A Trip To The Seaside

Five children, three adults and a trip to the seaside. Not necessarily a recipe for success, but our trip to Skegness went well. The children loved the train ride, the walk to the beach, the fish and chips and playing in the sand. They didn’t like the high wind, which blew the sand into their eyes, but that was a small price to pay for an otherwise good day.

A Publishing Bonanza

This is turning out to be a great week. I’ve had a book released on TodayBooks.com, an article accepted by Site Reference News and some tips published by LifeTips (Kaching). More on those another time. I’ve also managed a Blogitive bonanza, snagging 11 links before they all disappeared. Sometimes it helps to be in a different time zone.

German Weekend 3 – The Wedding

It rained all day on the wedding day. It was lucky there was a coach to take us to the church or we would have got drenched. We got in, sat down and tried to look as though we knew what was going on. It wasn’t easy, though.

The bride looked beautiful in a classic, off-white flapper number. She was carrying bread rolls (maybe this is a symbol of prosperity and fertility). The groom was immaculately turned out. The service was led by a female Protestant vicar and a male Catholic priest. We couldn’t understand a word, but I tried to sing along with the hymns and follow the readings. One nice touch is that all the cousins took it in turn to read verses from the Bible. There was a flute solo from another talented cousin.

Facelift For Main Site

Doublehdesign.com has had an upgrade. It looks cleaner and I hope that makes it easier to find everything. I think the old template, which had the advantage of having a small footprint, was starting to look a bit cluttered. The new look is prettier and roomier. Let me know what you think.

New Poem Published On Ritro

A few years ago I was having a discussion with a friend about racism. Why? Because both of us had experienced treatment that was racially motivated. I’m talking about losing jobs and apartments. And no, this was not the 1960s but the 1990s. So there we were, having a chat about why some people felt skin colour mattered. That was the inspiration for my poem, Does It Matter, which was published on RITRO.com on Friday. Have a read and come back and tell me what you think.

Nancy Burpee has lost the battle to be reinstated in the 2004 Paralympic Games team. A web release from Simmons, Jannace & Stagg reveals that Ms Burpee was disqualified from the paralympic swim team on a technicality. The law firm has represented Ms Burpee in an action against the US Olympic Committee, arguing that the Australian referee was biased against Ms Burpee. An independent arbitrator upheld the original decision.

1990 Gift Allowances?

I’ve been looking at my site stats and I’ve noticed some interesting things. The first is that people are beginning to find my site using keywords related to what I do, such as ‘freelance editing’, ‘freelance writing’ and ‘ghost writing’ and so on. This is great, because it means I’m beginning to have a profile relatedto those keywords.

German Weekend 2 – The Hotel

Our hotel was a revelation. The Zur Alstadt hotel was in the heart of the old town, right opposite the plaque explaining the waves of settlement into the town. Although the outside of the building blended right in, the inside was ultra modern. There was a bar on the left, a cake and pastry cafe on the right and reception straight ahead.

Checkin was efficient and they’d put a cot in the room for our daughter. (This was a translation error. We’d asked for a child’s bed, but ‘kinderbett’ in German is a cot, so that’s what we’d got.) I thought she might rebel but she loved the bright colors, and once we’d arranged it so she could climb out, she was happy.

Our room was large – we could have swung ten cats in there if we’d wanted to – and the shower was roomy and powerful. So far, I was very impressed. When my friend had told me her uncle had a hotel, I was picturing bed and breakfast, not near luxury. The hotel had a sauna on site, which I didn’t take advantage of.

The breakfast room was huge, with angled mirrors set off from the ceiling. More impressive was the spread: two kinds of juice, several kinds of bread, cold meats, cereal, cheese, eggs and some of the best cappucino I’ve tasted in a while. I was in heaven!

The culinary delights continued over the weekend, with delicious meals of salmon, potatoes and lots more. And the beer was good, too. I could easily visit that hotel again.

Next: The wedding ceremony

A web release from carinsurance.com heralds the launch of a new type of automotive insurance from Norwich Union in the UK. Short term car insurance lets people choose insurance for up to 28 days. This means that if you need to pick up your car from the showroom, or someone wants to borrow your car for a while, it’s easy to arrange cover. The short term car insurance costs £10 a day for the first two days and £4 a day after that. This type of insurance may well catch on in the US. In the meantime, carinsurance.com has competitive quotes on car insurance wherever you live in the US.

I Got Paid!

Last week I completed and submitted a parenting lesson/article for a client and the payment hit my Paypal account today. This confirms that I was write to spend less time on Guru and Elance and more on other sources of employment. So I’m really pleased.

More good news, too. Fresh from the stickiness of my post on blogging habits, I discovered that my site on steroids post has topped 1000 reads. This is very good news indeed. Ka-ching!

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Did you know that Orlando is the number one tourist destination in the world, with well over 40 million visitors a year? The information comes in a web release from Moremouse.com. The tourism industry is a big employer and many people are moving to the area to take advantage of the opportunities Orlando offers. And if you’re considering a vacation home Orlando has lots to offer, too. Great views, great weather, great beaches, great theme parks and great countryside. It’s no wonder I’ve always wanted to go there.