The summer run of 7 Days starts on Saturday 19th June 2010

7 Days: Day 2 – Style

My current obsession: Watching Pixiwoo videos and getting ideas for new makeup styles and techniques. My current bad habit: Watching YouTube videos on my iPod for hours when I go to bed.

Nuts, monkey and otherwise

One of the peanuts I planted has now germinated, pinging above the soil, split nut and all. I spent the first day or two trying to cover it up again with the compost, before finally confirming that it was ok, it was meant to do that. Like all patient gardeners, I’ve also dug about in the soil to see what the other seed is playing at. It’s still down there, not apparently rotting, but not really doing anything. Meanwhile the first one is forming its green leaves. And I’m trying to resist the urge to pick up the nut and eat it.

But talking of edible nuts: you will remember that the delightful Bethany sent me a bag of candied nuts at Christmas. And the postman, fearing I may have a nut allergy, did the festive, kind-hearted thing and ate them for me.

Not to be out-manoeuvred though, Bethany sent me another big bag of (yummy!) candied nuts, this time done up in a small cardboard safe. Sure, they print instructions on the box telling the sender how to construct and seal it, but no guidance is given to the recipient as to how they should get into the box, losing as few fingers as possible. But at least it meant that the postman couldn’t get in either. And the nuts, they are mine!

7 Days: Day 3 – Nuts to the postman

The gift I wanted to get Debbie for Christmas is best priced across the other side of the Atlantic and so I enlisted help from Bethany to place the order and then I’d pay her back (and we know how easy that was). Being a generous soul, Bethany enclosed a little something for me in the parcel too.

Today the packet arrived in the backlog of post that had built up over our snowy few days. Apparently our postman isn’t one for getting too much snow on his boots. There were envelopes from around the world for me and then Bethany’s parcel.

It was bound with tape that read “Received in damaged condition. Rewrapped by U.S. Postal Service”. The tape seemed to cover only a tear in the padded envelope and so I didn’t think too much of it. I opened it up and inside was the gift for Debbie, a Christmas card and a plastic bag – which had a sizeable rip in it and nothing but a few crumbs inside. The hand-written label revealed that they were the remnants of what I’m sure were delicious sweet & spicy candied nuts.

“Just for you” Bethany had written on the label, “Sharing is totally optional”.

Apparently not.

Hush money

I needed to send Bethany this month’s hush money and so logged into Paypal to work out from previous transactions how much to add to the amount to cover the fee. Because you know what Bethany’s like – if I didn’t do that, she’d probably fly into a wild rage … while also blogging, watching Chuck, making vanilla, baking a cake for Brenda and taking photos of it all (including the rage).

The calculation was made with very little blood lost and I clicked on the “send money” header. I ticked the “hush money” box and duly discovered that Paypal provide their own little “I’ll pay the fee” box, pre-ticked. They know what Bethany’s like.

To keep her sweet I added a message in the box for Bethany. A few witty lines about how Paypal owed me for the time I’d unnecessarily spent with my calculator working out the fee. It was 300 characters long, fitting exactly in the box.

I clicked “send money” and Paypal announced that the exchange rate had recently changed, so I’d better check the transaction. It was fine. But my anecdote had disappeared.

So I added a different message about how Paypal owed me 300 characters and clicked on “send money”. And the exchange rate apparently changed again. Even though it didn’t. But my message had disappeared nonetheless. I clicked on “send money” again. Did I know the exchange rate had changed? Perhaps I’d like to check the transaction…

So I went back to the beginning and started again. This time it worked. Fourth time’s a charm.

And so that’s either the story of how Paypal owes me about 450 characters and two anecdotes, or it’s the story of how I sent Bethany a hundred bucks.

Shiny new

I’ve been changing Dreamdust’s look this weekend, gradually changing a WordPress template to suit my tastes and gradually discovering all the bits of CSS that had been weirdly zeroed, so as to interfere with other bits of CSS when you weren’t expecting it. A couple of chocolate and ginger biscuits helped along the way and now – ta da! – the blog’s all different.

I tend to be somewhat monotone when it comes to choosing colours, so using a fancy piece of software called Color Schemer Studio for guidance on what colours go together I’ve dared to step into the world of More Than One Colour At Once. Whether I’ve stepped on into the world of Too Many Colours At Once, I’ll let you decide.

And when you’ve decided you can leave me a comment in that there comment box. I’ve now abandoned the Haloscan comments in favour of WordPress’s built-in comment facility, thereby taking the difficult route to eventually do the obvious. You’re welcome.