathing Dragon, breathing a fire dragon!

 The last photo is by far my favourite!