Another month, another update...

So. The last couple of months have been full of pretending to be a grown up, pretty much.

I'm now vaccinated with all the vaccines one could ever want - I have had jabs for tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, polio, Hep B, measles, mumps and rubella. I am basically immune to everything in the world, now. (Except those things they don't have vaccines for. There are a surprising number of these. Clearly we need more medical researchers working on this stuff. Get cracking, people!)

I have had an apparently long overdue smear test - one of the benefits of moving around a lot is that invitations for regular medical checkups can't find you. It was as much fun as you'd expect.


I have had blood tests to a) check the vaccinations worked and b) see whether my internal organs are functioning properly and that my arteries aren't all clogged up and the like - somewhat to my surprise, all is well.

I have an appointment tomorrow to check out some teeny tiny lumps and bumps that shouldn't be there; this will, hopefully, turn out to be nothing - but I'm now working on the basis that it's better to check and be sure, while I'm being all medicalised and stuff.

And lastly, some slightly bigger news, which I've mentioned to some of you, but not all: I'm about to start a new job in a new town in a new country, so this blog will soon be shutting down (again...) - as will (at least temporarily) my jewellery and web-design work. My jewellery and web-design stuff will hopefully come back once I work out the tax situation and legal registration stuff I'll need to do in the new place, but given the somewhat location-specific nature of the blog, it probably needs to stay closed once I move.

I'll think about this some more and let you know what I decide - if you've got strong views, do let me know in the comments! And if you want me to let you know if/when I start a blog in the new place, let me know that, too, and I'll drop you a line once I'm a bit more settled.

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Not dead...

So, since I've been asked, I'm not dead. And I haven't forgotten you all.

I've been dealing with a horrendous flu-type thing that left me unable to get out of bed for a few days, which was deeply unfun. And we still don't have real internet in our London flat yet. The company say it will be soon...

This weekend I'm back home, and it's been amazing. OK, so it's raining now, and last night we had a huge storm. And I don't have to tie furniture down in London. But still, so glad I can still come back here from time to time. We've seen friends, gone to restaurants and cafes we know and love - finally made it to the restaurant on the corner that we've been wanting to go to ever since we moved in, but hadn't managed it. Should have done - it's gorgeous inside, too, and the food was incredible. Sliced duck breast in a honey and ginger sauce with garlic potatoes and salad. Amazing.

You may, if I'm feeling really organised later, get a series of scheduled posts over the next few days to keep you entertained, with photographs of dinosaurs and everything. Or, you may not. But you can know they're brewing slowly in my mind...

Plus, it's nearly November, and nearly time for NaNoWriMo again! I was planning to do a prequel to last year's effort, telling the backstory of Krystal, one of the main characters. I have been thinking about this on and off for months, and was all set. And then, yesterday, I was struck by inspiration, and now think I'm going to write a murder mystery novel loosely based on a real life story I read about in the paper yesterday, about a murder committed in a tiny 800-person island village off the Breton coast, where there have been no murders for 100 years. They don't even have a policeman, except during the summer. Think of all the poisonous little resentments that could build up in a place like that, and what a strange place it would be to live. Perfect place for a murder mystery, I reckon, and I'm going to write it. I can picture it now, it's going to be awesome.

It will probably have an impact on my blogging though. In theory, it should cut it down - those this is academic if I don't have internet. In practice, well, I procrastinate. So you never know, there may be many, many more posts! I have set up a writing-focused blog, though, so the majority of updates will probably go there during November, so as not to bore people who want to read about Nice, or even London, rather than my progress on writing 50k words in 30 days...

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I have a new website!

(Sort of cross-posted from the jewellery blog)

Some of you may have noticed that my website has changed. It's now no longer the flash site it used to be, and so should be much faster to load, as well as being more easily found by search engines and more easily updated. The aim is to eventually host my own (multilingual!) sales platform, in addition to Etsy, DaWanda and ALM, and this is one small step towards being in a position to do that.

I'd be interested to know what you think of the new site - bear with me while I sort out the ugly URL it redirects to. My hosting company seem to have some issues... (If anyone knows how I can get the URL to redirect properly, masking the ugly URL, I will give you a gold star. When I find out where in France sells gold stars.)

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