Current Mood: Ecstatic

I thought I’d share with you a little of my pre-travel excitement.

The weather here in Gozo is quite beautiful after a very early morning thunderstorm. It’s a big contrast to the above, although right now more clouds pulled up… I have three pairs of jeans hanging outside that don’t want to get dry. I fear that I’ll have to dry them in Sofia!!

Does anyone of you remember my laptop troubles that always rear their ugly head when I’m travelling, or preparing for a trip? The first time it simply died on me in London; I kept carrying the dead weight around until my resuscitation attempts succeeded with a low-level format back home. This year the hard disk copped out the evening before I went on one of my trips to Frankfurt. This time round, yesterday afternoon the screen went all carnivalesque on me, showing the weirdest of colours (like shocking pink and bilious green) in a bizarre pattern. I was ready to grab my credit cards and go out to buy a new one. For a moment I forgot that I’m living in the land where certain modern comforts haven’t arrived yet… So I switched it on again after a couple of hours again, and what do you know: it worked fine! I’m keeping fingers crossed that it’ll survive the journey. You may laugh or shake your heads, but without a computer I just won’t do!! (Especially not if there’s free wifi in the hotel rooms!)

So… In Sofia it’s bitterly cold but that’s just how I wish it to be. I’m going to see snow for the first time after 25 years! Although I should be used to travelling by now (this year I flew to Germany 4 times already!!), I’m excited like a little child, to the extent that yesterday I didn’t (couldn’t!) eat anything except for one little snack in the morning. Not that a fasting day or two after all the Christmas sweets would do me any harm.

I better get going now. Still have to iron some last clothes (I really wish those jeans would dry!!), then try and fit all those heaps of stuff  into the suitcases. In 12 hours we’ll be on the ferry…

If my laptop stays alive I’ll certainly let y’all know how we’re doing in the cold!

Take care and a happy New Year to all!

This might be my last post this week (if not this year!); there aren’t enough hours in a day to cope with everything that needs to be done (a) before Christmas and (b) before going on holiday next Sunday (and that our flight is at 03:50 hrs in the morning, doesn’t help either!). A couple of days ago it suddenly occurred to me that this is the first time in many, many years that I’ll be working on Christmas Eve. We always had a “big” dinner at home on the 24th, which I don’t see how I can possibly handle this time. I was already panicking when an idea hit me – this year we’re going to have fondue, so everyone simply cooks his/her own food LOL! Still, there are preparations to be made. But I’ve already started feeling better since I had this idea!

Last weekend was quite a hectic one. I did get the most important shopping done. I even did my grocery shopping at the Duke – but I’m not sure when I’ll do that again. You see, they have underground parking – fabulous, eh? It wasn’t even busy, and I’m still thanking my lucky stars for that. Because to get two storeys down below, you drive on a single lane, which would be fine if it wasn’t the same lane you have to take to get back to daylight. In any other country on this globe the traffic light system would probably even work: if one has a red light, one stops and waits. But in this blessed country it’s different (like so many things…); since when do people here stop at a red light if they don’t see a reason why they should wait? And sure enough, I had almost reached the end of my way out when I met a Maltese vehicle head-on. Oh the joy! It wasn’t that bad, but I shudder to think how the system will cope with a really busy shopping morning…

Late afternoon I finally got to see Chasing Pandora live again, who had a gig at Arkadia. It was nice, but too short, and the atmosphere on the whole was a little too “cool” – not the music’s fault, but the crowd’s! But hey, it’s a shopping mall (albeit a small one!)… I uploaded three photos to my photoblog, but more can be seen in my facebook photo album. It just takes too long to do them one by one on the photoblog. One of these days I’ll have to see how I can improve on that site… (yeah, right!)

After the gig we went off to admire Bethlehem in Għajnsielem, at long last (again, photos are on facebook )! The “village” is very pretty, and the idea a great one, too. Silly me wished for a stand with mulled wine though LOL! But I reckon they didn’t have that two thousand years ago… :D Baby Jesus probably wished for something warm, too. I don’t think it’s great fun to stay in one place for hours as the “actors” did. So a big prosit to all involved – you’re putting up a truly wonderful show!

After Għajnsielem it was pizza at Smugglers’ again (they ought to give us some kind of frequent visitors’ discount!!). They had this little Father Christmas that from a distance looked like a real person sitting at a table (as a matter of fact, it was only half life-size and standing behind the table). Although hubby gets annoyed when I do that, I couldn’t resist snatching a shot…

That’s all for today, I think. I wish you all a very happy Christmas and hope you get to enjoy it in peace, with your loved ones – and without too much stress!

Current Mood: Cool

I’m publishing my PhotoHunt early, because who knows when I’ll find the time after tonight… Tomorrow I need to do some serious shopping!! Apart from that, I’ve known all week what I’m going to post for the theme – Wide -  it fits just perfectly my Tokina wide-angle lens!

You’ll notice that I’ve learnt a few new photoshop skills, I couldn’t resist putting them to test. (Big thank-you to my son – or then again, not, because now I’m spending even more time with my photos!!)

The first was taken at the same place and time as my breakfast photohunt a while back, albeit after breakfast, showing the bay of Marsalforn:

Then there’s one of my favourite places for photo-shooting, Dwejra. The wide angle really dwarfs the gigantic rock. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Gozo: there are actually two people walking right on top, those tiny dots you can see about half a finger-width to the left of the arch!

Last but not least, this is the lobby of the hotel where I work:

As usual, larger versions of the pics are found in my photoblog, but I’m too lazy to set the links right now…

I’m off now to find a cosy place in this house. My hands and feet are freezing. Yes, it is cold over here: 11°C the last time I checked, and inside it’s not much warmer. These are not normal temperatures for December – but then, you hardly find “normal” weather anywhere any more, eh?

Oh, I don’t want to forget: if you happen to be in Gozo tomorrow, don’t miss Chasing Pandora!! They are going to play in Arkadia’s function hall at 6 pm – and there’s going to be a wine-tasting too!! Chasing Pandora’s last Gozo gig at the Astra was cancelled – I’m keeping my fingers crossed for tomorrow!

Happy weekend everyone!

photohunt

The PhotoHunt theme – Favorite – gave me a little bit of a headache. My favourite pastime is photography. I suppose I could have taken a self portrait in the mirror, but I’ve done that before, so I decided against it. In the end I ventured out into the garden – glad that it didn’t rain, for a change! – and shot away at Felix. She (!) is not the perfect photo model; more often than not she starts all kinds of silly movements as soon as she sees me with the camera. However, I was the more stubborn of us two!

Another favourite activity of mine is playing with my shots in photoshop. So here’s Felix! :)

Now I’m just glad that my favourite cat – Simba – doesn’t know how to browse my blog. I’m sure he wouldn’t like Felix to feature in my Favorite post!! But of course there’s nothing wrong to feature Simba, too… This pic was one of the first photos I uploaded to my fotoblog last February; it shows his favourite look, which almost caused us to rename him Garfield LOL!

Now I’m sure that as soon as I start surfing other participants, dozens of other Favorite ideas will start cropping up in my head…

Happy Hunting!

photohunt

PS – I used the American spelling of “favorite” only in connection with the photohunt theme; I’m so conditioned that I cringe every time I leave out the British “u”!!

Suddenly it’s Monday afternoon, and I have no idea how that happened! (For those of you outside Malta, we enjoyed a long weekend, today being the feast of the Immaculate Conception.)

On Saturday we went to the Christmas Market in Nadur, but somehow the festive atmosphere didn’t want to materialize. At least we stopped a couple of times here and there to greet friends, otherwise we wouldn’t have spent all of 10 minutes. Afterwards we visited my creative friend Hermine, who lives just a few minutes’ walk away from the square. After showing us her latest creations, she served us Glühwein and popcorn in her very cosy (heated!) open-air space, which made us feel better instantly!

Yesterday was one of those slow Sundays (I’m trying to remember what I actually did all day long…), and in the evening we tottered off to Ghajnsielem. The idea was to admire the Christmas village (aptly named Bethlehem in Ghajnsielem). Unfortunately I hadn’t taken notice of the opening hours advertised on their website – and so we arrived when it was all over. Oh well… Pizza at Smugglers was consolation for yet another disappointment. Today was even slower than yesterday, and so half an hour ago we dropped plans to visit the village; by the time we’d be ready to go out, they would be closed again… It can wait until next weekend.

Most of today vanished in cyberspace. I visited as many photohunters as I could, and then I attempted to give my blog a proper Christmas dress. When I finally found a theme I liked and that didn’t need a lot of tweaking, I realised just how cluttered my blog has become over time… I tired rather quickly of dodging all the errors my blog threw up when I attempted to transfer the sidebars’ contents. So I gave up on the whole idea. Yep, I’ve become extremely adept in wasting my time LOL! But seriously, one of these days I will give my blog a fresh look. Just a matter of time…

Also this weekend I went to the hotel on a couple of occasions, to take photos of the main meeting room when it was set up for different types of functions. While there, various Christmas decorations caught my lens – at the top of this post you can see the result of what I spent the rest of my time doing. Not sure if that last sentence is actually English. I’m tired…

I guess this is one of my more boring posts and I admit to being guilty of breaking the golden rule of blogging: don’t blog if you don’t have anything to say. But then again, it’s my blog, isn’t it?

Only 20 days until my vacation… I’m sure you agree I need it!

Uh-oh… another week over and done with!?! At least this week the PhotoHunt theme – Breakfast – is extremely easy for me. Shortly after my wide-angle lens arrived last month, hubby and I went for a photoshoot, even though the weather was less than perfect. It was grey and overcast, but still warm. If you’re photo-crazy like yours truly you’ll likely to shoot anything that comes your way – well, that’s what I do, anyway, much to hubby’s consternation. When I took this breakfast shot he wanted to disappear, he was so embarrassed. Funnily enough, he wouldn’t have felt the same if we’d been on vacation somewhere (I asked him that LOL!). Oh well. That’s how it goes if you live on a tiny island where there’s no such thing as anonymity…

Is there any better way to have breakfast than on water’s edge? Even half-burnt sausages can’t diminish that kind of bliss!

I was flabbergasted just now to find out that Daniel has already posted his photohunt… (what’s this world coming to?!); he chose to publish a couple of pics he took when we had breakfast together last weekend before we went off on our photo stroll. Nice! :)

photohunt

What? Another blog post so soon?!? Well, to be honest, I feel obliged to give my web host a plug, and it’s almost overdue LOL! As most of you probably know from my Yahoo saga last year, there’s little I despise more in the online world than those automated e-mails you receive in response to your screams for help. On the one hand, I guess I’ve got to be fair and concede that support services are probably inundated with a lot of crap, which must be sorted out before setting the machinery into action. (During a programmers’ course I once learned that users are to be considered idiots, and sadly, there’s a lot of truth in that!) Nevertheless, it can be painful to be at the receiving end.

Lunarpages is a web hosting company in California, who charge very (I mean, very!) reasonable rates and give you a lot (a real lot!!) of everything you need to run your website without quibbles including unlimited bandwidth. Their basic hosting plan is probably more than you’ll ever need – even if you’re in business (if you click that link, you’ll see the complete list).

But that alone wouldn’t be worth as much if there weren’t real people working there. During nearly 3 years hosting my site with Lunarpages there were a few of occasions when I needed help, and always received it very promptly and accurately.

Most recently, a bunch of friends and I got together and came up with an idea for Kathy’s birthday: we were going to pool and pay for her website’s renewal (she’s always used Lunarpages and actually she was the one to persuade me to do the same), so she wouldn’t have to think about it for the next couple of years. After all, she’s to blame for keeping us all together!! :) And that’s were Randy Tarpley of Lunarpages’ Helpdesk came in: he went out of his way to make it happen on a Sunday while enjoying his own weekend off away from home, and even presented her with a notification e-mail that said it was a birthday gift from us.

Although Randy kept us on our toes throughout our usual Sunday chat – we were all waiting for “it” to happen, only it didn’t because, as it turned out, he had problems with his internet connection – Kathy received her birthday gift later in the afternoon (‘t was midnight here LOL!). Thanks to Randy Tarpley & Lunarpages! :)

And just in case you’re wondering (I know how cynics think – I am one myself ), I do not get paid for this post, and the above link does not include my referral details. It’s nothing but good intentions, because I really am grateful for the great service we received! If you intend to use Lunarpages and would like to do me a favour, click on the link on my main page – but if you don’t I’ll never know, and honestly: I really don’t care! Stupid, you think? Naaah. Just happy it worked out so well, that’s all! :)

Today is the first Advent… Christmas is just around the corner – and we haven’t done any decorating yet!! (In fact, I took this photo off my blog from a year ago!) That’s probably because time has passed so incredibly quickly, this past year must have been one of the fastest yet!

Apart from the first Advent, my dear friend Kathy is celebrating her birthday today! Girl, I wish you everything that you wish for yourself – and that the next twelve month will be full of happiness, health and contentedness! Another reminder of how the years keep swishing by: this is already your fifth birthday since we first “met”!

I’ve started counting the days (less than a hundred!) to my “big one”, not without trepidation. Wherever I go nowadays it becomes clear to me in a matter of seconds that I’m the oldest person in the room… when I’m tempted to “dance like nobody’s watching” I quickly realise that although I might feel like two decades younger, looked at from the outside I probably invoke pity; and that usually stops me dead in my tracks…

No, actually I’m not asking for your pity or reassurances. I still do feel younger than 50 (ha! There, I said it!) but I just can’t forget that there was a time when I thought 25 was old age.

Ok, on to less heavy stuff. Yesterday I talked my son into coming with me for a little photoshooting, and later his GF joined us, too. I hadn’t ventured into the valley of Marsalforn for many, many years, and it occurred to me that it should be a nice place for a photo stroll. Marsalforn, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Gozo, is the largest seaside resort of the island – though it’s still tiny in comparison with the mental image you might be having right now. The valley behind it carries rain water from the surrounding hilly fields to the sea. At this time of the year it’s developing into a swamp that somehow doesn’t look like Gozo at all. We took loads of pics – of the surroundings and of each other… :D

Here are a few select images that I’ve put into a collage; of course I also uploaded these – and more – to my photoblog.

A peaceful first Advent everyone!

Is it really Saturday again already?! This week flew by, I can’t believe it. This morning I had my last appointment at the dentist’s – phew! Although I was less apprehensive than ever, I still couldn’t do without sweaty hands and raised pulse… I’ve done it, and I’m very happy about it!

After the appointment, which didn’t last longer than about half an hour, I met with my son and we went to Marsalforn valley for some photoshooting. The weather is great for outdoors today, quite cool if you’re standing still, but ideal for walking around (well, even almost too warm for that!). I’ll upload some photos later, but let’s get the PhotoHunt out of the way first. The theme is Metal, and here’s my son getting his shot done – though to my knowledge he hasn’t uploaded anything yet go and have a look at his entry! (He does usually take even longer than his mother! )

I do hope he’ll forgive me for the exposure (pardon the pun LOL!). Well, here are my own metal things… the first one shows the metal cooling grill of my “Icy Box” – a device I’m using to work with the huge hard-disk of my deceased PC.

And last but not least, this is a detail of a brass candleholder:

That’s all for now. I’m off to sort through my fresh photos now. Later! :)

photohunt

Could it be winter finally arrived? Yesterday we had true November weather. The wind, howling like mad, reached force 7 or 8 – I was surprised about the lack of a power cut! Unfortunately it was too windy to light our fireplace, which has a tendency of smoking us alive when it is extremely stormy. All the other paraphernalia of winter were at the ready, though: hot chocolate, German Christmas stollen, scented candles… A cosy evening at home is hard to beat!

Cosy evenings at home apart, I’m very much looking forward to our vacation, which is little over a month away. Because Air Malta cancelled our New Year’s Day flight to Istanbul, we’re now off on 28th December already, going to Sofia (Bulgaria) for 4 nights, before spending 6 nights in Istanbul. So the whole holiday will be much more interesting (and I get to sleep in on 1st January!! ), visiting two different countries, cultures – and Kempinskis! Oh, and chances are great that we get to see and feel snow in Sofia!! That would be the first proper snow for me in 24 years. It’s been snowing in northern Europe this weekend, and it makes me all giddy thinking of it LOL!

This week my husband had a few days off work. It’s the season for that, and he really does deserve a break. Even so, I can’t agree with the way they seem to love to ruin our weekends by putting him to work for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon. That’s what you get if you choose to live in an island where time stood still. Ha!

But I completely digress, sorry. So… Hubby was off. And what do people do when they have nothing to do? For women it’s called Retail Therapy, I believe. For man it’s… hmm. Haven’t found quite the right description yet but fact is, hubby went to Malta and sold his (beloved!) Honda Shadow (some pics here). Only to return to Gozo with a Harley Davidson Sportster XL883C! Really shouldn’t leave men unsupervised…

His Shadow was very beautiful, and he put a lot of efforts and extras into it; in particular, the airbrush work is awesome (even if I can’t bring myself to like the graveyard theme) and cost a bunch. But hubby argues that “a Harley is a Harley!” Oh well. At least I shall be free of guilt when I order my next lens – after all, a Canon is a Canon (and With Canon you can! LOL!!)

Facebook – just after I sang its praises – didn’t treat me nicely: they deleted “videos” I had uploaded (photo slideshows made with animoto) because, “we learnt that your video might include copyrighted material owned by a third party, such as a video clip or background audio.” Rather than fight it, I just went ahead and deleted those they’d left standing for some obscure reason or other, but probably they’d have deleted them anyway…

OK, I’m not really stupid; I know that the music (mostly my favourites by Roger Hodgson) is copyrighted, but firstly, only one of the videos was longer than 2 minutes, secondly I attributed the songs used to the artists, and thirdly I received similar notices from youtube – only those informed me that the copyright owners did NOT object to my use of their songs (and that was before I uploaded them to facebook)!

Although I do understand that it’s not for me to decide, I strongly believe that it can only be beneficial to artists if their music is spread in this way and probably brought to people who had never heard of it. I can’t help finding this incident headshakingly silly. But then again, I smell iTunes involvement here. Their attitude towards their customer in general stinks; Microsoft is actually a lamb compared to Apple!

*shuffles off, grumbling, to retaliate (removing “iLike” from her facebook profile*