Blog – Page 61 – K.Ridwyn

Sleep and dreams

Post author By KRidwyn
Post date December 19, 2012

Last night, Mr 3 had a nightmare, so I got up and calmed him down. It was 12.37am. And it got me wondering, when was the last time that I got up to a cherub in the middle of the night? Do you know, I actually couldn’t remember! I had to think back, and back, several weeks… In fact, I think that it was actually when we were on Fraser Island, over the September holidays. How good is *that*?!!!
It took me a while to get back to sleep though. And when I slept, I dreamt. A rare enough occurrence that I remembered this one!
I was in some kind of medical facility, and my left shoulder was being examined. It had been getting progressively more sore, so for some reason I was getting it checked out. Apparently I had fractured it at an earlier point in time, and by now it was an old injury. ‘Ha!’ I thought to myself, and then the dream ended. Make of that what you will…
I’ve always been interested in dreams. As a person who regularly gets déjà vu, I find the workings of the mind, while the being is unconscious, fascinating. From a pet dog ‘running’, paws moving, while fast asleep, to sleep-walking, I would love to understand more about it all.
Perhaps that’s why I’m enjoying Season 2 of ‘Once upon a Time’, in spite of the extra characters that I didn’t initially agree with; it’s the introduction of the ‘dream state’ where characters can speak across the two realms, that is ride with possibilities!
And speaking of ‘Once Upon a Time’, can I just say a HUGE thank you to all my Facebook friends and twitter peeps who reminded Hubby enough of what I wanted for Christmas this year. I guess he got the hints! Thanks, everyone!!!

#blog12daysxmas

Blogging mojo

Okay, I know, I know. I’ve been pretty lax in this last couple of weeks, and haven’t managed to post every Monday / Wednesday / Friday, as I had hoped. Sorry, dear readers! Life kinda got in the way – and perhaps Miss 7 being back, home from school, may have had something to do with that busy-ness… but I’m not sure.

Anyway, I need to get my blogging mojo back again, I think, so I’ll be doing #blog12daysxmas again, here on Hmmm… – so this is an open invitation, to anyone who wants to join me! We start December 25, and blog daily for 2 days, on whatever topic you like. This ‘blogging challenge’ was the impetus I needed, and used, to get Hmmm… started three years ago. Maybe it can be yours too?

Think about it! And have a lovely day! 🙂

Uncategorized

Skyfall

On Friday night, I joined Hubby at the Sheraton on the Gold Coast, for his work ‘Christmas’ do. It was SO lovely to be pampered in such a luxurious setting – and to not have cherubs saying ‘Mummy?’ every two or so minutes!

Anyway, on Saturday, we planned to watch Skyfall on the way back home. In a spare moment, I updated Facebook and twitter to this effect, relating that I hoped that it would be as good as I had heard. Later that evening, I was asked my opinion – and seeing as my opinion runs to quite a bit longer than the 140 characters of a tweet, or even the 420 limit of Facebook, I mentioned that I’d write something on my blog. Hence this post. (And sorry, Jo, yes I know it’s a day late!!!) Anyway, for those of you who are reading and haven’t yet seen it, and want to, stop reading now. This is your spoiler alert!

Okay. So this movie, Skyfall, stars Daniel Craig as Bond, his third time in this role. And seeing as Casino Royale – his first time – was touted as ‘the first ever Bond film’ (chronologically speaking, that is) and the plot of Quantum of Solace (which I maintain is one of the dumbest film names I’ve ever heard) follows on from Casino Royale, it is valid to think that this – his second time – was then ‘the second ever Bond film’ (again, speaking chronologically). So it makes sense to me, then that this latest Craig portrayal of Bond would be ‘the third ever Bond film’ – even though the filmmakers have been keen to position these latest three films as “a reboot of the series, establishing a new timeline and narrative framework not meant to precede or succeed any previous Bond film“. It still makes sense that Skyfall follows Quantum of Solace (dumb, dumb name!) just as Quantum of Solace (even typing it makes me lose IQ points, I reckon!) followed Casino Royale.

So this then, is my problem. In the end of Skyfall, the scriptwriters kill off Judi Dench’s “M” and replace her with a new “M”, played by Ralph Fiennes.

But this is the seventh time we’ve seen the great Dame Judi as “M”. Four prior to Casino Royale, and now these latest three.

So it makes ZERO sense to me, then, that they kill her off now – when (logical chronological sense prevailing) she’s going to ‘appear again’ when the timeline gets to the Brosnan flicks.

Is it just me, or does that bug the crap out of anyone else?

Anyway. That spoiled it for me. Really, really spoiled it. For crying out loud, if they’d wanted this to be her last film, fine. Let her finish off the film, without dying, and then in the next film, cast Fiennes as M and don’t explain it. Why wouldn’t that work?!! Seriously – it happens all the time with Bond (and Q, Moneypenny etc etc) and we don’t bat an eyelid. So WHY kill her off?!!! Bad writing, in my opinion. Bad, bad writing. Equivalent to the ‘let’s jump in the lake’ of Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy, in the 1995 BBC’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.

On a brighter note… anyone read “The Discrete Charm of Charlie Monk” by David Ambrose? Now THAT’S an interesting take on the ‘Bond’ concept!!!

Random thoughts

Getting it right…

I got a few comments on my last blog post. Which was a surprise, because I had forgotten that I’d scheduled it to post publicly; I thought that I’d set it to ‘private’. Reason being: it wasn’t finished! I’d planned on finishing off the story of ‘the rest of the day’, adding in photos of me & the cherubs, where relevant, and making some sort of conclusion at the end of it al, some kind of reflection on the day as a whole.
Trouble was, I got sick. Then I got sicker. And I’m still coughing a week later, and feeling a lot weaker than I’d like to! Oh well. I’m on the mend, so that’s a good thing!
Now. Photos!

This lizard sat next to Miss 7 during the Croc show, at which Miss 4 was delighted that we were so close to the birds

Seeing a wombat

And a couple of giraffes
And then (trying to) feed well-fed kangaroos

but having more success feeding an elephant!

Then we said “hello” to the cheetahs

before a final climb on the giant croc!

Tags Illness, technology

Life Random thoughts Uncategorized

Zoo day

On Saturday, “Baby Bob” Irwin turned 9 years old. And judging by the crowds of people who were at Australia Zoo on the gorgeous sun-filled day, he had a very happy birthday!
We were there, the three cherubs and I, sunscreened to the max and with full water bottles weighing us down. It was a beautiful day!
I had hoped to follow our family favourite – the 10am otter feeding – with the 10.30 Feed the Elephants session… but I had not realised that they’d moved the Elephant feed to outside their enclosure, all the way on the other side of the zoo. Oops! Oh well. Tea cup rides and time on the Jumping Castle soothed Miss 4’s extreme disappointment, and time in the sandpit near the dinosaur ‘cave’ was in order, prior to feeding the baby farm animals and then the midday Croc show. It being Robert’s birthday, he came and fed a croc, as did Bindi; and Terri tried getting a uncooperative Mossman (the Zoe’s largest Salt-Water Croc) to eat a feral pig. We sat up the back, and got a good view of the birds, with a lizard for company next to Miss 7.
Then it was kangaroo feeding time, pony ride time, and elephant feeding time…

Tags Child, Children, Family, Holidays

Bloxham Marketing More about me Random thoughts University studies Work

Realities

I’ve blogged before about my TV watching habits. Well, on the recommendation of @joeyroo1, I watched Grimm last week. And again last night (taped from Wednesday night, when I was busy trying to get my bomb-site of a kitchen in some semblance of order). So. Grimm. Not bad, I must admit. Pretty witty in places too, which I wasn’t expecting! A lot darker than I’m used to, but I like the premise. Hopefully the storyline will get a little deeper though – the three episodes I’ve watched to date (this week’s was a double episode) have been rather similar, and I can see it getting old rather quickly, if it remains this repetitive. Not when you compare it to “Once Upon a Time”, which also started last week and which has quickly become my all-time favourite TV show. The script-writing is clever – to drag the ‘Snow White’ story into a second season, it would need to be! But even this show, with the introduction of Mulan and Lancelot in the second series, is becoming rather predictably far-fetched. I mean – how many extra characters do you need to add in here?!!

Be that as it may, I was thinking about Grimm as I fell asleep last night. And something occurred to me. They mentioned that “Marie”, the protagonist’s Aunt and ‘mentor’ in the area of ‘fighting evil creatures’ was a Librarian. Which makes sense, in that she needed to research the huge variety of evil creatures, in order to know how to kill them; and then pass this wealth of knowledge onto her nephew. And so yes, research and keeper of information, seems to go hand in hand with the occupation of Librarian. So far, so good. But you add her moonlighting (haha) as a sword-weilding killer of evil fantasy creatures, and then her character becomes enviable. I mean – who *wouldn’t* want to be that kind of a secret hero? That’s what all the comic books told us when we were kids, right? That to be good, and fight evil, and protect the innocent who were unfortunate enough to not have any super-powers… that’s what we’re all brought up on, right? So here she is, a little old Librarian, all the more pitiable because she’s little, and (apparently) frail, because she’s dying of cancer and keeps slipping into and out of comas at the most inconvenient of times, so that her nephew who is new to all this killing werewolves etc has to turn to a ‘good’ werewolf for help, and then she calls on super-human strength to wield swords, daggers etc and overpower people trying to kill her, and kill them instead. I mean – how cool is that?!!

And it occurred to me that I – me – am studying to be a Librarian. Yes, now that my Application for Advanced Standing was approved just a few weeks back, now I have just two courses and my 100 hours Prac to do, and I’ll be fully qualified to stand behind the desk in a Library and help people. By day. And maybe be a superhero by night.

Hopefully I won’t end up frail and weak, dying of cancer. Maybe I’ll be a Librarian like Superman’s mum was, or along the lines of Batgirl?! Or maybe I’ll just getthe qualification and keep on keeping on with Bloxham Marketing, and be a SuperHero marketer?!! Whatever happens, I guess, remains to be seen. Which do *you* think I should opt for?

Image credited to IMDb at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1830617/

Tags character traits, Employment, work

Life More about me teaching Work

Dreams

A while back now, I used to be a teacher. High school kids mainly, but I’ve taught from Prep through to Uni kids. But it was the High School kids that I enjoyed teaching the most. They were the right age that you could hold a conversation with, logically reason with, argue points of view with, and – if it was a good day – possibly be honoured enough to be a part of expanding their horizons. Witnessing that ‘lightbulb moment’ when a concept they’d been grappling with, finally made sense. SUCH an honour!

Well, some of those kids, at the end of each year, would bring me their Yearbook, and get me to sign the ‘Autographs’ page at the back. It must have been one of the early years of my teaching career that I really worked out what I wanted to say – and then I used the same phrase on each and every child’s book. Because I wished the same, hoped the same, and so gave the same advice, for each and everyone of them.

“Chase your dreams as hard and as far as you can.”

I wonder how many people read that. I wonder how many people remembered it. I wonder if any of them look back at their High School days and think that maybe, just once, someone hoped that they would have the best life they could possibly have.

Dreams are hard. They can be scary. They can drive us, inspire us, or freak us out if we think that maybe, just maybe, if we work that little bit harder, they might actually be within our reach.

How great a feeling it is to have a dream! To have hope!!!

What’s your dream today, dear reader? Whatever it is, my wish today? It’s for you. My advice, the same as I gave my High School treasures, as they set out into the next phase of their lives.

“Chase your dreams as hard and as far as you can.”

Go. Go on. Start chasing.

Tags Education, emotional

More about me Technology

#hateselfies

Post author By KRidwyn
Post date November 26, 2012

If you follow me on twitter, then over the last week you may have noticed some #photochallenge tweets I’ve sent. I’ve decided to bite the bullet and ‘just do it’ (Nike would be proud, maybe?) and just see how far I get. My reasoning:
Number 1. I hate selfies. As in, the photos you take of yourself with your own camera. I’m not comfortable in front of a camera; and so it’s difficult for me to actively *make* myself do something that I really, really, really, really hate doing.
Number 2. People who complete year-long challenges inspire me. Recently one of my Facebook friends has just finished a 365 day “Gratitude” challenge, and it was with a sense of true sadness that we who had been following her journey, sharing it with her day by day, read her final update. I’ve never done one. Not a 365 day one, anyway. Heck, even #blogJune these last two years has been difficult!! But I’ll start; and see how I go…
Number 3. I blogged yesterday about Facebook Bootcamp last Tuesday. Well the final speaker for the day, the absolutely incredible Sue Henry, asked everyone to raise their hand I the owned a smartphone. About 99% of the audience did; but only 4 or 5 people kept their hands raised she asked ‘who has taken video for their business on their smartphone and uploaded it to YouTube?’ So that was her challenge; and one that I doubt I could take up due to my hatred of the camera. Hence the challenge I have set myself. 365 days worth of selfies, to get used to the idea of being in front of the camera, photos with the idea that I’ll work my way up to video.
So yes, if you follow me on twitter, hopefully you’ll see 365 #photochallenge tweets. Well, that’s the aim, anyway. Maybe by the end they won’t still be tagged with #hateselfies !!!

Today’s, taken after a morning working in the garden…

Tags challenges, Selfies

Random thoughts

Catching up

I can’t believe how quickly this last week has gone. It’s Sunday afternoon and I only blogged once this week!!! (sorry Jo!) I *knew* I was going to be busy… I guess I just figured that I’d still get the odd few minutes here and there to blog. Whoops!
So I spent all day Tuesday in Brisbane, at the Facebook Small Business Bootcamp. As in, a workshop run BY the people from Facebook. It was great; I learned heaps; and will (when time permits) be making numbers of changes to my own Business Facebook page, and the pages of my clients’. So that’s cool!
But Tuesday being gone, that meant that Tuesday’s work needed to be done on Wednesday (as well as Wednesday’s work, of course) and I also needed to plan Thursday’s, because I’d be spending Thursday in Hervey Bay, running a branding photoshoot morning for a client. Home by 5.30pm Thursday to an even bigger backlog of work, plus a house resembling a bombsite because I hadn’t been there…
So now it’s Sunday afternoon. I’m in Hippo House, Morayfield, sporadically looking up to check on my three cherubs amongst the others running around at this birthday party. Yes, I’m being anti-social, blogging on my phone instead of socialising with the other parents. Oh well! I’m sure they don’t mind (it’s hard to carry on a conversation here anyway, due to excited children screams and other various noises) and I’ve really really missed you, dear readers! So. Better late than never??! And here’s hoping that I’ll be back in some kind of routine again this coming week!
Oh crap. I’ve just realised that the week starts tomorrow. 🙁

(It’s rather noisy here at the moment…)

Tags Child, Children, time management

Uncategorized

Commitment

Today is the 19th of November, 2012. It is a new day, it is a special day. Today will see – with God’s grace! – the continuation of the 18th year of my marriage.

Yesterday was the 18th of November. On that day, way back in 1995, I married my dearest, best friend in St Mark’s Church, Dunwich, at 12.15pm. It showered in the morning, cooling down what would otherwise have been a hot, humid late Spring day – but causing some consternation for our friends and family, arriving by various Water Taxis and at various times, to North Stradbroke Island for our nuptial ceremony.

Yesterday we celebrated our 17th Wedding anniversary. 17 years. According to convert unit.com, that’s 6211 days. You could also count them as 149, 064 hours; or 8,943, 840 minutes; or even as 536, 630, 400 seconds. Any way you look at it, it’s a lot of time. Time that’s gone. Time that’s passed. Time that marked the first 17 years of our marriage.

Today is the first day of our eighteenth year. The first day of the next chapter; the first day of the rest of our lives. And I’m praying that the next 17 years – and the 17 after that – the 17 after that – and the 17 after that one again! – are just as amazing as the last 17 were. Thank you, my dearest, for being a truly wonderful person, for sharing your last 17 years with me. I love you and look forward to the rest of this incredible journey that we’re on!!!