Well Chris is away down south (Hamilton) for the week. His last university exam EVER is on Wednesday, so he's down there until Friday, which means I'm bored. Really bored. REEEEEEALLLLY really bored and will continue to be so until Friday afternoon. Siiiiiigh.
Back when I first got here but before I had a job I had a ton of time on my hands and contemplated starting to write my next idea for a book, but ended up getting a job before I was ever able to start, so maybe I'll do that this week while he's away. Either that or I might actually finish the last book I tried to write. I'm sooooooo close to the end, except the desire to finish it isn't super huge because it's not really all that good. It was the can you write 50 000 words in a month or less challenge, so it was all written quite quickly, which is why it's not very good. Plus I think I'm better suited to writing fantasy (this book was a Stephanie Plum sort of book) because in fantasy you can make up all of the rules you want to whereas when you're writing non-fantasy, you have to follow various rules which means you have to know what you're writing about and research it, something I didn't really have time for what with having less than a month to finish.
Anyway, the point of all of that rambling was that I might finish the other book because it's probably less than about 30 pages from being done. It's already 125 computer pages long which means if you were to print it out on book size pages it would be a beast. A really, really big beast...
Anyway, we shall see I suppose.
Well it's been another while since my last post and there's less than nothing to do at work, so here we are again. Plus I spent a part of the morning reading through my old posts, from the last time I was here on my exchange, and realized that of all my readers, Caitlin has definitely been the one to follow closest. In fact, several times she said that she checks this page every day in the hopes that I've ranted something new. So having been less than regular in my posting the last, oh, year or so, I thought I should definitely put something up here. Perhaps I will even start to rant regularly again so as to keep you all entertained and amused.
I suppose I also don't really have to try to avoid writing things here that I would send in my updates because let's face it.. the number of people who would be affected by duplicates are just you Cait.. Plus maybe this way I won't forget about everything I wanted to tell people back home about.
So as Hazel says, I shall tell you what the crack is (i.e. the news).
Going in reverse chronological order, because that's the way it's easiest to remember things.. Chris and I went to a farewell ceilidh for Dan and Stef Robertson who are moving away to Aberdeen (about a 2 1/2 drive from Inverness). Dan just finished the education part of his training to be a pastor and is now off to Aberdeen to start actually being a pastor, or, a probationer to start anyway. It was good fun although the band played the songs too slowly. Afterwards I was reminded by Jim, the pastor and Dan's father, that the church is composed of a rather large range of ages and I suppooooooooose the older people may have all died off if the songs were their proper speeds. Maybe they just like to play them slower up in the highlands. Still good fun though. The band also played a couple of non-ceilidh songs to give everyone a bit of a break, so during one of them which was the proper speed, Chris and I took to the dance floor and showed everyone how it's supposed to be done. :) It was nice to be able to take really big steps and actually cover some ground when waltzing. For the rest of the dances the floor was so crowded that it took you probably 5 or 6 times through the dance to make it once around the floor. When it was just Chris and myself we went around the whole floor in 2 times through the dance. Chris just about died afterwards though because he, very sillily, wore his new boots which have metal toes and soles... Makes you feet rather a lot heavier and harder to drag around with you when you're dancing.. Ah well.
And the day before that I went to a girl named Katie's hen night (a.k.a. stagette or bachelorette party). It was actually my first hen night ever. We went over to Stef and Dan's house (Dan had been banished to his parents' house) and ate a LOT of chocolate and played silly games. We all had to draw Tony's (Katie's fiancé) face on a balloon and she picked the best one, so afterwards we had a whole lot of Tony's around the place, which kept getting gently nudged (kicked) out of the way. Very entertaining. We were also going to play pin the moustache on the Tony, but the organizers weren't quite as on top of things as they could have been, so we settled for pin the tail on the donkey. Ok, so yes, I admit the games are a bit lame sounding now, but at the time it was quite funny. And no, no one was drunk, just full of chocolate, i.e. silly.
Before thaaaaaaat.... Oh! Chris and I went into town and bought me a lovely tartan stole to wear at our wedding so I don't freeze to death. :D It's not a Morrison tartan because they didn't have any, but it looks very similar. The red stripes are thin rather than thick, but other than that it's pretty much the same, so I highly doubt anyone will know any different, especially as I don't think anyone knows what the Morrison tartan looks like off the top of their head anyway.
I don't think there's really much more to report before that, or not that I can remember at the moment anyway. Hopefully this will be enough to get by with for the time being, and I shall try to be better with ranting on a regular basis. Depending on how stressful the remaining wedding preparations turn out to be I may be on here much more often than not...
So it would seem that if I were a photographer, my particular style, or favourite style at least, would be close-ups. Most of the time when I'm walking around and see something that would make a good picture (and of course I never, ever have a camera with me..), it's always a really close up shot that I have in my mind. I am definitely going to have to get a number of pictures blown up larger at some point.
In other news, I will never again find myself without a camera when I need one because Chris' camera, which I have sort of hijacked.. is small enough to fit into the pocket meant for a cell phone in my pancreas (the bag I always have with me in case you've forgotten) and that's with my phone already in there! :) So probably you can expect to see a great many more pictures than before. (Not that I really needed to take more than I already do.... Ah well.) 
P.S. This flower is actually only about 1cm in diameter, just to give you an idea of how close up the picture is.
Well everyone, here we are, at work, again, with nothing to do.. again.. I have a small boatload of query invoices to deal with, except of course that I can't do anything with them until the lady at Gap gets back to me, so here we are.
The weather here has been absolutely lovely the last couple days. In fact, it's been warmer here than it has been in Calgary, which is saying something considering most people think of Scotland as the land of rain and soggy sheep as a result.. Most of the time they're right of course, except for this week which has seen all of us absolutely roasting in the office, minus Hazel of course.. She had about a zillion days off stored up because it was never quiet enough in here for her to take them, so she seems to be getting rid of them all in one go (she hasn't worked a full week for about the last month). Hazel being off is of course no reason for discontentment, except that she keeps e mailing us with updates on how hot and nice it is outside and she's even sent us pictures of her back garden and flowers. Personally I thought her flowers and green grass were hideous and ugly and that the gloooooooooorious sun you can see in the pictures does nothing whatsoever for them either. I also happen to think that I'm much better off roasting away in the office without the distraction of bird song and green grass and cool breezes and sunshine and that the incessant clunking and whirring of the beast of a printer to my right is absolutely all I need to get me through the day. Hah..... yea right.. At least tomorrow is Friday and then I can do something about enjoying the weather as well. And if the weather turns nasty before then I will not be a happy bunny.. In fact.. I will be a decidedly UNhappy bunny... Hmmm... apparently it is supposed to rain this weekend. Typical.
I think I will definitely be bringing in a book tomorrow. I thought about brining one in today, but for some reason decided I didn't need to bring it in.. Mostly likely I forgot before I was able to really contemplate it properly, because if I had, I would certainly have remembered that there is absolutely NOTHING to do at the moment and I would have brought it in. It would certainly beat trying to find things to look up on the internet.. The last time it was like this I ended up buying new tunnels for my ears. I'd been meaning to get some new ones for some time and they really are verrrrrrrrrrry cool, but it does mean that between now and when last I looked they don't have any new stuff. I'll have to see about getting a picture of them put up here. They're great.. they're blue and have a hole through the middle and are squishy!!! Makes sleeping on them verrrrrrrry comfy.
Anyway, until next time my dearies.
Well everyone, the pictures have all successfully been moved to Facebook so the mass panic that was about to ensue had they been deleted from the other site has been averted (yes.. you were all verrrry worried I can tell..).
I've also added links to some new pictures, or rather, some old pictures, but the links are new. They're the Picture Showcase links and they take you to see the best of the best of the pictures I've taken over the years. So go look! Go see!! :)
