Right lets me see about news. Work has been busy, there are both a number of PhD students who are coming fairly regularly to see me for advice plus the department wants some specific statistics for the end of August. I have had to cut back the specific statistics as the link with the database has been lost and we could only handle data for the last year. I finally got the full data sets a week ago on Thursday now all I have to do is to make sense of them. With one of them the first act must be to reduce radically the amount of data stored to that which I am interested in. I wonder if I had better do a Grep Search before reading it into any other package. Grep is a powerful searching tool which is available free and I think only myself and one other member of the department use it.
The weekend before last I went to my parents. The Saturday we spent at Dunham Massey. The idea was to go around the garden and take pictures. This was so I could get more used to my new camera and Dad would actually take some pictures on his while I was around. You can see the half way decent ones I got. The day was warm and we did not get rained on, the cafe was not crowded and we were not caught up in a massive traffic jam, oh and the parking wasn't bad either. So the day scored a complete zero out of all Dad's worries.
The next day we went to Parrswood for morning worship. The numbers were down and they had no organist that Sunday. Not that this phased the congregation who went back to the old cantor led singing quite easily even for hymns where they weren't familiar with the words. Colin acted as cantor, I think on the grounds that somebody had to and given that the choice of elders seemed to be him, Roger Smith (great in the rythmn section but perhaps not so good at the tune) or Ruth, made sort of sense. The preacher was a student studying at the college from overseas. His sermon was different to what we had expected. What was going to happen was that my parents were going to go home then Ruth and I would walk up to the Heatons then Dad might come and pick us up by car. Well we hung around talking so long that mum found the kitchen and the washing up was done by the time they were ready to leave. We then had Sunday lunch and talked until late afternoon, before running Ruth home. I got the train back.
The week feels pretty mundane, I think I had an elders meeting on the thursday that went on and on for hours, just a lot of getting through the business, nothing very exciting, the elders approved a budget, recommended the accounts and agreed aims for the church to go in the annual report. I also went to the Dicksons on Friday for a meal and a talk. They were asking me whether I preferred a 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. start, I said after two years of getting over to Rotherham for a 10:30 start both times are going to give me a lie in!
The weekend was writing. The process of writing is interesting, unfortunately I had a thick day on Saturday when my brain refused to string two sentences together for most of the day. I nursed it along but the rate of work done meant that I did not get to Chesterfield on Sunday. Pity.
Last week again was pretty normal although they have just built a new common room and kitchen at work in the building I am in. This means the old one will become a meetings room. The new one is down stairs, so I bought myself a cup with a lid on it so I can take my coffee upstairs. Actually at the moment they seem to be making a small meetings area just outside my office. There is at present a watercooler, a round table and a chair, all it needs is a few more chairs.
On wednesday I had a migraine. The first one for four weeks, now if the next one could be in six weeks time I will be very pleased. Otherwise just standard work at the office.
Yesterday I went to Leeds for a shipmeet I had organised. The organisation worked by people suggesting places and me looking for a consensus so we ended up at Tropical World which is a set of buildings that try to recreate various tropical zones and have the animals, birds, fish and insects that live there. It is just beside Roundhay Park. Needless to say having planned a day that was ideal for a wet British summer Saturday we had brilliant sun all day! About eleven of us all told turn up, people coming from Hull and Durham as well as Sheffield and York. A group of us met at York Station and then got the taxi out to Tropical World, where we met up with the others. A different selection got the Taxi back to Leeds station at the end. I took my small camera so you can see the pictures.
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