Christmas 2000

Greetings for a new millennium!

Our Year

This year has been a very tiring time. Lez has completed an MSc in just 12 months, and Andrew has been working hard in support mode. Everything has been built around successfully completing this course. We hope that we can now take life off of 'hold' and start again. We are currently going through a major life change - Lez has been a full-time student for the past 6 years!

Lez and University

Lez has now graduated from De Montfort University, Leicester (DMU) with an MSc in Information Technology (distinction) and she is currently seeking employment. If you are interested in her results and her course - or if you want to offer her a job! - please see our new website:
http://www.bullwer.co.uk

Travel

Our car now has 150,000 miles on the clock and is still going strong. The electrics are becoming more interesting and it sometimes has a mind of its own! We had a door mirror surgically removed by a white van.

University politics have made leaving a bike at work impossible for most of this year. However, Andrew is now able once again to use his bike at lunch times.

Decorating/bottom blacking

The only decorating we have done this year is to paint the cupboards in the kitchen. This was after Andrew rebuilt the cupboard to fit snugly to the wall and cooker to avoid 'lost toast' syndrome. This was because we now have a new cooker, which is a lovely dark green. We also had new flooring for both the kitchen and the bathroom, so it looks quite nice now. Nothing else has been done this year though because Lez was too busy studying to get any decorating done.

Andrew has re-hung the shower curtain - a frustrating job as the bathroom wall appears to be all plaster and no brick. We have designed and made secondary double glazing in our office at home. Also the door seal in the washing machine has been replaced (second-hand 11 years ago and still going strong!).

In May Andrew went to Uxbridge and helped Sue and Phil Groom black the bottom of their narrowboat. Bitumen bits were turning up for several weeks afterwards in unexpected places.

The Bookshop

The replacement (and still bug-ridden) computer system is currently being exhaustively tested before a big change over. This summer busy period went really quickly - maybe because Lez was over in Germany!

Holiday

We didn't get much of a holiday this year. We went away to Kerry (Welsh borders) with Lez's parents at Easter, but Lez spent a lot of her time revising for exams, so Andrew went for several hilly and muddy bike rides. During the summer Lez spent a month in Germany as part of her Masters project. At the end of Lez's course, we went away for a weekend to St Davids. We nearly didn't make it home as this was the time of the first petrol crisis - and South Wales was the first hit! Lez has also had another week's holiday with her parents, again in Kerry.

Television

Yes, we have finally succumbed to having a television. It's taken 11 years for us to get one. However, we're still not convinced that we're going to keep it. The pictures are still better on radio! It is also possible to wash up while listening to the radio.

Cataclysmic Events

Our house survived an earthquake of 4.2 Richter centred on Leamington (it felt like a narrowboat ramming the front of the house), also a lightening strike which blew up our ansaphone.

With love

Andrew's signature Lez's signature

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Christmas 2000