Teething

J is learning about putting things into and onto other things, this leads to some odd finds around the house:
He is also teething and it's not much fun for him or us. He was awake during the night and we all had breakfast before 6 this morning.
Our skiing holiday has been booked for next February, we are going to Val d'Isere with MK's parents and K&L. We have not skied for a while so it should be fun.
I am planning to have a go at telemark skiing since I have significantly lost interest in alpine skiing since I sort of learned how to do it. This is probably not how I will look trying out the telemark turn in February

A new blog in town

It seems that I have inspired another aspiring blogger to enter web 2.0, that is the user created content world that is expected to be future of the internet. Have a look here.
I am happy to be back home and working from home for the remainder of the week. The hedge is doing well as are the family.
At some point in the near future I hope to come up with something interesting, funny or thought provoking, but in the meantime here are some more pictures:

Before:
During:
After:

The garden is now about 180 square meters bigger than before.*
*Apparently it is important to someone to point out that the garden is not actually bigger, but the usable area has increased, that being the area not covered in hedge.

It's tough being a Mum... so it seems

It seems that it is very difficult to suddenly leave something that you have spent 24 hours a day nurturing in some way for more than a year. For the first day back at work yesterday, J was OK but Mum wasn't, today it seems that neither of them were too pleased to be going there separate ways for the day.
Thankfully tomorrow is a day off so they can enjoy each others company and I will also be back home.
It's not nice having to deal with an unhappy loved one from another country, but I suppose that we will all get used to the situation in due course, hopefully the situation will soon change so that we can all have more time together...
I know that before long J will be looking forward to being with his little friends, I just hope that the period of adjustment is not too long for him or his mother.

The end of an era

Today is D-day, MK is back at work, J is in child care and I am....

in Warsaw. *
It is clearly a wrench for MK to leave J and get back to work, but I guess that she will come to terms with it. Hopefully our situation will gradually develop so that we are more felxible and we have more time to spend together "en famile".
I think we will end up like Tom and Barbara, I can only hope...

*This is not a picture of Warsaw, but it is still a dump and we flew over a lot of these sorts of places on the way here!

The hedge has landed

After a couple of days of hard work by B, MK and myself the hedge is complete and looking rather smart even if I say so myself. Unfortunately I won't get to see it much as I am off to Poland again tomorrow.
J was helping as much as he can - not much.

Sitting on the sofa in your pants

This is what it would be nice to be doing at the moment and for some of the weekend, but I am busy ending a pretty stressful week and mentally preparing for planting 335 privet bushes over the weekend in the name of hedges
Pictures no doubt to follow...

... and then it rained

Things are not going well in Poland so I will be back next week. This is not what I had planned!
It is really frustrating being stuck in the project that is going uphill slowly.
At least I will be home tonight and am taking J to childcare in the morning after breakfast fun and games...

... and the sun is shining

I am in Poznan and it ia really quite a nice place, it doesn't hurt that the sun always seems to be shining here when i visit. Our UAT is progressing nicely, I would just rather be home.
I have decided that I should have some sort of coaching so at some point I am planning to invest in a one year subscription to training peaks.com .
J is enjoying vuggestue and even MK is getting used to the idea of going back to work.

Drop him and run

From next week our lives will change a lot, this morning we took J down to the nursery school and left him, it is the first time that I have done that and it is a funny sensation. I am sure that he is fine there and will enjoy playing with the other kids, but it is somehow sad seeing him as one of many rather than the only one we have to look after (that takes about 90% of our attention as well).
I suppose this is the very first step to letting go and watching them grow up...

Garden = muddy wasteland

It's all done, you will have seen some of the before, here are some more durings and we hope to finish the project next weekend by planting a new privett hedge so the afters will follow.
I have been worn out all weekend so the rain has been a good excuse to do very little...




Yes this was a big job!

Novotel Warsaw Airport

Oh the glamour. I left home at 06:15 yesterday morning and left the office in Warsaw at 21:00 last night. We are leaving at 19:30 tonight so at least we don't have to eat the left over KFC like yesterday. However, it's not that bad being here as the workshops are sort of fun. I can't wait to get home though and see what a mess the garden has become...

Can't put it back

There has been a pretty major development in the hedge project, the old one is almost gone and the new plants don't arrive until mid November so we will get used to this exposed feeling. One guy did this in less than a day and it should all be gone, roots and all along with 5 trees by the end of Thursday!
View from the living room

Here is the promised picture of the birthday baking ;-)

Happy Birthday to me.

I am late I know, but I too busy yesterday to get online and do this.
It has been a nice weekend with plenty of relaxing and the odd bit of panic cooking. We made bagels, pancakes and a lemon and poppy seed cake yesterday morning to go with the huge brunch that we served.
The sun shone and everyone was happy until MK remembererd that J starts in child care today and that made her rather sad. I am sure we'll all survive.
I'll try to get the pics sorted out tomorrow

Ready to roll - Re-posting due to technical problems

Last weekend we continued the preparations for J starting in child care. In order to deliver him we have had to invest in child seats for the bikes. He seems to enjoy being there although he is less happy about having to wear a helmet...

By the way, the code that you have to enter to leave a message is to stop me getting tons of spam mail that I was getting before that feature was added, sorry if it is inconvenient.

Which Superhero am I?

I know that this is something that you've all been wondering, so here is the answer:

You Are Batman

Billionaire playboy by day. Saving the world by night. And you're not even a true superhero. Just someone with a lot of expensive toys!

What Superhero Are You?

It seems that J has started to move along the path to walking, he has started to walk around with his little trolly thing in the living room. I have been showing him how to do this, but this time he decided to have a go on his own, much to our amazement.

Some home front updates

Handrail painted

Chimney pointed

Everyone's happy

The cricket gets it

Poalo Betini has won the world championships which is not a big surprise. I was a shame that Erik Zabel came in second again, he really deserves to have won this race at least once, but her never seems to get it right and I think time may have run out for him now.
For those of you who are not interested in cycling (probably all of you, but I am trying to educate my loyal readers a little on the subject of bike racing), we have had a very successful weekend of painting rails cutting grass, fitting child seats to bikes and general housey stuff. As usual I promise that pictures will follow.

Apples and potatoes

We are drowning in apples at the moment, but thankfully J has learned how to eat them so we may well survive provided he doesn't go off them. We have also harvested our "The Good Life" style home grown potatoes, some of which were so small that they were difficult to spot with the naked eye. M would have loved them.
Last night I polished off the chimney so to speak. Pictures will be posted when I have them on the PC. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will look a terrible mess, especially as the new pointing is much lighter in colour than the old stuff.
In the meantime, it looks as though we will be receiving a royal visit towards the end of October which will be nice and means that we can arrange J's birthday party a little early...

Back to work

Somehow I seem to have been raised to feel guilty if I decide to take a day off because I don't feel well. There are days that you go to work no matter what because there are things you have to do - presentations, meetings etc etc, but if you feel crap and there is nothing that can't wait another 24 hours then why should I feel bad? I don't know, but I do.
Anyway K is getting whatever it is now so I will be on extra duties at home.

Two other things are on my mind today:
I hope that Richard Hammond (Top Gear presenter) recovers from his 280mph car crash, it is terrible when things like that happen and I hope he is OK.

I wonder how Lance Armstrong feels this morning now that his ex-wife has won the individual time trial world champion in Austria. It seems odd that after they split she became a professional cyclist.

Tiny furniture

I have J's cold so I am behaving as men normally do in such situations, I am feeling sorry for myself!
We went to the nursery school this morning, I don't think I have ever seen such tiny toilets. I think it would have been construed as a little wierd to take pictures, but they were about 30cm high.
Meanwhile back in normal life I am in the tedious process of completing my career plan for 2007. How should I phrase it politely??? I can't
I hope there will be more news to come on that front in the near future...

Chimney action and other inaction

I have finally started repointing the chimney and have done 3 sides (I ran out of sand at that point) It was a lovely day yesterday to be up on the roof and the view is pretty good too.

That was the action, unfortunately the incation has been as a result of young J having a pretty bad cold (and teeth coming through I think). He has kept us awake very well for the last 2 nights and as a result, there was no way that I was getting out of bed early and biking in the basement this morning. One day I'll manage it...

Poznan and the 21 day challenge

I have just read that you have to do something for 21 consecutive days for it to become habit so from Saturday morning I plan to get out of bed and ride my bike every day for 21 days and see how that works out.
In the meantime, here is a picture of Poznan, I will be here for the next 24 hours, my first impressions are that it is nicer than Warsaw, but that doesn't mean much.

Early to bed and early to rise...

I have never been good at going to bed, I always dither around avoiding it and then regret it in the morning when I am tired and sometimes even grumpy. When I do eventually get around to turning in early, the bloody phone rings! It has been one of my aims for some time to be disciplined enough to go to bed in time to be able to get up and train before work in the mornings. I have managed it in the past and I know I can do it again, but like so many things it always seems to be something to do tomorrow. So as I am leaving a little later than normal tomorrow straight to the airport, perhaps I will find the time to train a little for the first time in a while.
I have posted pretty much all of the interesting holiday pics so I need to take some new ones.

Birthday wishes

It's funny that I was brought up to understand that it is terribly bed form to start issuing demands around ones birthday, but apparently here in DK it is absolutely necessary. I still find that it leaves a bad taste in the mouth being so demanding, but I'm getting over it :-)

Happy Birthday Maureen

Dieting

Whilst floating around in the pool in Boulder (in particular being washed up on the beach at the local kiddies pool) I decided that my excuse of new parent status has run it's course in the waistline department. There is nothing that slows down an aspiring cyclist like a bloomin' great fat gut. There is a plethora of dieting blogs out there and frankly they are even more dull than this one so I have no intention of making this into a diet blog, but as I am exceptionally weak willed I will publicly state here that: I AM ON A DIET.
I shall be publishing my progress on the fridge door for all to see and I am aiming to be at a hitherto unseen racing weight come the start of (or near the middle of at least) next season.
I can't upload an pictures for some reason so sorry to the Grandparents!

Funny names

Danes seem to think that the name of a town on Funen should be very amusing, it is called Middle Fart. Admittedly it is mildly amusing, but it shows an alarming lack of imagination. We have just driven home through one of many examples of funnier places: Assendloes - pronounced ass-end-loose. There are other examples, my personal favorite being Assenderup just up the road from Assendloes - fortuitousus probably.
Followingng the advice from ajen here are some more tedious pictures:

London calling

I am sitting in a hotel next to St Paul's and it's pretty boring, the course I am on is all stuff I have done before, so I am frustrated by that, but I had dinner with Ben last night and a couple of beers which was really good. I hope he and H can come and visit us.Apparently J is settling back to normal life and sleeping better.I suppose London isn't as bad as i recall, but it drives me mad sitting in a room for 3 days being taught things I already know...

Getting over the jetlag

J slept until I woke him to say goodbye this morning as I am off to London for a couple of days. apart from waking at midnight, it was a good night for the little guy.
It seems that most of my work things have come together during our holiday and now that I have mown the lawn, it's almost as though we never left.
I am still short on the witty comments so I'll resort to the weather: it's very windy here today.

More pics:

Sharing a sandwich with Grandad (that is a bib, not a ruff)

All in the pool

Tired after dinner at The Dining Room with M

Back to the grind-stone

I am back in front of the usual PC now and not much seems to have changed, except for the fact that I have that out of body jet-lag feeling and have not eaten for a while.
I am not going to fool myself into thinking that the few readers of this blog are interested in anything other than photographs of J so I will just post some and worry about the witty social comment tomorrow. Enjoy!


Eating pizza at the Boulder Tea Rooms


Buying a lawn mower at Home Depot

Standing near the top of the Flat Irons (I have sneakily included myself in this one)