Tuesday, September 27, 2011

The "Give us a twirl edition"

Hey! It's another week so I'm super excited with the thought of Chat even if it doesn't always behave itself throwing people out, we're going through a unusually hot period here and a certain someone has made there first post at a site having joined a while back. All I'll say honey is sure can't beat baby steps for getting going, so hugs!
Fashion, that's what's been on my mind for the last few weeks what with the London Fashion Week and also with recollections of fashion in the recent past for girls and how they compare with what we see while we're about with today's girls.
Depending on where you look and sometimes the circles you may move in you often here a refrain that regrets what is seen as a combination of the emasculation of girls fashion such as almost universal wearing of jeans, the tendency to dress all babies in boys attire with just  switched colours  and the spread at the other end of bling festooned 'ma b****' moll of the gansta rapper with low cut tops and incredibly small skirts that leave next to nothing to the imagination being sold to this age group as the 'cool' look.
Indeed at one point I did wonder if we'd see the end of anything feminine, modest and age appropriate but actually when you look around it's still there but updated for the modern miss to wear.
For instance I noticed new in at M&S - a well known middle brow department store in the UK -  they have a line in of lovely children's dresses at reasonable prices and going up to age 16 in sizes.
Here's an example of what I mean of a patchwork seemless dress from Girls Limited that looks so good it's no wonder the size 16yrs has sold out as I'd love it too.

And they other similar twists on classic designs available to in colours including pink!
All of this is great for those of us looking for inspiration to put together a contemporary LG look as for me it sure doesn't have to rooted rigidly in the past.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Teen Beat Edition


Following from my liking for structurally simple uncomplicated songs about romance I slowly graduated toward more complex music such as that by Kansas ( I couldn't really get into four sided concept albums) but the majority of their albums I had were on tape so I was mighty glad to get this cd set recently.
Beginning in the 70s from their hometown of Topeka, Kansas, the group produced a wild mix of rock anthems, introspective ballads, and loose jams on their studio albums.
Many of you have heard of "Carry On Wayward Son" on Classic Rock radio stations which was a smash hit for the group back in '76. Well that's from an album called Leftoverture that happens to part of this extremely cheap 5 cd set."Dust in the Wind" (off the featured '77's Point of Know Return album) is hardly indicative of the full-bodied, keyboard-and-violin-fueled anthems that grace most of their albums.
The albums included are:-
Kansas (S/T)
Song For America
Masque
Leftoverture
Point of Know Return
The discs are the Sony Legacy remasters from the 2000's that happen to sound extremely good to my ears coming with bonus live tracks too in card lp style covers.

I have the US
1996 re-master of Monolith from 1979 featuring the hit People of the South Wind as well Audio-Vision which had the hit Hold On.




















I first bought Drastic Measures as a lp record in August 1983 shortly after its US release and following a selling off period in the late 80's while I was trying to build up my cd collection, I have been without a copy!
This was a pity as it was a enjoyable album the Prog rockers when John Elefante joined the band taking lead vocals.
It came out briefly on cd in 1996 and I bought a copy although it is long period out of print (England's Rock Candy re-issued a few months ago but that not as good sounding)
The song Mainstream takes a pot shot at the label people who stifle artistic development and Fight Fire With fire is a up tempo rocker.



I also got the matching 1996 Legacy cd of  Vinyl Confessions the 1982 album with the hits Play The Game Tonight and Play On both of which shared as did most of tracks the bands strongly felt Christian beliefs.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The 'From Lausie with love edition'.

 Great start to the day today with flat fire closing off the high street making getting into work later than it should of been, the rubbishy IT system we changed to was reversed to old one and storms raging here meaning I had to leave early too. Such fun!

Well in chatting with Lausie a few topics came up and I thought it would a good idea to post about them subject to the usually "all locations and full names  removed cos this is the internet' stuff:

So you wanna know about boarding school?
Well I went when I was 11 and 1/2 and it probably as as well as there were lots of problems at home revolving around Dad that were affecting me emotionally.
As much as I'd love to say I went to this gorgeous old building with orchard and that, it was actually a very modern boarding school on the edge of a small town and as close we got to an orchard was a field with wild poppies growing in it.
The school was what you call co-ed so not just being a girls school one didn't need any kind of spray Elspeth might of concocted to get in!
I quite liked it because it gave me security, a host of friends and more of a chance to be myself because for once I was in the right place at the right time.

When you mention boarding schools people tend to weigh in with opinions from either 'my Island horror story' or 'the very making of me' but oddly enough I think the best portrayal is in fiction specifically Enid Blyton's Malory Tower or St Clares series that you might possible of read before those who had it in for Enid removed her books from libraries in England.
Her portrayal is very similar to my experience in that it's a multifaceted thing because you are part of a social unit who live and breathe together for all of the time so everything is that much bigger.The good and the not so good.

If you live a way from people as I did it's a great thing because you have a ready made supply of playmates available form daybreak to sunset from different backgrounds plus my family had issues amongst themselves (still does!) so it provided a bit of an escape from them.
I suppose the first thing to say when I arrived was there were more boys so when the first morning had began it obvious the head boy had rather more to 'take care of' so standing very nervously by the wall, the Head Girl puts her arm through mine and says "I'm Jo and I'll take care of you".
This leads to the biggest tear stain heart to heart ever as I explain what stuff is like at home and why I really hate how I looked to the point of hurting myself deliberately all with a vocabulary of a nine year old as my English wasn't terribly good then. She doesn't really understand it all but says she'll help me which is good enough.
By a stroke of luck while the individual Dorms are gender separated, they alternate along one long corridor and so long as you didn't snuck in rooms over night or when people were getting changed, you could visit anybody in either, so I spend quite a bit of my my time with the Head Girls Dorm with her friends who become mine.

As well she realizes how the imbalance may affects Games we'd be down for Rounders and Netball and has a masterstroke. She takes me in tow to the Games Mistress and Having explained the potential problem says can I join them? After a while It's agreed so all I had to do was go to were the girls were playing and anyway Swimming was mixed.

In my school, the  Dorms for us held about 3 or four to one room in which  which you can put up some of your own things such as posters, dolls and you could have your own tv and tape player

If you wished although in the common room where you could read watch tv and have drinks before getting dressed for bed and lights out. No talking ever after lights out!!

Generally we could play in our dorm, the hall, outdoors in good weather under supervision, in in our common room although that's where we'd listen to music mainly in and sometimes we could arrange activities or school would take us out to places like the movies or the theatre especially when we were older.
The other side of being in a boarding school was you had to accept this space had rules and you had staff who would see you looked after yourself when it personal appearance and hygiene because that was their responsibility.
We also wore uniform outside class grey skirts or trousers with grey or red jumpers and white blouses -nothing really fancy (I'd of loved a blazer!) which I didn't mind cos at least nobody was able to be nasty about clothes you had.

The first thing you learned in your first term as that the 'social ground rules' were different, so If anyone said anything catty regarding another it would last well beyond communal mealtimes and 'broadcasting' your thoughts willy nilly or making wild accusations was a very silly thing to do cos the group would be upset for ages and you couldn't escape it.
You'd pretty much have to apologize to the person and the group and take whatever sanction they'd apply so we all could move on. Yes that was one lesson I learned from the Head Girl of the form the hard way!
In hindsight that was the best training for using the internet ever ('Everything seen cannot be unseen') as well as being very useful in large organizations dealing with group issues.
So you see my school experience was actually pretty good not because of some big idict from above but just from being flexible and showing compassion.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The saving a dollar entry

Yes folks I'm not alone if your blogs are anything to go by that we like even need sometimes to save a bit of money to ensure we've enough to do the things we really enjoy what with increasing grocery and utility bills and what not.

I'll start of with something that has always troubled me in connection with computing and that is the high price of the manufacturers ink you buy for your printer with it being sometimes as dear as the price of newer discounted printer itself.
Faced with a bill in the region of £50 or more Pounds GBP to get it reloaded, I looked around and found I could get remanufactured ones much much cheaper and what's more they even had typical twice as much ink in them.
Jet Tec in England has a very good reputation for it's replacement cartridges  especially for the quality of the ink they use which is where replacement ink has been criticized before.
Jet Tec
I bought a black and colour set that came to about GBP 17.99 including shipping and they're great meaning I can get on using it for less than I paid last time fior the black cartridge alone with double the capacity for good measure so they'll last longer.
Cool, eh?

Cheap anime: Funimation in the States has a budget line called S.A.V.E for older titles so for thiosw whose dvd player will do Region 1 discs you can save a bit too while building a collection.
One I really liked  was this:
THE GALAXY RAILWAYS

 "The Galaxy railways" is an adventure series set in as the title suggest on the Galaxy Railways, linking all the galaxies together by railroad with a team of crack railway security people, the SDF, whose job it is to keep them safe for terrorists and the like.
Surprisingly this title has never been issued in the UK but can be bought from UK Amazon as well as Amazon.com