Thursday, November 20, 2008

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday...

On Monday Nick had to be at the manse at 3 pm to meet briefly with the builder again, who is doing a quote for us. We left straight after lunch to go to town via Printech, where we had to drop off CD labels for Tammy’s stuff, check on the status of their work on Tammy’s album, and drop off a couple of different files for Nick’s album. We were not very happy to see that they had not been successful in scanning the scrapped pages I had given them – they were fuzzy, so they had tried to photograph them but then they were fuzzy and the colours were wrong. Oh dear. I took all the pages back with me to try scan on a different scanner, since Printech’s scanner was obviously either not good, or not equipped to handle depth focus. Then on to town where I left Nick and the boys at the manse and went to the shops on my own, just for a few things that I needed. Back up to the manse, and then up to Elza to try her scanner which was also unsuccessful. Had a long talk with Elza, then heated up sausages which we had brought along, to take them to the docks for a hotdog supper. Home again at about 6.30 where we decided it was too late for the boys to bath, so they played until bedtime.

I didn’t sleep well on Monday night – I tossed and turned, and eventually got up at 1.30 and scrapped for an hour (didn’t get much done). Back to bed at 2.30, lay awake for another hour, then was awake again early in the morning. So on Tuesday I was a bit tired, but no time for sleeping! I had to go back to town after lunch to hunt down another scanner. Lucy and I had done the museum scrapbook scanning at Legal and Lands, but when I phoned them to ask if I could scan Tammy’s stuff they said it was unavailable until Thursday afternoon but that was leaving it a bit late as Tammy is hoping to release the CD next week. So I had to walk around town looking for a scanner. I thought the IT department would have one, which they did, and they were happy to oblige, and it worked – what an enormous relief. That didn’t waste too much time. Home again, spent some time on the computer touching up the scanned images, and then I made a pot of soup for supper which involved cutting up a pumpkin which took ages. The soup was good even though it was quite strong in the pumpkin taste, but Nick said it was tolerable and the boys enjoyed it (so did I).

On Wednesday we got an early start on school (the boys did their maths and writing before 9) so that we could get to Patsy Flagg’s coffee morning. First though, another stop at Printech to deliver the digital images for Tammy’s CD which were duly examined and declared to be fine. They can now start work on that and hopefully get the printing finished by Monday so that we can assemble the sleeves and cases and stickers etc, to have the album ready for next Friday when the cruise ship comes in. Then off to Patsy. She’s a lovely lady. She and her late husband Arnold started these coffee mornings in 2002, and have tried to have them once a month to raise funds for whatever the need is. Yesterday’s morning was a great success. There were 40 people in attendance which included invited guests (like us), and altogether the donations amounted to ₤153 towards the Baptist Church Restoration Fund. It even made the news last night!

We left Patsy shortly before 1, and decided that we didn’t really need lunch as we had had quite a lot of eats at Patsy. We hovered at the manse for a short while – Nick needed a few more books (actually it turned out to be only one more book), and I did some more school with the boys. I had brought our read-alouds along in case we had a spot in the day to finish school. At 2 pm Nick and I had a meeting in town which we couldn’t really take the boys to, so we took them up to Elza for half an hour. Then we went back to collect them, spent a long time chatting to Elza again, before finally leaving some time after 3. Home for about an hour, during which time Nick made supper of sausages on toast while I had a cup of coffee to soothe my headache, then at 4.45 we headed off again, this time to Bluehill where Nick had lay preachers’ training. The boys and I had to tag along because we needed to practice an item for the Ladies’ Orchestra on the 5th of December with Vincent and Vilma, and this seemed like the best time to do it. Actually I was glad to have sat in on the training as we watched a John Piper DVD and it was excellent. The boys played outside as it was still light. The training finished at 7, Teddy and Nick W left, then we pulled out the instruments and practiced “I’ll Fly Away” until our fingers hurt and our voices were sore. We left at 8; the boys were exhausted and quite ready for their late bedtime. Incidentally, today marks a year since we boarded the ship for our first off-island holiday!

School today (Thursday) ran its normal course with only minor interruptions. After a delicious cheese, tomato and onion snackwich for lunch, I went to town. I had very little to do there other than posting a parcel, and couldn’t even check our own post from Ascension as they hadn’t finished sorting it yet. I inquired as to whether there were any parcels for us though, still hoping for our Maths curriculum which I didn’t order from Sonlight, and which hasn’t arrived yet. Then home again, where I almost finished a scrapbook page I’ve been working on for a few days. I ran out of time though as I needed to still do a bit of preparation for the Girl Guides’ scrapping thing. That was at 4.30; at 4.15 Nick wasn’t home from his busking practice with Steve, but just as the boys and I were preparing to walk up the road to the place, he got home. Didn’t really help us as far as transport went though as he was dying for the loo, he said! It wasn’t a long walk so I really didn’t mind. I got there in good time, and after about 10 minutes all six girls were there. Pam first did a quick demo on digital scrapping, and then I took over with the paper side of it, and they got started on their very simple pages. I had already done a (very simple) page layout (using a photo of my niece ZoĆ«), so they just had to follow my design exactly. It went very well. They only got about half way with their pages, which is good because we still have next Thursday to work on them. Pam brought me back home at 5.30, and then stayed for the usual Thursday evening get-together. I daren’t call it a guitar practice anymore because we hardly ever pick up the guitars! Tonight, since we hadn’t yet had supper, we all had a bowl of soup followed by biscuits and chocolates which Maddison and the boys had bought (with Pam’s money); they walked home from the shops while I heated the soup.

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