First post of 2007

How ridiculous. I haven't posted in almost 3 months.

I'm starting to notice a theme here. Every post I make starts with a comment about how long it's been since the last one.

Anyway, I was inspired by my friend, Dr Ben Cosh, who has just started his own blog at http://www.normaltrouble.blogspot.com/. If he can do it, so can I. I'll be interested to see how long he keeps his up to date for.

So what should I talk about? Work is tough, life is tough, I could do with a break! We're going through a very difficult patch at the moment, as we've been idiotically short-sighted in regard to the boys' schooling. We hadn't really planned at all, and we're now faced with a choice between local schools which we're not 100% happy with, or having to move house to get within the catchment of a better school. The heart-breaking thing is we went to look at a school which we absolutely loved yesterday, but we're about a quarter of a mile outside the catchment area, so we can't get in. To quote my American friends, it really sucks.

I don't know which way we're going to go at the moment, but if I remember, I'll keep this blog updated with the latest developments over the coming months.

On the positive side, Max finally learned to walk last week. He's extremely cute - he still walks with one hand in the air, holding hands with the invisible sky god, a remnant from when he used to only be able to walk while holding a grown-up's hand. I don't think I've got any pictures yet - I'll try and get some this weekend. In the meantime, I'll post a couple of other recent pics.

Ill

Monday 27th November 2006. Lying in bed with a sore throat and a temperature. Noticed I haven't blogged for a while. Not much else to report, so here's a recent pic of my lovely boys.

No surprise

So, I haven't posted here for over two months. Plenty has happened. Holiday in Mallorca (not Majorca!) was great - Max learned crawl while we were there. Since coming home, we've had lots of birthdays. For mine, we went to see Avenue Q with Nick & Mila, which was excellent. For Ursula's we went for a posh meal at Almeida. Max had his first birthday party last weekend, and Jacob has his third coming up this weekend.

There's plenty more, but I ought to get on and do some work.

Fair's fair

Following on from the last post, I thought it only right that I should post a pic of Jacob too, this one from a carousel at Finchley Carnival last month.

Exploring Blogger

I've never really had a chance to figure out how this Blogger thing works. I've just noticed the button where you can add a photo, so I thought I'd post one of my gorgeous Max.

Only 4 days to go

Only 4 more days to go until we go to Majorca. I'm getting really excited now, as I could really do with the break. Thank god they downgraded the security threat at the airports yesterday. I was really dreading the prospect of travelling without hand baggage.

This isn't spam!!

Since I last posted here, my blog got locked. Apparently Blogger's automated spam detection system had flagged this blog up as potential spam. Despite their message saying they would review it within one working day, it took 3 days for it to get unlocked. It wasn't exactly a major crisis - it's hardly as if I have anything that needs to be posted with any urgency, but it was irritating nonetheless. I can't imagine what could possibly have made this blog look like spam. Their automated systems must be pretty rubbish.

I'm typing this now because I really can't handle any more Excel for one day! I've almost got the Autumn/Winter stock control system sorted, although it's a shame I couldn't get a decent system up and running. Hopefully it'll be more feasible for Spring/Summer.

A new post

I suspected this would happen...I posted every day for the first three days, and then nothing for two weeks.

To tell the truth, I would probably post more frequently if I had anything interesting to say. There's plenty I could talk about regarding what's going on in my life, but I can't imagine that if anyone in the big wide world happened to stumble across this blog, they would be even remotely interested. Maybe I should ignore the other people and think of this more as a personal diary. It might be interesting for me or the kids to look back at in years to come.

So, what's been happening since Friday 14th? I can't remember that weekend - it was way too long ago. Oh yeah, I think we had a barbecue at mum and dad's, to which Ursula's parents came too, which was nice. Last week we finished watching series 5 of 24: we had saved up the whole series on the Sky+ box so we could watch it over a shorter period of time. It works so much better that way than watching it over a period of 6 months. It was a great series and I'm really looking forward to the next one. But seriously disappointed now it's finished, as there is literally nothing else on TV at the moment (except Lost of course).

Friday we went to Tillingham for the "Tillingham Flower Show" which is more like a village fete, which happened on Saturday. It was quite nice actually, and Jacob really enjoyed himself. But let me state for the record here and now: I will never again drive to Tillingham on a Friday afternoon. It took me something like 3 and a half hours for what should be a 90 minute journey. If I ever think of doing it again, hopefully this blog will spring to mind and remind me not to be so stupid.

Monday was Grandpa's stone-setting, which was very sad. Immediately afterwards I had to leave for the airport to go to Germany for the Spring/Summer 07 sales meeting. Rather glad I missed Monday actually, as it was so unbelievably hot there, I may have melted. I got back late on Tuesday night.

It's now Thursday, and all I have to say today is that I am very disappointed in a certain old friend of mine who lives in the northern reaches of Scotland [name deleted out of respect]. I'd always thought he was a decent chap, but it turns out I was wrong. I don't expect I'll be talking to him again. I'm now left with a rather large problem on my hands, in that I have a season's stock to plan, and no stock control software with which to do. HELP!

I invented blogging!

Since setting up this blog, I've been getting a strange, familiar feeling. Then I remembered. I invented the blog! OK, that may be overstating the case slightly, but take a look at this link that I found on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

It's my first ever website, built in the early part of 1996, originally hosted on the minuscule amount of space we were given on Bristol University's servers. I decided to keep a virtual diary, with links backwards and forwards between pages. It's pretty primitive - but then there was no graphical web design software in those days. It was all hand-coded. It looks like I only managed to keep it going for a couple of weeks, but I was quite the pioneer, wasn't I?

I wonder if this blog will keep going for any longer.

Overexcitement?

Despite yesterday's excitement about Ursula setting up a blog, she hasn't actually published it yet. Who knows if she ever will?