Oi,...

Whoops sorry, I am late again.

It seems that talking about hedgehogging yesterday put me into just the bubble I wanted to be, completely forgetting that I have publishing duties to fulfill.

Yes, I got started on formatting the book. I cannot believe that it is lying around since more than a year. That at least is the date on the files when I saved them last. So all I can say for now is: be prepared for an eBook to come out on Kindle at one point in the not too far future. It is still too early to say when, as I am stripping everything to plain text, whereas the original was planned to have a lot of pictures. 

As soon as the text version is working in the Kindle format I can start to see how to get illustrations and pictures (only possible in B&W) in. Once that is done I can get started on the iPad version using colour.

So, off I go quickly and get the rest of the text into the file... See you later!

Ta ta
 xx

Happy ranting

Christmas is over and I hope you all survived it well. I couldn't help but write a little rant about this whole period... oh my, every year the same! The good thing however is that I had time to count the Orangutan Land Trust charity money and I could make another donation. So the office piggy has it's own page now.

So off I dash now to get the shopping done for tomorrow and hopefully I will find a bit of time to get some book editing done. Now that I know what to do I really want to get my fingers into it.

Wishing you a really nice day
Love

Merry Christmas All!

Hemingway was almost as famous for his Whisky consumption as he was for his writing, and there are many others more who are known for this combination. I have no idea how the two can go together. After a lovely party at friends house with loads of booze and food I am feeling rather brain dead this morning, at least writing wise. And although I may have had some witty moments last night, I don't think that those would spark great literature.

I will have to put this down to either the fact that booze is not really for me, or that I am just not a Hemingway. Either way: I am on holidays from now on, and hence I am not feeling too bad for not writing a big article. This is the period of time for which I had promised myself to kick-start a few projects. The sewing machine needs to be cleaned for the course beginning mid January. I need to start planning for a photo shoot with Matt to get templates for my book illustrations. I have to learn how to do an eBook and I have to start thinking about a posing routine for the Bodybuilding competition. Given all that there might be no proper articles during this time but just  the daily update, like this one, except for Christmas and Boxing day, those I will take off entirely.

On that note I am now wishing you a very merry Christmas, hoping that you might find a calm moment for yourself once in a while.

Always yours
Love

Better late than never

wintery waterfall of my fishpond

Ha! This is the first morning after I caught the cold that I feel like having a brain. Given that, I am actually rather proud that I kept posting throughout. Am a bit late today, though. Reason being that I swithched off all alarms... and promptly got woken by the telephone, oh well. Important thing is, that I got almost 9 hours and as it turns out: Sleep is the best of remedies!

I posted about this before, just that sometimes I don't listen to my own advice. This incident now showed that I better should, and not just when I am ill.

The other thing that is a really good remedy when the chesty cough kicks in is my quirky cough syrup. Tastes a bit funny but works wonders. As much as I would like to blab on: Work is calling. So, have a lovely day and keep fit!

Love
Rika  xx

Haaaptchi

I caught a cold, and this time a rather proper one. That is not helping with all the projects I eventually wanted to catch up with, but a cold never comes at the right time, I guess. I could live with a sore throat and a sniffling nose, the brain however goes all mushy just to a degree that one can still function somehow. These little buggers don't care how groggy we feel, keeping  us at a level of mobility that enables us to move about, and passing them on. Well, and our modern lifestyle is nicely tapping into it. I actually was already waiting for it, as I am working in an open plan office with aircon. When I heard people coughing and sneezing all over the place I already cranked up Vit C intake and resorted to Chicken soup and other healthy foods, but one evening in the pub, trying to over-shout the music and a day strolling through icy London brought me down.

Oh well, let's get it done and over with before Christmas. Today I will be working a bit from home and you may want to avoid visits to my house. I will be throwing the whole range of remedies I know at it and by end of the week things should be almost back to normal.

But remember what my Grandma used to say: A cold comes for a week, stays for a week and leaves for a week. Should you have caught it: Take it easy for a while longer, even if you are feeling all right. Otherwise you might be running right into the next one.

On that note I am wishing you a healthy week!

Haaaptchi.... sniff...
Rika

Just and update!

Gooooood morning, good morning, good morning everybody! Today just a quick update:

Christmas run up... getting there. This week was the week when everything would either run smoothely, or not at all and so far we are on the smoothely side of things. Made it through two Christmas dinners, and despite having them substancially extended into pub visits and Koffee-klatsches I still managed to write something every day. So very pleased with that.

I haven't been drawing all week, though, and I am really missing it. What is a good thing. This seems to be something that could become a new passion ... Sunday! Sunday I will be doing a bit of drawing... Pweeese...! Just a bit?

I still keep forgetting to take my business cards with me, which is a bit silly as this is the time of the year to meet a lot of people. Oh well,...

The blogs are becoming more and more shapely now. Since I discovered the stand alone pages I have inserted those into Live and Let Live, Bloody Hell... , Rika's Personal Blog and I will add a few more to the other blogs. I think it makes it much easier to find out what the blog is about. Hence pleased with that as well. 

The food and training side of things is a disaster, though. I am looking forward to next week when everything should be back to normal. I am getting really nervous now, but at this time of the year it is hard to find inspiration. So I will have to find it within myself, somewhere... don't have a clue where to look for it, though.

That's all for now I guess. I hope you are all on target! And don't forget: Half an hour time out with a cuppa can work wonders. It's short enough for the world not to break down around you and afterwards you will have the strength to face it again. On that note:

Tata, so long, chin up!
Love

Thoughts on passion and compassion

Weekend!

Thank goodness, it's weekend. At least for me it is. The joy of being a part timer. But that doesn't mean the worrying stops, in contrary: I am waiting for delivery from the online pharmacy, of some clothes and my new toy - a drawing pad and this heavily interferes with plans to have a lunch out with dear girlfriend. I am rather certain delivery services will all queue up as soon as I leave the house. A solution is needed!

Gotta dash now, so much to do before lunch time, and definitely don't wanna be to late for that!
Talk to you on Monday dears, have a lovely weekend,
Love

Argh...

This is the first day on which I am really struggling and my brain is dead empty! At least I filled in the entry form for the Anglian Bodybuilding Championships now, but for the rest of it the day job is killing any inspiration... have been sitting until half nine last night doing boring websites, and all of a sudden I am caught in this: EVERYTHING before Christmas thing...

Oh well, today I eventually will get the tooth fixed, I guess that is something to aim for before Christmas, and next Monday I will see  the nurse for vaccinations for my Sumatra trip in summer, another thing that needs to get into the pipeline as some jabs need to be done well before the trip.

So I really have to dash now. Wishing you a calm and sunny day, at least the sun rise looks beautifully clear and the forecast gives three big suns out of five, Hurrah!
Ta ta
 xx

Oi, that is great!

I admit, I watched too much of 'The Nanny' recently - this 'Oi' thing is very contagious. But that's not my point!

I am so glad that I chose Blogger as the Incredible Ladies Project's new home. I just discovered that for each blog one can have 10 additional pages to use for static information. This comes just in time for a change in the fund raising sector. Although the new approach is very reasonable money wise, it will be a bit more difficult on the inspiration side of things and will make tracing targets a bit more difficult. So I created a fundraising information page for the charity blog hoping that this will cover it at least in parts.

This page is listed as a tab at the top of the blog, with 'Home' being the original blog. This option will now open all sorts of opportunities for the other blogs and the growth of ILP. Those pages don't allow comments but that shouldn't be a problem. The blogs usually have initial posts which explain the purpose or the general trend, and which now have sunk to the bottom of the archive. Those new pages will now allow for them to stay in the lime light. So more work to be done for me to organise the ILP-landscape. Yippee, I love that!

Wrap up warm, here in Ipswich it is staying cold for the next two days, plus some rain today, some sunshine tomorrow, and cloud for the rest of the week while getting a bit warmer, well... that usually means murkier. So enjoy the sunshine tomorrow.

Love

It's not a style...

... or is it?

One is wearing panda, and one is wearing poodle, or so. The panda I understand, I have a few problems to get the poodle, though. Is it meant as a tease? All the words say 'No', the clothes say, I am desperate to be different even if it looks crap, and the body language says 'yes please!' Or am I just old? Yeah, probably that's it!

What I however find truly amazing is that this blog is utterly successful. My favourite jeans brand is over the moon to be named in it, whereas the owner of the blog is having a list of articles in reputable magazines like Harper Bazar and so on...

And did you see the ambiance the pictures are taken in? Oh there it is again... envy in all shades from yellow to green. And the pictures of shoes... See, I cannot use any of that kind, I wasn't even sure if I can publish the photo of the Vogue cover, even if I took it myself. Copyright is such a confusing matter. Hence I rather use the much less puzzling method of linking to places where nice photos can be found, although this may lead to something rather baffling, indeed.

And on this note I am leaving you with 'something for the ladies'
Ta ta

Don't cha?

Working Rhythm

Good morning Dears,

Wishing you a warmer home than this!

It is a Saturday morning and am thinking, that after several weeks of continuous posting and setting-up blogs I should get into a working rhythm, meaning that my daily updates will have to be restricted to working days.

See, once in a while I need to DO a few things in order to write about it, and what better time to do that than the weekend. I still find that the day job tends to get into the way of things, then there is the training, which is a more boring part for most of you, so that doesn't really count - or better: it counts separately, and then there is the writing part of my day which I really enjoy. 

This only leaves the weekend to get some other projects rolling, like shooting some of my infamous videos, the sewing course which will start mid January, and of course the book writing and illustrating wants to be done. So I hopefully will make good use of those two days per week, and will only bother you with my random thoughts from Monday to Friday.

On this note I am wishing you a wonderful weekend, and see you on Monday
Love

Slapstick & Chicken Soup

31 Days

Are you aware that in 31 days we have 2011? Remember when the whole world was fussed about the millennium bug? It is a decade on now. 10 years have passed since then. A lot has happened, but nothing really significant, I find. Changes lie in a personal perspective, though. Ten years ago I hardly knew how to switch on my computer, and these days I am running 12 blogs. Of course I get the feeling that an 'information revolution' has taken place. Yes, there has been quite a development, I would never have known about the Orangutans in Borneo and Sumatra, and I may never have found the drive to actually wanting to travel there.Yes, the Internet changed things quite a bit, but how far does it actually reach? There are still parts of the world where people don't have the means to participate and there are still people in our part of the world who either don't have the money or are lacking the education to participate either. Maybe it is a good time to remember that everybody who can read this is privileged in a way.

People who engage in environmental issues may find that this is where the biggest changes took place. Global warming is only disputed by very few and commonly acknowledged, more and more issues are addressed and solutions pushed into households, but on government level not a lot is happening, and there surely is no international consensus. Whether we like it or not, more and more responsibility will be put on individuals shoulders in a world that becomes more and more complex. The next decade will be an interesting one, I guess.

The next 31 days will be interesting as well, because the media will provide us with the views of politicians, comedians and other folks. Interesting times, for us and for the mouse who doesn't know yet that her relocation, relocation programme is on!

Wishing you a cosy day

Love