My very own URL

After much messing around, which as a techy I love. I have loaded this blog to my own url.

You can find it at www.jordylass.com. I hope to keep this one up and running, but it will be Jordylass that has my main focus.

Boot Sale Bargains

I go to a boot sale almost every weekend, this is something my partner and I enjoy, although we don’t often buy very much we have had some wonderful bargains. My best possession from a boot sale purchase has to be my Kenwood chef, which I got for £10 including a potato peeler and mincer.

When I was there this weekend, I turned on my newly installed sports tracker on my lovely N95 phone. It did run out of battery, but not sure yet if that’s because Sports Tracker is heavy on juice or because my phone had not been charged overnight. Even with the new software I’m lucky to get 24 hours out of the phone, and often much less with any applications running.

It did manage to plot my whole walk though and I was quite surprised to see that I walked 3 miles. It looks odd on the Sports Tracker website as you see my concertina path through a field. While I was there, I was thinking about the strange things you see at a boot sale, there often tends to be runs on things and for a while almost every seller had a glass chess set, then there were salad spinners to be seen on every other stall.

Although there is often something unusual, this week was head and shoulders above the rest. On one stall I saw a broken mannequins arm, as people went past most picked it up and examined it closer. I thought about it for some time, but apart from possibly some sort of bizarre art or paperweight, could think of no reason for wanting to own a severed arm.

As we left the field and joined the car park a man was taking a pony out of the back of a van. I’m not talking a horse box here; this was a small Bedford type van, and a very small cute looking pony. Maybe he had became agitated it the back of the van, something had obviously excited him, as I noticed after I took the photo minus the pony’s head.

My purchases this week.

Ø A couple of DVD’s to sell – Exorcist Trilogy and Blazing Saddles (both now sold)

Ø Books for my daughter – she’s currently reading anything about people who have overcome tragic young lives. A popular subject apparently, and we got her 4 books.

Ø Denby coffee pot and jug – this was a real find, everyone was packing up and this was behind a picture all they wanted was £1 for both bits. They had broken the sugar bowl and creamer on the way there. Profit from them will be sweeeeet.

OMG – I got a JOB

I’ve not been able to commit myself to much writing lately, because 3 weeks ago I GOT A JOB. I wasn’t sure I wanted a job and now I’m doing it I’m even less so. But… The people I work with are OK, and I could do the job standing on my head.

It does fill my time though and I work 30 hours when 16 would have been enough. I managed to make cake at the weekend so that we had a treat in our lunch boxes. Luckily Dave is a great help, and makes our lunch (bait) every day. Now that I work outside of the house. I have to make some effort to look presentable and I find that takes me most of the morning, besides which most of my new income is spent on clothes, (as I lived in jeans and T’s for years) and make up. What a treat it is to buy lovely make up.

I’m trying to maintain my frugal lifestyle and getting word of mouth recommendations for make up etc, and all of the clothes I have bought for work have been from ebay. I am strictly sticking to my packed lunch every day even though I can smell lovely bacon sarnies from the sandwich van which is parked right outside out building. It takes me about 7 minutes to drive to work, but a couple of days last week I got DH to drop me off in the mornings and I walked home. It is a really pleasant walk, by the map it is about 3 miles, but I can’t find sat nav (GPS) for walking and find it impossible to read a map, so I went round the houses a bit and it took me 90 minutes to get home.

I would have walked today but I went to the boot sale yesterday. The temperature was 21oC, and although I put SPF 15 on, and was only out for 2 hours, I managed to get seriously sunburnt. So today I feel all stiff and brought the car.

I have Friday off this week, ‘cos I’m going to visit my 2 youngest in their boarding school, for the weekend we get to camp and hang out with our kids, I always find it a really relaxed, chill out time and looking forward to it very much.

Life and Miracle Fruit

We got our tickets to Glastonbury festival . This has been a major event for the past 4 years. This year I didn’t want to go. We got the tickets just in case but it was really miserable last year, and I have cancelled mine. Dave is going to go with Chris. Although should it look like it may not rain I may well be trying to get tickets last minute. Apart from last year there being pretty miserable. It does not work out at a good time for us this year. Visiting the children is 2 weeks before; normally we’d visit with them for the weekend then drive on down to Somerset on the Monday, spending a couple of days camping and get into the festival on the Wednesday. This year we have to visit with them for a weekend, come home and spend the next weekend here then drive back down to Suffolk to pick them up and then on over to Somerset. Apart from which Katie who has just finished her mocks has a proper exam when we would be away.
So I’m looking forward to a girly week just her and I and lots of Ben and Jerry’s. Yes I am very fat already and really should not even think about Ben and Jerry’s let alone eat it. I am absolved though because of 2 things.

1. I have bought Wii Fit – and yes I have done it, quite a few times actually….

2. I have bought some Magic Berries – now this little miracle fruit as it is known, is going to save me from myself.

I had great hopes for these little berries. I could see how it would mean I wouldn’t have to add sugar to anything and I would ‘get thin’, but it gets washed away with hot food, so my coffee still has to have a little sugar, and when I suggested we all chewed a bit of this so we could eat rhubarb crumble without sugar, the rest of my family looked at me in disbelief. Just because I want to put all my faith in a magic little berry does not mean they will follow me. I know this from previous run-ins with my previous occasional obsessions of ‘truly wonderful ideas that will work’. These wonderful ideas are not limited to dieting. When I hit on a good idea it overtakes me and for weeks I can think of nothing else. At the moment my magic berries are hitting the spot, but running concurrently but a little under the surface at the moment is a love and demand for all things kenwood chefy. I know I need a chef. It would look so great in my kitchen. It would do all of those mundane tasks I hate and everyone on the MSE old style board has one, loves it, and uses it daily. I am mostly old style. I cook a lot, I eat even more I know I would benefit from a kenwood chef. I got an old one from a kind freecycler and it is stood in pride of place in my kitchen, unfortunately it does not work so well. The attachments work, the liquidiser, mincer, and slow speed chopper (don’t those words make you drool in anticipation), but the actual turny thing, the bit that would make perfect cakes and bread dough, that does not work. It will not turn. Dave took it apart straight away of course, he’s an ‘engineer’ but alas he thinks the gears are broken. This leaves me in somewhat of a conundrum. I have to search ebay twice a day for the answer. Do I buy the gears and fix the old machine. Look for another old one, or horror of horrors Dave thinks I should buy a new one. He obviously has no idea on the amount of research that went into this kitchen necessity and those in the know. (The regulars on the kenwood chef thread on MSE), their collective wisdom is that old is better than new. So while I dream about A701/A901, I know that he too is caught up in his own little obsession. As a family of geeks what more perfect present for my love than an Ipod Touch. It was his birthday a few days ago, and I believe he has had that touch in his hand more than his (err other favourite thing) since then. Not only has he filled it with stuff and moved stuff around and completely frustrated himself in his attempts to get his email on it. I’m sure he is stroking it when I’m not looking. On a positive note it seems to be the best birthday present he ever got, which makes me a perfect wife for this week anyway…