Silly Quizzes

On a visit to Mom-In-Scrubs' blog I came across the following quiz and just for fun I took it too. It seems both MIS and I are positively smashing at English. However having done that one I just kept going because deep down inside I have a real competitive streak wen it comes to silly quizzes. In no other area of my life do I even hint at competitiveness - but put a quiz in front of me and I go all starry-eyed and become desperate to share the insane amount of useless information I have acquired over my very interesting(?) life. I am such a nerd. But I am proud to be. Take some quizzes with me whydon'tcha?

Your result for The Commonly Confused Words Test...

English Genius

You did so extremely well, even I can't find a word to describe your excellence! You have the uncommon intelligence necessary to understand things that most people don't. You have an extensive vocabulary, and you're not afraid to use it properly! Way to go!

Thank you so much for taking my test. I hope you enjoyed it!

For the complete Answer Key, visit my blog: http://shortredhead78.blogspot.com/.

Take The Commonly Confused Words Test at HelloQuizzy

Then I took the "Which Harry Potter Character Are You?" test. My scores were actually as follows:
7 Potterness, 12 Grangertude, -24 Malfoyism, 7 Weasleyness, 0 Lunatude and -1 Longbottomness!

Only -1 for Longbottomness - they've obviously never seen my bottom!

Yes I'm Hermione - a by-the-book-know-it-all-who-likes-to-hang-out-with-the-guys. As I have already admitted my love of useless information - who else could I have been? I swear if JKR ever publishes Hogwarts: A History I will be first in the queue to but it!

Your result for Another Harry Potter Character Test...

Hermione Granger

"I read about it in Hogwarts; A History!"

The bookworm of all groups, you're the one everyone turns to when they have a question. You don't care much what others think of you, and are pretty darn smart! You're die hard loyal. When it comes to school, you dot your i's and cross your t's.

Take Another Harry Potter Character Test at HelloQuizzy

Then I thought just how astute am I? and whaddaya know there was a quiz for that too.

Your result for How astute are you?...

Fast-witted Fox

87% Astute

You're certainly clever, but maybe you're just a bit too quick at answering. Did you add up the pieces of fruit in each answer? Did you count the number of mothers? Did you continue reading to find the last "cow"? You've done really well, though, so go and have some chocolate to celebrate!

Take How astute are you? at HelloQuizzy

They even knew how much I love chocolate - surely these are the wisest quizzes ever!

In the early 80's when I was in secondary school I was very into The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. I know I read at least 4 of the 5 books. But that was back in the 80's and I can't remember as far back as breakfast-time with ant clarity. I have to say I guessed a pile of these answers. Still it's good to be a Hoopy Frood. That is good right?

Your result for The How Well Do You Know Douglas Adams, and Hitch Hiker's Guide Test...

Ford Prefect

You scored 74 % Knowledge!

You're a hoopy frood from a far out planet, you know Betelgeuse Seven from Magrathea, but may slip up on more difficult questions. Perhaps you only know one version of the Hitch Hiker's Guide, or slipped up on Douglas Adams knowledge... nevermind, you are clearly a true fan with some serious knowledge and that's what counts.

Please rate my test as it is entered in the 'Geekery' contest, if I get bad ratings I will try to improve the test, feel free to message me with any feedback. Thanks

Take The How Well Do You Know Douglas Adams, and Hitch Hiker's Guide Test at HelloQuizzy

It was at this point that I'd even bored myself and the need for tea overtook me.

The Impotence of Proofreading By Taylor Mali

I totally nicked this off Candy Gourlay's fab website Notes From The Slush Pile. I simply had to. It's far too god not to share with the whale wild wode. (OK that makes more sense after you watch this)



I laughed my shelf skilly!

Back To School!

What a week!

I have started the new job and have had to attend two meetings this week to iron out what we'll be doing in the run-up to Christmas. I will be working in Reception class (ages 4-5) for this year and it looks like a busy time. I have been loaded down with books, pieces of paper, courses and meetings and all I can say is I'm glad that I'm only doing 11 and a half hours a week because you have no idea how much work goes into those six hours when your kids are at school.

I have a renewed respect for teachers. They have a hard job. I can't talk about the specifics of my job because of confidentiality issues but I can say that it looks like it's going to be both challenging and rewarding and I'm looking forward to getting stuck in.

The people I work with seem like a really friendly bunch. Today was officially my first day and they gave me a little welcome present of a mug, sweeties, a pen with Eeyore on it and a sheep puppet. (This is where I remind you again that I am working with 4-5 year olds). I thought it was lovely. Small son is currently murdering all his little Lego men with the sheep puppet, the kids have polished off the sweeties and I am about to christen the mug with its first Cuppa.

Having spent the last 6 weeks getting up mid morning and spending half the day in my jimjams, the 7am wake-up call of the last couple of days been a bit of a shock to the system. I'm not naturally a morning person - although strangely enough, neither am I a night person. If there were no such thing as a schedule I'd probably wake naturally around 9am and fancy going to bed by 10.30 in the evening. How dull am I? Like any new regime it's just going to be a case of getting into the swing of things. I expect to stop yawning sometime mid-October.

Tomorrow is a really BIG day for the family. Daughter starts in secondary school. I thought it'd be a total breeze for her as she'd be able to just go along with Big Son who could show her the ropes but, of course, just to make things difficult, he starts back on Friday so the poor love has to go to the Huge Big School on her own on the first day. Further complications have arisen as her bus pass has not arrived. I am assured that the bus driver is obliged to take her on the bus regardless (as long as she is wearing the right uniform) as they are not allowed to leave a child at a bus stop. However the same driver is NOT obliged to take her home as s/he will be picking her up from the school and that is considered a secure environment. The transportation people have told me that the school should be able to issue her with a temporary bus pass once she's there so, fingers crossed that she'll actually get back home tomorrow too. Sheesh!

The other big thing is that Small Son is starting primary school. He has never done more than a four-day week before and as of tomorrow he is expected to go to school from 8.50 - 3.10, five days a week. He's only four! OK so he's five in a couple of weeks - but he seems so young to be at school for such a long day. The rest of Europe starts kids full time the year they turn 7. He's excited about it and his teacher is divinely wonderful and lovely (the perfect Reception teacher) so I know that once the exhaustion of the first few weeks has passed he'll be just fine.

So tonight I'm labelling all the uniforms, writing notes and filling in forms. There will be an early dinner, then bath, then bedtime by 8.

I have no idea what the kids will be doing!

What I've Been Up To…

Thank you all for the nice things you said in the comments about T's ikkle bit of input into the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. He's chuffed to bits to have been part of it and says "Ta" to you all. Sorry that I didn't get round to replying to the comments but I've barely been online in weeks.

That's really weird! I logged into blogger and it was all different. Has it been so long? Well my Bloglines feeds tell me there are 248 unread blogs. That's not entirely true -I have read a few of those - but there are many many more I have not. The children continue to monopolise the Big Computer. Every time I sit down I get "Are you going to be long?" or "Aw Jeez Mum - I was on Skype" or "It's MY turn!"

I'll tell you what - during school holidays - it's never bloody my turn.

So I have occupied my time watching the Olympics. I particularly love the first week - rowing, kayaking, swimming, cycling, sailing - pretty much anything to do with the water actually. And the gymnastics. Oooh and archery! I've discovered I really love the whole Robin Hood thing. Not such a big fan of the second week though. I'm easily bored with the running around in circles and throwing things. I woke up at 4am one day last week (possibly Friday) and I thought Well I may as well get up and see what's going on in China. They were re-showing the Women's Marathon. I thought I might as well watch it. I wanted to see if Paula Radcliffe had finished. What I got instead was two hours of watching skeletons running in agony. It was so awful I kept changing over to an infomercial channel to watch someone called Leeza and someone, I'm pretty sure was Laura Ingalls, tell me how brilliant this mineral based make-up was and how my life would be ten times better if I just bought some. It was a huge relief from the torture of watching grown (spindly, spindly) women inflict huge amounts of damage on their joints and their bodies generally. I'm not a fan of pain. I don't like feeling it and I don't enjoy witnessing it in others. I was hugely relieved when it was over. So much so that I fell asleep on the couch and MISSED the rowing.

I saw the highlights but it wasn't the same.

The whole Michael Phelps thing was very exciting. I rooted for him all the way. I didn't see a single one of his races live, of course, because they were all on at 3am. Thank you NBC and your big bucks for that. The BBC was very good about its coverage though. They had a "Phelpsometer" section in their evening round-up which had a large cardboard cut-out of the man himself which they daily updated as the medals were won. For a laugh they sent their swimming correspondent (and Athens Bronze medallist) Steve Parry off to Tiananmen Square with said cut-out to do a reportage. What he didn't expect was to be mistaken for the man himself.
I love stuff like that!

Team GB have done amazingly well and I congratulate them for a sterling performance. Good Job GB! It all bodes well for 2012. I might even get to go to that!

But mostly I want to say well done to Ireland's boxers Paddy Barnes and Darren John Sutherland for their bronze medals. I hope that there are more with the Athletics although I haven't been following it so closely. So many nearlys (Oh I sobbed when Eoin Rheinisch was robbed in the K2 and screamed for the rowers!) but all in all I was disappointed by the lack of coverage by the Beeb of the Irish athletes. Well I suppose I can't blame them really - I mean why should they? But I found myself searching for the Irish flag everywhere and hoping to see lots of green but I didn't. Ah well. Maybe next time eh?

Any highlights for you guys?

Beijing 2008 Opening Ceremony

(Photo credit: Clive Rose/Getty Images)

So it's finally officially opened and at last I can talk about it! Weren't the fireworks brilliant? Hubby had nothing to do with them but I just thought I'd mention them first because they were so good.



(Photo credits: Hubby, T)

This is what the Hubby has been doing in Beijing. He and his co-worker were responsible for displaying the images on the scroll during the Opening Ceremony. The above three photos were sent by Hubby all the way from China. I had a hard time finding any that didn't have a thousand dancers on it! But it went without a hitch. And I think the entire thing was breathtaking.

As much as I miss you Honey, I am so proud of what you guys have been part of. It was a truly amazing spectacle.

CarPet Capers!

When we moved into our house 6 months ago I was able to ignore the fact that it was covered in horrible carpets because I was so darn grateful to be out of that rented house.

(The short story is that when we moved last October we had to rent a house until our house purchase went through. While we were there the dog kept getting sick, Big son and Daughter were both sick at night and I had horrendous headaches. I hated the place. When we left we found out that there was a gas leak in the road outside the house and that the gas was escaping up through our drains and into our bathrooms. We were all slowly being gassed to death.)

So obviously given that we'd moved into this lovely place with all this room and NO GAS, I was ecstatic. The old mud-coloured carpet in the hall, stairs and landing wasn't even visible to me. The fact that each bedroom had its own unique coloured flooring that didn't necessarily compliment the wall colour or the curtains didn't even register. But weirdly after 6 months it's all I can see.

The dog is shedding again. This is an irritating thing anyway, as she has black hair, and it's hard to ignore. It falls out in massive clumps too. In our old house, the entire ground floor had either tile or laminate flooring. I'm very practical you see. With three children and a dog you don't want carpets on your entry level. Floors should be wipe clean and easy to brush. The dog still moulted. The hair still got everywhere but it was really easy to clear up. Upstairs we had a neutral-coloured woollen carpet that ran up the stairs to the landing and into all three bedrooms. The bathroom was tiled, or at least it was something that looked like tile. Putting a carpet in a room where people with penises have to take aim in order to pee, is about the stupidest idea anyone ever had. In this part of the world the carpeted bathroom is all too common. But not in my house. I am a practical woman, who lives with three penises males, (the youngest of whom has the worst aim in the world) so we had tile (effect?).

Mostly the dog wasn't allowed upstairs. Of course she still snuck up and of course her course black hair gave her away every time. Let's face it vacuuming pet hair is no picnic. That's why they sell those special brush attachments that beat the hell out of your carpet. I haven't got one of those. I just keep having to pull the hair off the vacuum brush and shove it up the hose. It's time-consuming but works well. When you have a good carpet that is.

When your carpets are twenty-years-old and well trodden, they get ornery. They grab hold of that dog hair and they don't let go of it no matter how good the suction on your Hoover is. You lunge that vacuum backwards and forwards, you change the attachments, you burrow and batter it with the crevice tool and the darn thing just balls up the hair and holds on to it for dear life. It's like battling with a Velcro covered octopus.

We have found a solution. If you run your shoe over the offending carpet the hair goes into balls but comes loose. Then you come along with Mr Hoover and suck those hair-bunnies up. It's quite labour intensive though. The thing is that I only ever do one or two rooms at a time. I alternate. It makes life easier.

Today I had a visit from a dear friend and her daughter from my old home town. It was their first visit to my new house and I wanted it to look nice. I was like a woman possessed with the housework. Quite unrecognisable really. I left the vacuuming till last. With my hand, I went over every square inch of carpet in two reception rooms, the hall, the stairs, the landing and the bedrooms…with a trainer (that's a sneaker to you American folks)…followed by the Hoover. It took over three hours and I felt like I'd run a marathon by the end of it. It was the best workout I'd had in years.

Then some time around mid-afternoon it started. It was just a dull ache at first but then it soon developed into actual pain - in my lower and upper arms and my shoulders. My body's behaving like I've been benching 100. From vacuuming!!!!

Ow!

I have always said that housework was dangerous. Now I have the proof.

Ow!

Oooh! I just remembered - my Breaking Dawn turns up tomorrow. I think the Pooch and I will have to retire to my bed and do some reading. She has her own special throw to lie on which keeps her hair off my duvet. And if she's on that she's not shedding on the horrid carpets. Which is good coz I'm not vacuuming again till I get another visitor. Or possibly when T gets back from Beijing.

Or maybe I'll just roll them up and chuck them out.

Geography vs. Creativity

I'm going to speak specifically to writers for a sec because I've found that I'm having a bit of trouble getting on with The Project. And it's not because I'm stuck on a plot point or because I've run out of ideas. I think the problem's geography. Specifically the way I think depending on where I am.

The Big Computer is located in the Family Room. This is not ideal at this time of the year, when the kids are off school, because the X-Box, all the toys and - oh yeah - the computer are all in the same place, hence noise levels can be quite high and it is not conducive to work. But to tell the absolute truth if I wanted to sit down and write in there I could just kick the kids out and tell them to occupy themselves elsewhere. Or at least work out a time-share option. No, the problem is the computers location, i.e. on a desk, facing a blank wall, with a hard wooden chair in front of it. This doesn't seem to bother me at all when blogging, writing emails, checking on Facebook, doing research and getting assignments done. It works well, in fact. I feel like I'm doing a task - working to a goal - I'm all business. The lack of natural light (it's in the darkest corner of the room) or comfort actually assists in the focus. No doubt, for getting work done, The Big Computer is definitely in the right place.

However, right now with The Project I'm in a very creative place. I'm doing a lot of day dreaming and picture drawing in my head and that dark corner, blank wall and wooden chair are doing my mojo no favours at all. There's no far off place to look to when I'm chasing down an image or feeling around for just the right word to describe something. And did I mention how uncomfortable that bloody chair is? On top of that every time I stop tapping for a few seconds one of my offspring hovers at my shoulders asking me if I'm finished yet. Aaarrrrgh! And don't even get me started on how distracting having the internet right there, when you're struggling, is!!!

However when I'm sitting on my bed, pillows piled high behind me, the window wide open allowing the breeze to circulate all around I'm in the zone. Here, my imaginary conversations come alive. Maybe it's the light, maybe it's the birdsong or maybe it's the fact that there's nothing that the kids want in my room but it's where I do my best imagining. In the last week I've been scribbling notes and little scenes in a notebook but despite the fact that I'm pleased with what I've got, I'm frustrated with the fact that I'm not making the same progress that I would if I had a computer. On top of that my handwriting dissolves into appalling scribble after a while and despite myself I end up writing in scrawly short-hand. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm actually losing the art of handwriting. Tomorrow I'm going to write in a much bigger notebook. A4. Instead of just a scene, I'm going to attack my next chapter. I'm determined to have the first draft finished in 12 weeks. I have three kids and I'm starting a new job soon so I'll only have an hour or two a day when I can give writing full focus. Because of that I have to make the very most of the next five weeks of summer holidays.

I know what the answer is. I need a laptop. No internet connection. Just Word and a printer connection. I could sit on my comfy bed and tapity-tap-tap, or look out the window thinking or draw diagrams and storyboards in my notebook, drink endless cups of tea and not be bothered by anyone. Because who else would want to go on a computer that's not connected to the internet?

And then when all the thinking and dreaming stuff is finished and I have to drag the darn thing into shape and polish it up I could go back downstairs to the hard wooden chair and the blank wall and get my focus on.

Seems like an extraordinary extravagance though doesn't it? My own laptop with only one application on it, just for me alone? And it still wouldn't stop that other thing from happening that's interfering with my progress… I keep nodding off after lunch.