Hurrah! I am back!! This is my first post in a long time but I’m determined to get back into my blogging! I’m conducting a social networking experiment at the moment, which I hope will allow me to blog more and I will post about that at the end of January but for now it’s just….
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
God, it’s been so long I’ve even forgotten how to change the font and colour!!!
nb. Facebook friends. This posts to my PAGE on Facebook so it doesn’t count!!! 😉
Having just said I wanted to write about more serious stuff on my blog, I just needed to update you on a few things first. I’ve written a list:
1. Burlesque dancing
It’s going well. I am still rubbish at it, I will never master the art of shimmying whilst dipping and I am more Rita von Cheese than Dita von Teese but that doesn’t matter. It’s fun, the girls are lovely and I get to wear frilly stuff. There is a possibility I will even perform later this year with the group!!!!
2. Italian classes
Yup, finished the classes and have been to Italy since. I wasn’t sure how much I would use the stuff we learned in class. I didn’t feel the need to ask anyone where the museum was or what time the next train to Milan left. However, I found that the basics I did learn gave me the confidence to try and speak the language and to ask the locals how to say the things I didn’t know. I’m pretty much fluent now…… And Italy was beautiful, as always
3. Gym and my personal trainer
Oh forget that. I never intend to set foot in a gym again as long as I live
4. Transport
I got a new car. Well, not brand new but new to me. Her name is Bunty and she is a Mini. I’ve never had the inclination to name a car before but I do actually love this one. And she goes!!!
I am sure I have more to tell you – but I won’t do it now. I’ll save it for next time
And anyway, I am just in the middle of writing a list on things I need to do
Well, we are almost at the end of January. My initial resolve was to take part in the 365 Project and post on the same theme for a whole year. I chose motivation but quickly realised that I’d bore myself, let alone my readers, if I posted up about that for a WHOLE YEAR!! So, I decided to adapt the idea and post on the same topic for a month. I also allowed myself not to post every day. I pretty much abandoned the 365 Project in fact!
Anyway, I have, more or less, posted motivationally themed stuff throughout January, I think, and I intend to end with a summary of how my own motivation has helped me to keep up my fitness training and started all the other things I said I would do.
Or rather, that WAS the intent
Unfortunately, I’ve just returned from a slap up meal of Tapas with copious amounts of wine and I really feel a bit of a fraud talking about how determined I am to eat healthily and keep fit.
Although I did go to a personal training session at the gym this morning. AND I have been walking regularly. AND…and this is the bestest AND….I have joined a burlesque dancing class. So far, I’ve only been to the taster session but I’ve signed up for the full six weeks. It’s so much fun! The challenge for me is how to look alluring whilst trying to follow the steps. Not quite there yet but I’m hopeful! Anyway, I highly recommend it as a fun way to exercise.
And, joking apart, I am really enjoying my exercise, whatever form it takes.
The Italian classes are great fun too, not too hard but I’m learning new stuff. It’s fun doing the class with KD who has a fantastic accent and we practise our new words during the week so I fully expect to be fluent by the end of the course (well, I hope to be able to order wine and food at least. Or just the wine even….).
As for the other projects I had intended to pick up on, well, the photography is slow. The weather has been poor and I have yet to find the subject that inspires me….but I will. I am a frustrated photographer.
I have not done any more drawing and I have totally forgotten about the needlecraft apart from a brief spell (one evening) where I got out the knitting needles for half hour.
Still, it’s only January. Eleven more months to achieve my goals!
I have decided to make my theme for February ‘Love’.
Amore.
Not sure what I’ll post yet but isn’t that the beauty of it all?
Ciao Belle.
I have a few different methods for remembering topics I want to blog about. One is to jot it down in the back of my diary. Another is to use my dictaphone to say a couple of key words and the other is the ‘notes’ feature on my iTouch.
I haven’t actually used this iTouch feature for some while now but I thought I’d just check and see if there are any ideas outstanding that I might want to turn into a post here.
I have five things listed, as follows:
Rouge Nipples
Quotient
Sandwiches
Fabulous business idea
Music
Now, I can remember what the music prompt is to do with and I will blog about that one day.
As for the others, I am totally clueless.
ROUGE NIPPLES??????
Whatever could I have been thinking about???
I’m even scaring myself there…..
It’s always nice to have a new project I think. Unfortunately, I have many ‘new’ projects -started and never finished. Needlework, knitting (I still have a cardigan I started for my six month old daughter. She is 29 now), painting and drawing, machine embroidery, web designing, photography, blogging (well, that’s kind of consistent in a fluctuating way), gym and keep fit….the list just goes on.
So, this year, I am going to write the list out and work my way through it and do every one of these projects by the end of 2012.
To add to the list, and a brand new project for me, I shall be starting Italian classes next week with KD.
I’m really looking forward to this as it is a very different sort of project compared to my usual ventures. It is only a 12 week course, just to get us through our next holiday in Italy in June. As long as they teach me how to say “Just leave the bottle on the table thank you” and “mine’s a double” I will consider it money well spent…..
I’ve just upgraded my blog and changed to a new PREMIUM theme, which looked as if it had a bit more flexibility than the previous one, although I was rather fond of that
Trouble is, I’m absolutely useless at all this stuff and I’m really lost now!
I have a blog roll and I can’t remember how to add people. The font is boring. The pages are boring. It all looks very untidy.
I’ve just accidentally subscribed to my own blog and I’ve lost my nice photo of the web that I had previously and it’s not on this laptop so I have to fiddle around to get it back. Even then, there’s no guarantee it will pop up where I want it to! Sigh…..
So, if the sight of my blog offends your eyes, bear with me, it offends me too!
My technical staff are working on the problem to resolve the issue as soon as possible and normal service WILL be resumed shortly
I hope!
I’m also still learning how to use a Mac which, although I love, is very different from a PC in a lot of ways and I’m always getting stuck (although I have just discovered how to save an image onto the Mac!)
All this is , without a doubt, the most difficult thing I have ever done
And I’m doing it all for FUN????!!!
I just can’t get organised since I returned from the holiday. I haven’t blogged here, I’m way behind with reading the blogs I follow and I have all sorts of other tasks and online activities to catch up on
It’s always the same when I have been away. I am not the world’s most organised person and structure does not come easily to me – I have to work VERY hard at it. That’s why I find lists so useful – but I haven’t even managed to write a LIST this week, I’ve just sort of lurched from one thing to another and it’s all very disorganised. Sadly, the Virgo in me loves order and structure so, as you can imagine, I’m totally confused now!
When I say the Virgo in me, I must stress I am not a great follower of the stars (apart from Russell Brand who I adore but that’s a different story and another type of star) but there really does seem to be something in the characteristics associated with different birth signs. Virgoans are supposed to be very organised. In my HEAD I am. In reality, it never seems to work like that because I am cursed with a butterfly brain. Well, I say cursed. If I wasn’t a Virgo I probably wouldn’t worry. But you see my inner conflict? Half of me wants to be all over the place but the other half is having kittens over it…..sigh
On another note, the N has disappeared on our keyboard. Well, it’s still there, but the actual N has rubbed off the key. This happens with every keyboard we get. We don’t know why. I don’t think our N gets over used. Maybe it does. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s gone again. Good job we know where the N should be on the keyboard. Well, of course we do. It’s the only key without a letter on it.
I’m off to write a ew list ow……
(Oh..and here’s a photo of a chair)
We are off on holiday in a few days time, to Porto Santo for the week. I am very much looking forward to it and I have started to think what I might need to take with me.
Not clothes, or shoes, or bags (obviously I need all of those)
But GADGETS
I have 
my Blackberry
My iTouch
My dictaphone
But I feel I need something more
I need an iPad2, that’s what I need
Well, I don’t NEED it, I just want one, so that I can keep up my PostaDay2011 challenge
I know I could blog from my BB or from the iTouch but both are a bit small and fiddly and anyway, I want an iPad2…..
However, I can’t really justify the £400 odd it will cost me right now
So today I had a little ‘test play’ with the AISC tablet that KD bought recently, for a fraction of the cost
The reviews were very good
But I can’t get the hang of it at all
Admittedly I have zero patience with things like this
So, I will either have to persevere
Or buy an iPad, like NOW
Or have a week off blogging
Hmmmm…….
When I told my dog I was blogging here, he immediately wanted to be part of it.
After I told him I had posted a pic of him in his leg warmers, there was really no stopping him…..
So here he is on his way to a rock gig
What did I do before the internet came into my life? I spend hours every day online, whether it be for work, for research or just for pleasure. I log in first thing every morning and I am never far away from the rest of the world from then on.
I get annoyed if a page won’t load in a nano-second, I swear at error messages and I spend hours and hours looking at stuff that really doesn’t need to be looked at….
Social networking has gripped me. I Facebook mercilessly, I have three Twitter accounts and I have had profiles on too many sites to mention over the years. I am sure there is a trail of ME that is taking up half the space online!
I LOVE the internet
If it wasn’t for the internet, I wouldn’t be able to do my studying from home. I would have to traipse into London on the tube and sit in a library and read BOOKS or order papers from the counter and then wait ages for them to arrive….I’d have to remember to take the books back when I loaned them or face a fine and I would most definitely not have access to the wealth of information I am privileged to now…..
I would still have to go to the SHOPS to buy stuff instead of sitting in the comfort of my computer chair and browsing sites from all over the world, selling anything and everything you could possibly wish for
I wouldn’t have found old friends nor would I have been able to share news about myself so quickly…..
I would not have been blogging
Then again
I wouldn’t have a houseful of stuff I don’t need, simply because it was there, at the click of a button…….
I would have made myself a hand-embroidered quilt by now. Or learned how to speak Italian. Or finished any one of the many other projects I started years ago, before the internet was invented
I would go to the gym
Probably
I HATE the internet
I guess it’s a love-hate thing if I’m honest. But I think, on balance, I love it more than I hate it
So I won’t be giving it up just yet
The Flossie Country Files 