Showing posts with label Open University. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open University. Show all posts

04 January 2011

Cushions, handbags and busy bees

Have a little read of my wedding blog - http://leese-dixon-eco.blogspot.com.

These days I have very little time to write on here and it will prob get even less when I am in the swing of my final year at Uni and erm finalising wedding plans. I am now wondering why I am finishing at Uni in the same year that I am getting married? Am I mad? Must be. I am also searching for a new job, ideally within the writing field. At the same time, Mark and I are still trying to push Solar Chi Designs. He is also searching for a job. Hectic times.

Mark is due back at court in February for (what we hope will be) the final stages of his Contact Order for his son Reuben. We hope to have him every other weekend at our home. He represents himself at court to save money. Solicitors are massively expensive without Legal Aid. I think he is very brave. I try to help as much as I can but at court, it is all him.

Love, peace and pansies.

xx

28 August 2010

The planet will laugh with us

I never seem to have time to write my blog these days. I should invest more time in it and as such, here I am, tapping away.

Life has busy of late. Busy and at times, very difficult.

I'm writing an essay at the moment well not exactly this very moment but I've written about 100 words so far today and procrastinated for about 2 hours. It's hard to write an essay when your head isn't in the right place but it has to be done. The Degree end point is in sight and as the years have skipped past, I've already got various other qualifications (HNC, certificate thingy, Diploma) to show for the long, painful effort that is higher eduction. I'm already allowed to put letters after my name but I don't bother with them. Nobody ever knows what they mean anyway and I find them a bit pompous. I don't bother with graduation ceremonies either (although I have done one). I don't look good in a large black gown and square hat. If I ever do a phd, I will probably bother with the Dr. Not to be pompous but I think if you have managed to come out the other side of a phd and still be sane then you deserve to use the Dr bit. I might just use Dr at the end and change my first name to 'the'.

On a different note, Mark and I are planning our wedding. Well, hmmm, I'm planning it and he is going along with it. He inputs with agreement and conversation mainly. We are planning a eco-wedding. This means having the wedding party at home (oh I hope the landlady agrees). It also means posting on freecycle and checking in every day to see whether anyone is giving away anything weddingy. We have been very lucky so far. Some fantastic people have already given us lots of great items for our wedding - white material, gold organza, tea lights, flowers, ribbon and a carpet! We plan to decorate our garage sort of marquee style. We also plan to have gazabos in the garden. Decorate practically everywhere with solar powered fairy lights. In my head the house looks like a fab venue. I've already started prowling the Internet for eco-honeymoons. I'm getting ahead of myself though, the wedding isn't sorted yet and no, we haven't set a date but it's likely to be late Spring or perhaps very early Summer. The weather has a will of its own so we may as well just ignore it and carry on regardless. It's a pity gas heaters are not eco-friendly. Oh I should say that Mark has collected Freecycle items so he has inputted more than I gave credit for in the early part of this paragraph. He also been very supportive of my eco-ideas. He is green but a fair amount of his greeness comes from being skint and a bit tight with money. It's all good though. Our wedding won't cost the earth either money-wise or literally cost the earth. We will have fun and the planet will laugh with us.

If any nice people happen upon my blog and would like to help us achieve our eco-wedding, please comment on my blog page. If you have old white sheets, throws, tablecloths, solar fairy lights, gold material, white silk flowers, tressle or decorating tables, fabric paint, old patio chairs / tables, erm a gazebo, some kind of sheeting we can use keep people dry with, old but unpatterned carpet / other flooring, wedding album / book that people can sign, biodegradable cups, plates, bowls, knives, forks, spoons, glasses you don't want (especially wine or champagne flutes), picnic rugs, cool bags / those things you put in cool bags and erm anything else that loosely relates to having a wedding at home - don't be shy, get in touch. We are not being uber cheeky. We will be actually spending some money. Anything that isnt something someone else no longer wants / needs will be come from charity shops or (as secondary option) second hand from ebay etc. The honeymoon will be eco. We will travel by train, bus and on foot. There will be no planes. We will only stay in places that are eco-green. We will be undertaking some hardcore guerilla gardening to sort of offset any carbon nasties associated with our wedding. I don't really agree with offsetting as offsetting but I think planting trees, plants and making everywhere greener is a good thing. It does have positive carbon effects but the effect is not immediate so in that sense, offsetting doesn't really work. You catch a plane and then plant ten trees - the plane has still pushed masses of nasty carbon into the fragile atmosphere and the trees are not yet big and scary enough to gobble all the C02 up. Not sure what the tree / plane ratio is but imagine that we need a hell of a lot of trees to remove all the carbon associated with plane travel. Offsetting is good but it doesn't do what it says on the tin so to speak.

Anyway I've rambled enough for now. Essay calls. Sigh.

xx


26 June 2010

Big Brother on with the sound down

I have Big Brother on with the sound down. What's that all about? I have it on = silly idea. The sound is down = probably for the best but why don't I just change the channel. Apparently, it's as compelling as it is awful. Compelling enough to prevent me for channel changing. Even though I can't hear what they are saying. I think I may be Uni work avoiding. No change there then.


21 July 2009

Oooooh

I am now a fully fledged member of healthy land and my Swine Flu induced house arrest has been lifted! Yay! Not only that but I move into a brief holiday period essay-wise. The long-avoided deadline for 2 essays was 12pm today. I cracked the essays off with a minute to spare - actually one minute off the deadline! The OU are very inflexible when it comes to end of course essay deadlines and a minute over would have proved educationally fatal. I'm still hoping that they will approve an extension so I can revisit the essays and improve them. Nasty flu really ate into my study time. I have emerged from the study pit relatively unscathed. Sleep over the last few days has been somewhat limited and in true student style, I went to bed at 2am this morning and reluctantly dragged myself out of bed at 6am. I'm a women that likes to sleep so this was a challenging undertaking to say the least. It paid off though. I breathe a huge sigh of relief. I celebrated with a sandwich of gigantic proportions and am soon to immerse myself in chocolate ice cream. Mmmmm. I still have two more essays to produce but luckily the deadlines are not imminent.

I made a promise somewhere in the mists of time, to paint the town a myriad of colours the moment a study gap presented itself. HELLO STUDY GAP! In the words of Pink "I'm comin' up so you better get this party started". ;-)

xxx

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