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The I Feel Happy Topic!

Will, that is great news!

It makes me feel incredibly lucky and proud, to be part of such a supportive community. The chat I had with a few members on Skype on Sunday night really was a turning point for me. It made me realise that I wasn't alone in feeling the way I felt, and that people who truly understand, are there for me.
 
Yesterday, I went to Leavesden to go around the Warner Bros Studio Tour with my younger brother, who's studying Maths at Imperial College London. I'd been looking forward to it for ages, and only booked the tickets a couple of weeks before actually going! Still, it was a fantastic afternoon spent looking at how the films I grew up with were made, and the amount of effort that went into making them. It's definitely worth a visit. In the shop, they've used some of the furniture from the library set to put some of the books on, which makes it feel even more authentic. It's made my week of work so far.

I just hope Towers on Saturday helps add to that, even if the weather's poor and not many rides are open. :p
 
It wasn't just Alton that was magical yesterday - I also met a wizard in Wolverhampton!
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...that's Mr. Jordan Rudess, for the non-prog-metallers among you :p
4 of the band signed my ticket too, including John Myung, who's usually TERRIFIED of public appearances.
 
Slightly long-winded story, but bear with me!

A friend of mine from work was planning a holiday to DLP with her husband and 2 young kids, leaving tomorrow. Yesterday she posted on facebook that she couldn't find her little boy (aged 3)'s passport. Despite searching non-stop and doing everything they can to get a new one, it isn't going to happen. She has been absolutely heartbroken, and convinced she is a bad Mum because of it (she's an amazing mum btw). They have taken the really difficult decision that she will take their daughter, and the little boy will stay at home with his Dad. He was so excited to meet Buzz Lightyear.

Probably partly due to the kind of work we do, we have a very close-knit and supportive staff team. People work there (school for children with autism) for a long time, and become best friends. Anyway, tonight, one of the girls who works at the school has set up a private facebook group entitled "Random Act of Kindness". She has invited everyone except for the members of this family, and her idea is to do something for this little boy to partly make up for what he is missing. Ideas so far include my hubby dressing up as Buzz and paying a surprise visit, a Buzz toy from the Disney store, tickets to Disney on Ice, a cake etc. We will probably end up with a combination of these ideas, and everyone has offered to contribute money towards this, despite the fact that our wages are frankly crap!

I just feel really emotional. Over the past 10 days, I have been reminded on numerous occasions of how lucky I am to know some truly amazing people. Last Sunday, my friends here on TST managed to kick-start me coming out of a horrible anxiety flare-up that was leading me into depression. I also had a great evening on Saturday with some of you. Then tonight I've been reminded what an incredible group of people I'm lucky to call my colleagues and friends.

I'm sorry that this post is cheesier than a big lump of Wensleydale, but I feel really blessed! :D
 
Words cannot express how happy I am this evening. I was out at someone's house and was getting ready to leave when I picked up a Facebook message from my department manager.

I'VE GOT THE ALL-CLEAR FOR JUNKET! :D
 
Alas, I'm sick of this rain, however, spring will soon be upon us, the days are getting longer and I've got 3 holidays including one to Europa Park to look forward to over the summer.

Sun's out buns out! ;)
 
Passed my driving test today, first time, with just one minor.

One of my 3 resolutions for this year done :D
 
Well I am really happy right now.

It was my birthday today and I got loads of messages on faffbook, thanks anyone that put them on, annoyingly Carla could not have this week off work. But we went out for a meal at Wetherspoons so I did not have to cook. :)

I got some nice presents which is good.

But the best news that is making me happy right now is that a project that I have been working on for about 10 years is finally coming to its end.

My Grandad died in 1999 and left to my brother and myself his memoirs which he had dictated and then had them typed up on a typewriter. He tried to get them published during his life but did not get very far with it. He did get one offer but he was not willing to sell all the rights to the story.

I first read it a couple of years after he died. I wanted to preserve it so I wanted to get it onto computer.

The manuscript was double spaced single sided type and I tried a number of ways to get it on to computer, typing was too slow and painful for my hands. Voice input at the time was so rubbish you would not believe. I tried some OCR software and that worked!

So my dad and I scanned in all the pages I can't remember how many of them there were but it was a serious amount. The whole book is somewhere around 100K words.

After this monster was scanned I did the first edit. This consisted of removing all the rubbish that the OCR software also picked up. It was a real mess of formatting, fonts and sizes. There was handwritten notes in the margins, all sorts of stuff that was hard to remove.

It took me a long time to knock it into shape. After I had done that it really just sat there for a long time as I am not skilled enough to edit it myself and my dad was too busy to do anything like that.

So fast forward a few years to 2012 and I found a woman that does editing but sadly she was far to expensive. Then a few months later I stumbled on a website called people per hour.

I found someone to edit it, he did the whole book for about £160ish.
He did not change the story only edited the spelling mistakes and just things that had slipped past me.

So after that edit was done it was a lot easier to read. I did another edit to correct mistakes and Russian/Polish spellings.

One night googling looking at book printing I found a really really good website that would give me an instant quote for getting books printed. All the others just wanted me to call or leave detailed info and they would get back to me. Protip, make your website just work and the info the provide easy to obtain.

It was quoting about £116 for 30 books at about 260 pages long in A5 size. It was then I spoke to my dad about getting it printed for the family and he was interested because the cost was a lot lower than he, or I, expected.

We visited the printers which is a small firm in Peterborough.

As a lot of the hard work was done my dad has been editing the final draft, which really is about edit number 4

I also asked for some help on here with a cover design. Lottie very kindly did me a cover along the lines of what we wanted. She also put up with a lot of requests from me to tweak the cover.

So Hopefully tomorrow the book will be e-mailed off to the printers and in a few days we will have a bound proof to look at.

We are planning on trying to sell it so my brother has done a simple website. I am going to try and get some stuff in the local press as over my Grandads lifetime he was in the papers a few times for different reasons, he also help setup Norfolk gliding club, Norwich Judo club and he is well know as he had a Jewellery shop in Norwich until he retired. He received two awards, one for performing CPR and reviving a child at a local swimming pool (he still lives locally as far as I know) and one for dealing with two yobs that were assaulting a policeman (he would have been in his 50s at the time) so he is well know locally.

Thats it, thats why I feel happy now and a tad emotional. And I feel that I have done what my Grandad wanted. I have got his book published. Its not just going to be lost over the years.

I hope that it sells well and I would love for the story to get out there so I will be spamming your facebook pages to death to try and advertise the book.

If anyone runs or know of book review blogs and would be interested in reviewing the book please let me know and I will see what I can do with regards to getting a copy.

If you feel like you want to buy a copy then I will be posting a link to the website on facebook in due course.
 
If your Grandad's wartime exploits were even half as exciting as what you've told me, then I can't wait to read this book. :)
 
That's really really cool Jem. Congratulations in getting it out there and good luck with selling it :)
 
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