Today..

Darren was buried today. Part of me wishes I was there because it might have forced me to accept his death. I'm not going to say a lot, especially since grief is a private matter... except that I miss him. Since I gave up the comfort blanket of faith I've had to face some harsh realities, and some beautiful truths.. but one of the harsh realities for me is that I won't see someone I cared deeply about ever again. I'll cherish my memories.

Goodbye Uncle Buck :-(



ps... unimportant website news in small font: the contact form is now working properly.

Website news

Thanks to all the people who gave feedback on chrissieB.net.

Some new features: The complete script of episode 1 of The Museum and synopses of the rest of the series are now available through The Museum homepage.

Some of your nice and not so nice messages have been uploaded on the messages page.

And thanks to Alex and Calum for the drunken bug report... I'll get my crack webmastery team on the case right away..


xxC

Being shrink wrapped

This is me totally wrapped in rubber. I wasn't diving; I just like how it feels against my skin. Mmmm, sticky.

We had fun at Blue Hole, NM, learning how to dive in our new drysuits. It is pretty tough, I spent most of the first dive lying on the bottom pathetically kicking up silt, but by the third dive we were starting to get the hang of it. There isn't much to see there, but there are some goldfish and a kind of grotto effect were previous divers have placed little religious icons and toys on the rocky shelves. I failed to find the legendary spongebob squarepants though, that has to be worth another 1200 mile round trip. My left knee is suffering- I don't recommed taking an old injury, wrapping it in sealed rubber and gradually increasing the pressure until fluid is sucked out of the injury and into the overlying skin. It's all creaky now :(. There was a potentially serious incident while we were there- a diver was at 60 feet, got low on air and instead of staying with his group and dealing with it he shot to the surface and popped out like a cork. Scary stuff, I hope he was ok.


This is Andy at Boca Negra canyon, NM, where native Americans carved petroglyphs into the hard black basalt to honour the sacred mountain. In the 1600, Catholic shepards added their own religious symbols, and today a few people have scratched their names into the rock. It throws up an interesting issue- how old does graffiti have to be before it stops being defacing vandalism and starts being sacred art? What if a native american artist just wasn't very good and did a bird that had a wonky beak? Would that still be art or would it be relegated to vandalism? Or doesn't it matter if it is bad or good as long as it is more than 700 years old or so?

NEW WEBSITE

My NEW WEBSITE is now online... but if you clicked through from my homepage you probably knew that already..

chrissieB

It's designed to promote my writing... I figured it was time to try and get somewhere with my more creative pursuits :-).

Any comments on the website, or offers of help to get The Museum produced, drop me a line!

...

I was going to use this space to have a full on rant about the people sat next to me at the hockey yesterday who talked insessant inane shit throughout the whole match, particularly the girl whose feet smelt like they could go lovely with a nice chardonay...

But sometimes things happen that make little inconveniences like that seem so unimportant. My family lost someone we loved and that is a damn sight more upsetting than dealing with some biological weapons grade cheesy feet,

baby fish! baby fish!

One of the platies had two babies (sorry, fry) yesterday. They are so amazing- how can a little fleshy machine 3 mm long actually swim and see and eat? They are also incredible cute. We didn't know that the fish was pregnant, but it's nice to know that the boy fish got his end away (or whatever fish do) before he expired. They were born on our anniversary too, how romantic! Hopefully they will survive and we can watch them grow, they are bigger than the mouths of the other fish so that is a good start. Andy got some neon tetras yesterday too. We wanted black neons but the fish shop has some disease thing going on and the black neons keep dying. The neons are very pretty, sort of iridescent blue and red, but they do clash a bit with the orange platies, dahling.

We are off to the pool tonight, hopefully A can dive without his sinuses exploding. I want to see if I can deploy my marker buoy from the bottom of the pool and freak out the children.

Quicky

So I have recovered from what may have been flu, almost ripping my legs off on a 5 mile ski that was way, way too hard from me, and sliding across the ice on my arse while trying to chase Andy on ice skates. That last one was a lot of fun, actually.

I have been busy writing. My time here is coming to an end (Wyoming, not earth I hope). I could just go and take another soul destroying uni job, but I though I should attempt to get somewhere I want to be first (since apparently if you want to get anywhere in life you have to MAKE it happen).. so I have been busy writing scripts.

I submitted 2 short drama scripts to The Play's the Thing and I am about to send the first episode of The Museum to the BBC, so in about 4 months I should have a rejection from them :(. I genuinely think The Museum is funny, I actually managed to churn out a finished script of sufficient length and I have plenty of ideas for the rest of the series. I'm so rarely confident in my own abilities, but I think if Radio 4 don't want to produce The Museum they are all clearly insane, and I may have to come at them like a laser, like a beam (Sorry, that was for Jacqui).

I am working on a website to promote my writing, I'll try and get it up and running soon and post the link here.

On an unrelated note, Andy and I have been engaged a year today. Tempis Fugis or summat. I ordered him a present but I waited until yesterday so I think the chances of it arriving on time are slim. I won't say what it is incase he reads this. Unlikely I know. He is taking me to Denver on sunday to watch Colorado Avalanche. Go Avs! Assuming he is better, he is pretty snotty today. I feel usurped..