12 Sept 2010

Day 255:
On the way home from London with Cristina, Ines and Nicolas in the car, we took the more scenic route home via the A303, turning off to head up to Glastonbury. The plan was to visit the Abbey ruins as well as Glastonbury Tor. Some days are full of surprises and this one turned out to be all about serenity... We had dinner in town at a cafe then hiked up Glastonbury Tor, just in time to catch the sunset over the Somerset Downs... Life is good!

11 Sept 2010

Day 254:
The day had finally arrived to see MUSE at the new Wembley Stadium. Although I started out standing stage right, I eventually moved to a seat right at the back to take in everything that was going... it was AMAZING! Definitely an excellent day with good friends and great music (well, minus the support bands...). Where else can you see a UFO flying around a stadium with a person suspended on a trapeze below it (sorry, photo not shown)?

10 Sept 2010

Day 253:
I headed up to London for the weekend for the MUSE gig at Wembley Stadium. Before going to that on Saturday, Jane, Iain, Rie and I met up for dinner at Acornhouse near King's Cross. It was a lovely meal (mostly all organic & sustainably sourced) with lovely friends, until the cabbages got involved! ;-)

8 Sept 2010

Day 251:
While still convalescing, I finally made a visit to Antony House for a bit of a wander around, after living in Plymouth for 4 years. It's a National Trust property about 6 miles from where I live and was used in the filming of Tim Burton's version of 'Alice in Wonderland'. Although I still have yet to see that movie, the house was pretty cool and strolling through the gardens was a lovely way to spend an afternoon despite the spitting rain at times.

5 Sept 2010

Day 248:
Under the approval of my surgeon, Rie and I went for a (7 mile--maybe that was overdoing it a bit) walk from the Cremyll ferry to Cawsand/Kingsand up over Maker Heights and then back through Empacombe Quay before returning to the Cremyll ferry. We started the day with a lovely Sunday roast dinner at the Mt Edgecumbe Arms pub, followed by tasty Cornish ice cream from the Orangery Tea Room and topped off with a Cornish cream tea in Cawsand. Along the way we encounter a rope swing in a tree. Of course we both had a go and it was BRILLIANT FUN... especially that first swing out from the ground.

3 Sept 2010

Day 246:
Well, I went in for a heart operation and all I left with was two band-aids! Modern surgery is simply incredible! The fact that I went home the same day after having medical instruments inside my heart earlier that morning/afternoon is beyond belief! And all that I have to show for it are these two small incisions on the bikini line of my left leg and one even smaller one on my right leg, less than 48 hours after surgery. WOW!

2 Sept 2010

Day 245:
I had Rie take this photo of me before we left for the hospital to go and get my heart sorted out, hopefully once and for all. Just wanted to have a record of the day in case something happened to me.  :-S Fortunately for all involved, a positive outcome was achieved!

1 Sept 2010

Day 244:
On my last day with my 'dicky ticker' (as Rie calls it), I met up with Hronn who was passing through town on her way back to Iceland. It was lovely to see her again and catch up on how her PhD adventure is panning out so far.

31 Aug 2010

Day 243:
Trying to be a little arty, I tried desperately to capture the steam rising from my morning cup of tea in the kitchen. The steam was a little harder to capture than I thought it would be...

30 Aug 2010

Day 242:
In an effort to try and learn to use the external flash on my camera and in keeping with a chilled out weekend, I practised using the flash while laying on the couch, taking photos of things in my living room. Funny as it may seem, you can learn a great deal about photography this way, just as long as you can remember what settings you had the camera and flash set to for a particular output!

29 Aug 2010

Day 241:
For an unexpected turn of events, I hosted a BBQ at my place. Nicolas, Cristina and Ines came over and hung out for the evening. While outside sitting on the terrace, there was an AMAZING ray of rainbow that appeared through the clouds over Plymouth. None of us had ever seen anything like that before!

28 Aug 2010

Day 240:
Today was the day that I came off of my medication (beta blockers) in preparation for my heart surgery. Not wanting to tempt fate and set my heart off into palpitations, I decided to stay home despite the gorgeous weather. So, taking it easy, I headed out to the terrace and worked on my tan. While out there, I spent a lot of time thinking about my legs and what it would be like to be in my mother's shoes, so to speak, as she had her left leg amputated on the 25th. It was hard not to cry...

27 Aug 2010

Day 239:
As a sort of final 'hurrah' for the summer & while most people were still in town (or had just returned), a large group of us went out for some drinks after work over at Air (across the road from uni) upon Sam's insistence. She had every intention of only staying for ONE drink, but 3.5 drinks later she was finally making her way home to pack as she was off to Oxford, Canada and Scotland the following morning at 9am. She was worried about forgetting the essentials so Kate helped her remember by writing a list of items that couldn't forget to pack once home in her drunken state... :-)

26 Aug 2010

Day 238:
Yet again, another funny thing that I saw along the walk in to uni. WHO ON EARTH WOULD EVER WANT TO BUY SUCH AN ATROCIOUS PIECE OF CLOTHING?!?!?  The only reason why I would want to know where she got that jumpsuit is so that I could torch the place to save us all from further fashion faux pas.

25 Aug 2010

Day 237:
Although taken the day before, this was what the weather was like on this day too. In fact, it could be any number of summer day's in Plymouth. And yes, sometimes I feel like I am imprisoned due to the weather...

24 Aug 2010

Day 236:
Such a beautiful Plymouth summer's day (view from the Davy Bldg)...

23 Aug 2010

Day 235:
In my quest to get as many samples processed as possible before my heart surgery, I had to make up a new batch of super saturated sodium carbonate (Na2CO3). These were the residual crystals left in the beaker.

21 Aug 2010

Day 233:
Well, as I was sitting here working on updating this blog, I was listening to KEXP on my internet radio and practically fell out of my chair when I heard New Model Army on the RADIO, during prime time Saturday no less!!!  The song played was "Understand U". Not their best one, but I'll take it! I was so shocked that I immediately emailed the dj and told him that I had just seen them the night before and that they were on stage right at that moment at Beautiful Days Festival, which he relayed on air! If you fancy a listen in the next 2 weeks, go to KEXP's website (http://www.kexp.org/streamarchive/streamarchive.asp), choose Stevie Zoom as the host, select 21 Aug as the date and you'll find the song at about 1:53pm.  :-)  His comments come later (after the 2nd set of of music following NMA), but he was totally excited that I had emailed him that info!

Might have to start pledging my financial support to KEXP again (seeing that they are my favourite radio station) now that they have FINALLY played some NMA, which I asked them to do years ago to help generate interest in the band while they were touring in the US.

20 Aug 2010

Day 232:
I wasn't really in the mood to take photos at the NMA gig in Poole, so didn't take many and the ones that I did all turned out bad for the most part. However, Sean left his camera on the table in the pub and everyone decided to take bizarre, out-of-focus, close-up photos of body parts. This is him looking at the results of their foray into the 'abstract'.

19 Aug 2010

Day 231:
Since I didn't get a worker's ticket for Beautiful Days Festival, I wouldn't be going again, which made me sad to miss out on some pretty good music including the Sunday Morning Sermon with The Fabulous Good Time Party Boys (again!). This year, however, The Fabbies along with a few others (Dan Donnelly, The Fish Brothers, The Big V and Rev Hammer) all did a gig the night before Beautiful Days at the Exeter Phoenix Arts Centre. The Fabbies 'theme' for this year seemed to be ZOMBIES! It was a BRILLIANT night out seeing friends, dancing, laughing, drinking and seeing someone that I hadn't seen in 21 years!