Marie's Web Log

I know I haven't posted for a while. I was knocked out of commission by some kind of nasty virus thing. I had to go back to the doctor and get yet another round of antibiotics, my second in a month. And an inhaler for my horrible, rasping cough. Don't worry, the inhaler's not the serious kind with steriods. The doctor said I may have reactive bronchial sensitivity, or something like that. On the positive side, after several days of rain and warmer temperatures, spring has finally sprung.

Posted by marie at 09:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Some cute sayings of Amelia's. I don't know if I told you about the one at Christmas-time, when she referred to Santa Claus as Santa Closet. We thought that was very cute. A little while ago we bought her a couple of marbles (no, not ones small enough that she could choke on) from a place called the House of Marbles. She lost one, and asked me what had happened to her "marvellous." Hee. Also she has a toy stuffed Daffy Duck that I got free from a drugstore, some promotion they were running. The other day she said his name was "Daffodil Duck." She pronounced it daff-oh-deel.

What else? Just trying to work on my novel (ha!). Though I think I should start calling it my novel (argh!). So hard to be objective about it. At one writing class I went to, I remember being told to be careful about thinking your writing is too good, but I have the opposite problem.

Still no news on the work or PhD front. Sometimes feel like I'm flailing about in quicksand, no chance of getting out. But I mustn't go down that road, or soon I'll be on to things like "Here I am at my age (I'm not telling you what age, though most of you know) and what have I achieved, blah blah...

We went to look at cats at the Cats Protection Society. They have to come and do a home visit before they'll let us have one. Also, they're pretty insistent that we put in a cat flap, which we can't do, obviously, in a rented house. Oddly, the RSPCA in Canada recommends that you keep your cats in, for safety reasons. Here they seem concerned that you won't let them out enough.

Posted by marie at 09:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Still cold here. Coldest winter in a decade, so the local paper says. So here's a photo to cheer me up. Not you, if you're in Toronto or N.B., as I've heard it's been unseasonably warm there. Or has that changed too?

Oh, and here's another one. The allotment, with part that Ian has already dug over.

Posted by marie at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

We almost moved to Edinburgh. I didn't want to mention it before, as I didn't want anyone to get excited (or freak out) unnecessarily. Ian had a job interview at one of the universities there last week, for a research post. He flew up and stayed over one night. Unfortunately he didn't get the job. It would have been a big change from the south west, but I wouldn't have minded going to a bigger city. I miss some aspects of city life. Exeter is only a small town masquerading as a city.

Ian also applied for a job with the Devon Wildlife Trust, but had a letter saying some of their funding had fallen through, so they weren't continuing with the process. Nothing is going our way on the financial side of things, and I don't know why.

We spent most of yesterday driving around the south west coast of Devon, an area we haven't spent much time in. A group of friends from Mississauga are coming over in June and we're all planning to spend a week together in a rented place. There are 15 of us including the children, so we need somewhere big. We went down to check out a couple of places we'd seen on the internet. It was a lovely sunny day, though cold in the wind. It's always interesting exploring the twisty, turny back roads of rural Devon. We spent ten mintues on one of those roads driving down to a beach, but when we got there it was spectacular - Bigbury-on-Sea. I took some photos, but they're still in the camera. Let me try to find one on the internet for you.

Well, they don't really do it justice, but here are a couple:

The island is only a temporary one - it's connected to the mainland at low tide. There's a pub on it that's been there since the 13th century, and an Art Deco hotel built by a crazy millionaire in the 1920s.

Amelia is fine. Her drawing skills have developed to the point where she is attempting to make representational drawings - mostly they look like circles. Though the other day she drew a series of circles joined together and said it was a train. She likes to play tea party with her stuffed animals, and last night she was feeding them butterfly stickers and chalk. Yum!

By the way, I am now set up on iChat, complete with video camera. If any of you are on iChat or AOL Instant Messaging, let me know. We could do one-way video chat even if you don't have a camera. I'm also using Skype for free voice chat. Both Skype and AIM are available from the internet as free downloads.

Posted by marie at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My apologies to those who don't get the joke in the title. (Chad, if you're reading this, you should!) I looked out the back patio doors a little while ago, and saw big fat snowflakes blowing around in the glow of the streetlamps. There is some snow on the ground, too - about an inch or so. If it keeps up, and we get a couple of inches, Amelia's nursery school might be cancelled tomorrow. (No, you diehard Canadian types, I'm not kidding.)

The weather has been strange lately. A lot of hail, cold winds, rain, sun, everything really. It has been much colder than it was last winter. Serves me right, I suppose, for being so smug. Still see people in shorts nearly every day, though.

On the other hand, my crocuses by the front door were in full bloom this afternoon. If I had a digital camera, I'd have taken a photo for you.

We made the momentous decision the other day to rent an allotment. For the uninitated, these are plots of public land leased out to people to grow vegetables on. Ours is in a really big site on a slope on the other side of the river, with beautiful views of the city. Apparently it used to be a plant nursery, and was left to the city with the proviso that it would be kept as allotments. I bet the city would love to sell it to a housing developer.

The usual size of a plot is 250 m by 10 m. This is quite large! Ours is only a half plot, luckily. The one next to ours has a full-size plum tree on it, and ours has brambles and some other things growing. Judging by the plants and trees on the other plots (the genial allotment officer took us on a guided tour) the site has been there for quite some time. Unfortunately it's been too cold to actually do anything with it yet.

Ian has to go down to Plymouth tomorrow to talk to someone at the university there about maybe doing a PhD with them. They already have grant money available for his type of subject. I hope the snow isn't too bad.

All for now.

Posted by marie at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)