Apologies for the very long absence of three months. I originally thought I’d re-cap those months, but instead, I think I’ll just highlight.

The trip to the States to see my family was a huge success all around. Seeing everyone again was amazing, but what was even more amazing is that we all managed to get on. This just does not happen in my family. Something always happens. I’ve written up most of the trip separately [just like I did the trip to France!] and I’m thinking I might write both up properly and make pages for them later. I haven’t really processed the trip properly because while I was there, I fell ill. I spent over a month being ill. I still get tired pretty easy so I think there are some lingering effects.

So very ill for the flight home, my sinuses were killing me and just felt extraordinarily crappy. My right ear plugged up on the way home and stayed that way for nine days. I ended up on antibiotics in the end. Because I was so ill I didn’t deal with the jetlag, so once I started feeling better I had to. Then after I adjusted to the time zone again, I discovered I was actually pretty depressed.

I miss my family. I’m still trying to make sense of it. I wasn’t that sad when I moved away, I didn’t actually like them all that much [I loved them, but you get my meaning]. The visits since then always had something go wrong and it sort of re-affirmed that I’d done the right thing by leaving. But this time as said, was wonderful. I do not want to move back or anything crazy like that, but I just wish there was something I could do that would make not being near them easier. I have to spend a minimum of £800 just to get plane tickets to see them, I have to get at least a week off work as going for any shorter amount of time is simply not worth the hassle of travel and jetlag.

Anyway, because I was feeling down in the dumps I couldn’t seem to get motivated to do anything and I’d lost interest in doing my usual things and I was tired all the time because of illness etc. etc. So I decided that perhaps my apathy for my website was down to having to update all the pages manually and it lacked a certain level of flexibility. So shiny new WordPress version of website is a way to bring me back to it. Hoping this will encourage me to dump little thoughts on when I feel like it. This also means I can update away from home.

I took the photos last Sunday. I got a shiny new digital camera for Christmas from Weasel so I thought I’d go play with the various settings and see what I could see. Went to a nearby park and saw bottle smashed on ground and it seemed like a good time to play with the close-up settings. I’ve had fun figuring out the back end of this design, the basic thing came from someone else, but I tweaked a few bits and pieces to make it work better for me. I know very little PHP so it was fun to see the files in action. Still goes over my head mostly though.

Oh, when we got back from the States, I went to turn on my computer and nothing happened. So Weasel went out that night and got me the pieces and built me a new computer. Took me ages to get everything sorted again, illness meant I wasn’t too good at the sitting up and concentrating for any length of time. I tended to fall asleep if I held still for more than five minutes… my personal favourite was when I was in the shower and decided I was tired to I laid down and fell asleep. I did take the chance to re-watch all of Alias though since very nice people completed my box set collection for Christmas. Very delighted with them!

Think I’ll end with the re-telling of a dream I had on the night of the 24th January:

So I had a dream last night that all of my teeth fell out. While fingering my gums, I found one hard white bit amongst all the bloody ruin. I pulled on it, and wah-la, new tooth. Systematically started searching along my gums and found each hole had a white bit in. Started pulling up teeth.

Weird thing is, I only did the bottom, but all my teeth came in. I remember being concerned about what was underneath each tooth after I pulled them up. Pictured my gums full of cavernous tooth sized spaces.

When I woke up I took the fear further and actually thought that if I were to bite down on something the teeth would just slot back in. Took me a second to shake that one off.