The End (well, onto a new chapter anyway)

From today my new blog is up and running at: www.mrselsmore.com . RSS feed for new blog available at: http://www.mrselsmore.com/hosted/te/blog.nsf/stories.rss

Thanks to all that have read here - if you enjoy then please follow me over onto the new blog.

T

'Angel Standing By' - by Cindly Lee Jones

Was tag searching for angels on flickr. You guys know I have a thing for angels right? ;) And I found an amazingly beautiful picutre: Angel Standing By. (It is copyright to her so the image is not here on the blog, but follow the link and you'll see it.)

I followed a couple of links and ended up on the artist's, Cindy Lee Jones, website. Her work is interesting for its variety both in terms of topic and technique. I recommend you take a look.

She has a section called '33 things': I hope she won't mind if I borrow one that I particularly like for a wee while:

How we greet the day and the people in it is up to us. When we leave this place, others will remember us not by what we did but by how we made them feel when they were with us...

Still here & life is good; really, really good: Socks, new blog, LS memories and more

Well being "vowe'd" yesterday made me think I should come out of my little 'nesting' hiddy-hole and say hello to the blogsphere again! Sorry for the quietness, but - I hope understandably- things have been a bit busy since we got back from the 6 week honeymoon that was the 'Elsmore World Tour'. We have been happy at home, just poddeling and doing stuff really. Libby reminded me it is called nesting and reassures me that it is quite natural for newly weds ;)

Anyhoo, after freeing Dobby from his evil Master, I feel I should continue my work and so I offer a green i-pod sock and an orange i-pod sock to any other unhappily-owned House Elves out there I know - all in the spirit of Hermione and S.P.E.W. of course ;) .

In other news:

New Blog:
I am now the proud owner of my own li'l piece of internet real estate: www.mrselsmore.com At the moment that url will redirect to this blog, so don't go trying to find it just yet, but you can update your links to reflect the change. RSS feed: at the button on the right hand sidebar (sorry, not sure of the url for the feed yet - note to self: need husband to come home and help out with a few minor IT bits and bobs ;) - so you'll just have to come to the site when it launches to grab the feed. Now as for the launch: Sunday 5th March 2006 seems as good a date as any; and it means I can call on Warren's expertise tomorrow to put some tweaks in place :) So from Sunday please follow me over onto www.mrelsemore.com - and my thanks to the Blogsphere team for their template.

LS '06 memories:
I know it was over a month ago, and this is darned late to be posting any sort of LS '06 review, but darn it I have been busy so here goes:

Let me start by saying that I HAD A BALL, AN ABSOLUTE BLAST. As soon as we arrived on the Friday night we found kindred spirits and old friends propping up the Dolphin Bar and things just continued from there, non-stop till we left on the following Saturday.

Personal highlights:
(Please take it as read that all caveats are in place about not meaning to forget anyone or anything - there's just so much and so many people I'm almost bound to forget someone or something - my apologies in advance. Oh and the whole 'In no particular order' set of caveats apply too.)

• Meeting so many people who I had spent the year reading and wishing to meet: Ben Poole, Captain Oblivious, Damien, Duffbert, Greyhawk, Jess & Matt, and The Lion King. You are all stars and I'm so glad to have been able to spend time with you.
• Meeting up with all those who I knew before we got there. Too numerous to list, but here goes: Alan, Bill, Bruce & Gayle, Declan, Devin, Ed, Pants, Paul, Richard, Terri, Turtle, Volker, Wes and Wouter & Coon.
• Meeting people I had not had on the radar at all:
  
• My incredibly special and dear friend Libby. Sometimes there are people you just click with. I think it took Libby and I about an hour of booze and Kimonos after the Opening Party and we were set to be life-long friends. You are an incredibly special person hon, and I can't wait to see you in Ireland in the summer.
• Kevin - basically you rock and boy were you good on that bungee thing at Sea World!
• Getting to indulge my split-personality trait and play at being, in turns: Duffbert, Greyhawk, Terri, Paul, Libby and anyone else I have forgotten. Thank to you all for your, umm, help in my enjoyment off all aspects of LS ;) And getting to the stage when people were questioning why I wasn't in a particular session.
  
• Thanks to Volker for making a specific effort to ensure I had a ticket for the Wednesday night party and to Libby's friend for her help in that too. Thanks also to Pants for preventing me from falling out of the minibus on our arrival at Sea World (due to missing the step I will add for all those sniggerng that I was drunk before we arrived ;))
• Hearing Bill welcome 'Warren and Libby - who have just got married and are spending their honeymmon at Lotusphere' to one of his and Paul's Worst Practice session! Good one Bill.
• Paul: I'm proud of you - and you know why.
• Seeing some of the Inter-Navy swan 'race' and thinking it almost worthwhile opening a book on how long it would take Buchan to capsize ;)
• Taking my hadsl dominos and playing them with Libby by the Dolphin's pool.
• Listening to one of the funniest comedians I have ever had the pleasure to hear live - my eyes were streaming and my sides aching by the time he finished.
• Belting out 'American Pie' - the LONG version with Libby in Kimonos and having all our friends singing along. And generally the whole of Sunday night in Kimonos - kudos to all who sang.

Oh jeez, think I had better stop there - just too much fun. It was madder than the first week of the new year of each of the three of my years are Uni and a hundred times more fun and happier. Thank you all for making it so great and see you next year I hope.

Life is good; really, really good:
Since we have been back in Edinburgh I have been remembering why I love this City so much. My friend Wendy, who is currently staying here, was saying this morning that there was some theroy that for each of us there are 7 places in the world where we feel immediately and completely at home. Edinburgh is definitely the top of my list. I feel such a sense of belonging when I walk down its streets. I feel so at ease and at home in it - it constantly amazes me quite how at home I feel - I feel it everyday and everytime I step out of my door.

I am generally so happy and so content in my life at the moment - really deep-seated and deep-rooted contentment - that I'm likely to be encompassed within it and neglect the blog. I know there are those out there who read and wish I would post more. But to be honest my blog is a pretty accurate reflection of me and as such it is not a rapid-fire commentary on life, that is churning out the latest thoughts (I have this picture in my head of the constantly stuttering printers in the 'news-collation room' in 'Good Morning Vietnam'), but an outlet of the distillation of thoughts which occasionally run round my head (as well as the random and general 'other' stuff that rolls around it too). It's reflective of the fact that fact that I generally consider what I am going to say before I say it; that I don't jump straight into conversations I listen and watch before speaking up.

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Right onto finishing getting our honeymoon pics up on flickr!

Be 'Monarch of the Glen' (well for a weekend anyway). Oh, and get to help a worthy cause at the same time.

Well it has been a while and I have a load to catch up on, not least my Lotusphere roundup, but first and formost, most importantly, I beg your attention for a few minutes.

Scotland is keen to embrace alternative energies. Normally a good thing I grant you, however they are slightly misguided on the specifics of some proposed Wind Turbine Schemes in Perthshire. I will not get into the details of why these are a bad plan, the website does that far more eloquently and comprehensively that I can, please take it that we are not objecting to green engergies in general just the specifics of these schemes.

The Locals have banded together and have won a substantial victory - a Public Enquiry has been called to look into the Planning of these schemes. However, with victory comes a price and in this case it is funding a QC (Queen's Councillor for those across the pond or elsewhere) to work on ASWAG's behalf during the public enquiry. They don't come cheap I'm afraid :( . Hence, a competition to help raise funds.

You and 18 of your friends, get to play Monarch of the Glen for a weekend. The prize is truly amazing and definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity.

You get to stay in a huge hunting lodge Dallick House; go quad biking or clay pigeon shooting; have lunch at Kennacoil House; visit Blair Castle and the House of Bruar; be guests of honour at a ceilidh at Murthly Castle and have a tour of some of the most beautiful scenary in Perthshire with a trained mountain guide.

For all this all you have to do is buy a ticket, £10 each - £10 for all that, just think of the prize value - answer a couple of questions and complete a tie-breaker sentence. All details are available on the ASWAG website along with details of the organisation's work.

I'm sorry to use the blog as a fundraising forum, and I wouldn't except that this a cause close to my heart and I hope you won't mind too much.

Temporary transfer to elsmore.net

We lay low for a day in Edinburgh yesterday and are now just finishing off our packing ready to start the 'Elsmore World Tour'. We head down to London Heathrow this afternoon and fly out to Hong Kong this evening.

For the duration we figured it made sense to blog in one place and we are going to do that on Warren's blog. So from now until the beginning of February there will be no posts on here. However, you can keep up with all our travels on www.elsmore.net

Blogging etc may be patchy as we are not sure what access to the web we will have, but what goes up will be on there.

Do come back here to www.thinks.blogspot.com in February when things will hoepfully get back to normal and you can chart my search for a new job and hopefully my new course too.

So this is Thinks signing off from here for the moment. See you in 5 weeks or so!!!!!

I'm Mrs Elsmore! Yay!

Well it all went off beautifully and according to plan (except for a few very minor glitches). I'll do a longer 'wedding day' post at some stage, but currently suffice to say that I am happy as a clam or a Pooh Bear who has found his honey stash :D

You know you have done one too many early morning airport drop-offs when...

... once you get home you point the car remote at the house and wonder why the door doesn't open!

5 days to go

Warren seems to have been covering most things over on him, but I get to beat him to the punch on this one :)

Our 'pre-wedding' photos are now up on Nigel Lumsden's site. So feel free to browse y'all if you feel so inclined. This is where our wedding photos will end up too, but not for a wee while yet!

10 days to go...

Well the countdown to the wedding has started in earnest.

• The dress is complete.
• The placement for dinner is in its infancy (balance between waiting for final replies and people having to change plans at the last minute :) ).
• The helium balloons are organised.
• The photo we are having for everyone to sign at the wedding is on its way.
• The spare bed is covered in piles of stuff to get packed for the honeymoon.
• Think we are almost at the stage of 'if it hasn't been done by now, it is not going to get done'.
• We are definitely at the stage of starting to over-engineer the wedding ;) .

Probably not many more posts till the honeymoon.

I'm dreaming of an orange christmas

Well, just in case we ran out of Jaffa Cakes between now and the wedding I thought I'd stock up... it is a full, five boxes long :)