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Monthly Archives: July 2012

Cubs and Dads camp

I had an excellent weekend camping with the cubs. We went out to Henlow for 7pm on Friday and were picked up again on Sunday at 4pm. In between we crammed in so many activities I am still struggling to focus on Wednesday. Some of the leaders usually take the Monday off after camp and I can understand why.
As a rule, we were not allowed to go to bed until after all the cubs were definitely asleep. Given that lights out was not until 11pm anyway and they were all hyper, I did not get to bed until 1am Friday and Saturday night.
Couple that with getting up at 7am and an exhaustive program with 8 and 9 year olds and I was understandably shattered at the end. I’m getting too old for this shit.

Still, it was great fun and we got to to do the climbing wall, archery, rifle shooting and raft building as well as number of other games and excellent camp food and it was well worth the small amount paid.

Sleeping in a tent was surprisingly comfortable but then I shared a 4-man tent with one of the other dads and we had a “bedroom” each so plenty of space.

We were lucky too that the weather was so great. Spending so much time out in the sun was a rare privilege and I did catch the sun a bit too much on my face I think.

Highlight for me was the climbing wall I think. Katie was one of only 2 cubs (9 in total) who made it all the way to the top. She is like a monkey. She made me very proud. I also made it to the top and only a few dads managed that so I was very pleased too.

We had great fun with the rafting too splashing each other as much as possible using the paddles. Wouldn’t have been so much fun if it wasn’t so warm.

With the rifle shooting I was again very pleased with Katie on the second set of 5 shots when she understood how to use the sights and got all 5 shots in the scoring zone.

And I’ve got a nice bruise on my left elbow from the string of the bow when it twanged in the wrong place and missed the arm guard. Bloody hurt.

Also, on the weekend they got on a bit of a recruitment drive and tried to get me involved with being a leader for the scout group. Lots of flattery ensued “you’ll be great at it”, “you’re an outdoors type of person”, etc and I admit I am really keen to get involved but just cannot give over the time needed to do it. I am sure it would be really rewarding and think I can probably give a lot but I don’t see my family much as it is so it’s a no for the moment.

Camping

I’ve been working from home all week because Lesley has been away but today I am working from home because this evening I am off on a camping trip with Katie and the cubs. It is Cubs and Dads camping weekend. We are only going to Henlow so not too far fortunately and I have been keeping a close eye on the weather forecast. It appears that the weather is finally going to improve next week and I am desperately hoping the dry weather will start from now. I don’t fancy camping in a soggy field.

It is about 20 years since I last went camping and I am a little nervous about it. I am sure it will be good fun though and I anticipate eating lots of burgers and sausages over the weekend and getting virtually no sleep. I imagine I will be quite tired come Monday morning.

Working from home

Only 2 weeks left at JL and I am in the unusual position of working from home for the entire week. This was agreed some months ago before handing my notice in because Lesley is off on a school field trip for 4 days near Dartmouth so I need to do the school run etc. This is also part of the reason for the leaving date I am working towards of the 27th July as it would have been pretty unreasonable to expect my new employer to honour this agreement.

I have always found working from home quite difficult. When you are a developer I think it is quite easy as you can just get on with the task in hand and when I have specific tasks it is quite easy too. But most of the time lately I am talking to people, answering questions, explaining stuff etc and that is quite hard to do from home. My main aim this week is to try and do as much of a brain dump as possible of stuff that I know that I think other people may not know and also to volunteer as many people as possible to cover any gaps.

I expect to be drinking lots of tea and listening to some loud music for a change. Hopefully getting some decent work done too… rather than just writing a blog of course.
Better get on with it I suppose 🙁

My first post

So I’ve finally done something with my website. I first registered the Roosterville domain name in 1999 when I needed a company to do some contracting work but I have failed to do anything with the website since then.

Then I saw the blog of one of my colleagues http://angelajwatling.com and she told me about WordPress. How had I not heard of it before? I can’t believe how easy it is to set up. But I am not going to go on a sales drive here. Especially as it doesn’t actually cost anything. Maybe another time.

I just wanted to get my first blog post nailed down and see where it takes me. I am not a hugely opinionated person so you won’t read me going on about this that and the other. I guess I’ll just post occasionally about things that are happening in my life and things that interest me.

So this evening I am sat at home, trying to finish off a deployment for work. Seems to be taking a long time. Not sure why I am doing extra hours when I am leaving in a few weeks. I am just so dedicated. Just over 2 weeks to go until I leave John Lewis having been there for 11 1/2 years. I am off to be a solution architect at Sainsbury’s and it sounds like there is plenty for me to be getting on with there so I am unlikely to be bored.

Right I am going to leave at that as a first post, just to get something up on the website. Still playing around with the settings and themes and things so the look may change around a bit.

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