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Thursday, 28 May 2009

Good days and bad days





Sunday, 24 May 2009

Isn't amazing how the weather can affect your moon?





Tuesday, 19 May 2009

New Career?

I have managed to get the printer up and running without too much trouble. This means that I can finally get round to printing up some more card blanks for cardmaking.

A colleague at work asked if I would do a card for her parents Platinum Wedding Anniversary - 70 years! I made it last night as I could print the wording before making the card with a design that Janet had asked me to do. When her parents married in 1939 her mother wore a corsage of three red roses with Lily of the Valley. Managed to design this on the PC and then print it off and then added decoupage roses. I was rather pleased with the results, though I now realise that I didn't take a photo of it before giving it to her. This evening I have been making wedding invitation acceptance cards for two other colleagues.

Could this be a new career? I would love to think so but the time it takes to make them means that it is not really possible to make a living at it. I only charge 50p a card just to get rid of them. It is all very well making them, but I can make far more than I would ever need to send so this gets them out of the way. At the moment the money all goes to a fund that my workplace has to raise money to build a science lab in a school in Rwanda.

Previously I have bought things from Good which I like as the money actually goes to buy the thing that you have chosen, whereas some other such charities will divert the money if they think there is more need. I also like the idea of practical gifts that can achieve something other than paying for advertising, salaries etc for charities. Necessary as that may be I want to be able to see what I am buying. With everything these days I tend to think that all organisations waste a lot of money and resources on image and branding when what was there before was just as good.

Sunday, 17 May 2009

Is technology good or bad?

I bought myself a new printer today. I got a new PC just before Christmas and my old printer won't load, though I have tried downloading drivers from the internet for it. Now it looks as though my mobile phone has given up the ghost! Technology is something we use all the time but it is only when it doesn't work that you truly realise how much you rely on it; to say nothing of how convenient it is.

Take electricity. I don't think that I use that much, but have a power cut and I then appreciate how much of it I do use, and for how many things. No power? I'll listen to the radio - no that runs off electricity. Can't use the cooker so no hot food and can't even boil water.

I thought it wouldn't matter that I didn't have a printer, I don't use it very much but when I do it is for things that I can't do elsewhere. I make cards to sell for charity and I have my own logo that I use on the cards. This means printing on custom paper sizes for the different size of cards that I make. I also use it for wording as my handwriting is not good enough to be able to hand write too much, though I do occasionally use my own writing. Then there are photos that occasionally I want to print off to send to people without the bother of getting them professionally done. The convenience of the technology we use is the reason we rely on it so much, a bit like cars - we know we could walk but it is so much quicker/warmer/drier to use the car. On that score it is good, but we have come to rely on it too much and have forgotten to rely on ourselves to get things done. It is the time it saves us, but do we then use that spare time for anything useful? Probably not.

Anyway I must go and set up the new printer, if I can understand the destructions.

Saturday, 16 May 2009





Friday, 15 May 2009

Let the Adventure begin

Stage IV Cancer is a journey and an adventure and in a strange way has given meaning to my life and made me more positive. I know that sounds strange because it should be the other way round, but being told you statistically don't have a future allows you in the end to be liberated from the concerns of the future and to concentrate on the here and now. It takes some adjusting to and it hasn't been easy but right now I think I am happier and more contented than I have ever been.

The Great Adventure of the title is not about big things like going round the world or climbing a mountain, it is about the real things that matter, like doing the Race For Life on 21 June 09, sorting out my house and all the other things that I can still do and accepting and ignoring the things I can't do any longer. We all have a past as that has happened, but none of us has a future because it hasn't happened yet. Saying that I know what the future holds for me today and that is two fillings at the dentist so I had better go but I'll be back!