Happy Birthday J

Yesterday was the BIG day for J. He got up really early as a result of it being both his birthday and the clocks going back an hour. 

We had a great day making another football cake and a huge vat of bolognaise sauce for dinner. All of the Danish family visited and we had a nice relaxed time eating, making lego aeroplanes and playing with the new electric ukulele. (I suspect that I am happier with that than J is for now...)

Good week

This has been a pretty good week. I have worked hard, but everything has more or less gone as well as I could have hoped and both of my current projects are as well on track as I could wish for.

At the moment the house is quiet as J's birthday party are on a treasure hunt down the road with MK and her parents. The peace is exquisite after the last hour and a half of frantic screaming. I have helped with cake decorations and cooking.

Cake decorating master class

Skeleton bread rolls

The Party

Cake in action

My arm has been driving me a bit mad as I can't rest my forearm on desks or tables and the healing up abrasion is very itchy. Must learn to stop falling off.

My yellow and green arm after last weekend's crash

I am pretty sure that this weekend will be a long and tough one as it's J's birthday which will involve a great deal of over-excitement and the inevitable tears and tantrums that go with it. Let's hope it goes well...

Too busy for posting

I am flat out at the moment so there is much time for updating the blog.

The windows are more or less done, there is still a missing door frame in the basement and some tidying up to be done. The big issue was that the terrace slopes back towards to the house which has obviously made rain water run into the space under the windows and rot the wood holding up the living room floor.
This is going to be replaced with bricks and mortar so we don't have the same problem in the future.

Otherwise all is well. Tomorrow is J's kids birthday party and then the long weekend birthday begins...

I must be getting old

I don't really know how I ended up looking at jeans online, but I ended up at the G-Star website (they have an outlet in Ringsted) and was really taken aback by 2 things.

Firstly, to my eye, these jeans look crap. Totally knackered and a dreadful fit - I can cope with "distressed" or even "destroyed" or even some odd twisted "anti-fit" thing but putting them all together just looks like they were tailor made for a bow legged slob and found in a skip

Secondly they are £350 (3200DKK or about $600) WTF is that about?

I can only assume that my total inability to understand how or why anyone would buy these is an indication that I am getting rather old and out of touch with the yoof of today.

Windows 2.0

Yesterday the window guy called to say that he was coming to start fitting the new windows today. That meant that we had a couple of hours work to do last night to clear everything away from the doors and windows that are due to be changed, but it's all in a good cause.

The chimney has been re pointed already and they were hoping to get the ridge done outside today so that they could start removing and replacing the mortar on the underside of the roof tiles today.

I'll try to get some photographs if it is still light when I get home, otherwise it'll have to wait until I am home in daylight hours again.

Exciting times...

Slush Cup #1

Not me or my photograph, but you can see it was a beautiful day to be in the forest

The first race of the winter mountain bike season is a race against the clock to determine which group you start in for the first real race in a couple of weeks. Having only ridden twice in October and having not ridden my mountain bike since May, I was not expecting great things and I wasn't disappointed with my predictions.
148 out of 186 overall and 60th out of 73 men - Crap.
I fell quite heavily on the first lap and hurt my arm and my left hip (makes a change from the right one) and when I got back on my bike, I realised that the bars were twisted by about 45 degrees. I managed to straighten them a bit but not completely so I had to ride the remaining 2½ of 3 laps with a 10-20 degree offset on my bars which didn't help matters much.

I need to do two things before the next race:

1. Train
2. Get used to riding off road again

This week's crash damage

I have also woken up feeling like I was hit by a truck and with a cold this morning just to remind me how badly prepared I was for that race.

Diet days off and a slush cup in the sunshine

Normally I pig out on a Saturday as my day off the diet. This weekend I will not indulge as much as usual in an effort to control the one day a week weight gain and to see what happens generally. I usually feel pretty bloated and crappy by the end of a day of chocolate and cake eating . We are going to friends for dinner in the evening so I will eat whatever we are given there, but otherwise, my day will just be normal eating.

Sunday is the first Slush Cup of the season and will also be the first time I have ridden a mountain bike since riding in a 12 hour race in May. As it is a race against the clock, there is less pressure to make a crazy fast start so I hope my rusty handling won't be a problem, much as I also hope that the latex in my tyres is 4 months won't leave them deflated either. The weather forecast for the whole weekend is really good so it should be a good race and I hope that we can all get to do some nice stuff outside together as well.

Race report on Monday.

Trouble

I'm being financially controlled by MK - the CFO on  daily basis and she immediately noticed that I have bought myself a fairly expensive piece of clothing. It's an SNS Herning cardigan which should be nice and warm and I got it for about half what it was when brand new as it has been worn a couple of times.

It am pretty sure that I will be able to sell it again if I am in too much trouble or I don't like it, but I am expecting some hot water regardless of the final outcome.

Next week I'll be disposing of some stuff on eBay, so hopefully I will be able to mitigate the financial and familial pressures both at the same time...

Missing the last evening

Today is my Mum's last day in Denmark for this visit, but I had to leave home at 6:00 to drive to Århus. Unfortunately, it looks like I will not be able to get home this evening so I will not get to spend the last evening with her and the family as I will be staying here overnight.

It was lovely to see her, and I am pretty sure that she is more interested in spending time with J&DK than she is to spend time with me. I am just grumpy anyway...

Weekend in the sunshine

This is not my picture - our battery was flat. The sun was shining whilst we were there.

We have had a nice relaxed weekend with my mum visiting. Saturday morning was spent buying food and me making a stew whilst Mum made an (unintentionally) huge Victoria sponge cake at my request. The cake was supposed to be a mere 4 egg number, but having miscalculated the amount of butter/margarine required, it ended up being 8 eggs!
After lunch we went to Gyrstinge for a walk in the forest and to see the lake before returning to some delicious stew and dumplings and a lot of cake.
Sunday morning was the usual combination of me taking J to football whilst DK went to gymnastics with MK. We spent the evening with MK's parents having more good food and also got to see K,L&A.
Sorry this is becoming incomprehensibly filled with acronyms.

Anyway, today I am working again and the rest of the gang are in Copenhagen at the Royal Ballet to see Bamse and Kylling Ballet which is a kids ballet with some much loved children's TV characters dancing with the royal ballet.

Office worker

DK is a bit under under the weather and we are meeting G&G in Copenhagen this afternoon so I decided to bring him in to the office with me for a couple of hours after my telephone meetings this morning.

He has had fun doing some drawings and then eaten rather a lot of lunch before being given and ice cream by the nice lady in the canteen.

I'll clean the desk later...

He is now installed in the play room watching TV before we head off for the weekend and school holiday week for MK and the kids next week.

Jet Lag

It's been pretty difficult to get out of bed the last couple of mornings. Last night it was also quite difficult to fall asleep until I remembered to take a melatonin tablet which did seem to help.

When the alarm clock went off this morning, I discovered that DK was in the bed beside me and it was again a huge effort to get out of the bed and into the shower. I did make it though and we all managed to get out of the house on time which was quite something as both MK and I had to go to Copenhagen for the day which meant an early start.

I have promised DK to take him to work with me tomorrow. I may live to regret that offer, but he wasn't at all impressed at being left in daycare this morning and I seem to be a sucker for his puppy dog eyes.

This may have been my warmest birthday ever - note the shorts!

Back home

I had a great trip to the US last week with a good variety of weather to contend with from warm sunshine to sleet.

At Total Climbing in Boulder

Getting over an overhanging section on a wall that is past vertical (graded 5.8 apparently)

The view from Flagstaff mountain -  the turnaround point of my bike ride

I did the usual stuff - eating mexican food, cycling, shopping and more mexican food and enjoyed catching up with everyone. The only real drawback was missing MK and the boys, I think I'll take someone or all of them with me next time.

Colorado

Well I'm in Colorado and it's 4:30 in the morning. I am catching up on some work and working out the jetlag after a long long day travelling yesterday. I met Andy Hamsten at Heathrow airport and shook hands with him. I think he was amazed that someone would recognise a retired pro cyclist, but then I have seen recent pictures of him as well. Here he is wining the Giro d'Italia in the snow quite a few years ago.

My battery is about to die, so this will be short...