It is still hot

As the title suggests, it is still hot down here in the South, and I understand that even in some of the darkest corners of our great kingdom there is sunlight and warmth, the like of which the natives have not seen in many a year.  Even down South, where we tend to enjoy these temperatures all year round*, we are finding things just a little bit sticky.  The plus-fours are back in the winter storage trunk, and I have moved to my summer cravat collection.

Joking** apart, at times I have been so hot that, as I open my eyes, I expected to see a swimming pool and a Pina Colada.  To find that in fact I am staring at two computer screens and a rather fetching poster of the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A is, to say the least, rather disappointing.

We are away this weekend down in Lyme Regis, with David and Samantha and Brad and Angelina.   The following weekend is free, and the following we are Riverside Lakes with Brad and Angelina.  The weekend after that we are on our Summer holidays.  Not a bad vista for the next month or so.

Right, need to get back to work.

Enjoy your sweating, speak soon.

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* I am of course joking, we sometimes have to wear a cardigan in the colder months.
** Joke?  What joke?

And . . . relax

Nearly forgot to post.  Just going to get Maggot 1 from Scouts.

Both Maggots had their school reports back, and both did very well.  We are pleased and proud, so can we just go on holiday now pls?

Have a great weekend, speak next week.

The Sun

It is still here, maybe not as hot as the weekend, but very much welcome.  Long may it continue.

The only downside to this is that my local Starfleet office has an interesting policy with respect to air conditioning*.  The centre of the building is a server room, perhaps it could even be called a small data centre, in which are a whole bunch of IT kit that generates heat at a rather alarming rate of knots, and so requires constant cooling to ensure they are able to function as designed.  So far so good.  The issue is that the air conditioning units are quite old** and/or underpowered, so that when the temperature exceeds a fairly modest outside temperature, the units prioritise the IT kit over the human beings.  On such days, by the afternoon we all feel like Steve McQeen sitting in the tin shed*** for the day.

As I sit in my office at home, with the windows open, and just a small laptop, a second screen and a hi-fi creating the heat, I can report that all is well with the Scobi heat-balancing systems.  I may even have a cup of tea in a minute****.

Enjoy your day, the weather and life.

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* I told this to my NHS friends and their rather disinterested reply was "Air conditioning?  What's air conditioning?".  Oh well, you can't cool all the people all the time.
** In fact a colleague who lives locally tells me the locals in the office area have complained about the noisy air conditioning units.
*** The Great Escape for those too young to remember, or those who are not drawn to watching fifty year old films over the Christmas period.
**** Had to Google the old adage "to cool down on a hot day, have a cup of tea" and the general consensus seems to be that while it makes you sweat more, thereby increasing the cooling effect on the body, the overall effect is only to increase cooling to remove the heat that the tea put in to the body in the first place.

Where was the Friday post?

I blame the weather.  The amazing sunny weather, and its associated heat, plain wore me out and so I just orgot to blog.

I would have told you that we had a fairly quiet weekend, going out on Saturday night, on the town no less, with David and Samantha for Samantha's birthday.  What I could not have told you, however, was that I would get just a little bit drunk - I blamed the weather and the novelty of actually going out - and I can also confirm that the cut by my eye was caused by my head making contact with the table salt in Zizzi's, though quite why my head was that close to the table is unknown and the cause of much conjecture.  I expect I needed to tie my shoelaces or something.

It was a fantastic weekend for sport, of course, and the Scobi clan had the tri-folds open to the garden and the TV on the Wimbledon coverage, and what a Wimbledon it was.  The man done good and the whoops and shrieks could be heard nearly over the other side of the allotment.  What a match, and what a great victory.  The amount of tennis currently being played in the Scobi household has increased tenfold, so the legacy will certainly live on here.

This week is normal, and really just another week to get through until we can go on holiday. 

Have a good one, and speak again soon.

Hot

A lovely hot and sunny weekend, not too much on, lots of loose ends tidied up.  That was just the kind of weekend we needed.  The Summer holidays are tantalisingly close, and before they start we have a weekend in Lyme Regis to celebrate the sixteenth birthday of our Goddaughter*, and we also have four days at Riverside Lakes, a wonderfully natural site where we had a most magical time last year, and weather allowing, will do so again this year. 

It is hard not to put too much expectation on our Summer holiday, and in fact I think we are failing, because we all cannot wait for it to come.  The prospect of a European tour would, I know, make most people start applying for overtime, but we are really excited and cannot wait to get on the road.  We have just purchased recliners**, and I anticipate that the 1pm to 3pm siesta time slot in Italy will be well used by me.  

Only other comment of note is that for those that read these pages, you may know that my fishing rod snapped on my last trip.  The*** one that got away.  Ever since, I have been on a campaign with the finance manager to get a new one, and she is not so far very supportive of any such purchase.  In fact, she was at one stage heard uttering "it is your fault for trying to catch such a large fish", which for anyone who has fished, is about as wrong as it is possible to get.  Anyhow, I have found the rod I want, and it is modestly priced, but better than the previous, with a bit more strength to it.

As part of my preparation for Riverside Lakes, and as a further example of my slow descent in to OCD-type tendencies, I have also been using Uncle Google to educate me on the vagaries of good quality hooks, leader lines and general lines, as well as the correct knots to use to avoid "losing the big one".  As you can see, I take this stuff very seriously.  I now have some large, eyed hooks (to take the large bait), some fluorocarbon leader line (all but invisible to the fish), a new hook-tying device and a couple of fine knots memorised, all in the pursuit of presenting the bait well, hooking a fish when the bait is taken, and not losing it as I play it in to the landing net.  With such dedication, who knows where things will take me.

Final story is about Maggot 2.  He is currently obsessed with tennis, already spending the millions he plans to make winning championships, though perhaps a bit more hazy on quite how he plans to get there.  He has a lesson 11-12pm Saturday, followed by his swimming lesson, and the first thing he wants to do when he gets home is have a game with his brother in the garden.  Anyhow, we were watching a film, The Big Year, a very pleasant family film with Jack Black, Steve Martin and Owen Wilson (Hutch to me and LO, the little fella in Night at the Museum for the Maggots) as bird watchers****.  At the end of the film, the TV switched to whatever channel was on the TV at the time, which turned out to be Primal Scream at Glastonbury.  At the end of the song, Bobby Gillespie shouted to the crowd "come on you f##kers", at which point Maggot 2 said "I don't want to be a tennis player any more, I want to be a singer, so I can say that".  Priceless.

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* I know, we were there at her birth, not quite literally coz that would just be wrong, but within a hour or two of her entering the world, and now here she is, about to turn sixteen, having just been to her prom looking like a very grown up woman, in fact looking just like a young version of her mother.
** And if that does not cement the image you have of me as being a boring, typical 'vanner, then I don't know what does.  All I can say is that I deserve it.  I am not saying that I go for comfort over style every time - I am not yet buying my shoes from the back of the Sunday Times supplement - however I am saying that, as part of this big tour, we are taking the opportunity to spend some of our holiday budget on things that will be useful beyond the holiday itself.
*** there were two actually.
**** An unlikely premise for a good film I grant you, but fun nevertheless.

Sinuses

Just a footnote.  Or nosenote.  I have had a headache, ranging from bad to head splitting, though not, I am guessing, anywhere near migraine status, but at times bad nonetheless. 

This headache started Tuesday afternoon, and on Friday morning, as I write this, it is just starting to fade.

My conclusion yesterday was that it was my sinuses.  Without giving too much yucky detail, I had some tension each side of my nose and the occasional "gurgle" from these positions, so me and Uncle Google reckoned it might well be related to my sinuses.

So I nipped down to the chemist yesterday to get some Sinutab and some menthol crystals (menthol, steam, bowl, towel) to help, and I think they have worked.  There was a slightly unpleasant moment an hour after taking the first Sinutab when I had a nasty taste in my mouth, which I concluded was my sinuses draining.  Anyway, just to report that I seem to be feeling better today.  Hurrah.

And . . . relax

We have a "quiet" one this weekend.  Just the Maggots sporting clubs, followed by lots of nothing.  To be precise, nothing involving others, so we will be suiting ourselves and getting on with homely stuff.  I, probably, will be mowing the lawn, having fed it yesterday just before the rain.  LO will be administering to the much and many activities that need doing to keep the household functioning, and the Maggots will be reproducing Wimbledon in the garden with their "two garden chairs and a rope" net and sticks and Crocs and even a skateboard to mark the lines.

We seem to be stuck in a bit of a rush at the moment.  It really does feel like those times when you are "abroad with work".  It may sound romantic and exotic, and may even draw a "lucky bugger" from some, but for those of us who have done it, we know that it is all about transport terminals, taxis, hotel rooms and business premises.  All exceedingly functional aspects, but none designed to be admired or to deliver any sort of aesthetic pleasure.  This is how our life feels at the moment.

The truth is, it is about a month until the Summer holidays, which, as I have said before, means 75% of the Scobi household stop their school-based activities.  We are all looking forward to this, and to our fantastic holiday.  My only fear is that sometimes, looking forward to something too much makes you forget to enjoy the now, and also when you get there it is not nearly as great as you had imagined it.

So, I wish you all a good weekend, and hope that you can practice some mindfulness that allows you to find pleasure in the present and not just in the future.  Sounds like good advice, may try and take it myself.

Until next week.

Well, that was certainly a weekend

We had a great weekend.  It was a bit stressful getting to Brad and Angelina's, but once there, we had fun.

The evening was all as described on Friday, and the time of my nodding off was, perhaps somewhat to do with a well placed coffee at around 10.30pm, very late, and in fact I went to bed at the same time as everyone else, which was the ungodly hour of 0130 hours, approximately an hour after all the Maggots finally got to sleep. 

We had a leisurely awakening with lashings of tea, egg baps and cake, and left around midday somewhat refreshed, but basically all totally knackered.  This should have made for a very long day, however we managed it well, even stopping at Whiteley to get Maggot 1 a new shirt for his leaving disco.  At home, there were two, yes two, messages from Scobi Ma Senior about her broken answer machine on her newish phone.  Apparently "your father pressed some buttons", the regularly repeating theme of blaming the other, so I nipped round to get it sorted, and it seems to be broken so will be returned to the nice people at John Lewis today.

On return, we were getting our bodies clean and in to lounging clothes - onesies for the others, a smoking jacket and cravat for me - to watch the final of The Voice.  Being recorded, we could skip all the boring recap bits and got to the finale in record time.  And what a surprise it was, too.

This week we will be mostly doing all the usual things, without any nasty extras, so while it will be busy, we hope we will get through it without any major upsets.

I wish you a good week, and speak soon.

And . . . relax

This week has been frantic, much more than usual.  LO had several extra commitments, and I have been at a conference one day and in the office a couple of others.  I missed the Maggots at their sports day, the final one for Maggot 1, but that is the nature of the modern working man.

I had a great conference yesterday, as I blogged yesterday.  They are always motivating, in as much as you are reminded that there really is a big, interesting Starfleet out there, and being dragged out of your trench to look to the horizon is something I need to do fairly regularly.  This conference did that for me.  It also gave me a few ideas of new areas of the business to investigate.

This weekend, we are going up to Brad and Angelina, with David and Samantha, and all the associated Maggots.  The Maggots love these weekends, giving them a chance to disappear upstairs and do whatever it is they do, record their farts or some other similar nonsense.  We also love it coz it is a chance to catch up with our friends, and spend a leisurely evening getting slowly drunk, enjoying good food and good conversation, and, for me at least, nodding off wherever I am sitting when the tiredness shutters close down.

Have a great weekend, and speak next week.

Conference

At a conference, very good day. Lots of updates on tech strategy, and for me personally, lots of motivational ideas to give a kick up the @rse, maybe even a wake up call, which on a double word score is unbeatable for w###-word bingo, in driving my career forward. Coz as we all know, if you are not going forward, you are going backwards, and that is all without getting my ducks in a row, since there is no point running up the rhododendron tree until the rats have fled.  BINGO. 

Tuesday

Tuesday's child is full of grace, and so am I.  Modesty is another one of my attributes.  As is my attribute.

Anyhow, Maggot 2 had a hospital appointment today and that went well, even if, at ten to ten, I suddenly realised I did not know where in the hospital we needed to go for the ten fifteen appointment.  Poor planning undoubtedly, and a quick call to LO, actually, a quick four calls, one voice mail and a text to LO, confirmed that she did not have her phone on her.  I rang her school, but that was engaged, so in panic, I decided to turn up at the hospital and hope that some divine intervention intervened.  She may not have been completely divine, but the nice lady on the main reception did have a computer and was able to look us up and, wonder of wonders, point us to the appropriate department.

A quick jog over to the other side of the hospital and we were presenting ourselves at the reception window.  As it turned out, we needn't have rushed since they were "running a bit late".  Nevertheless, we were out of there in under an hour and Maggot 2 was skipping along the main corridor in to his classroom twenty minutes later.

We do need to have one further follow up blood test, but all seems to be well, and very thankful are we in the Scobi household.

Pain

Pain is something to which I am allergic, and unfortunately as the years pass I seem to have more and more little niggles with which to contend.  There is my lower back, caused mostly by living to sedentary a life, and there is my upper back, caused by my sedentary life, and there is my overall back that is caused by my sedentary life.  This is all well known by those in our circle, and of little consequence because:

• I sit on my bum for a living
• I do not do sufficient exercise
• I am tall and I am getting on a bit

Some of this, as LO is oft to tell me, I could choose to do something about, however some of them are, in the words of Fletcher, an occupational hazard.  The mitigations are back exercises, standing up from time to time and getting off my fat @rse to do more sporting endeavours.  Time is, however, another unfortunately limited resource, and having a good excuse for every occasion is also in the mix.

Of late, I have been getting a new, more keenly felt pain, in my tooth.  The history of our dental provision is fairly checkered, with us having trouble finding a suitable National Health dentist for the Maggots, the elder who has OK teeth, the younger who does not.  This difficulty led us to what A&E call the best dentist in the area, and to get the Maggots with him meant LO and I going private.  This seemed OK since we have very little teeth problems.  Very little until we went private, that is.  Since going private a couple of years ago, we have had more treatment between us than in the previous ten years.

Anyhow, that is the history of dental provision.  My current pain is on a tooth where I have already had a filling replaced, which we thought was the cause of the pain.  It isn't, however I also had an x-ray and that did not reveal further decay or a crack in the tooth, however apparently cracks are very hard to see, so it may still be that.  This means I am faced with making an appointment for a checkup that will, inevitably, lead to expensive and painful remedial work.  I can sort of handle the pain to my wallet, but the pain to my head is something with which I really do struggle.  The cheapest option may well be to remove it, and while that is LO's worst nightmare, it is fairly well down my list, with the pain of any other of the options featuring higher in the list.

So, should I book an appointment or not.  Hmmm.  I will come back to you on that.