Of Sites and Ships and Theory Exams...

Richard went sailing today. Our friends (two adults, one 11-year-old child) took their lazer dinghy and he took his little mirror, sailing alone since it was a very calm morning. They took picnic lunches, and sailed about six miles, along the coast a little beyond Dhekelia.

Unfortunately, Richard hit a sandbank when going in to land at Dhekelia for lunch. Well, he didn't hit it himself, but the centreboard (whatever that might be!) was damaged, and water started coming in... and they were six miles from the Larnaka sailing club, where the dinghies live.

So they hauled it onto the beach, then Richard got in the lazer with our friends. He said perhaps it was a good thing he wasn't sailing his boat, because by then the weather had turned very windy, and the sea had become choppy, and it was much harder work sailing back. On his own, it would have been no fun at all. As it was, they all got soaked.

When they got back, they drove to Dhekelia with our friends' road trailer, so they could bring the mirror dinghy back to the sailing club. And he's brought the centreboard home to mend it, which is apparently not a difficult task.

Since I'm really not a sailor - I simply don't understand the ropes and other technicalities - I'm very glad I didn't go too!

Tim, meanwhile, took his Grade 5 Music Theory exam this morning. He plays the piano at a rather higher level than Grade 5, but nobody's allowed to take exams at higher levels than Grade 5 without first passing that theory exam. He's never been a huge fan of detailed music theory, particularly since in exams it involves a lot of writing. He has no trouble with the concepts, but in ordinary life he does any transposing or composing on the computer. Tidier, quicker, and much easier to correct mistakes. No doubt one day all exams will be done on computers, but that day hasn't yet come.

In the past ten days he's had extra theory lessons, and has done five past papers in full. He did get better marks on the later ones, so evidently learned some useful music theory exam technique. He's reasonably confident that he's passed, and that's all that really matters. His teacher thinks he should get at least a 'merit' (which I think is 80%) - but we won't know for a few weeks.

And me?

I did think about mowing the 'lawn'. But our lawnmower, despite lashings of WD40, and extensive cleaning, still doesn't want to co-operate. I think I may just give up. With the dry April we've had, the 'grass' is turning yellow and not growing much. The weeds at the far end can't be tamed. And we're still hoping to move in about a month. The house we're renting will be knocked down so flats can be built instead, and the entire garden will probably be sprayed with weedkiller. Ugh. Knowing this, I don't have a whole lot of motivation to keep the garden looking nice.

So I worked a bit more on my new home-ed site. Slowly, I'm directing traffic there from my old Geocities site. I do like Geocities - it was a great place to become familiar with web-site dynamics. It's easy to upload files, and there are lots of tools and options for different types of people. But I do think it's better having a proper domain and am enjoying fine-tuning the site, and writing a new page every so often.

I was a little surprised to find that Geocities was still working, since yahoogroups, which is related to it, appears to be broken. Since yesterday. The site is still there, and old messages can be read - but new ones are vanishing into the ether. There was a tiny trickle of 'test' messages on one or two of the forums I read this morning, but nothing else. No more yahoogroups mail all day. Usually I get at least 30 messages (I cut down significantly a month or two back) - and they're not even on the site. Nor is there any kind of news update page, unless I'm missing something. No clue what the problem might be.

I hope they fix it soon.