News is going to be in highlight form. I have made a productivity break through. I found out about Leech block for Firefox and it has meant that I can keep more control over how much I browse sites that have the capacity to enthral me. I also found that totally banning myself is not a good move, but that if I give myself a short time on those sites I actually tend to control my use of the sites a lot better. However when I ban some sites others come along that are time wasters such as Snowdays and the Haggis Hunt. The Haggis Hunt is only onto 25th January but I think the Snowdays may need to go onto the banned list. The fun sites on the Haggis Hunt are Eilean Donan and Paris. The Paris one actually is of the Eiffel Tower which looks absolutely lovely when lit up at night.
Otherwise let me think, at work I have been busy, sometimes with PhD students and sometimes with doing some programming to provide a report on a weekly basis. Really the first test of it will be next Monday as up until now I have not run it without being very much in control. I am pretty sure that it will work ok and it is just in time for the busy period of term, i.e. this and next week. One of the students came to see mr just at the onset of flu, which I am glad to report I did not go down with. However I do wish people with cold and flu would think of others before they decided to visit them.
PhD wise something interesting seems to have happened to my with respect to Chesterfield. Now that I am finally finished at Chesterfield, I am far more prepared to sit down and transcribe and also to spend time with the interviews. I wonder if some of the tension that I felt before was the tension between getting new data and trying to handle old data. The effect of stopping it has meant that I am far more relaxed at doing things like transcribing. I am also prepared to go back to diary records and start to build analyses out of these. It is far more a question of sampling the data and then trying to see what I build out of that. The advantage is that by doing this sampling I am actually starting to build a much fuller analysis. Things are happening slowly.
Also I have the Advent ring for the Chaplaincy to do again this year. I have decided I am bored with red and gold. So this year we are doing white, purple and silver. I just hope everything comes together and that includes the person in charge of lights having something other than the traditional orange or red filter. The big miracle will be if the silver ropes of beads turn up! At present they should arrive at my home tomorrow because I once again managed to fill in the wrong address on the delivery notice. If someone lets the delivery man in I might get them in time. If not I will have to do it without them. I checked at the local Sainsbury (technically one of their small shop, the equivalent to Tesco Express, but so big it would have been a full sized supermarket a decade ago) and they had none in. As they seemed to be the only shop selling them I tried getting them online. Then I messed up and now its too late. So if they don't come we will do without. I already have quite a lot of spray paint and ribbons and some white beads bought last year from John Lewis who had none in this year. I have picked six bags of greenery and had two definite donations and one maybe. Lets hope that I get more from somewhere.
However yesterday I broke the back of Christmas shopping. By that I mean I have three things left to get, but all of those are from places I would go to anyway. Given it was the next to last Saturday before Christmas, it was understandable that most coffee shops were rather full. I just looked at the queue in the Marks and Spencer one and decided against it. However having done a mamoth shop, I was feeling whacked and had to walk back home as the last shop on the list was on the way home. I fortunately decided to walk up by the Cathedral, and at the corner with Leopold Street there is a Lavazza Coffee shop which had a few customers in, only one couple waiting to order and lots of spare tables. When I left it was getting close to full and anyway placed there I suspect it is mainly a workers coffee shop. However the ability to get a coffee without even waiting and sit down and rest for a while was brilliant. I think I might check if these are regularly open on a Saturday and if so, make them the coffee shop I go to if I am in town. I have rather gone off the one that is next door to where SPCK used to be, since it got refitted. It went very up market, and what I liked was that it felt the sort of place where nobody minded if you sat in a corner, read a book and drank a coffee. Now it feels like a place where you go to see and be seen.
Today I went to Herringthorp, I think I am beginning to settle. I got a Christmas card unexpectedly off one of the elders well a couple of elders. I had not thought that I knew anyone well enough for them to think I should get a Christmas card, but obviously because I ended up working with the husband of the pair at the Christmas fair they thought it would be the right thing to do. I suppose I should have gone back for the Christingle service but honestly I was tired and I had the greenery for the Advent ring to pick, and one place I wanted to do during the light because I am not sure that drug users don't use it as a place to congregate out of watchful eyes when it is dark. During daylight it is next to a busy road and they would be observable but at night the traffic is less and the light does not really reach that far.
This week is busy with the Carol service on Tuesday and a supervision on Thursday. I intend to take Friday off so as to allow me time recover. Actually Saturday is recovery time as well, as I am planning on making home made chocolates for presents and to take into work.
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