Wedding

The day is nearing. Less than two weeks until we tie the knot. I got a lovely white silk halter neck wedding dress from Monsoon and Matt has even agreed to wear a waistcoat and cravatt with his new weddings and funerals suit. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the registry office will let Tiger be best man ;) Wish us fair weather :)

Halloween Pooch

Here's Tiger in his Halloween costume this year. Every time the doorbell rang he went flying to answer it and get lots of attention from all the trick or treaters. We had kids asking us what his costume would be this year since the summer so hopefully he didn't disappoint.

New(ish) job

After saying a fond farewell to being a librarian and geography/ environmental science teacher at Hastings College in August, I am now well established as the Earth Sciences teacher at Bexhill College.

I've jumped from having 10 AS students to 88 AS and 24 A2, in addition to adding geology to my repertoire and managing the department (which consists of myself and a cover teacher) until the new head of department starts in January.

It's been brilliant so far - far too busy but good for all that. I miss the folks I used to work with, but everyone has been lovely to me here. I'm even going to staff yoga every week. Going to Drusilla's with the AS Env Sci on monday, the NHM with all the geologists after half term, and to the Isle of Arran with the geologists at the end of february. Maybe even an Iceland trip coming up with the geographers at easter. After a travel dry spell things are looking up - especially with the honeymoon cruise round the med next summer. It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it :)

In other news, Tiger turns five this month, so we'll have to have a birthday party for him soon :)

I finally managed to log in

Wow - I haven't been blogging in a while due to a lack of time added to my inability to log in when the host changed something. Looks like it's all good now. My current teaching contract is ending soon, and I'm loath to abandon all the resources I put onto my Moodle area, so I'm trying to decide now whether to set up a website for them, a new blog, or adapt this old blog for them.

In other news, Matt and I have finally got on with it and set a date for the wedding. It only took five years since we got engaged. We've booked the Hastings Museum for the ceremony in July 2009. Coolio.

Back from our hols

We're back from our week in sunny Cornwall, where we went camping for the first time with Tiger. It was a lovely week and didn't rain too much. Wednesday was gloriously sunny for our visit to the Eden project - well worth a return visit since the last time I was there it was fairly newly opened.

Our own garden had faired faily well without us there to water it and fend off the slugs. I've been harvesting Swiss Chard, Carrotts and Courgettes this week, although my turnips had been munched - the leaves by caterpillars and the roots by maggots. I haven't been up to the allotment yet, but after the torrential downpours we've had here I suspect it may all be a bit flattened. With a nice big Tescos round the corner I'm not too worried about our lack of self-sufficiency though :)

Down on the farm

Here's our allotment at various stages of development.

Week 1 - waist high grass and weeds. Week 4 - Saturday - hoeing the weeds off the first bed we made (planted with spuds). The second bed also has spuds but is cultivated in a different way.


The third bed has just been planted with young French Bean plants. By the end of Sunday we had created another bed (which will be runner beans), a turf pile which will become a hot pile for ridge cucumbers and cleared the brambles off the old compost heap at the back (which has rewarded us with 10 barrow loads of beautiful crumbly loam - with plenty still to use).

infinite cat project

You can tell it's been a quiet day at work. Feast your eyes on this:

http://www.infinitecat.com/

Click on the picture of the cat with the rose, then keep clicking forward.

TeacherTube

First there was utube. Now there's TeacherTube. It has the benefit for me that the college hasn't noticed it and blocked it the way they have the equally bandwidth-hungry utube. It also has some cool stuff on it and some weird stuff too (including a talking, wig wearning finger telling you not to waste stationary in art lessons).

Mallydams

We went up to Mallydams on Saturday to visit Mr Biggleworth. He was looking great - fat and happy on mealworms. Mallydams was cool - there were all sorts of amazing animals that you don't normally see close up, including a seal. Thanks to Claire for our behind the scenes tour.

http://www.escis.org.uk/Entry/View/RSPCA:_Mallydams_Wood/8215