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.