Why I blog...

I use this blog as a kind of therapy. Sometimes I'm happy and want to share it, sometimes it's just a random thought and sometimes it's to deal with things in my past. After all a burden shared is a burden halved

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Blogger event




Last night Scott and I attended the Kodak Cape town Blogger event. It was great fun and I won two prizes! A cute Kodak camera and T-shirt from The friends of design Digital Academy.

Because Scott works in Town, and we had an hour to kill before the event started we thought it would be a good idea (it wasn’t) if we met at Neighbourhood for a few pre-event drinks. Dinner was the farthest thing from our minds, this would come back to bite us on the ass later.

Upon arrival at the Blogger event, we were all given a number to be kept for the lucky draw later and a complimentary glass of wine. Note that we had already had a few drinks prior to our arrival, oh and did I mention the one glass of wine I had before I left the house. The evening went well, lots of people received prizes as did I when my number was drawn out of a champagne bucket. Then they served a few horsdeuvres and topped up our wine glasses (more free wine). Then Phillip Schmid from Friends of design announced that he had 10 free T-shirts to give away if you checked in at Friends of Design on foursquare.

Now If you are on foursquare you will know that when you type in a venue, it will bring up about 5 different ones in that same vicinity and it can be very easy for someone (say like me) to scroll down your blackberry and click on the wrong one by accident. Especially if your vision is a little blurry and your fingers not so steady from beer, wine and an empty stomach. I clicked on what I thought was friends of design and when I saw that I had checked in I went to Phillip and proudly announced that I had. He was very polite and reminded me that I won a prize from them at the last blogger event. I replied: “but I checked in”. He then gave me a T-shirt. I was stoked; Scott was not too impressed that I had won again. I gloated and may have used the phrase ‘been there done that AND got the T-shirt’. Yes I know very cliché.

Well, this morning we woke up to discover that we were both suffering from a debilitating disease called Alcoholic Amnesia. Yes this is very serious; it affects about 1 in every 5 people who like to partake in such things as complimentary drinks on an empty stomach and beer. The symptoms are; memory loss, feeling of embarrassment, severe headaches and dryness of the mouth (or fuzzy tongue as it is known in medical circles). The side effects; the excruciating pain of tagged faceboook notifications, and strange status updates. Early indications; Waking up in the morning and saying stuff like “how did I get here? Where am I? Where are my keys and (in Scotts case) I can’t find my cell phone and cigarettes.

For me the worst side effect is undoubtedly the feeling of guilt! I checked my twitter timeline this morning to see if I had made any embarrassing drunken tweets last night only to discover I was still on foursquare. I had to my horror not in fact checked in at Friends of Design last night, but into some place called the Null. Now I have know idea where or what the Null is, but I feel so ashamed for having claimed a prize for which I was not worthy. And so to Phillip and the People at Friends of Design my sincere apologies. I did check in this morning at 3:45 when I woke up!

The photo above (taken on my new camera)is of Amanda and I with our T-shirts.

Monday, October 3, 2011

5 generations of AWESOME



5 generations of Awesome

It doesn’t happen every day and it doesn’t happen to everyone, in our family there are 5 generations of AWESOME women (yes we are that awesome I had to use caps!).

The day my daughter came home from hospital with my second grandchild we all got together to welcome her, it was at this gathering we realized that there were 5 generations of women in one room. Now I know you probably thinking so what? Your family breeds like rabbits and this is special? Well it’s just that I know quite a few people who have never even had the chance of meeting their grandparents let alone great grandparents. So when you have the chance to meet your great great grandmother it’s pretty awesome.

Ok so we may have cheated a little by having our children very young. My gran had my mom at 18 (she was married by then) my mom had me at 17; I had my first daughter at 16. And yes as you can see by the rapid progression of age declining I was a bit nervous when my daughter turned 15. I think I may have threatened her with death should she come home pregnant at 15! Luckily both my daughters waited till after 20 to have their babies breaking the teenage cycle.

These women in our family are strong; we have been through much in our lifetime and remain a formidable force to be reckoned with. I am proud to have a young at heart 78year old granny and I told her if she can hang in there another 20 years, till my granddaughters have daughters of their own. Who knows there may just be 6 generations of awesome to celebrate.