Monday 16th June

So tonight at least it is clear and the thunderstorm was this afternoon.  The is the calm, and no storm,,,,but after this afternoon...it is now quiet.  Early morning start....I was awake at six eventually came to about seven after giving angry birds a grilling.

Down for a cooked breakfast and the clouds were rolling over about eleven and the Librarian arrived around eleven thirty much to my surprise.  I did say that I thought she has died a natural but there she was.  She's been to the UK and ahd her relatives over from teh UK so has been far too busy to grace me with her presence and so it should be.

We chatted for a while, worked out a plan for heading to Greece for a holiday in August for a family name reunion.....and decided that it was cheaper to fly down than to go overland...we now need the details of when the reunion is to take place,

Worked in the garden when the rain and thunderstorm had abated and my golly was there a lot of rain.  When it stopped I cropped some of the bushes from the north garden but the fire wasn't  a goer....It's very damp tonight and the mist is hanging in the hillside.....it's not June....

Tomorrow off to Benkovski market and Zlatograd to sort out a few things for my guest....I shall phone the Librarian when we are leaving for a meet-up......Fish fingers with chippies and peas for supper tonight...nothing cordon bleu but adequate.....it filled the gap...LN....I have glasses to fill....I have guests...LN

Tuesday 17th June

Six thirty start and played Angry Birds until I got really frustrated and couldn't solve one of the games so up for a tootle round the garden to check out the temperature after last night's rain and thunder.  Not too bad but not what it should be for June but I think this seems to be the refrain of the month.  Shower, over to pick up the Librarian and we headed off to Zlatograd so that my guest could get some leather work done on a belt.  He'd brought his own buckle from the UK and the little man in the leather shop changed the buckle for free but there was another belt purchased.  Over to the pottery shop but there was nothing that caught my eye this visit and the lovely glass shop wasn't open fortunately.  

The mission in Zlatograd was to find a couple of pairs of Crocs but to no avail.....I think they're out of fashion this year and so into the shoe shop and his needs were satisfied.  Found some shrub trimmings on the car park and these have spent the afternoon in water and now they're planted up.  I think they are from a climbing hydrangea so we shall see.  Back to her village and we had lunch in the restaurant there.  The pool looked very tempting but none of us was suitably turned out to turn out.

Back home for just after two and I pottered with the shrub things, got a load of washing out while the weather was still good and the wind was blowing and within an hour it was back in the house and dried.  Gouldjan came round with the yogurt and she has had an attack of something which she called pneumonia but I would dispute but she's not working and the tablets came to over thirty lev including Ibuprofin.  She was coughing and hacking a bit but they do seem to go down hill pretty quickly here where we tend to soldier on.  As she left I looked at the lawn and decided that it needed to be done and it has been....I'm completely knacked.  Just need to go round the edges tomorrow and it's good for another couple of weeks...it's been raining so much that I didn't want it to get in the same state as before.  No supper for me....I'm still full from lunch but it's self service tonight...I'm on strike.  Emula came round and told me that he has to take my Avatar to the hospital tomorrow for her new dentures....top and bottoms and they were going to ask me but instead he will drive the family car but I might still offer to go with her....just to hold her hand.

So...evening almost over and I think a shower before bedtime might stave off some of the aches and pains that are probably heading my way after pushing that lawn mower for a couple of hours...I think a packet of bacon crisps might find their way into my hand and a glass of beer in the other....LN....the rain stayed off but it can come down tonight....it can please itself now the lawn is done...LN

Wednesday 18th June

So five thirty start this morning but it had been raining yet again but at least I don't have to water my tomatoes and the rest of the dependants.  Coffee at six and then out to the garden to get the bonfire from last night started and eventually it but died a natural while I was out.

But as for this morning...bacon and egg for breakfast and then off to do my Florence Nightingale routine with my Avatar who was off to the dentist to get a full set of plastic noshers,  I helped her up the stairs and in she went with gums and came out but not smiling.  Having spent four weeks or so without any teeth at all she must feel that she has a box of marbles in there and she definitely wasn't a happy bunny.  So I told her that two weeks and everything would be fine but she's really not convinced.

Anyway back at the ranch.....changed out of my glad rags and out to the garden and decided that I would get that fire going come hell or hight water and eventually it struck into life and cleared the debris but by the end of the day I have another lot.  I cleared some of the stone from the heap and worked my way round to the well and removed the old hawthorn bush, a fairly large old stump and the soil level is now being raised down the wall so that it's beginning to look like a walkway and a garden.  The honeysuckle has been slaughtered and I have to take lots of cuttings tomorrow and the other flowers in the top bed have now been distributed into my old vegetable bed and will be sorted eventually.  I just needed to get them into the soil.

Tomorrow we have a mercy mission.  Gouldjan has asked if I have a machine for going through concrete so I think the hammer drill is out for a trip but my guest will be doing or at least supervising the work.....hammer drills are not for the feint hearted or those careless with tools.  Supper tonight was chicken with onions and potatoes and red cabbage and it went down well.  There's enough chicken left for tomorrow so I shall have an easy night tomorrow.  No photos tonight.....I'll take some of today's exploits tomorrow...LN.....I'm going to get a drink and relax...LN

Saturday 21st June

So I owe this now to my wonderful American guru...I'm back on line in the format that I so love,,......he#s a superstar that knows his stuff...LN....need I say more...

As for you Bob...the updates will come....

But with no photo.....technical micro-merging...LN..maybe there for tomorrow ....depends on the American clock....L whatever.....I'm off to bed Bulgarian time....LN

Sunday 22nd June

The Saga and I don't mean holidays....

Thursday 19th June

Haven’t a clue why I can’t get into my website tonight but I’ll write it up anyway ever hopeful that I can post it later.

Early morning start and then over to Gouldjan’s with the hammer drill to attach the pipes to her outside toilet and her father now has to continue to use the outside loo since there was no help from that quarter.  Work finished over there and a stone was spotted on a heap of gravel that now does as a lid for the remains of my electricity pole.  I now have my own mushroom.

Worked in the garden this afternoon despite the thunder and lightening and rain storms but having said that it was quite pleasant,  Last night’s chicken was cooked with the remains of last night’s veg and served up with spaghetti but it was very late.  One of my web friends is over viewing property and came over to view the estate and we had a very pleasant evening.  Her comment was that everything was more colourful than comes over on the web so maybe I have to get a new camera….They've gone back to Djebel and tomorrow they might be viewing some properties in the area….I'm off to bed…LN…it’s been a long day….and now let’s see if I can get into the web…LN

And I didn't so I reported it to my hosting company and that’s when the fun began.

The initial problem was that Google timed out before it would load so engineers in their wisdom decided to transfer it to a new server.  Now my software doesn't like that.  It complains by resetting permissions and really does like love and attention afterwards before it settles down again.  So the next morning I opened my mail from the hosting company and it said that everything had been fixed….so I tried to open it up only this time I got the Internal error message so on to them again.  At two that afternoon they said that they needed to escalate it to their second tier and so I asked whether it had been moved to another server and the question was not answered despite several requests until much, much later.  Now I'm getting more angry and my communications are getting more to the point and vitriolic.  Eventually I'm told that it’s back on line and that their engineers have reset the permissions and everything in the garden is lovely.  So I log on and probably most of you saw it…no formatting, no pictures and raw data.  In the meantime I've contacted my super hero in the States who says that he would probably be able to look at it on Friday night so at first I wasn't sure if he’d cured some of the problems or not but he said that he hadn't had time but I gave him my access codes and in he went late on Saturday afternoon here and Saturday morning for him and within a few minutes he’d fixed it until I noticed that there were no photos displaying so two seconds later we were back to normal.

So this morning I have another message from the hosting company and yet another person is involved saying that they appeared to have been successful except that it wasn’t displaying the photos and did I want them to look at why.   I mentioned that there was a big difference between what I considered ‘success’ and theirs. There was a big NO from this quarter, I explained to the new person that I felt they didn’t have the in house expertise to deal with it and had already had it sorted.  The new person did say that they’d read the history and apologised for any frustration I had felt at how they had handled the whole thing.  I did say I forgive but that I rarely forget and should they have to move it again they should contact me in advance so that I can have the appropriate people on standby…probably with a shotgun to hand.  

So now for today…I felt pretty worn out with all the stress in that you can’t do anything and there was little continuity with the people handling the problem.  They thought they’d fixed one and created another bigger one but thank goodness that I have the ‘fixer’ on the end of an email even though our nights and days vary somewhat.

Lazy day today….I got out on the sun bed for an hour until it clouded over and now everyone is probably blaming me.  I took my Kindle out and finished the second book by my latest author but probably not going in for the third so it’s back to my disk to find someone new, my bonfire has finally burned its way through and I have nothing now to burn so better start chopping.  Supper was Cajun chicken with rice with spices brought over from the UK. Have a good evening everyone…peace now descends on Tree Tops until the next episode.  LN...I'm off for a refill...LN

Nice to have you back on line Elsa  

Trev