What I've Been Doing

Not blogging, obviously. Although I've still been visiting other blogs, and occasionally commenting.

My part holiday came to an end, and as of this week I am working fulltime again. I am also trying to keep my goals for the year in mind, so here are a few things I've been doing:

1) Walking. I started off the year a bit erratically, but I'm having fewer and fewer days when I don't exercise. Last Friday I went for a particularly long walk, as I reached the top of the track seemingly almost effortlessly, and decided to leave the track to wander across the hills (allowed, as it is a public park even though it is also farmed). And then I came across a barbed wire fence. I figured I could cross it right by the post where it was a little lower, but I got stuck half way across. And I didn't want to rip my good trousers. Eventually after fruitlessly trying to unhook them, I decided that the best way would be to take them off. Once they were down around my thighs, I had enough slack to unhook myself, and I finished climbing over, did up my trousers and turned round to find a mob of curious sheep staring right at me...

2) Transcribing testaments from the 1600's, including those of my 7x great-grandparents. I was about to start writing the first section of the family history - but I've had images of these documents for quite a while, and only partially succeeded in deciphering them. Finding a full transcription of one of them in privately deposited papers in the Stirling Archives, I thought it would help with the others. Think archaic handwriting, archaic language, messy crammed up handwriting, ink blots, and show through from the other side of the paper.

I've also been practising my Photoshop skills by trying to clean up the images in Photoshop to make them more legible.

3) Sweating. It's been hot. Up to 34 degrees (in the nineties, for those of you using Fahrenheit still). No doubt our Australian cousins think that's quite cool, but it is hot for New Zealand, and we don't have air conditioning.

4) Trying to gather information and fill in complicated bureaucratic forms with details of my income so that my son can get a student allowance. It is means tested on parental income for students under 25, and they go on the last tax year. Since our income has dropped since then, we have to have it reassessed.
S. also has to give details of his income. He put "zero" and now they want proof of his zero income, eg a letter from an employer!!

5) Putting all my holiday photos (the ones I had printed, anyway) into an album. And then I found I'd missed one out, so I moved them all so that they would be in the correct order. And then I found three more I had missed out.... yes, I moved them all again! I'm a bit anal sometimes, can you tell?

So, now I should stop blogging and get back to the form filling...