Evacuating buildings and meals out and that's just Tuesday!

There was slightly more happening this week as I did not sleep through a couple of days of it. Monday was largely uneventful although I got to my writing group and thoroughly enjoyed that. However I may well have to go this week without anything written, or bring one from a couple of weeks back which is in my opinion really weak.

Tuesday morning I was organising for the middle of my three SPSS classes having missed last week. I got up there and only four of the class remained. I am not sure whether this was because they forgot, life intruded or they all fell foul of a dreaded lurgy. However this time we had a fire. Oh not in the room we were in, just one in the building but it was the Hicks Building and we were on the top floor. It is a long story of why my department's teaching room is on the top floor of the Hicks Building, partly it is history and partly it is inertia. There was no real panic, first assumption was that it was someone testing the alarms, second one was that it was either a practice or a false alarm and it was only when I went back in to tidy the room after getting the all clear, I overheard porters talking of the smell of acrid smoke. So there must have been a fire somewhere in the building. Fortunately I had finished teaching for the day but the building catching fire is yet another new one on me. I had to create an evacuation plan on the spot and I may have sent people to the wrong fire exit as I sent them automatically to the main stairs rather than the set of stairs at the other end of the building which is possibly nearer. In the Hicks they have installed a lift for use in case of fire by the disabled, but it is so poor that Derek Collins has been recommended to come down after all the rest down the flight of stairs. Part of me wonders if it is due to some students trying to use it when they are able bodied.

In the evening I went out with CICS Prayer Group to Las Iguanas to mark Lynn and Cliff's retirement. We all made it except Mike who had managed to get his wires crossed with his wife and was needed at home to look after their children. The set menu was not as good as a few years back, when you could get several course that were imaginative for a very reasonable price, the set menu was largely standards that you can get at a lot of other places. They also had cut their fresh fruit options to one but then as I had taken a lactase tablet I could have IPANEMA MESS: Layers of sweet guava, creamy mascarpone & crushed meringue, I might even have got away with it without the tablet, but it would have been pushing it. Malcolm a former member of the group who retired about a year ago was there and looking well despite battling quite serious stomach cancer.

Wednesday was the first meeting of the NVivo users group, a group which I have thought of as necessary for the University for years but which I did not know any way of setting up. I started teaching it last April and it just seems to have attracted people. I will run at least three courses this academic year (1 run, 2 booked) and from one of the courses last year, someone decided something needed doing and got onto someone who knew who to contact. So the group has started. I have since created a mail list for them and need to get started on updating the course.

However by thursday a query I had been given by Patrice had started to bear fruit. Many years ago I wrote reports on the data from Petrmetr. Then people stopped using them (licensing software got better and the techie boys decided that immediate reports were better for their part). The result was that I dropped it. There is no point in doing a report if no one is going to look at it. Only we are back needing to have the reports again. Fortunately the software is still there. However I no longer have the ability to easily access the data. So another member of staff writes a report to extract the data, then I do some wizardry on the data and produce the graphics and measures we actually need for people to make sensible decisions. Meanwhile on the morning my cleaner was doing her fortnightly clean (or the family was as both her sister and mum came to help). The mum has the same attitude to my bath mat as my mum and asked permission to put it out.

Friday was a fairly normal day. I went to the Breakfast first thing, and had bacon and mushrooms on toast. It looked fairly busy although on later inspection people had just chosen to spread themselves around the room. Sarah was having a conversation with Phil on one table, on another Janet and Jean Dickson and a couple of others were talking. Legend/Peter was on the third and decided to call me over to talk to him. So all the tables were in use but people were spread out. Got back and did some more transcribing. I hope I can finish a second interview this month by transcribing on Monday and Wednesday. Then I must really look to getting them out. Went into work, and even though I had only one thing planned for the afternoon I ended up jumping in a number of different directions. So it was after five before I left.

I got in did a quick turn around and went back out again as the Dicksons had invited me for dinner. The traffic was awful even though it was approaching 6 p.m. when I got to the bus stop. It was not helped that it decided to rain, not a full scale Sheffield downpour but it was still pretty wet. So there was a wait for the bus. I think if I had known how soon the next would be I would have got it, but the traffic did not seem to clearing, although it cleared within minutes of getting on the bus, and the idea of being somewhere dry was rather tempting even if it was crowded. I was damp by the time I got to the Dicksons. It was pleasant after the business of the week to sit down with friends. Although when Jean decided to send me home around 9p.m. I was more than willing to go.

Saturday my parents came over. Mum had been struggling with sewing up the cardigan she had knitted me and had wanted during the week for me to help her with exactly how the pieces fitted together. The problem was that she'd lay them out in from of her and say something like does this go so to this. As I had no idea what either "this" was nor what shape they were it was very difficult to answer. She had asked my sister about it during the week but Cathy had been racing around keeping her household on track, she did not feel as if she had had a proper conversation about it. However she had sorted it by the time she had got here and I just had to try it on. She still needs to knit the collar and the facings for the jersey and I got a button for it while they were over. We also went down town, partly to get me a replacement bath mat, which dad decided was to be the surprise part of my Christmas present.

Today I went to Herringthorpe for both the service and the following church meeting. The thing that struck me once again is how much new stuff they are taking on. It is a very "can do" and "go ahead" congregation. This included voting to support the setting up of Street Pastors in Rotherham, voting new elders, choosing a charity to support as well as quite a debate about how to charge for use of the buildings to charities. The congregation got really quite involved in the deciding how to charge charities. It was one of those cases where church meeting over turned the decisions of elders. I came in and went to bed and slept for another couple of hours.

This coming week, I am going to try going to their bible study on Tuesday and also have a trip down to Birmingham on Thursday plus the two mornings typing up transcripts. Then next weekend hopefully a quiet weekend in.