Happy Christmas

Happy little boys

Van Gogh

Inspired painting of fallen trees by DK

Sneak Peak

Of the kids

Lessons to learn: When taking kids for photographing, check their socks

Grønnegade

MK and I had an evening off last night, we wandered around the shops and did a little bot of last minute Christmas shopping, we had coffee and then dinner at Restaurant Grønnegade in Copenhagen.
We ate half price courtesy of SAS Eurobonus but managed to spend a fortune on drinks anyway. The food was good, we had a couple of fish courses which were very nice, then an æbleskive (normally a spherical doughnut type thing) but this one was filled with duck and served with fois gras which was delicious, a bit like a stuffed Yorkshire pudding. The main was two different kinds of roast pork (dull fillet and fantastic belly) then I had cheese whilst MK had desert.

It was a very nice meal and it was nice to be out alone for a change.

Earlier in the day, DK had a check up with the doctor who removed part of his bowel. She was very happy with his progress, he has grown 10cm in the last year and gained 2½kg.

Travelling again?

I just had an internal job interview for a position as a group program manager position. It might be interesting to get back out on the road again and earn some air miles instead of spending all of my time travelling on the train. I don't know yet but it could be interesting...

Another busy weekend with some exercise, cleaning, shopping, changing car wheels, more cooking and not quite enough sleep. Tonight, however, I am going out for dinner with MK for the first time in a very long time. The kids are staying with T&B as DK wants to be taken to nursery by Morfar and whatever DK wants from Morfar, DK gets (as does J for that matter!)

Outliers

I am listening to an interesting audio book called Outliers at the moment.

It turns out that being a professional ice hockey player or football player has more to do with which month you were born in than skill and the same goes for many other areas of life like academic success.

If you are born in January (or September in the British system) then you will be the oldest, biggest, most mature and developed in the group when talent based selections are made in the early years of life. It is these people who get selected and then given the most training and the best opportunities for development during their schooling, lives and careers. It simply snowballs from there.

Interesting stuff and it explains why MK (birthday 10/01) is so good at ice hockey

Mastery and learning

So I have so far found out that it takes 5-10 years with 10 000 hours of concentrated effort to become a master of something, but as little as 20 hours to learn to just do something.

Learning to do something involves 5 steps:

1. Chose what you want to learn to do and set a performance target
2. Deconstruct the skill into specific skills 
3. Research it
4. Remove the barriers to practicing
5. Pre commit to at least 20 hours of specific and targeted practice

It's apparently as simple as that. My challenge will probably be the time on the water, but I'll try to work on that when the spring comes.

So where am I in this process?

1. I know where I want to be and how high I am aiming
2. I've broken this down into the following points
1. Physical fitness and strength
2. Racing skills
3. Starting
4. Upwind
5. Downwind
6. Boat setup and trim
3. I am already reading as much as I can on the subject
4. I can't really do much more here, my boat is by the water and ready to go, I just need time and appropriate weather
5. I need to make sure that I get out whenever I can and stay out on the water and work on specific skills to make sure that I am getting better each time I sail.

More barefoot goodies

I'll soon never have to wear normal shoes again.

Learning

I have read a few books on sailing since I got my boat at the beginning of the year. I have digested and understood a number of things and try to apply them when I am out racing with the other guys - who are pretty good sailors, it should be noted. The problem is that I don't seem to be making much progress.

I have the fundamentals in place and that allows me to be in the game, but I don't know how to get better. Sometimes I go well and others times I am slow, but I don't really know why. There is some understanding missing about how to set and sail the boat in different conditions - mast rake, sale shape and how to sail with or through the waves.

Apparently experience is the key to improvement, but I am impatient so I want to find out how to get better faster. Reading sailing books hasn't helped much because the advice is to general, ideally I would like to have a coach, but that is difficult and expensive so I am going to try another option. The plan is to spend some time and effort to learn what I have to do to learn to sail better as fast as possible. There is a lot of information available about the skill of skill acquisition and that will be my starting point. I'll be reading, watching and listening to podcasts in an effort to find out how I can become a good learner and then put that into practice over the winter and into next season.

Bison

It's been an odd weekend. The water went off at 10 on Friday evening so we had to arrange some odd workarounds to get MK a shower before having her hair cut on Saturday morning and the boys swimming was cancelled.

This weekend Peberdalsgaard had an open house and a sale of meat. What is a little different is that it is a bison farm. We stood in the freezing rain for a few minutes looking at the motionless, cold miserable animals before retreating to the barn to get some meat. The spegepølse (smoked salami) is excellent and we will report back on the sausages, mince and stewing steak that we bought. The steaks and better cuts were eye wateringly expensive so we'll have a go at these first before investing in a feast worthy piece of meat.

Imagine it looking cold and wet and standing in mud

Yesterday evening's stew was a hit and the shepherds pie that I made on Saturday was also one of the best I have ever made (thanks to the lamb gravy that I had frozen) so the home cooking is riding a pretty good wave at the moment.

Survived the storm

There has been a huge storm over Scotland and Northern Europe over the last 24 hours. We have had very high winds and apparently there have been surge tides hitting the coasts on either side of the north sea.

Having been stick in Copenhagen a month ago, I decided to head home at lunchtime on the train. That worked out pretty well, the train was full, but I got home without problems only to find that garage roof felt was peeled back so far that it was almost in the neighbours garden. I climbed up onto the rather rotten roof, folded the felt back and nailed it down. BHP then helped me with some buckets of stones to hold the edges down. It seems to have worked overnight, but we definitely need a new garage in the spring.

This morning there is some snow on the ground and it is still very cold, but I decided to stay home given the trains being in a mess and the roads being unpredictable. Hopefully the forecast snow will not be too great and not here for too long over the weekend.

Slowing down

After a couple of  months of extremely long days and a lot of work, things are finally slowing down to a steady pace that seems almost too slow now. I am unfortunately still having to come to Copenhagen every day, but I am not crazy busy all day, I don't have to work at home in the evenings and I don't have trouble getting to sleep. (Although DK likes to wake us up very early and then I can't get back to sleep for him snoring)

It seems strange to not be so busy, but I'm getting used to it and I'm able to leave work in time to help with cooking for a change although I can't quite manage to get home in time to fetch the kids because I'd have to leave in the middle of the afternoon to get back in time.

Christmas has started

I have managed to avoid a hangover, but 3 days later, I am still tired and a bit grumpy after the works Christmas party.

Friday night started at an Italian restaurant with pretty good food and wine and then continued in a night club until about 2:30. I haven't been in a club for many years and I quickly remembered why when we got there and it was full of middle aged men in black suits. Later on some women did turn up (mostly dressed head to toe in black as well) but it wasn't an experience I found myself longing to repeat despite the boss buying magnums of champagne and bottles of vodka.

I managed to stagger home using trains and taxis and was in bed by 4 only to be back up at 7 having been woken by the kids and terrible cramp. I staggered around the house for a while smelling awful and still quite drunk but after a shower, I went back out the door to go to another Christmas party, this time with the Finn sailors.

This party started at 2 in the afternoon and we had a much more traditional Danish party with herrings, schnapps, pork based stuff and a lot more schnapps followed by rice pudding and cognac. I left there at about 9 and was home by 11 expecting a hangover to arrive during the night. Thankfully that didn't materialise so we had a fairly relaxed Sunday with a trip to Crossfit in the morning and visitors in the afternoon.

Now I just need to work on catching up on sleep for the rest of the week.

So long and thanks for all the fish

It's been fantastic having a house guest for the last week or so. We have been spoiled by having the kids fetched and entertained, dinner has been made, the house has been cleaned and our clothes have magically been washed and ironed each day. Truly spoiled.

This morning we were up at 5:30 to deliver our Mary Poppins substitute to the airport and I was at my desk by 7:20.

Now a busy day awaits and then we'll have to figure out how to make ourselves something to eat this evening.

Thanks mum

I'm getting bad at remembering this

I seem to have fallen out of the habit of blogging a little.

We have been busy as usual. MK took 3 grand parents and the kids to the theater in Tivoli on Friday afternoon before I met them at Mother for pizza. I worked and got my phone fixed but was rather too early at the restaurant and they were late which was a little frustrating for me. The restaurant was packed and the service was VERY slow. The food was good but I think the overall result is that I can't be bothered to go there again especially given that MK and I had stomach ache after eating so much pizza!

I sailed on Saturday morning in Vallensbæk, the Finn club had arranged for a coach to be out on the water with us and to give some feedback afterwards. It was a really nice day with very little wind and we concentrated on doing a lot of starts. I wasn't very good as I am always very wary of hitting the new shiny boats that the more experienced and better sailors have. I enjoyed it but I don't think I learned very much.

Here's a video from saturday's sailing on facebook

Dinner with all of the outlaws on Saturday evening was delicious and Sunday was a day for crossfit relaxation, a walk and I have also changed the cartridge in the bathroom tap so that works again.

Poor Host

I am afraid that we are abusing the good will of our house guest.

The first evening I left her to cook dinner whilst I went to Crossfit. Wednesday evening she was left to make dinner again by herself and then had to put up with being shushed repeatedly whilst I tried to watch a film (that continued last night as well!)

At least someone else cooked dinner last night and we are going out to eat tonight after a trip to the theatre in Tivoli.

Shoulder Press

I squeezed in a cheeky Crossfit session last night which was great, but it was pretty tough. The first set of 50 times 50kg overhead presses was hard, but then getting back round to it again after running, 50 push ups, 50 pull ups, 50 medicine ball sit ups, 50 squats was really hard.

I managed 13 in the second round before running out of time at 25 minutes.

I also found out that I can quite easily do a 50kg snatch :-)

Scared

Another hectic weekend.

On Saturday the Finn club had arranged for the Danish national coach to be at the sailing club for a training session on the water. I hadn't sailed for a few weeks but I was looking forward to getting back out and hoping for some constructive help from the coach.

I am always a bit rusty after a month off from sailing, but nothing was working properly. The wind was blowing reasonably hard from the land which makes it shifty and unpredictable. We were also sailing close to the shore so the consequences of capsizing could well have been a broken mast (and the water is rather cold).

I was far too tense and terrified of capsizing which I nearly did 3 times. I wasn't enjoying it. The aim of the training was to have us all sailing close to each other so the courses were short and we had 3 starts for each actual race. I made the first 3 starts and finished the first race fairly close to last. I made the next 2 starts, but then somehow lost my nerve. Nothing I tried to do was going how I wanted to and I just wanted to get back without breaking anything. I sailed back a forth a bit in an effort to calm my nerves, but in the end I just went in. I was embarrassed. One of the guys out there was well into his 60s with an artificial knee and he was doing better than me and there weren't even very big waves.

I'll try again next weekend when there is another coaching session, but then I think I'll pack the boat up until sailing starts again in the new year.

Long day, late night

I know very well that I am not the only person who works long hours, but I am getting tired of it at the moment.

Yesterday I left the office at 7pm, worked all the way home on the train, went to crossfit from 8-9, ate dinner and then worked until midnight.

Tonight I am leaving on time (in the car because the trains were a mess this morning) and when I get home I am going to drink most of a bottle of wine before watching Jack Reacher.

Rhythm

MK was electioneering yesterday afternoon so I inherited the task of taking DK and his friend to their weekly music class (with J along as well). I was pretty lost to be honest,  everyone else knew the songs and what they were supposed to be doing, but it was actually quite good fun.

We then are an enormous piece of roast pork between us. It isn't very long ago that we would have laughed a the idea of eating over a 1kg of pork (before a gallon of fat came out) for dinner, but last night we had to find some other stuff for J to eat afterwards because he was still hungry. He generally eats as much as I do these days and always more than MK.

Getting better all round

DK is much better, he is still tired from the antibiotics, but the mark on his leg has pretty much gone and his cough is much better.

I seem to have slightly less to do at work as well at the moment so MK and I managed to watch a film together last night - Friends with Benefits or F%#k Buddies as it was translated in Danish. She loved it (I suspect she had no idea that it was Justin Timberlake or who he is but that's OK)
I thought it was pretty terrible to be honest, it was supposed to be taking a snide view of cliché ridden rom coms, but it ended up being one. It doesn't really matter because MK thought it was good and next time we'll probably watch something less like a romantic comedy.

Oops

I didn't sail because it was too windy for me. Of the 8 or so that did venture out, 2 broke their masts so I was very glad that I stayed on dry land.

Last Regatta of the year

Tomorrow is the last formal regatta of the year. We are only sailing for 3 hours instead of the normal 6 hours and there is roast pork afterwards instead of sausages.

Last night I stuck my own sail numbers to my good sail that I got with my new mast. It took a while to figure out whether the number should be parallel with the battons or the bottom of the sail or if they should be perpendicular to the back edge of the sail. It seems that the the latter was the case.

I think it looks OK, but its hard to tell on the floor in the basement. The weather looks like being rather boring but at least that minimises the risk of swimming in the rather cold sea.

Lovely

DK has been ill the last couple of days and then we noticed a big red ring on his leg (the black line around it is my doing to see if it is growing or not).

It turns out that it is all related to an infected tick bite so now he is on antibiotics for 10 days and we can hope that it doesn't developed into Lyme disease

Oh Bother

I dropped my phone on sunday and broke the glass on the front. Thankfully I can expense the repair, but it's a real pain in the bum to find the time and place to get it fixed.

Schaeffergaarden

I've been away from home again in Copenhagen, but this time it was planned so I had a toothbrush and some clean pants.

We are having a workshop at Schaeffergaarden in the north of Copenhagen

It's pretty nice and the restaurant is good too, I particularly like the 50s decor that I think is actually mostly original from the period rather than being a retro re-fit.

8 x 8 year olds

The house is not quiet!

Half a pig!

Viking ship chocolate ship

Pig

I just heard that MK has picked up our latest half pig, but it isn't really chopped up much (so much for a cheap deal from a farmer)

Sounds like I'm going to spend the evening up to my elbows in pig and plastic bags.

Happy Birthday

Thanks for all the cards and presents.

Apparently J was up very early this morning, but he didn't open any presents until breakfast. He is delighted with all of the presents, but I am happy to say that he seems most excited about the radio controlled car that we got him (and me).

He is having a viking themed party on Friday with the boys from school and then I guess we'll use the weekend building and then probably breaking the Hornet

Breezy out

I thought he was asking for trouble when I heard someone on the radio yesterday morning declare that Denmark wouldn't have the same problems with the big storm that the UK were having because Denmark is better prepared.

I left the office a little after 15:30. I sat on a train until 17:00 at which point they said it would be 2-3 hours before the trains were running again so I decided to get something to eat and then see a film. So after a picnic and seeing Rush at the Palads cinema, I headed back to the station to find ALL trains cancelled until today.

Hmmm

I ended up staying in the Cabin hotel and I am not at work in the same clothes as yesterday and beginning to smell a bit.

MK has come to Copenhagen today on a course so I have to get home in time to collect the kids. That is still looking a bit challenging so I guess I will leave at lunchtime and hope that I get there in time.

BTW Rush was very good. It is about the rivalry between Niki Lauder and James Hunt in the 70's.

All 4 faces

Pumpkin #1

Life without glasses

After a week without glasses, I am getting used to the benefits and drawbacks of no longer wearing any facial furniture.

I had a terrible headache by the end of the day on Monday but since then it has been more or less OK. I am getting used to very slight blurriness on most things, both near and far and simply accepting that as being how I can see at the moment.

It appears to be inevitable that I will need some reading glasses in the future, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, at the moment I am just +0.75 in each eye, but the short shortsightedness is down to -0.5 and -0.25 which is pretty insignificant and explains why I was getting headaches wearing my glasses that were stronger than that.

On the plus side, I can now wear any old sunglasses again without problem

Today's tie

It certainly got some comments

Model boat

Made from business cards last week

Winter

As some of you may have read, we were in England last week for a family break and to visit the other set of in-laws.
We flew over to Manchester on Saturday and after a long wait for the hire car, set off for Shustoke. J spent the morning at school with KP on Monday to see what it is like at an English school. He apparently thought the maths was very easy but didn't say much about the English lesson. We heard from the head teacher that he was very personable and from KP that 2 of the girls and one of the boys really wanted to be friends with him.

Tuesday was a mammoth shopping day for everyone (except me for once). I had an eye test and found that I am not very short sighted any more, but becoming long sighted so I am now trying to live without my glasses again although today is showing me that some reading glasses may well be in my future.

Wednesday we visited the Manchester Childrens hospital for DK to have his feet checked. They are fine (he refused to walk properly insisting that he always walks like a robot) and he runs with nice straight feet. We don't need to go back for another year and he should keep running and jumping and playing as much as possible.

Thursday we had a day off from the car and just relaxed with a walk and I moved some kitchen cupboards around.

Friday was home day and we have spent the weekend relaxing and clearing out the basement to accommodate the new massive freezer. Now we are back at work and school and it's peeing down with rain.

New cardigans

Thanks to Mormor for knitting these for the boys. They look great.

Broken Record

This will just be another post like the last ones. I am too busy to do anything except work at the moment.

I'll try and get better at posting some pictures as life goes by, but the words will have to wait until I have some more time.

Sausages

Making Waves

I could feel this cold arriving on Thursday evening, a combination of tiredness and stress didn't help me fight it off so it managed to invade my body and fill my head with gunk.

I didn't feel bad on Saturday morning so I took advantage of my last free weekend morning for a couple of weeks to head out for a couple of hours sailing. I was rewarded with sunshine and waves, both of which I have learned to deal with as a sailor during my first season sailing on the sea.

This was planned as my birthday weekend, the kids went to T&B overnight and we had at some point considered an evening in Copenhagen but that got shelved reasonably quickly when we found some beef filet in the freezer and thought about the energy required to get to CPH and back.

MK and I had a wonder around the outlet village to stock up on work clothes for her (along with some orange trousers!) and then I made dinner - sweet potato fries cooked in duck fat and the beef in a green peppercorn, cream and Armagnac sauce followed by a box of chocolates. We also drank one of the very nice bottles of wine that we bought in Provence with it (that was before the cold took away my sense of taste).

Sunday was very productive as we made about 6kg of sausages and cleaned the windows, but to be honest, it's pretty quiet being home without the kids. It's fun for a couple of hours, but we soon get the miss them and it's nice when they come back high as kites on sugar and being spoiled by their grandparents.

Tired Eyes

I can't f'in' see what I'm doing at the moment. I think my prescription is probably only about 5% off, but I am struggling all the time and nothing is ever quite clear. Normally that's not a big issue, but at the moment I am working quite long days and the fatigue is making everything seem worse than it did before.

I think I'm going to end up having to go back to the varifocals and give them another shot. This time, I'm not scrimping on the ones with the limited focal area at the bottom of the lenses though. Oh no, I'm getting the best ones I can get.

Travel Cards

We have a new travel pass system that covers the whole of Denmark.You check in at the start of your journey and check out at the end and it calculates the price.

There have been a lot of problems making it work, but it had apparently been sorted out and as I am now using the train reasonably regularly, I got one.

Having checked my account last night I can see that I have paid 88kr each way to work whereas if I had continued with the old paper 10 trip card I would have been paying 64kr each way. That means that I have been paying 48kr (about £5 or $8) per day for the privilege of using my shiny new card.

I also found out that a 30 day pass for unlimited travel is only 1600kr which would pay for itself in about 9 days compared with the rejsekort.

No more. I'm cancelling it when I get home tonight and getting a monthly card when I am going to be in CPH full time in the future.

A funny day

It's been an odd day today.

The result of which is rather a lot of motivation to partake in somewhat destructive behaviour at other people's expense. That's not normally in my nature, but in this instance, I'll make an exception, after all, I've got the moral higher ground

B'day

It appears to be getting less and less exciting having a birthday once you reach your late 30s. I had a new mast for my boat a few weeks ago which counts as both Birthday and Christmas presents stretched out into one loooong gift, but I did get a couple of small things this morning. Thanks.

This is a Concept mast but it's pretty similar. Mine is a Wilke and is black all the way up!

However, it's nice to see some of the smaller things happening around me this morning. DK has been singing happy birthday to me non stop since I got home from work yesterday evening and J had made me the worlds smallest birthday card this morning.

This evening I will get to sit on a very small chair and eat my dinner at the nursery whilst we hear about DK's field trip last month.

The biggest surprise of the day came when I opened google this morning and found this

Relaxing and re-setting

Last week was too much for me, I needed to spend most of the weekend consciously trying to relax and get over it.

I didn't sleep well on Friday night with frequent cramps and trouble relaxing but a couple of hours sailing on Saturday morning followed by manic cooking all afternoon helped to get my mind off work and onto other stuff. The weather continues to be excellent, the sun shone and there was a nice little offshore breeze to contend with (meaning no waves) without fear of swimming.

MK and the kids fetched our newest 1/4 cow from the farm so we are now ready for another few months of minced beef based dishes.

We had guests on Saturday night, I cooked pork filets stuffed and rolled with porcini mushrooms, bacon and sage followed by apple crumble with some of the tons of apples that we have from the garden. All was well, but getting home at 2pm from sailing without having bought the ingredients made for a very concentrated effort to be ready for the 5:30 arrival. We made it just in time.

Sunday was an altogether more relaxed day with Crossfit at 10:00 then dropping the kids at different parties and friends in the afternoon. MK and I even managed to find half an hour for a walk in the forest before collecting the little darlings.

Stressed Eric

I am looking forward to a de-stressing this weekend. Sailing tomorrow morning and friends over for dinner in the evening. I really need a break because it's been a pretty full on week with some rather heavy interactions with various people at work.

Bring on the evening's red wine, even if it will end up being later than I want it to be.

Last Race of America's Cup

Amazingly enough, Team Oracle USA has fought back from 8-3 down to 8-8 in the first to 9 competition in the America's Cup. That means that tonight will be the final race of the event - winner takes all.

I'll be watching on http://www.youtube.com/americascup at 22:00 European time  as it will probably be our last chance to see these monstrous boats racing - at least for the time being.

Yesterday Emirate Team New Zealand set the speed record for the event with an amazing 55mph.

Busy, Busier and Busiest

It has been written in various places that being busy is worn as a badge of honour in today's world. I like to be a bit busy, having enough to occupy my mind and feel like it's worth the effort of driving to work.

My first few weeks in my new job were at the Goldilocks - not too much, not too little, but just enough. Since then I have been gradually getting more and more to do. The situation took a turn for the worse yesterday when my substantially over worked boss had to start his vacation early. I guess I'll be very busy at least for the coming couple of weeks.

Sometimes life as a consultant is busy, other times it is less busy and it's important to recognise when you are not busy in order to relax and enjoy the ride.

Wimped out

Another fun and busy weekend is behind us and it's back to the normal routine again this morning except that I took the train after hearing the traffic news on the radio before leaving home.

Saturday morning was swimming for the boys whilst I spent a few hours chopping and loading fire wood. That was great exercise and nice to be in the fresh air, it was even warm enough to take my shirt off and get make some vitamin D.

I had planned to go sailing on Sunday, but along list of things to do at home, coupled with forecast string winds and and already aching body persuaded me to stay at home and cook, clean, mow lawns and so on. It looks like I missed a good day of sailing although it seems that there were a few of the experienced sailors who went for a swim at one point or another so it was probably for the best that I hadn't joined them. Maybe next weekend.

iOS7 - Nerd Alert

The new control panel

Unusually for me, I have been quite excited about getting a new piece of software this week. Yesterday apple released the new operating system for the iPhone called iOS7. It was quite a disappointment getting a new iPhone 5 because it felt exactly the same to use as the 4S that I had before. Now the operating system has been updated, it feels like a new phone but only really on a surface level as it doesn't really seem to do much that is new, it just looks a bit nicer.

I plugged my phone into the power last night and left it to update, at some point it said that there were 21 hours remaining on the download as half of the apple nerds in the world were also updating their phones. This morning, though, I was greeted by a shiny new look everything seems to be working perfectly so far.

Breakfast

I still think its very sweet and. Bit funny that MK has candles lit for her breakfast that she ate alone at 06:30 this morning before her early trip to work. It's nice for us to find them half an hour later.

Autumn

Autumn is definitely in the air these days, even if the leaves are still prety much still on the trees.

We spent Saturday morning having and car boot sale to get rid of some of the boys old toys. It went reasonably well although it was an pretty tedious way to spend half a day. I would have preferred to have been sailing, but my bruised thumb wasn't up to that anyway.

We had a more relaxed Sunday morning with pancakes and lazing around before MK and the boys went to gymnastics and I went to crossfit.

MK came home with 2 extra kids so the house was full for the afternoon and I hobbled around with a sore knee after rather a lot of squats in the morning.

DKs home

He's been away for 3 days (and nights) with his nursery staying in the woods. It's great to have him back but the head full of lice, we could do without!
MK is out in search of de/lousing shampoo.

Thumb

I landed badly on my thumb at crossfit on Wednesday evening. It hurt a lot and yesterday it was obvious to see that there is some damage in there.
I think I'll skip sailing this weekend and hope its better next week.

America's Cup

As mentioned somewhere else, the 34th America's Cup is currently being fought over in the San Francisco Bay between Emirates Team New Zealand and Oracle Team USA.

The whole boat is being lifted out of the water on the foils 

They are racing 72foot foiling catamarans with wing sails that are able to reach speeds over 45 knots (+50mph) with wind speeds under 20 knots. They are incredibly impressive boats, if a little lacking in grace compared with the traditional mono hulls.

The Louis Vuiton Cup that decided who would compete against Oracle was a total washout with only 3 teams taking part and nobody getting anywhere near New Zealand, but the Cup itself is turning out to be pretty exciting with very close racing.

Weekend at home

I suspect that we have just had our final weekend of the summer. I had a great sail on Saturday morning with plenty of wind and big waves whilst the boys had their first swimming lessons of the season. After a quick lunch, we packed the car and headed for the summer house to catch the last of the sun on the beach, pick some blackberries for pudding and eat another leg off BHP's birthday goat!

We all slept well (at least I did so it seemed that everyone else must have done so too) and enjoyed pancakes for breakfast on Sunday before a short walk to on the beach. J had a bit of a swim whilst the rest of us decided that the season for intentional sea bathing was over for the year and we headed home to prepare ourselves for the week to come.

I have finally taken the photos from the camera:

Sitting on the worlds biggest picnic table at Simon Small's house

DK and J with Ronje the Robbers Daughter

Pippi outside her house

J looking thoughtfully into the distance from Pippi's balcony

Commuting

I have spent a lot of time travelling this week starting with 9 hours from Shustoke on Monday. Tuesday was a terrible 2 hours in and 1½ hours back again, then an average 1½ hours each way on Wednesday and Thursday. Thankfully I can work from home on Friday and try to catch up on the missing hours and a sneaky trip to Crossfit in the afternoon before picking up the kids.
I don't really pull my weight much at the moment with the delivering and fetching the kids, but I hope to make up for that a bit by at least working from home once a week so that I can do both.

Managed it again

The good thing about the 06:00 Crossfit class is that it is not busy. Last week there were 2 of us and this week I was alone so I get personal training. I don't suppose that they will continue to run early morning classes if I am the only person who shows up, but for the time being it's great for me even it it's bit difficult to get going so early in the morning.

Now I just have a load of work to do after my 1½ hour commute.

Shustoke reservoir

We are back from a really nice relaxing weekend in Shustoke to celebrate a birthday. We ate unhealthy food and I think I drank more than I probably should have, but it was great to see everyone.

I can really tell that I was relaxed because I came back to work this morning and I couldn't remember anything that I was doing at the end of last week.

Sorry about the hiatus

Life is pretty crazy at the moment. Having been away for the weekend, I spent Monday evening looking after the kids whilst MK was at a school meeting before going to Crossfit at 20:00. Tuesday was another 3 hour commuting day along with at least 2 hours ironing in the evening and yesterday I was home alone again as MK was out running with her colleagues in Copenhagen, but I had managed a 06:00 Crossfit session in the morning.

The 3 hours per day commuting isn't helping things much either.

I'll endeavor to carry on blogging as much as I can, but at the moment it's hard to find the time.

Commuting

Now that I am working on a project in the centre of Copenhagen again I have been presented with the usual challenge of finding the best method of getting from home to the customers office each day.

The first week was ok as it was still holiday season, but over the last few days the traffic has worsened every day so that I now spend about an hour and a half travelling way either by car or on the train. My conscience tells me the use the train and I enjoy the time on the train a little more than the driving time BUT it costs double to use the train and it is consistently 1,5 hours each way whereas the car is worst case 1,5 hours but is often faster at least in the morning. I guess I'll stick to the car at least for now.

Pippi Langstrompe

We had a fab weekend at Astrid Lindgrensworld in Sweden. It's theist middle class theme park in the world. There are no rides, it is a series of plays and singing and dancing shows in the forest on sets that resemble the sets of 60's Swedish kids tv series.

The kids loved at and didn't care at all that they couldn't really understand what the actors were saying and they got to meet some of their imaginary heroes. Pippi, Emil and Ronje.

On top of that, the food was great, locally sourced local dishes - great bacon with potato pancakes and great big salad bars.

Here's our Pippi in front of Villa Vilakula

Solna

I've been in Solna for the last two days. Solna is a suburb of Stockholm and is to a large extent like a new town with new offices and apartment buildings everywhere but also some nice old parks. Stockholm seems like a very middle class place even by Scandinavian standards which may or may not be a good thing, I'm not sure.

I was on an introductory training course for my new job which was pretty good. The downside was the travel time and the immediate backlog from my normal work that built up but that's just life.

Now I have a lot to do before we head off for the weekend.

Swimming Lessons

Saturday's sailing plans were dropped fairly early on as there was no wind and it was raining. I checked with someone who lives closer to the sailing club than I do and we agreed to meet up on Sunday morning instead.
I got there in good time so that I could get my new mast fitted and all the confusing little bits of string in place before we hit the water. The guy I was sailing with had very kindly decided to bring his tape measure and sailing experience with him to help me get the boat set up for the new mast and my weight. I hadn't really been through this process before so it was interesting to learn a bit about what should be adjusted in which direction under certain circumstances.

When we finally went out the sail there wasn't really very much wind and we had a few gentle legs up and down a short course to check that my boat speed and pointing ability was where it should be. Thankfully it seemed that everything was fine.

not me

Then the wind hit us pretty hard and there were fairly quickly reasonable waves and it was hard work to stay upright. Upwind was manageable but on my second downwind leg I capsized, the wind and the waves meant that I had to pull the boat back up and let it capsize again straight away before being able to right it and get back in. That was something of a struggle as the mast got stuck in the bottom again,. but I took my time and thankfully avoided breaking another mast. About 30 seconds later (and much to my colleagues amusement) I did the same thing again. This time I remembered that you have to hold onto the centerboard as the boat re capsizes and pop up on the right side to pull it up again.

and now more clearly not me!

By the end of that, I was pretty tired and headed for the harbour to wash the sand and grit out of the mast and put the whole thing back together yet again. I was pretty tired and glad to be back on dry land again after that, but it was a fun trip and flying back the harbour over the waves was an absolute blast.

The new lunch boxes

That's me on the left, J in the middle and DK on the right. The boys are christening theirs today, but mine will have to wait until Monday as I am at a customer today with a canteen that I can use for free.

I have been struggling with aching legs since the crossfit on Wednesday morning. I'll be back there again on Sunday and see how things progress in the meantime.

Mast and Sail

I'm going to get my new mast and sail this evening so that I can sail again on Saturday morning.

Fancy carbon moulding

Hopefully there won't be any problems driving around Copenhagen with 6,5 metres of carbon fiber on the roof rack but I'll have to be careful not to take out any cyclists at junctions and corners.

I fear the the mast has cost more than the total amount that B and I spent on sailing in our youth including buying boats, clothes and club membership.

Isn't there a saying about the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys?

Early bird

I did manage to get myself to Crossfit at 06:00 this morning. After a warm up of air squats and skipping, we did a bit of yoga style stretching and then 20 max weight back squats (I used 50kg, but I should have had more on the bar really) then we did "Surfers on Acid" which is 3 rounds of run 400m and 21 burpees. It took me 11½ minutes which was OK for that time of day.
Then home, shower, breakfast and off to work for a loong day.
At least I only spend 1½ hours getting home tonight instead of the 2 hours it took yesterday.

Bloomin' 'eck

I am already extremely busy with my new job and was drowning in emails yesterday despite only having been in the company for 6 work days!

I have been going to bed too late each evening and consequently not getting enough sleep to counteract the stresses and strains of the day. The result? I have been a bit of a grumpy git with a headache and not much fun to be around.

Tonight I'll hit the sac extra early as I have signed up for the 06:00 Crossfit class tomorrow morning. I don't know how that's going to work out, but I'll give it a try.

Something bit me on both ankles whilst we were cutting the hedge. At the time I thought it must have been a mosquito, but given the size of the marks and that they are hurting 2 days later to the extent that it is keeping me awake at night, I suspect that it must have been a scorpion or maybe a venomous snake of some sort!

Hedges and Lunchboxes

I need to get better at taking before and after pictures for this blogging malarkey.

I did a pretty tough Crossfit session on Saturday morning before embarking on the biggest workout of the day that was cutting the hedge. MK and I worked hard all day (with a little help from our little helpers) and managed to get it done and the trailer returned to the garage by the deadline of 16:30. We were completely bushed by the end of it but managed to roast a chicken for dinner which is always a hit with the kids.

One of the absent neighbours mirabelle trees was hanging over our hedge so we chopped the branches back and collected a box of mirabelle plumbs that I made into Jam on Sunday afternoon. I'm looking forward to finding out if it's any good or not.

The other great event of the weekend was ordering new lunch boxes for the me and the kids - I now take lunch as there there is no canteen at my new job when I am not at customers. We get through a lot of cheap lunch boxes that get broken or won't close after going through the dishwasher a few times. We saw some very fancy looking ones in a shop in France whilst on holiday and after a bit of research, decided to buy some online. They are called MonBento and are made of silicone coated plastic with two airtight layers, a lid and fancy colours to chose from.

DK, J spent a very very long time deciding which colours they should have whilst MK and I agonised over the extortionate prices.

Here is my design. J went for a red and blue scheme whilst DK opted for red and white. Product reviews to follow.