boblog

BST

Hooray! Summer's on its way - British Summer Time arrived yesterday!
We had a lovely evening this evening; clear skies and sunshine right up until just after seven o'clock!

Blogging might be slow this week, I've got another heavy week at work, this time during school hours. Not that I don't normally work hard during school hours, but there's a lot of extra stuff going on for the kids that I have to organise and prepare for as well as being an amazing teacher .

Also had to suffer temporary internet loss this evening and it only just got sorted out before withdrawal symptoms began to kick in!

chocolate review

Yesterday I bought a bar of this:

Your eyes do not deceive you - it is lavender flavoured chocolate.

From the back of the box...

Decompress and relax after a long day with the sensuous, mouth filling flavours of milk chocolate and French lavender. Take a moment to escape stress with a chocolate that exudes the subtle, calming qualities of natural lime blossoms and the finest lavender from Provence, in sunny Southern France. It's a perfect, all natural, Belgian chocolate treat.
Enjoy this NewTree bar at any time of day, but especially before you sleep.
All NewTree bars are free of genetically modified organisms.

There's more...

Your health benefits
Relax and unwind
1 bar = 3 cups lime blossoms tea
3 vitamins and 3 minerals
GMO free

The NewTree website makes further astonishing claims...

The NewTree chocolates are healthy chocolates for two reasons:
They are good for you because they contain a high percentage of cocoa. All NewTree dark chocolates contain 73% cocoa. All NewTree chocolates are a natural source of vitamins (D, E and biotin) and minerals (iron, zinc, magnesium and phosphorus) that are necessary for the development and maintenance of a healthy body.
They have a positive effect on your health because they contain extracts of natural plants or fruits that are traditionally used and consumed for their health benefits.

It does taste like lavender at first but the aftertaste is tea. I don't like tea.
Saying that, I managed to scoff the entire bar in one sitting. At £1.99 for 80g I won't be buying it again.
I think I'd find Dairy Milk more relaxing.

stargazing

From space.com:
There are five planets that are visible to the naked eye - Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, Venus and Mercury. From late March into the first days of April they will appear together in the evening sky, a rare stargazing opportunity that won't be repeated until April 2036. The best viewing time is roughly 45 to 90 minutes after sunset.

There's a picture here illustrating the view (above the clouds of course!) from mid-northern latitudes tomorrow evening.

accents (again)

I say 'again' because I already posted about accents a while ago.

I had a conversation with Hetty about accents last week and then again with a friend at the weekend, I have further comments to make about UK accents

Some 'Suvv'ners' say... (mouse over for the 'translation')
rm
aas
mo'b-I

'Dahn Sahf' lots of people says 'f' instead of 'th' so they say 'Fursday' and sing 'Appy birfday burfday' at parties.

Hetty told me that Andrew used to live in Nottingham and he knew someone there who said 'foo' instead of 'few' and 'Toos-day' instead of Tuesday. Thinking about it I say 'chews-day' and on that day the kids in my class try to change the 'today is...' sign by looking for the day beginning with 'ch'.

I used to have a geography teacher who said 'git your homework done by toosday' and we used to think it was hilarious. Not sure where she was from, but we used to think she was posh. We used to think all teachers were posh back then because they were middle class. Look at me now!

On the subject of days of the week I know someone who says 'Wed-nnnsss-day' which amuses me as almost everyone else in the entire universe ignores that 'd'. Don't they?

robots

My class are suddenly very interested in space and ever since I told them about the 'robots' on Mars they have pestered me to see some pictures.
So, I listened to my class and stayed up late last night scouring the NASA website for some good pictures.

Upon seeing this picture one boy mumbled,
"Ugh! We want to see the robots!?"
"Err... that is one of them." I replied.
This statement was met by stunned silence (for my class, a pretty unusual occurrence!) then the same boy piped up,
"But robots are supposed to be like a person, only hard! You know, with legs!"

faults

I have faults, just like everyone else. Nobody is perfect.

One of these faults is summed up by my motto:
'Why put off doing something until tomorrow when it can be done the following day or the following week.'
I'm not great at getting something done unless I have a deadline.
I am very lazy.

It's weird because I haven't always been this way, but it's getting worse as I get older.

bad mood

Have attempted to post several times this evening but was never happy with what I wrote and deleted each one of them. I'm in a bad mood, and nothing's going to be good enough today.
Might even delete this when I calm down.
Grrrr!!!

t-shirt

Today I bought the t-shirt from Fossil that I've had my eye on for ages

which was nice.

advice wanted

I used to think that bottled water was a poncy soft southern thing. What was wrong with drinking water from the tap!? Water was water, tasteless and the same wherever you went.
That was until I left home and moved into halls of residence where the tap water was vile; chlorinated like it was tapped in from the swimming pool over the road. Occasionally it came out brown. I began buying bottled water and acquired a taste for it. I prefer Spa or Volvic. Evian, and other waters with high dry residue levels are as disgusting to me as tap water and I won't drink it. That stuff with extra calcium gives me headaches.
Recently I have been thinking about getting one of those filters. Anyone else got one? Are they worth getting?

Also, Husband has been considering laser-eye surgery as he's getting fed up with contact lenses.
Anyone had it done / know someone who has?

bad day

Bad day. Long story. Need sleep.

sylloge

Seen on bOINGbOING:

Sylloge

In June 2003, I wrote something about instant messaging that included the words "question" and "answerer". In November of that year, a young girl trying to finish her homework searched for "instant message question answerer", found the piece I had written, and IM'd me, looking for some answers.

January's entries are well worth a look.

weekend

As usual I didn't get everything done at the weekend that I had wanted to and now also have to spend tonight working, and probably tomorrow night and Thursday night. Humph.
The weekend rushed by in a blur, Saturday fiddling with the new blog, cleaning the car and basically doing anything that didn't involve doing school work.
Went out for a pizza that evening and there were a couple of really young looking people in the restaurant, like 14 or 15 years old, and they were smoking. Must be getting old as young people are beginning to look very young these days. Also meditated on the increasing trend for stupid children's names.
No-one ever had a stupid name when I was growing up.
Apart from me.

me again

I've been trying hard not to put too much personally identifiable stuff on here in case the parents of the pupils I teach stumble across me and get all huffy about me posting vague stuff about their kids.
But sod it.

Here I am...

That South Park one I did wasn't very accurate, this one is much better. I always look kind of pissed off, which is unfortunate and entirely unintentional. I never believed that crap about it taking fewer muscles to smile than to frown, frowning comes naturally to me.

You can do one here.
Via Hammer and Peg

stealing

I was telling Joanne earlier about someone in my class who likes to steal things, which then led to a confession about all the things I've ever stolen.

When I was about 6 there were some thin wooden rods in my classroom's maths equipment. They looked so pretty in the box together, as they were all different vibrant colours. I took one, but when I got it home it looked kind of sad by itself and I was too scared to replace it. Weirdly, I didn't I throw it away, perhaps to serve as a reminder of how bad it feels to steal something.

I'd like to point out that I'm now an upstanding citizen!
All that thieving hasn't gone by without consequence, though - I am now ultra-paranoid about being accused of shoplifting. If I've been browsing for ages in a shop but leave without buying something I always feel sure I'm going to be stopped, even though I wouldn't dream of taking anything without paying for it.

What have you nicked then? 'Fess up!

boxes

Since nothing blog-worthy has happened to me of late, I shall post a few more pictures of things I have made.

As my main curriculum subject at Uni was art we were always going on little mini-field trips here and there; to galleries, landscape sketching locations or places with noteworthy architecture - usually as a day or half day trip. In the final term of the third year the art students traditionally went on a study trip much further afield. We ended up in New York, primarily for the architecture.

These papier-mache boxes are based on real buildings I saw there.

We have them out 'on display' in the house, and keep candles and sewing stuff in them, so they do get used.

hello

Yes, I am still here. Apologies for the unintentional blog break. I forget how tiring the first week back is and I seem to have spent the week working and sleeping.

Off to bed!

all time top ten

OK, following on from last week's 'random music' post, I've finally decided which tracks have made it onto my all time top ten.
The trouble was trying to whittle the list down. I have four or five songs that I listen to over and over and over (not only am I a faddy eater, but I'm a faddy listener too) so a couple of those songs automatically got on the list. It's the 'classics' I struggled with, those songs that were my favourites two, five or ten years ago that really ought to have a place on this list.
It helped to ask myself 'Will I still listen to this song in five or ten years' time?'
So...

My (current) All Time Top 10
1. Deee-lite - Groove is in the Heart
2. Royksopp - Eple
3. Cud - Purple Love Balloon
4. Cud - Eau Water
5. Benny Benassi - No Matter
6. Nina Nastasia- So Little
7. Chopin - Berceuse in D Flat Op.57
8. Blur - There's No Other Way
9. Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds
10. De La Soul - Magic Number

Narrowly missed out on the big time:
- The Verve - Feel
- Bent - Private Road

Kenilworth

My main subject at University (as part of my teacher training) was Art. Tonight I realised that I have been neglecting my artistic and creative side, and decided to dig out some of my creations.
This is a piece I made in my first year at Uni.
It's acrylics on clay, a reproduction of the archway of St. Nicholas' Church, Kenilworth.