November

It appears that nearly a month has passed since I last blogged here and yet it doesn't feel that long. I've been doing a fair bit of cooking and blogging on my Frog End Food blog, but there never seems to be any really interesting news to post here.

There have been floods in our part of the country this last week, but luckily we weren't affected. Otterton Mill (where we're having our wedding reception next summer) was nearly flooded, but although the carpark went underwater we're pleased that recent work by the bridge over the Otter paid off and the main buildings didn't flood.

Our main contract with the company for the winter came to an end prematurely, but luckily we've had interest from several other potential clients so hopefully we'll have a new project to work on soon. In the meantime I'm having fun making a demonstration website containing an interactive map of my favourite nature reserve: Askham Bog near York. I'll post a link from here when the site's online.

Now that the family visits are over for the year we've brought some boxes down from the loft for sorting. I'm getting rid of all my old video tapes - the ones recorded from the television, but we're having fun watching some of them before I throw them away. Ian has brought down many of his parents papers and artwork (his Dad designed hovercraft) and I shall begin scanning them as soon as I've finished scanning my old photographs.

Ian and I have begun an online memory course. It's quite a long and difficult course and could take several months to complete, but the testimonials from other people who've taken it are incredible. It even includes a section on learning foreign languages - the focus in the course being on Russian so I'm very excited that I will learn some more Russian during the course. Like most other memory courses the techniques require you to visualise things. I've never been a particularly visual person so I'm finding it more difficult than Ian who naturally thinks that way, but it's gradually becoming easier.

We've been quite worried about our cat William over the last week or so as he's been hiding under unusual items of furniture and not eating at all. Obviously his nose is bothering him a lot more, but at least today we've managed to get him to eat something. He was finding it increasingly difficult to get food from his bowl without touching and hurting his nose in the process so today we put his food on a piece of newspaper and he's eaten a good meal. I suspect we'll take him to the vets in the New Year to see if they can put him on some kind of painkillers, but for now we're just happy that he's eating again.