Catch Up... if you can

I've been writing this post since god know's when. It started out as an easy way for you guys to catch up with what I've been up to this fortnight. Unfortuantely I've yet to catch up with everything I've been up to. So I don't know how everyone else is supposed to! I really could do with some "Me time" but it doesn't look like I'll get anymore of that anytime soon.

Without further boring preamble here is a blog-lite version of the last fortnight.

Helen's Visit
Starting with my week off from work. Helen came up for a three day visit starting on the Monday. Unfortunately on the sunday night one of my water pipe joints burst and flooded the bathroom. It was one of those moments where you just think "Great" with as much sacasm as you can possibly imagine. Helen arrived before the plumber turned up, but it wasn't too long before it was fixed. Then we got down to some serious DVD watching, including Alias ,House and Battlestar Galactica.

I also introduced her to Wii sports playing Golf, Bowling, Baseball and Tennis. The overall score was 2-2 with Helen winning the Golf and the Bowling. I somehow managed to fluke a score on the Baseball to win.

Helen taught me how to cook Rissoto (if not how to spell it) so I've now been able to add that to my batchelor repatoire. If you've never tried it I can heartly recommend it. We also saw "The Good Shepard" at the cinema. That film is way to long and slow to recommend as a cinema experience. Best to wait for the DVD.

Unfortunately the visit was over all too soon by wednesday when I dropped Helen off at the airport. It was lovely to have the company for a few days ad breaks from the routine are always welcome.

Ashford

By sunday it was back to work time. I was due back at the plant in Ashford (Kent) first thing on Monday morning to finish what I started. So I drove back down on the Sunday afternoon just so I wasn't drving down at some ridiculously early time on the Monday morning. There was no snow this time and there was no drama either. Which makes a change.

Because I was sitting on the Channel tunnel there was a chance I would end up in Belgium later in the week (being the nearest engineer), however it never materialised.

Manchester
Which meant I could go visit the lads up in manchester the following weekend. Well that actually should of read "the lad" as bally didn't arrive until Saturday evening. But he had a good excuse so we forgave him. Of course there was football to be watched that weekend. Specifically Middlesbrough FC (my team) Vs Man Utd (Dave's team). It was 2-2 in the end with Man Utd getting a hotly contested penatly at the towards the end.

We lost the replay and I'm not bitter, honest!

Twelve of Twelve

New Toy
I won the weekly sweepstake at work twice in the same month. I'll tryand avoid the usual puns about buses. I've been part of the office sweepstake since I joined the company and statistically I should win once a year. But as we all know statistics like to lie. Anyway, With my winnings I decided to trawl ebay to see what bargins there were.

In the end I gazumped somebody and bought a PDA. I'd been looking to buy one for a while, but never really found one that I like (at the right price). The reason I wanted one was that now that I have a new PC at work I've been trying to organise my life using Outlook (including contacts, etc). I've been doing a pretty good job of it except that when I leave the office all the planning becomes useless. People ask - can I do this? Am I available to do that, but because I couldn't get at the PC, I couldn't give them an answer.

I hate written diaries and this way I let my PC rule even more of my life. How can I lose? ;-)

Eurovision
Oh my god! Okay, so it's typically Eurovision. The reason we don't win is that the people who voted for Scooch to represent us don't take it seriously. Okay I'll admit I think it's better than last years, but for the full on effect why don't we just enter some Butlins Redcoats?



Staff Development Course

After 5 days of work this is just what I needed. A full weekend of "death by powerpoint", but this is exactly what I had to do this past weekend. The staff development course is actually another hoop I have to jump through before I can apply to become a uniformed staff member with the ATC.

It was a residential course so I stayed the weekend at RAF Linton-On-Ouse. The course started at 7pm on the Friday and finished at 5pm on the Sunday. The days started at 9am and finished at 8pm (on the Saturday). A lot of it was "powerpoint" work, but there was the odd discussion and drill section to keep it intersting. The best bit was the bar prices in the Sergeants mess. I bought a round for everybody (10 of us) and it cost me £12 how cool is that.

Thankfully I passed the course so I can now apply to go into uniform. If I get though the application process it's back to polishing my shoes until I can see my face in them.