warning, system going down in

10 seconds. warning system is down.

This is what we used to hear at work when our old Harris computer system was on the nod. Often the warning would bellow out of the walls after we'd started standing up and yelling at our blank screens. In those days you had to manually save, no automatic save functions on these little babies. No save by you and all was gone.

Now this warning is going off all around me, well not really but it should be.

For starters I can take photographs but for some reason I can't transport them into the computer. It just won't do it. Yes the photos are in the camera and I'd love you to see the latest Liesl, the wool from Melbourne that followed me home. The fellow is looking into replacing batteries and checking leads.

The next computer issues is more of a down and now up. We've gone wireless finally, although it did take him a week to get it installed properly.

The next thing going down is my work hours. My doctor has reduced my working hours to five hours a day, still Monday to Friday, in an attempt to find a nice happy medium that allows me to work and not be swallowing pain killers like lollies. A visit to a pain management specialist is scheduled. Which means work may react nicely and be supportive (that would be my immediate boss) or lash out like the spoilt toddler it normally behaves like (that would be the ed) and try to push me out the door.

I'm really looking forward to the reduced hours. Unfortunately it means hanging around town for an hour or so after work to wait for the children to finish school, but there is a wonderful library down the road from the school, in walking distance for the kids so they can come and meet me there. Imagine having time to read for pleasure!


And now for Bells seven random things about me:

I once lived in a place where the back yard was full of coffins and inter-continental body transporters (those are the big sardine tins). It was a goth household above a funeral parlour on Parramatta Road.


I get strange food cravings. At the moment it is all about mint and chocolate. It's not just a pregnancy thing for me, these cravings last for months or, in the case of mint, years and then suddenly it's somthing else. Tins of ready made caramel during my second pregnancy was probably the worst.


I love films. I love everything from the old B Grade monster, zombie and alien movies and have everything made by Ed Wood not to mention movies with titles that include Attack, Zombies, Vampires, I think you get the picture. Then I love films by Hayao Miyazaki which I first discovered after watching Porco Rosso (yep the pig one) late one night while breast feeding the eldest. The kids have grown up with these tales, yes both the zombies and the anime.


Both my thumbs are double jointed, I share this trait with my brother, but not my children.


I've sung all my children to sleep when they were little. Songs ranged from Drunken Sailor to the theme of Red Dwarf.


I am the Stig.


I stopped using shampoo and discovered I have really curly hair. Ringlets in fact under the canopy around my neck, I doubt I'll ever get the rest to ringlet because of all the dye I throw in there to cover the silver.