Late

Exceedingly late start for me today, as I woke up with a bad head - something that is unusual for me in the recent past - if I am going to get a migraine I usually start off with a fuzzy head and go down from there, but this time it was full on painful from first thing in the morning.

So, laid low until mid afternoon, but since getting up and about have started to feel a lot better.

Comeback

Good night at White Hart Lane tonight.

2-0 down on aggregate (including an away goal) and not much more than half an hour to go against Dnipro, and we manage to score three and go through.

Nice one!

Company

Today I worked from home in the morning, before heading off to Canterbury for a meeting in the afternoon. Home reasonably early so Jake and I went down to the driving range to hit a few balls (sadly busting my driver into the bargain).

Also this evening I have painted two green kites.

Takeaway chinese for tea. A few dents in the healthy eating this week, but at least I am cycling some decent distances.

Here's a picture of some of the company I had whilst working at home this morning.

Andy's Mum

Here's a very interesting theory - that it was Andy's Mum who discarded Jessie all those years ago.

See here for more details (as well as a site worth investigating in a bit more detail - need to go back and study The Pixar Theory properly at some point).

Tired

Driving home this afternoon, along the slow roads back from Eastbourne, it occurred to me that I was really tired, and unsurprisingly, it took me a lot longer today to cycle 12km compared with yesterday's 11.5km.

As I said to Nicky earlier, it is probably karma, and a message to tell me that a Lazy Morris from Toast (fish finger sandwich) probably wasn't the healthiest of lunch options!

Party pics

At Nicky's party last November, lots of people were taking photos, and I haven't been very organised in getting hold of any copies (as I was one of the few people taking none at all!). Kate took some super pictures, and shared them with us in an on-line album (which I have yet to pilfer properly and get onto flickr), and Carolyn and Chris also did a great job of getting some good photos, which they have shared with us through the wonders of photo stream sharing.

So here's one of all of us taken by one of the members of staff - a strong contender for going in Nicky's birthday frame.

Seasalter

Took the dog down to the seaside for a run-around today, and walked along the beach at Seasalter. Turns out that there is a right mixture of properties along there - some new and swanky sea-front villas, nestled alongside some ramshackle huts! A quick search on Rightmove shows that a decent building plot (with existing bungalow to be knocked down) goes for about £650k!

Barley had a lovely time, but did get rather muddy as it was low tide, and so was given a bath when we got home, so she is all shiny and clean now.


Other activities this afternoon were playing table tennis with Jake, and carefully masking up canvas to paint kite and dart shapes.

This evening we were out for dinner with Carolyn and Chris at the Farm House pub in West Malling.

10.5

21 / 2 = 10.5.

And that's quite a few km if you ask me.

Off for a lay down now!

Go go

Inspired by something seen in the background of a photo in a home magazine, look at what Nicky has created.

I think it is fantastic!

KJAM

Continuing on from yesterday's reference to digital sorting out, I was thinning out some files on my work PC today, and came across a folder of photos. My first smartphone (if you could call it that) was something called a KJAM which I had about 8 years ago, and before it bit the dust I managed to copy photos taken on it onto my PC.

Having rediscovered them today, here's one of my favourites!

MIA

Things that have happened today:

• Nicky and Jake went to the bank to open a new bank account for Jake - he is old enough to have an account with his own debit card now.
• I went to meet a new client (taking over from Neil) in Maidstone. They gave us a tour of where they were flooded over Christmas.
• Nicky hasn't been feeling very well and has retired to bed with a poorly tummy, aches and pains.
• Jake and I went and hit a few balls at the driving range.

This evening I've been sorting out some of the filing on my computer (I know, what a riveting life I lead!) prompted by the fact that Dropbox has been complaining at me for quite some time about being nearly full.

Sorting through files on my computer, I found some notes from June 2012 that had been made in a word document on the computer for later uploading to the blog. Well, as far as I can tell, I don't think I actually ever got around to it, so before I delete the document, here it is:

It’s 9.55am on Sunday 3^rd June 2012 and I’m sat on my bed in the Miami International Airport Hotel. Meet the Press is on the TV in the background, and outside (according to my rather dirty hotel window overlooking concrete airport roofs) the sun is shining, and if the TV reports are to be believed, it is in the 80s already.

I’ve just got off the phone with Nicky, and all of a sudden it seems like a long time since I left home, and an absolute age until I’ll get back in ten days’ time. I’m keeping an eye on channel 33 on the TV for the international departures, but there’s no mention of my flight just yet – hardly surprising as it doesn’t leave until after 2pm, and so I am killing time by jotting down some thoughts. I’m not connected to the wireless here (separate charge) so will probably copy and paste this into a blog at some later point. Nicky has already told me what gate my flight will be departing from, thanks to her AA app that she’s downloaded to her phone.

I am wondering about the timing difference between here and Costa Rica. I thought that it was 3 more hours, bringing a total of 8 difference to the UK, but looking at flight times I’m not so sure now. The local time to local time flights there and back show a one hour difference (roughly leaving 2pm arriving 3pm) on the way there, and a five hour difference on the way back (leaving 4pm arriving 9pm). Sounds like it must be a three hour flight with two more hours of time difference.

  

Impressions of MIA are mixed. The airport terminal building is arranged in a U shape, with airside being on the outside of the U. The enclosed space in the middle of the U is taken up with some huge multi-storey car parks. The hotel I’m staying in is built on top of the bottom of the U. The corridor on the way to my room has some old framed photos of the airport on the wall, from which it is possible to see how the airport has grown over the years (no doubt with the American luxury of space to grow into unlike the London nightmare of wedging new things into Heathrow, arguing over second runways knocking down local villages at Gatwick, or coming up with far-fetched estuary plans), and the photos show that the hotel has been here for quite some time.

And, looking around me, I probably could have guessed that! The hotel is fine, but it does feel a little tired in places. Breakfast wasn’t the most impressive meal I’ve had. I arrived at the 7^th floor “Top of the World” restaurant - a bit of an exaggeration perhaps – Top of a low-rise building yes, but hardly top of the world! It boasts about its amazing views of the airport, but again this is a bit of a stretch – as I’d already discovered from my room, views across concrete roofs don’t really do it for me. The restaurant was almost deserted, and I wasn’t greeted on the way in. One of the waiters eventually showed me to a table, and in their laziness, they had arranged all of the occupied tables close to their waiters’ station so that they didn’t have too far to go. Let’s just say that the waiters could probably benefit from a customer service course: sniffing as they walked past me, dumping a pen on the table without a word when I asked for one to sign the check, and generally non communicative. It looked like it wasn’t just the waiters who were rather less than customer-focused, given the way one of the kitchen staff wandered out to have a chat with them, wearing his grubby Batman baseball cap!

Oh well, I don’t suppose I will be using the restaurant for breakfast again, as my flight out on the way back is rather earlier.

I went for a look around the airport yesterday evening to work out where I will be checking in for my Costa Rica flight, and looks pretty straightforward. Each airline has their own check in areas around the U shape, and AA are clearly the largest carrier from the airport, as they have all of the left hand side of the U for their desks, with separate areas for domestic (next Saturday) and international flights.

So, time now to put things back into my bags, swap over books in my carry on luggage (started and finished one on the way over yesterday) and head off to find a check in desk.

Booking

Nicky has booked a table for dinner out with Carolyn and Chris on Saturday, and I've just taken a quick look at the menu.

Hungry now.

Stats

Right, the stats are in for just over a week now, and it does indeed seem to be pretty clear cut that weekends are far more active than weekdays, mostly thanks to dog-walking, sporting with Jake, and shopping trips.

The steps for the last eight days have been:

Sun - 12,324
Mon - 5,141
Tue - 5,381
Wed - 4,688
Thu - 9,634
Fri - 2,672
Sat - 10,305
Sun - 11,666.

One other thing from today, Nicky has printed and framed a couple of pet pictures, which now look rather nice on the windowsill in the conservatory.

Saturday

I am sat on the sofa, and Coco seems fairly determined to help me with some typing. She is sat on my lap and is licking / chewing my fingers, making blogging a bit of a challenge.

Jake went to Bluey with Jo today to see Robocop at the cinema. I dropped them off, and did a little bit of shopping myself, as well as reading the paper whilst enjoying a cappuccino, before coming back home to feed the animals.

Nicky was up at her Mum and Dad's for most of the day helping with a bit of a kitchen sort out, and this evening we've been catching up with a few Sochi highlights.

Other than than, a fairly uneventful day. I seem to be doing a good job of proving with the fitbit that I get more exercise at the weekend than during the week. Perils of a desk job.

Cycle

Blogging from the exercise bike - just putting in my 7km cycle before bed.

Late

Bit of a late finish today. Been to London for Neil's retirement dinner. More tomorrow.

Wet

Surely the storms and the rain have to stop sometime soon, for the sake of all of the people flooded out of their homes, if not for the rest of us. I was out for lunch today, and got soaked getting back to the office, and then my drive from the office to the Lexus garage to pick up my car after its service was a pretty wet one as well. Parts of the A264 were underwater, and one or two bits had turned into a stream where the water was running off the land next to the road (presumably because the land was so sodden that the water was no longer soaking in).

This evening I have been investigating kites and darts - I suspect there may be more about those in a later post!

Smoking

The government are considering banning smoking in cars when children are present. Encouragingly  it passed a vote yesterday, and the news today is saying that it could be law before 2015.

This sounds like great news to me, but it has been interesting to hear some of the arguments made by those who oppose the introduction of this new legislation.

It'll be hard to enforce
This is undeniably true, but then, does the fact that a law is hard to enforce necessarily make it a bad law? Surely, there are lots of laws already on the statute books which are hard to enforce but which we all agree are appropriate to have. Doesn't the whole fall-out from the Savile scandal tell us that certain offences are hard to deal with for all sorts of reasons, but we still need clear laws about what is or is not acceptable behaviour. In an analogy related to cars, I think that there is a pretty clear consensus that  making it illegal to travel in a car without a seat belt on was a very good idea. Given that there are millions of car journeys every day in the UK, it would clearly be very hard to enforce this law effectively, but the fact that we have had it for a generation now means that the vast majority of people comply with it, and it doesn't need a whole lot of enforcing. Hopefully a law about smoking in a car with children will also result in a change in behaviour in the same way, and it'll become socially unacceptable to light up when there are children in the car.

What about civil liberties?
This is a tricky one, as we start to get close to the whole "nanny state" debate. We could argue that smoking should be make illegal on the basis that it has been clearly shown to be harmful to health, or on the basis that we all, as a country, pick up a pretty enormous tab in terms of health service costs to deal with the consequences of smoking. But then shouldn't all sorts of other harmful activities (unhealthy eating, boxing ...) be made illegal as well. So, let's not go there and let's accept an individual's right to smoke if they wish to. But freedoms have to be balanced against responsibilities, and whilst we may wish to give people the freedom to smoke if they wish, smokers should also have a responsibility to minimise harm done to others as a result of their own harmful activity. Scientific study has shown undoubtedly that second-hand smoking is harmful, and that the concentration of smoke in the confined space of a car (irrespective of whether windows are open) makes passengers at an even greater risk. Surely in the vast majority of cases when smokers are in a car with children, aren't they most likely to be their own children? And wouldn't we expect parents to do everything they can to avoid any harm coming to their children.

Why stop at cars?
The nay-sayers suggest that perhaps this is the thin end of a wedge, or that the proposed law seems peculiar because it singles out car travel, rather than other situations when smokers may be in an enclosed space with children. Well, so what? If we can agree that there is a benefit to stopping smoking in cars when children are present, then shouldn't it be seen as a positive step in the right direction. Just because it deals with one bad situation without dealing with others shouldn't distract from the fact that there is an opportunity here to deal with one bad situation. And that should be seen as a good thing.

So, roll on the introduction of the new law.

Middle age

Middle age is having a choice between two temptations and choosing the one that'll get you home earlier.

What most people consider as virtue, when you reach middle age, is simply a loss of energy.

Inside every middle-aged person is a younger person wondering what happened.

Middle age is when you turn off lights for economical rather than romantic reasons.

When you reach middle age you can't do anything every day.

Just remember, once you're over the hill you begin to pick up speed.

Middle age is when your age starts to show around your middle.

The first sign of middle age is the discovery that the volume knob also turns to the left.

Middle age is when you still believe you'll feel better in the morning.

At the age of 20, we don't care what the world thinks of us; at 30, we worry about about what it is thinking of us; at 40, we discover that it wasn't thinking of us at all.

Middle age is always fifteen years older than you are.

The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.

Bloggie

Over the course of this weekend, I have been having a bit of a sort out of the cupboard in my study. It was full to bursting with a fairly random assortment of stuff, including a few boxes that had been in there since we moved, a whole load of old IT kit and wiring, and goodness knows what else.

Well, it is looking in much better shape now, and the recycling and rubbish bags are pretty full for tomorrow's collection.

One of the things that I found was Nicky's Bloggie video camera, and so this evening we have been enjoying holiday videos from summer 2011 when we went to Orlando with Owen. Given the name of the camera, I should probably see if I can upload one and post it here sometime soon.

Also today I have been fitbitting, and thanks to a dog walk and a couple of kick-arounds with Jake (not to mention my 4.5km on the exercise bike) I've not done too badly at all. According to the latest stats I have done over 12,000 steps, walked just under 10km, and burned 2,700 calories. Doesn't seem too bad to me, although I don't suppose I'll manage to do quite as well tomorrow.

New toys

I am already a very lucky birthday boy - even if it isn't quite the big day yet!

Today I've set up my two Sonos speakers - and a huge thank you to everyone who made a contribution to the fund - and they are extremely good. Great sound quality even from the Play 1's, and so easy to access my iTunes library and all sorts of other music sources.

Nicky and I had a trip to Bluewater - to swap my coat for one with a smaller number of zips - and whilst we were there I was telling her about "fitbit" devices and how cool they are, and then when we came home Nicky suggested to Jake that he should give me his birthday present. And it was a Fitbit Flex! I am part way through setting that up, and it is currently plugged in to charge up fully before I get stuck in properly with it.

Lucky me!

Helpers

I am working from home for the first half of today, as we will be off to London later to see the Del Amitri concert.

And, as you can see, I've had some helpers making sure I get through the necessary work.

Cycle challenge

Time to explain the keep fit challenge that I have set for Jake and me during the course of February. We both have to ride (on the exercise bike) the day of the month x 0.5km every day during the month of February.

So, on the 1st, we only had to do 0.5km, and today we are up to 3km, which we have both managed, Jake with ease, and me with not too much trouble.

It'll be interesting to see how the month progresses and how we are doing by the time it comes to 14km on the 28th!

Head

Back to see the head doctor again today, in the next round of consultations.

We were only with him for about 10 mins, but he has suggested that I start taking gabapentin, with the hope that it will help in preventing the migraines.

I am under instruction to take 100mg for a week (once a day just before bed), followed by 200mg for a week, and then 300mg from then on, and then to go back and see him again in about six weeks.

So, we shall see ...

Lanes

OK, so maybe this is a sign that I spend far too much time on the motorway, but it looks like the end might be in sight for the J5-7 widening project on the M25, which has been going on since just before we moved home.

However, one thing that is noticeable is that there is smooth new tarmac on the new lane 1 and on the surface nearest to the new concrete barrier between the two carriageways, but that the bit in the middle is still the old, tired and bumpy surface, now made even worse by the painting on and removal (which seems to take some of the surface away with it) of lots of temporary lane markings.

Will be interesting to see if they leave it bumpy and scrappy-looking, or whether we'll be shunted around between lanes for a while so that they can resurface all the way across.

Most of all, looking forward to having 4 lanes all the way from 5 to 7 - let's hope it does actually make a positive difference to journey times.

Away win

Remember there was a post called Home defeat about a week ago, as my team hosted Man City and got hammered.

Well. many celebrations tonight as Jake's team travelled to Manchester, and took all three points from City to go level with them in the table.

The title race remains wide open - the only certainty being that it won't be the other Manchester team that are crowned champions this season (what a shame!).

Shooting

Last year, Owen took Jake to try out some clay pigeon shooting as part of his birthday treat. Well, this year I got to go along too. I didn't do too badly, 4 hits in my first 25 wasn't too impressive, but I did pick things up in my second 25, with 12 hits. Mind you, we were no match for the Anderson family, who were both pretty good shots.


Meanwhile, at home, some members of the family have had a particularly busy day.

Omar

Early start for a Saturday, as we were up and out at 7.30 this morning for a trip to Suffolk to visit the Omar Homes site, to take a look at some of the lodges that they could do for John and Margaret. And jolly nice they were too. Looking forward to seeing the updated designs that should be coming through in the next week or two.


After our visit, we went to the Elveden Inn (pretty much next door to the Center Parcs there) for lunch before we headed for home and J&M continued on to Norfolk to do some visiting.


Mostly blue skies today, until we were nearly home, and then we saw this.