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A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 23 trips to carry that many people.

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And after a nice shopping tour where we got all the delicious thing I don’t have in the UK and spent the evening with dining.

On Saturday came one of my best friends for a short visit and we had a long chat, talked about my old employer and he showed me some nice pictures from his new wooden log hutt he’s working on. It was so good to see him again and I can’t wait to get the next letter from him.

But to be honest…I am a little bit home sick and can’t wait to be back home with Neil and the fluffies. Although I miss my forest and friends from over here I think that my new home now is the UK. Shocking…I know. Even if I don’t really have many (or no real friends too be honest) over there, I call it my home because that is where my partner and my fluffies are!

So one more night (again only with a few hours sleep before the pain kicks in) and then I’ll be back on he plane and on my way back home.

Hmm…that smell…guess it is almost dinner time…so see you in a few hours back on the island.

Tanja

It is December and it is almost x-mas again. Time to look back and review a few things.

It certainly was a very tough year for me, full of frustration, anger and disappointment…but also with loads of fun, surprises and a very important realisation.

I think the first, big and important thing was to come off the books of the bl***y JobCenter plus (I still wonder for what that plus stands for…certainly not for customer service and help) and launch Ladbroke Audio together with Neil. It means so much for me to finally earn my own money and be able to buy stuff for myself, the cats or Neil without asking him for money all the time.

Just to be able to drive to the Garden Center and by a bird feed table made me so stupidly happy that I kept watching it all day long through the window to see the birds…well..squirrels to be honest….get their food.
I know that might sound silly….but it really makes me happy to know that I can help that little wildlife we have here in Croydon (yes, even the cheeky squirrels). That was also the reason to join the Surrey Wildlife Trust for a fiver per month, to help them do even more for the wildlife here in the UK.
Next year I will try to do a bit more for the bees and other insects in our garden, so that it will be our very own little wildlife paradise.

I think the next big thing for me was a hug from the almighty and wonderful Tom Baker. I mean…come on….he IS the fourth Doctor! Thanks to the help of Michael from AudioGo (because I was too shy to start a conversation with him) I got into a lovely chat with Tom and even got a hug. (melt) Even if I didn’t grew up with him in Doctor Who…he will always be my favourite Doctor!
That day I gave him a little letter in which I wrote how much he changed my life and how much I love him as the Doctor…and a few weeks later I even got a replay!!! (geeky happyness)

And inspired by him I started to knit my very own Doctor Who scarf. And after weeks and aching fingers it is finally finished and I really, really love it!

The next scarf I have to knit will be for Neil…and I think there are already 4 more people who want one as well. Guess that means I have to learn how to knit faster.

This year was also the year of shocking cat events. First Schnecke got a deep wound on his tail and we had to go to the emergency service around 11 PM. Second (again) Schnecke got poisoned and had to stay 2 days at the VET to be monitored. Luckily he survived and is a happy, fluffy bunny again.
We also got two young kitten and we weren’t sure if we wanted to keep them or find a new home for them. But let’s be honest….how can you give something that cute away after we had coddled them up?

Anyway, I’m going to fly back to Germany for a couple of days to celebrate my mum.s birthday and have a great time with her. Can’t wait to see her again and have a nice long walk in my old forest again.

Hope you are all having a good time and don’t get too much stressed with all the x-mas shopping duties.

Talk to you soon.

Tanja

Walter was always there for me and was more of a dad then my real dad ever was!

It is so wonderful to get a handwritten letter from someone that is so important for you and who lives now so far away. That really made my day because I know that there is still someone who hasn’t forgotten me.
Of course I’ve already handwritten him a reply and hope that he can read my scribbly handwriting. Fingers crossed that I’ll see him in two weeks when I fly back to Germany to celebrate my mum’s birthday and have some time in my old forest.

Shame that I still struggle to make real friends over here in the UK…
Still the best friends I have here are friends from twitter and I know only 2 of them in real life. Weird isn’t it?

But I am not alone with this ‘problem’ and because of that Neil came up with the idea of the Tweet-Up Club to give everyone the chance to finally meet the people behind the @ in real life.  Sadly the response isn’t the best yet but I hope that will change after x-mas!

That reminds me that it is almost time to write my x-mas /Yule cards for my online friends around the world.  So if you want to get one as well, get in touch.

Tanja

I don’t really know where to start so you have to bare with my mad writing in this post.

This week I decided to go back to Germany. I’ve got a job offer a tool maker plus assisting production manager and I could have started basicly the same day. So I told Neil that I was thinking of taking it to earn my own money and be more independent again. But that also meant that I had to leave him for that.

Of course you are right that this wouldn’t happen if everything was fluffy and happy. But let’s be honest, we all have our little probs and weird things about us and I did the same bloody error like I always did in my life: go the easiest way and walk away.
I did that in my longest relationship I ever had with a person…I just gave up and turned away without fighting for it.

So let’s try to cut it short without getting into too much detail…after a very emotional day, a lot of talking, I decided that this time I won’t run away from the problem, THIS time I would face it! We both did and I feel so relieved that we finally did talked everything through.
I mean I gave up all my life back in Germany to come over here for the man I love. We even have now our own business together and I really enjoy the editing work and much more, work from home! So why should I give all that up? Of course I miss my forests, my mum and my friends but with the new business it will also allows me to drive/fly back home instead of just once a year.

And now, after everything is sorted and I feel so relieved and calm again I will stay here in this weird British Island and will start to conquer the Universe from here .

So let’s fight for your life and your happiness because it is YOUR life and BE happy.

Tanja

I can now finally tell you on which amazing Doctor Who related audiobook I was working on a couple of weeks ago: It was the Lis Sladen Autobiography. And I can’t tell you how emotional and what a great honour it was.
I mean this was my first ever Doctor Who (related)  audiobook which I edited from start till the very end. Neil then added the music in and did the fine edits for the master CD’s.

Editing this book was very special to me. Sadly I never had the chance to meet Lis but she knew about me through Neil and I still treasure my BIG FINISH CD that she signed  for me. I loved and admired Lis in her role as Sarah Jane Smith and even if I didn’t grew up with Doctor Who, SJS will always be my favourite Companion together with Tom’s Doctor!

And while editing the audiobook version, read by Caroline John, I had so often the feeling that it was Lis telling me her story because Caroline just sounds like her! It was a brilliant choice to get her as the reader!!!

So if you want to have a look into the life of the wonderful Elisabeth Sladen, then pre-order your Elisabeth Sladen Autobiography now!

Enjoy this wonderful, emotional audiobook and let me know what you think.

Tanja

Here I am again but this time with a little review of my newest gadget. As some of you might know, I’m an Audio Editor and need a tablet to read the script while editing. Till 2 days ago I had my most beloved Samsung Galaxy tab for this job. I always love especially the size of it which made it so handy for all sorts of things…the only downside was reading scripts on it. I always had to adjust the size of the pages which made it difficult because you had to do it every time the page changed.

Well, since Neil had the ‘horrible’ (just joking) idea to have a nice drive around to pop down to B&Q, Toy’s r Us and Best Buy.
So we ended up in our most loved (hated) Electronic Store in the area: Best Buy and took a look around the available tablets. I really liked the new Samsung Galaxy 10.1 but from my point of view it was with £399 still too expensive.
So I took another look around and found the Motorola Xoom for only £330 with much more power and also 32 GB RAM, double as much as the Samsung.

After Neil had a little play with it as well, he decided that it would be a good thing to have this one for our new business instead of the Galaxy. So this gorgeous new friend found a new home in Hokusbloke HQ.

So here it is front and back view:

I must say, that it is very light (it feels lighter then the iPad 2) which makes it a lot easier to hold in your hand without getting any aches.

I especially like the way how you can lock your device with this little program were you decide in which way it unlocks the tablet.

So you have to create a ‘way’ with those 9 dots to unlock it. Quite clever me thinks

And this is my home screen. Of course you can organize it the way you like it.

This is the multi-tasking view where you can see all the programs that are running at the moment. (there is also a nice app to kill all those with just one click..more about that later).

Here you can see the overview about your notifications which you can open by tapping on the clock in the right bottom corner. There you find all your notifications like: emails, G+, tweets, basically all the stuff from your apps that are allowed to notify you. You also have a little shortcut under the clock to get direct to a mini version of the full settings menu, like the pull-down bar that you have on your Android.

And because I am a weather geek, I also have to have my all time favourite App on the Xoom again: WeatherPro. For me THE best weather forecast app on the market. The guys from MeteoGroup are also on twitter and facebook and if you have any questions they reply quite quickly. (well, at least the German gang is always up for a quick tweet or reply on facebook).
So here 3 different views:
1st: the overview of the weather of a location you have chosen before. You can find even more details about the daily weather by clicking on the symbols on the left & right side.
2nd: Here you get the satellite images and 3rd the radar view for the oncoming rain.

And this is how the picture overview looks like. All the pictures you have taken with your camera will show up here.

Talking about the camera…with just 2 MP in video mode and 5 MP in camera mode, the pictures look grainy and not really that brilliant. One plus for my little Galaxy

And since one of the most brilliant features about an Android is the live wallpaper, I just wanted to show you my favourite one: Thunderstorm.
You can get it for free or pay the full version which allows you to make more changes.

So, all in all I really love my new gadget. It is faster, I can stream easily my favourite Animes on Crunchyroll even with a low WiFi signal. And yes, the Animes there are free and also is the program. You just have to ignore the advert at the start of every episode you want to watch.

Haven’t tried any movie files yet but as many people online say, I don’t think that it will be any problem since the Xoom has a lot more power then my Galaxy.

There is just one more App I really think you should have to kill running programs Advance Task Killer. It is free and really does the job – it kills everything (you have ticked…oh…that sadly doesn’t apply for annoying co-workers, your boss 0r the noisy neighbours).
I just wish that Kaspersky’s Internet Security for the Android wouldn’t be so expensive. I really love their prog and would love to have it on the Xoom as well….but not for something around £7.

So, if you like gadgets, tablets and Androids…then forget about the iPad and join me on the dark side! Androids are cool!

Em, well…not sure what my overall message of this post is….maybe…I love my new gadget and it is faster then the Galaxy tab and better then the iPad 2 because it’s an Android?!

So, talk to you soon…

Tanja

Look what just arrived via post today from the almighty Tom Baker aka the fourth Doctor:

And there even was a nice picture for Neil in it. Gosh, I can’t tell you how happy I am! I feel so honoured that I had the chance to meet him in person. He is such a charming, wonderful man and he will always be my all time favourite Doctor!!!

Thank you Tom!

As some of you know, our two youngsters had to go to the VET last Wednesday to get their men parts removed and to get the microchips. So, I tried to bring them with my car to the Vet early in the morning, only to find out that the bloody new car battery from Halfords was dead again. Well, thanks for that!!!

So I had to use Neil’s car instead and had to have a chat afterwards with the nice guys from Classic Automobiles around the corner. They came, jumpstarted the car and took it to the garage. After  24h of recharging my car finally moves again! Just hope that the battery didn’t take any damage and I can get to Germany in 2 weeks without any problems.

And now, on a sunny Friday morning, the electronic cat-flap is now open and in constant use of our youngsters who are now allowed to go outside.
I must say that it feels odd to me to see them running outside. I just hope that they stay away from strangers and cars! Yes, I know that I am always too  worried when it comes down to cats…but…I love them so much…so I can’t help it.

And here a few pictures from our gang

Jiji is now going in and out every few minutes and he is now playing with his catnip mouse. Toshiro though is somewhere outside and I hope he will come back soon.

Right, suppose it is time to finally start work and later this evening I will definitely continue knitting my Doctor Who inspired scarf….I must get to 2.5 metres at some point

Wish you all a beautiful weekend.

Tanja x

I had two fantastic days with Neil and just wanted to tell you what we did.

On Thursday we went into London to see Simons Cat book and video premier, but first we stop in a great Whisky shop. Gosh, all the different sorts….one more tempting then the other. After a couple of minutes I finally found a new one to try. Well, what can I say….it is absolutely delicious!

After that we stopped at Forbidden Planet and discovered that they had the Delta Squad action packs! EEEEK! But as you know…you always find too many new cool stuff in their store…and so we ended up with some more new Troopers.

Around half 5 we went to the Prince Charles Cinema and had a fantastic time at the book premier! Simon told us some of his cat adventures & inside stories. We also got his newest book and lots of other goodies as a present for winning the contest.

On our way back through Chinatown we stopped at a little store with loads of cool looking hats…and…yes…I couldn’t resist…so I ended up with two new ones. One in red and one in black.

On Friday, we had to get up early in the morning to get into London for the last Serpents Crest recording. So we spent the day with the almighty and extremely lovely Tom Baker, the sweet Richard Franklin and Susan Jameson.
It was the first time for me to see Richard, and what can I say? He is sooooo sweet!

But I am sooo nervous when it comes down to Tom, so Michael from AudioGo had to introduce me to him to break the ice. That was sooo nice of him. So in the end I got a very nice chat with Tom, he even signed my photo of him with ‘For Tanja’

Yes, I know…he didn’t really wrote Tanja…more Tanga…but hey…it still means a lot to me. I was also brave enough to give him a letter I have written and he was very sweet and said: ‘Do I have your address?’ and I told him that he would find it inside.
What a charming person he is! I also got a  cuddle from him which made me soooo incredibly happy! And how knows? Maybe I’ll get a letter back from him?!

And since we had such a great time in the studio, I also had the chance to borrow the long scarf Michael had brought to take this brilliant picture:

Shame that our Canon ran out of juice that day, so Neil took this picture with his Android phone. But still, I think this is the first ever photo of me that I really like….well…to be honest…I don’t like it….

I LOVE IT!

So, that shall be it for the moment. Time for me to rap myself up in blankets to fight my cold…

Hope you’re all having a great weekend.

Tanja x