26 May 2004

Cosmopolitan Phil

I'm really enjoying the traveling to the first aid course. A short drive (<5 minutes) to the local station, jump on the train direct to Nottingham. Then theres about a 2 - 2 1/2 mile walk to the red cross centre, but its by the side of Nottingham castle for the first stretch then by the side of the canal, what a great way to get to work. Normally pick up a nice coffee or a bacon bap on the way too!!

The actual course is pretty intense, theres an awful lot of information to absorb, and they spring practical assessments on you to. You feel a bit of a tit talking to a plastic dummy in front of all those people, but I'm getting used to it (some would say that I'm just realising what everyone thinks!). We are being taught some pretty serious stuff and seriously makes you think.

Good news is that I'm in a good group (and I'm the only male!) it includes some hair stylists from Toni & Guy - very glam on the first day, noticed they'd changed their style for today (i.e. no underwear or diamonte thongs showing today!!!)

Getting back home in the evenings and feeling pretty drained.

Best wishes to Mark and family for the upcoming holiday (glas to hear that you've got the mag quota sorted - I'm assuming that the toiletries have also been actioned!!)

23 May 2004

And relax...

Spent most of the day in the garden after an early morning family swim. Lovely hot day, lunched outside just like being back in France. Tasha gone to the Brewhouse cinema to watch a private viewing of 6 pence -left me with the ironing (nothing new there!)

The boozer thing didn't really come off, by the time we were ready it was quite late and Tasha had come down with Nate's cold - nipped down the road and got a pre-chilled bottle of vino and sat in instead

21 May 2004

Ups & Downs

Well the announcement at work finally came, which was our operations manager has resigned. Thoroughly decent bloke that will certainly leave a big whole and a fear in me that (even in the short term) might be filled by someone that isn't up to the task. All the hard work of the last year may be turned around in next to no time if things aren't handled correctly. Anyone reading this message from the office needs to keep me up to speed while I'm out. The news really did hit hard and I'm pretty sure that over the course of next week will think of plenty of scenarios. Hopefully the powers that be will have also seen what we all see and be addressing the problem behind closed doors.

Other up and down news for the day comes in the form of a new record Everest ascent and the skydiver who cut his own shoot cords.

Announcement....

..still hasn't happened, so in the mean time I have educated myself (via The Soul Sailor) in knowning how to ask for a beer in 78 languages!

The day of reckoning

Well today is supposed to be a day for decisions (more later probably), but for now it seems strange that the US spend $$$millions on developing super missles that can fly down a chimney somewhere and pick out people in a room to kill when all they needed to do was follow the UKs lead in warfare technology!!! It also appears that the Beckhams will be staying in Spain.

Watching "24" last night and I can't see where its going at all (and indeed how much of Jacks 3rd bad day is left). All of the plot lines seem to be drying up/killed off. There does appear to be an interesting quiz show coming on though "How gay are you?", and everyone seems to be bigging up BB.

20 May 2004

From the mouths of babes...

... a pearl of wisdom (maybe) from Florence last night, during a family chit-chat, Tasha suggested that I actually needed more looking after than either of the kids, to which Florence replied "Well.....he's a man"

Long range weather forecast is still saying that the weekend is going to be great, Tasha may have put a stop to that by planning a major gardening day Saturday (I can't loose really, either it will be pissing it down and I can't do the garden or I'll be outside all day in the sun). Finishing the day off in the boozer will also be spot on!

Looks like it will be only Stubbs and myself on the Peak visit - not to worry, just need to pin down a route now. 64zer0 arrived yesterday, which will give me a chance to test it before then.

Dad has still not heard a date for his op, no doubt he will receive one shortly that is slap bang in the middles of the holidays! We were talking about potential contingency plans and the best one we've come up with is to take both cars.

19 May 2004

I should be worrying about sunscreen

I should be on the other side of this glass. Can't believe what a glorious day it is outside, and I'm not in it. Listening to Brian Eno doesn't help either - conjuring up pictures of beaches in my head. Definitely a "keep your head down" day today, get away early and hopefully sit around the paddling pool with the kids before dinner! Checked the weather and (at the moment) looks to be a stonking weekend.

Information Snippets

Don't you just hate/love getting snippets of information and then your source drying up before you can see the whole picture? Well that's the position that I'm in at the moment after what Mark M told me yesterday! Have just seen him before he's off to site and I'll just have to wait for official channels - but I fully understand that sometimes if you are told something you have to let someone know, and then you immediately regret what you've done ( so don't feel bad!)

Superb weather yesterday and this morning looks like it could be the same way. I only hope that the weather is like this until September now! (but unlikely)

Am contemplating working from home next Monday, see how things go for the rest of the week, but might be an idea as I'm out on a course for the rest of that week and will probably be getting home late (with the finishing time and train times)

Managed to get to Ridware early last night, had a good chat with Deb. Saw the first "output" for Open Studios, only the advertising flyers, but they look really good. Deb has done some painting for herself, and they look really good - introducing a little bit more definition to the abstract. My work last night wasn't as good - subject matter doesn't appeal (flowers) but was a new technique - running things under a tap after random heat drying, ox gall & meths application. Pretty uncontrollable! Hopefully will get some painting done in Wales later in the year (taking Kurt for inspiration!)

18 May 2004

HTML

Well have added some more html stuff today, for what I'm currently reading - linking straight through to Amazon for purchase.

The book is very good, hard to put down actually (unless I've just fallen asleep). Quite eye opening what goes on inside politics, and I think I'd be quite worried about the whole thing if I was American. The UK version has quite an interesting forward describing how the publishers tried to stop the release of the book post 9/11 - reading further I can see why they became worried!

17 May 2004

I almost forgot

A quote from on high was that "..we got rif of all the bad news in one go.." so nobody should be worried about more redundancies.

Steve started to cry.....

...not really but I thought it might pep this blog up a bit! Boring management meeting, with absolutely nothing new. The whole thing covered sales (no one leaving) and the management restructure (no one leaving).

The only choice item was that the audit highlighted "..that there wasn't any marketing output from the business" Ha Ha Ha - too right.

Touching the cloth...

..is what "Touching the Void" should really be called. Jesus wept - my kind of film. Climbing stuff is very good, great scenes in Peru and the Alps. Format not what I expected at all though, kind of a reconstruction of the events , with on going narration from Simon & Joe. An inspiration for not giving up on anything if ever I saw one! I'd not actually appreciated how long the incident had taken, or indeed how it had all started (just the few seconds when Si cuts the rope was all I had really!).

Yesterday was good - local carnival (for local people), but was a bit too warm for the kids, especially after a couple of goes on the bouncy castle! Paddling pool made its first outing of the year though, so summer has officially started in our house. Finished the evening off with the first BBQ of the season and a bottle of "Tracey Lord's" champagne sitting out in the garden - very civilized!

Planned to be in the spread next weekend, lets see if we can organise that, should be a good reward for doing the hedge!


15 May 2004

Groupies

Out with the groupies last night - to the brewhouse to watch Tasha (who was f-ing fantastic). Was a bit tricky watching all the "love" scenes, but she played the comedy bits really well, and got the big laughs in all the right places. Singing was great - no wonder the Mail liked it! They all went to the newish Thai restaurant in town, and gave it good reviews. Tasha has just left for the double day performance, Nate is in bed and Florence is chilling after a busy morning at ballet!

13 May 2004

Future portable gaming

Just when I was getting back into my GBA, i read this piece of news!

Still not quite into this season of 24 (its now 3am) have managed to be a little creative tonight at least and knocked out a few paintings for Tasha.

My ebayer whos not paid has now run out of time, over 2 weeks now, and not replying to any emails - time to invoke my 1st none payer!!

Fame.....

Thankfully the people at the Burton Mail had good sense to continue their favorable coverage of High Society by writing a good review. Apparently last night wasn't quite as good as the opener, with a few "ad-libbing" moments, but Tasha did come home with bunches of flowers! I however spent the evening recovering from "Not enough hard-disk space to run application" error messages - and so started the process of Archiving My Documents!

12 May 2004

The show does go on

High Society opening night was last night. Despite plenty of "visits to the bathroom" all went well. No lines were missed and audience laughs were heard in all the right places (which is also a good sign!). The preview was a whole page in the local paper and despite the captions showing a number of spellings of Tasha's name (non of them correct) the coverage was very good. With luck there should be oodles of good reviews in tonights edition (which will eventually get posted on the web).

Have continued titivating the template, but am becoming happier with the whole layout now.

11 May 2004

The Cold War continues

Air conditioning wars has started in the office today. Several "discussions" took place including global warming, room chilling and all manner of other things. People sitting freezing their knacks off just to annoy the bearded one - first class. Other office gossip includes debate about Paul Barlett working from Worcester, the lack of new equipment promised, the usual stuff really. Our illustrious leader has been behind closed doors all day today on Grain.....what is going on?

Troubles

Having troubles updating

Website

It really is disgraceful that my webpage hasn't been updated since July 2003 (and that was only to put some holiday composites on so that MMQ could have a look at the beaches!). Its time for a serious overhaul, and there's no time like the present. Set myself the deadline of the end of June for update and re-organisation........ yeah yeah we'll see!

Here goes nothing

Technology testing.  Checking that I can write down an email address correctly!


Thought 1

Lets see if I can maintain this idea (not like the updating the personal website thing!)