YouTube - Cared Witless 2/2

YouTube - Cared Witless (1/2)

Buying, selling and writing lists

Buying

Right, well, you can tell that it's getting closer to take-off time because I've started buying inane thing. Well, maybe they're not all inane, but just why I've chosen to buy so many Piglets is another matter, especially as I already have quite a lot of Piglets.

I bought:

Piglet Pin badge

Pooh and Piglet Pin Badge

2 Piglets, 1 quite large, 1 quite small

1 Small piglet

Very Small Piglet

500GB backup backup drive

... and case to put it in

Extra SD card

Spare batteries for camcorder

And now you maybe wondering why I bought pink PJs. If you know me you will appreciate that this is really just not my thing. The pink that is. PJs are definitely my thing. So here's the reason beside it.  I decided that maybe if I did something a bit different with the parachute jump, it could attract me more attention and get me more sponsorship. So I decided that one thing might be to do it wearing a Piglet costume. The only problem with that was in not having a Piglet costume and not being able to find one, anywhere. Plenty of costumes for small children but there's no way I'm fitting into a 6 year old's costume. So my next thought was to do it in PJs. Partly because I am such a big fan of PJs, but mainly as a tribute to the 'Pyjama Protesters', a group of people in a Leonard Cheshire Care Home who were fed up having no choice over when they were dressed into day clothes and put back into pyjamas, no choice when to go to bed or get, just very little choice about anything in the lives. So they protested by refusing to get out of pyjamas and eventually things did change. This is well-known disability history event, although documentation of it is very hard to find Read this article from the Leeds Disability Studies Website where there is a single paragraph about it. And it wasn't the only time people have protested in pyjamas but may have been the first.

Which is all very well, but I know that what you really want to see is me wearing pink pyjamas. Well, maybe later.

Selling

And the other thing I've been doing is setting my my online car boot sale to boost my sponsorship fund. I'm been rounding up anything that I might be able to sell and listing it all on eBay. So far I've listed about half the stuff I've got. I've taken pictures of the rest but they will have to wait now till next Sunday. Apparently the best day of the week for selling things is Sunday, in the afternoon, so that's my strategy. If you're not the sponsoring sort, but would like to help DASH in some way then head over to eBay and see what's in my shop. And remember... IT'S FOR CHARITY.

New Piglets

All the piglets

Lists

• Get a suitcase [tick]
• Arrange overnight stay in Bristol
• Book airport parking
• Liase with airports over transport
• Make a will?
• Check on insurance
• Clean up copmuter
• Buy portable hard drive
• Buy  spare camcorder batteries and mini dvds

Simon Lezama drinks beer as he cruises around the pool area at the Riviera hotel-casino in Las Vegas. Lezama, a trim and fit-looking restaurant manager from Odessa, Texas, rented it on day three of his five-day vacation, "and now I can drink and drive, be responsible and save my feet."

I did some research online yesterday and found that it is possible to hire a mobility scooter in Las Vegas for about the same price as it costs to hire a car. Still, it might be worth it. I also found several news items saying that there's a new trend amongst people with no mobility impairment at all to hire scooters in Vegas just because they are plain lazy. Yes really, read this.

But right now the sky is so full of stars it's light a light show. But real.

I only know that because I just put the dog out for  a last wee. Having a dog works on so many different level.

Hooray for a wet Sunday

At last a wet Sunday. I've not had a proper wet Sunday for months. The key ingredients of a proper Wet Sunday are:

• It has to be a Sunday
• It has to be a least damp on the ground and damp in the air, if not a full-on downpour
• No appointments, no going out, no visitors
• Absolutely no getting dressed, pyjamas must remain on at all times (if it is necessary to go up the garden, e.g. to get to greenhouse, then plastic trousers may be worn over the top) 
• No important work to be carried out (i.e. no work for money), only frivolous pursuits may be carried out
• At least 80% of waking day must be spent on a sofa
• Alcohol may be added to coffee
• Slushy movies may be watched at the same time as blogging, comping or other computer hobbies
• Toast with peanut butter and jam may be eaten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, o indeed, all three

So far, I'm managing to comply. 

And since I'm now in countdown mode - with 4 weeks before jump day, oh yes, see the final itinerary and tickets arrived a few days ago.

So maybe I should start with my Things I Have to Do Before I go list:

• Get a suitcase [tick]
• Arrange overnight stay in Bristol
• Book airport parking
• Liase with airports over transport
• Make a will?
• Ummm?

And now at one moth to go - lost track of the money (must sort it out)

Well plenty more time has gone by. I've realised how much easier it is to write a blog in the winter than it is in the summer. It's just very hard to be indoors on a nice day and what with having a job and all, there's not that much time to spare.

So, one of the most important things that has happened is that I got the medical note. 

Not that I would have not gone without it but at least this way it's legitimate.

Pheweeee....

And another thing that happened was getting this story into the local paper. 

Wow, time flies - but now up to £223.40

Well, lots of things happened since my last post, I had visitors, I went visiting, I took on a new tenant, I had several good photo opportunities, including The National Botanic Gardens and Cors Caron, so I'll let the pictures do the talking. 

Here's some from The Botanic Gardens:

What a fantastic place. I really want to go back there and sooon, I could have spent days and days taking pictures in the huge glasshouse there. It's a flower photographer's paradise. It was also the first chance I'd had to take my scooter out for a proper excursion, and what a huge difference it made. I'd never have managed to go round and round the glasshouse, never mind climb the hill to get to it, and for lots of shots I didn't even need to get out of the chair. 

And some from Cors Caron

On the trip to Cors Caron, I took the scooter along as well and met my friend The Vole there, and we had a race to see whether I could unload my scooter with the ramps faster than she could unload her electric wheelchair using a hoist. I won, but only just and I did have to put more physical effort into it, so the hoist still does have some advantages. As ever, there was a lot to hear and less to see, it's not the sort of place where you're instantly surrounded by very obvious wildlife, it's a lot more subtle than that. But we did see some interesting things including this mystery insect, with a body that looks like a blue damsel fly and black wings. Any ideas?

Then on the way back I remembered that Paul Culyer had told me that on warm days you can see lizards basking on the edges of the boardwalk, so I started to look out for them and soon I saw one, and then another, and another, and then even more on the rails of the fence. Needles to say I took loads of pictures. The very first lizard had a strange looking tail, with a tip that had no scales on. None of the others were like this and we did speculate as to why this might be but neither of us really knew, so again, any ideas?

I'm tired now and want to go to bed, so I'll have to save the rest till tomorrow.