When I became a Bahá’í, I wanted some beads to help me keep count when saying ‘Alláh-u-Abhá’ 95 times. I couldn’t get to grips with the knuckle counting technique that some Bahá’í’s use, so I googled ‘Bahá’í Prayer Beads’. I came across Kimberly Winston’s website, more specifically this post in which she gives instructions on how to make a basic set.

I’ve made a few sets of beads since I found her blog, mainly for myself and Michael to use. I find making the beads quite soothing and meditative.

Yesterday at Le Beado I bought some new fish for Michael’s prayer beads as one of his fish had snapped in hald, and some ‘tulip’ beads so I could make a new set for myself as well. By last night Michael’s beads had been given a new lease of life, making him quite happy. And after a visit to Fenwicks today with the lovely Amelia (thanks for coming in with me chick!) to get some beads to compliment the ones I got yesterday, I now have a new set of beads as well.

Beads Galore by lindsaybotterill

Michael’s ‘fish’ beads are at the top, and mine are below…the ‘tulip’ beads are the ones nearest to Mikes’ fish.

I’ve just installed the ‘flickrpress’ plugin, so just testing how it works to include flickr photos in a wordpress post.

I can still see you by lindsaybotterill

Enjoy this picture of the very cute Jenny.

I got the night bus home with May and Gillian, May and I coming back to Newcastle and Gillian getting off at Birtley. Once May and I were in Newcastle we split up; me to walk home and May to grab a taxi. It’s interesting the kind of people you can come across walking through Newcastle city centre at 2am. Not long after I left May, something hit me in the side…it looked a like a burger! Glancing around, I spotted a bunch of lads on the other side of the road sniggering. I just laughed and walked on, if they get their kicks out of something so childish as throwing food at someone, then good for them.

I didn’t run into any more drama until I was nearly at Chinatown. I took a shortcut under The Gate and past Blackfriars to get onto Stowell Street….as I headed towards Blackfriars, they were a couple of guys ‘relieving themselves’ against the walls of The Gate…I shouldn’t have expected anything different that time of night but I was still slightly taken aback, so I raised my hand to the side of my head so I didn’t inadvertently see anything! One of the guys said’ “Geez, sorry love!”. I replied saying it was alright and kept on walking!

Just before I hit Stowell street, one of the guys I had passed answering nature’s call had obviously finished and caught up with me…as he walked by, he turned around and said ‘he would behave’. I laughed at him (in a good natured way of course!), and we struck up a conversation. We were going in the same direction for a little while so we walked together. I found out his name is Richard, he is originally from Durham but went to university in Sheffield, and is now living in Newcastle. He told what he had been doing in town, and I told him what I’d been up to in Durham. We split up on St James’ Boulevard…I was heading up Bath Lane home, while he was walking down to the casino near to the Redheugh Bridge.

In the final stages of my journey home, I considered my conversation with Richard, and came to the conclusion that it was nice to be able to strike up a conversation was someone who is a complete stranger….a few years ago I wouldn’t be able to do that, but nowadays I’m comfortable enough with myself to have the confidence to speak to someone I don’t know.

As for the burger boys, at one time it would have really bothered me that I was the target of the childish act…now I don’t let it bother me.

It was an interesting walk home.

And now, it’s 03:26am…time for bed!

So this is a quick post just so I can say to myself that I’ve posted SOMETHING, even if it is just a moan about not posting on a regular basis!

Busy weekend ahead….need to do some shopping tomorrow, then going to Leanne’s tomorrow night for a ‘girly night’, quite looking forward to that. On sunday I will likely be in Blyth as it is my Dad’s birthday on Monday, and in the evening I will be at the 19 day feast.

Busy couple of days indeed! I want to play around with this blog’s design a little bit, hopefully I can fit some time in before Monday, as well as time to look at the banner for the website that is being put together for the Newcastle Baha’i community.

Need sleep now. Goodnight :-p

The weather there was pretty much the same as it is here at the moment – aka, wet! Still, we didn’t let that bother us too much. Our little trip wasn’t about sightseeing, rather we were using it as a chance to spend a day together away from home, so we walked, chatted, had tea and coffee at Bewleys on Grafton Street, and just enjoyed the break.

As we stood by the River Liffey on Tuesday evening, I made Michael video me singing a certain song…the Janeypants song! Dedicated to my lovely little sister, who this week got herself a new job at Linden Hall. Congratulations Jane, wish you all the best!

Michael really wants to travel over the next couple of years before we start trying to have kids – he wants us to visit all the countries in the EU. I’ve decided that whenever we visit somewhere, I will now always sing the Janeypants song on video it as proof. I hope my sister doesn’t mind! :-p

Michael will be writing in his blog about our trip in more detail…I’ll link once he has.

Janeypants! ♥

He was right, I loved it!

Looking at all the lovely ‘disapproving’ bunnies on this site reminded me of my rabbit, Snowdrop.

Snowdrop when he was a baby

He was a gorgeous rabbit, and I miss him a lot.

He used to chase my cats around my front room…the poor felines didn’t know what to do! All Snowdrop wanted to do was sniff them with his twitchy noise, but the cats didn’t let him get near! It was quite funny to watch, although sometimes I felt bad for the bunny, he just wanted to be friends.

I called him Snowdrop as I was convinced he was a girl when we first got him. He wasn’t, so we shortened his name to ‘Dwop, which Micheal always used to say sounded like a ‘hip hop’ name.

Baby ‘Dwop with one of my cats, Misty

An older ‘Dwop in his hutch

‘Dwop passed on nearly 2 years ago, and I still get upset sometimes when I think about him not being here anymore, but he had a good life with Michael and I, and we both cherish the time we had with such a lovely pet.

After sitting with me a while, she then proceeded to wedge herself under the sofa. I wasn’t sure at first what it was she was looking for…

…but eventually she emerged with one of the gray and red toy mice I bought for her, Sweep and Misty a little while ago. All the cats love them…during the day I often see one of them carrying a toy mouse around by it’s tail. So cute! ^_^

Jenny started to bounce this particular mouse around, so I tried to capture the moment. Fail – by the time I took the picture, it was earth bound.

Finally, a non-kitten related photo…this is the card I got for Michael’s birthday which was on monday…it’s special since it’s the first ‘husband’ birthday card I’ve ever bought. Awww. ♥

I discovered Muse when I was around 16-17 years old. My Grandad gave me a free CD that came on a box of Golden Grahams breakfast cereal. Most of the tracks didn’t do anything for me, except this one track called Uno, by a band I had never heard of before – Muse. I quite liked the song, so I kept that CD close to hand and played it quite a bit just for the one track.

One day when I was having a root around the bargain bin in my local Woolies, I came across a single called ‘Sunburn’, by the band I remembered from the Golden Grahams CD. It was only 99p, so I bought it not knowing what to expect, knowing I would have no regrets due to the measly sum of money I had parted with.

I loved it, and my love affair with Matt, Chris and Dom began.

MTV2 were the only music channel that I can remember who played their video’s, so I harassed my poor mother by having it on constantly, hoping to catch a Muse video. I started to buy Melody Maker and NME to keep an eye out for news and new releases from the band. Jo, my best friend at school, bought me ‘Showbiz’, their first album, for my birthday, although I sadly couldn’t persuade her to stop listening to her cheesy pop long enough to actually listen to them herself.

I used to listen to Showbiz at night with my personal CD player, mouthing the lyrics to myself, trying to remember to not wake my little sister Jane, who I shared my bedroom with. Muse helped me getting through the angsty ‘the world hates me and I want to die’ phase I went through during sixth form. I also credit them with introducing me to more ‘credible’ music – I started to listen to more guitar laden rock/alt/indie music, instead of boy bands and girly bubblegum pop…i.e. Muse replaced Boyzone, RHCP replaced Steps, and so on.

It’s very rare I buy CD’s now – the world of music has moved on so much in just a few years since my days of taking my personal CD player into school with speakers that plugged into the earphone jack socket – now we all have iPod’s with speaker docks, and music is stored in digital form, downloaded from the internet and transferred between devices.

But Muse albums are something I always want to have a ‘hard copy’ of. Digital downloads are fantastic, but sometimes you just want to have something you can hold, something more ‘real’ than a file saved to your HDD. Very materialistic of me, I know.

Anyway, here I am, listening to The Resistance. I am currently on track 4, which is United States of Eurasia. So far I am loving the album. As a die-hard fan, I would say that though! I’m not going to review the album, I’m not very good at that kind of thing!

I will say this though – in my opinion, Muse are a little bit like marmite, you either love them or hate them. I would strongly urge anyone to listen to them at least once, even if you end up falling into the ‘hate’ camp and never let them grace your ears again.

I am still in the ‘honeymoon’ period with this browser, so my opinion could change. It took me many years to make the move from Internet Explorer to Firefox, although that being said, Flock is built on / using Firefox, so in that respect it is very much the same. The import ability when installing the browser has so far made transition easy – all my passwords, bookmarks etc have been copied over from Firefox to Flock so I haven’t noticed any difference when browsing.

I would seriously suggest giving it a go. I am very pleased that I did.

Last night I downloaded a couple of new gadgets for my vista sidebar, one of which is simply known as LCARS. I am very impressed with it. I’m sure any Star Trek fan would probably be as well, at least on a visual note if nothing else! The gadget displays the time and date, along with CPU, wireless network connection / strength, power and memory information. I especially like how it flashes *offline* in red when my laptop isn’t plugged into the mains!