Minehead

We had a fantastic time in Minehead last week with the family. Thanks again for arranging everything and hasving everything so well planned as ever with the food and entertainment.

The Danish branch of the family flew to Gatwick on Saturday, picked up a hire car and drove the 3½ hours to Minehead. It was a long journey - about 10 hours in total, but the kids were great and it went smoothly.

The house was ready for us and we basically spent the week pottering back and forth to the beach in Minehead, taking the train to the beach at Blue Anchor and the open top bus through Porlock to Lynton and Lynmouth. These places don't seem to change much over the years, but it was nice to see the kids enjoying them for the first time.

I always like the water powered fenicular cliff railway between Lyton and Lynmouth. DK liked the steam train and J was taken with kitkats and ham sandwiches on the beach.

The cream teas were also fantastic, but had an unfortunate (and predictable) affect on the diet. I am half way back to where I started a month ago, but after a couple of good days and bike riding over the weekend, I am confident of getting back on track soon enough.

Paris

Having fun in Paris at a conference and doing a bit of site seeing in the evenings and a bit of eating whilst trying to stay on the diet. It's not easy when there are croissants everywhere.

Weekend away

I have been in Legoland for the weekend with the rest of my company for a conference/get together/knees up which meant that I was away from home from 5:30 on Friday morning until Sunday afternoon and was rather tired when I got home. We had great weather and a good time but I can feel that I missed a weekend at home and could do with a rest. However, I am off to Paris tomorrow morning to an SAP conference and will not be home again until late on Friday so there will probably be a break in the usual blogging service whilst I am gone.

In the meantime, I really need to crack on with my Danish home work and try to get myself good enough to get through this damned exam at the end of May.

Holy Visitors

I am working from home today because J is performing in the nursery performance of the Tin Soldier this afternoon so there was no point driving to CPH.

There was a knock at the door a few minutes ago and rather than seeing the usual delivery man, there were 2 middle aged ladies holding a leaflet about Jesus. Uh oh I thought but then I pulled the ace out of my sleeve and spoke to them in English explaining that I couldn't understand any Danish.

It worked, they left straight away and didn't even give me one of their leaflets to throw away. Success.

If you have similar visitors in the US or UK, may I suggest suggest speaking to them in Danish to see if it has the same result.

Dieting

I have been sticking to my diet as described to me but there seems to be a problem. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays and this week I decided that we should make pizzas. That was a great idea, the pizzas were delicious and I ate plenty of them.

The result is that I starved myself all week last week and didn't really enjoy any of the meals I ate except for the one in the Italian restaurant in Århus and have not lost any weight.
Saturday 25th March I was 102kg, Saturday 2nd April I was 101.2kg but thiyesterday morning I was 102.2kg again. Bummer.

I'll be taking more care this week and making sure that I don't binge whilst away with work for our kick off weekend in sunny, glamorous Billund with the aim of being 100kg by next Monday.

Drains and guttering

DK had new drains in his ears this morning. That's his fourth set and it seems to me to be overkill but it is important that he can hear properly at the moment so that he can get on with learning to speak. He learns new words all the time, but most of them sound very much like the ones he already said and it is really only MK who can actually communicate with him so far.

I also cleared out the guttering yesterday after watcing a very exciting tour of flanders and getting very wet and muddy on a bike ride.

Tour of Flanders

This weekend is the first of the BIG Belgian bike races of the year - the Tour of Flanders. I rode it a few years ago the day before the pros did and it is a damned hard ride of 270km (168 miles) with a 18 short, very steep and mostly cobbled climbs.

I have been saving the ironing for a week so that I have an excuse to be parked in front of the TV on Sunday afternoon whilst the race is happening.

I am also expecting to get some good riding in myself this weekend with warm temperatures promised for Saturday, even though it also seems that there is a good chance of some rain at some point.

Happy Birthday George wherever you may be!

Drat

Wiggle didn't have the stem I wanted so now I have had to cancel the order for the matching handlebars because I can't find the stem anywhere. Back to the drawing board now (well back to trawling the internet for 130mm 6 degree rise stems with matching 44cm shallow drop bars).

Other peoples arrangements

This morning I took the Aygo to get the summer wheels put back on which took about 45 minutes last time. I planned to spend 45 minutes looking at the new cars, reading The Economist and having a cup of coffee.

This time she spiced things up a bit by asking them to repair a (very very small) stone chip in the windscreen at the same time. The result was that I spent 2½ hours sitting around a Toyota dealership. Not all that interesting although I think I may have decided that when the Mazda 6 is to be replaced we may have to get one of these instead. It has 2 seats that fold out in the boot, uses less petrol than the Mazda and costs half as much in road tax (£200 per year less!!)

Århus

I am away from home for the first time in a while tonight. I am staying in Århus having spent the day testing our solution for a customer at their office.

Someone had been playing with my alarm clock so the volume was turned to zero when the radio came on at 5:30 this morning. That meant that after a moderately poor nights sleep, I woke up an hour later than planned and had to get out of the house in 10 minutes. I was only 15 minutes late getting to the office and most of that was related to not being able to find a parking space and then not be able to find my way out of the shopping centre car park!

I have also ordered my new bars and stem and signed up for a racing license again. I am fairly proud of myself for not falling into the trap of buying uber expensive carbon fiber parts despite the enormous temptation...

Antibiotics

MK and I have both had pretty sore throats for the last couple of days and after another bad night we went to the doctors together this morning. After a quick swab and some tests, he said that we had a strep infection and he has put the entire family on antibiotics for a week.

We then took DK to get some new shoes and finally for a check up at the hospital to see how his tummy is doing. She was very happy with him and says there is no need to worry about his nocturnal crapping and to take our time with the potty training.

The sun is shining, I have plenty of pain killers and I am still 3 kg lighter than I was 10 days ago so the world looks fine until I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow to drive to Århus.

Belated Happy Birthday

I lost track fo time yesterday so I didn't get around to calling Ben to wish him a happy birthday. I hope he had a good day. The same goes for Rose although I hadn't planned to call her, maybe in a couple of years...

The diet is going well, I have now dropped an amazing 3kg since last weekend and I am looking forward to my day off tomorrow although I don't plan on going mad. I have actually been eating more or less an Atkins diet because I can't get myself together to cook any beans or lentils but I don't seem to be too hungry and now I am getting used to it, it is OK.

Tonight I will make some lentils and try to make sure there are some left over for tomorrow. We can also eat the remains of the monster ratatouille that I made yesterday.

Stuff

The diet is going well and I have got passed the sugar addiction problem now so that I am not craving sugary things all the time or more especially after meals. I seem to have dropped 2,5 kg or 5lb since I started last saturday and I am looking forward to something resembling a day off this saturday as I am apparently supposed to do.
Breakfast of eggs and bacon or eggs and smoked salmon is actually quite nice with a cup of tea, not the only real problem is finding something I want to eat in the evening.

Before the bike fit the only thing I could find in the supermarket that I could eat and fancied was carpaccio which I ate with my fingers in the car (including the parmasan and olive oil!)

DK is back in nursery today. The drain has fallen out of one of his ears and we are hoping that he will not have to have it replaced when we go to the ear doctor for a check next week. Yesterday he decided to be potty trained with little input from us. It's odd that he can manage the peeing part, but seems to pooh in the bath every time he has one for quite some time now.

Bike Fit

I spent 3 hours sitting on my bike on a trainer (roller, not a person) last night to get my bike fit done. The guy did some basic checks on me first to check that my legs are mroe or less the same length and that I am flexible enough.

Not me

Still not me

The next step was to attached velco pads to my feet, ankles, knees, hips, shoulders, elbows and wrists to which he then attached some light things for a special 3D camera to trace. Then I did several sessions of riding whilst the camera and a computer watched me. He said my initial fit was not bad, my saddle hieght wa correct but it needed moving forward by 5mm and my handle bars were a little low and close so now I have another 5mm or so of spacers under my stem and I need to get a stem that is 10mm longer. He has also suggested getting a shallower drop bar but I am not sure whether to do that or not at the moment as it will move everything that he has just put in place and they are (of course) expensive!
I'll put up the pictures when he mails them to me.

Bike Fit Day

Tonight I am off to get my bike fit done. I'm looking forward to going through the process and interested to see if he makes any significant changes to my set up. I already have wedges in my shoes to change the angles of my feet and I hope that my saddle and bars are in more or less the right place. I'll have to wait and see.

The estate agent has suggested that we have an open house on Sunday afternoon so we can spend the weekend tidying and cleaning in the off chance that someone wants to come and see it. The worst that can happen is that we have a clean tidy house so there isn't much to lose.

Dieting

The hardest part of this so far has been getting over my sugar addiction, but I think that is starting to pass now. I had fallen in the habit of eating sweet things after dinner most evenings and I still get serious cravings after meals for something sweet.

I have stuck to the rules over the weekend which included a birthday party without cake and a 3 hour bike ride on only the scrambled eggs I'd eaten for breakfast. I have since found out that I could have eaten some carbohydrates while I was cycling, but I survived and oddly enough I was 1,6 kg lighter this morning than yesterday morning although I am well aware that I have not dropped 3lbs in 24 hours.

I am working from home today which is a good thing because I had a call from nursery at lunchtime to say that DK had a fever so could I pick him up. He is now snoring away on the sofa and will hopefully feeling better when he wakes up.

Breakfasts

I have eaten cereal with milk for breakfast more or less every day of my life since I started eating solids and the prospect of having to find something else is daunting.

Apparently eggs are the answer, but how much fun is a boiled egg without soldiers or a poached egg without toast? Not much in my opinion, but I'll give it a go. I have been recommended to try poached eggs with salmon, scrambled eggs with vegetables or mackerel or omelet with spinach and ham or chorizo.
I guess this will be OK at the weekends, but it will take some effort during the week.

The Famous iDave diet

So it is now only 15 weeks until the Marmotte (bike race up and down mountains in France) and I have started training again with some sort of enthusiasm. I am having a bike fit done on Tuesday next week to sort out why my knees are hurting when I ride and I suppose things are falling into place.

Except for the one big issue that I have been avoiding. My weight. I have gained a few kg since my back problems last year and I need to get rid of them (plus a few more ideally) so I need to get cracking on the diet front.

I am going to have a go at this one and see how it goes.

Basics

• NO bread, pasta, rice, potatoes etc
• NO drinks with calories
• NO fruit
• NO Cereal
• NO Dairy
• As in NONE. Just don’t do it, even a bit

As much as you want of …….
• Vegetables
• Beans/lentils
• Lean meat
• Eggs
• Seeds/nuts
• Lots of water
• Coffee
• Red wine with meals.
One day a week eat what you want

It is based on controlling insulin development and the guy who told me about it has coached many successful athletes from Tour de France stage winners to world champions so hopefully it will work. The main problem is that it is a big departure from my current eating habbits. I have eaten cereal for breakfast for my entire life and I don't think that will be an easy habit to break, but I'll give it a try and just MTFU.

Bike Fit

Having finally managed to start riding my bike again I am really happy to report that my back is absolutely fine. No back pain at all. However, my knees are significantly less happy than they used to be.

I rode for 2½ hours on Saturday and then for another hour on Sunday and I am in terribly bad shape. I can't imagine every being fit enough to race again, but I suppose it will come back if I work at it and start to improvc my diet again.

One of the problems of increasing training though will be that my knees are also out of practice when it comes to cycling and given my problems in the past, I have decided to get a proper bike fit done using the Retül system (which originates in Boulder, CO) in an effort to minmise my risk of injury.

Spring may be coming

There is a certain springy quality in the air at the moment, it isn't so cold, there are snow drops and some yellow flowers scattered around the garden and I managed with only a long base layer, long sleeve jersey and a jacket for my bike rides this weekend. Maybe I'll be able to ditch the hat and change the jacket for just a thick jersey in a week or two.

We had a lovely relaxed weekend with pancakes, home made pizza and cousin A's birthday party yesterday. Now we just need to get the clocks moved fowards and we'll be well on the way to getting past the worst season of the year.

Nocturnal habits and floaters

DK and J are still sleeping in the same bedroom as we haven't had a chance to move the furniture back yet. J seems to be able to sleep through almost anything so it hasn't been a problem that DK has not slept well for the last couple of nights.

Strangely (and hopefully not as a sign of problems for the future related to his bowels) DK seems to rarely fill his nappy during normal waking hours. There wasn't much action at the beginning of the week in that department and then he has filled 2 or 3 or even 4 nappies during the night for the last 2 nights. On each occasion it needs to be dealt with immediately and there is total hysteria if MK is changing him and he wants me (rare) or vice versa.

On top of that he felt the need to lay some cable in the bath that he was sharing with J last night. At least J has learned not to drink the bath water now...

Grammar

I am getting to the point with my Danish that I am being hindered by my total lack of knowledge of English grammar. I have trouble identifying the subject of a sentence and please don't ask me about main and sub sentences!

I suppose that I just have to battle through it, but life is going to be quite bland if I avoid the issue by never using adverbs or possesive pronouns...

Now to move the furniture back

It has been great to have M&J visiting for the last week and the timing was prefect to help look after DK whilst he had chicken pox.

I delivered them to the airport this morning accompanied by DK and we have now returned home for me to do some work and him to continue not being at nursery. We are expecting him to be back tomorrow though so that we can get back to the office. I also have to do a lot of Danish homework before my next lesson tomorrow...

Back again

I haven't blogged for a few days because we've been busy, DK has chicken pox and J&G are visiting.

DK had to miss his gymnastics display on Saturday morning becuase he is covered in pustules. J did his, but I was home baby sitting and then MK did hers in the afternoon and it was great!

The Pox is back

This time it is DK who has been struck with chicken pox so he is home today with T. Cousin A also caught chicken pox from J whilst we were skiing so she is at our house for the day as well. They both seem to be in good spirits without too many belmishes so hopefully it will be over and done with fairly quickly.

At the weekend we were at a Fastelavn party. I am not really sure what all this pagan stuff is about but it involves the kids dressing up and then hitting a barrel (a cardboard box these days) with a cat in it (sweets used now unfortunately) until the barrel breaks and the cat falls out.

Freeeeezing

It hasn't been above freezing here since we got back from holiday. The wind is coming from the East bringing all the Siberian cold with it along with some rather nice sunshine. There is still ice in the sea and the wind is betterly cold.

On the plus side, it seems that I have won the war with the supermarket over my parking ticket and they will refund me the 590kr (£60 or $100) fine I got before the holiday when I forgot to set my parking timer. On top of that I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have inconvenienced several people at the shop. the shopping centre and the car park company in the process as well as copying my initial letter to the local paper.

Will this change anything? I doubt it, but it feels good!

Shustoke's new coffee machine

Note the new shelf and anti gravity function.

Healthy house

We are in an unusual period of good health in the house. J's chicken pox is gone, DK is eating considerably more than usual (so he will probably grow 5cm this month) and the grown ups are just a bit tired from the usual running around, but otherwise in good health.

I was supposed to be away tonight in Århus, but the workshop was cancelled by the customer so I had an unexpected working from home day today. It seems, for the time being at least, that everything is fine and dandy over here except for nobody wanting to buy our house...

Zermatt

As I mentioned yesterday, we had a great time in Zermatt. I also wanted to let you all know that we had some great skiing too. Once we had figured out that the piste maps were unclear and the signage unreliable, we just used common sense, memory and gravity to dictate where we went.
The first couple of days MK had some serious problems with squashed toes. We have no idea why her boots were suddenly too small, but some skilled guys in the boot fitting shop heated and stretched the outer shells and made them fit her again. A good result especially as they didn't charge for doing it.
My new skis were excellent, I can now telemark reasonably gracefully down red pistes without undue fear of death and was even able to link together several turns without having to stop and catch my breath.

MK and I decided that we liked the place and are considering it as a summer holiday destination for some time in the future.

Home Again

We have had a fantastic week in Zermatt with MK's family skiing and relaxing. We drove down after work on the Friday arriving just before lunch on Saturday and spent the whole week skiing, relaxing, eating and enjoying some good weather.

Zermatt sits right under the Matterhorn and we agreed that we had never skied anywhere with such magnificent views. MK and I got to work on our telemarking and J made really good progress learning to ski. Next time we will put him in a ski school so that he get to ski on some real slopes with some real lessons, but we were all proud and impressed with his progress.
Unfortunately I forgot the charger for the video camera and after filming this little clip or J skiing when it was -6C, it didn't have enough juice for anything else.
On Friday MK and I skied over to Italy in the morning and had a wonderful lunch at a small restaurant at the foot of the Matterhorn where they raised their own sheep - cured lamb, lamb chops, lamb sausages and lamb free tarts for pudding.
We drove home again on Saturday arriving at 3:30 on Sunday morning ready for bed and a relaxed day unpacking and getting ready for work and nursery.

We have to say a huge thank you to T&B for inviting us on holiday, it was truly one of the best skiing holidays I have ever had.

School trip

We took J to see his new school this morning. He will start there in August and he seemed to enjoy looking around although his new found habit or whistling all the time is getting somewhat tiring.

After all the criticism I received for saying that I wanted a Paul Smith bag with a mini on it, I decided to refine my searching a little.

I can get this one that matches my wallet with 25% off

But what I really want is this one which is not reduced at all:

There will be an interuption to normal blogging next week whilst I try out my new skis.

Paul Smith

I love my Paul Smith wallet that MK bought me for Christmas.

I am now longing for a matching bag...

Biker

A couple of weeks ago J declared that he wanted a leather wastecoat. Apparently he has seen someone who was a rock star wearing one on Bølle Bob (I don't know either!) and this makes them the epitomy of cool. This disturbed me more than a little because it immediately cunjoured up an image rather like this:

But not wanting to ignore his request I did a bit of online searching and found one for sale on eBay that looked OK. It's a Harley Davidson Kids waistcoat which was brand new and I guess probably cost someone a lot of money at some point, but I got it shipped to Denmark for £11 so I was happy. The greatest relief is that he absolutely loves it, it fits and doesn't look that bad.

Copenhagen 6 day race

For those of you who don't know, during the winter there is a series of 6 day races held around Europe's velodromes. Originally the races were 6 days long and the person who went the furthest won but over time it has changed to 6 evenings of different types of racing in pairs with a winning pair decided over the 6 evenings.

I was invited to go to the Copenhagen race on Friday evening and had a good time watching the different races from Derny races paced behind funny motorbikes to time trials, sprints and madisons (named after the Madison Square Gardens venue where the race was invented)

Film Reviews

Fantastic Mr Fox

This is an animated (stop motion rather than cartoon) version of the Roald Dahl childrens book made by Wes Anderson with George Clooney as the voice of Mr Fox. Whilst I think it was marketed as a childrens film, I don't really think it was a childrens film as the script was somewhat grown up with jokes about existenctialism amongst other things. I absoluetly loved it, it was fast paced and witty with great animation which was somehow reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit whilst having a really unique style. If you have the chance then I would really recommend seeing it.

Our other film of the week was The Karate Kid with Jackie Chan and Will Smith's son Jaden. My expectations were not high, but both MK and I enjoyed it and I don't regret having watched it unlike some of our more recent films from lovefilm. Last week we had I Love You Man with Jim Carey and we gave up after about half an hour.

Woops

Well the strict austerity measures didn't last all that long.

I got an offer mail from Telemark Pyrenees this morning telling me that there was at least 30% off Atomic skis so I thought I'd take a look and sure enough they had something just right for me!

So after a couple of phone calls to find out about bindings, shipping angetting permission, I pulled the trigger and ordered some Atomic Snoop Daddys.

Ken Follet

Shortly after Christmas I stayed up rather late for 4 consecutive nights to watch the Pillars of the Earth on TV. I quite enjoyed it and have subsequently considered reading Ken Follett' follow on book "World without end". I haven't made much progress on that as I don't have a copy and I have been finishing Saturday by Ian McEwan in the meantime.

At the supermarket on Saturday there was a book sale and I picked up another Ken Follett called Nulkoden. As you can maybe guess from the title, it is in Danish and I can see that progress will be slow. However, I have made a start and I am now a whopping 4 pages into it. My aim for our skiing holiday is to finish it. (Also to ski and drink irish coffee in that order)

iPad

Did I mention that we got an iPad last week?

This is the first time I have used it for blogging so we'll have to see how it works out for that but it is really convenient not having to turn on a pc every time you want to check mail or loom something up and it is a lot more convenient than using your telephone.

In other news, I interviewed 2 people in Danish this morning. It should have been 3 but the last guy was Swedish so we had to switch to English.

Fingers falling apart

When  I started playing the guitar I had some problems with the ends of the fingers on my left hand. They got quite sore from holding the strings down, but after a short while I developed some hard skin on the ends of them which solved the problem.

However, I have not had much time to play over the last 2 weeks and now all of tha hard skin skin is falling off my fingers and snagging on odd things. Last night I payed the guitar for a while and the thin strings helped to remove a lot of the lose stuff...

I am planning on playing some more over the weekend and getting my F chord a bit quicker and slicker so that I can learn some more songs to not sing out load. Maybe when I have got the Danish out of the way, I'll take some proper lessons.

Working out

I was too tired to train on Tuesday evening after several days of consecutive riding, but had planned for a session last night. The problem was that I had to take the train to work yesterday for an early meeting in the centre of Copenhagen which mean that I spent 2 hours getting home in the evening. The result was a late supper after the kids were in bed and no time to train. I will have to do a good session tonight to make up for it.

Making cakes last week

Just to cheer things up a bit.

Flash Back

This morning we were back at the end of last week again. J was up during the night with ear ache again and MK has conjunctivitis in both eyes. I just hope that DK and I can avoid all of this sickness whilst J's antibiotics and MK's eye drops do their business.

Kartoffelkur (Potato Diet)

Since Christmas we have decided to metaphorically tighten our belts a little (oddly enough mine had literally tightened itself during Christmas anyway) in order to prepare ourselves for a potential house move.


Having sifted through our bank statements for the last half year, we could see where we spend our money and I was pleasantly surprised that I don't actually waste as much of it as I thought, but we do get through a lot of stuff. As a result we decided to cancel the expensive vegetable deliveries and get rid of the cleaner (although MK can't bring herself to do that for some reason!)

Another concession has been to start shopping in Netto for what we can and then going to the other "normal" third world supermarket for the things we can't get in Netto.

The most boring part of it though is that I know that I can't buy anything frivolous even though the sales are on and I have developed a longing for a new work bag. The ones(s) that I have are all somewhat un-grown-up and I have decided that I should have a more grown up bag now that I am out seeing more customers.

This is the one that I really want if anyone is interested:

Ear Ache

It's been a nice relaxing weekend.

We had friends visiting us for dinner on Saturday evening but otherwise little planned. I went for a very cold and alarmingly slippery bike ride on Saturday morning. The studded tyres helped a lot, but eventually I had to abandon the smaller country roads in favour of the safer main roads. I managed 2 hours of riding and it did me good to blow out some more cobwebs. The training regime is sticking and I have managed to ride on 8 of the last 10 days.

The guests didn't manage to leave on saturday night. Their car was making "funnyt noises" and my reasurances that it was just a small hole in the exhaust pipe wasn't enough so all 4 of them slept in our living room and called a tow truck on Sunday morning. To my smug satisfaction, the guy toild them that it was a small hole in the exhaust and that they were perfectly safe to drive home.

J had a bad night on Saturday complaining of ear ache. That went away to some extent on Sunday morning when his ear drum burst and releaved the pressure. He is home today with MK after a trip to the doctors but seems to be well on the way to recovery after a day on the sofa with a fever.

This was the outfit for the gala party at the nursery last week. Apparently he attracted a lot of female attention with the pink/purple tie. It's odd that it never worked that well when I wore it...

Never ending month

January seems to have been going on for ages already and there is still another week to go before we get paid again.

We heard a couple of days ago that the owner of our estate agent will cease to be the owner with immediate effect. Apparently that won't have any effect, but we are getting rather tired with the whole house moving project and beginning to wonder if it is worth the effort and expense involved. I suppose time will tell, but our conditional contract on the house we want expires at the end of March and we are not going to extend it again as the bank guarantee is costing us a fortune and we don’t seem to be getting anything in return.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Last night I watched this film on Blu-Ray. Firstly, the bluray is really good, the picture quality is superb and unlike our old dvd player, the film didn't stop or jump at any point.

The film was made by Terry Gilligham (the American guy from Monty Python who did the crazy animations) and is suitable strange. It was also notable for being Heath Ledger's last film, he died whilst it was being made and to overcome this his character changes appearance every time he enters the "imaginarium" so in some ways his death just added another dimension to the oddness.

Not bad, but just a touch too odd for my tastes

House viewing

At about 5:00 yesterday evening we got a call from the estate agent that someone wants to view our house at 10:00 this morning.

Having not had a viewing since December, we had gradually shifted back into our normal way of life and whilst the house was far from a tip, there was still plenty to be done to get it up to scratch for a viewing.

Whilst MK was at gymnastics I tidied up quite a lot and then she took the kids off to nursery this morning fairly early and I did a whirling dirvish job on the whole place and took a load of cardboard boxes and empty wine bottles to the tip before heading to the office a little late.

Let's hope that the effort pays off.

Back on the bike

I have finally managed to get on my bke for 3 consecutive days and my backside is not impressed at all. I rode indoors on Saturday and today and I managed an hour and half outside yesterday now that most of the ice has gone and I have studded tyres on one of the bikes.

I guess I am now back in training and getting ready for the saeson ahead. It even feels like the weather has turned as it has been over 5 degrees for the last few days and almost all of the snow has gone as a result of that and the rain.

I've fallen

This morning I took the kids to nursery. I dropped J off and then took DK on my shoulders down to his nursery. Unfortunately the roads were incredibly slippery and I managed to fall over quite spectacularly in the middle of a quiet road.

Some sort of parental instict took over and I did everything I could to catch DK and stop him landing hard on the tarmac which worked out quite well for him. I, on the other hand, landed like a sack of potatoes and have a rather bruised left knee and elbow. After sitting cuddling DK in the street for a moment, I managed to get my (by now rather wet) backside up off the ground and deliver him without any major trauma, but I am still hurting a little several hours later.

I'm using the baby jogger when I go to fetch him!

Oil problem solved

MK spoke to the oil company yesterday and reminded them that she had asked them not to deliver more oil to us last September and questioned their reasons for us sitting on 1½ years supply of heating oil at a cost of nearly £4000 ($7000 if you're interested).

Thankfully the guy on the phone seemed to have encountered this problem before and offered for someone to come and take the oil back without charging us.

That is quite a big relief as, strangely enough, we didn't have £2000 waiting to be spent on something tedious and unnecessary.

Lemon curd

Monday was MK's birthday so I wanted to make a nice meal in the evening. I dug a good bottle of wine out of the basement and took DK to the supermarket to buy some good meat whilst J was doing gymnastics (chateaubriand if you were wondering). Whilst getting the rest of the meal together I threw together a bread and butter pudding as this is one of MKs favourites. There wasn't much jam around so I tried a lemon version with lemond curd in the sandwich things and some lemon zest in the custard.

The result was maybe the best bread a butter pudding yet. The lemon curd was sweet and just a bit chewy and the overall lemonyness lifted the potentially heavy desert to a new level.

It's all gone now though.

Happy Birthday MK

Monday's are generally rather hard work for us with traffic and gymnastics to add to the monday blues. Today is a much more exciting day becuase it's MKs birthday.

Have a good one!

Oil

Yesterday we were both out all day for the first time in a couple of weeks. OK oil took the opportunity to sneak round and drop another 2000 litres of oil into our alreay full oil tank.

Towards the end of 2009 I wasn't very consistent in checking the level of the tank so we tended to run out of oil once or twice a year. MK got tired of that so she signed us up for automatic oil delivery service. I thought this was a waste of time and money (I am always right) because the first thing they did was deliver over 2000 litres of oil which (without any warning) we suddenly had to find £1600 ($3000) to pay for.

After they did this again in September last year MK contacted them to say that we didn't want any more oil for the time being as we were planning on moving house and there was more than a years worth of oil in the tank anyway (2600litres)

So after yesterdays stealth delivery, we have to find another huge amount of money to pay for the oil that we won't need until next year as there are now 3750litres in our tank and we have enough for 1½ years.

Thanks for the overdaft charges you bunch of absolute F&#KERS!!!

More snow

To celebrate my return to the office for 2011 we have had another 5 or 10 cm of snow. It is dificult to tell exactly how much has fallen but there is certainly no shortage on the roads along with ice and stranded/crashed cars and trucks. It took me 2½ hours to get to the office as well, but at least I made it in one piece.

My eyes are still completely red and somewhat swollen, but they are no longer itchy and uncomfortable and I am generally perking up a bit.

Tonight we are going to a parents evening thing at what we expect to be J's school come August. More news on that tomorrow, in the meantime I can look forward to the final part of Pillars of the Earth on TV tonight and try to remember some of the Danish that I have forgotten over Christmas.

2 eyes down

The flu is getting better, but I now have infections in both eyes wich didn't seem to respond to the first round of antibiotics so I am now on some other drops which I hope will work better.

The rest of the family seems to be healthy enough so life goes on.

My diet is going really well. I have lost 3.6kg (7 pounds) in 3 days. Good eh? Somehow I don't think this can last and I think it will go up again before going down, but you have to look for the silver lining to the clouds.

Sick

I seem to have real flu soI have spent the day at home shivering with a fever and a slightly less gammy eye. I forgot about the eye so when I went to fetch DK from nursery I was surprised to be treated like a leppar.

I suspect that I'll also be home tomorrow, but time will tell. At least I am not running to the bathroom every few minutes as I was this morning.

Blugh!

Happy New Year

There's has been a lot of nothing going on here. I have a fairly bad infection in my left eye and now seem to be coming down with flu. MK and J have milder infections in their eyes and DK has been a bit sick from time to time (most between midnight and 5 in the morning)

All that has left us feeling a bit tired and not in any way ready to get back into the swing of work next week as the rest of the country gets 2011 moving.

We have had a nice relaxing Christmas and a very quiet New Years Eve at home after we had to cancel our party plans to avoid spreading conjunctivitis to 14 other people.

Juicing

MK got a juicer for Christmas from K&L and we have been experimenting with different recipes over the last couple of days. Apples seem to be good and the pineaple was good too, but the rather past it's best melon gave me stomach ache. It seems to be a great and painless way of getting rid of all the awful fruit that is sitting around the house so later I may try it with some vegetables and see how cabbage juice tastes. If it is awful, at least I will have got rid of one of the cabbages from the fridge.

We were supposed to be visiting MKs family in Holte tonight, but we have had to cancel. J was up  lot in the night being sick (after drinking bath water that DK had pooped in) and DK has been coughing non stop for 24 hours to go with the running ear infection, cold and fever thing that he has going on at the moment.

Other than that, we're all fine.

Happy Chrimble

We've had a great, relaxed Christmas and MK was back in action again.

Disaster ahead

MK has the flu. I fear that this is going to take some of the fun out of Christmas at the very least.

Shortest Day

Today is the shortest day of the year which also makes it the worst day of the year in some respects. For the next 6 months, things just get better.

It is also looking rather wintery outside with another 20cm or so of snow falling overnight, we now have about 40cm over everything and it is beginning to get difficult to find places to put the stuff when you are moving it.

Apparently it is also -6C at the moment as well (this was last night)

Can anyone remember where I hid MK's Christmas present? I can't find it...

Bad Santa

We've had a snowy weekend. We went to get the kids hair cut, post cards and collect parcels from the post office on Saturday morning (thanks Auntie P) and then put up the Christmas tree and made pizza in the afternoon.

DK has been wearing his Father Christmas costume all day every day for 4 days now and shows little sign of taking it off. Thankfully he is wearing it over his clothes and is prepared to remove it for meals so it is not too dirty yet. I am, however, concerned that it won't last too many cycles in the washing machine.

Grumpy Nisser

The snow was absent for only a very short period and is now back and about 20cm deep around us. The country doesn't grind to a halt, but travelling is hard work and the roads are not being cleared properly becuase there is no money left at this time of year. Hopefully they have some set aside for the new year.

Just in case this doesn't happen, I have just ordered some studded snow tyres for my bike because I really need to get outside on my bike. I rode in the basement yesterday but it just doesn't cut it really.

Rapha Festive 500

My favourite bike clothing brand is running a challenge over the Christmas period to try and encourage people to keep riding through the bad weather. The challenge is to ride 500km between 23rd and 30th December and the winner will be the one who shows how they did this in the most creative way.

I am not kidding myself that there is a good chance of me completing this, let alone winning it, but I'm going to give it a go and I have created a new blog to chronicle my progress.

You can have a look at it here: http://ridingtheraphafestive500.blogspot.com/

In the meantime, I will try to figure out if this is possible at all as I already know that it is not sensible.

Woolly hats

I appear to have less hair with each passing month at the moment and am considering taking drastic action to deal with it in the new year. I'm not considering hair plugs

or a wig

But the Bjarne Riis thinning solution.

One of the drawbacks of getting thinner on top (unfortunately not in the middle) is that ones head gets rather cold. The obvious solution of a hat is an excellent one, but my preference is for a woolly hat and therin lies my problem, wolly hats make my head itch. A lot.

The solution is merino wool (I suppose cashmere would work too) so I have challenged MK to knit me a merino wool hat and amazingly she has accepted. The yarn has been purchased along with kneedles and a pattern and I am confident that there will be something ready for me to wear before next winter. I can't wait.

Christmas is coming and I am getting fat

I have a grotty cold and a cough which stopped me riding my bike on the icy roads in the freezing cold this weekend. We went and bought a Christmas tree on Saturday morning and then MK and the boys went to a Christmas concert in the afternoon whilst I did the supermarket with most of the rest of the town.

On Sunday MK had arranged for some friends to come and make Christmas decorations at our house so we had a house full of kids and mums. I make some jam tarts and the first mince pies of the year which went down well. It turns out that I make really good pastry when I try, but thankfully I don't do it too often.

Stuff

I seem to have developed a rather unpleasant cold overnight, but I suppose that is just what happens at this time of year. It took me 2½ hours to get home from work last night because the motorway was covered in snow and the traffic was dreadful. To celebrate, I worked from home today and now we are preparing for a quiet-ish weekend in the frozen wastelands.

Here is the front page of Monday's local paper:

Crazy days

Yesterday was rather manic with a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. The result was getting home rather late with the boys to put to bed after they had an afternoon with Mormor ad MK was out at a meeting.

On Saturday morning we were asked to come out into the street to have our picture taken for the local paper along with the other residents of our road because we have, as a street, started a neighbourhood watch thing. To our amazement, on Monday morning our photograph filled the top half of the local paper with the story filling the bottom half of the front page and half of page 2. It was quite funny and as you can imagine, the boys and MK in particular stole the show.

I'll try and scan the picture later

OECD PISA Report

I have just been reading the OECD PISA report about the standards of education measured across all member countries and it was certainly an interesting read. (You can find it here)

It seems that Denmark has not really improved in any areas and there has been a slight slip in some areas although it is still firmly placed in the middle of average. Of course, there are lot os interesting things to say about different socio-economic reasons for this that and the other and the influence of culture on this that and the other, but I was not surprised to see that Denmark scored below average in the performance related to disciplinary climate. My reading of that is that Danish school kids would perform better with more discipline in schools.

I am not really overly concerned about the education system in Denmark. I am pretty sure that our family will overcome the immigrant parent problems and take advantage of the engaged parent benefits to come out of it all with nice, above average kids. After all, isn't that what we all aspire to?

Speech therapist

This morning MK and I took DK to the speech therapist at the cleft lip and palate centre in Hellerup.

The visit didn't start too well as DK tripped and dived headlong into a deepish icy puddle. That was the spare set of clothes used up for the day so MK is hoping that we will avoid any further clothes incidents.

We have a check up there every 6 months or so and the therapist was happy that there is some progress, but there isn't much progress as most of DK's words are reduced to "is" meaning ice cream, eat , pee and maybe more or just some animal noises.

We have noticed that he has come on a lot in the last few weeks and we are hoping that this will continue, but if he hasn't made some substancial progress by the next appointment then he will probably have to have some help progressing.

MK, DK, J and Mormor are now in Copenhagen for the afternoon to look at the Christmas decorations and generally get into mischief

Late nights

We were invited to a Christmas party at some friends in CPH on Saturday night. MK got a new frock and we had a really nice time but with that came a very late night  - 02:30 before we were in bed. As a result, the long, very slippery and snowy journey back to CPH on Sunday for my company family Christmas party was rather an ordeal. The kids made a lot of noise and both MK and I were a little short tempered with them.

The second party was really nice as usual and the kids got some nice presents and enjoyed the entertainment. The bridge too far was when I deceded to built DK's new bed when we got home. It was a nightmare of poorly thought out flat pack furniture. The bed had several different parts as guard rails and thing but there were only instructions for the basic bed and when you came to put the rails on, you had to take a lot of it apart again. The final straw were the finely crafter cheese screws you had to screw in with no space whatsoever whilst getting splinters in your hand.

There was much swearing and sweating, but I did prevail in the end.

snow and more snow

It has continued to snow so we now have at least 30cm in the garden and it is getting a little tiresome.

We are off to friends and my works family Christmas party over the weekend along with collecting DK's new bed and being photographed with the rest of the street for the local paper.

No rest for the wicked

Hospital visit

We had a half yearly check up at Roskilde this morning for DK. He was wieghed and measured and we had a chat about his progress. Other than not speaking, he is doing fine and there is nothing much to do for another 6 months. He then had a hearing test which seemed to show that he can hear properly and there isn't much to worry about there either.

The Doctor who oversees DK is presenting him at a conference in January as a case study because he is an interesting little boy who doesn't really fit nicely into any know syndromes. Despite that, the Doctor is convinced that he has CHARGE syndrome based on his one sticking out ear.

Not being a doctor, it is difficult to argue with one about a diagnosis, but I do know that a syndrome is just a collection of symptoms and there is a requirement to have a certain number of these symptoms in order to be diagnosed with the syndrome. The problem is that DK doesn't really have the symptoms necessary for a diagnosis so I really cannot see why he is so determined to demonstrate that it is what he has. Next step is a DNA test to determine if the "right" genes are messed up for it to be CHARGE.

Frozen Sea

It has been really really cold here for the last day or so. Yesterday there was only a little ice in the sea accross the street from the office, when I arrrived this morning, it was completly frozen over and now it has a good covering of snow on top too. I am starting to think that this will be my longest coldest winter since arriving in Denmark which is quite a thought given how long and cold the last one was.

Brrrr.

Got it

Just as I was leaving the office last night the guy selling this guitar called me back to say that he was in CPH and had the guitar with him so I arranged to go and meet up. It sounds really good and I think it is nice that it has been gently used. There are no major dings or marks, the neck is straight and the top is flat.

The only real problem is that I can't really play much on it. I can get lots of chords, but I need to work a lot on changing between them accurately and then quickly.

The most amuzing thing was that the guy (a music student) was selling the guitar to get a new flat screen TV for his bedroom in a shared house. When I asked about the 37" one on the wall, he said that he needed a new one. That was too small and anyway it was 4 or 5 years old now. Apparently he is getting a 50" 3D TV despite apparently having no idea about what you can see on it. He seemed to think that all TV became 3D on a 3D TV. I think he is in for a dissapointment...

(I should point out that he will be a very long way from affording the new TV with what I paid for the guitar.)