Sushi For Breakfast

No really, I am - which is why this is the first post of 2019 even though it's March. Am in the depths of assignments for my course at work, this is number five of six, and I really hope I've passed number four, because I don't want to go back and think about finance again if I don't need to.

I am also three-quarters finished with my current cross-stitch. It's a large kit, and I'm ready to have it finished now so that I can get on to the next project, which is from a magazine and has fancy typefaces and beach huts. I've also rediscovered eBay, and today the second batch of old cross-stitch magazines I've bought on eBay arrived. I've also bought a couple of current magazines recently, including one today.

I have also been spending money on other things today - got my Comic Relief T-shirts today. This year it's Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and as they'd got both designs in my size I bought one of each. I've bought two Comic Relief T-shirts in the same year before - I think the first time they did more than one design, which was just a white one and a red one with the same basic design. I think there's only been two times when I've not got the T-shirt - the first year (1988), and then I think in either 1995 or 1997 when they sold them at one particular petrol station which was the other side of the city and they sold out really quickly. Now they have them at TK Maxx so that's not too bad. It's still Sainsburys for other Red Nose Day goodies, like the noses and pins and wristbands. And the show (Friday next week) looks good, there's this which I'm really looking forward to:

It's a whole month (ish) since I last posted. I have nothing new to add to the fallout from the US Presidential elections except for the fact that when I woke up on the Wednesday morning it was from a dream that Hillary Clinton had won and was giving a press conference, accompanied by Chelsea, from a hotel's rose garden. In the UK us sensible chaps have been cheering on the various legal and parliamentary attempts to prevent the triggering of Article 50.

I had my first mince pie of the season today at work, and am part-way through Christmas shopping. I'm waiting to hear what my sister and her partner would like - Mum reckons they'll ask for giftcards or vouchers. It's four weeks until our Christmas lunch at work, too, which I'm looking forward to but am sad that one workfriend will be unable to join us.

I am continuing my cross-stitching in fits and starts. Wednesday evening's session was the first for a couple of weeks and at one point I used the wrong shade of dark green, but hopefully I've countered that by using another moderately dark green in another place.

Last week my long-anticipated copy of A Month In The Country arrived - I have it on the original issue DVD, but this is a much better quality picture and has audio commentary and a few interviews, including one with Colin Firth, as extras. It's a double-disc set that contains a DVD and a Blu-Ray disc and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

So for Tim Peake's landing yesterday, there was no Stargazing Live special as so many of us had hoped. Instead, there was live coverage (mostly the NASA TV feed) on the BBC News channel, which had the usual experts (Libby Jackson from UKSA, Professor Lucie Green from UCL) along with BBC science correspondents who knew what they were talking about, and general studio presenters who didn't. So glad all went so well, there was a BBC guy who was practically interviewing Tim Peake on the Kazakh steppe. Yuri Malenchenko was sitting bolt upright early on like the seasoned space traveller he is, but Tim Kopra looked a bit wobbly for a while but he seemed to be getting his bearings OK eventually.

Having this on the news rather than a dedicated programme meant the news headlines ticker was on screen almost the whole time, so all the stuff about the man who murdered the MP Jo Cox was there. I can't believe what a nightmare that was. I've met a few people through work, my age and younger, and you know immediately they're a future MP for a left-leaning party, and they'll be a very good one, just like Jo Cox.

My friend and I took a little break from the usual work routine on Thursday morning to watch the Aviva Women's Tour go past along the main road near our business park. I had read about this early in the year, and my friend wanted a photo to illustrate a staff newsletter article she was writing about the Cycle To Work scheme. I took my flag and was cheering and yelling as they went past - it was still quite early in the race so they were all in a big bunch. Sadly we didn't get on the TV highlights, they went straight from the start in Atherstone to the part just after us when they went through the University of Warwick campus. But it was so exciting seeing all the build-up, the police motorbikes, the race marshal motorbikes, and the support cars going past, all waving at us, and us waving back. There wasn't many of us along that stretch of road, but there was lots of TV coverage of other stretches of road where there were lots of schoolkids cheering and waving flags. I was only going to watch the highlights once but I'm going to keep them now, as there are lots of sights I recognise, and I'll always remember being out there, even if it was only for a short time.

Tonight we had a good evening out from work, and then I had things to do when I got back. Glad to be back, but the stuff to do was meh.
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It started snowing when I was driving home. Hopefully it won't amount to anything major, but it's supposed to stay cold for a good while yet. I'll be glad when winter is over.

Today was my last day in work until Monday 6th January, which will be the longest I've had away from work for a very long time. The day started early so I could get to Sainsburys before work. Going round the store wasn't a problem - it was really busy but as expected - it was the car park which was the issue, lots of people driving round looking for a space, or waiting for someone to leave. Eventually I got into work around the same time as usual, having originally left home about 7.45am. There wasn't a lot of work to do - a few tweets, a go at infographics which was only partially successful - basically I was in to drink coffee and eat Christmas sweets. I also bought a secondhand book - we have a bookshelf where we bring in unwanted books and sell them with the money going to a local hospice, and I bought the Cordon Bleu Cookery Book, which I'd had my eye on for some time.

It's been very windy and rainy here today, the worst was during the middle of the day I think - coming home, the weather was probably the nicest it's been all day. It's supposed to be the same again on Friday, but hopefully I won't have to venture out anywhere. I got plenty of veg today and also I have lots of pasta, the plan is to make another lot of pasta bake sometime. After last year, I'll be happy for none of us to fall ill.

My sister and niece are coming round tomorrow I think. Jess has been super-excited about Christmas - she was an angel in the pre-school Nativity, and they also had a carol service and Christmas party at pre-school. There was a raffle for parents & family at the party, and Mum & Dad won a tin of Quality Street, so we've got some of all the main Christmas sweets now - the main feature is Roses, I also bought small boxes of Celebrations and Heroes. They were here on Saturday, Jess was standing on her little step-stool in the middle of the living room, singing Christmas carols at the top of her voice. I showed her coverage of the EVA on my tablet - I pointed Doug Wheelock out to her, and that he knows who she is - this is following a Twitter conversation relating to three years on from his EVA and Jessica's birth, on the same day.

Tonight in celebration of the end of work, I replayed A Very CraftLass Christmas, which resulted in a long Twitter conversation between CraftLass and myself about Christmas carols and church denominations, and when the music ended I fished my tenor recorder out of the cupboard for the first time in a couple of years and tooted through a few Christmas carols. I really like it as an instrument but it was clearly made for people with longer fingers than I have.

Today was my last day in work before I turn 40 (which happens tomorrow). I arrived to find my friends had decorated my desk:



I had to clear most of it so that I could work, there was also a banner across the bookcase near my desk and a long banner down the pillar by the bookcase. There was other decorating going on in the office too - a woman from another team goes on maternity leave tomorrow, and one of the directors is retiring tomorrow, so there were balloons in his office, and the walls were covered in a variety of photos of him from his 20ish years here. Also leaving tomorrow is one of my friends who has secured a permanent job following six years of temporary contracts (due to her working on time-limited projects rather than any aspersions on her awesomeness) at our place. She's having a night out in Birmingham with some current and former members of our team - unfortunately my birthday arrangements preclude me from joining them.

Tomorrow we are going out for lunch, having visitors (and no doubt phonecalls) in the afternoon & evening, and then Friday is my best friends' wedding. After some issues which pitted my ideal outfit against the weather, I finally found suitable shoes yesterday which will allow me to wear the new dress and jacket as originally planned, albeit with my big winter coat added for outdoor scenes. Weather-wise it's due to remain cold, but without additional snow of any capacity to cause concern. I shall report back here after the events.

Due to weather uncertainties (ie how much snow would we get today), I didn't drive to work today. We had been forecast heavy snow, turning to sleet, all afternoon, and on our business park that can mean a two-hour wait to proceed to the end of a road which takes 10 minutes to walk down. So I decided I'd get the bus so I wouldn't have to worry about getting stuck - if the traffic did get bad, I could walk round to the main road and catch a bus from there. I'd had this plan for a couple of days, and was getting ridiculously over-enthusiastic about catching the bus again like old times - the first two years I was at this place, I had no choice about catching the bus as I couldn't drive at the time.

Dad gave me a lift into work, after asking several times if I'd like one, I eventually relented. During the afternoon lots of people were peering out of the window looking at the snow, while I was enjoying not having to worry about it. I'd packed my Olympics backpack instead of my usual bag, which doesn't stay on my shoulder if I'm wearing a heavy winter cardigan under my winter coat, so I'd be OK if I had to walk any distance. I was able to get my email newsletter off in good time and catch a bus just after 4.30pm. I'd seen a tweet at lunchtime from the bus company saying there was a software problem with some ticket machines on buses - there was one on the first bus I caught from the business park, the driver waved me through and I got a free ride! It's the first time in over 12 years I've caught a bus from the business park, and my first bus ride in that part of the city since the bus lanes were dedicated, so it was such a novelty being able to whizz past all the cars lined up on the busy commuter streets. I didn't have to wait long for my bus home from the city centre - which had a fully-working ticket machine - and was home just after 5.20pm, completing the journey in less than an hour. I also had my book Nella Last's War to read on the bus (the Mass Observation diaries that Victoria Wood based Housewife, 49 on) which is always absorbing.

The weather is due to be much warmer, with lots of rain again, tomorrow so I'll be back in my car. And I'm glad to say my car is fine after the recent drama, the problem with the gauge is apparently a known fault, according to a few websites, and can be caused or rectified with a jolt, which explains how mine happened. It doesn't explain how it was rectified, as it sorted itself out somehow while sitting in the car park at work.

We had a change to the routine at work this afternoon, as a bunch of us in my team attended a lecture given in memory of our late Chief Executive, who died a year ago. It was held at Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and luckily a colleague volunteered to drive - as we ended up travelling through a few underpasses in Birmingham city centre and down Broad Street, I was quite relieved. The Botanical Gardens were very nice, although we didn't get to see a great deal, it was clear there's plenty to see on a more general visit.

The guest speaker was Karen Darke, winner of a silver medal at the Paralympics in the hand cycling time trial, and was fourth (fractionally behind team-mate Rachel Morris, they crossed the line joining hands & registered the same time) in the H1-3 road race. She talked about her life and career, about mountaineering both before and after she broke her spine, and about getting involved in paracycling and making the team for London 2012. While I didn't get to meet her properly (nor did I get to meet our late CEO's father or sister, nor some of the other people in attendance I would've liked to) I did see her Paralympic medal up close:



It's very heavy! I guess for people like Sarah Storey who won several medals, all the training for their sport gives them the serious neck & shoulder muscles necessary to wear multiple medals at once for more than a minute.

After the talk, we all had tea and cakes (ie coffee, a little sandwich and two little cakes in my case). The plan is for this to be an annual lecture event, and in a bigger venue next year as there were lots of people who really wanted to attend but had prior arrangements. I think today it got off to an excellent start.

I have spent part of this evening baking cookies - Peanut butter, pumpkin seed and chocolate chip cookies. I sampled one and it was very nice, even though I managed to pick the one without any chocolate chips in. Here are the rest:



The green tub is for us at home, the clear box is for taking into work tomorrow. We're big on baking in our team at work, I tend to average something home-baked about once a year but I saw this recipe in the paper at the weekend, and it looked straightforward enough for me to decide immediately that I would try it. I'm glad I did, if they go down well at work I might look around for another recipe to use up more of the baking ingredients I now have.

First thing changing is the date for the extremely stressful database-and-website project at work, which is now launching in November because there's so much work to do beforehand. This means I won't be on leave when it all happens, and it suits me more because other crucial things will have been completed by then. It was set to start early October because some lunatic had the idea that people only go away on holiday in July and August. Thankfully it's been put back so hopefully this means we can get it to work properly.

There was a HUGE spider on the wall at work today :( :( :( It was right at the top, on the little inner wall that separates off the photocopier room from the main office. And we don't have a spider-catcher. I hope it's gone by tomorrow and doesn't return.

Am not at Zumba again, because I like how my knee doesn't hurt at all when I don't go. Still no news, according to her website, of my former yoga teacher finding a regular venue to restart kettle classes, I'd be interested in going to them so I can develop my technique properly. Her website right now is full of stuff about the Christmas party, cos she always holds it the first weekend in December to make sure it doesn't clash with anything else like family or work or neighbourhood Christmas happenings people may have, which is a good idea but I'm trying not to think about Christmas just yet.

Not thinking about Christmas is easier to do when you don't go into Boots or Marks & Spencer. Yesterday I went into both, they have Christmas stuff edging onto shelves but thankfully no Christmas catalogues yet. I really needed some new boots cos mine are wearing out, unfortunately Next don't have anything suitable for work so I went to the cheapo little shoe shop inside the main building and bought some boots with good cleated soles for £15. Even if I find something else that I wear more, these will be good for the snowy weather - they're warm too, a bit too warm today with the summer temperatures we've had.

Tomorrow I have sushi to make. Have decided to just make the one batch, it usually yields about 50-60 pieces which should be fine as it's all towards lunch. And I might not include carrot, which might be a first.