New worlds for old

It's been a very hectic week for us all here.
We have had people in to look at the building and see if we can extend our apartment into the spare apartment to make three bedrooms, one for us and one each for the angels. Seems it is possible by taking our end of the corridor and having a door in our kitchen leading to stairs down and also running a connecting arch into the bedroom opposite that will become our third bedroom.
When I was small the whole of this floor was the family home but when Father retired to Otaru I was living here with Hiro. So it was converted into four apartment spaces. Mine and his two bedroomed apartments and on the other side of the corridor the guest apartment and utilities area which are identical one bedroom apartments. Now that my Children are back with us we could do with three bedrooms and Hiro & Rina may have another addition to their family.
So we are looking at plans to convert my apartment to three bedroom apartment and Hiro's into a four bedroomed one (when Dad wants to come and stay) and we'll still have the washing room for the restaurant linens.

Nia has now become a part of the team in an official capacity and we thanked her for all the hard work she's done for us in assisting, running and promoting the studios. We had a little celebration after another of her successful shoots and then invited her and her husband to the restaurant for a celebratory dinner.

Yahoo!
I received a message from my sister April in Hong Kong regarding yahoo chat.
Yeah she's such a sentimental creature and I was at home on the computer sorting through some photographs and so when she messaged me to say meet her in chat I was a little reluctant having outgrown that computer world madness. I did not promise her and after doing what I was doing, I forgot all about it as I went to bed. I woke shortly after four and thought perhaps it was a sign. Had it gone already? It was almost four am on Saturday the 15th for me.
We used to have fun in there when 'fun' was missing from my life due to marital problems and it was during that time that we met Nancy and we became a threesome of friends online.
Nancy at that time didn't live too far away from April. They were both online as I sat at my computer and blew the dust from yahoo messenger. April said that she and Nancy were there in our favorite chat room and if I could come for even if just for nostalgic reasons please do so!
I simply had to oblige and I opened up my 'Y!Supra' chat client and fell into Alice's Wonderland hole for one more time.

There were just a few gathered there as if to watch the sky fall.
It seemed calm in there and even light-hearted and jovial as if no-one truly believed it could or would end. No comet shot across the sky and no tsunami raced across the ocean. No volcano erupted from the mountains and no bombs fell to lay waste and silence us forever.
The pulse of activity beat on despite the thinning thread holding the sword of Damocles overhead.
All was serene as if it was just another normal chat day.
I was talking to a few people in the room and to April in a private message and then suddenly the room became still and the birds stopped mid-flight, their songs forever silenced as the chat world iced over and the sun went out.
"I think that's it" April said in my message box and sadly I had to agree with her as the system message "System is busy" displayed across my screen.
Nancy then private messaged me and said that the room on her screen had frozen and had it all ended rather abruptly and simply with a sigh rather than a last gasp, a whisper or even a bang!
Chat ended then at 8:00pm GMT on December 14th (5:00 am the next day for me and 12:00 Noon for Yahoo California) and with a note of sadness we perhaps bowed our heads to the fact that all good things must eventually end.
I said goodnight to them both and uninstalled my chat programs and switching off my machine I went back to bed. Hitomi, the one who sleeps through most natural disasters, woke long enough to tell me I was silly to go chatting at such an early hour but I said that it was most definitely the last time and I managed to say it without any irony at all.

Happy Christmas everyone.