Being a Busy Person

Hello! I promised myself that I would promise to write a wee something for you all each Tuesday. So here we are. I'm off out committee-ing this evening, so I'm starting off on tonight's ramblings in my lunch hour at work. Thank God for lunch hours, and university wifi, and this lovely tiny new computer. I've charged it twice and been pretty much attached to it since I opened that box. My screen-time-addled eyesight knows about it.

I'm finally owning up to the fact that I am a busy person. I know this because I am writing this at lunchtime, having just sat and worked out what is happening with our dancing group's money. I have become one of those people who sit down and then panic about what else they need to be doing. I'm trying to fit all of the things I want to do and all of the things I need to do in to 24 hours in the day (or 23 this weekend, when the world decided to be royally screwy and run away with an entire hour of my precious time. Grr).

So, mostly by way of a convenient brain-data-dump for me, I thought I would tell you about all* of the things that are keeping me busy. There might even be a list.

Let's take this from last Tuesday. We had just had a party. We might not have finished all of the washing up. Cough.

On Wednesday I hung around after work, I meant to be useful and get a dance class started but instead I sat on a uni sofa and emailed people about boring things. Then I took the car, abandoned the poor dance class to L's mercies and went to a band practise. We're playing the Beach Ballroom, or so I've told my Mum. She doesn't need to know it's a private birthday thing in one of the upstairs function rooms. Looking forward to the gig anyway.

Things I need to do. Practise the bloody tunes.

Thursday I zoomed home, made curry, and went dancing.

Friday there was some more stuff. I think we went to the gym. Then we ate all the leftover party cheese and watched a bit too much Big Bang Theory**. We also started putting together the necessaries for a Rowan Tree Tents facebook page, cos' we are totally down with the social media youtwitface thing.

Things I need to do: spam you lot till you like our stoopid tents. Or you could just click here, like us now and be done with it.

Saturday we came up with and photographed this marvellous creation:

Photographed during the 30 minutes of glorious sunshine before the monsoon.

Tiny wooden drawer unit, which turned out to be free because it arrived in more pieces than intended. Amen for epoxy. Next jobs are to give it a coat of varnish, some legs to stand on, and some form of windbreak to go behind that stove. I've a marvellous kludge planned to fit that pretty red set of pans inside it. Only a few weeks till we need to use it, right. Oh, and we'll probably want a whole second set pretty soon.

Things I need to do: crack out the woodworking tools.

Then we got it all up on the website and everything.

Things I need to do: play with the website.

Sunday we did muchos dancing, as we launch in to a packed schedule of panicing about practising for our trip to Toulouse this June. Great fun. I am very much looking forward to this trip. Maybe I'll get all rose-tinted and harp on about dance festivals some other time. For now, what it really means is that we all suddenly become amateur dressmakers***

Things I need to do: buy acres of white check cotton tartan.

Yesterday we were at the theatre, watching the Full Monty. The tickets were freebies, so we wound up with 4 of us, me and the lovely girlfriend L, another couple, both of them girls. Yes, 4 women, all in relationships with other women, watching the Full Monty and totally enjoying the irony.

Phew. 5 minutes to seven, and I need to go see a man about a secret thing and get me over to that meeting. Wrote this in a one-er, so, erm, sorry for the distinct lack of pictures.

In other news... The lovely people at Comrie Croft have given us a little plug on their website! Isn't the world a marvellous, friendly place (occasionally)?! So, y'know if anyone fancies a stay in wee holiday in Comrie in a fancypants bell tent, the world may explode from the sheer pretentiousness, but we could probably sort that out for you.

Many more busy things, and great excitements planned for the week ahead. This time we might even keep the camera to hand!



*yeah, most of. Ain't going to be telling you about things you don't need to know about, or things you don't get to know about. So there.

**A combination to which I attribute total blame for the dreams that I had that night. There was an elephant, and a supermarket, and a castle full of ghosts. Feel free to interpret.

***not seamstresses, they're different.

Wanted: Your Old Junk

no, not like that

This week. In which I get myself a new toy, and then ask you for stuff

It's Tuesday! I'm just home. At 17:21 I had the startling realisation that the man I was talking to really resembled the Trolls in Frozen.

Ok, maybe only a little bit

L is out doing yoga. I've a pizza in the oven and I have just opened this exciting box.

Inside it was a smaller, possibly more exciting box.

And inside that was this shiny tiny piece of gadgetry.

Oooooh.

It's a Chromebook, which is think is shorthand for "cheap, small computer that's really useless if it's not connected to the internet". Thankfully it is connected to the internet, and it's giving me a guided tour of itself (which would be a very personal thing to do were it a person and not, in fact, a computer) while I write all this on George, my 2007 relative dinosaur of a laptop, which can only manage to run a browser and no other programs. What I think it will do is everything I ever need a computer to do outside of work, whilst not wasting space or money on stuff I'd never use. Cloud storage, google docs, that kind of thing. Wish me luck.

What it will mean is an end to this sort of nonsense behaviour.

Yes, there is a keyboard under the table. A toddler left it there at a raucous party we had on Saturday. 

A memo be circulated. FAO: me. Subject: Appropriate Computer Use. All snack and beverages to remain at a safe distance from the Shiny. A Shiny Safety Zone will be established around the shiny in to which no crumby, sticky or liquid substances shall pass. For a while at least.

Beep beep, beep beep, beep beep. Pizza must be ready.

Leftover party pizza, with additional leftover party cheese. I love you guys.

So things are pretty good. I have a new toy to play with. I had a Birthday. You guys were all lovely and came round and we had a happy little party. I know we did because the flat is tidy-ish and I keep finding mugs on shelves. There's leftover party food in the fridge and in the freezer and there's quite a lot more Prosecco in the flat than there was before Saturday.

Yesterday we went out for our tea, stuffed our faces, whilst romantically talking about tents and plans for them. Then we came home and emailed lots of people, asking for what boils down to free tent advertising. Some of them have even said yes.

This has inspired us to do bit more shopping for tent stuff, and in doing that we got to thinking about how much buying stuff we really want to do. No more than we have to, was the answer we came to, and the feeling that I've always had about these things. And then to really question the things that we do end up buying, to make sure we're going with the best option.

The tents, they're new. That means they match and we can confidently say that they're in great nick, and that they were made in the country and all that. I don't want to send people off to sleep in a tent that I'm not confident about. The air beds, well they're new, but they're made of recycled stuff. Gas stoves, definitely new. I ain't about to go blowing you all up. Some stuff, on the other hand, need not be new, and this is where we come a-begging.

We want to make your old junk in to pretty, useful things. 

Here's a list:

Scraps of cotton, for me to tear up in to strips and crochet in to floor mats.

So, so much more to do. 

Scraps of yarn, to knit in to useful and/or pretty things.

Glass jars, especially the small ones.

Tin Mugs.

The Monopoly one is my favourite.

We're got a handful of these beauties already, with the aim in mind of a miss-matched "set" of 4 to go in each kitchen package. I've been stalking eBay, and they're all so expensive. To be fair, we might give in and nip down to Aberdeen market for some plain ones to make up the numbers, but if any of you happen to have any lying around that you don't use and are not attached to in any way, then we can really help you out there.

Wine bottle corks, going to make something out of them one day.

Next week I hope to have gotten a prototype and some photos together to show you what we have in mind for those glass jars and scraps of yarn that we're looking out for.

Till then...

Off to Find Some Northern Lights

Or, y'know look at some clouds. 

Apparently there's a decent chance of seeing the Aurora Borealis today in this part of the world.

This being the case, Mother Nature has decided to blanket Aberdeenshire in a nice low layer of cloud and fog.

To be honest, I don't fancy our chances.

So we're chowwing down our Taco Salad slightly quicker than a Doctor would recommend, and we're about to jump in the car and head out in search of a break in the cloud somewhere away from the light-pollution bubble. Wish us luck.

In other news, we did some dancing this weekend.

L had a lovely time and I, apparently, stared in to space looking wistful. 

We also went to Messy Church, which I think we may have personally outgrown. But if you're still young enough to go to nursery or school and not get paid for it, I would highly recommend it. There was potato-printing. The toddler I was looking after was much more concerned with pushing Thomas the Tank Engine down the slide, but I made sure that he didn't miss out on the potato-printing. I'm nice like that.

I'm now going to be terribly lax and run away without really having written much for you all. If there is anything more than darkness and mist out there, I might return with some nice pictures. If you have any specific party food requests for Saturday (you didn't forget, did you?) you have got a few days to let me know. See you then!

Big Brave Things

Here is a thing that we're doing. Eek

Evening all, it's been a whole fortnight. Have you missed me? Actually, don't answer that, my little bloggy ego probably couldn't take it.

We did many things. We went to many places and danced many dances. We travelled many many miles, mostly patronising the wonder of back-of-an-envelope style organisation that is Megabus. I spent half an hour in Cardiff, at 6 in the morning, standing in the street eating a terrible croissant. I have been accruing life experiences.

This (I imagine) is a Cornish Six-Hand Reel, and I (I imagine) am just off-shot to the bottom right. Thanks to C for putting this image somewhere nice and public for me to "borrow". 

This weekend just past I went to a wedding. They both said yes and all is well. A wonderful time was had by all, and we now know that it takes at least 4 people and 2 false starts to work out how a Friendly Waltz goes. Sorry 'bout that everyone.

Congrats M&M! 

Really hope you two like Denby.

Shocking realisation time. I have a confession to make. Here goes. I really like Premier Inns. They're all purple and matching, and you can see the telly from the bed. The nice big comfy bed that someone else made up and all the pillows you get to choose from. I had a bath the night we arrived, even though it was past midnight and I was so tired there was a real possibility I'd fall asleep and be found by the cleaners the next day, just because there was one. Then because I was worried that I might fall asleep in the bath, I made tea, with the tiny kettle and the free teabags. Then I was awake for hours, but that was ok, because I could sit in bed and watch rudetube. And then... And Then! Then you get to wake up* and someone else has already set out all of the things you might ever possibly want to eat for breakfast.

Really what I'm saying is that I should paint my room purple and put a tiny kettle in the corner.

Less messin', I have things to tell you. 

Drumroll please...

Stop. I'm building this up too much.

Let's just tell the story.

I, along with the lovely L, am about to embark on what I hope will become a happy little weekend sideline, and foray in to the world of all things camping. We are making the move from just owning and using all of our fancypants camping kit, to hiring it out so that other people can use it.

I give you, Rowan Tree Tents, our little baby website. 

Our essential idea is this, camping kit is expensive and fiddly and a pain in the arse to dry out, store, move around etc. But camping is awesome. Camping in Scotland is very awesome. So wouldn't it be nice if you could have an awesome Scottish camping holiday, in a really pretty, comfy, furnished tent, without having to worry about any of it? So we're giving this thing a shot. Hiring out our bell tents (yes, plural - you should see the spare room).

The model seems to be rather popular in more southerly, overpopulated parts of the UK, and there doesn't seem to be anyone doing it on a small-scale basis north of the border, so I'm hopeful that there is a tiny little niche up here for us to wiggle ourselves and our tents into.

Beyond that we don't really have a clue.

Us, not having a scooby.

It might not work. If it doesn't work we'll have a spare, unused, brand new bell tent which can get sold on again on ebay. Beyond that we'd be a couple of quid down, but we'd have given it a damn god shot.

Me, bravely running away.

Then again it might just work. If we get it right we could be looking at a summer of weekends where we run around the county, going to beautiful parts of Scotland to set people up with beautiful tents. We could wind up very tired and sticking a few extra thousand miles on poor little Spoyky. We might even make a little bit of pocket money.

So it's early days yet, but spring is fast approaching so it's time to stop being shy about our ideas. 

The website, so that you can tell all of your friends is www.rowantreetents.com. The more it gets visited the higher up google's search rankings it will be, and the happier I will be. Some time soon you will no doubt be invited to "like" some form of Facebook presence. In the meantime please ask us questions, there's probably tons we haven't thought of, or have thought of and haven't done yet. If you're feeling nosy, keep half an eye on that website, it's an absolute work in progress. Have a read through - beyond the two of us it hasn't even been properly proof-read, and anyone reading this will know that I am capable of writing some utter codswallop when I really try.

We even do gift certificates. Coming soon to a raffle near you.

And wish us luck!



*and get dressed and go downstairs