Catching up... the wedding

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Yep, I'm terrible and haven't posted for yonks. Anyhoo... thought I'd better put together a few posts in order to fill in some of the blanks...

...starting with the wedding...

The wedding took place in Cyprus - although actually it would be more accurate to say that the wedding*s* (plural) took place in Cyprus since we had to have a civil ceremony as well as the church one. The civil ceremony took place early in the morning, but we deliberately chose not to invite anyone (beyond the witnesses and best man) since - in our eyes at least - the 'real' wedding (i.e. the one with the posh frock) was taking place in a church later that day.

Anyway, by around 9:30 that morning we were already married - we stood on the steps of Paphos town hall, took off our wedding rings and handed them back to the best man (for re-use at the church wedding).

...as you might imagine, that got us some funny looks...


Anyhow, despite being married we went our separate ways (Stuart back to our hotel, and me back to my sisters villa) where we both went back to bed until it was time to do it all over again.

Pretty strange - getting married and then leaving without your spouse (or wedding ring)!



The 'proper' wedding was wonderful - obviously I'm rather biased, but I swear it was the best wedding I've ever been to! The church was tiny (holding a max of 25) and (oddly considering it's size) was beautifully decorated (lots of high colour and Greek style iconography).

(See?? ...Pretty aint it!)

We had about 20 0f our close friends and family there and I guess that one of the best things about getting married abroad is that everyone was in 'holiday mode' by the time the wedding came around, and that meant that there was no stress or worry, just lots of happy, relaxed people - just what a wedding should be about as far as I'm concerned! Organising it was pretty easy too - you simply don't have the same level of choice as you might have at home - once you've accepted that, there's really no point in getting stressed about the small stuff!

The wedding reception was held in the hotel that we had been staying in over the previous week, and we were welcomed at the door with a red carpet, the wedding march and (because Paphos is clearly a holiday resort), lots of holiday makers in shorts and bikinis applauding us!! Slightly bizarre I suppose, but very memorable!

Equally memorable was our 'first dance' - we hadn't booked any entertainment - we were just going to play it by ear and relax by the bar after the meal, however as you might expect, the hotel put on it's own entertainment for it's guests each night. As it happened, the day we got married was the day they had a Robbie Williams tribute act (which my new brother-in-law hijacked by getting 'Robbie' to invite the happy couple up for a dance). Given that neither Stuart or I had particularly wanted to do a first dance, it was rather unfortunate that we ended up dancing in front of about 400 boozy holiday makers!

Let's just say that we now feature on lots of their holiday videos and photos! To be honest, I was mortified at the time (so much so that our guests quickly joined us on the stage), but looking back on it now it was pretty cool - I guess not many people can say they had Robbie Williams sing at their wedding!

Anyway... it could have been worse... if we'd married a day later we'd have had a stage hypnotist!!!!


(*shudder*)


So that was it... the wedding. There's only one other thing to mention I guess, and that was my hen night - the ONLY stressful part of the wedding...

My 75 year old mother invited herself along and was 'drunk on life' way before she'd had a whiff of the strong stuff (or any stuff at all to be frank). At one point she had her head inside a waiters T-shirt, whilst on another occasion she had to be restrained from dancing in a circle of fire (created on a pedestrianised area by the club owners using lighter fluid) - I'm quite sure that should she have been left to her own devices we'd have ended up having the wedding in A&E! Suffice to say, it's jolly difficult to let your hair down when you're trying to look after your elderly (in years, not in behaviour) mother, and to prevent her from booing the stripper booked by another hen party. To cut a long story short, we ended up cutting the evening short and dragging her back to dad before she could do any real harm to herself, a waiter or a stripper.

...The legend that is my mother, is now known far and wide - even people that weren't at the wedding (and have never met her) have since commented on her 'joie de vivre'!!

(My husband on the other hand is fervently hoping that I don't turn into my mother any time soon!)

Pointless, but funny

If you fancy a giggle, try loading your photo into My Heritage to find out what their face recognition software makes of you...

Depending on the photo I upload, I'm getting:

Or...

Ha! Yeah... I wish!!

Maybe I'll do Stuart next... Between me and you I'm rather hoping he'll turn out to be a George Clooney/Brad Pitt look alike...!

Times may change but Love Hearts should remain constant

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So, last Tuesday it was Halloween, and living in an area with lots of young families we really went to town buying bag upon bag of sweets and putting little piles of change on the shelf by the front door - no child would go away unhappy from our house, no siree.

Getting into the spirit of the event Stuart, invested in some Halloween props of his own which he figured would amuse the little ghosts, goblins and ghouls who knocked on our door with thoughts of extortion and blackmail. The props included joke lights that sit behind the ears, invisible until they are turned on with the surreptitious flick of a switch - whereby your ears appear to glow bright red for no apparent reason, and an artificial thumb which also has a hidden red light inside it...

...the idea is to trick the children into thinking you can transfer the light from your ears onto your thumb and then, with a swift movement to the side of the childs head, suggest that you had transferred the light to their own ears - and if they haven't already run away screaming for an adult, you can even transfer the light back again in the same way...

Genius.

Except, this year for some reason no children came to our house

Whilst I figure their parents just threw a Halloween party for them this year instead, it's also possible that the kids simply remembered Stuart from last year (... all I'm saying is he likes to participate in Halloween), and decided to miss us out of their route.

Either way, we were left with loads of kiddies sweets to get through ourselves.


YAY!!


I opened the mix bag to find a distinct absence of Parma Violets and Climpies (despite the picture on the front of the pack).


(Harrumph!)


Fortunately, I'm an adult and can rise above this little disappointment...


(sulk)


Really... I can...


Anyway, to cut a long sulk short, I felt much happier when I found the tube of Love Hearts lurking at the bottom of the bag. Talk about blast from the past.

So, there was I - expecting to see those familiar slogans...

'Be Mine'
'My Guy'
'Love You'
'Stay Cool'


Not these days it seems...


The first two that I saw were:

'Text Me'
'Email Me'


...I'm scared to eat any more in case I find any other new additions - maybe a 'Pimp My Ride' or 'BCNU' (...suggestions on a postcard...)

Modern relaxation techniques: voodoo dolls and jelly babies

The last week has been a real stinker as far as work goes. As always, it's other people who've been causing me problems (but isn't that always the way?!), and with their smoke and mirrors approach to communication, remaining sane has been a challenge to say the least.

I've been upset, I've been stressed, and Stuart's well meaning "It's only work" approach, whilst accurate, doesn't seem to have helped allay the sleep deprivation that tends to follow a week like this.

Fortunately I have a colleague (a manager in another team) who knows just what I'm facing, and who has been terribly supportive on a day to day basis.

So far the support package has included:

* Coffee, tissues and good advice
* a card with an insert telling me to 'hang on in there'
* a bag of jelly babies (with written instructions to bite off the heads first)
* a voodoo doll (albeit on loan - it is apparently used on a frequent basis)
* a semi-naked picture of David Hasselhoff...



(ahem!)

There are few things that beat the sugar rush brought on by jelly babies, but the Hoff (and the support of great colleagues who've been in your shoes more than once) come a very close second!

Academia goes back to school

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Someone once said, "If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day"

Well here is todays bit of strangeness...



I work in education - or more specifically, tertiary education. You know, bastion of knowledge, home of the wise - that sort of thing.

(...Or as one of my colleagues once suggested, "a cheaper form of care in the community")



I've just done my daily scan of our website and was intrigued to find reference to a 'style sheet' that we're all supposed to be using.

"Ok", I thought. "Maybe we're adopting standard fonts, memo and fax forms etc... maybe branded PowerPoint templates and stuff. Guess I should take a look".



Boy, did I laugh... put it this way, it's not quite what I expected!

Here's a few extracts - and remember, I work in TERTIARY education...



Capitals
Names, job titles, faculties, departments and course titles always have initial capitals
Academic subjects are lower case when referring to the academic discipline, upper case when referring to a full departmental name
She had been interested in chemistry since an early age and so decided to join the Department of Chemistry

Small words (in, at, of, the, and, on) are not capitalised even in titles


Quotation marks
Use double quotation marks for speech: " "
Single quotation marks should be used in headlines and when writing a quote within a quote:
Professor Jones said: "Anyone who says 'I understand quantum physics' doesn't understand it at all."





Ummm... anyone else learn this when they were 9, or is it just me?



Oh yes, your children's education is in safe hands folks.

Funny how things change

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I guess I'm at that age where many of my friends have now married - most having waited until they were in their 30's. Listening to them recount the marriage proposals has (by and large) left me rather stunned...

One of my oldest friends simply burst into tears (for 20 minutes of prolonged sobbing) before she could manage to respond in the affirmative, whilst another used to talk incessantly about 'when we marry', but would always add the hurried qualifying statement 'of course, it's not something I'm thinking about at the moment...'. Suffice to say, when the proposal actually came, she couldn't contain her excitement - think bottle of pop that's been shaken really hard!

So after friends have set this kind of example, imagine how inadequate (not to say guilty) a girls gonna feel when her boyfriend proposes (yes, my boyfriend) and she doesn't get all giggly, falling over herself to accept.


...Let's just say that my response was one of abject panic!



My (very wonderful) boyfriend almost had his arm yanked out of the socket as I was trying to stop him kneeling down (and I swear that if I was a fitter person, I might just have compounded this by sprinting the length of the park in the opposite direction).

Fortunately he didn't take it personally! We've known each other for ages - around 11 years, so he knows me (the good and bad bits) better than most people, so I think he rather assumed I'd get back to him when the shock wore off...


It took me two weeks of soul searching to reach a decision, during which time I concluded (if nothing else) that I was a complete nut job.

You wouldn't believe the pointless arguments that I had with myself during this time (between you and me, I blame it all on my independent streak which chose to stick it's nose into my business at the wrong time).


"I don't want to change my name" - after all, I've been 'me' all my life.

"I don't want to be 'given away'" - Do I look like a Christmas hamper? Well DO I??!

"I have to wear a ring?" - Oh sure! Go ahead... just brand me and get it over with!



And this independent streak??

In reality, it doesn't even exist!


Anyhow, I eventually arm wrestled it into submission and the upshot is that I'm getting married to a wonderful man who is responsible for just about every one of my laughter lines. How good is that!

(I should probably be mad about the laughter lines though... altogether now, everybody say "Botox")


And isn't it funny how things change...

...everything that I was dreading, I'm actually looking forward to now...



(except the name change of course, but some things can't be helped!)

Whoda thunk it?

Ok... Obviously I'm not quite up to Mikey's standard (he got the angels whilst I got stuck with the annoying purple dinosaur on happy pills).

All in all though, it's a result I can live with:

How evil are you?