frustrations

Okay. I just spent the last month teaching 100 students pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and colloquialisms in the English language. Yesterday, I asked each of them if they had done their homework, and fully HALF of them said, "No teacha, I ause yeseday," (No teacher, I was absent yesterday.)

So, why go to all the trouble to present this stuff, if they are so willing to throw it aside when they have the opportunity to use it in a more authentic way than a contrived dialogue written in their textbooks? Never mind the fact that most of them WERE NOT absent - why NOT add what they learn to their repertoir, rather than stick with the "I ause yeseday"? What better way to personalize and make an authentic conversation than to talk about something real for them?

Today they have their final written exam, tomorrow they have to present a project in spoken and written form, and on Thursday, they have an oral exam in which they have to make use of all the language they have in their lessons. "I ause yeseday" gives me no confidence at all that they have learned or have tried to learn anything. I guess I'll see.

I've been told by the administration that I'm too demanding and that I expect way too much from my students. I wonder if that's bad. I expect them to be motivated and study. I expect them to come to class. I expect them to do their homework. I absolutely expect them to respond in some way, be it a correct answer, an "I don't know," or even "I don't really care." At the end of the cycle, many of them try to wheedle a better grade out of me by whining and tearing up or batting their eyes and flirting with me. Some try to intimidate me into raising their grades. Still others use guilt trips and head games, and one even resorted to the traditional Peruvian way - bribery.

I don't remember school or the few college classes I took being anything remotely like this. Maybe all those years working for the Air Force made my world too sheltered and structured. What ever happened to integrity, responsibility, and impeccability? Actually, I'm not that hard of a person. If I can see some TRY in a student, I'm willing to give him or her the benefit of the doubt. But to spend the cycle piddling around, talking about boyfriends, trying to sleep in class, or just not coming, and THEN try to squeeze extra points out of me? Sorry baby, I'm not that easy.

New spindle!

Here's my new spindle from ButterflyGirlDesigns. It's beautiful! Now I can get on with spinning the Plum and Ginger batts from ArtemisArtemis!

a bunch of random late night stuff

1. I'm still working on the knitted roving bag. I think it will felt very nicely, since it seems to be felting right here in my hands.

2. Still spinning Waltzing Matilda. Gads, lambkins can be spun for frickin' EVER and still have a pile of roving left in the bag.

3. Still spinning on Rough Cut Diamonds...less than 2 ounces of the original 6 to go. Hoping for enough to make some nice long socks.

4. Still spinning on ArtemisArtemis Ginger and Plum...kinda held up while waiting for my new Butterfly Girl spindle to come. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. WHERE IS IT??? I've got the mailman traps baited and set out, but haven't caught anything yet.

5. Have 8 ounces of beautifully rustic rambouillet roving from Fat Cat Knits to spin up into stockings, if I ever get finished with what I've got on the spindles already.

6. Celeste has a beautiful cushy new bed and where does she sleep whenever possible? (Hint: NOT in her own bed.)

7. No Bubys or Butsys in my classes this month. Only 7 Luises, 5 Maricruzes, 4 Jorges, a whopping 15 Joses, but just 1 Miguel. After calling on Jose 1, Jose 2, Jose 3,4,5, and 6, I'd give my eye teeth for just one Livinton or Wasinton. I'd even settle for a Dooby or a Dohboy, just to break up the monotony. (They're one's in someone else's class. Such a pity.)

Just quickly...

Damn this day job! It interferes so much with my REAL life, my fiber life. Between a correspondence course on line, a presentation and class observation with another instructor, getting evaluated, and a full day of teaching, I'm not getting the proper quality time with my projects. Knitting with the mermaid blue/green/purple roving has become so addicting; just watching those gorgeous colors slip through my finger is mesmerizing. It's been quite an interesting experiment so far. I'm not advancing as fast as I'd like, partially due to a little vegetable matter (VM) that's cropping up as I split the roving and draft it out to the thickness that I want for knitting. And partially due to the fact that I spend a lot of time just staring at the colors and imagining that I'm in a clean, clear river in the mountains.

Septimus Heap is over for now. Wah. It was a fast and fun read, but now I have to wait to get the next volume until I go visiting Barnes & Noble when I go home next month. The SH series is a result of the Harry Potter craze, but these books are a little more gentle and less violent. Not that there's a lack of danger and adventure - there is plenty - but it's handled in a way that's more suited for a younger reader. So it focuses a little more on the fun aspect of the magical imagination than Harry Potter does. Things also take place outside of the walls of the castle, in the forest, in the Marsh, in the Badlands, and in the Ramblings, and things seem a little more verdant and fresh, and not so dark. Plus the characters are kind of different. The story is a little less sophisticated than Harry Potter, and so are the characters. I definitely recommend The Septimus Heap series if you want a fun, quick read! The good thing is that there doesn't seem to be an end to the series looming on the horizon.

And, speaking of going home, I really cannot wait to go! It's been 2 years since I've had a vacation, and I'm ready. It's been 2 years since I've spent much time at all out of the smog and car exhaust. I need a few lungfuls of clean country air, even if it's flavored with eau d' dairy cow, goat, or alpaca. Plus, I need some clothes. My work clothes are getting worn out and I seem to be too big to be able to find affordable clothing and footwear here. My tennis shoes have several holes in them now and the soles are so smooth that I get no traction at all with them.

*Sigh* It's time to get ready for work again. See you later.

a little progress

I've never been able to stick to just one project at a time. I've been playing with the rovings bag, knitting little here and a little there. I've also been spinning on two sets of batts, and I've got a crochet project in the works, too. Project ho, here. And, I've been reading. I'm in the middle of the second volume of the Septimus Heap series, Flyte. I know, it's a kid's book, but it's also a LOT of fun. And I like fun with no strings attached. A kid's book - just what I need for these gray, damp and fungusy, dreary winter days!

So here are some photos of the experiment of knitting with roving, so far (and a little peek at Flyte.) I like it, but I need to devote a little more time to it. This is how it's going so far:

The mermaid roving.

knitting with roving

Well, today's my last day of the Independence holiday. As usual, I've been drop-kicked by a bug too small to see. A head cold. Luckily, today is the first day in a week that I've felt half-decent. I've had WAAAY to much caffeine and have too much energy for my own good. I've had a ton of projects bouncing around in my head, but so far, all I've managed to do is get groceries, get some laundry washing, and take the latest spinning project down from the drying rack and bag it up.

So I have some really gorgeous wool roving - mermaidy colors in blues and greens and purples - that I've been working with. There's a LOT of it and I'm kind of spun out on it for the time being. And I've been, of course, reading a lot on Ravelry and getting a hankering to felt something. I want to make a bag with this roving, but I'm so sick of spinning it that I've decided to go with just knitting the roving. I've pulled some down to pencil roving size, more or less, and begun to knit it on US size 11 straight needles. They're the biggest needles I've got for now. It's going surprizingly well! I had some misgivings about it at first, envisioning the roving falling apart, but this fiber still has a little sheep grease in it, I think, and it's kind of sticky. That makes it a little hard to spin, but it's making it fabulous to knit with! So far, no falling apart, and when I was pulling it into smaller sections, if it broke, I just rolled it between my hands a couple of times and PRESTO! it's whole roving again!

The only drawback to this whole process is that there's no hot water plumbed into the laundry room. I'll have to heat water in the teapot to carry to the washer for my felting process. Plus the fact that every time I pull it into pencil roving, I want to grab a spindle! This fiber is just beautiful! I'll have pictures of this experiment later. Right now, I've gotta get my overly-caffinated brain back down to the ground!

Handspinning Sunday

Superwash merino, 64 ct, Waltzing Matilda colorway, from Enchanted Knoll Farm
Superwash merino and sparkly stuff, Rough Cut Diamonds colorway, from Enchanted Knoll Farm
70% bamboo, 20% firestar sparkles, 10% sari silk. Colorway "Riot", from Butterfly Girl Designs.

The thick and the thin of it all...

Harry made me do it.

Well, I should NEVER go to see Harry Potter movies. The problem is that I like them too much. They get me thinking about all the little stories I told myself when I was a kid, and all the little stories I told my daughter when she was a kid. See, I happen to think that we ALL have a little magic in us, especially women. It's just that we often forget about it, what with growing up and boyfriends, and husbands, and kids and responsibilities. In fact, I think we have A LOT of magic in us, if we just slow down enough, often enough, to remember it. I've been playing with my sparkly ladybug magic wand these last two days. I'm not so proficient with it and spend a lot of time sparkling things up. Luckily, Celeste knows when to dodge the magic wand sparkles and when they're just sparkles that are falling out of my spinning batts. She's only had sparkles from one or the other on her a couple of times. Both, I might add, are equally magical!

I remember that huff and fluff that was going on in the various churches some years back, when they decided that Harry Potter stories were DANGEROUS to kids and threats to God and the church. I thought it was ridiculous then and I still do. As I was perusing the Harry Potter books on Amazon.com this afternoon, I noticed that right there, among all that printed magic, was a book that warned about the dangers of Wicca to children. Well, I have to say that Harry Potter has nothing to do with Wiccan beliefs. While listening to the hubbub about it, after my sister got kicked out of her church because her kids revealed in Sunday school that they had indeed read ALL the Harry Potter books (gasp!!!), and when I discovered Lynn V. Andrews's books, I did some in-depth digging into the Wiccan religion and investigated. Just call me "Super Sleuth".

Wiccanism's nothing to do with Harry Potter. I have no judgements to proclaim, except to say that I just can't get into it as a religion. It's not for me. It is very interesting, though, and I think that before condemning it, one should know about it.

But anyway, because Harry was so good for me this week and lifted my spirits so immensely, I ran right over to Amazon.com, as I was saying earlier, and looked for some more fun and magical books. I haven't read all of the Potter series, and intend to do so when I get home in September because, you know, those corrupted children in my sister's house have all the stories, PLUS the Spiderwyck series!!! At this point, I think I need to point out that I corrupted my own daughter at an early age with the Wizard of Oz and later, with Magyck (the Septimus Heap series opener), Phillipa Gregory's book The Wise Woman, and Monica Furlong's Wise Child and Juniper. Even later, I turned her on to Diana Gabaldon's Voyager series and she traveled through time in her dreams.

She didn't tumble headlong into Wicca because of it - but she DID name her dog Juniper.

And when my mom was alive, all the women in our family, from age 7 to seventy, stumbled into a magical store in Olde Town in Fort Collins (just to the right of platform 9 1/2) to get a price on a Nimbus 2000 and wands similar to those used in the movies. Luckily for us, they were priced WAY out of our Christmas shopping budget. If they had been more affordable, we might have spent that Christmas zapping one another. Then the Church would probably have sent us all to hell, post haste. Good thing that fate intervened, isn't it?

Back to the search through Amazon.com for a Harry Potter-like magic fix. It turns out that I only glanced through Magyck in a very cursory way and don't remember much, if any, of the story. So I ordered the first two books in the Septimus Heap series, and then pre-ordered the one that's due out in a couple of months. And then I ordered Abby Franquemont's new spindling book, too, due out in December. Sorry, Abby. I didn't order from your website, even though I'd love to have your autograph. The money I saved by not having you sign the book will go towards the shipping costs. Spindling is a magical process in itself.

There. I said it. I admit it. I blew my fiber budget for next month on frivolous magic and IT'S ALL HARRY'S FAULT.

Tour d' fleece spinning

Here's my last photo of TdF spindling. Rough Cut Diamonds:

This is about 1 ounce of sock weight singles. Unfortunately, I still have 5 ounces to go.

Rough Cut Diamonds is superwash merino with sparkles, from Enchanted Knoll Farm.

Have a drinky-poo

Everywhere on the west coast of Peru, people use the diminutive when they speak. "Quesito?" (A little cheese?) When I was first learning about this phenomenon, I read that it is used to express endearment or cuteness. An example would be "tengo un perrito" (I have a cute little dog). Okay. I could understand that. But typically, I hear things like this: "Aqui estamos en el mercadito. Gaseosita? Solamente cuesta un solcito. Toma esta bebidita. Y carnecita? Come un poquitito y regresamos en la nochecita, amorcito. Llegamos a la casita en un ratito. Y entonces jugamos con tu perrito. Es presiosito!"

I translate this in the most literal way, because that's mostly the way my mind works, and because it makes me laugh. Then later, I go back and think about what the person really was saying. So at first, the Spanish comes into my mind like this:

Here we are in the cute little market. An itty bitty soda pop? It only costs one cute little sol. Have a little drinky-poo. And a little bit of meat? Eat a little bitty bit and we'll go back at nighty-poo, my cute little lovey dovey. We arrive at the housey-poo in a little minute-winute. And then we'll play with your little doggy-poo. It's so cutie-wootie!

Yeah. Makes me laugh and then makes me gag a little bitito. Too much sugar makes me ill.

Sunday

Well, this is the last day of the Tour d' Fleece, and I've definitely bitten off more than I could chew. I managed to complete the Cabaret yarn, and filed a spindle with Rough Cut Diamonds, but only one, and I've got a private English lesson coming at 11, and a correspondence course on the puter that I've got to work on. Wah. I need to learn to stop over-committing and pace myself. I'm a non-finisher. But at least I've got 900 yards of really pretty sparkly yarn for a shawl and matching socks, probably...and the Rough Cut Diamonds is going to be nice, too. I should probably do some housework and laundry, too, before the lessons show up in a couple of hours. This apartment smells like STINKY DOG FEET.

And, I've been reading the Yarn Harlot's blog. She has a troll. Terrible. You may remember that I had a troll of my own a while back. I have sympathy for her, but Steph is lucky in that her troll doesn't personally know her, so cannot personalize her nastiness to the extent that mine did. I think, though, that she will be able to get past the ugliness by not responding to it. Delte all the ugly comments without posting a one, and not responding in any way to the comments or e-mails. I wonder what moves people to be so ugly on line. I wonder why they always feel so justified in their written attacks on others. I've had a lot of time to think about it, and I know that it has to be some kind of mental imbalance. After doing some research, I have learned a lot about Borderline Personality Disorder, and I feel like this fits my previous troll to a T. If you Google this, you will find a wealth of information on it. I can't think about this anymore - it still bothers me - so I'm moving on to another topic.

I went to see Harry Potter and The Half-blood Prince last yesterday afternoon. I loved it! I went kind of apprehensive, because all those child actors are growing up and I wondered how good it might be. I hoped the movie would still have all the charm that the first couple did. And it did. The ending is left open for the continuation, so I imagine that another one will be on the way in the next year or two. No spoilers here. I'll just say thank goodness there was no extended quiddich game. Just a short, quick match to prove the power of the mind.

names...

So, I'm on my lunch break at work now. I've been thinking about my students a lot lately. Some of their parents are sending them to study here because they want them to travel to the US and have a better life than they could have in Peru. I think they must have always wanted that, because of some of the names they give their kids. I think (and I could be completely wrong about this) that they want them to have good American or English names, so they do their best. For example....

I have a student in Basic 9 this month whose name is Buby (pronounced "Booby"). The poor guy insists that he be called "Moises" (the Spanish version of "Moses"), which is his middle name. I gladly oblige him. I can't imagine waking up with a name like "Booby" every day, either.

I have another student named Rut. I believe it is meant to be Ruth. And there's Grake...Grace? Butsy...Bootie or maybe Betsy? Parents, parents...please check your spelling!

I found out that there was a period of time, about 1960, when in Peru it was illegal to name your child anything except a Biblical name. If it wasn't found in the Spanish version of the bible, it was illegal, and the application for a name would be rejected by the governmental agency for vital statistics. Goodness...talk about control freaks. No wonder there are so many women named Maria and so many men named Jose and Jesus!

spindling Cabaret

300 yards of Cabaret; superwash merino fingering weight yarn. Only about 1.5 ounces to go.

Tour d' Fleece, spindling and some excuses

You may have noticed that my posts have been woefully devoid of photos this winter (summer for you up there in the northern hemisphere). Yup. I've been neglecting the camera in favor of spindling. I'm participating in the Tour d' Fleece, spinning my little fingers down to the nubs, but so far I'm just managing to complete the plying on one skein of Cabaret fiber. Wah. My 6-days-a-week job gets in the way of spinning, and what a danged inconvenience it is. I think I'm in a fail situation. I may have to concede that I have set my goals too high. I hope not. I still have another 10 days to go, so it's possible that I could still pull this off.

Even if I don't reach my goals, I'll still come away with some nice yarns, and a bit of space cleared on the shelf for more fiber stash. I'll be able to do some vacation knitting and spinning in September, when I go home to the farm for a month. Hopefully, the pair of laceweight spindles that I ordered will be waiting for me, but I'll take one with me, just in case.

What? What's that you say?? Why, YES! I've bought my plane tickets for vacation! Yeay! O is a little bummed out, because he STILL has not applied for his visa, so he gets to stay home again this year and play with Celeste and do his own laundry. Tut tut. It's his own fault. The Embassy will not give you a visa if you do not ask for one. I tut when I think about it.

And, honestly, I must confess that my camera batteries are dead again. Grrr. Must rectify that when I get groceries sometime this week.

I hope that Peru is about done mourning Michael Jackson. I'm totally over seeing the funeral and the 1980's music videos played over and over every day. You do know that there were only two music videos that Michael Jackson made, don't you? They were Thriller and Billie Jean. At least that's the way it seems here. Nothing else is shown on TV, and on the radio? The Man in the Mirror. Over and over and over. The world was fascinated with Michael Jackson, but I'm ready to let him rest in peace. How about some Nickelback or Everlast, just for a change of pace?

Birthday weekend

Last week I had a birthday. I celebrate my birthday in a much different style than most people here in Peru. For my birthday, I prefer to forget about parties and have a quiet day. This year, both O and I were working, so there was no party planning on any one's part. O knows I don't go for parties, but his friends are pretty determined to take advantage of any excuse to have a fling. This year, thanks to my job, there was none of that. There was, however, a birthday lunch at some one's house.

Rosa and Flover live in Rimac, which is a very nice part of town, except for the smallish area where they live. Their neighborhood is SCARY. They have no car, and they live a little too far away from the market or the grocery store to walk, so we often give them rides to wherever they need to go. They repay the favors by making lunch occasionally, inviting us to barbecues, parties, and other events. I rarely go, but now it's understood that I just prefer a quieter lifestyle.

Anyway, Rosa insisted on a birthday lunch on the 2nd. Rosa is from the highlands and her taste in food is a little different than mine. My special lunch was actually Rosa's favorite: chanfainita, a typical highland dish.



How does it look? Tasty, right? Chanfainita is stew, made from chopped potatoes and cow's lungs. Now, I know she went to a LOT of effort to prepare this delicacy, but there are just some things that I don't want to eat. Lung tissue is one of those things that I choose not to eat. I think Celeste would enjoy this stew immensely.

Luckily for me, there was plenty of picante sauce and a good bottle of dry red wine. If not for those, I couldn't have managed to eat any of it. Rosa would have been offended and I would have been embarrassed to pieces. So I poured on enough hot sauce to set the house on fire added handfuls of chopped mint, and washed it all down with judicious sips of wine. Everything ended quite well. I didn't ask for seconds, but Rosa felt well pleased.

On Sunday, O and I went to dinner at Club Sullana, where we had a fantastic steak cooked with annato oil and fried yuca and banana slices. Then we went to see "Ice Age 3" and went home.

Complicated lives

While the US and the rest of the world is mourning the passing of Michael Jackson, Peru is feeling the pain of losing one of their own musical stars, Alicia Delgado. Alicia died last week, murdered at the hands of (supposedly) her chauffeur. It's a complicated tale, which gets more and more complex and twisted as the police dig further into her life.

From what I can gather, Alicia was known as the "Princesa de Folclor" (Princess of Folklore) and was a very popular singer of huayno (Peru's brand of country music.) The story is that she was married and later divorced from her husband, then hooked up with another female huayno singer, Abencia Meza, who later became Alicia's closet lover. After a time of performing together, they decided to come out of the closet. This was complicated by the fact that Alicia also had a male lover, a fact which really torqued Abencia's jaw.

Sooo...last week, Alicia was found, killed by a bullet to the brain. Several people have been arrested, and as the investigation continues, more and more people appear to be implicated, right down to Alicia's own mother, who made it known that if anything were to happen to Alicia, her mother would be able to sell Alicia's apartment for quite a pretty penny. Alicia's chauffeur claims that Abencia paid him to kill Alicia, so it's not his fault and he isn't guilty. Hmmm. That's as far as the things went last night. Maybe the news tonight will reveal still more twists in this confusing story.

Celeste is so confused by this sordid tale that she felt the need to leave a trail of dog food pieces from her bowl to the living room...you know, just in case she can't find her way to bed tonight. Hopefully there are no crows to come behind her and eat her crumbs. She might end up missing her bed and wind up in the witch's cottage deep in the forest, with Hansel and Gretel!

Okay, now I'm the one who's confused. Anyway, here's a Youtube flick of Alicia, and one of Abencia. Don't you just love a good "Whodunit"?

Hot Off The Spindle

Colorway: Catwoman, from Enchanted Knoll Farm.
Fiber: Superwash merino wool, 64 count.
Handspun on a spindle from Restlesspeasant (Ravelry ID)
Approximately 182 yards of light fingering weight yarn from approximately one ounce of fiber. Still have about 3 ounces left to go!

Attention deficit

Poor Celeste. These days have been extra hard for her, because it's finals week at work. I have exams to prepare for and exams to administer, then grade. Not too much time for playing, not too much time for long walks or sleeping on THE BED. And, I have been working on the Garden of Alla shawl (in hand-painted alpaca) and spinning some superwash merino, too, so Poor Celeste has been suffering from an extreme deficit of attention from me. Today, while I was grading exams, she let me know how much of a deficit there was. Whenever I reached for an exam, she bumped my arm with her nose. While I was marking the exam, she paced in circles, and then rested her head on my knee.

After finishing the exam grading, I picked up my spindle to ply the merino, and she paced in circles around the spindle. She reached out and grabbed the spindle just long enough to stop it from spinning. Hmmm. She didn't want to go outside, just be the center of attention for the afternoon. I can't afford to give her all my attention till I'm finished with these exams.

Hold on, Celeste! On Friday, I'll be all yours to go walking with, to play with, and to just give you all my undivided attention!

Protestation, violation, retaliation, and examination

Well, this last week has been interesting!

there has been a growing unrest among the indigenous people of the Amazon region. For years there has been a law protecting the Amazon rainforests and the indigenous people who live there. But within the last year or so, the government of Peru has opened up that area to logging and oil. This decision affects the property and lifestyles of the people who live in this area, and it was done without consulting them or allowing them to vote on it, or to express their opinions in any way. It has led to numerous non-violent protests and roads blocked with stones and people, typical of the way the Peruvian people usually express their disagreement with government actions. But, as I said, unrest has been growing, culminating in a confrontation between the indigenous and national police who were sent to clear a roadblock near Tarapoto. This confrontation resulted in several indigenous people being killed...which in turn led to police in a different area (Bagua) being killed or taken hostage, in retaliation for what happened in Tarapoto. Bloodshed there in Bagua (pronounced Bá-Wa) continued for a week, during which time the leader of the Bagua indigenous faction fled to the Nicaraguan embassy in Lima to avoid arrest.

Last Thursday, the protestors followed their leader to Lima and staged a protest on Abancay Avenue, where the Ministry of the Interior is located, as well as being just half a block from where I work. The police were prepared, but none of the local people were aware of what was going to happen until it happened. About 3:30 in the afternoon, hundreds of university students and indigenous people marched on Abancay Avenue, armed with clubs, steel pipes, and 2 x 4s, waving flags and banners, and makng a huge racket with horns, pipes, loud speakers, and the like. I was in my classroom and couldn't hear what my students were trying to say.

Then something went awry and the protest turned violent. Police reacted by shooting tear gas into the crowds and chasing a good number down to the middle of the block (where I work!) with gas bombs. Although the steel doors on our building were closed and the windows were closed to the second floor, gas still managed to enter the building. Between the noise and the effects of the gas, classes had to be temporarily stopped. And, heh, I had one student who just couldn't resist opening a window and sticking his head out to see the spectacle. He got a good doses of tear gas.

Oddly, I wasn't affected by the gas. I had several students who complained of sore throats and itchy eyes. I didn't feel anything. Huh. Musta been all those years of gas mask training in the Air Force, with real tear gas. We were locked down for about an hour, then students were allowed to go home out the back way, to avoid the remnents of the protest.

And then, on Saturday, I had to take an English proficiency exam provided to the institute by the University of Michigan. I'm not sure how I did, although it seemed to be to easy to be real, for me. I wonder if this will benefit me in some way. Every ICPNA instructor has to take the exam and pass it, but what will it do for me in the future? Nothing, probably. English is my first language, and at my age, I expect that I should be proficient in it.

All last week, I had substitutions. I'm not sure what was happening...maybe everyone was sick? I don't know, but I had 10 hours of work every day. Love the extra money, but the hours really sucked. Wah.

After a long pause...

...I'm back. I've been swamped, then run down, and consequentially got sick. Now I'm back on my feet again, and although still swamped with work, not sick anymore. I apologise for the tardiness in posting and meeting my commitments, but rest assured that I am back in commission and in gear once again.

See you on Monday!