Pictures and apologies

I'm sorry. Again. I know I've totally sucked at blogging and reading everyone else's blogs this year so far. I've been distracted. TSC's job hunting and frustration at the lack of availability of civil engineering posts suitable for him have sort of taken centre stage of our little world.

In fact, the job issue has pretty much taken over everything at the moment. He can't think of anything else. And seeing he's at home, where I work, that filters into my headspace too. By diffusion maybe?

Anyway, I could write loads about that. But it's depressing me, so I thought I'd share some pics from the holiday, which already seems light years away.

First, presents:

A Dassie, for Po:



(Shot at Augrabies National Park in the Northern Cape)

A Lizard for Helen:



(Also at Augrabies)

A a Kokerboom / Quiver tree for everyone else, because I think they're beautiful plants:



(Shot on TSC's family's farm in southern Namibia)

A really interesting flower, for anyone who can tell me what it is:



(Also at Augrabies)

And a pink bicycle on a pink wall, because we have to maintain the mood of madness on this blog:



(Shot at Die Pienk Padstal outside Kakamas in the Northern Cape)

More to follow, I promise!

Off to a disorganised start

Every year I have great intentions of being more organised and less of a mess. And generally I start off very well and then descend into my usual bad habits by about mid-February (dumping my shoes in the kitchen as soon as I get into the house, not keeping my log book up to date, forgetting to file my telephone bills, losing my diary etc).

But this year not even my smooth start has been possible. We've gone straight to chaos, bypassing the whole "new leaf" stage.

See, I have a job-hunting husband sitting at home stressing, which means that there is no real hope of a routine for me. Furthermore, the useless piece of crap otherwise known as my ancient Nokia cell phone has given up the ghost and been replaced by a sleek, new, impossible to use Blackberry (damn I hate the QWERTY keypad), which has mysteriously eaten half of my contact details.

I also finally got round to taking my poor Ella (my car, a gorgeous Honda Jazz) to the panel beaters following someone reversing into her last year, so I'm currently driving a rental. The fact that in this little Corsa the indicators (signal lights) are on the opposite side of the steering wheel and the reverse gear is forward not backwards on the gearshift means that I actually have to think about driving while I'm doing it. Nevermind the fact that the door unlock button is underneath the radio instead of underneath the window and the key looks like it's about to break every time I turn it. Eep!

My once-a-week cleaning lady also couldn't come this week and my new once-a-week gardener has gone home to Zimbabwe to divorce his wife, so the house and garden are a bit... wild. And, in between all of this, TSC and I decided to paint one of the walls a different colour for a bit of a change downstairs (ok, so that last one was more me - I get the urge to "fix" my home every January). Despite vacuuming and washing the floor, there still seems to be dust from sanding the wall down before we painted it.

*Sigh*

On the upside, at least I can't get cross with myself when I slide back into disorder if I'm already there ;-)

Off to sort out my bedside table now. I can hopefully bring a little bit of order to that small space.

Howzit, 2011.

I composed the perfect post in my head at 3am this morning, explaining my long absence and detailing my adventures since the last post, along with some sage wisdom for 2011. But I woke up and I'd forgotten it all, so you're stuck with this post.

Hello blog. Hello readers, if there are any of you still hanging around.

Happy belated Christmas, New Year's and assorted other holidays. I missed you. But I enjoyed going cold turkey for awhile and switching off from all things electronic (some by choice and some not, like my phone that has suddenly stopped receiving sms. Thanks, Vodacom. You still suck.),

I don't know where to start, so I'm not going to really. I'm just leaving this little note here and then heading off to delete all the spam in my inbox. How is it that the spam never stops, even when all other mail ceases for the silly season?

At some point I'll also start making in-roads into the ridiculous number of items in my feed reader, but no promises that I'll catch up this week.

And, while I'm in my I'll-try-to-be-better-at-admin-and-keeping-in-touch-and-pretty-much-everything-else-in-2011 mood, in between rearranging the furniture, colour-coding my calendar and sorting out my paperwork (I do this unsuccessfully every January), I'm also investigating new phones (my contract is due for renewal) and considering the Cell-C Whoosh stick for mobile internet. So if any of you have any thoughts, recommendations, accusations of abandonment or anything else to say, please do leave a comment and kick off my blogging year to a good start.

Thanks. It's good to be back.