That’s how the quote goes. In my case Monday will be followed by two more days of work, a day off and another day of work, before finally the weekend will be there. However, I must say, my Monday wasn’t so bad at all. Sure, I’m tired, but I can blame my six week holiday for that.
It was back to work for me today, and I must say I have to get used again, to devide my attention to  22 children (this year, last year I had 28 of them) and their questions, small talks and actions. I am amazed how well children adapt to a new situation – in this case a new class room, a new teacher, the subjects becoming more difficult. It sometimes makes me wish I were still a child. I remember my childhood, it was pretty well carefree, secret clubs with friends, the dancing, the horse riding, I remember having two favourite teachers…That reminds me, one of those I’ve met somewhere in July again, whilst going to work with my mother. He was working there as well for a little while. And now he will be my collegue for at least three weeks, replacing an ill one. I really couldn’t make this up, even if I wanted to.

Oh well, the work day is over, I came home, got a nice surprise in the mail, did the dishes, I’ve fed myself, wrote down some more quotes I like (which I’ll be adding later here), sent an e-mail, did my share of twittering, thinking about dancing tomorrow and I’ll be on my way to clean out the litter boxes. Oh what a boring life a primary school teacher has…

Back to the surprise mail. On August 6th, 2010 I posted this post. It was about winning a signed copy of Search, written by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. Well, the book arrived today, to my big surprise. I’d never thought it would arrive this quickly. When inside, I’d opened it quickly and I was surprised once more. When I thought there simply would be a name, they completely personalized it with my name and a reference to The Lost World as you can see on the photo below. It brought quite the smile to my face reading it and this fan is going to do an evening of reading after all the chores are done.

On to the reason of blogging at the strange time of midnight:

A couple of years ago, well more like ten years ago, there was this TVshow called The Lost World I was totally addicted to. I was so addicted to it, that I managed to get copies from the USA send to me by a friend (whom I’m still grateful), so I was able to watch the 2nd and 3rd Season aswell, since TV stations in my country kept broadcasting Season 1.
It was the reason I went to the USA in 2003 and when people ask me what I’ve seen of Long Beach and the area around it, my answer is always the same: three themeparks (Disneyland, Seaworld and Universal Studios), a hotel and the appartement we were staying at.
I’ve got several items as well, the original script of London Calling signed by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens and twice by Jennifer O’Dell (who played Veronica Layton), I’ve got Marguerite Krux’ (played by Rachel Blakely) hat, and the dress she wore in Phantoms. A friend made me a copy of Rachel Blakely’s Survivors script which was also signed by her and then there’s of course the different photo’s I’ve gotten, not to mention some personal messages from Rachel Blakely as well.

But with the sudden ending of the show, I got addicted to other TVshows, none as bad as TLW though. Recently I’ve been rediscovering TLW and somehow I stumbled upon the Twitter page of Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens. They have been writing several episodes of the show (most – if not all – are so worth watching). I decided to follow them and learned that they’ve written a new book called Search. Through several small contests on Twitter, they’ve been giving away free signed copies. On their website was some information about the book and I must say it sparked my interest immediately. They tweeted there would be a question about TLW today and I decided to give it a shot.

ReevesStevens SEARCH signed copy to 1st correct answer: Which J&G ep of THE LOST WORLD has a crossover reference to J&G’s THE CHRONICLES OF GALEN SWORD? 

It was more a guessing matter than me actually knowing the answer. I guess I was lucky, with some research on The Chronicles of Galen Sword (those books had to do with the supernateral), rereading the episode synopsises of TLW and finding out which episodes were written by J&G lead me to several episodes which could be it. And after several tries I got an @ reply.

ReevesStevens We have a winner! @tessa_vermeulen got “Stone Cold” as the ep with a Galen Sword reference. DM an address please. Bonus question up next! 

I’ve won myself a free signed copy of Search. I was lucky the question was posted early and I was in a timezone in which work was done for several hours (not that I worked with one more week of vacation left).

So hence the title of this post: Old habits die hard. It still applies to me in this case, I think. I’m still crazy enough to do things like this .

Below the bodice with the ribbon inserted. That was such a pain to do. I think I’ve been working on that for at least 4 hours. Silly me wants the ribbon not rotated in all directions, so that took an enormous amount of time to get it right. Then something went wrong, and I had to start all over again *sigh*.

Bodice with ribbon

Close up of bodice with ribbon

I’ve seen this with another dress some time ago: ribbon through lace. I loved that, and I simply had to do it with my own dress as well.

Bodice with ribbon through laceClose up of ribbon through lace

Back of bodice

And another batch of photos will come tomorrow