Where in the World is Rebecca Today?

So sorry to do this to you guys two days in a row, but I had skin tags frozen off my armpits today and it’s too painful to do much of anything.

If I’m feeling better later, I will do a different entry for NaBloPoMo!

I was on the radio today. For about five minutes, but it was a fun five minutes. William Wright and I follow each other on Twitter and each day he usually tweets about what he will be talking about on-air and asks people for responses. He’ll read most of the replies out on-air, and will talk with a few of the people who tweet him. A few weeks back, he was discussing impulse buys, and wanted to have me on-air to talk about an impulse buy I tweeted him about (my mom when she was in her 20s went out to get her hair done and came home with a new car), but we couldn’t coordinate it because I was out in Haxey and mobile reception isn’t the greatest.

This morning, William tweeted about height. Apparently, there is a convention of tall people taking place in Paris right now, so he was curious about people’s height. I wrote back and told him I was 4’10.5″, and it was the half inch that really mattered. I also mentioned that my Brother-in-law was 6’8, so it made family functions fun. William wrote back and asked if I could come on the air and talk about being short, I said no problem and direct messaged him my phone number.

I received a call from Helen at BBC Lincolnshire who needed to take down some personal details and told me to expect a call back between 10 and 11. The phone rang a few minutes past 11 and William asked me to repeat what I had told him via Twitter. He asked me if I ever hated being short, so I mentioned being away at Summer camp and having two older boys use me as an elbow rest, and told him about being the shortest member of the family I married into.

It was fun and enjoyable, and I wouldn’t mind doing it again.

Of course, this isn’t my first time being interviewed with BBC Lincolnshire. You might remember a few months back, I auditioned for Priscilla Biggadyke. They interviewed me pre- and post-audition, as well as recorded my audition. I haven’t seen or heard my audition though. I almost wish I had asked for a copy of it! I also was interviewed by Fox 11 when I went down to London for the Royal Wedding, so what an interesting few months it’s been for me! I’m (almost) famous. Okay, not really. But it was still loads of fun!

Apparently, the show will be available on the iPlayer. It’s Melvyn in the Morning with William Wright sitting in for Melvyn from Today, 3 June. The show airs from 9AM til 12 Noon, so if you want to skip to my segment, forward it for about 2 hours. I don’t know how fast the shows go up, so I’d imagine you can check later in the day. I’ll try to download and record my segment as well, but I’m not very good at that!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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Testing posting using the wordpress iPod app.

This is a test to make sure the RSS feed has been fixed.

I had a few questions about how to upgrade to the newest (secure) version, so here’s easy directions with screenshots:

1. Log into your dashboard with your admin account

2. Look to the left. If it’s not dropped down, click on the word “dashboard”

3. Click “updates”

4. WordPress will tell you what needs updating (WordPress, plug-ins, etc) and all you have to do is click on the upgrade button and WordPress will do everything automatically.

BTW, if you don’t have a dedicated comment spam blocker, I recommend going into the plugins and searching through the available blockers. I added Askimet last night, and it’s already blocked 75 spam comments. My previous spam blocker, WP-SpamFree, blocked some spam, but would have emailed me those 75 spam comments for me to manually mark as spam.

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We’re off to Austria for two weeks. The remaining Wales updates will be posted when we return along with Austria posts…I just didn’t have time this week to make any scheduled posts for while we are away.

Monday took us to Llanberis Lake Railway and the adjoining National Slate Museum. We arrived early enough in the morning to watch the two engines get steamed up, and got to ride on the first train of the day.

I was lucky enough to be able to show my Network Rail Spouse ID card and received a 75% discount on my ticket. A regular return ticket costs £7.20 for this five mile journey. The return trip takes an hour, and it is well worth it. The scenery is beautiful, and if you’re lucky, you can even catch Snowdon as it peeks out from the clouds!

The Llanberis Lake Railway is a narrow gauge railway. Mark was told the official size is 1 foot 11 5/8 inches, and our friend Dave told us on Wednesday that this is close enough to be considered two-foot gauge. We all enjoy narrow gauge railways very much, as that’s what Helen and Mark, Tim and I, and Dave and his family all have running through our gardens in a much smaller scale (we use 16mm to the foot, so our tracks are 32mm). One of the engines at Llanberis is blue and named “Little Thomas”, but they will claim it has nothing to do with a certain children’s story….

There’s not much else to say about Llanberis, as everything is better said in photos.

After our trip on the train, we took a quick look around the slate museum before heading off to Caernarfon, where we had lunch at the Floating Restaurant and then had a look around Caernarfon Castle.

The Floating Restaurant was fantastic. If you are trying to find it, you will need to walk the entire way around the outside of the castle and you will find the Floating Restaurant tied up close to the swing bridge. While we were eating we got to watch the bridge open several times. The food was reasonably priced and very good…and you got quite a lot for your money! During low tide, the restaurant doesn’t float, but once the tide comes in you can feel the boat sway slightly.

Admission to the castle is £4.95 for an adult, but if you have an English Heritage membership, you can get in for free. The earliest date with a reference to the castle is 1289, and it’s quite impressive how much of i is still standing. While visiting you can climb up the steps of all of the towers to see impressive views over the sea and town, walk around the castle walls, or look at the small exhibits scattered around the castle. In 1969 the castle grounds were used for the investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales and you can still see the dais where it took place in the centre of the courtyard.

The castle lawn is immaculate, largely due to the many “keep of the grass” signs, no doubt. It struck me as a little odd that people could not use the castle lawn area for picnics, games, or lounging when I am used to seeing people scattered about on the castle grounds at Lincoln, but I’m sure there is a reason behind it.

From Queens Gate (which is the gate Queen Elizabeth II entered from during Prince Charles’ investiture), you can look out over Caernarfon and see the Welsh Highland Railway. I visited the Welsh Highland Railway in September 2009 with my mom and Tim, but sadly, I never blogged about it. Something about getting engaged while visiting the UK in September and then planning a November 2009 wedding got in the way of blogging that trip.

Admission is money well spent, provided you have enough time to explore the entire grounds!

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Everyone else can ignore this. I’m adding my blog to Technorati, and they need me to post a code to verify that I own the blog I’m claiming. Here’s the code:

FRCDJAYCCRAR

One of the new requirements under the BCI bill is volunteering. Volunteering will cut 2 years off your citizenship wait, reducing it from 5 years to 3. Since I enjoy volunteering, I decided to look for a place to volunteer starting now. This way, when the requirements finally get posted I’ll hopefully be on my way to fulfilling them.

I started my volunteer stint (will be 4 hours each week) at the Cancer Research UK charity shop yesterday. The day was on the slow side, but still enjoyable and I picked things up pretty quickly.

My basic responsibilities are all on the sales floor. When items come in they go upstairs for pricing. Someone will bring the priced items downstairs and people like me will go around placing the items on the correct racks (and in size order). I also am responsible for keeping the racks neat (make sure hangers are all going the same direction, nothing is falling off, sizes are in order, etc) and for operating the till (register). The people I worked with seemed somehow surprised that I picked up working the till so quickly, but once you’ve seen one till, you’ve seen them all. The money is different, though. I found myself looking for a £1 paper note (which doesn’t exist) a few times, and I forgot all about the £2 coin so when someone needed £4 in change I handed them 4 £1 coins! The other big difference is the size and types of coins – a 10p coin is the size of a US quarter, and a 5p is the size of a US dime. the UK doesn’t have a 25p coin, but has a 20p and also extensively uses a 50p coin as well as the £1 and £2 coins.

…But I’m learning.

I’m looking forward to this a lot. Not just because it’s a requirement to obtain citizenship, but because I honestly like helping people and volunteering.

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Travel blog is going on a short hiatus other than video logs until I am back in the states the first week of April. There’s so much I need to catch up on, I figured it’d be best if I wait until I’m home and not rushed!

I’m here for just one more week. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for seven weeks already! There’s so much to do in so little time, including the dreaded re-pack. I have a feeling I’m going to need to use my second bag I brought along…not because I have a ton of more stuff to bring home, but Tim sent me 4 books for my birthday, and I bought a shirt and my suitcase was pushing the weight limit on the way up. So I think I’ll just pack into three bags for the way home.

I’m still not sure what time I’m leaving or what the plan is other than flying out of the Dauphin airport, but I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough. I’m sort of glad I’m flying instead of taking the train or bus down to Winnipeg…mostly because I’d rather just get it all done in one day.

My flight doesn’t leave Winnipeg until 1, but since I’ll probably get there early I’m going to see about getting on an earlier flight just in case there are open seats. As it currently stands, I won’t actually get back to Lancaster until midnight because of taking the train from Philly (my flight gets in at 8, but I have to wait for the R1 and then get to 30th street so I miss the earlier train). I can always sleep on the planes and trains.

I also need to figure out food for traveling that will make it through airport security. I should be okay as long as I’m not packing any raw fruits or vegetables…I don’t know if cooked/canned are okay or not but I probably won’t pack them just to be safe. Cream cheese bagels seemed to be okay on the way up, so I’ll probably go the same route.

I keep thinking I should start to pack, but then I realize if I start packing now, I’ll have to live out of the suitcase for the rest of the week! So I have a feeling Monday night is going to be a rush of packing, especially since I probably have to be up pretty early on Tuesday.

But I do have lots to do. I figure I can start to get all my non-clothing stuff into one location and I can pack up the toiletries I’m not going to be using. I want to vacuum their basement to get up all the cat litter that’s been kicked outside of the box, and sweep or mop the floor up here…the cat’s scratching post (a table leg) really leaves splinters on the floor! Monday evening I want to wash the towels and bedding and I also need to plan meals to use the food I have left (which I went grocery shopping yesterday to get some things to compliment what’s left…but I think I bought too much!)

I’m not sure if I’ll be doing anything this week or not. I might take one more walk into town because who knows when I’ll be back? I’m hoping I get the chance to see the people I’ve met while I’ve been here one more time.

So, I’m trying to set up a blog for all the traveling I’ll be doing, so there’s an easy place for mom and others to just check in on me as I travel around.

I’m still trying to figure this out and customize things, so please bear with me. Help is always appreciated.