I just shouldn't be allowed out.

As many of you know I recently got a new phone. My new new phone will be arriving this week after I broke the screen on the old new one. I'm not sure how. I think I sat on it.

This is brilliant. old but brilliant.

YAY! Dangermouse! Woooo!

Dangermouse is coming back to TV :-)

2 hours and thirty minutes, or 150 minutes, or 9000 seconds or 9e+012 nanoseconds

That's how long it took me to get to work this morning. Thirty minutes to get to the bottom of the hill. 2 hours to go about 4 miles across handy cross roundabout.

I've named various traffic cones on the route. Please say Hello to Jack and Tom when you pass them.

I think it's the first time I've been caught up in real gridlock. Something else to cross off the list of 'things to do'.

Then when I got to work, and got myself a coffee the milk was off… Things were just improving. Then I dropped my pen into my mug of herbally infused water.

Please can we rewind and start today again?

Just for Martin...

Martin is the best example of blokeness I have ever seen.

And this is not written under duress. And I'm sure his girlfirend would agree.

He's also asked for semi-revealing photos.

This is a semi revelaing photo...

They're married!

ok, so I should have posted this sooner, but hey. On the 19th August, two of my best friends got married. To each other.


I was one of the best men. (I like to think that I was the best best man).

So yes, I was on the stag do. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

The wedding was great. I've attached some photos. We all look very grown up. It was really weird because it was a very local wedding so everyone knew everyone else. Half of us had grown up on the same estate (that's essentially how I know both Natalie and Ryan). Natalie looked beautiful - she always does, but particularly on the day.

We all drank a fair bit at the reception - although not as much as we did the ngiht before. We were playing drinking games with Ryan's Dad. I have no idea what the rules were I just drank when told to. Dave was in a far worse state than me the next morning.


I think my tankerd was empty.


Me and Charlie.

Only downside of the evening was a minor onw - I lost my bag so had to crash at Ryan's parents house that night as I coudln't get back into my parents house. I also lost my phone so if anyone has been trying to contact me recently I'm sorry. My old number will be active again tomorrow when it's ported across to a new phone and network (which actually has signal in my house!)

Cold, Not Cold, Cold, Not Cold

It's amazing what you can learn when you're out with Friends. This weekend I went to Greenbelt.

I will never be the same again. Although, with luck a hot bath ought to sort out my back. Man was not meant to camp. Perhaps Alice and I should have camped so that we weren't on slopes such that we both ended up in the same corner of the tent by morning. On the other hand, that sounds a little dull.

Greenbelt was good. I kept bumping into people that I've not seen for ages. I was working in te ticket office again so I also met lots of new people who are all completely mad. There was a beautifulo moment where some people were pretending to be automatic doors at one end of the box office, and we were checking wrist bands while salsa-ing at the other end. Punters generally looked pretty scared - but we took lots of money - more than the target by LOTS. We rock.

Got to see some good bands - YFRIDAY, Sounds of Salvation, One Nation. Some interesting talks - Timothy Radcliffe, Norman Kember
and eat some great food. Although I'm still craving salad. And vegetables.

If you've not been to Greenbelt it's well worth a look. Don't expect a life changing experience, but it's good fun. And a lot less crazy than Reading festival. Which, incidently, my brother survived.

Incidently, the title refers to a discovey that a very intelligent PhD student made in the ticket office. When the door is open - it's cold. When it's closed - it's not. When you repeat this observation over and over again people start to go crazy. Here's praying that Alice's write up is more intelligent...

BBC NEWS | Have Your Say: Have UK airport delays affected you? ...

Second comment down.

Genius.

BBC NEWS | Have Your Say: Have UK airport delays affected you? ...: "Wednesday, 16 August, 2006, 11:34 GMT 12:34 UK "

Should I be worried...?

I just opened the office door to someone from another office. He works in a different field to me - Cleanwater instead of Dirty. Yet when I introduced myself he said 'oh, I know that name... not sure why'

It could be good.

Or it could be very bad.

Either way I appear to have a name for myself.

Things I have recently learnt at work:

To reboot - to remove the computer's shoes and later replace them. The smell of sweaty computer feet apparently works in a similar fashion to smelling salts.

Also, apparently there are right and wrong responses to someone saying that their baby son has put on 2lbs in two weeks. Right - "wow, he's getting big." Wrong - "oh yes, well I can do that too…"

My kinda God....

Spot the odd one out

President of the Institution,
MD of the company,
HR director,
My business unit leader,
Another business unit leader,
Senior Technical Manager,
Future Leader, Inspirational Leadership candidate,
Technical Expert and my supervising engineer,
Me.


How did I get myself into this one? We’re all going for dinner at a posh hotel and discusing the state of the industry.

Important things not to say: "Not sure why I'm an engineer really" "well, I suppose it is an ok company" "well, you'd expect that from HR" "not that bothered about getting chartered really"

This is going to be interesting. :-s

Branded with the cross.. and a seatbelt

I went to Norwich over the weekend. It's a great city! We drove up on Saturday morning and it was beautifully sunny. It takes 3.5 hours to get there and I had the window open. So I arrived with one red arm, a red neck and chest… and a small white cross and a white line where the seatbelt sits. As I arrived at Annette's it wasn't too bad. By the time we went out Saturday night it was really very very funny. Thankfully by Sunday it had all calmed down as it wasn't actually burnt!

So what did we do on Sunday? Go to the beach. I'm still not burnt, but you can tell I've been out in the sun …

Norwich is great though. Well worth a visit. It has the most random street names I've ever seen. Upper Goat street, Lower Goat street, Golden Ball Street, Rampant Horse Street...! Seriously.

And they have the best waffle house in the entire world. Mmmmmmmmm. Could barely move afterwards but oooooooh it was good waffle.

Two people face each other across a crowded room. There is no other way to resolve this, they turn and walk away from each other - 50 paces each.

They turn

They fire

"So can you do Tuesday?"
"So can you do Thursday?"


Diaries at dawn.

Did I mention I was going to do a very long walk?

I did it! I took part in the Playtex Moonwalk on the 20th May which is a 26.2 mile walk. The walk takes place overnight and involves 14000 women and 1000 men all wearing decorated bras. I started walking at 2335 on Saturday night and finished at 0735 on Sunday. By which point it is fair to say that I hurt. Quite a lot.

However, as the photo to the left shows, at the beginning I was quite cheerful about it all.






The event was amazing, although it did take me the best part of a week to recover. My name was in the Daily Telegraph so that makes it all worth while :-s I've also raised about £800 which is a far better outcome. Thanks to all who supported me…

To prove I did it here are some photos. And no, I'm not doing it again. Nor am I running it next year.
The Team bra decorating night. Bras and Butterflies everywhere!

The team before we started, left to right, Mary, Barbara, Bethan, Janet, Judith, Helen. All in matching pink bras with lots of butterflies on them!

And we all got to the end, Left to Right, Bethan, Helen, Barbara, Janet, Mary, Judith. Note the amazing pink tent in the background - they called it Playtex city and it was the first time I've ever seen a baby pink circus tent!!

After this photo was taken we all went home where I slept for 16 hours out of 24.

More photos from the telegraph

Productivity.

Given that I am only productive in the morning OR the afternoon I believe that I should be allowed to leave the office at lunch time if I've achieved anything in the morning, as experience suggests that I won't get anythign done all afternoon.

The fact that I would quite like to listen to England drawing the cricket is nothing to do with it.

IQ tests

Got sent through a link to a IQ test. The numbers are meaningless to me, and to be honest, half the test involves spacial awareness and identifying patterns which I ought ot be able to do for work anyway, so it's a bit of a nonsense but this one comes up with a comment about you that is quite interesting.

Your unusual talent of being equally good at both mathematical and verbal skills, paired with the way you learn through experience, makes you an Inventive Inquisitor. You understand the world by "learning through living" and are able to teach others by taking them through actual experiences.

Most people search their brains for previously stored information that might help in a given situation, but you are open to an unusual amount of change and take things as they come and see things as they are.

What is interesting is that it actually sounds like me... although there is an implication that I don't search through my brain enough! :-)

(BTW I have an IQ of 127 according to this test)

I like people.

This weekend I went up to Birmingham. By train. Now, trains are great. However, the complete chaos of knowing when and how you're going to get to your destination does allow for a certain amount of unexpected excitement in a journey. And that's putting it nicely.
Got up to Brum and pottered along to the pub where I was meeting a mate for lunch. It was closed. Felt like a student all over again as I pottered around Selly Oak with a Rucksack and then sat outside the pub waiting for it to open. At this point a different mate turned in to the pub to turn the car round, enabling me to organise myself into another pub trip later in the day. Really felt like I was back at uni . Although, of course, I did more than socialise in the pub at uni (I also worked in the pub).

I organised my weekend around food, so Saturday was pub lunch with Andy, and Balti with Dave and loads of others in the evening and Sunday was roast dinner at Newman House. On each occasion it was great to socialise with people and actually chat about how things are with them. I suppose it's inevitable that it's easier to meet up with people in Brum when I have no other responsibilities or demands on my time than it is at home, but it is a little frustrating. Need to get my priorities straight.

Newman House was great too. Mass at Newman is one of those things that never fails to inspire. Maybe it's because I don't have to worry about organising anything there these days! Had an interesting sermon too, which I actually managed to remember (which is unusual for me - I just don't learn from being talked at. I take in pretty much nothing at all.). It was all about how after his conversion Paul was so enthusiastic that churches he visited desperately tries to get rid of him. It was an image that is very easy to identify with, and gave me some interesting things to ponder about being overenthusiastic and trying to do too much.

Lunch at Newman is always good for a laugh too, and the discussion over lunch pretty much sums up the gathering. We chatted about married priests, female priests, condoms, captain pugwash, apples, alcohol, cathsoc, how to cook potatoes, Bach (the profane works), abortion, how to find and use the Catholic Catechism (which was only got out once, along with the Canon Law) where the cables in the building go, and if anyone knew where the milk had gone. I really miss the kind of randomness that Newman house has always had. There aren't that many places where you can meet complete strangers along with old friends and have that kind of variety of conversation!

Michelle and Chike's Wedding

Wow. It's always great to see lots of old friends, and Michelle and Chike's wedding on Saturday was a case in point. I knew most of the guests!

Michelle looked beautiful and Chike looked handsome. A lovely couple. Halfway through the reception they disappeared and reappeared in Nigerian traditional costume and cut the cake making it a real blend of the two cultures that they combine.

I did a reading, and managed not to mess it up or trip over the altar steps, and made it through the 'till death do us part' line.

It doesn't seem real to see Shell married, but then we're all growing up now and she's definitely found her Mr Right.

And I'm still looking for that millionaire….

Grandad's funeral

Grandad's funeral was on Friday. It was a really nice service and a beautiful church. Mum used quotes from here in the eulogy which took me by surprise, but apparently the image of Grandad with a glass of wine and the New Scientist was one that most of the congregation could relate to.

But despite the funeral being a time to say goodbye to Grandad it seemed to me to be more about the rest of us. It was far more to do with recognising a landmark in our lives and understanding that things had changed for us in a way that could not be reversed. Life has changed, but then, it always does.

It served as a marker to say 'what am I doing and why am I doing it?'
To which the only answer can be 'ummm….?'

Grandad's obituary is here