Me. Doing stuff.

In which I open tins, occasionally go to the gym and eat ice cream in a bobble hat. 

If you have better things to do, you can probably skip to the end now, and I'll catch you next week. 

This weekend I was lucky enough to attend the social event of the year; a French Tin-Opening Party. The tins were French, just to clarify. Although the party was quite French. The back story to this amazing social occasion starts* in the summer of 2011. A bunch of us, under the Aurora Scottish Dance and Music banner, got on a bus and went to Alsace to do some dancing, drinking, ceilidhing in the street and all-round amazing festivalling. Whereupon we met some more French people, this time from Toulouse. We wound up sharing a coach with the Toulousian group and by way of compensation for my absolute lack of French language, I made friends through the medium of red nail varnish. I guess you had to be there. In 2012 we invited the Alsations to Aberdeen to reciprocate. In 2013 we had a lovely little festival in Genoa, and in 2014 we were brave enough to invite both the Toulousians and the Genoans to our little corner of Aberdeenshire.

Portfino, Italy. No-where near Aberdeenshire.

Scotland's answer to Portofino. Of absolutely no relevance to this story. 

In then end the Italian organisation was, well, Italian. And in August this year we welcomed Le Poutou de Toulose to Aberdeenshire.

Le Poutou avec interlopers.

They came on a bus, which did magical things and converted into bunks for sleeping and we got overly excited about it. And they brought things. Many strange and interesting things. The legacy of this Festival was that many of us had become the owners of large tins of unknown French delicacies.

In for a penny...

Being the good friends that we are, we would not stand by and let someone have to deal with large quantities of French food (and wine) without a little assistance. So the tin-opening party was born.

I had a lovely time, and opened many tins. Never before in my life have I seen so large a quantity of duck fat. I didn't however take any photos. So these are all pinched (with permission) from someone else who did. Thank you!

If your weekend was as exciting as mine, then well done you.

Also this week. I have accounts to do, so I will sign off soon and go do some maths. I will do so looking like this.

The hat and scarf are because I'm not really sure if I like ice cream, or if it's just too cold. If it's a special occasion and we're at a cinema that does Ben & Jerry's I'm allowed a scoop of Phish Food ice cream with some chocolate polar bears on top, whereupon I will miss most of the film by acting out the food chain. 

The other thing I want to declare to the internet is that I have managed to go to either the gym or the swimming pool 6 days a week for nearly 3 weeks now, and I'm quite chuffed with my little self. You see, I'm from Sunderland and some things are quite culturally ingrained. Like chronic inactivity, never voting Tory and not wearing a coat. I still can't understand coats. I didn't go last night, and stayed home doing sums and eating ice cream, as you have just seen. This is an addition to my life that I hereby promise not to bang on about too much. That said, when I achieve my first ever unassisted pull-up, you will hear about it, be warned.

There's been quite a lot of pictures this week, you lucky things. Next week I might tell you about Hallowe'en, and how the neighbours' decorations actually gave me nightmares.


*L and I have just had to reconstruct the last 4 years of our lives to work out this date

Wallpapering for Numpties

In which we ignore all of the normal boring household tasks that ought to be done, and instead attempt to DIY something we know nothing about.

This week I'm slightly less cream-crackered and feeling less glum about life. There's probably a causal relationship right there. That's what 12 hours of dancing followed by staying up drinking Jura will do for you.

This one, to be precise. This picture is here so I can use it as a thumbnail when I post a blog link on Facebook, so you guys can go "ooh, alcohol" and come read my blog, and I can then get excited about the number of pageviews. 

This weekend there was altogether less. Less dancing, less whisky. More sleep. We did DIY, make brownies and played Settlers.

What follows is a high-octane adventure in wallpapering. Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...? I can't promise all of those things. But there is a double bass player who might be on fire and a happy ending.

How to do Wallpapering.

1. Move stuff. Pile the bedsheets in to a heap of squishy and have a little nap. It will help.

2. Paint scary chemicals on the bits of the wall that look a bit dodgy.

Pop the kettle on while it dries. DIY is mostly about tea, right?

3. Pause. Time for a Before picture.

4. Get cutting.

5. Fashion a plumb line out of anything you have hanging around. Stab it in the wall somewhere. The combination of dental floss and a spare key seemed to work for us, although I'm still not sure at which stage we were meant to have used it. Tangent - is it only me that didn't know cornicing can be made from polystyrene?

         

6. Make up some paste to a consistency of "about right, what could possibly go wrong?" and get pasting. 

There is an alternate photo of L doing the pasting, but due to a combination of neckline and angle issues, it would have to be tagged NSFW, and that would be odd.

7. Jump on a chair (or find a really tall friend. Actually, you'd need a really really tall friend. We are most people's go-to tall friends, and we needed a chair) and try your best to stick the paper to the wall without too many tears, wobbles or gaps. It turns out there are special brushes made for this very purpose.

Family-friendly angle.

8. Get rid of all the bubbles, and stick some extra paste in the edges till it looks like it's all just about stuck.

Packaging said something about "butting each edge up to the next" and I am very childish. Also, check out this funky wallpaper!

One strip down, five to go!

Pile of clean laundry for scale.

9. Repeat steps 6, 7 and 8 for strip number two...

...three...

...and four.

10. Stop.

This step is very important and I absolutely would not recommend skipping it. Stop everything and go to a gig. If you can help it try and track down a Danish folk band with a double bass player who is followed everywhere he goes by a cloud of smoke.

Ok, so photos at gigs are bad, but that man is on fire!

If in doubt, add more musicians. Folk bands should have "sections" more often. 

11. In the cold light of another day, repeat step 9 for strip five.

And, after some fiddly cutting out, again for step 6. Voilà. I really hope you haven't come here looking for an actual DIY how-to. This paper will look just fine as long as we (1) put the bed back against the wall so it covers the bits at the bottom where nothing lines up, and (2) no-body points out the bit where I tore off a lump and just stuck it back on again.

Step 12. Reward. This is another very important stage.

The wallpaper behind me was done properly, by the Parental Jones who know how to do these things and don't even need a chair.

Still to come on Project Spare Room: 

Painting, finding bed sheets that don't clash with the funky new paper, and putting away the camping crap which shouldn't be there. Stay tuned for more thrilling heroics.

In other news I have now made it to the gym before work 4 times. Four whole times. Today I ran two miles without needing to stop for a sit down and a cuppa in between them. I am feeling very smug and promise to try not to be unbearable about it.

Next week I have a committee meeting for which I have to prepare accounts. It's a pretty sure thing then, that you will find me over here, deep in bloggy procrastination.

Till then.

How do you Juggle?

A post about nothing much, illustrated with images shamelessly half-inched off the interwebs.

I'm not sure if I have a point this week, or if I'm just feeling a little rambling. It's half past seven, I've made it home and have bonded my butt to the sofa. L is sitting in the chair in a dragon onesie reading Buzzfeed articles, and I am racking my brains for something interesting, or even just faintly entertaining to tell you all.

Might be out of luck on that front.

This week's question. Functioning adults - how do you do it? How in heck do you manage to make it look like you are on top of all the things? I don't think it's possible to achieve dishes-zero and have a work-suitable outfit clean and not-too-crushed. It's one or the other in this house, and not even always that. Heck, some of you do that with children around. Tiny, little, totally-dependant human beans. And you keep both them and you alive and functioning. I need help to look after a freaking swiss cheese plant.

I'm a tired bunny, which is having it's usual effect of making me feel tiny and the world feel big. I'm gonna hit publish and hit the sheets. Half eight is totally a legit bedtime.

http://zenshinibuu.deviantart.com/art/sleepy-bunny-257722462

I'm in a bit of a funny head-space today. It's the Aberdeen tattie-picking holidays this week, so most of my colleagues have taken the week off because their kids are off school. Leaving just me and the Boss. Which is fine. I can listen to questionable music, and take my shoes off, and no-one will interrupt me to try and make pointless smalltalk. Last night I dreamt that I had gone to work and everyone had cancelled their leave and come back in because they didn't trust me not to do it all wrong. A truly inspiring night, thank you dear subconscious.

I can only guess that comes from a desire I have to be able to do everything that you could possibly do, and to do it all really well. Left unchecked I would end up with so many different juggling balls in the air that I could call it a model solar system and charge people to come and see it. The problem would then be that I'd be mediocre at some of those things and pretty darn crap at the rest. Especially any of those things that involve talking to people. Even more so if that involved picking up the phone. Last week I was meant to have a haircut, but I totally forgot about the appointment. I haven't phoned back since then to make a new appointment because I dislike making phone calls so much. My hair is poking me in the eyes and I look like my little brother during his teenage years, but I don't want to pick up the phone.

So I check myself from time to time, yet I still have quite a number of balls in the air. The thing is - it's all good stuff: dancing, music, church, friends, gym. I don't want to drop any of them so I guess I just need to get a bit better at juggling. Functioning adults - any juggling tips? I think today's brain fuzz is actually the slightly delayed result of a great weekend that featured a huge amount of dancing, a little bit of drinking and a lot of people. Come Sunday evening I was more of a zombie than my friends who are parents to a one-year-old and a two-week-old. Stamina has never been my strong suit. There's less stuff planned for this coming weekend, and that's probably a good thing.

Yesterday I printed off my Outlook calendar from here to the end of the year. Then I got a marker pen, and added all of the dates that are floating around in my head. It's quite daunting. I am daunted by it. There is something on (it feels like) every day from here till Santa time. Maybe this weekend I'll do all my Christmas shopping and then I can feel smug and accomplished for a few months? You'd all get jammies again. That ok?

Ach, I'm rambling. Off to sleep. Subconscious Me - if you are reading, please could we have a quiet night with no databases, colleagues or looming deadlines? Perhaps a desert island? Not the Radio 4 one though, I hear it's getting overcrowded. Or a dessert island? That would be awesome. A whole island made of desserts. Lakes of custard, mountains of brownies, that kind of thing. I have been watching too much Bake-Off.

Publish. Shut down. Sleep.
This week I am trying to achieve a Thing. If I actually manage it, I'll tell you next week. Heck, I'll probably tell you if I don't. Till then...

And its name shall be called...

Scroll down for the interesting stuff.

Call off the search, I'm not actually lost in the wilderness. My poor little Rowan Tree blog has just been sliding down a list of priorities to the point where I have shamefully neglected Tuesday Blog Time since July. Eek, August and September have passed us by in their entirety.

Want to know what I've been up to? Nah, it's quite a bore. L went a long way away and left me All Alone. I cleaned the house and read a lot of Terry Pratchett, because I know how to have a good time. Some very cool French people came and paid us a very exciting visit, during which the Aurora Ceilidh Band* played to a quite full Stonehaven Town Hall and I felt a tiny bit like a rock star, even if I didn't get to wear my epic new Tartan Waistcoat. We trashed a gazebo, that's at least a little bit Rock Star, right?

Rock Stars, for sure. Tartan and broderie anglais are in fashion now, I'm sure of it. If not, someone please get that trend going - I'd never need go shopping again.

I worked like the blazes for a Big Important Deadline on the 1st of August, which we spectacularly missed.  Tried some more for another bash on the 1st of September, which became the 8th of September. At 0900 the system went live, and at 0916 it farted, fell over and that was that. We spent the rest of the week doing stuff on paper instead, eating other people's sandwiches and trying to look useful**.

That was a whole month ago, and I'm just attempting to emerge from the over-tired brain fuzz it left me with. Hands up, I do not possess the stamina required for normal adult life.

We went on holiday with my parents. Ok, so we crashed my parent's holiday, but it was nice. We met some donkeys and semi-accidentally climbed all the way up the back wall of the Corrie Fee. I wish I could spend more of my life up on the Cairngorm Plateau.

This one's for you, fellow Geographers.

And we're caught up. Well done for reading this far. Now for the Main Event.

The naming of the tandem

A couple of posts back (cough) I invited all of you lovely people to send me postcards with suggestions for a name for our lovely new tandem, wot I keep banging on about.

There was a postcard.

This card has been on the fridge, or possibly some other magnetic kitchen surface (of which we actually have many, 'cos we're not posh enough to have hidden all of our kitchen appliances away behind fake cupboard doors like my Mother has (and is now afflicted by the terrible First World Problem of having no-where to put the magnets)) for some time now. So that strange brown bit at the top right - probably food based. That's all I know. I just licked it*** in an adventurous quest for knowledge, and it was sticky, but not giving up its secrets. 

A French postcard, postmarked in the Netherlands. Either a great mystery of the European postal system, or some clever post-card reuse. We were even presented with a choice of names; one for a boy and one for a girl. How ever to choose. Knowing the options available, I put the all-important gender decision to L. The news - it's a girl. Name chosen. All fair like.

More recently, another suggestion has come our way. A bike this big can cope with a nice long name, I reckon, so it's going to be appended as a middle name.

For their highly important contributions, our gracious thanks to JW, RK and JR.

Ladies and Gentleberries, our lovely Tandem  is hereby christened...

DRUMROLL....DRUMROLL....DRUMROLL....DRUMROLL....DRUMROLL....DRUMROLL

Daisy Caroline Schwinn

Here it is one more time for your viewing pleasure. Our next job is to take it to a local bike shop so we can ride it at night without either (1) the squeaky brakes waking up the whole neighbourhood, or (2) us not using the brakes, crashing, dying and generally being a poor advertisement for tandem-going society.

Ok, not really. Here it is.

Come and have a shottie some time, once the brakes and gears work.

*Available for Weddings, Conferences, Birthday Parties, Balls, Funerals...
**I don't think I'll ever be allowed to write Job Descriptions. 
***I was once a Geology student, something obviously stayed with me.