Monday 30 November 2009

www.taaz.com

While sitting watching X Factor and I'm a Celebrity last night I have to admit to playing a little on my laptop.

Now this is purely a female thing. I found the above website where you can upload a photo and do a 'makeover' online. So there I was playing around with different hairstyles; colours & make up. It was quite hilarious.

Isn't funny how you take for granted your youth. When I was younger I used to be forever changing my hairstyle and colour. One moment I'd have very long hair and the next I'd get bored and have it cut really short. Shortest I can remember was what they called then the pixie cut. Of course after a while I'd get bored with that and start to grow it long again.

Colours well I've been very dark brown, very pale blonde, chestnut, auburn, burgundy, golden blonde, ash blond, red and anything else inbetween. It got to the stage that I forgot what my natural colour was!

But playing around on that website last night has shown me that your skin tone must change with age because colours that used to look fine on me I found now made me look washed out. Also whereas it didn't matter what style I tried in my youth I could now see that they would now make me look bl**dy awful!!! Guess that's gravity for you.

So what is my hair now? Well it's a 'natural blonde' (to hide the grey) and it is still long. The bob I had cut a couple of years ago has grown out and after looking at the photos last night I can see why my hubbie didn't like it. I occasionally have it loose but most of the time I have it in a casual up style or tied back.

In England they used to say that you shouldn't have your hair long after the age of 40 (it might even have been younger than that) but I tend to find that over the age of 40/50 the short hairstyles all tend to make everyone look the same! Once you reach 60/70 well then you get to what they used to call the 'blue rinse brigade'. Although it's changed a lot here now there are still plenty of hair salons that naturally assume that you want the same hairstyle as all the other over 50/60/70's.

So what's my point? Well nothing really except that I am an individual. I want to wear my hair the way I want to. I want it to be whatever colour I want it to be.

Oh and I guess I don't want to conform.

Hey, hell I was a child of the 60's :-)

Rain, Rain Go Away

Well it's 9 o'clock on Monday morning and it's raining still. It doesn't seem to have stopped raining for ages...

The only good thing today is that I woke up and heard the rain at 6 o'clock and smiled to myself and turned over and went back to sleep. Because today and tomorrow I've got my last two days holiday for the year. I've got to work over Christmas and as my birthday is tomorrow I thought I would make it a long weekend. Bliss, I'm sitting here in my pyjamas and I didn't have to stand at the bus stop in the rain.

Now some people may say it's a waste of two days holiday. Aren't you doing anything? they say. No I'm not. I'm just enjoying being at home; enjoying not having to get up at 5.30 in the morning and I can do just whatever I feel like doing.

Mick, as usual, is asleep still. (He's taken the time off too) Because Mick can sleep for Britain and when he's at home he doesn't normally emerge from bed until very late in the morning. But I love to just make the most of my free time.

I've been promising myself that I'd get my paints out and do some painting as I haven't had time just recently to do it. If I'm not at work I'm optimising my webstore which is a very time consuming thing to do. But today I think it's time to just relax and paint.

I have to pop out later to post one of my sales but with Paypal printing online postage labels all it takes is a trip to the nearest post box so that won't take long.

So rain, rain go away as I want to enjoy my last two days holiday.

Roll on summer.

Sunday 22 November 2009

A Strange Phenomenon?

Well a strange thing happened the other night. Mick called me over to look at a photo of my dad that I've got hanging on the wall. It is a black and white photo printed from my computer and he is standing in a garden. The flowers in the garden that were white had turned pink!

Now the photo has been hanging on my wall for well over a year - so what caused the sudden change?

I know there is probably a logical explanation for it but in reality I don't really care what caused it because to me it was almost as if he was sending a "hi" to me at a time when I've been quite stressed out.

So on that note I'll leave the mystery to itself.

Thursday 12 November 2009

Mamma Mia and the daily commute

Well Mick has converted our DVD so that I can play it on my phone en route to work. Today was the first time I tried it and it was great. I can vouch for the feel good factor that you get from watching Mamma Mia while commuting!

So there I am sitting there, headphones in ears (in ear ones so no one else gets disturbed), grinning like a cheshire cat and trying not to bounce around on the seat or sing along to the songs.

I know, Mamma Mia is not perhaps the most intellectual film going but boy does it make you feel good.

Hopefully the smile will last a little while before the work pressure kicks in :-)

Friday 6 November 2009

Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox

Well I have finally given up on Internet Explorer 7 and the continual "IE has encountered a problem and must close down". This has been going on for so long now and is so frustrating when you are in the middle of doing something and it crashes and when you go back in you have to start all over again.

So time for a change. If Microsoft can't fix their own problems then I'm going elsewhere.

Initial reaction to Firefox is good. It seems to be very quick but it will take a little while to get used to the layout. Good news apparently is that if Firefox or your computer crashes then when you reopen the browser it goes back to where you left off. Fantastic, that will make a change!

Well, only time will tell...

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Reality Check/Redundancy?

Well yesterday was reality check day. It appears that the company I work for is about to sell out to another company. Of course at the moment all is hush hush and denials yet the proof is there and has been overheard and seen.

What then comes to mind in circumstances like this is to whether our jobs will be safe - or if they are, for how long.

I've been through the whole scenario a couple of times in my working life and contrary to how secretive they have been the telltale signs have been there so it comes to no surprise to me.

But and the big but on my part is - do they really want to employ a 55 (nearly 56) year old woman and if they don't then where the hell do you start looking for work when you are competing against all the other unemployed young people during this credit crisis.

Mmm, time to dust off the old CV and get updating - I used to be a girl guide so am used to "being prepared".