Memories...

On Christmas Eve we needed Tully to have a nice long sleep, so decided to go for a bit of a tour! Mark had never been to Norfolk so we headed in that general direction. Not far from Kings Lynn, which is just over the border from Lincolnshire, is Sandringham so we decided that was as good a place as any to go to. I'd forgotten how lovely it was there. But it also reminded me of something from my childhood.

As some of you might know, Sandringham is where the Royal family spend their Christmas. On the Sunday they all walk down from the house to the church, and the general public are (were? not sure if this still happens...) allowed to go and join in the service by virtue of it being transmitted outside. Then afterwards the police gather the children and there is opportunity to give flowers / gifts to the family.

One of the last years we did this I had 2 bunches of flowers, and really wanted to give them to Di and Fergie. But how soft am I??? When I got there everyone was giving their gifts the the 2 'young' ones, and the Queen and Queen mum were stood there looking a bit like spare parts so I felt sorry for them and decided to give mine up to them instead! Ho hum...

Night out

Last night Liz and Alison came to look after Tully, so Mark and I decided to go to the cinema for a change. Rather stupidly I'd not thought through the whole mad last minute Christmas shopping thing and had decided that the best venue was the cinema at the Trafford Centre as it had better show times than the cinema we normally go to in Manchester. However because of the traffic jams to get in, and then parking at the far end of the car park about 10m from our front door, we missed the one we wanted anyway and had to go and see a later showing! Ho hum...

Anyway, we went to see Harry Potter, and I have to say I really really enjoyed it. Rather bizarrely I think it's one of the worst books in the series, and yet this film I think was the best so far. I'm sure lots of people have alreayd written reviews so I won't bore you here, but needless to say I really enjoyed myself.

Phew, I've calmed down at last!

APologies in advance, this is going to be a dull dull diddly dull blog entry... But still, here goes!

I had a very grumpy Wednesday and Thursday this week for worky reasons I won't go into here. But on Friday I was back in Birmingham again, and it made me remember why I do actually love my job and made me get over my crossness with the internal politcal bobbins we have to put up these days. As sad as it sounds I love being on site and working with our customers / prospects and showing how I/we can help make their day to day working life so much easier. It was a bug I caught all those yaers back when I first started out in implementation, and still get now I work in technical sales, even though the customer interaction is at a totally different level.

I have to go back on Monday and present to a large audience (~40 which is far more than the average for such a demo) and I'm really looking forward to it! (You watch now - I'll probably end up posting some woeful tale on Monday now about how disaterous it was to serve me right for being so cocky!) My only worry is that the podium stand I'll be presenting from has the most unusable mouse in the world ever. Still, I suppose that'll just make me think of innovative ways to show the software with the fewest possible mouseclicks - something that's meant to be a good thing - or so I learnt in my training last week...

Mad Week!

I have to apologise on both mine and Tully's behalf for lack of blogging this week. It's all been a bit crazy!

Saturday was mad busy what with taking Tully swimming in the morning, then getting stuff ready before going out obscenely early (5:45) for the Christmas party. Sadly Mark had caught Tully's tummy bug from the week before so we ended up cancelling Mum and Dad who were due to baby sit overnight and he stayed in with her.
The party was everything you'd expect it to be, with maybe slightly better food than usual. There were cocktails, wine, gin, some food, some more wine, and dancing! Perfect! I staggered home at a relatively respectable time a bit before midnight - but mostly as I was sharing a taxi home with Jon and Mandy and Jon had got to the stage where he wasn't much use to mankind! :) He has managed to post some very embarrassing photos if you are really that interested!

Sunday was generally spent recovering from the night before, although I was surprisingly well - I really shouldn't have been! We did all manage to go out for a walk to the park though and put Tulster on the swings for a bit.

Then I had to come to work on Monday and Tuesday for a training course - typically as it was run by am american trainer it started at 8:30 in the morning, didn't finish until 5:30 at night as we didn't really have anything that you could call a break in the meantime - working lunches / coffee breaks etc - the only time I left the taining room was for a 'bio-break' as americans seem to say! As you can imagine I was a bit tired after all this to do blogging when I got home. And yesterday I was in a bad mood so went straight to playing some World of Warcraft to cheer myself up! Looking forward to a quiet weekend, and a mostly non-working week next week.

Sorry!

It's been a long time since I posted anything (again)... So, what have I been up to?

Well, last Saturday I went skiing at Xscape in Leeds again. I was meant to be meeting Stu and Amy there, but Stu had dropped a radiator on his foot in the morning and was in no fit state to be on the slope. Since I'd got there I thought I might as well ski on my own though. I had quite a lot of fun, but it's surprising how many runs you get in when you don't wait at all for your mate to get on / off the lift! One thing that did keep me entertained was watching the people tobogganing! It looked like loads of fun and kids and grown ups alike were screaming and chortling in equal measure as they went down! Definitely something to do with Tully as soon as she is old enough!

On a duller note I've been spending more time in Birmingham with work than strictly ideal. We are putting a pilot trial system in at a lab at one of the hospitals there, so I've been down for the odd day over the last couple of weeks helping to get the system configured, and then spent 3 days there this week running 'drop in' sessions, which basically involved people from around the lab coming to see what we'd done. Harder work than it sounds (honest)!

I've also been using up some of my holidays. Not done a great deal really - spent some quiet time at home, caught up on the housework a bit (although that was a couple of weeks ago and you'd not know I'd done anything at all again now :( ), went in Manchester and started the Christmas shopping etc.

And that's it! Not very exciting I'm afraid to say. Still, it's our work Christmas party tomorrow night so maybe there'll be some debauched stories to tell soon! :)