Olympics time!

I'm wearing my team GB t-shirt and the union jack bunting is up in my office (this isn't a joke, it really is). I'm ready for the Olympics to start tonight!!

Part of me can't quite believe that it was 7 years ago that the 2012 Olympics were awarded to London. I was back in England after returning from Oklahoma via Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Hong Kong and was sending a few days in Loughborough visiting my brother. We both watched the announcement live on the TV and were both in shock when he said London. I was convinced Paris would win! That was the start of three crazy days.

The next day, was the day of the 7/7 tube bombs in London. I remember sitting and watching the news in my brothers student house and feeling so terrible for all the people who died and were injured and feeling so proud of all the people doing everything they could to save strangers lives. Such a sad day for London after such a great day before. That evening we drove back to Worcester and down to my Granny's house in Basingstoke (i.e. towards London). Maybe I don't remember it correctly but I'm sure the signs on the motorway said "London is closed" that evening.

The following day was my undergraduate graduation from the University of Reading. It was a great day, blue skies and sunshine with friends and family. Plus I didn't fall up or down the stairs despite all the champagne!! If I can find a photo from that day I'll try and add it here when I can.

University of Reading undergraduate graduation 8th July 2005. I forgot how blonde I was back then (all fake of course)!!

Now the London Olympics are finally about to start and I'll be watching as much as I can and supporting Team GB (which is sometimes hard to do when watching American TV). Barcelona in 1992 were the first Olympic I remember watching and part of me wishes I could actually go to some of the events in London. Maybe some day I'll get to go to an Olympics.

Here's hoping for a successful and inspiring London 2012 Olympics. Good luck to all.

Flying ant day you say?

I've mentioned flying ant day in the US before and got some very puzzled, "what are you talking about crazy lady" responses. For those who want to know what the heck flying ant day is, then the BBC had a nice article on it today.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18983219

I'm going to get some more blog posts and photos up here soon hopefully!!

Farewell Lappy

I'm back from France, my parents are back in the UK and Matt's parents are back in Texas so this would seem like the ideal time to update my blog with all the pictures and stories from the last month. My computer however, had other ideas.

The week before I went to France I decided to download some new podcasts, charge my ipod and perhaps if time, update the blog. The battery on my laptop had failed to charge for a long time so I have had to use it with the charger always plugged in. That was never really a big deal as despite it being 6 years old this was the only ailment it had.

However, this time I plugged lappy in I got nothing except the light on the charger. No light on the laptop and no power on. After trying all the things I could think of (i.e. taking out the battery, wiggling the cord, blowing any dust out of the connection) I took lappy to the computer doctor.

It wasn't quite this extreme but the effect was the same!

The diagnosis was not good. Essentially it would cost me a lot to figure out what exactly was wrong and then it might not even be fixable (motherboard, connection ports etc.) or cost too much seeing as lappy was old.

Luckily they were able to get all the data off the hard drive and onto an external drive. This was really the most important thing for me. I had a lot of old stuff backed up but I hadn't done a backup in about 11 months (I know, I know, will try harder).

So now I am personal laptop lacking (I have my work macbook pro) and trying to decide what to do. I don't really want to rely on my work laptop for all my photos/music etc so I need to get something new, which will most likely be a mac. I guess that will be my birthday present to myself.

Any advice on what to get (pro, air, just an ipad??) would be nice. I also need to find the best way of recycling my old laptop (and the previous old one too - which still works, even with it's 10GB hard drive). There must be some good places around to take old electronics?

So I might be a little slow with the updates now but I'll do my best :-)