Back home again

I'm home from a week's holiday in NSW - had a lovely time. The wattle was flowering all along the roadsides - lovely! However, it was pretty cold down there! One morning the pipes had all frozen, and the water in the birdbath was solid!

On the Monday we drove up to Sydney and I managed to get in a quick visit to the new Apple Store in Sydney. Gazed longingly at the new iPhone there - one day I'll get one! But for now my aim is to save up enough to go overseas next year! My accountant also told me I needed to get a new laptop, but I'm afraid it's going to be the same story regarding priorities!


We spent a few days in Mudgee, a lovely little town in central NSW - has a thriving wine industry among other things! We were staying with family friends who have a property (farm!) there. It was so nice. I spent half a day driving round helping to cart rocks to put into a creekbed to help erosion there. Then we went wine-tasting and even honey-tasting!

Met up with someone who I used to work with - she is enjoying her new life down south!

I took my yoga mat with me and managed to fit in a bit of yoga once! (naughty, naughty!) But I guess that's better than nothing. Monday evening I'll go in to class.

Now I'm sitting in front of the fire, but it's a lot warmer up here! Tomorrow I'll work on a small website I've got to do, and I'm also going to try and finish (or nearly finish!) my mosaic piece! On Thursday evening our new book club is meeting at my place and some of my fellow mosaic-ers are coming and want to see it finished!!

Cardiff photo in online travel guide

Have a look at this:

Schmapp for the iPhone

Last year someone from this online travel guide (Schmap - what a name!!) contacted me and asked if they could use one of the photos I’d taken at the National History museum near Cardiff (Wales) when I was there in 2005. (They found them in my Flickr page.) So of course I said yes.

Now they’ve done a new version of the online guide for the iPhone, and they sent me this link to show me what my photo looks like in their iPhone guide!

If only I had the money to get one ... :)

Doctor's visit and other stuff

Today was the day I went for my 3-monthly appointment with my doctor ... rather than repeating it all, you can read about it on my lymphoma blog. Suffice to say I am pretty happy about things!

I managed to combine the doctor's visit with a work project meeting in one of the uni's coffeeshops - Wordsmiths. I'm part of a small project team that is trying to write/develop clear accessibility approaches, based on the WCAG v2.0 Accessibility 'Principles'. These are much clearer than the W3C's V1 targets, but are still quite difficult to comprehend! We're doing this initially for our workplace TEDI (Teaching & Educational Development Institute), trying to apply them to different roles within TEDI- eg. Graphic Designers, Instructional Designers, Programmers. Now we've won an internal grant from the uni's diversity/disability committee to do this, which means we're going to have to take the next step (!), run training sessions for different groups within TEDI, and also present it as a 'seminar' with the university's annual Teaching & Learning Week, sometime in November I think.

This weekend I'm going down to NSW to spend a week with my Mum. We've got a pretty busy week lined up, with various family members coming down on the weekend, a visit to Sydney on Monday, and on Wednesday we're going on a bit of a road trip to Mudgee, to visit some friends. That should be really nice - we'll be there for 2-3 days. Then back on the following weekend. I will be taking my camera so should have some nice photos to share ... :)

Christian the Lion - wonderful YouTube

This is such a gorgeous Youtube video! When someone sent it to me on Facebook I was sure it was not going to have a happy ending, but instead it brings tears to your eyes!!

My scans were clear!!!

Yesss!! I had CT and PET scans last Friday and although I'd been sure they would be clear, as the date approached I started to worry, all the 'whatifs' were running through my head, specially in bed at night!

Anyway, I got a message from my doctor that they were negative / clear !! I'm seeing him again in a couple of weeks, and I'll see what he has to say then, but it is quite a relief! (I couldn't have waited 2 weeks to hear!!)

Apart from that (great news!) things are good! I did yoga practice at work yesterday (lunchtime) which felt really good. And we've got the Friday lunchtime yoga session with a few others from work happening again too.

The chooks have gone back to Angela, now that she's back from her world tour! She came for dinner on Sunday night and we went down to the chookshed at about 8pm with a torch and various boxes and managed to transfer them into said boxes without too much squawking or anxiety!

Anyway, I'm happy! A weight has been taken off my mind (which I put there, but ...) and I can get on with enjoying life and what it brings!