Anyway having looked at my diary I find I was in Birmingham for a supervision last Monday. I was in a state of panic going as I had forgot to print out the papers. I tend to do this in work. I had two options, one was to print them out in work before I went and the other was to go down there and print them out. I decided that in this case the extra hassle of getting into work did not outweigh the hassle of using an unfamiliar printing system. So I went into work. Just as well I did as both the rooms, I use for computing when I am there, were shut. This only meant therefore I did not get to check my email, rather than have to panic about finding a room and then sussing how the printing works. The other thing I normally do is a bit of a literature search. Checking if there is any papers I should be reading but I have learnt a trick so I can do that at home without going through a complicated set of menus. I took my umbrella and just as I was setting off for the station home it decided to rain. So my umbrella was truly wet. I am also learning that 5:00 p.m. train is very nice thank you. The people who are at a business meeting in Birmingham all get the 4:30 pm train and the people who work in Birmingham all get the 5:30 p.m. train so I get this one in between and there is usually lots of space on it!
At work we have had the results of the Voluntary Severance Scheme. It has not quite got the number of redundancies the University wants but when the fact that older staff were disproportionately represented in the scheme it might do. CICS has been quite heavily hit and what we are loosing is some people with a wealth of knowledge. I am quite sure that managers are going to find things don't happen and wonder why, then realise that the staff that did them have gone and no one has been delegated to do them. The good thing to come out of this from my perspective is that two of the staff who are leaving have decided to set up a walking group that goes for walks once a month and asked me whether I'd like to join. It was just as I was starting to get restless over walking again and wanting to be out doing it, so the timing is perfect for me.
Then Billy Anne made one her bi-annual visits to Sheffield. She said would I organise a days walking before she came, then she said would I organise it for the Sunday 16th August. Well St Andrew's Chesterfield was already holding a walk on that day, so I saw no reason to organise a second. So at 11:30 ish we headed out to Chesterfield to meet up with others on the walk. I made a mistake of thinking that because the roundabout which we turn off from the A68 was a messy last week, it would not be this week (the work on the new Tescos store is going very rapidly, which was the cause of the problem, and I just was over optimistic). The queues were worse, stretching all but twenty yards to the next roundabout. If it had been twenty yards longer we would have taken an alternative route. So we had a long wait and were later than planned at getting there.
We went the scenic route after us following Alec out of the carpark and me then realising he was probably heading home. So back to my map reading as the SatNav was failing to give me Clumber Park (arrgh). We got there, via Coal Aston which is definitely not on the route and then skirted Worksop. Fortunately I was better at navigating around the grounds and we got to the car park that they were meeting in and joined them for lunch. Then we divided into two groups, one group sat around by the cars and otherwise entertained themselves; the rest went for a walk around the lake. Well almost I don't think we got into Hardwicke village but crossed on a bridge before that. The pace was a gentle amble, the sun shone, there was an ice-cream van half way around and then swans and grebes on the lake. At one stage trying to get pictures of swans I crouched down and my left ankle which was bearing my weight decided it did not like this so plonk me down with undue ceremony. No injury apparent at the time but I woke with a stiff back the next day. John, Tricia and David's son thought it was hilarious which it probably was but only he would tell me. We ran Dorothy and Audrey home so were not dependent on my map reading skill and had a commentary and tour all the way. Including arguments about where the former military training college was and being told to stop on top of a narrow bridge to admire somebody's garden (which was delightful) Pictures of the walk are up on Flickr. .
Monday, August 17, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Brief description of busy weeks
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.
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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