Canoe

It's quite usual for children to call each other names, but the particular choice of name can sometimes leave one baffled. This morning, one of our daughters was upset because her sister had called her a canoe.

Yes, that really happened.

Teepee

Well, we couldn't follow up a post of awesomeness with anything but a teepee. Welcome to October everybody!

Misc

Time for a little catch up again...

We open with a caption competition. What could possibly be up there?

I really like this picture, which you can probably guess immediately followed the one above. I was after a new background for my phone, and this made the cut.

Soon after, Naomi went on a picture taking exercise again...

"No pictures"

"Well, okay then"

"Look over there, a squirrel! Really!"

Some time after those pictures, we got a similar look of amazement from the girls during dinner. I turned around to see a hot air balloon - and quite an impressive one coming surprisingly close to the house.

It landed in a field a few minutes' walk away.

Breakfast. I like the improvised seats.

Every night now bedtime partly consists of the girls taking a few minutes to read themselves. We find this scene cute every time.

...and now some non-child randomness...

This plant live in our bathroom. I moved it there this time last year to get more sunlight than it was getting in our en-suite, because it looked like it was struggling. Soon after, it seemed to have died completely. I watered the bare earth in the pot for a while in case it came back, but probably stopped doing so around January. As a testament to our cleaning-motivation, the empty pot has sat there ever since, bone dry. Imagine our surprise then, when the plant sprung back to life in July, and has now grown to this! I've started watering it again, albeit very sparingly given that it seems to be happy without it. The lesson - don't tidy up dead plants!

To close - a nice Venn diagram that some may find amusing. If you can think of a good joke to fit in the middle I'd like to hear it!

Results

Well, the voting is over, and the result is in. Obviously I'm disappointed with how it's gone, frustrated that we're now essentially stuck with a lot of what's not working in politics just now, and a little concerned that we've missed both a great opportunity and chance to protect ourselves from the direction that Westminster seems to be travelling in. However, we have to respect how the majority of people voted and move on. A similar number would have been disappointed had it gone the other way. Thanks to those of you who already expressed sympathy or commiserations to me. I'll be fine, really! God's in control.

A couple of thoughts as I wind down on all this. I really hope that this morning's offers of real change ahead do actually come to something, particularly for the thousands of people who voted for the first time in their lives to make a real difference. The noises of backbench conservative MPs and the appointment of an unelected Lord to oversee the changes aren't all that promising. I'm also not all that keen on the various statements about "what a no vote means" this morning: I reckon lots of no voters will have had lots of different reasons! (as with Yes voters too) However, I'm happy to give them a chance - maybe they will surprise us and to be fair, at the moment there does seem to be a real move for change. After all, we still all need to live together and work out the best way to make our country work.

I mentioned yesterday that I was quite taken by the huge numbers of new voters - equally inspiring is that such a large number of people then turned out to vote: 84.6% of all the people on the register. It was over 90% in some places, and nowhere was it below 75%. Remembering that the register is usually a bit out of date (it includes people who have moved away, died or or become ineligible to vote in the past few months) and that it includes the over 300 000 people who registered since 2010, this reflects unprecedented participation levels for this country. I hope that this level of engagement can continue, because the country works much better when everyone has a hand in saying how it should work.

Of course, life goes on. We were quite amused yesterday that Naomi dug out a book that's been unread on the shelf for months:

Our girls continue to have perfect timing!

Yesterday was an interesting one. I ended up doing two things. Quite amusingly, I was assigned to help in Bannockburn, and our base there was Wallace Street! As someone who is (in the main) a Yes supporter for pragmatic rather than patriotic reasons, I felt a little irony in that. For the first couple of hours I was at a polling station. Mostly this is just so that Yes had a presence to allow for last-minute questions and to serve as a human face to that side of the vote. There is also a need to keep count of how many people are turning out to vote, so we can target areas for door knocking. There were a couple of other Yes people there as well as a couple of no's - and although there was some debate at points it was really very friendly and there was some great banter there. We all knew we weren't going to convince the other side, and we're all humans with in interest in what's going on, so we got on well. My experience of those in politics at other times has been similar: while there are a few in it for the wrong reasons, I'd say that most of them do it because they want to make a positive difference and are genuinely nice people. Remember too of course, God loves us all equally! The other thing I was doing was door knocking, which is just visiting houses and reminding people that the vote is on and checking if they need help to get to the polling station. This is quite pleasant because the list we have is all people who said they'd be voting Yes: consequently there was a lot of hand shaking, offers of drinks (none taken - must remain compos mentis), people asking how it was going and general encouragement. This was great fun, but very tiring! I also have a lovely blue hi-vis YES jacket to show for my efforts. No, I don't have a picture. :)    I was also interviewed by that bastion of local record, the Stirling Observer, on why I was helping Yes. I'm sure they asked lots of people so I might not appear, but I said it was simply that I thought Yes was the best way to achieve the kind of country I want my daughters to grow up in. While I still think that's true, I suspect that they'll do just fine with things as they are, because they are amazing.

On that note, I think that's all that needs said (probably more). Since this has all been a bit heavy (great Scott!), I conclude with a Llama saying "yeah".

Comedy

So, a little light relief from work.

First, this cubicle is in our lab building.

The notice on it really does say "Mr M Barker. Office. Do not disturb." Suddenly my wee corner of an open plan office doesn't seem quite so bad!

Second, for the geeks out there... Some time ago we used some surplus project money to buy a monster computer - with 12 CPU cores, and 12 virtual cores - the equivalent of 6 fairly standard current home PCs sitting next to each other, or thereabouts. Sadly, it didn't seem to recognise the virtual ones, but today we figured out the issue, and poor old windows doesn't know what to do with itself when we tried to get it to show CPU use:

Look at all those CPUs! Looking forward to some serious computing power now.

Nothing to do with Naomi!

I have a new hair do, thought you might like to see.  It's a good bit shorter than it was before but I absolutely love it!

Funny

A bit of Friday humour. Well, if you have my sense of humour it is (so, just me then...). For the past few years Jay's been getting me a calendar for my desk at work; it started out with some daily brainteasers and quotes, then moved on to Dilbert (which is just great by the way), but this year I have some New Yorker cartoons. These are a bit hit-or-miss, but today's appealed to me greatly:

I tried looking for some more by the same guy - Ariel Molvig - and there's loads of good stuff. I'm also quite fond of this one:

The next post should be some more Naomi pictures, which of course, if what everyone really wants!

Bababa-zzzzzzzz...

The latest thing Naomi likes to do...

We've tried getting her to do it with her own hand but she makes it quite clear she wants us to do it for her! Meanwhile, tonight, on returning from work, I was informed that Naomi hadn't napped since 2pm. This usually results in a somewhat cranky or at least unpredictable child - and tonight she was something akin to a hummingbird at times - full of energy but short on patience! This reminded me of Apu (from The Simpsons) describing a time he'd been awake 96 hours...




In other news, yesterday at work I saw this truck. Sadly the picture hasn't come out too well, and the truck drove away before I could get another one, but you can just make out a piece of cardboard stuck to the inside of the truck wall. It said "The End Is Nigh" - and all I can say in response (as a Scot living in England) is "we're doomed!". Chilling in a humorous way.

Apparently I'm short on sleep too.

Solar

In a beneficial move for us, our landlords have decided to make the most of England's extravagant sunshine and install some solar panels. (though I note it's not that extravagant a sunshine - according to this map there's not much difference in the same solar energy that falls here compared to Aberdeen!)

We'll ignore the fun that was involved emptying out the cupboard where the loft access is (it's in Naomi's bedroom, so napping that day was a bit different) and skip straight to the pictures of before the work...

...and after...

Thanks to the way the electric's counted, even if we use all of the electric generated by the panels (and so none of it is sold to the rest of the grid), our landlords don't get anything less than they would have otherwise (they get paid a flat rate for whatever's generated), but our bills also go down.

So far I reckon we've saved more than a pound! Maybe in the summer this will be more lucrative.

In other news, here's a geyser erupting from a pancake on Saturday...

courgette

Is this the biggest courgette you ever saw?

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Teepee

Since the last post was so awesome, we weren't sure how to follow it up.

So here's a teepee.

L

Much to Jay's annoyance everytime I heard the word "labour" I couldn't get this out of my head from about three months ago until the birth. Now I'm sharing it with everyone - it's from the earlier days of Harry Enfield's humorous television programme.

L is for Labour

The madness that comes with parenthood...

Sandy and I often have slightly mad conversations, particularly in the evenings our discussions can descend into the quite surreal.  However, the sleep deprivation (that isn't really that bad) must have kicked in as we have just finished a lengthy discussion at the end of which we determined that it is a good thing that I now don't mind drinking water otherwise we would use more fruit juice in a month than we do gas.

We thought this might entertain others also, and so decided to share this with you!

Funny story

Sandy and I bought a copy of the Loughborough Echo today, we wanted to look at the classified ads, but thought we should have a look through the rest of it too. We were laughing for quite some time on finding the following story on page 3 (you had to turn to page 5 to get a story about some thugs who had been arrested!) - only in a local newspaper!!



In other news, we have had our chimney swept and during this cold weather are very grateful to be able to warm our feet at the open fire!!

top 10 things I am looking forward to after the birth...

First, for those that want to see, a picture of my bump...



Sandy was concerned people wouldn't know which bit was the bump so here is helpfully pointing towards the bit of me with the bump!!



However the real point of this post is for me to give you my top 10 things I am looking forward to after the birth of our baby!!

1. Meeting the baby and getting to know it
2. Caffeine! More specifically, diet coke but also tea and coffee in general!
3. Sleeping in any old position I like, most of all on my back :-)
4. Walks in the park with the baby
5. Eating proper meals again, getting to stop the grazing all day habit I have had to develop
6. Taking a deep breath without it being inhibited by the baby being where my diaphragm used to be!
7. Cuddles with the baby, I am very excited for cuddles!
8. Throwing away the many bottles of gaviscon I have had to start leaving in strategic places for myself
9. Fitting into spaces that I used to fit in and no longer do (I have a scratch on my bump from where I thought I could fit between a box and a door - I couldn't!)
10. Settling into a new baby routine!

Bus

Picture the scene. I'm sitting on a bus full of students, we've just passed through Loughborough College on the way to the university. The roads are quite busy and there's a bit of a jam as we leave the college, going round a tight corner. At this point, a bus coming in the opposite direction slows down and stops, much to the frustration of the long line of drivers waiting behind it. The window rolls down and its driver leans out, and a blast of cool (I won't say cold, we don't even have snow here yet) air indicates that our driver's window is down too. Our driver leans out and yells "poatato". The other driver smiles, windows roll back up and buses proceed on their way.

I can't believe it took this many blog posts to have a "randomness" tag.