Floss tagged me!

Thank goodness it is quite an easy one this time. This is what I have to do ( straight quote from her blog, cos I am lazy, lol ) -

This one is charmingly different and easy:
1-Collect the book that you have most handy
2-Turn to page 161
3-Find the 5th complete sentence
4-Cite the sentence on your blog
5-Pass it on to five other blogger friends
Well, it did seem easy at first glance, but then I realised that my desk is in front of a bookshelf, with hundreds of paperbacks! The photo only shows the top three shelves, the middle shelf has all my soap business paperwork on it, and the bottom three shelves are full of sci-fi and fantasy books as well.

Hmmm, I decided that the shelf right behind the monitor was the one with nearest access to books, and the top of the pile sort of next to the monitor was probably the most handy. And that book was -
Terry Goodkind - Confessor. This is the concluding novel in the utterly fabulous and unmissable Sword of Truth series. I can't praise that series enough. Every time a new book came out, I re-read the whole series again right from the start

Right, lets turn to page 161 then.
and the fifth complete sentence is.......
" Rikka looked disappointed "
Waaahh, how disappointing is that? Such a boring, short sentence. Not fair, when there were lovely long, interesting sentences just before and just after. Well, humph.
Ah well, it doesn't really tease your imagination and it probably won't have made you rush out and buy the book, lol, but honestly, if you like very well written fantasy, get into this Sword of Truth series.
So now I need to nominate 5 others, right, hmmmm. Well
Sarah, from Red Gingham is my first choice, although the only book she is likely to pick up over the next month or so is the (probably very hefty) instruction manual for her new sewing machine
Joy, from Hippy News is next, come on Madame Cowpat, stop thinking about your new fella and do this little thing for me ( oh, before you all think the worst, her new fella is a gorgeous horse )
JJ, from The Diary of a Croaper, has no excuse not to do this, as the prodigal friend has finally returned from Portugal and has computer access again, yay.
Charlie, from Figs and Lemons might be able to find the time to pick up a book, unless she gets more invitations from strange men to sushi parties, in the middle of the night.
Amy, from During Quiet Time, she is busy busy busy all the time with all sorts of things, but I still think she is either Superwoman or has a time machine stashed away in the basement, so she will surely be able to find the time to pick up a book.....
There, all done, that wasn't too bad. Oh, no, not all done, now I have to tell them all they have been tagged, lol.
And now for something completely different. Last night my beloved little Sony digital camera, an ancient 2.1mb , but very handy little thing, starting dying on me after many years of very excellent service. Not good timing, because the standard lens on my Nikon D40 also bit the dust for some reason ( it locked up ), which left me with just the telephoto lens on the D40. I do love the Nikon, but its bulky, and sometimes I just need a little camera to take with me to fairs, on holiday etc, you know the sort of thing. So when I was in the shop this morning getting the lens sent off for repair, I also looked for a new little camera as backup and for general use. After much deliberation and pretty sound advice from the guy in the shop, I settled on a Fuji Finepix F60, which seems to be quite a nifty little thing and not too expensive either. I have only just unpacked it and taken a few pics indoors with it, but it seems to be coping well with close up text ( on the label ), which is important to me. What do you think of the pic quality? Passable for a dinky little cam? Don't judge them on the contents, lol, I couldn't be bothered to move, just snapped from my chair

I am going to have a play with it at the fair tomorrow, I think there will be loads of fab things to photograph.
Right, I am off now to tell all those lovely people above that they have been tagged!
xx

Yikes, I have been set a challenge!

Dear Floss, I used to like you before you set me this challenge, lolol. Now I am not so sure anymore, having thought about what I could possibly mention in this post.

I am going to copy from her blog to show what this is all about -

"NZ Sarah, of Red Gingham, has involved me ( thats Floss ) in the game she says is called 'Desafio'. It's a Spanish word and means 'Challenge' in English. This game is about getting to know each other better. In order to play this we must share 7 things about ourselves and then we must send the game to 7 other bloggers. "
Well, in French, this game would be called 'Défi', which shows the close links between French and Spanish, I think!"

There is definitely a huge potential for getting me into heaps of trouble here. Now, where should I start? Oh goodness, here goes, 7 things you probably didn't know about me and quite likely didn't really want to know either, lolol

1) Most of you won't know that I am a Kraut, born and bred. Am I a typical German girl, blonde, blue eyed, buxom? Tall and well built? Errmmm, nope, not quite, not at all in fact. I am short ( my youngest son lovingly calls me Baumstumpf ( tree stump ), I have brown eyes and red hair ( bottle, but dont you dare tell anyone ) and I am not quite as slim and trim as I used to be .

2) In the days when books were still used to look up things, and googling was unknown to most mere mortals, I used to work as a sales representative for Encyclopaedia Britannica ( I do own a set and I do love it ). Now, once a year EB would have a huge stand at the Ideal Home exhibition and a selected honoured few (40) sales reps out of a few hundred countrywide were allowed to work there. At the end of the three week show there was an award for the best sales rep. It was the " EB Top Dog Award ", the most prestigious recognition a sales rep could get. I was the first ever woman rep to win this award, and of course after that it had to be renamed, yes, you guessed it, it became the " EB Top Bitch Award " ! I am not entirely sure I was happy with that.

3) I once slept in a haunted house! Many many years ago, in the days before I was married, when I was working for Lufthansa German Airlines, a girlfriend and I took a trip to Barbados. We got quite friendly with a bunch of oil rig workers, who had hired a large villa for their stay. The villa had an open tower, and apparently, a previous owner had murdered his wife in the villa and put her body in the open tower for the birds to pick her bones clean. It was supposed to be haunted by the wife ever since. Now we are talking big, butch macho men here, totally down to earth oil rig workers, but there was such a weird atmosphere in this house, they would never close any doors, not even at night and usually tiptoed around the place. I have to say, I didn't notice anything spooky, ( probably due to the rum cocktails ) but they were dead serious about the haunting.

4) I used to do quite a bit of pop photography in the 80s. My darling husband was working at the Hammersmith Odeon in the evenings, after his normal job so that we could make ends meet ( mortgage, two kids, me at home, you know the story ) and I would be in there, photographing the bands. That was awesome! Not enough for me though, I used to phone the record companies and set up interviews and photoshoots with whomever I had taken a fancy to ( sigh, I was quite smitten with Kajagoogoo for a while ), and it was surprisingly easy to set it all up.

5) Staying with the music business, absolute ages and ages ago, I think it was CBS but can't remember now, anyway, a record company threw a launch party for Labelle. Remember the girls? Voulez vous coucher avec moi? Everybody had to wear silver outfits and that made for a really stunning affair. I still have the rather posh silver invite somewhere, must dig that out one day. Nice guest list, too, including a very sweet Elton John.

6) I am a half elven bard! Yep, I used to be into roleplaying, in a game called Neverwinter Nights. Actually, it was more roleplaying on the game forum than the actual game, lol. There was such a huge hype about the game before it came out, guilds were springing up all over the place, probably two years before the game was eventually released. I played a half elven bard in an evil guild, that was such a buzz! I loved my character, Rhydiana. But by the time the game was eventually released, I was pretty much played out.

7) I am a grumpy old woman, I think one of these days I'll have to start a list of my ten most hated things. At the moment there are a few things vying for first place a) roadworks, up for months with millions of traffic cones and of course no work being done, or, you may be very lucky and actually see some so-called workers, but............. at least 3 will be standing there just watching a forth using a shovel, No. 5 will be on the mobile, and No. 6 will be just sitting in some sort of machinery reading the paper. At any time of the day, NOT lunchtime. b) Pedestrians totally ignoring the red traffic lights for them, crossing the road despite traffic, and making the cars stop rather than stopping themselves until it is their turn. c) Dog walkers pretending to be so good and picking up their dog's business in little baggies, in places where they can be seen, and then chucking the bag in the bushes when they are out of sight of others. I constantly find that in the Firehills where we often walk with our dogs. Whats the frigging point???

OK, enough already, lolol, I dread to think what my little selection of 7 facts reveals about me, I hope there are no shrinks amongst you lot reading this.

And although Floss has dropped me right in with this challenge, she is lovely and I love her blog, and she therefore gets a Lululiz award -


It will shrink to the right size, lol.

Oh, darn, and now I have to find 7 others to challenge??

Can I think about that, lolol ( actually, I have to work out how to make the name link to their blog, lol, I am soooooooooo bad at this )

xx