Both the kids are out this afternoon. Dylan at Davids birthday party and Harriet over at Mollys. So I finished off fitting some new lights in the kitchen. That's done and now what? I want my kids back! The house is too quiet without them.
Everyone over at ours on Tuesday. Dashed out in the morning to stock up on party food then prepared a grand spread in a flash. With the food done, some settled down to a game of Cluedo but me and Steve started up Burnout 3. Eventually everyone was lining up for a turn! There was much screaming and laughing as the cars were smashed into slow-motion oblivion. Top entertainment. The kids all moaned when it was time to go (after more than 5 hours!) but so did the dads!
Tired this morning from late night. Went to see 'A Series Of Unfortunate Events' at the cinema. Not bad at all. Jim Carey was superb. Art design was lovely. Very Burton influenced and that's a good thing. Back home doing a few chores here and there and continued play-time. Jacq still hitting the Sims hard. Harriet on Animal Crossing. Me and Dyl doing bits with all sorts.
Over to Theresas in Tamworth picking up Jim along the way. The cousins had a fun time and much screaming during pressie opening time. Jacq brought Taboo and Pictionary over with us as Theresa has no games. Taboo was a blast! We haven't played it for years. Hilarious!
Back home we played with Dyls RC cars and track. Good fun doing the sports DV footage. Must get some good F1 type sound effects for the audio track. Stayed up MUCH too late. A little bit of booze, Jacq on Sims 2 and me pottering on PC and stuff. Booze has been very moderate this year and feels much better for it.
Setup the camcorder on tripod in the corner of the room and started it off just before I let the kids in to see the pressies that Santa had delivered in the night. The morning went by in a blur of flying wrapping paper. Dinner delivered the classic 'dying scientist' gasping for breath, can't eat another thing type moment.
Harriet sqeeled with delight over her Pokemon direct from Japan. Dylan loved his 'Doc Ock' arm and went around picking stuff up with it. Mostly my pressies were DVD's this year. Got the Alien Quadrilogy box which is lovely and a bunch of music discs. Jacq liked her PDA but mostly spent her time with Sims 2. I'm not into the game but the graphics are superb and the program is clever stuff. Jacq was SO into it, she played until her eyes bled!
A quiet day really. Dylan and I went out for a while to a few local shops. I love being out and about with the kids and just chatting about what we see and do. The calmness continued through the evening, the kids went up to bed nicely and we set about the pressie preparations.
A task I had been meaning to do all week was to record the Peel tribute doc on Radio 1. I was convinced it was about to be removed from the 'recent shows' list so I decided to load Total Recorder onto my machine. Before loading my old version 3 of the program I checked the official site and found that the latest version 5 is available for only 11 dollars (6 quid)! So the purchase / download was made and the show recorded for later playback on iPod.
Last day at work yesterday. Hurrah! Spent the morning in the office and sorted out the details for a drinkie in the evening. Site work in the afternoon was uneventful. I always expect a nasty suprise on my last day before holidays. But thankfully not this time. Once home, I got Jacq a balti from the Raja then headed over Burton way.
Got to Dans house then taxi to Burton to meet up with Phil. At last the 'real', unoffical, alternative, self-financed SAS Coventry Good Guys Christmas Party was ON! Had some beers, had some balti, had some great chat. All in all, a top evening. Glad to finally get out for a beer with those guys. Circumstances did not permit more of the good crowd within the team to make it, but maybe the numbers can increase when we do it again. Which I'm convinced we should. Maybe a summer one next?
Crashed at Dans and woke mercifully without hangover. Drove back home then Jacq took the car to collect Becky, Jodie and Katy for a sleepover visit. They've all had loads of fun today. Noisy, but fun. My parents visited and dropped prezzies for Jacqs birthday. Spiderman 2 DVD, nice. Watched it tonight. Awesome movie. Moved me again, just as it did at the cinema.
Thankfully the pain cleared last night and this morning I was fully back to normal (whatever THAT is!). Jacq & Harriet went out to the cinema to see some girly flick. Paul collected Me and Dylan and we went over to sort out his printer problems.
Went over to Duggos in the afternoon and dropped off presents. Mike and Liz turned up there too and came back to ours for a visit. Exhanged prezzies and played some Eye Toy. I'm hoping this Christmas holiday will kickstart my creative activities and I'll have some material to share with Mike sometime soon. Liz is talking about them moving back to Bearwood which would be awesome.
Updated my Flickr buddy icon with a festive makeover last night. Everyone is doing it so it seemed like fun to join in. Pete has joined and left a few comments. I hope he goes on to upload some shots. New feature spotted today allows ranking of your photos by views, comments and favourites. Suprised to notice that 4 people rate my Stone Pile as a favourite. That's some cool. I'm chuffed.
Pain has returned today. Different at times and then back to the usual back/stomach ache. Have had to resort to the painkillers a couple of times. Desperately hoping it doesn't linger too much over the holiday. That would be a real bummer, but it's not unheard of me to trash my time off with feeling ill. Attempting to continue a kind of normal life. Kids last swimming lesson today so the floats were out and a fun time was had.
I was sure I was going into the office this morning. Bags packed, lunch made. But I couldn't find the car after Jacq had parked it way down the street following her visit with Jim to hospital yesterday. I got soaked walking up and down the street looking for it! Then Dylan started complaining of stomach ache again. So to be on the safe side we took him to the doctors. Turns out he's got a throat infection that can sometimes include symptoms of stomach cramps. Gave him some painkiller then dropped him into school for 'toy day' and Jacq went off to a carol service. I'm back home working in a much better environment than the office anyway. I WILL try and get there on Monday to drop off some stuff and do a bit of paperwork.
Monday morning 10:00AM, Harriets Christmas play. An alternative Snow White panto. Much fun. Took the camcorder but didn't have a good viewpoint. Barely glimpsed Harriets singing. Mom & Dad turned up to see the play and we'll probably see them at Dylans play on Wednesday too. From school straight to site with hopefully a better attitude. The work went smoothly enough and the afternoon whizzed by. Home to a top roast meal from Jacq. Scrumpcious. Later I capture the second DV tape so now I've got all the footage from 2004 in the PC. Played a bit more with Movie Maker to see what could be done. Lots of choice, but it's soon obvious which are the naff bits to avoid. So now I need to assemble a movie...
Tuesday up to SWSH. Met Phil in the canteen about 8:30AM. Told him about the DV stuff and he advised to do the edits in 'chapters' that way the Nero software will build the DVD with the scene selection points already there.
The strategy workshop we attended was generally a pretty positive and useful exercise. Good to get more 'face-time' with Jurgen the MD. Didn't hold back from dishing the dirt, and the structure kept most things quite anonymous which will hopefully feedback into SAS. We'll see. It'll probably be a few months before any outputs emerge so the challenge is to stay a bit more positve in the meantime.
Swimming as usual. Dylan making a great effort. Harriets technique looking sweet. Mitchell came back to our after for a couple of hours playing. Dylan had a great time with him. Groceries later then off to the office party.
Not looking forward to it much. Met up first at All Bar One. Standard lame expensive style thing. I bought 3 drinks and got no change from a tenner. Thankfully it wasn't my money. At the Thai Edge the seating was arranged around two circular tables. I was of course seated between two couples. The food wasn't awful but I can't say I liked it. Jacq would have hated it all. Rather have an Indian anyday. Had a few Thai beers which were ok but the opportunities to chat to the few people I would have liked to, just did not appear. Call from Jacq that Dylan was not well provided a reason to leave about 10:30PM. No buses were appearing on Broad Street so had to resort to taxi. Dyl asleep by the time I got home and felt OK in the morning.
Out last night with Simon, Adrian, Pete & Martin from the good old days back in the Cincinnati software department. Excellent night as always. Walked across town from the bus. Passing through the Bullring where fake snow was being blown from the top of the building. I watched as people walked through the area and spotted the snowflakes then a smile appeared. Got to the Big Wok all-you-can-eat Chinese and met up with the others. Waited a while to get a table. The place was packed. The food was good and I had a good three plates full. It was great to see them all and the chat and banter was top notch. Looking forward to the next meet-up already.
Jacq bought the Christmas edition of the Radio Times today. What a joy! One of my favourite Christmas rituals is to read through each day with a high-lighter pen and mark each TV programme or radio show that looks interesting. Usually each year I end up missing about 90% of all the things I mark, but that's not the point. It's all part of the 'Magic Of Christmas'.
It would be mildly tedious if I were to continue 'bigging up' Flickr again so I'll try not to, except to say I think it's by far the best place on the web right now. I've been uploading a bit more and enjoying the comments and contacts. The coposites group has been going from strength to strength and it's fun 'bumping into' Phil at all sorts of places all over the site.
Phil, Dan and I met up with SteveY at lunchtime over at the Cocked Hat. Good to catch up with him. A good chat was had and we sneaked back into the office way past two. A good day in the office, although I can't say that I got much actual 'work' done. Motivation eludes me still.
As ever, the good people at Flickr continue to rock my world. The new 'Date Taken' feature has given me reason to spend lots of time tweaking the details of my photostream. I wonder if the word 'photostream' will ever make it into the dictionary?
Found an interesting character on Flickr last night. Going by the name of Striatic, the guy has quite a few killer shots in his 'stream, and seems to go around wearing a bowler hat! That must be quite unusual in Canada. One of his composite shots went straight into my faves, you can check it here.
Got the tree up yesterday. Look a treat. Must blog a photo later when the lighting is at maximum 'christmassyness'. Working at home today. Dylan off school with a temperature. Poor buddy. Texts from Phil on a retail expidition to the Bullring. Off to see Jacqs Dad later since I'm home today and will be on site tomorrow.
Dyl did the business at swimming this morning. Keith commented on how he had come on. So I guess last Sundays swimming session paid off. Straight after swimming we picked up Jacqs dad and went over to Chiquitos down Marys way. Jimi was up from London on one of his rare visits. A couple of hours and it was all done. Christmas obligation over and Jimi and Luisa were off. The chat was more relaxed once they'd gone. Harriet was upset that we weren't visiting at Marys after but we promised a sleepover for Beccy, Jodie and Katy during the Christmas holidays.
After dropping Jacqs dad home we wizzed up to Ikea for the last hour. Picked up new lights for the kitched. Hopefully get them installed tomorrow to give the kitchen that halogen sparkle. Bought a few other items and before you know it that's a hundred pounds please! Am I a tightwad to be shocked at that?
Tonight we watched 'Something's Got To Give' on DVD borrowed from Dave. Enjoyed it more than I was expecting to. Worth a copy.
I actually DID take a photo today, even if it was just with my phone. Took a sequence of shots of the Bullring in Birmingham. Composited the image in Photoshop but not sure it was good enough for a Flickr upload. But I did post my composite of Barbara Hepworths St.Ives garden. I need to finish off some more of my composites and get them up there. The Composites Flickr group is continuing to grow and quite a few really nice shots have been added recently. I think it's my favourite group on Flickr.
I'm enjoying Phils new early morning photo and Flickr post. The images may not always be his best but the ritual is inspiring. Todays was a joy. And a composite too. Double points! I wonder if I could take an interesting picture today and upload it? I shouldn't really challenge myself like that because I'm bound to fail. Or am I? Check later posts to see.
Working at home this morning. There's a frost on the cars and rooftops and it's a lovely bright day. Jacq's just taken the kids down to school and I'm chugging through word documents (and blogging this of course). My heads back in a much better place. Busy weekend ahead. Hopefully sometime Sunday I'll get the christmas stuff down from the loft and we can start the decorations. Booked my last few days of holiday yesterday so I'm only in for the last Monday before Crimbo and that's me down. A fortnight of chillout infront of me. No chores. No shops. Just fun stuff. Bring it on.
There HAVE been things and thoughts worth blogging about this week, but my head's so mashed by work that I need to sort those issues first. Not really sure where to start as it's all really a continuation of the bad vibes that have been around all year. The Grain project is still going tits-up causing SP to been down in Winchester for the forseeable. Coupled to this, poor client/time management regarding Barts projects. These two major issues are causing a general feeling of despair in the office, even with those, like me, who aren't directly involved in the projects. It's our office they'll be closing down.
Decided to go into the office today after a day at home and a day at site. As soon as I got there I wish I hadn't bothered. Didn't do anything there I couldn't have done from home. Lasted till lunchtime then went home to some work there. Fetching the kids from school helped to cleanse the mental space.
