Oh. My. God.  I just saw the epic cat yodelling video on LolCats and I simply had to share it:

In other news… Life’s pretty good.  Apologies for the lack of posting.  Been busy – new freelancing job, new man, new band.  You know how it is… But I guess I can update y’all now, if’n y’like.

New job:
So I’m still working in the same job with the charity, but with slight changes to my remit – more Fundraising going on, along with the IT stuff.  Fundraising doesn’t come as naturally as IT, but at least I’m not intimidated by putting words on the page.  The quality of those words might not always be sublime, but I get there in the end.

But the freelancing has the potential to be exciting.  I’ve been helping other Scottish non-profits develop their own Salesforce Databases.  Salesforce is my database of choice these days, especially for non-profits.  I’ve looked at all the other databases available in the charity industry – Raisers Edge and all the others.  Salesforce beats them all for price and quality.  And I love the look on other charity workers’ faces when I tell them that it’s free for non-profit orgs! So yeah, we’re liking the freelancing.  If you know of any non-profits who need a database set up, tell em I’m the cheapest they’ll find, too! /wink

New man:
The lovelife is still going nicely.  I’ve been dating a lovely boy who we shall call “J” for the past 8 months.  He’s a geek.  You’d like him.  He builds computers in his spare time, he’s a recovering warcraft player (I’m suffering a relapse just now, but I’m working through it) and he puts up with my occasional rash of girlieness with the patience of a saint.  Flat-Mate-Mads and I were watching Gok’s Fashion Fix the other night with J sat next to me on the couch, and he didn’t even sigh once.  Ok, maybe once. But he held his tongue, bless him.

He gives good hugs, and he totally gets my slightly odd-ball humor (and equally, I enjoy his outlook on the world) PLUS he likes all the geeky things that any real man should – Galactica, Firefly, Dollhouse, Trek.  All round, I’d say double thumbs up…

New band:
Oooh yeah, you’ll like this one.  They’re called Ardentjohn, and they’re BRILLIANT! I answered a Gumtree ad late last year – they were looking for a new violinist to help add to the beautiful string sound already created by their cellist.  I listened to their myspace and was pretty much hooked.  Then they gave me a copy of their new album, due for release later this year, and it was all I could do not to BEG to let me join up!

So, a few months and many intensive weekend rehearsal sessions later (I love bands who take every element of their arrangements seriously) we’re going down to London in a fortnight to play our first gig. Excitement much? I think so.

New bike!

Oh! I have a new bike, which you may have gathered from Twitter.  The second bike to be featured on this blog (the first being my beautiful but not very practical bike in China), and I loves it with all my heart.  I got it from The Bike Station – an Edinburgh based charity which accepts donated decrepit old bikes, refurbishes them, and sells them on to the public once a week, amid a mad Saturday morning scramble to be the first to find that gem of a bike.  The competition is fierce.  Doors open at The Bike Station at 10.30 am, but when J and I arrived there at 10.10am, there was already a queue of people waiting outside.  More arrived as we waited, and when the doors finally opened, they only let people into the shop 10 at a time.  Brits are very good a queueing, so it was all very orderly.

So I was let in with the second group of ten. I walked the line of bikes once, twice.  Not much there to grab my attention – they were either all too big or too small.  But then I walked it a third time, and lo! There she was.  A glimmering frame of purple mountain bike, complete with the lowered bar for girls.  Someone must have taken her out for a test ride, and then brought her back, dissatisfied.  But I wasn’t dissatisfied.  She was – IS – perfect.  She has 18 gears (every one of which is needed in Edinburgh’s mountainous geography) and she has “Born to be Wild” written on the side.

She’s a little rusty I guess, but personally, I like to think of the rust as laugh-lines.  She’s seen it all and is still giving good service.

And Edinburgh has never seemed smaller – I can get to work now faster than I would in a taxi.  And I’ve only been outrageously soaked by the rain a couple of times.

And that, my friends, is my news for now. Per-maybe-haps I’ll blog from the road about Ardentjohn.  Road trip down to London should be fun…

Much love petals!

Cx

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