Tony Blair and Archibishop Desmond Tutu …. and Chad le Clos

I have just finished an annual event called the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit.  It is a conference where they invite influential leaders to talk to a room full of other influential people.  It is a fairly high profile event.   (See website here)

My job was to oversee the accreditation and registration process.  The event this year was met with many challenges – the first of which was that Archbishop Desmond Tutu refused to share the stage with Tony Blair.  Apparently the Archbishop made the protest because of the former Prime Minister’s “morally indefensible” decision to lead British forces into Iraq in 2003.

I hate to admit it but I have lost a lost of respect for the Archbishop over the last week.  The reason being is that both the Archbishop and Tony Blair have been on the agenda for weeks and weeks – contracts signed and fees paid.  The Archbishop’s morals suddenly changed earlier this week though when he all of a sudden decided that he would not share the stage with Tony Blair.  2 Days before the event!

Now I would have no problem with this if he made his case and stated his opinions before he signed his contract or when both their contracts were confirmed ages ago.  The fact that they were both contracted was no secret and this has been in the media and on the relevant event website for weeks.

Anyway – all was not lost.  The event organisers brought in a last minute replacement.  None other than our new local hero – Chad Le Clos.  He recently brought home (to South Africa) 2 Olympic medals from the 2012 Olympic Games – one gold and one silver.  Now I am sure you are all saying how can I compare Chad Le Clos to the Archbishop.

Well it is easy –

• Firstly, his morals are not in question.  
• Secondly – you only need to look at him to see why I loved having him there.  It brightened up my day yesterday and almost every conversation I had with a female co-worker was about “have you seen Chad yet!” or “wonder how we can get into his change-room…….”  I have included a pic of him here – I didn’t bother to include his face as I didn’t feel it was relevant!

I did manage to sit in on the conference during Tony Blair’s speech and for his question and answer section after. I have always been fairly impartial to Tony Blair – he was the leader of one of the world’s most influential countries, but he really didn’t affect my life much.  I am also not really bothered about politics.

I have a new found respect for Tony Blair now.  This was not the typical politician who blagged his way through 45 minutes on stage.  He was absolutely riveting on stage.  The delegates asked him some pretty tough questions and he answered them all honestly and he didn’t try to avoid any of them.

All in all, it was a successful event regardless of the challenges and well done to the organisers for a fast save!

My Son the Porn Star

Our kids do so many things that make us proud and sometimes things that make us laugh as well.

Son no 3 had to do a school project this year for Drama.  They had to create their own music video – they had to write the script, direct it, act in it and create their own music.

I have posted the video below for you all to see.  I think it is amazing – from the expression on their faces, to the story line.  The music was created using Garage Band and I can’t help thinking about a cheesy porn film when I listen to it.

(16MB .mov File)

Hope you enjoy it….

Spring is in the air

Just checking in with you all to let you know I am still around.  It has been a busy week with family and work.

I spent the day today playing with my new printer – in fact it was more like a challenge.  I had 2 jobs to get done.  The one set of artwork was given to me as a psb file – the only way I could bring it into the RIP software was to export it as a tiff file – this ended up being 3GB in size.  The other job was annotated PDF files where the annotation bits would not print on the new printer, but printed fine on a generic lazerjet printer.  So I had a fun day exporting / importing / saving as etc – but I learnt so much about the printer today.

I am doing an event next week so I am rushed off my feet getting signage / accreditation / registration etc all done.  Hopefully things will calm down then for awhile.

Son no 2 leaves on Monday – I will be sad to see him go again.  I must admit my boys have been very mellow for the last week – nothing worth blogging about either which is really boring as I was looking forward to having loads of  things to tell you all about.  The only thing worth blogging about is that his girlfriend is gorgeous and a real delight to have around.  She has a great sense of humour and has coped very well with all of us.  They seem madly in love (oh to be young again!).

We have just had the most amazing weather this week – hard to imagine it was snowing 2/3 weeks ago. It was 29degrees C today – beautiful blue sky.  The weaver birds are all out building new nests.  Our Hadeda pair is back in my garden so I am sure we will see them nesting again soon.  My summer wardrobe has come out of the closet and I hope spring is here to stay.  I will take some pictures to show you all soon – especially of the purple jacaranda trees in bloom in a few weeks time.

That’s all for now and hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

My Brood

Had a lovely weekend so far.  Went to our local casino yesterday for Sushi and today we went out for a family lunch to a famous South African restaurant – Carnivore.

From left to right:

Son no 4, Son no 3, Friend of Son no 2, Son no 2, Girlfriend of Son no 2, Wife of Son no 1, Son no 1

Currently watching 21 Jump Street for the third time.  Everyone is relaxed and having a ball.

More Awards

I have been given 3 awards this week so I thought I would address them all in 1 post as follows:

The Liebster Blog Award

Nell at http://www.theramblingcouchpotato.com/ has just given me the Liebster Blog Award.  This is not the first time I have received this award, but I am just as grateful and surprised as the first time.  Thank you Nell – it is really great of you.

Now for the nitty gritty …

These are the rules:

1.  Link back to the person who gave it to you.(Done)
2.  Post the award on your blog for all to see! (Done)
3.  Give the award to 5 of your favorite bloggers (with 200 followers or less). (Not so easy – most of the blog’s I follow have loads of followers – but I will do my best – see below)
4.  Leave a comment on your chosen blogs to let them know that they have been given the Liebster Blog award (Done)

In order to fulfill item 3 above, I have decided to give the Liebster Blog Award to the following bloggers:

• Rachel @ http://www.journeyofanawakening.com/ (Back at ya)
• http://www.absolutelynarcissism.co/ (love her post “My kids hate each other”)
• http://lastunturnedstone.blogspot.com/
• http://myhusbandisannoying.com/ (love the title of this blog)
• Ric @ http://www.lifencanvas.com/

---

The Sunshine Blogger Award:

I received this award twice this week.  With thanks to Melanie at The Mother of Nine and Rachel at The Journey of Awakening.  Melanie has made me feel really special with the comment she put on her blog about me (Click the link to The Mother of Nine above to read it.)  I don’t know Rachel at all so getting the award from her was out of the blue and has made me very very special – I will be a fequent visitor to her blog from now on.

The rules as follows: (I am cheating and only doing this once)

1. Include the award logo in a post or somewhere on your blog. (Done – See above)
2. Answer 10 questions about yourself: (I have chosen random questions which are short and sweet to answer)

• What size shoe do I wear – I wear a size 6 in a summer shoe and 7 in a winter shoe as I like to wear socks and not stockings in winter
• What is my natural hair color – Blond – I still like to keep it blond and have highlights to hide some of the gray about every 3 months
• What is my favorite flower – Orchid
• How tall am I – I am 1.63m or 5’3″ (I think)
• What is my favorite colour – Hmmm – would have to go with blue
• Where do I like to go on holiday – Anywhere as long as it is a 5 star hotel (general rule is that it has to have room service and I dont have to cook or clean)
• What is my favorite city – Singapore
• What is my favorite pastime – spending time with my boys
• What is the part of my body I hate the most – my ankles
• What is the part of my body I like the most – my boobs

3. Nominate 10 to 12 other fabulous bloggers.
(This is always the most difficult part of these awards)

• http://paulsmusing2.wordpress.com/ – He takes fabulous pictures

(9 more to follow…..)

4. Link your nominees to the post and comment on their blog, letting them know about the award. (Done where relevant)
5. Share the love and link the person who nominated you – Herewith links to the 2 bloggers who shared the love:

• The Mother of Nine
• The Journey of Awakening

Life’s Cherries

Well its Friday – and my son has arrived from Dubai.  My 4 Boys have been romping around and laughing all evening – LIFE IS GOOD!

Going to fetch Son no 2’s girlfriend from the airport at Midnight – she is flying in from Cape Town as she has been visiting with her parents there – Dying to meet her.

I will keep you all posted………

---

Mine’s bigger than yours

This week is quite an exciting one for me.

Today was Son no 1’s birthday – he was 24 today. So I made my famous Mac and Cheese for dinner – this is the favorite meal with all my kids. I felt quiet bad as this is the first year I did not buy him a present. It is very difficult buying something for a IT geek who has everything (And he really would not appreciate a pair of socks!).  So we had dinner and then had some delicious chocolate cake (store bought I’m afraid – I have to work for a living!).

The printer technician also came early this morning and replaced the fault part on my new printer.  So I did some test prints and it is amazing.  Can’t wait to actually have to print a job on it for a client.  The word will get out though and I am sure I will have loads of people wanting printing done.

I am having my hair done tomorrow – I need my high-lites redone and could do with a trim.  I have been trying to grow my hair for about 18 months now.  It has been really difficult as it irritates the hell out of me, but I have managed to grow it this long and I am certainly not cutting it short again.

Then I am having my monthly wax on Thursday – This probably falls in the TMI category so I will leave it at that…..

Then on Friday – Son no 2 arrives from Dubai!  He is bringing his girlfriend with and I am dying to meet her. Pity they are only here for a week.

I am bracing myself for the heightened testosterone levels with having all 4 boys around for a week.  In fact – I have been seriously thinking about popping one of my HRT pills into their morning breakfasts for the next week in anticipation that it will being down the testosterone levels.

Son no 4, who recently turned 12, is starting to go though puberty.  He is being so testy with son no 3 at the moment and just pokes and pokes and pokes at him all the time.  We are still having the morning snarl at each other as Son no 4 is still sitting in his new position at the table and Son no 3 still insists on setting his place in the old position.  Everything is a competition and they are all experts at everything.  Most of the time I can ignore it, but some days I want to pull my hair out.

Next week will be worse as I will have all of them wanting to prove something – especially the 2 older ones making a point of telling the 2 younger ones why they have it so much easier and when they were little they had to do this and that else they were beaten or locked in the bathroom etc etc  (they must have found their way into an alternate reality at some point as I don’t remember any of this, but anyway….).

Well it is time for bed and I will let you know how my week goes.

Menopausal Cuckoo

Reblogged from my favorite blogger in the USA:

Menopausal Mother: Menopausal Cuckoo:      I think I’m losing my mind. Seriously. I used to be a compulsive organizer and proud of it. The spices in my spice rack were placed in …

Very Cute

I found this pic whilst browsing – I thought it was just to cute to ignore (Sorry Guys – I know you probably disagree!):

Pics found at: http://kelvynstevens.blogspot.com/

My new baby

I have taken delivery of my new HP Latex L26500 printer this week.  All very exciting actually.

I placed the order about 2 weeks ago and paid my deposit.  I then had to get an electrician to install 2 dedicated power sockets for it.  The electrician finally arrived on Monday and did the installation.  I then called the printer company and told them the power was in and they could schedule the delivery and installation of the printer.

Within half an hour they emailed me back scheduling installation and delivery on Tuesday (yesterday).

So a huge crate was delivered yesterday morning.  This then started getting a little complicated.  You see yesterday was the coldest day we have had in years – in fact it was so cold, it snowed.  Snow in Johannesburg – never!  But I kid you not.

So the crate had to come indoors for the installation.  This meant I had to reorganize my office to make space for the crate and enough space to open and spread the parts out so the technician could build it.

The technician arrived about 15 minutes after the delivery took place so it was all well timed.

He then started with the assembly.  By mid-afternoon I had a new presence in my office – it is enormous and definitely overpowers the room – and it looks very impressive!  He then asked for my full attention while he went through the procedure of installing the various consumables.  He showed me how to put in an ink cartridge.  He then asked me to put in the other 5.  So I then install them one by one.  The machine goes beep once it accepts each cartridge.  I installed the black cartridge only to get an error message.  So I uninstall it and try again – same thing.  The technician then tries and also gets an error.  He then spends 15 minutes messing about with various bits and pieces and then decides that the black cartridge is faulty.  So he calls his office and asks for them to send another one with a driver ASAP.

While waiting for the driver to arrive, he installs the RIP software and starts showing me how it all works.  Very brief introduction as he cannot initialize the printer until it accepts all the cartridges.

Finally the driver arrives, the replacement cartridge installed and Voila!  the printer initializes after we install the remaining consumable items (printheads / cleaners / waste bin etc etc).

So he gives me a very basic run down of everything.  Not much time to do anything else as it was almost closing time.  We manage to print a sample print.  Now I am really excited!

He leaves and promises to come back early this morning. I had a sleepless night – kept thinking about my new printer and what I could do with it – I could print on some wallpaper and paste it on the kids bedroom doors which are damaged after years of being abused by slamming it into furniture sitting behind the door when it swings open.  I could print posters.  I could print ………  and so my mind worked all night.

He arrived bright and early this morning.  He sits with me and gives me a lesson on the software and different settings and scenarios and printing profiles to match different media.  Eventually I am up to speed.  I load my media and am ready to print.  I bring in some images and RIP them to print.  The printer starts up and you can hear the fans going.  And half an hour later, the printer is still heating up – no print yet!

The technician is now beginning to realize that “not all is well in the state of Denmark!”

He then starts fiddling and cleaning this and adjusting that – and still nothing.

He fiddles some more, makes a few phone calls – and still nothing.

I am now rather anxious as all I want to do is PRINT!

He finally gets up the courage to tell me that there is a problem (no Shit!).  There is a fault with the curing sensor – so although it is getting hot enough, the sensor is not telling it that it is hot enough.

The bad news is – it is a public holiday tomorrow and of course this means the part will only be dispatched on Friday and I will only have it sometime next week!

I should be a total wreck by next week with no sleep……..