Yesterday was a bit of a washout, mainly because i discovered The Da Vinci Code and have struggled to put it down until i finished it. That is *so* my kind of book 🙂 Fran and i spent a bit of the day looking at the online quiz; i impressed myself by managing to do it without resorting to help pages. Must get The Broken Sword game again, that was about Templar Knights; oddly i had been reading about them anyway in my pre-crusade project research. I could definitely get into that bit of history.
Had planned on going to the eo group on India but badly needed a bath first (really badly, you know when you just can’t go out?????) and Josie was looking very crusty too. Couldn’t get the water to heat up at all and eventually realised that in fact i hadn’t been aware of any hot water/heating for a couple of days. *Grumble* – called out plumber who fixed one thing, went away then had to come back when the pilot light kept going out and eventually couldn’t fix it till today. So all that scuppered everything, not least because it had occurred to me that a morning that included mendi designs was going to be a sensory nightmare for Maddy who wouldn’t be able to not have them done (masochist) and then would go nuts at not being able to get them off. So trying to deal with that without hot water seemed like a big no-no.
A variety of good things did happen but it was all a bit the far side of autonomy for my liking! Maddy and i had an excellent discussion after she built a cube of geomags and spun it from one corner – she realised that the top and bottom points were “moving but not moving”, so we spent a while exploring that and looking at our globe as another example. Fran did several of the Farmyard Sticker books that i got for Amelie 🙄 and also independently decided to do a “reading tree” (i think she must have been reading some ‘how to motivate your child to read’ articles or something) so we drew a tree, she read a book and we stuck on a leaf. Funny girl. I also showed her how to make and do anagrams and we both had a go at some Suduko.
Then it was time to deliver a very important parcel, which i did and then got caught in 40 minutes of traffic after an accident – eventually had to make my way off the dual carriageway the wrong way down a slip road, most unnerving!
Today we’ve been out to Burghley House with the intention of going into the very beautiful Sculpture Gardens but when we got there, it’s gone from being a free resource that you sometimes pay £2 per family for at weekends to a commercialised, shop at the entrance, paying attraction – £3 per adult and £1 per child – making it prohibitive for a family of our size. I find it incredibly sad. It’ll be free November to March, or i could buy a season ticket but really – you can pay £3 to get an adult into most NT or EH sites, places you’d spend a whole day.
We walked around the park for a while, identified some trees, took pictures of Red Deer, watched a male Deer bark and paw the ground until her saw off an approaching yonger male but the edge had gone off the visit really.
This afternoon Maddy and i have been into town where i narrowly avoided being knocked to the ground by a bunch of lads who suddenly started fighting and now we are curled up with The magic Roundabout.
the da vinci code was fantastic. my bil lent me his other books but haven’t started them yet. can’t wait to see what the movie is like.
Yes, i’m going to look on mybookyourbook for some others. I’m not into conspiracy theories in general, but i do like stuff like that.
you are welcome to borrow one of them, I am sure my bil won’t mind.
grin – i’ve just been and requested loads – makes me read them quick otherwise someone else asks for them!
Sim loved the da vinci code too, I’m reading the island walkers having finally got to the end of midnights children recently. It wasn’t really worth it in my opinion and was such tough going that I read four books while reading it, trying to escape it. Sim loved the da vinci code and recommends straw dogs- he’s been totally hooked on it and doing my head in churning it over at me at 2am!
ROFL – me too – i’ve read 8 while trying to read Midnighhts Children – in fact, its staring at me from my bedside, now i’ve ofund it, so i am just going to read the end chapter and be done with it!
Well my excuse for not keeping up with my blogging this week is because I’m stuck into Digital Fortress atm, after reading DVC over the summer. Happy to pass it to you in October. (You are coming to the Halloween party, aren’t you?) What on-line quiz was that? Was it the one I linked to from my blog?
Oh, and did you get my request for the password?
No, i’m not coming to the Halloween party. I’ve got a whole lot of hang ups i need to get myself through over the next few weeks and partying just isn’t going to cut it.
I’ll hunt for the quiz, its probably the same one though 🙂 Thanks for the loan offer but i’ve just requested it from mybookyourbook 🙂
http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/davinci/main.html
That is the one 🙂
Yeah- read the last chapter and be done with it 😉
Pretentious, over-rated twaddle was broadly my feelings on the book. How about yours?
Incomprehensible attention seeking 😉
DVC – good story, but *soooo* cheesily overwritten! You now have to read The Asti Spumanti Code – bloody hilarious 🙂
I hated DVC, and abandoned it half way through. I used to be obessive about finishing books, especially if they were “modern classics”, but now I’ve decided life’s too short for such nonsense, and if I have to force myself to read on, it goes straight to Oxfam 🙂
So did you phone the number, Merry? I ended up googling it as objected to costs, but wished I hadn’t as I turned up more spoilers than I intended.
I really surprised myself that I enjoyed DVC so much. I can see why there is so much objection to it, as it’s so unclear what is based on fact and what is purely fictitious and what might be in between. Clearly a fantasy, but I didn’t like the way some completely made up ‘facts’ were slipped in with exactly the same style as real facts, iykwim, but overall I was hooked. Waned to blog more about it, but I know my family reads my blog, especially having just come back from Poland, and one of them is quite high up in Opus Dei, so it was a bit of a sensitive subject.
Rofl! Really? That’s quite spooky to have it turn up in a book then. i can see why you’d avoid blogging.
Its made me want to find out more about Issac Newton, since he lurks on Max’s family tree somewhere. You never know what might come of it 😉
We so need a secret team ranting blog 🙂
i hope you don’t mind me commenting like this but i saw you were talking about MyBookYourBook, which charges people money to join.
The thing is, there’s another book swap site in the UK that is completely free and has been around for a lot longer than MyBookYourBook.
it’s called ReadItSwapIt and the url is http://www.readitswapit.co.uk
i really recommend it if you like swapping books because it’s a lot less complicated than MyBookYourBook – and it was there first!
I’m trying to spread the word so we all stick together.