Up and running!

 My relationship with technology is fraught at the best of times (ask my mobile phone who was rescued off the bonnet of Miranda on the way to work again this week) but in a household that has two tower PCs, three laptops and an iPad you would think that one would be able to contact the webesphere. But! In the straight out of it only happens to yours truly category, in the same vein as my bank manager being arrested for fraud and my bank account frozen as the bank thought I was one of his made up customers, the second I finish slaving away over my last essay for university I log onto the send it in quick page of the university website and find a message addressed to me asking for 3 new assignments all due by 23.59 the following day. Some mistake surely but as all the uniworkers had gone home for the day there was no one to remonstrate with. By midnight I had managed to access my previous assignments and hurrah had passed all of them so no need for resubmissions. Still the curious message remained. So instead of submitting new essay I decided to wait until the morning and phone, speak to a human and ask the hell was going on. Which I did. And happy happy joy joy the message was an error and all I needed to do was submit this essay and I was half way there. Except as I was about to press send the computer committed suicide. Gone. Kaput. Nothing. Zilch. Unlike previous times and mindful of my capacity to break things I had, thankfully, stored a copy on the drive at work so aside from the references it was all salvageable. To the office (phone on bonnet) After a few deft strokes of the keyboard it was gone, essay not phone. And the good news is the university really liked my research proposal so as long as I get funding and few mentors then I am one step closer to being a Dr.

 Meantime nothing much has happened. Rug rat mkII got chased by a big bear.

 And a giant pot plant tried to eat him.

 The Northern contingent arrived for their holidays and are very well trained so I am in the process of untraining them. Here we see the its ok to sit on the sofa phase of training. This is not Rocky and Reba, but Buddy, Rocky's son and Reuby, Reba and Reuben's daughter.

 Talking of training the apprentice got a new second hand train set which did not keep us both occupied for hours. We particularly did not like the was it made authentic steam engine sounds or puff real steam out of its funnel. Apart from that nothing much has happened.

Except for my beautiful and oh so patient wife had another birthday.