Jun 23 2009
Anna On Chris' Shoulder
Just a very quick post here; Anna is on my shoulder, in the front garden of Irina’s parent’s house. Hmmm, I need to double check my apostrophe use there, I’m never sure if that is the correct way to indicate ‘possession’ twice in a row. Anyway, this picture was taken on the 23rd June. You can’t see her teeth yet, but today she munched on her first bits of food! I may break with previous predictions, and try to post that photo soon 🙂
Jun 20 2009
Dan&Lara came over,we all had lunch together at inlaws.No lake trip today.Anna doing fine. http://twitpic.com/7w3r9
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Jun 18 2009
This evening, so Anna could have some fresh air (and a snooze, as she had been cranky all day – teething?) we walked over to Mega (see previous tweet with picture). On the way there (we still take an extra few minutes to use the proper light controlled pedestrian crossing, compared to the main cross roads next to Mega, where cars don’t have to stop when turning right, even though the little green man is, well, green, for pedestrians) we cut across a little patch of grass to get to the pavement. It had previously been raining, and I suddenly found it very difficult to push Anna along. Looking down, I saw the wheel and lower part of the frame caked in mud. Lesson learned – stick to the concrete where possible. It looks like we may be needing some pressure washers to clear the mud off the frame for the pushchair. Hopefully the Akim here in Astana will consider building a proper pavement (sidewalk for American readers), as the one on our side of the road is actually just a series of (usually) connected concrete covers over large pipes.
Speaking of construction in Astana, NewEurasia.net has an article explaining how Kazakhstan hosting the Asian Winter Olympics has benefited Astana now that the city is co-hosting with Almaty (the old capital city over here). See here for the full run down.
Anyway, despite the use of big puddles, leaves and tissues, the pushchair was still leaving a muddy streak behind it when we arrived at Mega, so Ira ran in to pick up a few essentials from Ramstore, and also a couple of takeaways from Star Burger (I think that was the name) – I had a relatively tasty cheese burger, with no scary rabbit food (lettuce, tomato, gherkins etc), which filled a hole nicely.
On the way back a water tanker (one of the smaller versions, compared to what you might see in Europe) was drifting across lanes, apparently trying to drive through a car, rather than overtake it, luckily they both stopped in time for the zebra crossing, so we arrived back home in one piece, though a little wet, as the clouds broke again for a few minutes.
Jun 18 2009
I have been meaning to process all the images stored on this server for a while, and watermark them with this site’s name. Why? Because I see from my server logs that quite a few are used across the internet (often in Arabic forums and MySpace pages, for some reason), and if others wish to use these pictures, I’d like to get a free advert out of it as well 🙂
However, a family in America discovered another reason for branding their own photos – a Czech company (that specializes in sales of imported Italian food) had taken their happy family snapshot, and used it in their own promotional materials! See an article on it here.
Anyway, unless and until I get anywhere near hitting my monthly data transfer allowance with my web host, I’ll be happy to just watermark the pictures with ChrisMerriman.com, and not take the drastic last step of replacing the file with an identically named one featuring a goatse. (The idea being that on your own site, you update any references to the new filename of the original image). Don’t go and google that word, unless you have a strong stomach, and aren’t at work/in front of children right now.
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Jun 08 2009
AntiSceptic likes to game, I like to game, this is a match made in heaven! It takes a gamer score like 1,025 to be as cool as him. He rocked out to SEGA Superstars Tennis, Peggle, and then AntiSceptic went to get some food. I told him to bring me back something but I got seriously dissed.
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May 25 2009
Again, I think I may have used PockeTwit to provide a quick update at the time (25th April), but here are the proper photos. Dad and Nick came over for a meal to celebrate my 30th birthday. Whilst living in Clydach, any time I drove into Swansea, I’d pass a restaurant that looked interesting. TBH, anywhere that sells New York Italian food is likely to get a thumbs up from me, and whilst not exactly a dinner jacket required sort of establishment, the food was delicious. Anna behaved very well, and the next time we’re back in Wales, I’ll gladly be heading over to Frankie & Benny’s.
May 20 2009
Back 2our flat once more 2sort cats food/water/litter. Onto toy shop 2 grab pressies for cousins arriving next week http://twitpic.com/5jmqf
Apr 25 2009
These ARE photos from a day that has already been posted about – 25th April when my brother, Nick, and Dad came over to Wales for a birthday meal. We went to an New York-Italian restaurant, and I loved the food and company. For complicated filing reasons, these photos aren’t residing in my ‘not yet published’ folder within Anna’s archives, so I wanted to post the pictures now, so I can close a Windows Explorer window I’ve had open for a few days as a reminder to publish them.
Chris Anna Birthday Meal
Dad Nick Chris Birthday Meal
wow, just looked at the photos properly – Anna looks so tiny in comparison to now, sat in her car seat there!
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Feb 28 2009
As I recently mentioned, we finally managed to get around to collecting all of Anna’s photos into one place, so I can now start posting them here for family and friends to see. Apologies for the three week delay in getting these up, but TBH I’ve not had a lot of spare time recently, for some reason 🙂
This shot was taken when the first batch of ‘Congratulations’-type cards arrived. I think this is one of the pictures that will make it into Anna’s book that John and Irina are producing.
Next we have a close up shot that was taken on the 28th of February
OK, that’s all for now as the food shopping needs to be put away downstairs.
Feb 13 2009
I am trying to post these in something resembling logical batches, so here we have what happened after we arrived. Having been given a birthday present at the airport, I managed to resist the urge to roll something immediately and took a few shots of the flat (see previous post) before it got too messed up.
Continue reading “Amsterdam 2008 Photos #4”
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