hypersage

Last week was one of mixed fortunes. Unfortunately we had to bite the bullet and let the organisers know that we wouldn't be able to raise the money we needed to go on the Costa Rican Rainforest Trek. Despite a year of fundraising and a lot of hard work, we were still short by a huge amount. I am disappointed but would like to thank anyone who was kind enough to make a donation (unfortunately I can't refund your money but it still goes to the charity, I hope you understand).

We will hopefully be attending one of the expeditions in the future (they try to do one each year) but, with the global money situation as it is, I think we'll wait for a while. The training and preparing for the trek has left me with a new love of the outdoors though and I think I'll be taking hiking trips and going on more adventurous vacations from now on. No more sitting around on the beach for me. I think I'll try the Lake District first:







Who wouldn't want to walk in and photograph that beautiful landscape?


The best thing to happen in the last week was that, after being shafted (screwed, for my American friends) by our previous tenants, we have new ones. I am so relieved about it as repossession was a real possibility when we had no-one in the other house and to go into Christmas with that hanging over our heads would have been awful. After the year I've had, I just wanted to make the holidays special for us and having the house situation resolved takes a huge weight of my mind. Money will still be tight this Christmas but at least now I only have the regular money worries for this time of year.

I don't think the tenants know how desperate we were to rent it when they came along; I was just about to drastically reduce the listed price when they made their offer, which would have meant us putting in more money to cover the loss.


I had the oldest Devil Child at home sick last week too. It was one of those situations where we couldn't tell if she was acting or not, she'd be fine most of the day but then at bed time she'd be crying and saying that her stomach hurt. After checking if there were any reasons she didn't want to go to school, we took her to the doctor who couldn't find anything wrong but told us there was a virus going around and to keep her home for rest.

She was fine all weekend but then on Sunday night started complaining that she felt sick again, we're making her go to school but it's hard to know what to do. On one hand she could be acting up and we don't her to get away with it but, especially with her medical condition, you don't want to be too hard on her in case she is actually sick. We have an appointment with the doctor on Friday so, hopefully, we'll find out then.

Having her home all week really threw everything out of sync, I had to arrange to work from home so that I could look after her but it was hard to get any real work done.


I'll leave you with another item from Top Gear:

"Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy. "
Hamlin Garland