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|Road Essays
|Road Reviews
|Black Authors
June 2006
"You can't tell if I'm grumpy; my arms are too small!" Sean Sammis
The Trouble with Socks: 06/30/06
This morning as I got dressed for work I realized that I couldn't get my sock on my left foot. The right foot was no problem: I just leaned over and put it on. The left foot though was out of reach. I thought briefly of getting Ian (and he did offer) to put on my sock and shoe for that foot but I'm stuborn. Thankfully I'm still flexible enough to reach my feet when they are stretched out in front of me. It seems odd that I can reach my feet when they are stretched out but can't when my knees are bent but most of pregnancy is just as surreal as the trouble I had with my socks this morning.
When I was pregnant with Sean I was able to put my socks and shoes on all the way to the end (with some grunting and groaning). I plan to do the same thing with Harriet but she does seem to be making it more difficult to me. On the other hand, I can breath better than I could with Sean. I wonder if she'll manage to keep out my lungs for the remaining nine weeks?
Boy and Girl Films?
Sean informed Ian on the way to school that there are girl films and boy films. From the sounds of things, this is an idea he's gotten from one of the girls at preschool. Ian replied that there doesn't have to be such a division: girls and boys can like the same sorts of films (and books, and whatever else). So now we'll have something new to work on with Sean.
Neither of us want him pigeonholing himself into boy things just because others tell him he has too. What comes next? Does he give up liking cooking? Does he stop watching Beauty and the Beast? Does he stop growing flowers? This whole thing is ridiculous. Fortunately we're his parents and will know him longer than he'll know the girl who has put these ideas in his head. I want him to know that I prefer books that are considered "boy books" (can anyone say Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt series?) and Ian reads far more romances than I do.
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Humidity: 06/29/06
Yesterday we had some rain but mostly we had cooler temperatures with high humidity. I'm actually finding the humidity easier to deal with than the drier and hotter heat from earlier in the month. I'm not getting dehydrated as fast as I had been although I'm still drinking enough water for two or maybe three people.
Things cooled down over night but I went to bed feeling hot because of Harriet. By morning, though, I had pulled up the covers and felt much better. Now at lunch time I can feel myself heating up again.
The big clouds from yesterday have today been replaced by a coastal fog that as of my commute in still stretched across the bay and into the Hayward hills. I think by now it is has probably boiled off or blown away. I hope it comes back tonight. It's so much nicer having it in the mid 70s in the living room than the high 80s or low 90s.
My Legs Don't Work:
The sciatica has gotten to the point that sometimes my legs (usually my left one) don't move. I will be trying to get into bed and I think about lifting my leg and it stays put, my foot still on the floor. I try again and sometimes it will work. Sometimes I have to lift my leg into bed. I remember watching my grandmother having to go through these manouvers when getting in and out of cars. Now with this pregnancy I'm going through the same thing. I don't remember if the sciatica made me this stiff when I was pregnant with Sean.
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Steps: 4500
Gentlemen & Players: 06/28/06
Last night I finished reading Joanne Harris's newest novel Gentlemen & Players. I have to admit that I almost gave up on the book as the first 50 pages confused and to some degree bored me. Usually I would have given up but there was something lingering in the book that made me try one more chapter. I'm glad I did; by page 64 the book picks up and a book I was avoiding reading, I was now making time to read!
Here is my BookCrossing review:
Up until the ending of the book, I was thinking of writing my review strictly in terms of the Mr. Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith in that they both deal young characters who resort to crime (and murder) to protect their newly created identities newly found acceptance among the upper class. Harris's protagonist murderer, though, seems to have more motivation than just protection of a new lifestyle but I dare not write more as I'll probably spoil the ending. Go read the book and enjoy it!
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Five Children and It: 06/28/06
Last night I also finished an Edith Nesbit novel, Five Children and It. While Sean is getting dressed in his jammies after his bath, I like to have a book to read. It has to be a book I can put down at a moment's notice and pick up again without any rereading. Nesbit's book fit this criteria and had lovely illustrations as well. I especially loved the drawings of the grown up Lamb (even if I didn't especially enjoy the chapter).
Here is my BookCrossing review:
My next book for reading while Sean is getting dressed is The Plot Against America. I know that sounds a bit heavy for a book to read only a page or two at a time but so far I am clicking with Roth's style of writing and it is working well.
Other reviews and posts
Rain, Sort of:
On my way into work it sprinkled a little. At noon we had a brief thunder shower. In between it's been cloudy, windy and muggy. It would be nice if it would rain more to cut the heat and humidity.
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Steps: 5500
Some Musings on Sean: 06/27/06
As promised I have posted a picture of Sean's first successful signature. The S and the N are a little wobbly but it is still a huge accomplishment. The letter he was having the most trouble with was the A. He used to make the letter A more like an @ sign until Ian suggested that he should make the legs of the A "like a rainbow." That description really clicked with him and he hasn't had any trouble since.
Another thing Sean is learning is his colors. He knows that red, blue and yellow mixed together make brown; blue and yellow make green; yellow and red make orange. He sometimes forgets that red and blue make purple but he'll figure that out soon. It doesn't take him long to learn new things.
He has always been interested in music and musical instruments although recently he has
had a renewed passion for them. Mostly he's interested in how different instruments sound
and what they are called. Last night before bed, Ian pulled out his guitar and Sean was very
eager to try his hand a playing it (and tuning it). As a trade for the guitar (which is almost
as big as he is), Sean kept offering Ian his spoons. "You can play the spoons and I'll play
the guitar." If the two decide to jam again I'll try to get a picture of them.
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Flighto Outer Space: 06/26/06
The last couple of nights I've had some very realistic but out-of-this-world dreams. Last night's found me in an airport hotel with friends who were also co-workers (but not my real co-workers). Ian was also there but I don't know where Sean was and I don't recall if I were pregnant or not. I know Sean existed because I had his garage toy with me and needed Ian to take care of it once I had to leave on my trip.
We were all at the airport to meet one last time as a group before getting our next assignments. Our assignments came as a first class plane (which could also include rocket ship) ticket, some spending money before our direct deposits began in the new location and a dossier about our trip and the location selected. I was given a first class ticket to a planet with especially harsh winters. I would be flying via United Airlines (guess they also ran space flights ala PanAm in 2001) and would be landing in an area going through the harsh winter. It would be my first off world trip and while I was a little excited, I was also disappointed. I wanted to stay closer to home and presumably to Ian and Sean.
Beyond the spending money I was given, I had $5 of my own and decided to spend it on something fun. I thought about getting a paperback book but I wasn't sure I could afford one and the sales taxes. Instead I opted for a grande brownie flavored Frappacchino and drank it while chatting with my coworkers about their assignments.
Afterwards, I returned to my hotel room to meet Ian. I asked him to take care of Sean's garage. Sean was not at the airport for whatever reason. Then I settled into packing for the trip.
Saturn Number Five:
Recently Sean found a bunch of my old slides taken on various trips (to Mexico, Australia and Florida, and at home in South Pasadena). His favorite of the lot is now the box containing the slides of my tour of the Kennedy Space Center. There are a number of slides of a Saturn V rocket ("Saturn Number Five" as Sean calls it), the hangar where the shuttle is kept before launch (aka "the shuttle house" per Sean), and a photograph of me at age 13 sitting at the airport holding a baby Mickey Mouse I had purchased at Walt Disney World. The Mickey Mouse is now part of Sean's collection of animals (most of my old ones are) and he is just fascinated at seeing me nearly 20 years younger. In that picture I am closer to him in age than I am to myself.
When I took those slides I was taking them for my own entertainment and memories. I had no idea that any of them would become part of a nightly post-bath ritual with my son. At age 13, I don't think I had even imagined myself with children. Yet to Sean, it seems completely logical that I of course took them for him since he couldn't have been there.
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Steps: 5500
Don't Kick Me There!: 06/25/06
From 11 PM until 5 AM this morning, Harriet had fun punching me in the ovaries. Babies are the only people who can wind a grown woman by a kick or a punch to the ovaries. I would take a breath and she'd punch me. Then I'd be winded and gasping for breath. Just as I was recovering, she'd do it again to me! Now I'm a stiff, sore zombie woman. Oh the joys of motherhood!
Raindrops are not falling on my head!
After a poor night's sleep for Ian and me, we opted for a very late breakfast at Baker's Square. By the time we got there it was rightfully lunch time but we all wanted pancakes. Fortunately breakfast is always available. Sean's old enough now that he can order for himself, something that always seems to amaze and amuse the person taking the order. Everything was cooked to perfection. They make wonderul country potatoes, something I much prefer over hash browns (which are never brown enough for me).
The restaurant is in a shoping center that sports a clock tower. The clock plays songs on the hour (a hit is Sean). Today as we were heading back to our car the clock was playing "Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head." It could only be wishful thinking as it is about 85 degrees outside and completely cloudless. We won't be getting rain for another three or four months at the earliest. The most we can hope for in the interum is some mist from the fog.
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Steps: 5500
The Crib: 06/24/06
As it is a much cooler day, Ian and I took the time to get the crib pieces from under the house. Before we could get under the house we had to clean out the stuff that had accumulated on the trap door. Once that was done, my job was to hold open the trap door and haul things out of it while Ian was under the house lifting pieces up to me. The only piece that we will have to replace is the matress. It looks like mice got to it. Fortunately the mattresses are easy to get and affordable. I'll pick up a new on my way home from work. Now all we have to do is put the thing together.
Tortilla Maker:
I had a few errors of memory in my description of the tortilla maker in yesterday's post. While at Chevy's Sean and I took a lot of time watching the thing and I took note of the brand and maker. It's a Beta 900 by EB&SCO, Inc. They are located in Texas.
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Who is in My Bed?: 06/23/06
This morning before the alarm went off I thought I felt the cat coming into bed to sleep on my feet. I thought we had the door closed but Ian had come to bed late so maybe he had left the bedroom door open. I certainly hadn't heard the usual squawk of the door sliding against the jam but the dry air lately has made is a little less warped.
When I opened my eyes I didn't see the cat: I saw Sean. He was up a good fifteen or twenty minutes early for a week day. Normally he gets up after I do and then takes my spot next to Ian (especially now that I have a huge pile of very comfortable pillows to lounge on).
Since I was still in bed, Sean took the spot between Ian and me and borrowed a corner of each of our pillows. He used tucked himself under Ian's blankets (separate blankets are a key to a happy marriage!) and waited for me to get up in another ten minutes or so.
Once I was up, Sean settled in on my side but first had to tell us that today is Friday and that we have big plans for tonight. Tomorrow he knows is Saturday when we "stay home and make pancakes or waffles." I don't know which one he and Ian will decide to make tomorrow.
After I was dressed, Sean saw me to the front door where we did our usual morning good-bye hug. He then stood in the doorway behind the screen door to make sure I got to my car safely.
Welcome Subscribers!
In the last couple of days of syndication our subscriber numbers have gone from two, to five, and now we're at eleven. Welcome to everyone reading this feed! I started this feed on the request of one person and am thrilled to see so many others already reading it on a regular basis.
<1---->Father's Day Friday:
I know; Father's Day was last Sunday but Sundays are busy for us and we didn't have the time or energy to do anything special. Since the Mother's Day Friday dinner worked so well, we've decided to repeat the event tonight for a belated Father's Day.
We will be going to Chevy's in Pleasanton. We like the food and the atmosphere. It's very family-friendly and loud children are not a problem (not that Sean is very loud in restaurants). Also, they have more space around the tables which makes holding Sean's hand as we walk to our seat easier.
Sean is thrilled to go for two reasons: their quesadillas and their tortilla maker. He's been talking about seeing the tortilla maker again all week. It's one of those automated ones where the dough balls are fed in at the top of the machine. They go down a conveyor belt to a spot where they are rolled flat and then deposited at the bottom of a spiraling pie plate thing that slowly cooks them over different tiers of fire. At the top they are flipped over and sent down another spiraling pie plate contration where the otherside cooks. When the tortilla reaches the bottom of the second spiral it is popped out onto another conveyor belt which leads to a basket where they are dumped until a person comes along and puts them into the baggies that are taken to the tables.
Now I'm sure many of you have seen these makers before and are wondering why I've spent so much time describing one. Well, I've done it for Sean. He'd complain that I wasn't telling the story right if I didn't include a full description. Anyway, I'm thinking of ordering fajitas tonight just to force them to bring some fresh tortillas to our table. Yummy!
Sean the Pillow Stealer:
As time permits I've been adding in Sean's baby pictures to his photo gallery. These are photographs I hadn't had the time or energy to add while I was working at Oracle and then thought I had lost when the Cube crapped out. I'm currently working my way through February 2003 and while I was creating the page for when he was a few days shy of six months, I realized that he has been stealing my pillows and my spot in bed most mornings since he was an infant.
In the picture he has taken the same pose that I saw him take this morning (except now he's much taller and older). At a few months shy of his fourth birthday he still comes to our bed (though now under his own power) with his toys most mornings. He still prefers my side of the bed and each night when I go to bed I have to be sure to check the bed and floor for toys he might have left there for me. I'm often having to ferry a favorite toy back to his bed after he's gone to bed. It's usually someone like Owl or Pikachu, or it will be a favorite book like Peekaboo Bunny.
Ian and I have been joking about needing a bigger bed once Harriet is born because we're not sure where she and Sean will fit if they both want into our bed at the same time in the morning. Our double bed is crowded already!
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Nothing But Hot Air: 06/22/06
Ian and I didn't get to bed until 1:15 AM this morning because it took that long for the house to cool down. There was absolutely no air flow in the Bay Area yesterday which drove up temperatures everywhere. It was in the high nineties inside our house. Usually it doesn't get that hot until mid August.
We had every window open that we could safely open and had the ceiling fan on all night. Even the downstairs bedrooms were as hot as the upstairs. There was no escaping the heat.
All of yesterday at work and at home I was drinking water. I also made sure Sean and Ian drank lots of water. Yet, all of us were thirsty and irritable. There just wasn't any way to keep up with the heat.
Today is also supposed to be the hottest day we've had so far this year. While the coastal areas are expecting the low to mid seventies, inland areas are expecting to rise over the century mark. Our home can fall under either weather report depending on how well the air flows over the bay and up our hill. I'm hoping it will tend towards the temperatures on the peninsula and not towards the inland cities.
Here it is only 9:30 in the morning and I've already gone through 40 oz. of water and I have a heat related headache. Normally if I drank this much water this early, I'd have run to the bathroom at least once if not twice (especially while pregnant) but instead, I'm feeling parched.
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Solstice: 06/21/06
Today is the solstice, summer up here in the northern hemisphere and winter for folks in the southern hemisphere. It heralds the official start of summer in the states and for me, the slow but steady march to end of the year. Today we will be having the most day light hours that we will all year and then things will steadily unwind with the days starting later and the sun setting earlier. I love watching the retreat of the sun as fall and winter approaches.
When the next equinox comes (the halfway point between the solstices), Harriet will be about two weeks old. This morning I realized just how soon her birth is as my belly has really popped now. As I stared at myself in the mirror this morning I couldn't believe how much more pregnant I looked today as I did when I went to bed. She had done a bunch of squirming when I had gone to bed and I guess she must have been repositioning herself.
Today is also supposed to be the hottest day we've had so far this year. While the coastal areas are expecting the low to mid seventies, inland areas are expecting to rise over the century mark. Our home can fall under either weather report depending on how well the air flows over the bay and up our hill. I'm hoping it will tend towards the temperatures on the peninsula and not towards the inland cities.
<"062106b">Bird Song:
Every morning when I get to work I am greeted by the bird song of a flock of house sparrows. They fly around our roof, land on our phone and T1 lines while constantly singing.
Yesterday I had my camera with me and it for once wasn't filled with Sean photographs. I was able to snap a couple pictures of them. With the high number of pixels the camera is capable of, I was further able to divide the two pictures into about ten to really high light the different birds.
The house sparrow reminds me of my grandmother. She built a bird feeder out of hurricane fencing and wood to give the smaller birds a safe place to eat away from the reach of the larger birds of prey. There was a gate to get inside the aviary where she would put seed in hanging baskets and some of the floor and fresh water in a standing bird bath. Every evening around dusk huge flocks of birds (mostly house sparrows and morning doves) would arrive and sit on her roof and her back fence waiting for her to put the food and water into the aviary. Once she was done and back into her house (usually the kitchen for prime viewing) the hundreds of birds would stream through the diamond shaped holes and begin to eat and sing for the next hour.
Now that my brother lives at grandmother's house, I don't know if he's kept the aviary or not. He's done many well needed improvements inside the house and to the front yard but I can't remember if the bird feeder was on the list. It's his house now and he can (and should) do with it as he pleases. Regardless of what he does, I will always have the fond memories whenever I see house sparrows.
<"062106c">Flat Tire: Argh!
Ian was already running late because he and his advisor needed to work on some code. Then just as he was about to pull into our complex, his car got a flat tire. So now he has filled it up as best he could and is limping his car down to a service station. At this time at night I think he's going to find them all closed. I don't know when he'll be home for dinner.
On top of that it is ninety-one degrees inside the house. I think it is hotter outside. We don't have AC (couldn't afford it if we did), so we have all the windows open hoping that the cross breeze will eventually cool things down. So far it doesn't seem to be working.
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Steps: 3500
Syndication: 06/20/06
Last night I finished setting up a preliminary RSS 2.0 feed for Puss Reboots. I am still in the process of refining and testing the feed but early subscribers are welcome.
The initital set up took some doing as any new project does but after defining the channel and creating the first item, the rest falls into place. I'm currently not using a RSS creation tool; rather, I am doing the coding myself. Whenever I learn a new technology, I like to get under the hood first. I may later as needs change move to using a prepackaged service or application. For the moment I'm doing it all in house.
I'm still not allowing direct commenting but if you see something wonderful or something
screwy, feel free to drop
me a note. Emails that read like comments, might even be posted. If you don't want an email
posted as a comment, please let me know.
Writing Names:
Sean brought home a paper from school where he had written his name! The S was a little angular but the other three letters were perfect. It is so exciting to see him writing. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. He's so creative, that it wouldn't surprise me to see him writing stories soon.
If I can find the paper he brought home (I have no idea where he has stashed it), I will scan it and post it on the website. I'm in full on proud mommy mode and can't wait to share his "John Hancock" with the rest of the world.
Post Office:
Yesterday I went to the post office to mail some BookCrossing books that I had promised to other members. I arrived at 4:30 and that's usually a dead time before the 4:45 rush as the local shipping companies (like Mailboxes Etc) close and bring in the mail they've collected over the course of the day. Yesterday though, there was a line out the door into the hallway when I arrived. It wasn't the usual lot: these were regular folks who all needed to mail packages. It was an odd time of the year to see so many people mailing boxes. A trip that should have taken ten minutes ended up taking half an hour.
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Steps: 4000
Idle Threats: 06/19/06
Sean in his enthusiasm for preschool has been calling his old day care a bad school or a school for bad kids. Sean's teacher has decided to use this to her advantage. Now when he misbehaves she threatens to send him back to his old school to be with the other bad kids.
On Friday Sean came home dead serious that he was going to be sent back to "Maria and Joe's" this week because he had been bad at preschool. Ian and I scratched our heads for a while until Sean's story started making more sense. We got the gist that his teacher was probably just using a humorous idle threat to get Sean back on task (something we often do ourselves).
This morning Ian asked Sean's teacher about the threat to be sent back to the old school. She confirmed what we suspected. It's nice to have a teacher who has an approach to dealing with kids so much like our own!
I only coughed six times last night. For the rest of the night, I actually slept! There were a few minutes right after we had gone to bed that Ian had started his "instasnore" and the snoring while not loud through the ear plugs, was loud to Harriet and she started kicking me angrily. I had to wake up Ian and get him to settle down in a non-snore position (fortunately he still has some!) so that Harriet would settle down and let me sleep.
I managed all this sleep without taking any Robitussin (or Wal-tussin, the Walgreen's version). I only had to get up once for a bathroom break. I didn't spend hours pacing the halls trying to blow my nose and stop coughing. Instead I got really, uninterupted sleep with dreams.
It was the first time this month that I've woken up with the alarm and not wished I could crawl under a rock for another few hours of sleep. I slept so soundly that my hips were sore from not chaning positions much at night. I had to hobble around to get things back into order but it was worth it.
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Steps: 4000
Lazy Day: 06/18/06
It was much cooler today in the house and we just didn't feel like doing much of anything. Ian is still fighting off this cold, I was suffering from morning sickness and Sean was content to play with his toys. So we took it easy.
Ian even took longer than usual to leave for Berkekely, opting to take a quick nap between breakfast and lunch. While Sean played, I finished reading Girl, Interupted.
Third Trimester:
It's hard to believe that I'm now in my third trimester with Harriet. Over all it's been a very easy pregnancy. Nonetheless my morning sickness seems to be back. Sunday is usually my day to cook breakfast with Sean but the thought of cooking just made me want to vomit. I haven't felt this was in three months at least. The iffy stomach was quite an unpleasant surprise this morning!
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Steps: 10000
New Bath Toys: 06/17/06
Today it was more than eighty degrees inside and probably about eighty percent humidity. In other words, we had to get out and seek a cooler environment. We opted for the mall in Pleasanton.
Unfortunately the Lego store closed last month but there is still a toy store. We popped into the toy store and after looking around at nearly everything (getting good ideas for presents for Sean and Harriet), we came home with three wind up bath toys for five dollars. Sean chose a yellow turtle, a blue crab, and a green alligator.Tonight after dinner Sean couldn't wait to take his bath. He wanted to play with his new wind up toys. The turtle swims the best and the alligator the worst. I will get some photographs of them soon.
Spaceman Sean:
Sean and the other kids had a wonderful time at Chabot yesterday. They watched a planetarium show and did some projects in the lab (classroom). Sean proudly announced that he ate his entire lunch.
Today after his bath Sean found another box of slides I had taken on a trip. These slides are from a trip I took with my mother to Florida. It has some fantastic photographs of the space shuttle hanger and of a Saturn V rocket.
While we were looking at the slides I found my old painting of a flock of macaws flying through space. Sean was so enamored with it that we decided to hang it in his room. I will take a photograph of it too.
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Steps: 10000
Planet Gazing: 06/16/06
Today is Sean's school trip to Chabot Science Center. Last night in preparation he helped me pack his lunch: a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich cut into four squares, a box of apple juice, a banana and three short bread cookies. We then wrote his name on the paper bag in big red letters.
With the upcoming trip, the planets in our solar system have been the main topic of conversation. I've come to realization that Sean now knows more about them than I do! He thinks is very funny that he knows more. He has learned many of the names of the other moons and things like how many moons Jupiter has (16 aparently). My only contribution so far to Sean's base of knowledge are the two robots on Mars and the Shumaker-Levy comet that hit Jupiter some years ago.
Our planet gazing and discussions at home have earned praise for Sean and us from his teacher. Sean is really soaking in all the information of this month's topic at preschool.
Last night before we went to bed, Ian popped outside to look at Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. I had already gotten into my jammies so I stayed inside. I think he had the easiest time with the rings of Saturn and some of the moons of Jupiter. He should have been able to see four but he only saw two jovian moons.
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Steps: 5000
Pregnancy Mask: 06/15/06
While brushing my teeth this morning I realized that my cheeks have gotten darker. I look like I've been slapped on both cheeks except that the color isn't red, it's more tan. It's classic pregnancy mask, something I didn't get when I was pregnant with Sean.
Three doses of Robitussin over the course of the day got my coughing under control enough to get some good sleep but it has also raised my blood pressure from the 120/60 range to the 140/70 range. My cut off for the PIH monitoring is 150/90 so the Kaiser nurse gave me a strong talking to last night. She also said that if the Robitussin doesn't work and I'm still coughing and having trouble sleeping, I should make an urgent appointment to get prescribed something stronger but still approved for use during pregnancy.
The good news is I did manage to sleep pretty solidly last night although I did have one coughing fit around two in the morning because I had somehow inhaled some of my pillow. Other than that, I slept better than I have in days. So far today I haven't taken any cold medication and I won't until after I get my blood pressure taken this evening.
Baking Cupcakes:
Earlier this week one of the girls at preschool had a birthday party and cupcakes were served in place of cake. The cupcakes reminded Sean that it has been nearly a year since we baked any ourselves at home. Since then he's been pestering me to see when we could bake some cupcakes with chocolate chips and colored frosting.
I promised Sean that we would do the baking on Wednesday and yesterday at work I popped by the grocery store to get the few ingredients we needed. Sean was thrilled to bake them again. We didn't use the peanut butter frosting as I just didn't feel like making something quite so heavy. For the frosting color he had planned on doing green all week long but last night red looked better to him. So we have red (more fuschia than red) colored cupcakes in the fridge.
We did make them lower sugar than the recipe calls for so they taste a little different but they are still good. I didn't get pictures of us baking because if I had pulled out the camera Sean would have wanted to do all the picture taking.
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Steps: 5000
Sleep (Like a Cat): 06/14/06
While I did still have two coughing bouts last night, I did actually get close to a full night's sleep. I found that I could either position myself to avoid most of the coughing or I could position myself to make my hips comfortable. In the interest of actually sleeping, I opted for the sore hips because I'm better at sleeping through pain than I am sleeping through coughing.
The position to avoid coughing without putting Harriet's weight on my vena cava is to keep my hips pointing to one side and my torso pointing as close to straight up as possible so that the back of my head is on my pillow. It's basically the classic deep nap cat position where the front and back legs are pointing in opposite directions.
Unfortunately I'm not a cat so around three in the morning I woke up with the unpleasant sensation of my pelvis having fallen asleep along with my right leg. So I hobbled out of bed for a bathroom break and another dose of Robitussin and nose blow before stumbling back to bed. I chose the same position but facing the other direction. This morning when the alarm went off I was stiff but at least my pelvis wasn't tingling again.
The good news is that I did actually sleep. I got maybe five hours of sleep (up from the two or three I have been getting). I know I dreamt but I don't remember about what. I still have a little more cough but I think one more good night's sleep with take care of the remaining dregs of this cold.
Everything But Mars:
Before Sean took his bath last night, he and Ian went out front to look for planets in our new telescope. They managed to see the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, and Mercury before the clouds rolled back in from across the bay. They had hoped to see Mars but just couldn't manage it with the cloud cover. Sean was thrilled to see what he had seen but was disappointed at missing the "red planet."
The night before I had a quick look at Jupiter but I was mostly just waiting outside for Ian to find it and get used to using the telescope. As we have such a short tripod and there was nothing to hold onto, I really couldn't squat in a stable enough fashion to keep my eye close enough or steady enough to the eye piece to see more than a wiggling big dot and a very fuzzy and wiggling little dot, thus comprising Jupiter and Europa. Ian apparently saw a second of the many moons of Juipter. Oh well. For the moment I will let the boys enjoy their star gazing by themselves.
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Steps: 7000
All Baby: 06/13/06
I heard the best words I've ever heard at one of these prenatal appointments: "That's not belly fat any more; that's all baby!" I was pretty sure that my big belly now was all Harriet as it is shaped like the classic pregnant belly but given that my pre-pregnancy clothes still fit and I'm six months pregnant, it's hard to judge what is me and what is Harriet.
I was also given the paperwork for pre-registration to fill out and return by the next appointment. That appointment will be on July 12. I am currently seeing a different OB-GYN because the one I was assigned is on her honeymoon. While both ladies are nice, I click better with the stand-in and I think I'll make her my primary OB-GYN after Harriet is born.
The other good news is that I am really almost over my cold and I can take up to four doses of Robitussin every day until it's over if I want. Personally I can't take that much even when I'm not pregnant, but I will opt for two doses at night (once after work and once before bed). She also listened to my lungs and they are clear. I don't have pneumonia nor do I have bronchitis: that's a relief!
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Apocalipstick: 06/13/06
After a bunch of serious reading, I'm giving my poor brain a break and reading something completely stupid: Apocalipstick. The characters remind me of some of the folks from the series Ab-Fab. The protagonist isn't a stand-in for either Edina or Patsy but the people she works for do remind me of a hybrid of Edina and Patsy.
Apocalipstick isn't a book I would have picked by myself to read but it was recommended to me by a man who goes to the BookCrossing meetings on a regular basis. Ian has also read the book although it wasn't goofy enough for his tastes: he prefers the parody books like the Georgia Nicholson series by Louise Rennison. So far though, I'm enjoying Apocalipstick for its disfunctional characters and artificially high stress work environment. It's rather funny to have a woman who thinks most beauty aids are crap working for a beauty magazine.
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The Baby Catcher: 06/12/06
Near the middle of The Baby Catcher, Peggy Vincent describes two births that ended in C-section; one where the mother waited too long and one where the mother didn't. For the one that ended poorly (in extreme brain damage including blindess and deafness), the mother ignored all the advice she had been given even though she had a history of fetal distress deliveries resulting in C-section.
One detail that stood out for me in both births was the activity of the baby prior to birth. The children had the tendency to flip around or move their heads up from the head down position. Vincent says that late positional activity like that dramatically increases the changes of cord wrap or prolapsed cord. Sean went into fetal distress with an erratic heart beat shortly after getting to the hospital and after only a couple hours of labor I was raced off for a C-section. He had all the signs of things going horribly wrong: the heart beat problem and the meconium. I've wondered if Sean's distress was a fluke or something that had been on-going. Now it seems that it was an on going problem. I'm glad I was such a worry wart and didn't labor for long at home.
Instead of either having a still birth or a brain damaged baby, I have a healthy son who is at the head of his preschool class. The only trade off was a bit of adominal surgery which I will gladly repeat for Harriet. Speaking of baby number two, she so far is not following in her brother's foot steps. While she does respond to the world around her, she does it now mostly with her feet and sometimes her hands. She seems to have figured out that she should be head down and should stay head down. I could probably VBAC with her but given other issues like being over weight and being monitored for PIH (although my blood pressure is lower with her than it was with Sean), I am opting for a C-section. At least this time I will be awake for the experience and will be able to hear her first cry.
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Classic Sean: 06/12/06
As I'm in the process of retooling my website, I thought it was a good time to finally start adding in those baby photographs of Sean from 2003 and early 2004. So far I have added two pages, one from his first New Year's Eve and one where he is crusing around his crib at the tender age of five months! I had forgotten how young he was when he expressed an interest in walking. He started practicing at five months and started solo walking at ten months. By his first birthday he was running.
On the New Year's page, there are also two more photographs of Sean doing tummy time. There is also one of my favorite photographs, where Sean and Caligula meet nose to nose during tummy time. As I get the photographs posted, I will update the photography gallery index and the link list at the bottom of the home page.
Back at Camp?
I'm listening to KCEA via the internet and all of a sudden I feel like I'm back at summer camp and I'm singing a song about a Hawaiian chant. So I look online and sure enough, I'm not losing my mind. It really is Hawaiian War Chant as played by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. Why do all these years later I still remember the lyrics? Why do I have the feeling I'm going to have this song stuck in my head for the rest of the day?
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Steps: 5500
84 Charing Cross Road: 06/11/06
I'm still coughing, though I seem to be in the last stage of the cold. I'm coughing up all the drek that has accumulated in the last week or so. Ian meanwhile seems like he's on the verge of coming down with the cold. Poor Sean who is perfectly healthy is stuck with us at home. He's been nice about it but he'd rather go out and do something.
Ian did offer to take Sean to the park to play ball or frisbee but Sean so far is out cold. He can be a very heavy sleeper. Although he has given up on napping at school he still gets a good four hour nap in on Saturday and Sundays.
While we've been home, I've been reading. I finished the second of the Mr. Ripley books: Ripley Under Ground, 84 Charing Cross Road, Weight and The Baby Catcher. Most of these books are short and easy reads which is why I've been able to finish so many.
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Steps: 3500
Garden: 06/10/06
The plums are ripe again and this morning I caught a squirrel in the process of having a nice breakfast in the smaller of the two trees.
Sean helped me water the garden. His pumpkins are thriving. The berry vines are producing small berries but we're not expecting a proper crop until next year.
My rose bush has attracted a small army of affids. I will probably have to do something about the infestation. At the moment the rose bush seems happy.
Taking it Easy:
I finally managed to get a full night's sleep. I am still coughing due to congesting at the back of my throat and my nose is still stuffy but I can at least breath and I'm not coughing as frequently. Ian and Sean let me sleep in until almost eleven. I can't recall the last time I slept that late. Later in the day they both went down stairs for a nap while I stayed upstairs to read.
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Steps: 3500
<"rss">RSS and Atom: 06/09/06
Ian kindly went to Borders yesterday and got me a copy of Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom by Ben Hammersley. As with the other O'Reilly Media published books that I keep on hand for reference, it is a well written book. It introduces the technologies by discussing the history and methods in creating the various standards. Then it shows numerous ways on how to use feeds both as a syndicator and as a subscriber.
As I was telling Ian last night, I don't think I would have ended up doing web production if we hadn't met. I think I would have been put off by the computers. Programming was something my brother did as a kid, not me. Sixteen years ago I couldn't have imagined relaxing after dinner to read a technical book! But he has always been very encouraging and never doubted me when I said I could something.
While I'm reading the book, I am also retooling what's currently under the hood here at Puss Reboots. I've cleaned up a bunch of old latent code and I will be doing some minor but important changes to how I handle my blogs (specifically my archives). Current blog archives will not be affected by these changes and frankly other than the final switching on of the feed, regular visitors should see no changes to the site.
My Nose:
I'm nearly over the coughing but my nose is now completely congested. I woke up a number of times last night feeling as if I were under water. Hopefully this bit of the cold will pass soon: I've had this darn thing for a week now.
Book Diary Anniversary:
I just realized that my book diary anniversary is up today. This concludes my 19th year of tracking everything I've read. In the past year I've read 300 books. Many of these books are one's I've read to Sean but a good 200 of them are longer books. Today begins my 20th year of tracking my books. In January I had to start a new diary volume as I'd run out of pages in my old Holly Hobbie diary. My new diary is a slick red faux leather mini diary. It's gorgeous!
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Steps: 6000
The Family of the Sun: 06/08/06
Sean has always been a very musically inclined person and right now his preschool is using songs to teach the planets of our solar system. Sean taught me some of the words (enough for me to Google the rest) of his favorite, "The Family of the Sun." I've pasted the lyrics below and they are sung to the "Farmer in the Dell" according to the website but the tune Sean has been taught is something different.
The Family of the Sun
For more wonderful examples, please see the space page on preschooleducation.com
Sudoku Nightmares:
Ian and Sean worked on another Sudoku puzzle last night and I think it stuck with Ian. This morning he woke up complaining of a Sudoku nightmare where he couldn't get the right numbers in the right boxes. Perhaps it's time for an intervention?
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Steps: 3500
On the Way Home: 06/07/06
Last night I took a break from the heavier reading (Mr. Ripley) to read something short: On the Way Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane. The heart of the book is a short diary of the Wilder family's migration from De Smet to the Ozarks during a crop failure in 1894. Laura's contribution is a diary of brief entries for each day, mostly noting where they had traveled, what they ate and how hot it was. Rose's introduction, conclusion and periodic annotations flush this diary out to explain the hardships the family faced at that time.
The most poignant bit of the 115 page book is the disappearance of their nest egg, a single one hundred dollar bill hidden away inside a lap desk that Almanzo had built for Laura. Having traveled for six weeks and hundreds of miles on the hope of buying a new homestead in the Ozarks their dreams are nearly dashed when the arrive. The money isn't in the desk. Did their traveling companions take it? Did Rose play with it and lose it? Did it fall out? Read the book to find out what happened.
I can relate to this story of the secret bill. I'm currently carrying a secret bill of the same amount with me. It was a gift last Christmas and with our tight budget I don't want to spend it on the wrong thing. I'm still trying to decide what to spend it on. In the meantime I keep it close just in case I need it.
Ian has recently become addicted to sudoku: I went through a similar phase last year around this time. He likes to do the puzzles on line and sometimes Sean likes to help. I don't have any photographs of them working on it together but it is really cute to watch. They stare at the screen and when they figure out a number for a box, Sean carefully types it in.
Cough Cough Barf:
I'm at the congested coughing, can't breathe through my nose part of the cold. Last night I'm not sure if I slept. I know I coughed. I coughed sometimes until I vomited. It's now day time and I'm at work and I still can't breath through my nose. When I was pregnant with Sean I didn't catch a single cold. Why do I have to catch two with Harriet?
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Steps: 3500
The Penelopiad: 06/06/06
The Penelopiad suffers from the problem as Cat's Eye. Atwood seems to believe that "strong" female protagonists prove their strength by bitching about how hard their lives have been. Unfortunately this approach takes an interesting and tragic character and turns her into the one dimensional shadow that the Greeks belived people became in the afterlife! Atwood may have written many well received books but she should stick to her strengths, namely distopic near future science fiction. When it comes to epics, she is no Homer. For a much better modern interpretation of Penelope, watch the Coen Brother's film O Brother Where Art Thou.
Other posts and reviews:
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Low Iron and Itching: 06/06/06
I've just heard on Radio4 that low iron stores can cause itching. I have been itching here and there. Abnormal liver fuction can also cause itching but my liver has been tested twice this pregnancy and it's working normally. That leaves only the anemia. I'm now taking pills to get my iron up so we'll see if the itching goes away. At least today I'm not itching yet.
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Test Results: 06/05/06
I've gotten all my test results back from the Saturday trip to the lab. I don't have gestational diabetes and my liver is functioning normally. I am howerver, slightly anemic. My doctor has called in a prescription for me at the Hayward pharmacy so I'll be leaving work a half hour early to pick it up.
In the meantime, I managed to catch Sean's cold over the weekend. I started feeling ill with it on Saturday. Yesterday I was pretty much useless after having spent the entire night coughing. I also spent much of last night coughing but did manage to get more sleep than I did the night before. The combination of having a cold and being pregnant has made me very thirsty. I have always been an eager water drinker but now I seem to have a glass of water with me where ever I am.
Lunch with Ian; School for Sean:
Ian will be joining me again for lunch today. He has some errands to run so he's heading over for an early lunch. We will be eating at Carl's again. Then he has to return a library book or two.
Sean is fortunately well enough for school. He was very chipper this morning but was hard to drag away from his vacuum cleaner box-fort. I think I'll help him decorate it to make it more fort-like. We'll probably move it down to his room for longterm playing.
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Steps: 7000
Vacuum: 06/04/06
On Friday a box big enough for Sean to hide in arrived at my office. Actually it arrived downstairs and as it was so big, I was asked to come down and get it, rather than it being delivered upstairs like smaller packages are. Anyway, inside it were two new vacuums from Ian's parents. Fortunately both of them together weigh about half of what Sean does so getting the box to my car was awkward but not impossible.
Today Ian put the two vacuums together. They actually came mostly assembled so it was mostly a matter of snapping together a few pieces and tightening a couple screws. Sean and Caligula watched while I gave pointers.
Sean has now claimed the big box as his personal fort. He likes to go into the empty box with a flash light and close the doors. I will get pictures soon.
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Steps: 3500
Wiggy: 06/03/06
This morning I had to get up with Sean and Ian and dash over to Kaiser's lab for the one hour glucose tolerance test. As fasting is required and pregnant women don't like to fast, nine out of ten people there were pregnant women getting their tests. Some of them were there for the three hour version as they had failed the one hour test. I passed the test with Sean and think I will do the same with Harriet.
The test consists of rapidly drinking eight ounces of a very sweet, ice cold, and mostly flat soda beverage. The drink comes in three flavors: lime (which I had with Sean), orange (which I had today) and grape (which would make me puke as I hate grape flavor). One has to drink this horrible thing in under five minutes. Then one has to wait for an hour getting wiggier and wiggier as the sugar rush hits and the horrible after taste lingers. Then after one hour, blood is drawn and sent to the lab and one can finally break-fast.
So after the lab work was done (and I had read 100 or so pages of Cyclops by Clive Cussler), I met Ian and Sean for breakfast at Carrow's by the airport.
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Steps: 7000
Another Fever: 06/02/06
Sean went to bed coughing and woke up coughing. When I gave him his daily goodbye hug I could feel that he had a fever on top of his cough. Since Ian is staying home already, he is keeping Sean home with him.
As of 9:30 this morning Sean had decided that it was nap time after breakfast. Sleep will be good for him. It's always the same with a new school. The first couple of months are filled with colds and fevers and then he gets used to the new bugs and stops getting sick unless a new epidemic hits the school and all the kids get sick at once.
Sean the Gardener:
Last night Sean helped me water the garden. I filled up his fish watering can thinking he'd just water his fairy garden and then wait for me to fill up the two other watering jugs. Instead, he also watered his pumpkins. I had expected half of them to die off but now all six of them seem to be thriving. Sean has a green thumb!
Ongoing Sore Right Hip and Leg:
Harriet is still head down and lopsided. The bulk of her weight is against the right side of my pelvis. My right leg is still switching between numb and sore.
Pushing the Car Seat Back:
This morning I realized I could no longer comfortably drive my car with the seat as close as I like it. So I've had to put it back two notches to make room for Harriet. With Sean I didn't have to do this until I was about eight months pregnant but he didn't roll into the fetal position until cramped space forced him to. With the seat farther back, I feel like I'm driving a car with bucket seats. Don't worry, I can still easily reach the pedals and wheel and I can still easily see out over the hood and through the mirrors.
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Steps: 4000
My Phone, Ian's Car: 06/01/06
My new phone should now be using my old phone number. I will know for sure later when Ian gives me a call. He's getting Ferdinand (our 1995 Civic) tuned today. We think the car needs front breaks. When he gets his PhD next year and he gets his first job (or post doc) we will start saving up for the down payment on a new car for him. We'll either get another small car or a hybrid if we can find one that is comfortable for both of us to drive.
Ferdinand has been a reliable car but he is eleven years old now and we've driven him to death. Like my dodgy old phone, he's not as reliable as he once was. He's also starting to fall apart here and there. So far the decay is all cosmetic but I don't think he has much more than a couple years left before he will have to be replaced or rebuilt. Looking at him now I'm amazed that we made the move up her from South Pasadena in him. We made about a dozen trips up and down the state in him when we were moving.
A Lovely Evening:
Last night there was a cool breeze on our front stairs and Sean wanted to play on the hill. I grabbed my camera and joined him outside. When he tired of playing in the dirt and I'd taken enough photographs, we decided to wait for Ian on the stairs.
Sean sat on my lap and we talked about a number of things. He's learning about the planets in school this month (and will have a field trip to Chabot in two weeks) and started off the conversation with, "Do we live on Earth?" Then he wanted to know how he could see that we live on Earth. I pointed to the ground and said that was the Earth. Then I pointed to the sky and said that was the outer edge of the Earth and told him that the planet is a big ball of dirt and water with a skin of air. It's a simplistic explanation but he seemed satisfied with it.
We also talked about the trees. I showed him the difference between pine trees and oak trees. I pointed out the star jasmin that grows along the other side of our stairs. We talked about flooding and why trees and plants are good for holding down the soil. I think we both enjoyed the time on the porch waiting for Ian.
Still Sore Right Hip and Leg:
Harriet hasn't moved from her cubby hole in my pelvis. She likes to lean against the right side of it. I'm going on my third day of a sore pelvis and resulting sciatica. Only ninety-six days to go until she's born.
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Steps: 4000


text:
Satish A. Patel, Kalpesh M. Prajapati*
Department of Quality Assurance, S. K. Patel College of Pharmaceutical Education and Research,
Ganpat University, Ganpat Vidyanagar – 384012, Mehsana, Gujarat, India.
A simple, sensitive, precise, accurate and rapid RP-HPLC method has been developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of Chlorzoxazone and Diclofenac sodium from synthetic mixture. The chromatographic separation was performed on ACE 5 C18 column (150 mm × 4.6 mm i.d., 5 μm particle size). Mobile phase consisted of a mixture of phosphate buffer (0.02 M KH2PO4, pH adjusted to 3 using orthophosphoric acid), acetonitrile and methanol (30: 30: 40, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 1.0 ml/min. The detection wavelength was set at 279 nm. The proposed method was validated for linearity, accuracy, precision, LOD and LOQ. The calibration curve was linear over the range of 2-50 μg/ml for Chlorzoxazone and 2-50 μg/ml for Diclofenac sodium. The retention times were 2.8 min for Chlorzoxazone and 6.3 min for Diclofenac sodium. The mean recoveries were 101.1 ± 0.47 and 100.8 ± 0.77 for Chlorzoxazone and Diclofenac sodium, respectively. The method has been successfully applied to determine the content of both drugs from the synthetic mixture. Hence, the method can be easily adopted for quality control analysis of both drugs in mixture.
Chlorzoxazone (CLR) is chemically, 5-chloro-2, 3-dihydro-1, 3 -benzoxazol-2-one (Figure 1), is a well known muscle relaxant drug1. It is official in United States Pharmacopoeia (USP). USP2 describe spectrophotometric method for its estimation. Literature survey reveals HPLC3 and UV4 method for estimation of Chlorzoxazone alone.Literature survey also reveals HPLC5-8, HPTLC9 and spectrophotometric10-12 method for estimation of chlorzoxazone with other drug combination. Diclofenac sodium (DIC) is chemically, 2-[2,6dichlorophenylamino] benzene acetic acid sodium salt13 (Figure 2). Diclofenac sodium (DIC) is official in Indian Pharmacopoeia (IP)and British Pharmacopoeia (BP). IP14 and BP15 describe liquid chromatography method for its estimation. Literature survey reveals HPLC16 and UV17 methods for determination of DIC in single dosage form. Literature survey also reveals HPLC18-19 and HPTLC20 method for the determination of DIC with other drugs in combination. The combination of these two drugs is not official in any pharmacopoeia; hence no official method is available for the estimation of CLR and DIC in mixture or dosage forms. Literature survey does not reveal any chromatographic method for estimation of CLR and DIC in synthetic mixture or dosage forms. The present communication describes simple, sensitive, rapid, accurate and precise RP-HPLC method for simultaneous estimation of both drugs in their combined synthetic mixture.
RP-HPLC instrument (Shimadzu, LC-2010CHT, Japan) equipped with a UV-Visible detector and a photodiode array detector, auto sampler, ACE 5 C18 column (150 x 4.6 mm, 5 µ particle size) was used. Chromatograms were automatically obtained by LC-Solution system software. A Sartorius CP224S analytical balance (Gottingen, Germany), an ultrasonic bath (Frontline FS 4, Mumbai, India), Nylon 0.45 µm – 0.47 mm membrane filter (Gelman Laboratory, Mumbai, India), Whatman filter paper no. 41 (Millipore, USA) were used in the study.
Reagent and materials
Chlorzoxazone (CLR) and Diclofenac sodium (DIC) bulk powder was kindly gifted by Acme Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India.HPLC grade methanol (Merck Ltd., Mumbai, India), HPLC grade acetonitrile (Finar Chemicals Ltd.,Mumbai, India) and KH2PO4 and otho phosphoric acid (S. D. Fine Chemicals Ltd., Mumbai, India)were used in the study. Water for RP-HPLC was prepared by triple glass distillation and filtered through a nylon 0.45 µm – 47 mm membrane filter.
Preparation of phosphate buffer solution
Phosphate buffer (0.02 M KH2PO4, pH 3) was prepared by dissolving 2.72 g potassium dihydrogen phosphate in 1000 ml HPLC-grade water and the pH adjusted to 3.0 by dilute ortho-phosphoric acid.
Preparation of standard stock solutions of CLR and DIC (100 μg/ml)
An accurately weighed standard CLR and DIC powder (10 mg) were weighed and transferred to 100 ml separate volumetric flasks and dissolved in methanol. The flasks were shaken and volumes were made up to mark with methanol to give a solution containing 100 μg/ml of each CLR and DIC.
To optimize the RP-HPLC parameters, several mobile phase compositions were tried. A satisfactory separation and good peak symmetry for CLR and DIC was obtained with a mobile phase consisting of phosphate buffer (0.02 M KH2PO4, pH adjusted to 3 using orthophosphoric acid): acetonitrile: methanol (30: 30: 40, v/v/v)at a flow rate 1.0 ml/min to get better reproducibility and repeatability. Quantification was carried out at 279 nm based on peak area. Complete resolution of the peaks with clear baseline was obtained (Figure 3). System suitability test parameters for CLR and DIC for the proposed method are reported in Table 1. Overlain UV spectrum showed that both drugs showed good absorbance at 279 nm, hence the wavelength of 279 nm was selected for quantification of CLR and DIC (Figure 4).
Table 1: System suitability parameters of chromatogram
(n = 6)
(n = 6)
Retention time (min)
2.833 ± 0.22
6.265 ± 0.53
Tailing factor
1.255 ± 0.39
1.139 ± 0.48
Theoretical plates
3042 ± 0.85
5486 ± 1.22
12.62 ± 0.81
Figure 4: U.V. Spectrum of CLR and DIC
Validation of proposed method
The proposed method was validated according to the International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines21.
Calibration Curve (linearity)
Calibration curves were constructed by plotting peak areas Vs concentrations of CLR and DIC, and the regression equations were calculated. The calibration curves were plotted over the concentration range 2-50 µg/ml for CLR and DIC. Accurately measured standard working solutions of CLR and DIC (0.2, 0.4, 0.8, 1.6, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 ml) were transferred to a series of 10ml of volumetric flasks and diluted to the mark with mobile phase. Aliquots (20 µl) of each solution were injected under the operating chromatographic conditions described above.
Method precision (Repeatability)
The precision of the instrument was checked by repeatedly injecting six sample solutions of CLR and DIC (8 μg/ml) under the same chromatographic condition and measurements of peak area, retention time and tailing factor. Percentage relative standard deviation (RSD) or coefficient of variation (CV) should not be more than 2 %.
Intermediate precision (Reproducibility)
The intraday and interday precision of the proposed method was determined by analyzing the corresponding responses 3 times on the same day and on 3 different days over a period of 1 week for 3 different concentrations of sample solutions of CLR and DIC (4, 8, and 16 μg/ml). The results were reported in terms of relative standard deviation (RSD).
Limit of detection and Limit of quantification
LOD and LOQ of drugs can be calculated using the following equations designated by International Conference on Harmonization (ICH) guidelines21.
LOD = 3.3 × σ/S
LOQ = 10 × σ/S
Where, σ = the standard deviation of the response and S = slope of the calibration curve.
Accuracy (Recovery study)
The accuracy of the method was determined by calculating recovery of CLR and DIC by the standard addition method. Known amounts of standard solutions of CLR and DIC (50%, 100%, 150%) were added to pre quantified sample solutions of CLR and DIC (20 + 2 µg/ml). The amounts of CLR and DIC were estimated by applying obtained values to the regression equation of the calibration curve.
Estimation of CLR and DIC from synthetic mixture
CLR (50 mg) and DIC (5 mg) standard drug powder were accurately weighed and then mixed with commonly used formulation excipients like starch, lactose, magnesium stearate and talc in appropriate proportion. The mixture was then transferred to 100 ml volumetric flask containing 50 ml methanol and sonicated for 20 min. The solution was filtered through Whatman filter paper No. 41 and the volume was adjusted up to the mark with methanol. The above solution (0.4 ml) was transferred to 10 ml volumetric flask and diluted up to mark with methanol to obtain 20 µg/ml CLR and 5 µg/ml DIC. Aliquot (20 µl) of sample solution was injected under the operating chromatographic condition as described above and peak area was determined for both drugs. From these area values, the concentrations of CLR and DIC were determined using respective calibration graph. The analysis procedure was repeated six times with synthetic mixture.
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text:
The Giza pyramids are one of Africa's best-known monuments. Visitors from all over the world go to Egypt every year just to see the pyramids. They are a testament to the grandeur of a civilization long gone. Africa has another set of pyramids not far from Egypt. Just across the border are the Kush pyramids, a testimonial to another great civilization, the Nubians.
Pyramids of Giza
The pyramids of Giza, located in Egypt, are what comes to mind when you think of "Africa" and "pyramids." The Great Pyramid, the largest of the three, is over 480 feet tall and covers an area of more than 13 acres. The pyramids were built around the year 2500 BC and were originally covered in limestone and possibly in black onyx. The onyx is long gone and the limestone was removed in the year 1356 AD to be used in the construction of nearby mosques. The Giza pyramids are mostly solid, with just two passages to move in and down into the pyramid, as well as a few chambers and galleries.
Kush Pyramids
The Kush pyramids are best known as "the other" African pyramids. The Kingdom of Kush was located in what is now Sudan. Kush was under the ruling of Nubian kings, who built 223 pyramids in the area. At first view, the pyramids are smaller and less impressive than their Egyptian neighbors. This is only because the pyramids have large underground chambers, all of which are impressive and richly decorated. Most of the pyramids were built around the 4th century BC.
Meaning of the Pyramids
The three Giza pyramids served originally as funerary structures. Or at least that's the primary theory, since scientists are still debating the issue. The doubt comes from the fact that no bodies or embalming products were ever found inside the pyramid. Also, the passages are narrow enough that it would have been difficult for slaves to bring a sarcophagi down into the chambers. The Kush pyramids were built as both tombs and monuments. Kings and rulers were buried there, but so were priests and other important figures of the time.
The Giza pyramids are in remarkable condition considering their age. Although their outside covering of limestone and onyx is long gone, they are still standing intact. Tourists can walk into the corridors and explore the chambers. The Kush pyramids are spread over a large space of land and some are in better condition than others. Towers, columns and temples are built around the pyramids, making them part of a complex. The Giza pyramids, on the other hand, are stand-alone structures.
Leaf Group is a USA TODAY content partner providing general travel information. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.
Photo Credits
- Attribution: Ricardo Liberato; License: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license


text:
Open [Science] Sunday — 14.2.10 - Building blogs of Science
Fabiana Kubke • Feb 14, 2010 •
What happens when you put around 200 motivated people in a room and let them decide what to talk about? Well, if that happens in Warkworth, New Zealand, then it is Kiwi Foo Camp. Structured as an unconference, the group introduces itself to each other start talking and, one by one, session themes are proposed [...] … Read More


text:
Today's traveler has a huge assortment of apps, websites and tools available to research, book and track business travel. According to the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA), most business users are going directly to the airline and hotel apps on their itinerary with some use of third-party booking tools. Some of the newest technologies in the industry - Lyft, Uber and Airbnb - are quickly establishing themselves as major players.
These methods of booking travel may be easy for your employees to use, but there's a cost to travel managers who need to track spending and monitor adherence to the travel policy. When your employees book travel directly with a provider, your company loses the opportunity to leverage your travel budget into bargaining power and gain visibility into which suppliers they're using.
What's going on in the business travel technology space?
Can you implement tools that your employees like to use that also track expenses and monitor which suppliers are booked, all while consistently offering quality customer service? Let's take a look at the latest trends to find out.
Sharing Economy
The advent of the 'sharing economy' has skyrocketed Airbnb, Uber and other on-demand services to unforeseen ubiquity. A 2017 study by Certify, a provider of travel and expense software for companies, found that 6% of all business travel transactions in 2016 were with Uber, making the ridesharing company the most common expense, in terms of transactions. Uber's top competitor, Lyft, is making inroads into the business travel marketplace. It's challenging Uber's auto-expense feature by partnering with expense management firms to send your receipt directly to your personal travel and expense report. The Airbnb for Business program promises to 'make it easy to travel for work without sacrificing the comforts of home.' The Airbnb business travel product offers customers quality Wi-Fi, 24-hour check-in and direct expensing to your company. Does your company have a policy or guidelines for using these tools?
Virtual Payments
Virtual payments are another cutting-edge technology being adopted by business travelers. Although corporate cards remain prevalent, the availability and usage of virtual payments are on a steep increase. An important consideration is that today's millennials may not have access to credit due to huge student loan burdens and no rental history. For this sector of employees, virtual payments offer ease and convenience and no awkward conversations with their travel manager about how soon the expense report will be paid.
Mobile Tools
For Millennials, as well as many Gen Xers and Boomers, the mobile phone is their single most important possession; they spend an average of 174 minutes a day on the device! For international business travelers, their mobile device functions as both a booking tool solving the logistical issues of itinerary changes, while also providing opt-in travel alert texts. Generally, most travelers would benefit from a mobile solution with the ability to identify weather or other factors that would affect their trip and then offer real-time rebooking. In the near term, many companies are exploring the use of a GPS tracking tool to locate employees on a business trip in case of unexpected complications.
Making Technology Work for Travelers AND Your Company
By allowing individual trips to be booked on proprietary airline, hotel and car rental websites, your company loses an important cost savings benchmark: the total spend. You may be able to leverage your combined buying power by using a common booking portal, some are even mobile. When all your travelers are using a travel management system, it's easier to track expenditures, target savings and deliver real ROI on your travel spend. Many airlines offer 'soft dollar' programs that provide in-kind benefits in exchange for your company's airfare spending. Soft dollar incentives may include airline tickets, waived baggage fees, upgrades, status match and club passes.
Putting it all Together
Bringing your travel spending under a single umbrella has a number of advantages, but implementing a new technology can be fraught with complications. If your booking tool isn't helpful and intuitive, your travelers won't use it. Unless your staff understands the overall benefit, it can be a tough adjustment. Training sessions and a walk-through video to introduce its advantages can help with the rollout. The idea is to reinforce that employees using a booking portal is good for the company, and helpful for them too. And, travelers will still be able to get the benefits of loyalty and rewards programs and accrue frequent flyer miles using the new booking tool.
Many business travelers would prefer to try an easy shortcut or a familiar tool instead of using a business travel booking portal. Most corporate booking tools don't offer the personalization and efficient experience of top travel apps and websites, but the benefits of consolidated bookings outweigh the value of a preferable user experience. Booking with a corporate portal will provide the same results, especially when they can often go back and make adjustments like a seat change, upgrade with points, etc.
Your goal should be to find technology solutions that offer the ease of use that your travelers want with the management tools you need in order to monitor bookings and achieve cost savings. You'll get the best of both worlds – easy and intuitive technology with the hidden ability to watch travel spending and track compliance.


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Ok, i think i have a pretty particular problem i ll try to describe as precise as i can.
I work in a Mac 10.4 with Writer OOo 3.2.
I just close and odt filei was working in, from a usb, to open the file in a PC for printing. Once i try to open the file in the other computer, from same OOo 3.2 i got a dialog bos proposing my "Filter options ASCII" - which means, i guess, the format of the text change in between. Of course, no one of the option in the dialog box is able to open the document. When i try to go back to my mac to document will not open but just the dialog box. Which ever option i use i just get a totally uninteligible encoded text. I guess the filed got corrupeted in some point but i cannot either launch the recovery option cause OOo dont recognize any damage (as does Words, that cannot either recover the file) but just and encoded text.
I try the temporary files, the OOo back up but nothing so far...
Can anybody give me any tip or help ?
i ll be gratefull


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Failing Grades
Although I have been writing a column for the last 21 years, I don't recall ever having written about education. I say "don't recall" because you forget what you have written. (Now you know why columnists repeat themselves.) I was always aware that education is one of those great and hopeless causes in which progressives had invested so much hope. Education would change us all, society would be transformed, and so on. It was a doomed cause, obviously, so I ignored it for years. But it has turned out that I was wrong. Educators have indeed changed the world. What no one predicted was that they would change it for the worse.
My mistake was to assume that a constant, fairly decent level of education would be sustained indefinitely. It wouldn't get any better, to be sure. But at least it wouldn't get any worse. Wrong! When I was growing up, education was something stable and unobtrusive in the background. It was simply there for all who wanted it. Most didn't, of course, and most still don't. Beyond a certain level, in fact, most people don't need much in the way of academics.
How are we to explain the great decline that has taken place? In England in the 1950s it was often said—and it was probably true—that the grammar schools (state schools) were as good as the private schools. I hadn't come to America yet (I arrived in 1962), but I gather that in the 1950s the public schools here were pretty good. No harm was done if working- or middle-class parents couldn't afford the fees for private school. Their children would get a pretty good education anyway. But that is no longer true. The relative advantage of parents who can afford school fees is much greater now than it was 30 or 40 years ago. The same change has taken place in England.
The failure of government education is a crisis of liberalism, for the guiding philosophy of liberalism is this: if there's a problem, the government should spend money on it; if the problem persists, it is because not enough money was spent. Yet public education has proven that premise false again and again.
My first job in the United States was as a schoolteacher—at a prep school in Virginia. The students were good, on the whole, and the headmaster was a memorable figure. Above all, he made sure that everyone worked hard, which included the teachers. I taught geometry and algebra, although I had no math degree and certainly had taken no education courses. Something called the New Math was coming down the education highway. But we were allowed to ignore it, so the students did okay. The astronomer and writer Clifford Stoll, growing up in Buffalo, had teachers who were afraid to seem old-fashioned, so he was subjected to New Math. He has fun with it in his entertaining book High-Tech Heretic. Algebra "had to be learned outside of math class," he says. Now there is something called New New Math, apparently, or Connected Math, or Fuzzy Math. "It all adds up to Mickey Mouse Math," he adds.
Educators have indeed changed the world. What no one predicted was that they would change it for the worse.
Progressive education had been much touted earlier in the century, but in the 1940s and 1950s (when I was growing up) it was in remission. "It sprang back to life in the early 1960s," Diane Ravitch writes in her new book, Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms. "Once the hierarchy of educational values was shattered, once the schools lost their compass, hawkers of new wares could market their stock to the schools. Every purveyor of social reform could find a willing customer in the schools, because all needs were presumed equal in importance, and there was no longer any general consensus on the central purpose of schooling."
The latest fad, and one of the silliest and most expensive—promoted by Al Gore during the presidential campaign—is that if we can only hook kids up to the Internet the problem of educating them will be solved. That only shows he has given the subject no thought. The idea is that education imparts information; information is available through the web; therefore kids exposed to the web will acquire all the information they need. Kids will be motivated, too, because computers are fun! Any teacher who believes that is simply looking for a quiet life. Education experts who believe it should get into another field. They won't, though, because theirs has been a playpen for mediocrities and daffy ideas for decades. That isn't about to change.
Government schooling was an important issue in the presidential campaign, but my sense is that George W. Bush hardly understood it any better than Al Gore. But the parents are catching on. More and more, they know it has not been working for their kids. People are even beginning to realize that, wait a minute, maybe more money isn't the solution after all. In that sense, the failure of government education is a crisis of liberalism, for the guiding philosophy of liberals is this: if there's a problem, the government should spend money on it; if the problem persists, it is because not enough money was spent.
The teachers' unions are the key to understanding the modern failure of public education.
It has been a great source of frustration to conservatives that so many Americans persist in believing this. It has seemed impossible to disabuse them of the idea that problems will be solved to the extent that government spends more money. Lousy schools and an incompetent education establishment have come close to doing the job, however. That's a plus. But during the campaign Gore and Bush continued to see the problem through the eyes of the educators, not the pupils. When Gore touted the National Education Association line—hire more teachers, give us more dollars—Bush in effect responded: "More dollars? I'll go for more dollars. But not quite so many as my opponent." He conceded the premise and lowered the ante.
Over and over again, the experience of public education has falsified that premise. More money has meant lower test scores. There is a correlation, but it is inverse. The big test came in Kansas City in the 1980s, when a power-drunk federal judge ordered taxes raised and the money spent on local schools. Two billion dollars were spent, more teachers were hired, salaries were increased. Test scores didn't budge. The judge was naively convinced that, until he imposed his will on the district, the problem had been a shortage of good intentions.
The unions have succeeded in getting control of almost all aspects of schooling.
Now that George W. Bush is president, we find him making education his number one initiative. The education bill that he sent to Congress would call for more money to be spent at the federal level but not as much money as Al Gore had wanted to spend. It's a safe prediction that the problem is not going to be solved in Washington.
Diane Ravitch says next to nothing about the teachers' unions. But one who has studied them is Hoover fellow Terry Moe. I had a chance to talk to him recently at an education conference at the Hoover Institution. He has convinced me that the teachers' unions are the key to understanding the modern failure of public education. We are talking about two unions here—the National Education Association (2.5 million members, 2 million of them practicing teachers) and the American Federation of Teachers (about one million members, half of them teachers).
The problem to be explained is why public education failed, having been reasonably successful for about a hundred years. The great decline took place at just the time when union power was rising. Their membership was inconspicuous in the 1950s, but in the following two decades both unions grew rapidly. In effect, they learned that they could "game" the system. They could exploit the nation's willingness to spend ever-larger sums on public education and make it work to their own advantage, not just in wages and fringe benefits but in controlling almost every aspect of their own employment. It is not easy to get the relevant information from the unions themselves. Even the simplest questions "must often be answered through sketchy information" assembled from other sources, Moe stresses. Journalists, meanwhile, have exempted teachers' unions from the usual media scrutiny.
Two things work greatly to the unions' advantage. The first is that parents often don't know what is going on in the schools. Many are too busy, too harried, too misinformed. This is especially true of single and inner-city parents, where a close watch is most needed. Parents who do pay attention, or who learn the bad news from others, often remove their children from government schools entirely. That is why there is now a large home-schooling movement in this country. The second point, stressed by Moe, is that the local school boards, nominally in control of schools, are in fact strongly shaped by the teachers' unions.
In a chapter of a forthcoming book, Schools, Vouchers, and the American Public, Moe writes:
Unions bargain with school boards, which play the role of management. But school boards cannot be expected to behave like the managers of private firms in resisting union demands. School boards face little or no competition, and needn't worry that they will lose 'business' by agreeing to union demands that raise costs, promote inefficiencies, or lower school performance. The kids and the tax money will still be there. In the second place, school boards are composed of elected officials, whose incentives are explicitly political. . . . Moreover, the unions, by participating in local elections, are in a position to determine who the 'management' will be."
For private sector unions, this achievement would be "a dream come true."
How do they "participate" in elections? School board contests attract a low turnout (10 to 20 percent), and they are typically nonpartisan, meaning that voters lack the information that party identification normally conveys. This allows the unions to shape that message. Unions also have lots of money. They control an army of workers—teachers themselves—who have a direct stake in the outcome. They can be organized to vote, make phone calls, ring door bells, distribute literature, serve as campaign staff. No other community group "can come close to matching them." They overshadow business and civic groups, parents especially. All this explains "the astounding fact" that teachers' unions can control "who they will be bargaining with," as Moe says.
The agenda of the teachers' unions does not necessarily consider what is best for the children, for the schools, or for the public interest more generally.
There are regional differences—the unions are still weak in most southern states—but overall they have succeeded in getting control of almost all aspects of schooling. It's not just pay and fringe benefits. In urban districts, where unions are strongest, contracts may run to 200 or 300 pages. There are rules about hiring and (almost impossible!) firing; about how teachers are to be evaluated, how much time they can be required to work, class schedules and sizes; about teachers' roles in school policy decisions, grievances, time off for professional meetings; and about who has to join the union (there are big "agency fees" for those who don't).
In this analysis, institutional self-interest overrides everything else. Unions need to attract members and money, which entails not just winning higher wages and benefits but increasing the demand for teachers (that's what "smaller class size" means), supporting higher taxes, seeing that more money flows into union coffers, minimizing competition, and seeking political power. Notice what is not included here: considering what is best for the children, for the schools, or for the public interest more generally.
Some conservatives who understand these things have developed a political philosophy that might be called Leninist: "the worse the better." Lenin supposedly said that, in the period before the Bolshevik revolution. Any amelioration of social conditions would only reduce the pressure for revolution. So, some on the right say, "No vouchers!" They would only extend federal control to private schools anyway. The unions are inadvertently encouraging people to take their children out of public schools and home-school them. The worse the better! I'm not sure I go that far, but it's something to think about. Home-schooling deserves a closer look.


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Tahoe City recently completed the last section of bike trail through the city. They call it the Lakeside Trail and it's only a mile in length. However, this is a very important section because it links the West Shore Trail to the North Shore Trail.In the past, cyclists/walkers had to venture out on Hwy. 28 to connect with the two trail systems. Hwy. 28 through Tahoe City is a rather unpleasant and hazardous stretch of road for cyclists.
The Lakeside Trail is a safe and scenic trail that keeps you away from Hwy. 28. It travels across private property adjacent to Tahoe City Marina and Mall, Boatworks Mall, and Lighthouse Center. As an added bonus, each of these property owners provide lunch/dining opportunities for trail users.
The complexity of crossing multiple public and private properties has made this a very expensive and lengthy process to complete. The first phase of the trail was completed in 2001. The unveiling of the completed trail was conducted on June 21, 2012. The largest contributor to the trail project was $5.8 million, donated by the California Tahoe Conservancy. The total cost was reported to be $12 million.
There is currently a plan by the Tahoe Fund to complete a bikeway around the entire lake. The total cost is projected to be $82.9 million. They have collected 18% of that amount so far.


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Information on Putting Sulfur on Tomato Plants
Growing your own juicy, red tomatoes is relatively easy. But when leaves yellow or the fruit fails to mature, sulfur can help, both in the soil and dusted on leaves as a fungicide and insecticide. Sulfur and copper are the only fungicides allowed for use on certified organic produce.
Soil Nutrient
While sulfur is only needed in small amounts as a micronutrient to grow tomatoes, sandy soils can be deficient in sulfur. Sulfur helps form organic compounds that help impart flavor to tomatoes. Tomato plants with yellow-green lower leaves and elongated, woody stems may need more sulfur in the soil. The amount of additional sulfur needed is often fairly low, so a thin layer of compost of about one to two inches added to the soil may provide enough sulfur. Sulfur can also be found in many fertilizer mixes. Use about 1/2 cup per tomato plant. Work it into the soil when the tomatoes are small.
Fungicide and Insecticide
Powdery mildew spores can be carried on the wind to tomato plants late in the season. This fungus causes tomato plant leaves to develop yellow spots, and can eventually kill the leaves. Sulfur can be sprayed on the plants to reduce infestation. Another tomato pest, russet mites, can be controlled with sulfur, but it may take several applications. Sulfur can also be used to prevent an infestation.
Applying Sulfur
Sulfur can be applied as a dust or as a wettable powder. When applying as a dust, use a hand-cranked dust applicator in dry, windless weather. Coat the leaves and stems of the tomato plant lightly. The wettable powder form of sulfur is stirred into water. However, it doesn't dissolve. It is applied with a specially designed sprayer.
Sulfur can damage tomato plants when the weather is hot, and should not be used if temperatures climb above 90 degrees Fahrenheit. If squash and melons are planted near tomatoes, do not use sulfur, as it can injure these plants. While sulfur is less toxic than many chemical pesticides, it is best not to get it on your skin or in your eyes as it can irritate them. Avoid use on a windy day to keep from inhaling the sulfur or it spreading to other areas. Wear a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, eye protection and plastic gloves when applying sulfur. Wash tomatoes thoroughly before eating them to remove any sulfur residue.
- Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station; Sulfur Deficiency in Tomato Crops; Meredith Melendez
- UC Integrated Pest Management Program: Powdery Mildew on Field-grown Tomatoes
- National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service: Organic Tomato Production
- San Diego Master Gardener Association; Troubles in the Tomato Patch; Vincent Lazaneo
- Cornell University: Growing Guide: Tomatoes
- UC Integrated Pest Management Program: Pesticide Information: Active ingredient: Sulfur
Photo Credits
- Digital Vision./Digital Vision/Getty Images


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Why yoyomama?
We get the web, mobile and mums – not only is our team of mums über-connected, but we're also always keeping an eye on other mothers we connect with and watching how they use their technology. Over the past six years, we've expanded from a daily email newsletter to include an engaged social media network too. We know mums are agnostic in how they consume media and we make sure they can find us wherever they are and however's best for them.
Our digital advertising offers trackable ROI that we use to tweak campaigns as they run to make them as effective as possible.
We can target your marketing by region and delivery method – website, email, and social.
Digital offers flexible pricing that's more reasonably priced than traditional media, easier to track and more nimble.
For advertising inquiries and our 2017 media kit please contact:
Lakhvir Brar
Publisher, yoyomama.ca


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North Yorkshire County Council is pushing ahead with plans to carry out major structural repairs to the Selby bypass in the spring.
The highways authority intends to start the work on the bypass as soon as possible in April and this very necessary, major repair can be carried out.
The county council has been carrying out an enhanced inspection and reactive repair regime to ensure that the by-pass remains safe for travel for motorists and other road users during these winter months and is concerned to get ahead with the project once the weather improves.
"We are committed to undertaking this work," said County Councillor Gareth Dadd, North Yorkshire's Executive Member for Highways, "because this major route has an important part to play in promoting the long-term economic prosperity of Selby, easing congestion and supporting the flow of transport around the district. We too share the concerns and frustration of the public about the very poor state of the bypass, especially along particular stretches"
However now that Selby has been chosen to host a start for the Tour de Yorkshire, the county council will also make sure that the bypass works do not jeopardise the success of such a prestigious event for the town. The authority will be working closely with Welcome to Yorkshire to ensure that all necessary routes are open to traffic and the increased numbers of visitors expected to come to Selby for the occasion.
Selby and Ainsty MP, Nigel Adams (pictured at the bypass) who instigated an online campaign to have the bypass repaired which gained the support of over 1000 local residents, said: "I am delighted that the county council is to start the repairs shortly. The road has been in a very bad state for too long and I know that residents and road users will be relieved when the surface is finally put right".
Cllr Dadd added: "It is a great privilege and good for Selby to be a start location for the Tour de Yorkshire, so we will coordinate the works for this necessary repair so the town is more than ready to make a great success of this exciting event." ."
The timing of the Selby bypass works programme also has to take account of other developments and highways projects in the district, such as the major improvements to be carried out on Newland Bridge, which takes the A645 over the River Aire and is one of the main access roads to Drax Power Station. Work on the bridge is expected to start in spring 2015 to be completed during the winter of 2015/16.
The reasons for the surface failure of the bypass stem from the lower layers of the road's construction, so any permanent repairs will be very costly. The county council is making progress in discussions with the Highways Agency, which was responsible for the bypass construction, about responsibility for funding the repairs. Implementing the works without the prior agreement of the Highways Agency would seriously undermine the aim of carrying out the works without cost to the county council
"Though the negotiations with the Highways Agency continue" said Cllr Dadd, "there is no doubt that these structural repairs will be undertaken. We will push ahead as soon as the weather allows and all preparations are in place."


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passing out parade
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Pitch a Developer
Perhaps you've been to a pitch event before where you get up on stage and pitch your idea for 60 seconds. After your pitch is over, you sit back down and the event is over. Good practice but not very helpful in getting something launched.
That's where the Pitch a Developer event comes into play. Each person gets a few minutes to pitch their idea to the Development Team at Firehawk Creative. We will then ask questions and provide practical advice to help you build out your idea and launch your product.
Click here to sign up. It's free and thanks to our friends at WeWork Labs, we'll have some free food for you as well.
If you've been dreaming up this idea for a while, I'm sure you'd love to know the following:
- How much will it cost to build out my idea?
- How long will it take to develop?
- What are the biggest technological challenges?
- How do I overcome those challenges?
- What are the core features of Phase 1?
- Should I go web, mobile or responsive first?
- Where can I find a technical cofounder?
We'll answer these questions and a whole lot more. This is your chance for some free consulting with a development team who has built and launched over 20 startups from just an idea.
It's time to pitch your idea and get some practical feedback that will actually help you launch.
We'd love to meet you.


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CrystalMeow video. More videos (2)Free chat with CrystalMeow
Free chat with CrystalMeow
Sweet and innocent just like it should be, here to change your mood and make you feel like you just stepped on the 9th cloud . I like chit-chat and I love to have fun, teasing might be one of my biggest quality aside from the fact that the private time will be exquisite and as real as you can get it . Make sure you prepare yourself for a relaxing and exciting time along with me!


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17th December 2007
We held our traditional presentation assembly on Wednesday 12th of December. A large gathering of invited guests, parents, students and staff were present. A group of student musicians accompanied by Mr Vince Ivens provided background music to start the proceedings. A backdrop of senior student artwork displayed by Ms Vicki Earle highlighted the talent of the student body and set the scene for a great morning.
After a welcome from Mr Bruce Schmidt, past student Rohan Bock spoke to the assembly about his pursuit of a cricket career and his unexpected path to becoming an apprentice green keeper. He acknowledged the grounding supplied by the school, staff and general community for his success.
Following came a long list of awards, presented to students in all year levels from Reception to Year 12 for academic, leadership, sporting and community achievements. School leaders acknowledged the generosity of the many sponsors who support the school annually in recognising our outstanding award winners.
The school community farewelled Mrs Glenys Munro who is leaving after two years as Principal of Moonta Area School and Mr Greg Pritchard who is retiring after twenty eight years of service to Moonta Area School. Both have contributed greatly to the development of our school and all involved with it.


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- Penny's Paper-Crafty Challenge~ Anything Goes
- Craft Your Passion~ Anything Goes
- Love to Scrap~ Anything Goes
- Lil Patch of Crafty Friends~ Anything Goes
- 613 Avenue Create~ Anything Goes
- Conie Fong Art & Design Facebook Group Challenge~ Bows
Friday, April 22, 2016
So Sweet
8 comments:
- Christine Dol said...
Totally cute Danni!!!!!!!
- April 22, 2016 at 9:11 AM
This is stunning Danni! You colored this beautifully. So adorable! Thank you for participating in our monthly challenge:)
- April 22, 2016 at 9:54 AM
- MiamiKel said...
Stunning coloring and a darling card design!
- April 22, 2016 at 9:34 PM
- Kristie W. said...
Awwww the image is so cute!! Love the soft pretty paper you used with her.
- April 23, 2016 at 7:20 PM
- Jean said...
Oh this is so cute, your colouring is stunning. Thanks for joining us at Penny's Paper Crafty Challenge. Jean DT xxxx
- April 25, 2016 at 2:55 PM
- Lynette said...
What a darling image, Danni, and your coloring is perfection! It's been a long time since I've made a stop at your blog:( Congrats on your new home!
- April 25, 2016 at 3:03 PM
- Ann Chuang Crafts said...
So beautiful card! I adore the sweet image and your gorgeous coloring!Thanks for joining us at Love To Scrap! Challenge Blog! Hope to see you again soon!! HUGS!
Ann DT
- April 26, 2016 at 7:08 AM
- coldwaters2 said...
Oh my this is filled with so much sweetness and delight Danni, the image is beautiful so is the card design, thank you for joining our challenge at LPOCF
lorraine x
- April 28, 2016 at 4:35 PM


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The Motorola Defy+ was scheduled to go on sale in the UK tomorrow, the 30th of September, we just got an email from the guys over at Clove to let us know that the Motorola Def+ is now available in the UK from today.
The Motorola Defy+ has a 3.7 inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 854 x 480 pixels, there is 2GB of built n storage, plus a microSD card slot, processing is provided by a single core 1GHz processor and it will come with Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread.
The Motorola Defy+ also features a five megapixel camera with auto-focus and an LED flash, it is designed to be a rugged Android device which is resistant to water and dust and also shock proof.
It is now available in the UK for £246 including taxes, SIM free from Clove.
Source Clove