On a wet Sunday Afternoon

A fortnight to report as I did not get around to it last week so I will try and do events based rather than a day by day account.

However the week before last was pretty mundane, the only problem was that work decided that it wanted me in early three days out of four. Therefore I was struggling to get my thesis writing done in a morning. I managed it before work on the Monday but Tuesday’s meeting was even earlier and I didn’t. I was hoping to get it done at night but was just too tired.The final one was on thursday and once again I managed it before work. It seems easier to move things around so I do it in a morning than to try and fit it in on the evening. However apart from these early starts the whole week was not overly busy. This was such a surprise to my brain it started having bright ideas. Whether any of these are any good will have to be seen but I have let other people know.  I also recorded a test for the NVivo course.

The other two notable things that happened that week are that my writers group started up again and I am glad to be back, even if I am tired in work on a Tuesday after attending on a Monday. It finishes as 9:30 which should mean I get to bed by 10:30 but it is anything up to midnight before I manage it. The other is Elle has started attending Broomhall Breakfast. She is one of Margo’s students and is looking at eating patterns with people at the Breakfast and from the Breakfasts point of view looking at its contribution to their diet. There are perhaps three groups. There are a group of people who are part of normal society if pretty marginal to it. Some are employed, quite a few are self employed, or work combining if you prefer or vulnerably employed. Then there are the drinkers, I suspect most of them are housed, they get by through camaraderie and sharing money for next drink. These are not employed. My impression at the moment is few of them are on anything stronger than drink.. Finally there are chaotics, who drop in, sometimes for several weeks but for various reasons attendance regularly is unlikely. These may or may not be housed.

The weekend was a writing one. That meant most of the time indoors but Stephen  from the Breakfast has an exhibition on at the Access Space He claims he never could do representative art but once he started working with geometric designs he has gone from strength to strength. If you have the chance just pop in and see.

The big problem over the weekend is my right hand started hurting from the use of the mouse. On Monday I went into work and it was so painful I was almost yelling out loud at time. It presented as a repetitive use injury, so I looked at the options and in the end decided to get a Bamboo Pen and Touch. I was not happy with the idea of using just a pen as that seemed to involve holding the hand in quite a cramped position and while I am happy to do that for writing, I am not sure I wanted to quite work a mouse like that. I was pretty sure due to where the pain was that most ergonomic mice which seem to be designed to take the strain off the wrist and I was not too sure about tracker balls. Well I am getting used to it. It is more different to work than I expected. Although they have programmed it to do the same sort of things a normal mouse does and more, they have also programmed it to do them in several ways. As I am finding this is essential as tasks that with a normal mouse seem the same, feel very different with a touch pad. However I was developing skill and the big thing was that my hand was not hurting any more. I am still debating whether I buy a second, at present my paln is to carry it between home and work.

Tuesday I was off to Birmingham for another supervision.The weather was dry and I even managed to sit outside in the sunshine after my supervision. The supervision was short but sweet, in that my supervisor assessment was at the top of my range  of where I was at. That meant a chapter could be put to one side while I got on with writing the next. More detail of where it is at can be found on my thesis blog. My supervisor asked me how the trains were and when I said fine he looked surprised. It turned out he had been using local trains that morning and they had been properly topsy turvy; whereas with my train coming at least from Newcastle if not Edinburgh and going onto Reading it had been little affected. The other thing was with the train to the University I just get the first available rather than worry about timetables as they are at most fifteen minutes apart.

I have finally got moving dates. The problem has been that I am not moving to Burnswick but to the Computer Centre. That meant I did not know whether the Brunswick move applied to me, or whether I was going to be timetabled as a separate move to happen between the two Brunswick move weekends. I also now know which office I am in. The result of the change around is I am going into my immediate bosses office unless something happens to change it, then it is the office next door. The other big advantage is for the first time since I started the job I will have a south facing room. I hope that that makes up for the closeness of the buildings opposite. I have asked for a big book case and three office chairs. It just suits my style of working to let a guest sit on an office chair rather than a table chair. Table chairs are lower than desk chairs.

Wednesday it started raining and although there were times on Friday and Saturday when you could get around without getting soaked, the threat of rain has been ever present. I was relatively unaffected until Friday morning, then after Broomhall Breakfast I came home to find that locally we were having another series of powercuts. However after an hour or so they cleared and I settled down to get on with things. Unfortunately that did not last. Just before 5:30 pm the power failed again. So I sat down and started reading. As it got darker I lit some candles and moved my reading position to the window. At 9:00 p.m.m I decided that I may as well go to bed, but just as I did the lights flickered very quickly on and off several times. The longest the power was on I had just got around to resetting all the clocks and was doing the last one and it went off again. The annoying thing was that everytime it went off smoke alarms from several flats would also go off. They would ring for a round half an hour. There was no point going to bed until they stopped ringing. Eventually got to bed, woke again at 3:00 to 4:00 a.m. when the lights flickered on several times briefly. However there was no power when I got up. I used my dongle and checked the internet and found it was not expected on to 11:30 a.m., so I replanned my day and went to Costas for an early coffee and then a leisurely shop around town. Got back around 12:30 but the power was still not on, was just checking to see how long it would be when it suddenly came back on. That was good news as the estimated time on the webpage was 7:00 p.m. Northern Grid also put a note through my door saying I was due a refund due to the power cut. We have had an awful lot of power cuts recently and I suspect the blue huts opposite on Broomspring Close have something to do with trying to fix it. This power cut seems to have done less damage than the one a month ago.

At the end of Low Week

Monday I spent the day with my parents, Dad has a long history of wanting to stay at home on bank holidays. On Saturday his watch stopped working. Throughout Sunday he was regularly asking my mum the time, he was not going to accept either my Mum’s watch which is one on a chain or my gran’s old wrist watch even if it was just to wear around the house. I suggested that we should go into town on Monday to get him one. His first objection was that the shops would not be open. When he got told to stop talking nonsense shops had been open on bank holidays for years, his ruse went to the weather which did not have a good forecast, even though I offered to drive the car down. In the end I spent some of the morning sorting Dad’s computer, not that there was much wrong. One task was to try and get linkedin to work for Dad, in doing so I am realising how big an education task the URC has. There are good Reformed sites out there, take Reformed Worship for starters but just because a body had “Reformed” in its title does not mean that I or my father want to align ourselves with it. The Reformed Theology Institute) is one case where I am wary. The theology there is Reformed but it is largely of the very conservative sort. However a number of URC people seemed to think it was a good idea to sign up to that group on LinkedIn.

Tuesday was a day I missed due to a migraine. My cleaner was due to come when she discovered I had a migraine was happy to come on Thursday instead. It through me slightly in that it largely affect my tummy rather than head but as treating it as a migraine cleared it, I am presuming it was.

In work this week I finished the next draft of the NVivo document. I must admit I still have one or two bits to add, but I think the most important thing now is to for me to put together the first of the videos. This is going to be one of the few that involves both teaching and also using the software, it is not the first of the videos in order. I will also need to keep it short and I have had to order a book to do it. Otherwise I am teaching myself confirmatory factor analysis as I really need to start encouraging people who are dealing with scales to use that technique when appropriate.

Friday I went to the breakfast, there were only forty there but as the volunteers were down because it was so far out of University term the kitchen was busy, also Sarah was away with it being the week after Easter. Fortunately Joshua was there and he really keeps things tidy in the hall when he is. It was also obvious when I was there that there was help needed to get the hall s straight. Particularly as the Ethiopian Orthodox church which hires our premises was celebrating Good Friday. They wanted to be in from 10:00 a.m. or earlier but as breakfast serving only stops at 10:00 a.m. that was not possible. Fortunately people decided to leave slightly earlier this week than last week and two of the regulars Dave and Peter stayed to help clear, so we were clear by 10:30 a.m.

I then spent the rest of the day working on my location chapter, I have sent it to my supervisor and I hope it does not need another draft. On the other hand I am realising that I am beginning to know what theory I need to put into my chapter on community. I also found that I am better concentrating on editing if I have music on in the background. Saturday and today I have spent time writing up another section on my community chapter and I am beginning to know what theory I am going to put into the chapter, there will need to be bits on system theory and on organisational anxiety, something on ordinary theology. Then need to make it clear how these feed into the flows of the congregation around of themes. Also start to move to the way the congregation addresses people.

On Friday evening I went up to James and Jean for a meal. It is a very good relaxed evening and one I look forward to. They are going up to Melfort next week, this time without the family, but their daughter and family have managed to find a house fairly close to them and thus the family is getting more and more settled in Sheffield. Just hope that their son-in-law finds a post in this country soon that is an easier commute than Cork.

Today for the first time I was back on the sound system, this might have been slightly earlier than attended but John a church member has had stroke and though physically he seems not to have too much problem it has affected his memory and he is certainly not well enough to do it at present. Any way it was not until I got to working the system that I realised that people had been trying to get it right and thus fiddling with the levels, only they kept turning things down. I was therefore tuning it during worship, it appeared that the preachers diction improved when in actual fact I was upping the treble and mid so as to remove the bass boom that the system had developed. The preacher managed to choose three songs from Common Ground, one of which we did not know and the theme of his sermon was anniversaries. That said doing the sound almost means I am slightly disconnected from the actual meaning in the service as I am concentrating on whether I can hear what is being said.