Gymnastics

DK really enjoyed the experience

J in full flight

Leap frog

MK on stage

Serious concentration

Spring in the air

The sun is shining.

The snow drops are out and the daffodils are poking their heads out of the ground

I am pretty sure that spring is on it's way.

Busy and back in training

I have finally kicked myself back into action this week and got some cycling done. That has lead to cramps during the night, but I need to get moving if I am ever going to get fit this year.

J has lost his first front tooth but is waiting to put it out for the tooth fairy until he has shown it to T&B.

This weekend is the gymnastic display for J, DK and MK. I can't wait and there will certainly be some photographs to follow. We are also having a tree cut down in the garden at the weekend so there should be plenty of photo opportunities.

Ear there any everywhere

DK was supposed to see the speech therapist today, but that was postponed for a trip to the ear doctors for a hearing test. Amazingly, we have never had a 100% conclusive hearing test for him, instead having to settle for "he can probably hear fairly well" as an answer.

Of course the hearing test was another wash out. The drain has fallen out of his right ear so he will have another put in on Monday next week (with yet another general anaesthetic) and the speech therapist will go ahead as planned tomorrow.

Let' see if she still thinks he is somewhat retarded or if she is impressed by his 29 word vocabulary.

Pippi and the Ninja

Yesterday was the the Danish equivalent of Halloween where the kids dress up and take it in turns to hit a barrel until it breaks and a cat gets out. The cat has now been replaced by sweets but the pagan roots remain.

J went as a Ninja

DK was Pippi

Congestion Charges

When the current government was elected in Denmark, there was a fairly determined commitment to implement a congestion charge ring around Copenhagen modelled on the one in London. I was not very happy about that as I have no realistic alternative to the car unless I want to double my commuting time to 1½ hours each way.

There is some congestion in Copenhagen, but relative to London, it is insignificant and the prices being discussed were rather high. The general feeling seemed to be that nobody really wanted the congestion charge and it was far from clear how much it would cost to implement, how much revenue it would generate and what the overall impact would be on the economy. As usual, the statistics were being manipulated to support the people using them and nobody knew what it all meant.

Then the good news came. Firstly the decision was delayed whilst the areas around the proposed ring considered the impact on them and then on Wednesday the whole plan was dropped with smug grins and red faces liberally scattered around the coalition government. It was a rather unusual turn of events, but one that I am thankful for. I understand that on 29% of people commute by car within Copenhagen and I would happily use the train if it didn't take so much longer than driving. Until that problem is sorted out, I think the congestion charge would be little more than a straightforward tax.

Fastelavn

I am away overnight in Viborg this evening. It's not the most interesting town in Denmark and it has been something of a frustrating day, but never mind.

Yesterday MK bought a fancy dress outfit for DK to wear to the Fastelavn party this weekend.

I can't say I am too impressed to be honest, but it is apparently exactly what he wanted.

This isn't DK, but he looks frighteningly like this with the costume and wig on!

I'll take some pictures of him for future blackmail and general embarrassment! J wants to be a Ninja, but apparently every other little boy in Denmark does too so it's proving a little tough to find him an outfit.

Tenotomy

Before starting to write this, I did a quick google image search to try and find an appropriate picture. I wish I hadn't. But I did find this:

We now have a date for DK's operation on his feet. The plan is to lengthen his Achilles tendons so that his heel bones point down as they should instead of up as they do at the moment. He will then spend a month with both legs in plaster from his toes to his hips and we will spend a month running around after him and entertaining him (thankfully with some help).

I'm sure it will all be fine in due course, but we are not looking forward to going through it and the travel element adds to the frustration of it all.

Livigno

We got home late on Saturday night from a lovely week skiing in Livigno, Italy. We all skied (except Grandma), ate well and enjoyed the change of scenery. It was extremely cold for the first few days - between -10C and -20C but then after a storm on Wednesday which closed almost all of the lifts, it was not far below freezing point for the remainder of the week.

They say a picture says a thousand words so here are some.

J won the ski school race at the end of the week 

DK loved skiing and insisted on hitting the slopes every day

We took J to the top of the mountain

Lunch in a restaurant - Pizza for the kids and beer for Morfar

We even managed to have some time skiing without the kids.

Thanks for the company, baby sitting and lunches.

Deodorent

Some time ago I read that we shouldn't be using deodorant with aluminium in it. Apparently

• Its been shown to be associated with both the plaques and the tangles in the brains of Alzheimer's victims.
• Aluminium accumulates in nerve cells that are particularly vulnerable to Alzheimer's disease.
• Many experimental studies have been done on animals and cells that show that aluminum has a toxic effect on the nervous system.

I assumed that it would be easy enough to find a brand of deodorant that is free of aluminium salts, but it is not. I have tried 3 or 4 different types. The first was good but too expensive and none of the subsequent ones really seem to work that well. One from the body shop doesn't work, another which was the active ingredient "crystal" which doesn't work and a Sanex version with minerals that was actually OK, but I can't find it any more.

I guess the search will continue and in the meantime, I continue to become just a little too aware of my own scent by the end of the day.

Life...

Thankfully the cold was not quite so biting this morning as it was just below freezing instead of the double digits below zero that we've had for the last week or so. There is quite a lot of ice in the sea and winter is very much in the air.

Sometimes I really struggle to find something to write for this blog (and I guess that is evident to you readers), if I think about what I did yesterday is was basically, wake up, eat breakfast, deliver kids, work, fetch kids, cook, eat, clear up, ironing, TV, bed. That was it.
Today I get to add a couple of hours of driving into the mix, but there won't be a big difference.

One thing that I did do though was to begin the process of getting a cycling coach. He is the guy who gave me the diet tips that I have used to lose weight over the last year and as he used to be David Millar's coach, I am pretty sure he knows what he is talking about. I am looking forward to getting back into proper training after our skiing holiday to be ready for racing from the end of April.

Certified Scrum Master

I took my test yesterday after the 2 day course last week and I am now a certified scrum master.
As was pointed out somewhere else, this has nothing to do with Rugby at all and everything to do with agile project management.

The idea is that instead of running projects where you spend a couple of months planning, investigating and writing a solution description, followed by a couple of months building a solution and then a couple of months testing. You work in short cycles of 2-4 weeks which each involve a little bit of planning, some implementation/programming/building and then some testing so that at the end of each "sprint" you have added some usable functionality to what you had before. You keep repeating this cycle until you are finished or run out of time or money. Whatever happens, you should only ever be a short time away from having something that works with some defined functionality that was the most important at the point that it was made.
The scrum part is the daily 15 minute meeting where everyone states what they did since yesterday, what they will do today and what is getting in their way.

Sorry if that is dull, but I found the course very interesting and Í am in the process of implementing it in one of our product teams

Back to normal

Last week was insanely busy but I survived it and it appears that this week will be significantly more normal.

It has been, and still is interestingly cold with the temperature fluctuating between about -6C and -13C as the coldest so far. However, this hasn't had too much affect on us other than reducing the length of time we want to spend outside. J played in 2 football tournaments at the weekend. They won on Saturday adding another gold medal to his collection and came second on Sunday (despite winning only 1 game and losing the other 2). Anyway, the upshot was that they are invited to the Sjæland championships in March.

BUSY

I am stupendously busy at the moment, but feeling much better (thanks for asking).

I have already done nearly 6 days work this week and I'm not quite done with Thursday yet and tomorrow will be another marathon so I am looking forward to a lie in on Saturday morning and some down time.

Flu

I don't think I am really I'll very often, but I woke up yesterday morning with a fever and a general aching all over kind of thing going on. Unfortunately AI am booked on a course yesterday and today in Copenhagen learning about running agile software development project so staying in bed was not an option. The course is very good so far but it was unfortunate that there was no heating in the meeting room all day so I sat shivering and sweating all day. I then had the pleasure of spending my evening interviewing Bulgarian consultants.
Last night was, if anything, worse than Sunday night so there is a lot more sweating and shivering on the cards for the day. Hopefully I will either be better tomorrow or be able to take a day off sick.

Looks good for skiing

Montana

Part of the basement referb involves us moving the office furniture from the dining room into the basement. We need something to replace the storage capacity in the dining room for wine glasses, booze and cook books.

Despite our repeated problems with the biggest Danish on-line auction house (it's a real auction house, not eBay) we have again managed to win a lot and pay for some Montana shelves. Whether they turn up or not remains to be seen.

These are usually stupidly expensive and they are supposed to be brand new (presumably ex display) and also fitted with the mounts to hang on the wall and built in lighting (minus transformer).

I am already dreading trying to get them hung on the wall

Failing to Thrive

DK had a single drain put in one of his ears on Monday and he has been put on antibiotics to deal with the ear infection that he has. He basically didn't eat anything yesterday and he is lethargic and grumpy and sleeps a lot so I have kept him at home today whilst I work in order to force feed him and give him a little more time to recover.
So far it has gone reasonably well. 2 bowls of oats and raisins with half milk, half double cream. Thickly buttered toast with cheese on it and a bread roll with a slice of butter and raisins for lunch along with a chocolate biscuit, all washed down with full fat milk. We really need to get some fat on his bones and some protein in him but it is uphill as he has a tiny appetite and capacity for food.

Chopper

Well the cycling trip got postponed again!

Saturday was a real winters day with sleet and snow and general grey unpleasantness outside. J played football in the morning and we hid from the weather inside with a fire and home made spotted dick for pudding in the evening. We also moved some of the furniture into the basement and started moving into the "old cave".

Sunday was a much more reasonable day weather wise so I agreed to meet Lars at his parents house to chop wood in the forest to sit and dry for the coming couple of years. There were 4 of us working hard for a few hours and we managed to fell 2 big trees, one of which we also split into firewood whilst the other is awaiting the attention of some axes.

Despite it being cold and snowing a little, it was really nice to be out in the fresh air getting some exercise and my axe which I got as a birthday present is a magnificent tool despite not being quite as big as some other others that were being swung about. I think I could chop tougher, knottier wood with this than the heavier, blunt axes. Back again next weekend for some more wrist jarring action.

Getting Ready

I am really excited about our skiing holiday this year. J wants to try snowboarding which will no doubt be fun for us all and we are taking 2 grandmothers with us for baby sitting duties so there should be ample opportunity for skiing. It even looks as though there is plenty of snow.

This webcam image may update automatically in which case it will be dark at night!

Having bought skis last year, I did't really need much gear this year, but my long underwear was too big when I was 10kg heavier and I wanted a new ruck sack, so the underwear is on it's way along with one of these.

This weekend I am planning on getting back out on my bike for the first time in a while. Not surprisingly, this coincides with the arrival of the winter. I guess I just have to MTFU and get on with it!

I've been driving in my car

It's not quite a Jaguar!

I did the 6 hours round trip to our HQ yesterday in heavy rain and completely dark both ways. That's a long way in a silly little car and I didn't enjoy it at all. On the positive side, the "profit" on the expenses will cover the new thermal underwear I have ordered for our skiing holiday and we have managed to leave both of the kids at their respective daily entertainment establishments today. DK was deeply unimpressed at being left at nursery after many days of one to one entertainment at home but sometimes life isn't exactly what you want!

Everyone's sick

DK has had a fever since last Wednesday and has developed a rather unpleasant cough. I am starting to think that it may be pneumonia (probably just bronchitis in reality) and MK is also suffering with the same thing, but she is much tougher than DK. I have been working from home to take care of him quite a lot, but MK arranged to work from home today so that I can go to some meetings in CPH.

On top of that J has been up all night throwing up all over the place so I must confess to being quite happy to leave the house this morning. I suppose it is just a matter of time until I come down with something, but for now I am the only one in good health.

It's typical that the kids get ill as soon as the regular baby sitting service goes on holiday.

Winner!

No not him!

J's school took part in the local inter-school football tournament on Saturday morning. Normally he plays for the club so this was the first time that the school has had a team together and given that there are only 7 boys in his year group and one of them is on holiday I was not particularly optimistic about their chances agains the bigger schools.
Well to cut a long story short, despite losing one of the group matches, they went on to win the tournament (as did the girls team from his school). They got gold medals and a whole page of the local paper on the competition and we were all very proud of him and the team. He scored about 6 goals along with the other star of the team (V) who got about 7.

Here they are getting their gold medals

Day off...

Eating!
I didn't eat for 24 hours between Tuesday night when we celebrated MK's birthday and getting home from an evening meeting at work last night so that was 24 hours without eating. It was actually quite easy and I think I should try to do it once a week and see if it helps with controlling my weight.

Roof Box

Last time we went skiing, the other half of our party was travelling in a transit van so they had plenty of space to take our skis (they don't fit in the car). This time we don't have that luxury so I have been considering possible solutions. We have a roof rack already so it wasn't a big leap to get a ski box for the roof which also gives us extra capacity for carrying stuff around.

MK spotted this ex demo model in the Toyota dealers a couple of months ago and it was still there when we called yesterday and appears to have never been fitted to anything. That saved us a third of the price and it wasn't even that difficult to get it home hanging out of the back of the car.

Happy Birthday MK

It's MK's birthday today.

Yesterday was a busy one. I picked the kids up a bit early as they were not on top form in the morning. We went and bought wrapping paper and then wrapped MK's birthday presents and made cards for her.

Then after dinner and clearing up, MK went to gymnastics so I made a birthday cake and painted the door frames, skirting boards and floor in the basement. That took me up to 11:30 and left me rather sick of painting on my hands and knees. The floor paint isn't really the colour we were expecting, but it costs a fortune so there is very little chance of us changing it. Tonight we will be celebrating a bit and I have a guitar lesson so it should be a less tiring evening.

Condensation

Having just spent a lot of money on having the roof fixed, it was, at the very least, disappointing to find a puddle on the living room floor last week. Admittedly it has been very windy and rained hard, but the roof should be completely watertight, not just fairly watertight. Having been in the loft to investigate, I could see that there are a few places where water has been dripping onto the the boards up there. I suppose the builders will have to take a look at that.

What is more concerning is that there is condensation on a lot of the underside of the roof. I suppose that is the effect of having had the ventilation gaps (leaking holes) filled in but I suspect that the insulation also needs to be moved from the edges of the roof space so that there is more breathing room. I guess we'll have to consult the builder when he comes to check out the leaks anyway.

The cause is simple, hot damp air in the loft space. The solution is not so simple - Dehumidifier, more insulation, new moisture membrane??? I don't really know

All told, it s a bummer and will no doubt end up costing money one way or another.

Århus

I have had two bad nights sleep wise and I think I've only slept 8 hours in total. This morning I was out the door at 6:00 for the 3 hour drive to the head office. I was then in meetings until 6 and now I am sitting in a very dull Scandic hotel room having eaten a supermarket salad and working on a bottle of wine.

Now I need to get some work done because I will be in meetings all day tomorrow and then driving 3 hours home after dinner so I won't see the family until Saturday morning. I hope the weather improves for the drive home as it was very windy and rainy this morning and was snowing on the way to the hotel this evening.

Anyway, enough moaning.

Doesn't add up

So we were advised that we would save money by changing our oil furnace to the district heating and then when the first meter reading was due, we had used double the expected amount of energy. We now apparently need to put more insulation in the loft which will cost about £1000 for me to do it myself and £3000 for a builder to do it. I suppose that will also pay back over about 20 years. We're going to be laughing when we retire with all the energy savings we are making!

Any smart ideas how I can get £3 per roll insulation delivered to Denmark from B&Q to avoid paying £35 per roll for it over here?

Walls

The walls are done and I have the skirting board that I need to replace the rotten stuff in the main room in the basement. Tonight is guitar night and I am away overnight on Thursday so I only have Wednesday night this week to work on the house. I am hoping that will be enough time to get the radiator pipes painted and the skirting board repaired and painted. Then I can spend a bit of time at the weekend doing the last job - getting the floor painted.

I am convinced that the builders have done something to the insulation in the loft as the house seems to get cold very quickly since they were working up there. There isn't much insulation and we were told that it should be replaced. The insulation itself is not expensive and I don't think it is difficult to put it in, but I know if will be a time consuming and dirty job and there are a couple of areas that I don't know how to deal with. How do I get the insulation under/over the walkway and on the loft hatch for example???

I don't suppose I'll get around to doing anything about the insulation before the end of January but I know I have to do it at some point.

Happy New Year

I (obviously) took a break from blogging over Christmas and the New Year. We have been busy with guests and general festivities and I have been working hard getting the basement sorted out.

It was lovely to have G&G visit for Christmas and the kids really enjoyed having them stay despite, or perhaps because we had to move them into the same room together.

New Years Eve was a quiet event as usual, we always seem to end up having an evening in with some nice food and a bottle of bubbly. This year I knocked up a quick beef wellington to eat after the fois gras that we shared with the kids and we demolished the (almost) last of the Christmas chocolates before midnight when I had to get back into weight loss mode. I managed to gain about 5kg in a week by eating lots of chocolates and cake. I aim to get rid them and more before the end of the month so it is strictly slow carb for me in January.

The basement is going well, I hope to get the main room finished this week and then move on to the rest of the basement as well as changing the insulation in the loft and putting a new floor down in the hall. It's going to be a busy time until Easter.

Woops

Turns out that today is the shortest day. It's dark and grey whatever!

Last night was spent wrapping presents and getting ready for guests. Apparently J now understands that we have bought wrapping paper and is aware of what his presents are wrapped in so we have to get secret paper for Father Christmas's presents now. I guess it only gets more complicated.

It has been fun to hear J talking about the nativity play they did at school (it is a Catholic school so I suppose it's unavoidable) but it's odd to find myself encouraging him to believe in Father Christmas whilst at the same time having trouble hearing him talk about Mary and Jesus, Adam and Eve without interrupting and explaining that I think it's a load of rubbish. I suppose these are things that he will find out for himself as he get's older, but given that there is the same amount of evidence for the existence of Father Christmas as there is for God, then I suppose he'll come to the same conclusion as me unless the Catholics get to him whilst they have the chance...

Shortest Day

It's the worst day of the year (that is was probably some time in January or February to be honest, but in principal, the shortest, darkest day of the year should be the worst).
I had an odd day yesterday. I passed my Danish oral exam with 10 out of 12 which was OK and then I drove through a lot of traffic to an auction house to collect a piece of furniture that we had bought. It turned out that the idiots had measured it incorrectly and it was 2.40m long and not 1.40m as listed. That meant that it wouldn't fit in the car or probably in the house. The second issue was a mute point because I couldn't get it home so I got a refund. I didn't get refunded for my time, petrol or general annoyance though and it is not the first time that Lauritz.com have messed us around. Nor the second.
It will be the last though!

What happened to the weekend?

I have no idea what we managed to achieve this weekend. I suppose we did some of the last remaining bits of Christmas shopping and I fought the Christmas tree into the stand (until it was deemed to be too crooked on Sunday when I had to do it again).

We had a delicious meal with T&B on Saturday evening and I spent the last 3½ hours of the day ironing whilst watching North by Northwest on the TV. Great film!

We wasted a lot of Sunday waiting for football matches. We had to be at the hall at 11:15 but the first game J's team played in start at 12:40 so we were bored and hungry by the time that came around. J's team won one, drew one and lost one which was somewhat below par for them and it wasn't there best display.

I cooked a duck for supper and finally had an evening of doing nothing for the first time in a couple of weeks although there was predictably nothing on the TV other than Derren Brown conning some American spiritualists which provided a little amusement.

Tomorrow: Danish exam attempt two...

Argh!

That sinking feeling you get when you realise that you've done something really stupid...

I stood in the language school and asked which room I should be in for the exam. I was told that I should have had a letter with the information on. I had it at home so I called MK and asked her, she said it's 106A and it is at 13:30.

At that point it was about 16:00.

F&%K

I had mixed up an email about a meeting at the school and the exam time and somehow made a total F up.

Thankfully I have been able to arrange to take it next week instead, but my word that is embarrassing.

Photo updates

Clean and clear under the stairs - needs another coat of paint  though

My cave 2.0 - where I now keep my stuff!

Falling asleep in your rice cake!

Danish part 2

This afternoon I have the oral part of my Danish exam. It is a 20 minute exam with another candidate and an examiner. I have to talk about the Danish tax system for 2 minutes and then answer some questions, talk about some pictures and then I get graded and told if I have passed or not.

I am not all that worried about failing because my spoken Danish is better than my written and that was apparently good enough to pass. However, I was apparently worried enough about it to have trouble getting to sleep last night and then to wake up at 4:30 and not be able to go back to sleep until just before the alarm went off.

Such is life.

Tonight we are celebrating (or commiserating) with my guitar lesson's group Christmas get together. MK and the kids are coming along too so that we can eat some food and play and sing some songs together. Should be fun, but also has the capacity for being rather humiliating...

Where have I been

I can't believe I have't posted in 5 days. I've been very busy.

Friday was the company quarterly meeting where we all get together to find out what is going on in the organisation, this was followed by the Christmas party. I didn't drink too much, but I wasn't in bed until 3:30 as a result of missed trains so I was pretty tired on Saturday.

We bought a Christmas tree on Saturday but to be honest, that was about all I could manage. Sunday was a different story. I have been painting in the basement quite prolificly ever since (with some help from BHP). Now the old boiler room is gleaming white with a grey painted floor ready for me to be filled with shelves and "man's stuff" and the space under the stairs is gleaming white and ready for the freezer and more shelves and more stuff. The biggest challenge at the moment is finding room for all the stuff whilst we work on the rest of the basement.

I am not sure that my hope of having the main room done by Christmas is in any way realistic (having just re-checked the calendar, I can see that it is not) but I'll keep working on it until it is done.

Photos to follow...

Sleeping / not sleeping

Well it isn't getting much better.

I had planned to get some exercise last night, but I was too tired and still aching too much from my mammoth concrete breaking session at the weekend. I decided to watch one of the Blurays we have sitting around from lovefilm and see if I could relax enough to sleep well.

It was not to be as MK decided I should spend the evening doing Christmas shopping online. We got quite a lot of that done but it took until bedtime and I had yet another bad night with waking up, cramps and then DK joining us at about 5.

Tonight I am definitely riding my bike and going to be because tomorrow night is my company Christmas party which means a late night and possible a little too much to drink.

I think I owe some pictures of the new dining table and the red wall...

Got my new phone

Now I can spend the evening getting it set up how I want it.

I do want to get some exercise in the hope that it may help me get some sleep. I have slept really badly the last few nights. I think it is caused by stress but I can't say for sure. I am really tired though.

Not much more to say really...

BOGOF glasses

I've been getting really tired eyes recently, especially at the end of the working day so I decided to get an eye test. Not surprisingly (well, they did give me varifocals before that I was completely unable to get on with) I do need some reading glasses or screen glasses as they have to be called these days. 

Thankfully my employer is legally obliged to contribute to the cost and as there is a buy one get one free offer at the opticians, I managed to get 2 pairs whilst I am  personally only paying for the anti reflective coatings on one of them, all the rest is on expenses.

I'm not sure which will end up being the home glasses and which will live in my school bag...

Red wall, yellow wall, orange wall

So last week I fixed the lining paper and painted the wall orange.

We hated it (It was mostly me that hated it, MK just wasn't keen, but it turned my stomach)

Then I painted it light yellow twice. We still weren't happy.

Then I got more paint charts and found that there is an "accent red" that should go with the other colours in the room so now we have the wall split in two, the right hand side is dark red (it took 3 coats) and the left is still light yellow. The red is OK, but it goes much better with the darker shade of yellow on the other walls than the light yellow adjacent to it. Guess what? I need to get some darker yellow and do that half of the wall now.

I am really bored of painting that wall.

Tomorrow and electrician is coming to put some extra sockets in the basement and I suppose I'll go to buy some paint.

Would anyone like to suggest what I should do with the pipes that are buried in the concrete floor that used to take the oil from the tank under the drive to the boiler room. The plumber has put caps on them but they stick up out of the floor in the middle of 2 rooms and are really in the way. How do I make sure there is no oil left in them and what should I do to get rid of them?

A prize for the best answer!

Passed

I passed the written part of my Danish exam, apparently I got 10 for the comprehension part and 7 for the presentation bit but I am notnsure what it is marked out of so I don't know how good that was. MK is saying it's marked out of 12 but you can't get 11 pr some other weird thing. The amazing thing about the marking system is that it was recently changed to this to make it easier to understand and relate to other countries marking systems. Previously it was marked out of 13. Anyway, next up is the oral exam on 15th December. Today the builder finished so there will be no more of the builders turning up at 7:00 in the morning and banging on the door to come in with his ladders.

Going going gone

The orange wall has now been painted twice and now only shows a slight tint of oranginess. I expect that one more coat will have it done.

The builders are expecting to finish tomorrow as well so we can get going with the tidying up and preparing the house for guests which also includes getting a new second hand dining table on Saturday morning. By some stroke of luck, we have found one the right size, colour shape and design being sold by someone in Ringsted. Great news I think...

Practice makes perfect

I am not entirely sure that practice necessarily leads to perfection, but I could certainly note at my guitar lesson last night that a lack of practice makes things deteriorate.

The last 2 lessons have been the last 2 times that I have played the guitar and I struggled a bit to keep up with everyone else and I am sure I played some bum chords as well. I have been too busy over the last couple of weeks with work, Danish and decorating to spend time on the guitar and it has been tucked away whilst the work men are in which doesn't help.

I must get some practice in this week so that I am ready for the Christmas get together with the class and families in 10 days time.

Bold choices

This weekend we've learned another lesson about interior design: When you make bold choices, sometimes you get it wrong.

All kinds of wrong

I patched the wall above the radiator and painted the wall and then got to work painting the wall with what was supposed to be a darker shade of the colour on the other walls. It turned out to be a horrible apricot colour that clashes with pretty much everything in the room.

I plan on covering it up tonight with the left over paint from the kitchen which is a the same colour as the original dining room walls, but a shade lighter. Then we may have another go at finding a colour. Or we may not...

New phone

My iphone 3G is now about 2½ years old and is pretty slow and rather battle scarred. I guess I could get my boss to agree to buying me a new one, but I can't decide whether I should try to change it now or wait until the iphone 5 is released in about a years time.
I have also considered getting a lesser telephone as an interim until the iphone comes out next year, but then I think I'd have to transfer everything that I use in itunes over to an android based program and also figure out how android works. The advantage would be that I could get something smaller and faster and a bit less antiquated.

iphone 4S

I am pretty sure that I'll just wait, but if I'm going to replace it, it may as well be now, there is no point waiting for 8 months then getting a phone that will be superseded 3 months later.

Sony Xperia mini pro

iphone 5???

Missing post

I sent a post from my phone yesterday but it appears to have not appeared - so to speak.
I spent 4½ hours in a 3 written Danish exams yesterday which felt like quite a long time. I think it went OK. The question and answer bit was pretty easy as it appears to be in all the previous papers that I have seen. The great unknown is how much of a mess I made of the 200-300 word text I had to write. You get a ridiculously long 2½ hours to write it and as a result I think you tend to over analyse what you are writing and probably correct it so much that you start changing things are are right in the first place.
I'll find out soon enough (2nd December I think) and then if I have passed, I will take and oral exam on 15th December.

Decorating

There is still a guy working in the roof and he hopes to be finished next week. It is nice to be on the receiving end of a fixed price job where the estimate turns out to be too low instead of being the one explaining why you've used way more hours on a job than expected.

As I type this, BHP is painting the radiator pipes so that they look a bit smarter and MK and I are in the process of choosing a new colour for the walls in the dining room. We are bit torn between another yellowish colour (I believe the current colour is called Kenya) and something more like milky coffee. Or orange.

Colour charts in action, I am leaning towards the oranges in the middle

We are planning on doing the dining room this coming weekend and then getting going on the basement over the coming few weeks so that we can at least get the main room down there done in time for Christmas. I am hoping to get as much of this done as possible before Christmas so that I don't have it hanging over me in the new year when I want to be getting ready for the cycling season and a skiing holiday as well as looking after DK as and when he has his operation.

I just found this picture on the camera of the boys with their hair spiked after J got some hair wax for his birthday.

Hair waxtastic!

Vests and HP7a

Our parcel arrived from M&S yesterday with trousers for MK, pyjamas for DK, Christmas cards and some vests for me.

I don't remember the last time I wore a sleeveless vest, but I must say that it's pretty good. I can appreciate the warmth but I don't have a clearly visible t-shirt showing where my shirt is unbuttoned at the top. Win!

I am in Jutland at the moment working on getting one of my projects to go live with some consultants. It is weird to be away overnight for work on a Friday, but such is life. We made up for it last night by having a mini Friday night and watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1. The film wasn't exactly joyful, but it was very well done and seemed to scare MK rather more than a kids film should.

Tomorrow night is gala (ball) night at MKs school so we are getting dressed up. I understand that she is somehow working for the evening so I don't yet know if it will be fun or boring. I'll report back on Monday.

Disappointing news

DK had a check up in Manchester yesterday to see how his feet are getting on. The news was not too good, his Achilles tendons are too short which pulls his heel bone up (labelled calcaneus below) meaning that he doesn't really have a boney heel at the moment, just a pad of fat which won't last forever if he walks on it.

The solution is to do a tenotomy which lengthens the tendon by partially cutting and stretching it and then putting his legs in plaster for a month (yes both legs toe to hip with 90 degree bends like when he was a baby)

That is going to be a long month for him and probably for us as well on top of two unexpected trips to Manchester, probably in late February, early March to fit around when appointments are available and so that DK can enjoy his holidays.

He didn't look too impressed with the casts last time and he couldn't even walk then.

Parents evening

Yesterday afternoon was our first parents meeting at J's school and let's just say that we didn't buy cake on the way home.
I was a little irritated to arrive 3 minutes late (having left work very early and getting stuck in traffic) to find that MK and J were almost finished having started early. Why wait for me if they were ready?!
The conclusion was that he needs to stop messing around in the cloakrooms, try to learn to concentrate for longer, stop messing around in the cloakrooms, keep working on his letters and finally, stop messing around in the cloakroom.
I think that was it.
I don't really understand why J was invited, all he took home from it was a stomach full of small biscuits from the bowl on the table and when we asked him at home what had been said, he hadn't really remembered anything at all but he seemed to think that Real Madrid had beaten Barcelona 10-5. At that point MK took out her frustrations on the vacuum cleaner whilst I savagely murdered some root vegetables to make soup.

Fire Wood

It's been a good weekend. We relaxed a bit on Saturday. J played football whilst DK and I made rock cakes and then we had some family guests visit to see if we can take any walls out in the basement. The conclusion was that we probably can...
We then hit the outlets to get some new trainers for J and tracksuits for both of the boys.
Yesterday didn't pan out as planned. I should have raced my mountainbike in the morning, but having not fixed it since last weekends ride, it wasn't really worth an hours drive to get to the race and then not have working gears. I've been quite busy this week and I just didn't get around to doing the bike in time.
In the afternoon we went to L's parents to collect some fire wood. We have agreed that we can have wood to burn in return for helping them to chop and carry it in to their barn when the time comes. Seems like a good deal to me.

Meaty snacks

Diets the minimise carbohydrates and rule out sugar are good in that they discourage snacking. However, sometimes you really need a nibble on something and that can be problematic. At first I was eating nuts, but they are very morish and rather calorific so I needed to find a substitute. Pork scratchings!

You can't eat that many of them, they are easily available here, cheap and don't seem to be too bad on the weight management even though I understand that they are loaded with fat (and little else)

I must admit that the ones I eat rarely look this appetising!

Hmmm

Vests

I ordered some vests from M&S last week as we were getting some stuff for the kids and MK along with a few bits and pieces for Christmas.

I have been hankering after another kind of vest for a while and have narrowed it down to two.

The first is made by Woolpower from Sweden and is mostly made of merino wool

The second is pseudo wool (totally synthetic) and made by Patagonia

I can't decide which to get, they both cost about the same and look similar. I like the idea of the wool one, but I  suspect that it may get bobbly over time but it does look less like a coat which is what I am after. The Patagonia one is a bit more coaty but I am confident that it will wear well and be well made as their stuff always is. I was leaning towards the wool, but having written this post, I think I am now more inclined to get the Patagonia...

I know the lack of colour is boring, but I don't want to limit what it will go with by getting a colour that doesn't match some other stuff. The plan is to wear it as an extra layer under my now rather large coats and to keep warm in cold offices (both at home and at work)

Sick kids

Last week MK had a flu jab and struggled to keep her eyes open for the proceeding 24 hours. DK had one yesterday and was awake repeatedly during the night and has had to spend the day at home with a fever today. I didn't realise that a flu jab was just supposed to give you a mild flu. I think I'll take my chances with J and not have one!

Builders

We chose the same guy to fit our new windows as did it last time because he was efficient, reasonably priced and did a good job. This time he seems to be taking advantage of the fact that there are other builders in the house to palm off all of the tidying up work onto the other builder, leaving us to pick up the tab.
I have tried to deal with him and make sure that we are not getting ripped off, but to be honest, it is difficult to explain everything  over the phone when your vocabulary doesn't run to much more than "window" and "edge".

Anyway, if it doesn't go to plan (and so far it doesn't look like it is going to) then I'll set the bull dog on him...

Then he'll be sorry!

Falling off the wagon

There are a few food that I have trouble being around without giving in to their temptations. The list looks something like this:

1. chocolate biscuits
2. cakes
3. Fresh bread
4. Pastries
5. Peanut M&Ms

Most of the rest of the banned things I can leave without any real effort. As J insisted that we made a repeat of his football cake for his second birthday party, I decided that I had to make some other cakes for myself to enjoy on my day off. They ended up being fresh raspberry and white chocolate fairy cakes and they were delicious. I ate a couple at the weekend and then put the rest in a tin out of sight. However, after dinner last night, whilst the boys were eating the boring football cake, MK had one of my remaining fairy cakes and I easily gave in to eating the rest of them.

As penitence, I then did an hour of intervals on the trainer and some core exercises so my weight this morning was actually still down on yesterday but it was still bad form to cave in to temptation.

The ultimate result is that I have decided to add a new general rule to my diet: I will now only eat home made cakes and biscuits. Nothing out of a packet - be it a hob nob or any other type of confectionery. I think this may be a bit of a challenge at first, but I think it may turn out to be the best rule I have come up with so far.

NaNoWriMo

National Novel Writing Month runs through November with the fairly wild idea that anyone can write a 50 000 word novel in a month. It started as a US thing (hence the National bit) but has become a global event with writing groups all over the place.

I had some idea that I should get myself together and write one. After all, it is only about 1600 words per day, how hard can it be?

Well it seems that it is hard. I had a guitar lesson last night so I only sat down to start after 9:00 and despite having thought about it quite a lot over the last 2 months, I still had no idea where to start a story. I did start one and wrote 442 words, about a third of what I needed to write. That is not such a problem in itself, I could catch up if I had time. The problem is that I am pretty busy with work at the moment and I have a Danish exam in a few weeks that I have paid quite a lot of money to enter and to have lessons for. It would be silly to spend all of my time and energy writing an inevitably crap story in English (and I have no intention of doing it in Danish)

Perhaps I'll just put it off until next year, but there is something about the whole idea that I can't quite drop from my head, it's just a shame that the idea I can't drop is that of writing a book and not an idea for a book which would be quite useful given the circumstances