Cas-Couple's Naturist Blog By Cas and John

It’s getting towards the end of boxing day as we write this and everything is starting to get back to normal for most people.

We hope you all had a great Christmas and have not indulged too much of the food and drinks.

We don’t actually celebrate Xmas anymore, as it is now too comercial for our liking. After several years with us and our families never knowing what to buy each other, it got to the point where we were all just telling the others what to get us. We decided that this was in a way pointless and all made an agreement not to bother with presents from then on. This means that the money each of us would have spent can be used to buy what we want. Everyone is more than happy with this arrangement, we do all send cards still.

In the last week we have not been out much, one due to the snow that was still lying on our local roads and two because the towns were miles too busy for our liking. We spent a quiet Xmas day at home this year, as we don’t really watch tv the radio was on all day as usual and kept us amused with the various antics of the presenters.

We finally chose a laptop and got what we thought was a very good deal. We bought a 17″ Acer with windows vista on it, this meant that it  was being sold off at a reduced price. It worked out that it was a 35% discount on the recomended price as it had vista on it and not windows 7.

We would like to wish you all a happy New Year and hope its brings good things for you.

This week has been a bit different weather wise, we actually got some snow!!

During the week we went to one of our local towns for a wander round to look at the xmas lights and browse in some shops. The day had started off with a few flakes of snow but it wasn’t lasting long or settling, so we made our way to the park and ride to go into town. While we were wandering round it started snowing a bit heavier, this made a great change. We found it lovely to be out around the shops with all the xmas lights etc set off with some snow. Loads of people were commenting that it was great to be doing their xmas shopping in the snow and it seemed to really lift peoples spirits. As we were making our way back to the bus the snow was getting heavier and looked to be set in for the night.

Once back to our car we made our way home, the roads were starting to get a bit slippery and the snow had started to settle. Our journey home was a bit slower than usual but not a problem. We settled in for the night checking occasionally how much snow was settling as we had to be out quite early the next morning. We got about an inch to 2 inches of snow over night, making everything look picture postcard.

We took a few photos of our garden and road for our collection before we headed out in the morning. Our journey that day usually takes us about 40 minutes, we had given ourselves more time due to the snow but this proved not to be enough. The roads which we thought would have been relatively clear as they are main roads weren’t. This meant a slower journey than expected to start with then having got to Colchester we ran into nose to tail traffic that was hardly moving. Wondering what was causing the problems we put the local radio station on to listen to the traffic reports for our area, we soon found out the the A12 just up the road from where we were stuck was nearly blocked with people that had got stuck in the snow over night. There were lorries that had gone off the road in the snow and were stuck in the central reservation and some cars that had been abandoned when they had got stuck. The knock on effect of this was that most of the roads in Colchester that went to the A12 were at a near stand still.

Having checked with family that the appointment we were taking them to was still ok if we got them there late, we changed direction when we could and headed for the back roads. These we thought might have had more snow but at least we would be moving. Having got to the back roads we were very pleasently surprised to find them the clearest of the roads we had been along. We believe this may be in part due to the fact that they are a bus route and may have been cleared for this reason. We started to make good progress at last and made it without further problems.

Listening to the radio reports some areas around us had got about 8 inches of snow over night, this meant that the choas of the morning was really no surprise. People always critise the councils when this happens for not gritting enough but we had seen the gritters out the night before and with that amount of snow in a few hours no amount of grit could of stopped it from settling.

Well enough of our ramblings for this week.

Here is a photo we took think it speaks for itself.

Blackbird after some berries

We put food out every day for the birds but there are still some berries left for them on the trees around us.

Yet another mainly wet week, we have had a few dry spells here and there so have been out a bit during the week.

We have been checking out various shops and websites this week looking for a laptop, there is quite a big difference in specs and prices. We started looking at the small netbooks thinking that one of these would be good to carry anywhere as they are small and light. While reshearching these we realise that although the battery life on some was very good the majority were no better than a standard laptop. The other disavantage of these being that they have no cd/dvd drive so would be reliant on pen drives/external cd/dvd drives/external hard drives to save any photos we had taken as well as the card reader to read them in the first place. This sounded more and more like the amount needing to be carried was getting too big to be viable, as the extras would take up more space and add extra weight.

We then turned our attention to laptops, we thought maybe a 15″ one would be fine for our needs as we would still be using the main pc for photo editing etc. Spent quite a while looking at the various specs and decided that we did not really want to have one with Windows 7 on, as we deemed it too new to trust and that the bugs had yet to be ironed out.This left us with vista machines, which are getting harder to spot as everywhere is mainly selling the Windows 7 machines. There turns out to be quite a few ex demo vista machines about so this is the way we are thinking of going as the discounts on them are very good at the moment.

We are tempted to get a larger screen size as well as they are they same sort of price as the smaller ones. Still investigating at the moment so no decision made yet.

Anyway we did manage to get a few pics this week as it finally stopped raining at points this week.

Wrecked Car 1

We get a lot of burnt out cars around where we live, they do rather spoil the views.

Wrecked Car 2

A closer view of the wreck.

Well it’s the end of the week again, it’s been a very wet week which has meant limited time out of the house.

We took the copies of our friends wedding dvd up to theirs this week. They are very happy with the photos we took and will be giving the copies out to family as they see them plus sending a couple of copies to relatives in America.

We have been busy with family members this week as well as dentist appointments. This went ok although Cas needs a filling.

Naturist-corner forum has been keeping us busy, working on the testing of the beta items to make sure they all work before they are incorporated into the main site. We are always looking for ways to improve the site and encourage all members to take an active part hence the beta testing. We are still getting quite a few new members on the forum and hope this continues.