Fradley

Went for a walk arounf the pond at Fradley junction at the weekend. It was a great end to a busy show week. Went with Martin, Alison and Archie. The morning was crisp and frosty with a little fog, especially over the water. The little nature walk with some wood sculptures, bird hide and jetties over the pond was really good, and just the right distance for little legs. There is a good cafe (as the junction gets quite busy with narrow-boaters), and had a mocha. Despite my efforts I couldn't push people to hang around for lunch at the pub!

Getting back to work was a really drag - and my motivation was low, but is picking up a bit more. Had a great game of squash with Stubbs on Monday evening and followed that up with a circuit training and pilates session last night with Col and Martin. The running parts were pretty competitive, and I thought that I might not be able to move this morning! But the pilates stuff must have stretched all that out.

The early birds in the office this morning, all put on their tickets for the Euromillions draw on Friday. £100 million jackpot!! I MUST WIN!

Pickwick

Just got back from watching Tasha in Pickwick. Its quite a long show, not the best, but not the worst either. The music seemed a little dull, but the story was good. Some great performances kept the whole thing going. The cast have gone out larging it now so I guess I won't see Tasha at all until she needs to leave for tomorrows matinee performance!!

Need to be winning the Euro millions lottery tonight £85 million!!

Catchup

Been experimenting with a few more Photoshop things this week. Am having another phase of really getting into my camera and Flickr, spending a good few hours looking round.

Bust weekend, ballet re-started after Christmas and Florence also had more parties to attend. Tasha is in Pickwick this week at the brewhouse, so she'll be out every night. I'm trying to work at home a lot this week to help out.

Came down with a bit of a sore throat this morning, but dosing up seems to be holding it off.

I'm LOST

Jesus!

What an ending to a series, the panning back down the long ladder - fantastic! I can see why Mark needs to go and find the 2nd series, not sure I can wait until June! Was a good sequence in the airport where all of the characters came into contact without knowing it. Thought that something was going to happen between Locke and Jack, which would explain the tension a bit more. Very good bit when Hurley was going to catch a flight and went past a sports team, whoose numbers on their shirts were "the numbers", very subtle, almost missed it.

Flickr technique frenzy

I've been looking into some more photoshop goodness over the last few days. As a result I've come across some really good tips. Firstly sharpening, which I've also had hit & miss results with in Photoshop using the unsharpen mask. There are a lot of tips out there saying that the easiest way to get this done is to use Picasa, which has a really simple tool and it works very well.

I've then ran the image here through a couple of the techniques on Flickr, the old favourite of the LOMO effect, as well as the new one for me of tiniting. Its a pretty useful technique , even for creating B&W images, or slight tints. Making the shadows warmer, highlights cooler etc. Making this image B&W has really changed the focus of the picture the the rflections in the tube.

Busy Birthday Weekend

This weekend has been a blur. Worked from home on the Friday and I hadn't got a "chitty" so only had to do 4.75 hours to make up the time. Saturday morning was spent doing chores ready for Nate's birthday party, with a short break when Gill & GJ came round. It was really good to see them and Nate really enjoyed it.

Saturday Florence had to be taken to the first party of the afternoon (obviously after eating a cooked lunch). I picked her up (after eating a party tea) to take her home for a quick change and then attending Nate's party (and another party tea). Nate's friends were great and he had some great gifts. Tasha made a fine cake which everyone enjoyed too.

Sunday saw the actual birthday, and he seemed to have a good bag full of presents. He almost completed his collection of Bob the Builder toys (just Muck missing now) and he had some more brio Thomas the Tank items. After toiling for about an hour I finally managed to construct the mini trampoline!! Tasha had to go to long rehersal yesterday. The rehersals normally run from 2pm to 11pm, but there had been some last minute plea to try and change the times (to 11am) so that people could watch the Burton vs Man Utd match - which I thought was off. Tasha thought long and hard about doing this show on the basis that long rehersal was on Nate's birthday and to then be out for the whole day would be wrong. So she objected and thankfully the times were not changed so we could spend the morning together. In the evening I updated Tasha's webpage.

Got to work this morning and the building is falling to pieces!! The handle to the main office had fallen off, so I had to go round the back and themn open it from the other side and prop it open, and the new phone system isn't working again (this troubles me less as it means a quiet morning!!)

Costumes

Tasha came home with her latest costumes yesterday. She has got a lead role in Pickwick, and they have hired the costumes for the principles this show, so they look the part.

The interviews scheduled at work have now been moved to Coventry, which saves everyone the trip to Manchester.

Got a little more 43 folders action done - let it lapse over Christmas, but need to get back in there. Noticed that there is a 43folders podcast.

iPod is still playing up.

Announcement

The announcement was made as promised at 10. It was a little worse that I expected (although it was promised our office would not be directly affected), but the other 2 offices need to loose over 30 bodies between them. They are hoping to perform this either from voluntary redundancy or by internal moves to other dept. We also have to complete a skills matrix and attend an interview next week. I was told this was an exercise to ensure that the headquarters knew exactly what our skill sets were, and an opportunity to apply to join a global task force (which doesn't interest me greatly). The personnel colleague who attended didn't answer questions particularly well and as a result there is a lot of confussion about what the interview is truely for. This was of course quashed immediately by the office manager (NOT)

Bad news, then more bad news

Yesterday, I went to undock my iPod , which had been sitting there all over Christmas and it wouldn't disconnect from the PC. After rebooting the PC the damned thing had lost everything on it. I decided to perform a restore, but the application wouldn'tconnect! iTunes wouldn't either. Last night I tried again, without any luck at all.

Then I got an email from Mark, saying that there were going to be simultaneous announcements across our offices today - thats NEVER good news!

Came into work this mrning and there is the obvious banter (but reading between the lines the word out there is that the news might not affect us at this office). Also I tried the iPod, and manged to get it connected to my work PC, so I was able to perform the restore and get some tracks on, which are playing. Will keep an eye on it today, but hopefully thats the end of the matter!!

Happy New Year!

Well 2005 is over, and its been a year of ups and downs. Hopefully 2006 will not have as many surprises. Started off well with some amazing fireworks, just about everyone else seemed to be letting them off.

We are doing our final "Christmas Day" today going to see Dan and Karen.