The beaver is a proud and noble animal

Please don’t put your toothbrush up your nose.

It’s been a loooooong weekend. Katy’s been working 12-14 hour night-sit shifts since Friday night so she’s knackered, and she seems to be coming down with a bug, which isn’t helping her energy levels. It’s still a transitional process, but I’m finding it a bit rough to not see her these days. It seems that we’ve only had three night in the past month when she hasn’t been working, and two of those were in Leicester. She leaves shortly after I get in from work, so we have maybe 15-20 minutes to chat a bit before she has to get ready. I generally put beastie to bed and then spend the evening cooking and watching TV. When she’s not working night-sits, she comes home between 10:30 and 11:30, so we might have another 15-20 minutes to chat, but by then we’re both tired so we just go to bed. I’m sure we’ll both get into the routine of things.

The beastie is just being a beastie and is into everything, biting everything, throwing everything, climbing everything and scratching everything that shouldn’t be scratched. I discovered that he can climb into his high-chair by himself during one of those “it’s too quiet” moments. He was sitting happily next to the fridge eating my fridge magnets. Oy, vey.

I had my first motorcycle lesson this weekend, the Compulsory Bike Training (CBT) course. It gives very high-level pointers on maintenance, controls, maneuvers, road safety and the like. I’m doing the course with Joe and he said it best when he said that it feels like it’s too much to take in at once and the best way to get everything to become automatic (like it is for him to drive a car) is to get out on the road and do it. That’s actually a bit intimidating, but I’m looking forward for more.

The day started out with a bit of stress because I had to pass a field eye exam. Now I know that this sounds dodgy, but I knew where they kept the fixed-distance license plate they use and I already knew what was written on it, but all of that went out the window when the guy said “just read the plate on either of the cars at the end of the parking”. I took a deep breath and said what I saw. The dude squinted a bit and said “yeah, that’ll do”. HAPPY DANCE!!!

Joe and I didn’t go on the road on Saturday, even though a road ride is normally part of the CBT. That’s because we’re doing the direct access course that will allow us to ride bikes bigger than 125cc. We’re going to be doing the rest of our lessons on 500cc bikes that require a things be done a bit differently than with the smaller, lighter bikes. The other guy who was on the course with us, a loudmouth Ozzie who will someday wrap himself and the 1100cc crotch rocket he wants to get around a tree, was only doing the CBT and went on a ride. I find it a bit mind-boggling that, in most cases, people are let loose on the road for unaccompanied riding after only 6 hours of training on a bike that can do 70 mph with very little difficulty – without even needing a theory test. Still, that’s how things work here apparently and who am I to question a system that will actually let me drive :D

It is a lot to process, the things you need to unconsciously think about to be able to drive safely. The good news is that they seem very competent teachers and they’re very safety oriented. Still, I’m a bit humbled to say that I expected it to be easier. Anyway, I have a feeling that if all goes well, I’m going to be very proud of myself for accomplishing a goal that I’ve always thought impossible to achieve. Go me.

Current Mood: Tired

We were in Leicester last weekend, when the British summer heatwave came upon us.

We bought a little paddling pool for the beastie, which he quite enjoyed. We found out that he likes being attacked with a hose as well. As he loves fresh garden peas (we stopped counting after he ate a dozen pods). It was really nice in the evenings, because we could sit outside and watch Mel trying to burn down the garden with his chiminea while downing a pitcher of rather boozy Margaritas.

The weekend was actually really nice, until the drive back home when the beastwich had a heat-induced meltdown in the car (we still haven’t been able to make time to get the AC fixed). That put a bit of a downer on the weekend, but otherwise, lovely.

  
 

All pictures here: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/leicester_jul_2010/

Current Mood: Calm

So far today the bean has had his first taste of tea (which went down quite well), some sausage butty (which was inhaled) and some Starbucks smoothie. He is so our son…

The beastie scratched his crotch while standing upright for the first time today. A milestone for any man! *Sniff*, I’m so proud!

Current Mood: Amused

Current Mood: Amused

We were in Leicester this weekend, for Mother’s day. The weekend ended up being rather less than stellar, as Katy wasn’t feeling well and the oldies were in fine form. The Beastie, however, was full of beans:

You might need to boos the volume way up high for the videos, btw.
The Beastie is also becoming a fruit monster:

 
 

That last one is impressive. He grabbed an apple out of Pam’s fruit bowl and proceeded to eat it. All of it. It was almost as big as he was. And yet it was eaten. With much slobbering. There are lots more pictures here: http://flubu.com/various_pics/ben_early_2010/, including some taken when my mom came to visit in January.

Current Mood: Depressed

So, firstly, the pictures. Becca from the nursery took these. Apparently, bouncing on the trampoline is his favouritest thing in the whole wide universe:

Then, the comics. They haven’t been processed for the comics page yet, but they will get done eventually.

Current Mood: Amused

Current Mood: Amused

It would seem that I have been lax with my blogging in the past few weeks. Besides one or two events, there hasn’t been lots happening (which might have explained my silence. Or maybe I’m just lazy and/or addicted to Farmville).

My mom came for a week to visit us. And by us I mean the beastie. She basically threw us out of the house one day so she could have him all to herself. Katy and I were able to have a nice pub meal at the Red Lion and go see a movie (though it would now appear that I’ve forgotten what we went to see – this is me getting old). I do remember that Katy really, really, really enjoyed her bacon double cheeseburger from Burger King :) Pictures will be up as soon as I can get them converted and properly formatted.

My mom had asked for a nice roast and some profiteroles for her birthday, so I happily obliged. The roast rolled shoulder of pork took 6 hours to roast, but damn if it wasn’t nice :) The in-laws and Stu came over for the day to say hello. It was a nice day. The weather was rather unimpressive so we weren’t really able to give my mom a proper tour of Saffron Walden, though she did like the weekend market (and especially the sausage burgers from the Giggly Pig). I did manage to use the power of the for-sale list at work to snag my mom a cheap ipod and load it up with her favourite music for cheap. That reminds me that I need to ask her if she’s using it or not.

Speaking of which, I’m saddened to say that my trusty Shure E3C earphones finally died a death. I had to buy myself another pair of earphones. I got S-Jays and they do live up to their potential. Still, they’re nowhere near as good or comfy as my Shure. Having said that, they’re a fifth of the price so, you know, there is that to consider. Still, I will mourn my old faithful buds.

Things have been brewing with Katy’s employers and we’re investigating options on that front. I don’t want to say a lot more because I’ll start swearing at them again. Bastards and fucktards, the lot of ‘em (well, most of ‘em anyway). Katy’s looking into other avenues, but returns on investments haven’t been all that good. Still, there’s no harm in sending feelers out.

The staff association at work organized a group jaunt to go see Varekai at the Royal Albert Hall last weekend, so Mel and Pam came down to look after the beastie. It was the first time that somebody else than us put him down for the night. Mostly, they did a good job save for a few details and something that bugged me a bit but… meh. No harm no foul, but still a silly thing to do and leave it at that.

The beastie’s been a handful for a few days now. He’s caught a cold and is now a snot monster. He’d been coughing a bit for a few days now but it really went full-blown over the weekend. He’s not been too bad, sleep-wise, in the last night or so so we’re hopeful that it’s not going to last too long. He’s really getting mobile now and can take one or two tottering steps before falling face-first on something or someone.

Katy got some maternity back-pay so we were able to pay off the last of the xmas credit card. We still have a bit left over and we’re itching to buy stuff :) Katy wants to get a Wii and Wii Fit but they seem to be out of stock everywhere I look. I bought a NAS for home backups (mostly because I realized that all of my MP3s, documents and the digital pictures from the last 5 years only exist on the home laptop and a few scattered CDs or DVDs).

I’d like to get a new phone (I’m lusting after the googlephone), a new camera, a camcorder. Thing is, I already have stuff that covers those roles and most of it still works perfectly fine so I can’t really justify the expense. Katy wants a Tassimo and a KitchenAid. The KitchenAid is something that we’ve both been lusting aftet for years now, but it also means that we’d be cooking more cakes and pastries and that’s really not a good plan at this point in time. I’ve put on a helluva lot of weight in the last year and I need to start shifting it before bad things happen.

Besides that, not a lot. Work is work. I’ve reviewed two papers and submitted one. Barring any incident, I should have another first author paper and a few more associated author papers to add to my CV. I received notification that I need to have my end-of-contract review meeting with the powers that be before the end of April. I’ve already fixed a nasty bug in the PRIDE mapping job and I’m in the process of testing code that I wrote before going on holiday that will hopefully make the current PRIDE webapp more responsive. Florian’s buggered off to Costa Rica for a month (not that I blame him) so that means a lot of work’s been dumped on me. The good news is that we have a new team member starting in a few weeks and we’re holding interviews for another position in the coming week. So, busy busy busy but good busy.

Rui from work bought me some japanese cooking supplies from an asian shop on Mill Road so I’ll be able to start playing around making chawanmushi and dobinmushi, as well as wonton soup and spring rolls. Watch this space.

Current Mood: Busy