A very busy week!

I have a cold :O(

Well I was right, I did have a cold coming along. And it's turned out to be the mother of all colds.
I've spent the last 3 days blowing the most amazing amount of snot out my nose! The guys at work really appreciated it today! (I spared them yesterday and worked from home)
I'm ment to be doing loads over the weekend, but as the majority of the plans involve being out in the cold I'll have to wait to see how I'm feeling tomorrow.
Well crashing out now and it's only 10pm! I must be ill!!

Shattered....

I've had one of those weekends where you come back into the office feeling shattered, even though I didn't do much over the past 2 days!

I must be on my 4th cup of coffee for the day and I'm still feeling as though I have just got out of bed! I haven't been feeling 100% for the past 3 or 4 days, it's almost a cold, just without the cold part.

This week is looking like it's going to be a busy one! I'm on a course with work from Wednesday, so I have two days to get 5 days of work done. Hopefully I can just get the iPod up and running and get my head down! Unfortunatly everytime I get started another email or phone calls rolls in and I loose focus again!

We had a second viewing of the house we are buying on Friday afternoon, we were hoping to take some better measurements so we can get started with planning the new kitchen and what walls we want to take down. We arrived and met the estate agent.. The problems began when the current owners weren't in and their children didn't know that we were coming! The house itself was in a right state. It seems that since we had our offer agreed (over 2 months ago) that the owners have stopped looking after it. Lightbulbs had blown and not been replaced and the state of the whole house is much worse than before. The fact that to get anywhere without steping over dirty clothes and dishes also wasn't great!
I'll call the estate agents to have a moan about it!

Back in at the deep end!

Well the return to the office has definatly been a rapid drop back onto the fast moving treadmill!! Normally you get that re-adjustment time after Christmas, not this time tough! The past few days have mainly involved loads of researching and report / presentation creation! I've broken the back of it now, so I find that I can actually have a calmer afternoon!

I'm heading off to the solicitors this afternoon to look over the papers for the new house. We're hopefully exchanging in the next few weeks, with completion soon after that. Then the real hardwork starts!! There are a few things we need to change with the layout pretty much straight away, so we'll be knocking a few walls out and stripping wallpaper! Thankfully were staying in our rented house for a month while all the work is being done, I'm hoping that this will make the moving process a little less stressed!

Tonight is the 1st evening back at cadets. I'm a Civilian Instructor with the Air Training Corps and have recently taken a training role within the squadron. I have the pleasure of teaching 20 new staters all about the ATC, RAF, History Of Flight, Initial Expedition Training, Map Reading, Comms and Airmanship. 20 cadets is a huge number to teach so I'm hoping to use some presentations to deliver the lessons via a projector. It's great fun and very rewarding being part of the ATC. It gave me a lot when I was younger, so it's great to be able to put something back! (I would recommend it to anyone with some time on their hands!)

All Back to the Norm...

Well after the best part of 10 days off it's the night before the return to work.

It feels a little like when you were younger and after the summer holidays (which seemed to go on for ever) you would have to head back to the classroom... So my bag is packed, unfortuatly the new pencil case has not been bought (stationary cabinets are a great substitute!)

I'm kind of looking forward to being back in the office, get things back to normal after 2 weeks of excessive everything. That probably sounds really sad!

The house is still showing signs that Christmas has been and gone, the obligatory peanuts and mountain of chocolate still reside in the kitchen, undoubtably settles in for the long haul. We'll be throwing most away I would imagine.
It's one of the main things about Christmas that pisses me off.... the huge waste of food and the expectation that is placed of everyone (presents, where to go for lunch etc...) There seems to be no reason that we should adopt these behavours. Most people these days treat Christmas as a chance to get out of work, drink and eat till your sick and moan about what they have / haven't been given.
-- Sorry this is turning into an anti-christmas rant -----

I'm not a religious chap, I can see where the origins of the Chrismas festival comes from, but it's become over hyped and far too comercialised... I'm determined that next year will be different! I would love to go away and leave all this behind for the two weeks of madness!

Some friends of mine have done just that and as I type they are driving from the UK to the Gambia to rainse money for Cancer Research and a number of Gambian charities. They are on an adventure! have a look at their site, if you can make a donation...

www.woogied.com

I'll end my longest blog entry to date here and wish everyone a joyfull return to work tomorrow.

- also appologies for the spelling... no spell check on this web form

New Year... New Blog?

Well last years "I'm going to write a blog" didn't really work out. It turned out to be a pretty busy year for me, so now I'm saying it again that I will be writing a blog more offen!