Chocolate Bingo

Went to the chocolate bingo, raising funds for the pre-school on Saturday afternoon. An excellent turn out, with nearly 150 people turning up. This year out table was quite sucessful (apart from poor Nate who didn't win). Tasha out with the girls, for a belated Birthday evening, to Pastiche - but they had awful service and the evening went a bit flat and they all came home early.

Sunday, went swimming - Florence is now 35 on the waiting list, but saw that there was a woman doing private lessons. This got Tasha thinking, so we are going to get some information so that Tasha can jog her memory on when she did her swimming instructors course.

Went to Mum & Dad's in the afternoon, and they seemed to be in quite high spirits.

Chess

We went to see chess at the landau forte theatre last night. The production was really professional with fantastic voices and great full orchestra music. Came back had had a chilli with Jane and Nigel. Productive afternoon after spending the morning having a coffee with Tasha (hopefully the first of many now that Nate goes to play-group solo). The early evening was spent finding yet more items to put onto eBay - major life laundry happening now!

v3 of tashascakes.com gallery is now posted

Interest in knackered iPod

Well, the new Nano arrived safely, and I managed to get all my old iPod stuff on eBay. There has been a surprising interest in it, although no firm bids yet.

Ready to tak the car in today, hoping its not too expensive to sort out. I'm always really wary of garages that they can pull the wool over my eyes, because I know naff all about cars.

Emissions

A little light came on in the car the other day to say that there was something wrong with our exhaust emissions. Expensive was my first thought. We've booked it in for a diagnostic check tomorrow, just to make sure its nothing serious - but GJ has suggested buying some diesel additive, and giving that a try too. It might be that the turbo just needs a good blow, so with any luck the light will go out when we drive it into Derby. The diagnostics check costs £35.

My iPod nano has been despatched so with any luck that will arrive today, although, due to my normal bad luck will be tomorrow when we are out with the car - hopefully get Alison to keep an eye out if thats the case though.

Reasonable productive day yesterday, and we got a few things set up in turbo lister last night ready to blast onto eBay today as its a 10p listing day!

Nano

Did a bit of trawling yesterday, and I think I've managed to get a good price (from Amazon) . The delivery wasn'y too bad either. Got a dodgy price from currys using a perkz code that wasn't supposed to be valid, but seemed to knock £20 off the price. The delivery was another £12, and the earliest it could be was next Tuesday - and unfortunately that was an online price only. Had my second "used" item from Amazon, I think its a pretty good way of getting books, and I've listed some myself now. Its a lot less hassle than ebay, and the item doesn't need to be re-listed all the time. Some more items are queueing up for eBay now (and tomorrow is a cheap ad day too)

Working from home for the rest of the week, so got my little work station set up.

Used the power of Google Chat yesterday and caught up with Mark who is working out of Germany again this week.

Announcement email

Yesterday saw a slightly criptic email, that was very long, but didn't say very much - about the delayed reorganisation plans. There wasn't really much gossip about the whole thing though.

I got the results of my CFSE exam and I FAILED (by only 3 marks) bit of a bummer, but hey what the hell.

Adrian has been seconded to the manufacturing group for a 6 week stint at Johnsons, as expected that didn't go down very well, especially when he pointed out that right in the middle of that time, he is due to go to Karlsruhe for a workshop.

SIL session cancelled this week, due to people being mobilised offshore for the investigation (glad its not me) - so may work the rest of the week at home.

Another great weekend away

Had another great weekend away. The weather was great and it snowed after we arrived on Friday night. Woke up to quite a thick blanket of snow, but beautiful clear blue skies. Some great walking and exploring in the Churnet valley.