Iceland update

Well I can confirm my first impressions: It is very cold here. About -10 Degrees and a VERY cold wind.
We went riding today on Icelandic horses (small and hairy) in the desolate and impressive landscape. Then we went to the blue lagoon in the dark, thankfully with no big allergy problems. Legging to and from the hotish water was rather bracing!

Landed in Iceland

I'm in Iceland, it is
Very Late (03:00 Danish time)
Very cold
Very windy
I'm going to bed now

Making progress

Well I'm back from Hamburg after a long dull day of 8 hours on the train and 3½ hours in a meeting. It seems that J is not much better, but still he is a bit better. Sorry, not pictures from Germany, but I am taking the camera to Iceland (really I'd like to buy a new one, but that's secret...)

News From The Trenches

Well it's been messy:
Thursday night - J and MK are both sick
Friday - J and MK are getting a bit better
Friday night - I am sick and J is still under the weather
Saturday - I am under the weather and J is sick
Sunday - Everyone has their status reduced to "under the weather"
However, as J has not eaten anything resembling a meal since Wednesday we have been to the Doctors and come home with penicillin for his double ear infection and preparing for him to have another week at home.
The rest of the week, I will try to make more interesting with pictures and updates from Hamburg

and Iceland

Skype me!

Well apparently some of you now have skype accounts :-) However, I don't know what your Skype names are so I can't get hold of you :-(
So post a comment and give me your details please.
I have had a crazy week, one night at home and 60 hours of work, I need to sleep.

Back in home for a few moments

I was home just after midnight, I left again at 09:00 until tomorrow. What an exciting, jet setting life I have. It will be so glamorous sleeping in the Quality Hotel (always a mis-noma) in Viborg tonight.
This is the gate that I walk through when I go to the main office in Carlsberg, it is pretty impressive and even after a year here, it still makes me smile.


J is sick again after having a vaccination yesterday, this is getting boring...

Stuck in Poland...

Well I should be on my way home, but instead I am in Poznan looking forward to another night in the Mercure hotel and another day working in this building next door (office on the right, hotel on the left)


The exciting thing is that I am going shopping in a minute to get some clean socks, pants and shirt!
I don't suppose I can find a picture of those on google images though...

Domestic Bliss

Autumn Cleaning: Arranging Mum's vast collection of shoes and boots

My weekend was spent putting winter tyres on the car, cleaning, tidying, washing, cooking etc etc. Domestic blisters ahoy. Now the basement is clean and tidy though

At least I managed to clean my bike ready for the winter it is now safely fitted to the turbo trainer for the coming 5-6 months... urgh.

I can while away my time making infinately slow progress towards this table and surrounding junk/bike parts

What is Skype?

Skype is a company that allows you to make telephone calls over the internet, it is free to call other Skype users (such as me!) and cheap to call anyone on a land line (such as you :o)). If you are interested you have to download to software and create an account here

Skype

This is special post for a number of reasons:

1. It is the weekend
2. J is not going to be mentioned
3. I am making a request

Please can thos people with whome MK and I have regular telephone contact outside Denmark install Skype and get themselves an account on their computers. No excuses, we can then all talk to each other for free whenever we are online at the same time privided that the computers are swithed on, we can even call each other. It is also cheaper to call to normal phones.

Thanks, I am looking forward to Skyping with you all soon!

First refusal

It's been some time since I updated my faithful readers on the progress of my PhD project as nothing really has happened. My contact at Copenhagen Business School called me yesterday to say that the first company who had been contacted did not have the time to commit to my research. The upshot of this is that the guys at CBS will continue to look for funding from other companies and I carry on waiting. However, it is a little exciting that my proposal will be printed in the journal of Djøf, the union forlawyerss and other professionals as I understand it.
J is getting better, but still not sleeping much so neitherr are his parents.


Oh and it's still cold!

Slow recovery

J seems to be getting better, I think the ear ache has cleared up and the is coughing a little less. It's not much fun being so full of snot when you are that small apparently.

There is snow falling outside the window so I suppose that winter has arrived a bit earlier than last year. The winter here is absolutely awful it will be cold, dark and wet for the next 6 months. That means it must be time to start planning something fun for next year!
BHP and I are hoping to get into the Jeantex Transalpes Race (have I mentioned this before?) that takes 7 days to (no surprise here ) cross the Alpes from Southern Germany to Italy. If there was ever a reason to get in shape and loose some of the enormous gut that I have been developing, then this must be it!
Here is the route from last year:

Brain fart

It took me 3 hours to get to work - damned trains. It appears that if you get on the wrong train going in the wrong direction, you will end up in the wrong place (possibly at the right time, but that is unlikely and of little use). So I spent an hour sitting at Glumsø this morning waiting for a train to take me back where I had come from. Consequently I spent 3 hours getting to work for a meeting (I would otherwise have worked from home again) that was cancelled half an hour before I arrived.
Lesson to learn for today: Check where the train is going before getting on it.
I hope the journey home is better...

Pictures may have to wait, but the winter has arrived today in no uncertain terms. It is about 3 degrees and there has been sleet and snow all morning.

All at home

This is real time stuff: They are currently both asleep on the sofa
What a night! None of us has slept much, but I think that MK bore the brunt of the crying. Thankfully I can work from home again today and MK is taking a days holiday or something to stay home with J and get some sleep. His breathing seems better, but he had a fever this morning, we are hoping that he will get better during the day as we both have to be in Copenhagen tomorrow so Mormor will be babysitting.

Not so happy birthday...

Today has had two firsts for J, his first birthday and his first uncheduled trip to the doctors. He has a virus (seems to be bronchitis, a cold and an ear infection as far as I can understand) anyway that explains why he has not slept much for a week, is difficult to live with, a fussy eater and generally down in the dumps.
We are looking forward to him getting better, especially as it is going to be hard working out who can be home with him for the rest of the week while he recovers.
Get well soon son!

Awful meal

We are all a little worse for wear today (that is a little sick, not hung-over). After a good nap this afternoon I was feeling better until we just ate, I made potato and squash rosti (too greasy and slimy) and some fish that K bought yesterday (simply not nice, may have been the sort of fish or it had seen better days - not sure, it smelled OK)
So now I'm feeling crappy again although everyone else seems fine.
My word, it's amazing how boring one can be when one tries...
Hopefully not me later (for a number of reasons):

Sleeping under a cloud

G&G bought a new king sized duvet last year, but it turned out to be too warm for them. Fast forwarding to this year, K&I bought a huge new bed, suddenly our bedding is not big enough.
Yes you've guessed it, we got the big duvet and last night was the christening (first sleeping under that is, nothing mucky!)
This morning K declared that the new duvet is lovely "it's like sleeping under a cloud or something". This is not a description that would have sprung to my mind, but if there is such a thing as a warm dry cloud, then so be it.

Back from the brink

The morning started badly, I got to bed at about 1 o'clock and had trouble sleeping and J was awake many times during the night. However, after a decent breakfast, and a good pooh, J was more or less back to his old self so I have taken him off to nursery and now I am home again working.
It is certain to continue being a hard week, but there may be light at the end of the tunnel...
Best of all, J is better. He looks like he is trying to avoid having his picture taken, but he just wants the camera really badly.

Sleepless in Poznan

I was nice not to be disturbed by the little guy during the night, but we worked late and I foolishly went to bed after midnight and now I am still tired.
I am looking forward to getting home at around midnight tonight...
Here is the lovely Mercure hotel in Poznan:

Poland again...

For me anyway.
MK is left at home with her mother in law, mother in law's twin sister and a sick baby. What fun! I am only joking and I am very happy to know that they will all have had a good day in Copenhagen and I hope that J is feeling better this evening. He had a fever this morning and wasn't much fun to be around.
Meanwhile I'm living the life...

Party time

The birthday party passed without incident although J was up all night being sick, we were therefore also up all night changing him and his bed repeatedly. He seems to be alright again this morning thankfully. (No he didn't eat a ton of cake or sneak off with a bottle of gin!)Consequently, we are all at home today although I am working, G&J have gone into Ringsted for a walk around and MK is trying to catch up on some lost sleep...
Here are a few pictures of the weekend's social event:

I have added a links section to the right in case any of you fancy wasting a little time reading about cycling or want to sign up with an online coach! Please don't ask for HTML lessons though.

Cousin Dickie also appears to have started a blog here and linked to the right. Being a policeman seems to have increased the value of his spare time, he seems to use it fairly actively. (He also resembles his dad with that dodgy 'tach)

Argh! His teeth are killing us!

I am sure that J will sleep well today at childcare because he didn't sleep much during the night. From 3:00 he was in our bed, kicking, fussing and crying until MK got up with him at about 4:30. We are all rather tired and looking forward to the young man's teeth finally arriving and us getting something resembling a nights sleep again.
I am working at home which is great, I am stocking up on bright light in an attempt to ward off the winter blues. I like to think of this as mission control - one PC for each company*
It will be J's first birthday party on Sunday (a bit early, but his grandmother is visiting) so there should be some more pictures next week.
Last night I tried to work out when I would be able to take some time to exercise, the evenings are apparently a loss so that means I need to find the time in the morning, apparently I need to be done by 6:00 so that I can feed J whilst his mother has a shower. If it works, this is going to require a lot of dedication.
*I admit that I am not a company, but somehow it is fun to have all three switched on and connected.

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