The lost week

Well, a whole ten days without turning up at the office and I feel worse for it. When I left on the Friday, I had my ankle still playing me up and my hip going into spasm on a regular basis. By the Sunday, the ankle was a bit better and so was the hip. On Tuesday the ankle was almost gone and the hip was obviously going to get there as well. On Wednesday we went to visit friends who live on a boat and the walk and climb was a struggle but we made it, there and back. On Thursday, our cockateil fell off the perch and had to be given a decent burial in the rubbish bin. By Saturday, I was trotting to the boys room a lot, eight times in fact, with a severe case of the runny squirts. I took to my bed for most of the day, mainly because it's next to the bathroom. By Sunday I was a bit better and today I am back at work and somewhat glad to be so.

Today is not a good day to buy a hard drive for your PC due to the floods in Thailand. Eggs in one basket springs to mind................





This is not Feathers, this is an anonymous male photographed by Dan.                RIP Feathers

Aaaaaaah, Soul

We picked up the new car this morning and reality hit me as I put our things in the boot. This is just too easy! I have never before experienced the thrill of owning a new car, or any car, with so little hassle. I know that, strictly speaking, the car belongs to Hazel, not me, but I am the driver and the feeling is awesome.

I spent my lunch break going through the handbook whilst sitting in the car and managed to set up the Bluetooth  system for my phone. I have never used a voice recognition system that is so easy to use and works so well. The next thing I do will be to set up Hazels phone as well. Even the radio is simple to tune. I do realise that there is a fair chance that all modern cars have equally good electronics but this is the first time I have used this stuff myself and I was impressed.

Finding her feet........

is our Sal. She signed on with an agency on Tuesday and has an interview for a full time job today so fingers crossed. We have done a bit of video chatting using ooVoo and, as all worked well, I will be moving some kit into the kitchen in order that Hazel can talk to her. Yesterday was bad, Hazel had so much pain I had to stay home as well to look after her. It's awkward because I like being with her and looking after her but, all the time, I am thinking I should be at work. Yesterday has come out of my leave so no real problems but I wonder what will happen when I run out of leave?

A new lifestyle

Sal has arrived and is settled in. We had a fairly tearful phone conversation last evening but she is much better off than most young people looking for a job in London so she will be fine. I have been looking around her neighbourhood courtesy of Google Earth and I am very impressed. Just a casual look reveales so many intriguing places to see and all within a short walk. The temptation is great to visit and spend days just taking photographs.

One more time......................

Another weekend come and gone, we only saw Samuel for a brief time as he had been naughty and was sent home early. As I was not having a very good weekend anyway, this came as a bit of a blow to me. We learnt on Friday that the new car will be ready for us to collect this coming Friday morning so Hazel is really looking forward to that. I am seeing it as yet another step closer to losing our camper. On Sunday, I made pasties and these were the best yet. I got everything just right and they turned out a treat. Perfect appearance, perfectly cooked and great taste. I must get around to writing down the recipe soon because I suspect very few people outside Cornwall and South Devon, apart from Russ of course, will have ever eaten a real pasty like these.

On Friday, I received my Kindle copy of the latest 'Discworld' novel, "Snuff". By Sunday, I had finished it and put it back in the archive so I could assign it to Sally. She will, undoubtedly, begin it tonight.  

If I was reviewing "Snuff", I would say that it's a fascinating story with mainly well known characters in a very new situation. It knocked me off balance for the first few pages until I got into the rhythm of the story. As usual, Sir Terry manages to imbue the story with morals and themes based on our world but subtly changed to a Discworld perspective. Guess who the Goblins are? Despite my first impression, this may well become one of my favourites.

Image via Wikipedia

Sal is off today to begin living in London. She has a flat share in Soho and, although she has no job yet, she has enough money to stay for up to six weeks looking for one.

Defying logic

Yesterday, I told of the painful patch on my left leg. I have just discovered it seems to be getting better..........

This probably has nothing to do with the research I have just finished on our university implementation of SharePoint 2010. I have spent a few hours over the last couple of days testing how the 'Alert' option works within the Tulip and Scolar system. In short, it's, as always, very logical (For a given definition of logical) and seems to do what it wants to do. What it doesn't do is what the users want it to do. I can understand why but I can also understand the users frustration when it doesn't do what they expect. However, thanks to my research, at least I now know the limitations and strong points of it.

Let's get medical

This is a bit like the old joke about the chap who went to the doctor and asked about a pain in his hand. "Does it hurt there?" he was asked, "Yes", "Does it click if I move your finger like this?", Yes", "That's funny, I have exactly the same symptoms, I wonder what we have wrong with us".

So, I have a very tender area of skin on my left leg, just below the knee and slightly to the outer side. Not very big and no outward signs or redness but extremely painful when rubbed or put under pressure. I have just looked on the Internet for any conclusions and found dozens of people with almost exactly the same problem. Many have been to their doctor only to be told that they, the doctor, have no idea what it is. It could be stress or something viral, shingles maybe but no one has an answer yet. Good, innit?

Maybe, possibly.............

The eagle eyed amongst you may have spotted a small change to yesterdays post. It seems I didn't get the full story until late yesterday so I was happy to set the record straight this morning. The second and, hopefully, last box of books from The Book People has now arrived. More Christmas presents for lucky boys and girls.

Hazel off to the specialist this afternoon and Sally with her. Sal didn't get the job she interviewed for last week so when she returns to London at the weekend, she will be job hunting in earnest.
I had a phone call yesterday from my old friend Bob. He has moved from his old address after goodness knows how many years and is now living just around the corner -ish from me in the Barbican area.. We plan a get together soon.

And wait................

Well we got a reply of sorts about the car but not until today. and Sally isn't due to hear about the job until today either. But we had a good time with Corey anyway. Yesterday, they told us they couldn't get the car very quickly but they would let us know this morning. And so they did. According to the distributors, there were two silver diesel automatics available in six weeks and nothing before. So Hazel said a reluctant "Yes" to one of them. Five minutes later they call back, the distributor has sold them. At this point, our sales lady got a bit bolshie and told Hazel she would sort the distributor out good and proper. She went to her boss and told him how desperately  Hazel needed the car and he then rang the distributor and, lo, he managed to find another dealer with a red model and hopes to have it by the end of the month.

Fait accompli

We went for our flu jabs at nine on Saturday, intending to go straight on to do our weekly shop. Well we detoured a trifle and went to the Kia garage at Brixton in between. We checked out the Soul and found it to be a very nice car with much better access than any other we have looked at. After shopping for the week, we took it home only to discover the letter of acceptance for Hazels disability living allowance had arrived. So she rang around the two branches of Rodgers to find out the exact situation and, to cut this off at the neck, we went back to Brixton and ordered the Soul2 diesel automatic in red. We even got a test drive in exactly the same model and we loved it.

In the meantime, Sal was travelling back from London to pack her things and go back to London where she is sharing a flat and may even have a job by now. Ians birthday today and we are looking after Corey so his parents can go out for the evening and have a quiet meal together.

As one door closes...................

Image via Wikipedia

We are waiting for a decision from the powers that be about whether Hazel qualifies for the Disability Living Allowance. We had our eyes on a very nice Hyundai i30 5 door diesel automatic. Sadly, the new prices for 2011 - 2012 have placed it out of our range now. The i20 is still OK but it is quite a bit smaller and we are both quite tall and need good leg room. So I have been looking at the other cars again with particular interest in the new ones. When I was looking before, I was impressed by the Kia range but they didn't come into our price range for the size we needed at the time. There is now, however, a new Kia available which looks a much better proposition, The Soul. This looks very nice indeed and has a lot of headroom by the looks of it. It ticks the same boxes as the i30 and also fits the original parameters we were looking at. We need to have a look at it but, so far it may be our best option. 

Traumatic fun?

Just spent a difficult couple of hours looking at yet another SharePoint problem. The customer wanted to have a particular display style for her 'Announcements' web part. Easy peasy.............not. Every time I changed it to the way she wanted it to be, the whole darn page re-positioned itself. So I got the boss involved and it did it for him as well. Eventually we came to the conclusion that it was one of the site graphics causing the problem, shifted it and lo it all worked properly. When I contacted the customer, she expressed joy and said, "I always thought there was something funny about those pictures, they didn't work properly for me either.....".

Things to come

A pleasant weekend with the children again. We had Samuel and Keane on Friday evening and Saturday morning. Then just Samuel until the evening and also the following morning. Sally went off to Lunnon on Sunday and dropped into a bar to hand over a CV and landed a trial out of it so she may be ok there. The final hearing of the court case today, all ended well. We should be able to start work on the house within the next couple of weeks with luck. I wasn't there but the judge was, apparently, very helpful to all concerned and made sure all parties were happy with his time scale. Now, our main worry is that Ian and Lulu get a reasonable home to move into whilst we work the oracle on their old one. The whole job may take as long as ten years but, eventually, it will be theirs again.

The last of series Dr Who on Saturday was pretty good and there looks to be a good show starting on Sky1 this evening, "Terra Nova"  is produced by Spielberg so it should be pretty good. It's claimed to be the most expensive TV series ever so I expect to see the money on screen.