rmc28 | Entries tagged with work

I'm playing an ice hockey game tonight in Cambridge, a charity fundraiser between Warbirds and Tri-Base Lightning. But until then I have a strangely unscheduled day. I might sleep or read or something.

I could post about what I've been up to lately!

Work:

spoke on a panel about effective 1:1s, it seemed to go well
played my usual Senior Tech Woman role for a colleague's recruitment panel, and am happy that our preferred candidate has apparently just accepted. (a frustrating number of timewasting applicants more or less obviously using LLMs to write their applications and generate their free-text statements on suitability for the role; I really resent having to wade through paragraphs of verbose buzzword bilge to ... fail to find any evidence they actually know how to do the job)

Hockey:

KODIAKS WON PLAYOFFS on the bank holiday weekend oh yes they did. So proud of the players, and definitely earned my share of reflected glory managing the team this season and running around half the weekend. League winners, Cup winners, Playoff winners, promotion to Division 1 next season, utter delight.
Very much an Insufficient Sleep weekend, we topped off the playoff win with a night out in Sheffield, I got back to my hotel as the sky was getting light, good times.
Kodiaks awards evening last night: lots of celebration of the hard work and lovely camaraderie of this group of players, A and B teams both. I got to announce and hand out the B team awards, and I received a really nice pair of gifts for me as manager: a canvas print of a post-final winners photo, and a personalised insulated travel mug (club logo and MANAGER on it). I love this team.
I'm still enjoying also playing with Warbirds, and have now been to a few summer Friday scrimmages run by Tri-Base. I went to a couple of Friday scrims at the end of last summer and felt everyone was very kind but I was pretty outclassed. I'm pleased to feel like I'm keeping up a bit better now after training a lot harder this last season.
I trained three days in a row this week (Warbirds Monday, Haringey Greyhounds tryouts in Alexandra Palace on Tuesday, Kodiaks Wednesday) and that was Too Much and I was pretty sore Wednesday evening and Thursday. Rest days are important even if I am much improved in fitness compared to this time last year.

Other:

I did a formal hall at my old College! Using my alumna rights and having a nice evening hanging out with old friends (who were the ones to suggest the plan). Good times, will do again but probably not this term.
I had an excessive number of books out from Suffolk libraries that needed returning, so I did a flying visit to Newmarket by bus last Saturday, this turned out to be the cheapest/quickest way across the county border. I managed to stick to my resolution not to borrow any more physical books but slipped and fell on the "withdrawn books for sale" stand. Managed to only come home with four.
I did a little indoor cricket the Friday before playoffs (it's now finished due to exam period), and some nets practice last Sunday, but I keep being too busy to actually play any of my team's games. I'd like to do more nets practice though, that was intense but also felt like I was beginning to improve.
I did a little table tennis with Active Staff but that's also now suspended for exams. I'm considering getting a cheap set of bats and balls for me and the family to go use at the local rec ground, or in the free indoor tables at the Grafton Centre.

Coming up: my summer is full of ice hockey camps and tournaments (Prague, Hull, Sheffield, Biarritz) and my old club Streatham have just announced all their summer training sessions will be "Summer Skills Camps" open to all interested WNIHL players, so I'm looking at going to London regularly again in July and August.

Goodness having a cold is dull. I spent most of yesterday resting/asleep, felt able to work today, but did it from home and definitely favoured the easier tasks from the todo list. I skipped indoor cricket this afternoon, and TriBase scrimmage tonight, in favour of continuing the recovery curve enough to play an ice hockey tournament this weekend.

I have successfully wrangled a car pool for the Kodiaks B to go to Gosport next weekend, which includes me driving a hired 9-seater, whee. Car pooling has been wrangled, mostly not by me, to get Warbirds to Romford tomorrow and Sunday. (The women's team and the mostly-men's team living up to stereotypes about planning, not for the first time.) The weekend after Gosport is playoffs in Sheffield, where we see if Kodiaks A can win promotion to the next division, and as a bonus I can meet up with my mother-in-law.

A couple of weeks before my Czech holiday I started taking all the morning school runs while Tony took the afternoons, after a long period where it was mostly the other way around. It is suiting me much more than I had expected, and has also led to me going to the office a lot more. Essentially, once I've cycled to school, it's as easy to go to the office as to go home, and usually I'll go to the office. Partly because my role and personality make "useful spontaneous in-person conversations" more likely to happen. Partly because once I'm on site, it's easier to take advantage of the university's Active Staff programme. I'm generally only working from home now when not-quite-well (as today) or if my schedule is All Online Meetings All The Time. The downside of the office is I have no privacy at the hotdesks and need to use a pod for meetings. I quite like the pods, but not for hours on end.

Active Staff is a recent initiative of the University Sports Service. Through it, I can get two exercise classes a week for free (mostly yoga, pilates and similar) and additional ones at the Sports Centre on a PAYG basis. While the most popular classes often book out really fast, people seem pretty good about cancelling if they can't make it, so a space often pops up the night before or morning of. I can also join the indoor cricket and table tennis "Give It A Go" sessions which are shared with students, which is how I've ended up playing cricket again for the first time since I was a teenager. It's not helping my workload problem but it's not making it worse, and it is bringing me a fair bit of joy, so I'll call it a win.

(I do have other interests in my life, honest)

I have completed and passed "subject to moderation" a Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Autism, with West Suffolk College online. This was a government-funded course suggested by my kid's school, with the twist that if I didn't complete, I was on the hook for paying for it. I feel like I already knew about 60-70% of the material, but it was probably worth doing it for the stuff I didn't know. However, I really, really don't want to do any more study on someone else's timetable for some time, that was way too stressful, even with being given a generous extension for the last two assignments.

Doing the course definitely came at the expense of my language learning, with quite a few Duolingo streak freezes used up, and a lot of days doing the bare minimum. But I've already ramped up my Duo time since submitting the last assignment on Monday, and I'm hoping to start working through Pimsleur audiobooks from the library again soon. Still trying to get at least some Czech into my brain before April, and see if I can improve my French for both April and August.

I went for my routine dental checkup this week, nothing is disastrous but I need a minor bit of work and to see the hygienist. I said "didn't I just see them?" and they were like yes, in July. Oh, July isn't just last month any more is it. So I have more dentist appointments in January and February, and I've scheduled in the children for their checkups.

I have just over two weeks of work left this year and I am very ready to be done with it and have a break. But before then we have department Christmas dinner and I am genuinely looking forward to that, and to seeing a bunch of people in person I either never see or only the other side of a screen.

I've had two weeks off work: my Friday-to-Friday holiday in France, and then theoretically a week at home with the children. The children frequently preferred to do other things than spend time with me, so it's been a fairly chill week, very restful, lots of reading. I did the scoreboard for a local rec team game Sunday night, managed to turn up far too early because I'd put the game and my cycle time into my calendar while I was on French time and failed to notice the discrepancy at any point after arriving back in the UK. At least I didn't have the time wrong in the other direction!

The Worldcon Discord opened up last night and is quite busy, so that's been entertaining. fanf and I will both be attending remotely after all this year, which is a bit sad, but the best solution for us in the circumstances. I managed to catch some of the Olympics women's football this afternoon, and right now I'm half-watching a women's ice hockey game between Ohio State University and the Sweden Olympisk Offensiv team (a training team for future winter olympics, I think).

I am not exactly looking forward to what awaits when I log into work tomorrow, but Friday is usually a relatively quiet day and should mean I have a chance to beat the inbox into submission before stepping into the full firehose next week. I have hockey in Streatham to look forward to Friday evening, a skating lesson on Saturday, and a trip to see naath on Sunday. And maybe more Olympics as and when I can.

Last Saturday afternoon I went over to the rink to help out with the annual charity ice hockey game between two of the rec teams based there. I'd offered Slavik, the organiser, help "wherever you can use me", which turned out to be selling raffle tickets and also entries to the "Chuck a Duck" and "Shoot a Puck" games held after the ice cut between periods 2 and 3. People don't tend to want to buy tickets when the hockey is being played, so I got to watch quite a lot of the game, which was fun. We raised over £1000 from the evening, all for a local churches charity helping people in food poverty. After the game I got distracted by meeting a very tiny and very adorable baby (about 10 days old! such tiny fingers! such alert eyes! mama looking so well for 10 days post-birth!) but eventually biked my way home in the post-sunset twilight.

Sunday was a busy day. I got up early and got my covid jab (and despite the stern wording about needing to show proof of my diagnosis, and digging out one of my stash of hospital letters referencing it, the nurse on the day took my word for it). Then I did a circuits class in the gym just upstairs from the vaccine clinic, showered and changed and left my sweaty stuff in a locker for the day. I bought a nice sunhat and headed off to Alexandra Palace park for a goodbye picnic for a hockey buddy who's off to Germany for the next stage of their academic career. Vast numbers of people also had the idea of a sunny picnic in the park, but the park is also large, so we got a reasonable bit of space between us and the surrounding groups. Buddy has lovely friends, both ones I already knew and new ones, and it was a great afternoon.

I missed my planned train home and the next one was cancelled, so I wasn't going to be back in Cambridge before the gym closed. I sent a frantically apologetic email (because we aren't supposed to leave stuff in lockers overnight). On the bus replacement from Royston, about halfway to Cambridge, I realised I'd left my nice new sunhat on the train, which must be some kind of record. At least I got one afternoon's use out of it. Back at home I had a reassuring reply from the gym that they'd let me off this once and not break my padlock. Literally as I closed the email my arm started aching and the vaccination fever started, and considerately passed in about ten hours, leaving me just fine for work on Monday morning.

I had a bunch of training sessions at work this week, and I spent two hours staffing a stall at the University's Jobs Fair (I'm also in the video on that page encouraging people to come work for us), talking to people interested in working in IT for us. I enjoyed it, but the room was very noisy, so it was hard work. I made a point of mentioning the noise level in my event feedback, so maybe next time they'll find a venue that isn't terrible to be in with dozens of people talking simultaneously.

Wednesday evening I had a "healthy nudge" check at the University Sports Centre that I booked for myself a good three months ago. Weight, body composition, peak flow, grip strength, blood pressure, and instant cholesterol & blood sugar tests. In summary: I'm fit and well with above-average strength and muscle mass, also very overweight with a lot of fat. None of which is really a surprise, but nice to have in writing.

Today I did strength class again and then went to visit naath, leaving my sweaty gear in the gym locker, along with a library book that didn't fit into the out-of-hours book drop. I picked up fancy sourdough pizzas from Tesco for our lunch and we had a good gossip. This time I got back to Cambridge well before the gym closed, and also managed to get the giant book to Cambridge Central library before it closed.

(The giant book is The Power Broker which I've made no progress on since being on holiday last month, and now someone else has requested it. So I'll give it a month or so and then request it again, and attempt to get through more of it for the 99% Invisible podcast book club. I have a library book backlog, and I've been reading everything Sarina Bowen has in Kindle Unlimited because that's where my brain is right now, and also I feel like letting whoever-it-is get at least one renewal in on the brick before I claim it back.)

Tomorrow I have both a skating lesson (one-off move from Tuesday because of the Jobs Fair) and the penultimate Learn to Play session, and enough hours in between it's worth coming home. I could and probably should tackle the garden but I'm more likely going to chill out with some of the library backlog.

I am now working full-time again, as of 1 May, after nearly 3.5 years working a 4-day week. By agreement with my boss, I start late on Fridays so that I can continue going to Friday morning coffee skate with Charles

For tedious reasons I spent much of my last Friday of freedom traipsing to Willingham and back. Can recommend the probate valuation service offered by Willingham Auctions. Cannot recommend needing a probate valuation.

I then had about four days in a row of mild migraine symptoms, so cancelled a bunch of skating. I did manage to attend the last home game of the season for the Cambridge Kodiaks, which we won in front of a substantial crowd (we think our biggest of the season). I think I got through it on adrenaline and then had to spend the Sunday in bed recovering. Ugh.

Last Thursday I had a surprise offer of a spare ticket to see Show of Hands with lnr at the Junction. I've been failing to keep up with the band in recent years, so didn't even know about the Full Circle tour. It was a lovely evening, great company, a real lift to the spirits. I am currently debating whether it's in my budget to pay for the livestream of their 20 May concert at https://www.folkscape.live/

Saturday I played in the Kodiaks dev game against the new Lee Valley Vampires team. I thoroughly enjoyed the game and was completely shattered by it. I know a bunch of the players involved in the Vampires, and it was lovely to see them and play against them. Charles came with me and helped open/shut the bench doors, which he seemed to enjoy. We lost 8-4 but it was a good time anyway. Then we slogged south to Streatham to help out with their evening game, with train delays meaning we arrived just after the game started. It was nice to sit and watch a rather higher level of game play while I rehydrated and recovered from my game and dealt with the occasional visitor to the penalty box. I had another round of quick catchup with old friends after the game, and then we hurried home with just a quick stop for hot chicken from Morleys across the road from Streatham station.

Sunday morning Charles and I headed off again, this time to Slough to watch the very last Kodiaks game of the season, which was gripping and hard-played. I didn't have an official role, but I parked myself near the bench and did water runs as needed in the breaks, as well as updating the group chat for people who couldn't be there. To our immense satisfaction, we won the game, which means the team have secured a spot at the WNIHL playoffs, and a chance at getting promotion to the next division. Thankfully my MIL has a spare room and a blow-up mattress in Sheffield, so we can go support the team on the cheap.

All the weekend travel was made significantly more tedious by rail replacement buses between Cambridge and Royston/Audley End. I am sure I will be delighted with Cambridge South station when it is finished, which I keep telling myself every time I get a rail replacement bus.

Today I have mostly been resting, with both general tiredness from the weekend, and a specifically annoyed knee from Saturday's game. The latter means I've skived off training tonight, but I'm hoping it will be less annoyed tomorrow evening for my skating class.

On Friday, once we were done with coffee skate, my calendar was entirely empty. A rare pleasure! It was lovely, I just pottered about, getting bits of housework done, reading, resting. Saturday I was similarly unscheduled, although with more errands and housework to do, until about 4pm when it was time to go to the rink for the Cambridge Kodiaks home game, also our Pride game raising money for the Kite Trust. The game went well, my off-ice team were superb, our on-ice team won the game, and we raised a decent sum with the raffle.

Unfortunately, on the way to the rink I added to my recent run of stupid non-skating injuries, skidding my bike on a cattle grid on Ditton Meadows. I'm basically fine and think I'll be ok for hockey practice today and tomorrow if I take it gently. ( details )

I'm enjoying still having the whole of today and tomorrow before I go back to work, and then it's an extra-short week, because I don't currently work Fridays. I've had verbal confirmation I should be back to full time work in May, but I'm waiting for written confirmation before I start updating my work calendar. I'm going to make a particular point of enjoying my Fridays off in April.

I'm at a "professional services conference" today, tomorrow and Friday morning, which meant I shifted my days this week to work Friday rather than Monday, and also that Tuesday was hectic.

At the end of last year I had mostly wrestled my inbox into submission, and had managed to keep it that way until late last week. I had a migraine Thursday afternoon and was off Friday and Monday and into the aforementioned hectic Tuesday, and now my inbox is chaos again. (yes I am using a gap in the conference to fight entropy and read dreamwidth)

I'm quite pleased with how much of the conference is being offered as hybrid/remote options, but I am doing as much in-person as I can, because that suits me better. My favourite line so far is "change is a team sport".

( covid precautions including masks )

I don't normally work Fridays, so today was my last day this year, and I restart on 2 January. 11 days in a row without thinking (much) about work.

I had Wednesday off to use up my leave, and Tuesday and today were very quiet. I used the time to make a huge push at dealing with my email, which had got a bit ridiculous. Before I finished today I had got everything that needed an action from me either dealt with, or snoozed until a sensible time for me to deal with it. I still have an enormous swathe of emails which are basically things I should read or watch at some point, but those are labelled up so I can see they are non-urgent at a glance, and they're now the oldest things in my inbox, so I can just excavate into them a little at a time next year. Now to keep up the good habits and stay on top of incoming email next year ...

I did have three (3) unscheduled in-person conversations today that were useful and productive, with my counterparts in another team we work closely with. They very kindly invited me to share their team's festive pizza lunch too, which took me approximately one (1) second to accept.

Today I'm on a morning train to London, for a conference put on by a potential new supplier of a system my team support. So far I have had the commuting joys of:

the dude whose headphones are up so loud I can make out the lyrics and the phat beats four rows away
the woman sitting opposite putting on a full face of makeup between Hitchin and Letchworth
the dude who asked me out of the 20 other people with bags on the seat next to them to let him sit down, and has since spent the whole journey coughing. I am the only person in sight wearing a mask, why did Mr Coughy have to pick me instead of people who don't give a shit about catching anything?

On the good side, at least I got a seat, with a table and a power point, and I've caught up on the emails from my two days not working. But I'm remembering why I prefer to work at home or within cycling distance thereof.

Dashing this off so I actually write something but setting a time limit so I actually go to sleep on time.

Last week:

busy busy week due to office reorg
N's school sports day, the children seemed to have fun, and I got to know some other parents a bit better
my birthday: actual day spent at online conference, birthday "party" Saturday afternoon in a pub garden with many lovely people :-)
despite not drinking, woke repeatedly Saturday night and Sunday was a bit of a write-off

This week:

felt terribly unfit cycling Monday afternoon, turns out the bike tyres were soft, oops
much work (3x interview panels, office move timetable became even more exciting)
work conference in Newcastle Wed+Thu
- opted for early start and fast train Wed am to arrive in Newcastle before 9am; still think this was the better choice over an extra night away, but I was feeling it later on ...
- unimpressed by hotel gym, so sneaked off to the Gateshead instance of my gym chain in the weirdly long gap between talks and dinner
- dinner did not finish until nearly 10pm, I did not stay for disco afterward
- hotel room was about as big lengthwise as my entire house but had only 2 power sockets
- accidentally won a conference award for "best delegate contribution", apparently I ask good Qs, go me
- plan to work on train home thwarted by train being v full and me being v tired, listened to audiobook and watched scenery instead
managed PT today but not much else
discovered Witcher S3 is out now, discovered film adaptation of Red, White & Royal Blue is out next month, new challenge: find time to watch them (& reread RW&RB first)
mini heatwave is tiring me, at least it should courteously cool down again by Sunday

time's up, let's post

Concussion: ( Read more... )

Work: ( Read more... )

Fitness ( Read more... )

Family: ( Read more... )

Solar panels ( Read more... )

Cargo bike: ( Read more... )

Concussion: I spoke to my GP yesterday

( appointment notes, also knee and skating progress )

I am getting ever more pessimistic about being able to play at Nationals in three weeks' time, especially after the GP's comments on rest, but I haven't given up yet. I guess my deadline is when we set off a few days beforehand to visit family in Sheffield and I have to decide whether or not to bring my kit.

I have been too busy / tired to blog much lately.

Family stuff

My uncle's brother's funeral was in Enfield on Thursday 19 Jan, and I went to support my aunt, uncle and cousin. I didn't know Richard very well, but it was clear he had inspired a lot of affection in the people who did. He really seemed to be someone who brought out the kindness in people around him, and certainly that was my own experience.

The same day, my sister-out-law J had her operation (the preparation for which is what took me to London at the start of the year, where I caught Covid from her and my brother). So my brother D was at the hospital rather than the funeral, and I was more than usually attuned to my phone for updates. It was successful, but fairly serious, and there will be a longish recovery time.

I wasn't working Friday of this week, so I went to J's home in London after finishing work on Thursday and came home this morning. I'll likely do more visits like this over the next few weeks, around work and hockey commitments, but we're taking it week by week for now.

Hockey and health stuff

I've been boringly sensible about not training back to back, and about not training if I have signs of fatigue or migraine. My hamstring was holding up really well but just this morning is being niggly after Friday night's practice, so I'm skipping tonight's practice and hoping to be ok for next week instead.

I was exhausted when I got home from London after the funeral two weeks ago, and had some tired days in the week following, culminating in a near-miss migraine the Friday of last week. I woke up with early symptoms, but drugs and a lie down let me continue with the work day as planned. I spent most of the Friday evening and Saturday in bed, and broke my streak of weekend decluttering work.

I missed two weeks of London hockey practice but managed to get there from J's this week. Next weekend I'm hoping for Friday practice and a game on Sunday. Longer term, the Cambridge rink just started advertising for players interested in a women's rec team and of course I have put my name forward. I'm a bit "believe it when I see it", but if I could practice regularly with a women's rec team without having to commute to London, that would be amazing.

Work stuff

I had my first day of strikes on Wednesday, although in my case I put my out of office on and went back to bed for a few hours. Working a four-day week, and moving my day off whenever it coincides with a strike day, I will be working a total of five days in February and eleven in March, plus I have a week of leave in April. It was a fortnight's leave in April, but I don't want to entirely lose momentum until May, so I amended it. I have one specific task I'm trying to get done during that time (as so often in my manager role, it's more "getting other people to get this work done") but I doubt I'm going to get much else done until end of March.

I will probably spend my strike days on a mixture of bereavement admin, house decluttering, and taking some turns at caring for J in London. Or sleeping, that's always appealing at the moment.

The longer I leave it, the harder it is to write a "what I've been doing" post. Happy to expand on specific things if people are interested.

( holiday, covid in the house, football, hockey, solar panels, spending Tony's money )

I'm currently on strike with my union because I'm fed up of below-inflation pay rises and my pension being gutted on false premises for the profits of others. Strike days yesterday, today and next Wednesday - and I am on leave Mon and Tue, because I'm desperately tired and need a rest.

Bivalent covid vaccine plus flu vaccine definitely gave my immune system a workout. I had a mild fever Tuesday night through to Wednesday, and was exhausted most of Wednesday and fairly tired most of Thursday (able to work, but only by WFH - normally I go to the office on Thursdays but that was Not Happening this week). My arm was pretty sore from Tuesday evening through to Thursday evening. Friday morning I woke up completely fine bar being a bit short of sleep, which was entirely self-inflicted.

Friday also featured a lovely lunch with work colleagues to celebrate a project completion. I made probably the least and smallest contribution possible to the project, but the PM insisted I was invited and I am not one to turn down a nice meal. It was indoors, but with openable windows within reach of the table, which let me do an incidental demonstration of the value of a portable CO2 monitor. (Level when I sat down: 1200. Level a few minutes later after opening windows: 600. Closing the windows: level creeps up to over 1000 until I open one again.) Also I managed to mention the Glasgow worldcon to my Scottish SF nerd boss, so he might sign up.

This morning I took Nico to see DC League of Super-Pets featuring Dwayne Johnson voicing Superman's pet 'dog' Krypto. Yes, it's a "bunch of misfits come together to make a team" story, this time superpowered animal-shelter pets, but it hit the beats perfectly and we found it funny, and moving, and almost entirely non-irritating. I laughed a lot, and so did N (not always at the same things), and both of us would like to see it again. There are two end-credit scenes to stay for.

We did a library run on the way home. I have been quietly accumulating a vast "bookmark" list on the library system of books I want to read, but I fell out of the habit of library runs when I had covid in May. I picked up four books today, and am hoping this starts me back in the habit of regular library visits. This week I finally figured out how to borrow ebooks (yes, I'm an IT professional), and have read one and got a hold placed on another.

The rest of today has mostly gone to catching up on sleep and reading, but tomorrow I need to make a concerted effort to clear the back garden. We have scaffolding coming on Thursday, to allow solar panels to be installed the following week, and right now there is far too much vegetation in the way of where it needs to go.

I walked there, did a whole day's training, and had useful conversations with multiple people. I think I have identified a good pilot real-world case for using the new shiny on which we were being trained, which if it works will address a very old bit of technical debt on which I'm an expert. Hopefully I can start doing some concrete work on that very soon: I am the sort of person that forgets training fairly quickly if I don't start using it.

I do really like seeing people in person. I took my CO2 monitor and the levels were good both in the training room we were in, and in the bit of office where my team "normally" sit. From next week I'm planning to go to the office one day a week, so I can do some of my 1:1s and regular meetings there in person. I'm only meeting with people who are already working in the office at least part-time, or who have expressed a wish to do so, and I'm rejigging my schedule a bit to get all my in-person meetings on the same day of the week. So it's a relief to know that the ventilation system seems to be doing its job.

( post-covid fatigue )

Strong positive line on this morning's test, ugh. I reminded myself of what advice there is on testing positive after ten days: basically the collective medical advice boils down to "shrug, you probably are still infectious but also isolation has costs, up to you mate". So I chose to continue with mostly-isolating from the family, masking when I do interact with them.

I worked from home today. It was tiring and I needed to take breaks and rest much more than usual. Several colleagues who've been through this before me have told me to be very careful, take all the breaks I need, plan to work short days etc. I am listening and taking the advice!

Mum is still in hospital in Athens, is improving slowly but still pretty ill, and there's no really good idea yet of when she will be able to leave. I get a daily update from my stepdad, and pass it along to siblings etc. Mick's sisters are with him this week, and my stepsister will make a visit next week.
I went to a conference yesterday! I gave a talk! It was very on-theme, about how I regained my own confidence in my career these past few years. I was pretty relaxed giving the talk, or so I thought, but my fitbit decided I had done 30 minutes exercise based on my heartrate. (I find this hilarious.) The conference overall was pretty good, although I feel I have now met my quota for talking about Being A Woman In IT for some time and would like to focus on technical and/or management topics for a while. It was very weird being around a large number of people who were behaving as though the pandemic were over, and I'm rather hoping I haven't come home with the bonus conference swag of Covid. (So far no symptoms, and today's rapid test was negative.) I do have some sweet hardback notebooks though.
No ice hockey today because I went to get the dodgy mole removed from my arm (cn: risk of cancer) ( Read more... )
Anyway, I was in and out in 30 minutes, nearly had a nap while lying horizontally with nothing to do while they worked, and have been firmly told to not play ice hockey for at least a week. Bah, etc.
I wanted comfort reading earlier in the week so have been zooming through all of the World of the White Rat series by T. Kingfisher, starting with Clockwork Boys. Thus I have accidentally done some Hugo finalist reading; I make no commitments to doing any more though.

"Ah yes, you work a four-day week," said my colleague. "It must be nice, spending more time with your children."

I laughed, and then explained that really it's more time with my ice skates: weekday morning public skates are a good time for my private lesson as it's not too busy, and I tend to stay on for an extra session if I can, before heading off for the afternoon school run.

The main driver for cutting my hours was to give me more of a weekend by getting more stuff done around the house during the week, with the bonus of an obvious day on which to get things done that needed to be in "office hours" e.g. school meetings. I definitely still do those meetings sometimes instead of extra skating. And so it's worked out that I still do most of my housework at the weekend, but in return I get a leisure day most weeks, which is continuing to make me very content.

Things other than weird Covid test results have been happening!

I watched another two episodes of Bridgerton, and my goodness they included one of the most romantic speeches (the one about not love at first sight, but growing friendship), and one of the most romantic sex scenes I can remember seeing. More TV watching this weekend: we have three episodes left and should have time to get through at least two of them.

Tony got offered a new job, and after some careful thought and back-and-forth about details, has decided to take it. He's very happy about it, I'm very happy that he's happy, his genius is recognised, etc :-)

We also did some shakeup of the household routine over the last month, with Tony experimenting with whether taking on the morning school run from me was feasible. It's turned out to suit him, so I now have rather more flexibility in my mornings, yay, and five fewer bike rides in the week. So that in turn is prompting me to think about my daily/weekly exercise habits and whether/how to tweak them a bit.

We had a weekend visit from Tony's mum and her dogs - they stayed overnight at the nearby Travelodge (one-off fee per animal, max two animals) and hung out with us during the day, and it was really lovely to see her, to make friends (again) with the dogs, to have a lovely walk in the cold bright weather last Sunday, during which the smaller offspring and the puppy chased each other around and wore each other out. Pure joy.

I was off work last Friday (using up my leave) and managed to time my trip into London to meet my dad for an hour or so. While I managed to get time with my dad at half-term, he cunningly arranged for his cousin to meet us, and I hadn't seen her since before the pandemic. We didn't do anything other than stand around and chat, and then ride a train to Streatham and chat (and then dad and cousin went back to Paddington together) but that was in itself a great pleasure.

I'm on strike today and tomorrow. Strike action runs Wed-Fri this week, but I don't work Wednesdays anyway so I think I wasn't on strike then, at least for paperwork purposes. Between strike and pointedly using up all my annual leave (my department's leave year runs Jan-Dec unlike much of the university which runs on academic year) I am only working nine days in December: two next week, three the following, four the last week before Christmas, and then everything shuts down until the fourth of January. I am tired from this year and I don't think I'm alone in that. I just want to get through those last nine days, do what I can, and have a rest.

We're two weeks into the school term, and work is in full swing, and while it's not entirely true that my life is currently work, children + skating, it's nearly true.

(I'm writing this while listening to FIYAHCon panels; I find it hard to engage with online interaction "for fun" these days, perhaps because I'm doing so much of it for my day job, but listening with occasional glances at the video stream seems to be working.)

The new job continues to be challenging and interesting and (mostly) satisfying, and only a tiny bit terrifying. I was rather flatteringly asked directly if I'd sign up as a mentor on the university's "self-match mentoring" scheme, and I've helped out this week with some interviewing for a post in a neighbouring team. Last week my department held an outdoor garden party, and I got to see very many of my colleagues in person for the first time in a very long time (and in some cases, for the first time ever), and found that very good indeed.

We saw one set of family in Sheffield in the summer, and are due to visit another this month, and a third at half-term, if all goes well. I've also formally moved our Eurostar booking to next summer. One day, Leiden, we will be in you, but not this year.

All of us were overdue for eye tests, and we didn't think it was going to get less risky to get them done later this year, so I committed a bunch of logistics to get us all done. My prescription has stayed remarkably stable, although I am starting to see the age-related long-sightedness coming in, but others in the household have got new glasses coming.

Last weekend Nico and I met up with my brother J at the local Model Engineering Society's monthly Public Open Day, for model train rides. Unfortunately, there were very many other families who'd had the same idea, so the queues were very long. J had come prepared with A Slip of the Tongue which helped while away the queue, and the ride itself was lots of fun. We looked at the queue to go again and decided instead to bail to Lammas Land playground where there was food, and a filled paddling pool, and rather fewer people.

And we have had two pieces of vaccine excitement this week:

Request for parental permission (granted, obviously!) for C to be given flu vaccination (nasal, not jab) in school. Normally TPTB only vaccinate primary-age children through schools, but this year they're extending to secondary schools, hoping to avert major flu outbreaks on top of Covid.
The news that C's age group will be offered Covid vaccine from next week, probably via school again. However I'm also going to keep an eye on the local walk-in clinics from next week in case we can get him done sooner that way. Even just the first dose will be a huge weight off my mind.

I'm two weeks into my new job, after two months of transition between old and new roles, and gosh look here comes the learning curve now my new boss has handed over everything (and gone on holiday).

Last night after work I went skating, which turned out to be a disco session, which is apparently going to be standard now on Friday nights. I'm good with that, the lights and music help me skate for longer. The ice had just been laid before the session started and was a delight to skate on. Even an hour later after a lot of people had flailed around on it, it was still easier than Tuesday's surface, whatever was going on with that. The only downside was the limited music playlist which was into its fourth repeat by the time I stopped: the only song I knew on it was Dizzie Rascal's Bassline Junkie, and while I like it, four times in one evening is a bit much.

Then I went from the disco lighting into the last of the evening. I cycled my tired self home as the sunset faded from gold to pink to grey, and the light reflected from the river in beautiful ways.

One of my goals with moving to a 4-day week is I do more "life+household admin" on the weekday and this have more time at weekends to actually have fun. This week's Wednesday I had booked myself to skate, but then I realised I could divert to the post office en route and post off an Important Legal Document by international tracked mail. (It has since reached the right country but not the final destination therein.) Then I resumed heading to the rink and realised I had no socks, so I diverted again from Riverside to Newmarket Road Tesco and bought some multicoloured socks with pineapples and parrots on, because why buy boring emergency socks if pineapples are available?

Anyway, I arrived at the rink late, which they were tolerant of, and left it late, which meant I had 35 minutes to get across to West Cambridge for lunch with work colleagues. I therefore biked somewhat faster than my usual post-skating pace, and arrived strictly 2 minutes late, but before anyone else so that was fine.

Lunch was lovely, although the sunshine was enough to encourage us to decamp to shade once all food had been retrieved from food vans. There was much gossip and joy-in-good-company. Then I had to head back home and capture the cat for a vet appointment. She was Unhappy with me, but I got her in the carrier and the carrier in the cargo bike, and the lot of us to the vet bang on time. Then I had to wait outside for an hour with no shade, although I did nip over to the Co-op for some cold drinks to keep me going.

Eventually cat was returned to me, having checked out fine to continue on her pain medication and with an amusing array of shaved areas from a dematting. By the time I got her home again in the cargo bike, I was really too hot, also mildly sunburned, and basically useless for the rest of the day. I fell asleep early and slept about 12 hours instead of my usual 7-8. I take that as an indicator of packing in slightly too much, for planning future days off. (Previously to this week, my day off was Friday, so if I overdid it, it didn't matter too much. But overdoing it when I have two more days to work to finish out the week is a different matter.)

The children finished school (on different days) this week.
I have finished my old job and now have ten days before I go back to my new job (internal promotion, different role, different team, same department)
I was allowed to leave the house again from yesterday morning, woot
the current heatwave appears to be easing off

I am somewhat underslept this week, so my current plan for this weekend involves lots of napping. I really ought to tackle the garden some more too (ugh, keep up momentum, ugh).

Also I have to figure out a summer hols exercise routine now I'm not cycling the school run ten times a week. It will probably involve running.

Two weeks ago I'd just finished a nice week off work. Since then I've been pretty busy.

( work, some travel, family, skating, weather and friends )

This coming week looks likely to continue busy, but then I have an extra-long weekend with my usual Friday off and Monday off for my birthday. So far I have organised cake to be delivered next Sunday, and a ride with Tony on an experimental self-driving bus on the Monday. Probably getting a birthday dinner delivered too.

I don't normally work Fridays, Monday is a bank holiday, and for work reasons I need to work next Friday, so I moved my day off next week to Tuesday. The weather of course is forecast to be cold and gloomy throughout, which makes me disinclined to organise meeting people outdoors, but at least I have a comfy home to hole up in antisocially while I appreciate not having to do my day job for a few days.

I am still, I think, recovering from the stress of schools being closed at the start of the year, so I'm not setting any goals for my time off. I have this week's to-do list with plenty of things still outstanding, and a pile of paperwork to deal with, but I'll treat getting any of it done as a bonus.

On a more cheery note, I would like to share this amazing fact from the Reddit Today I Learned community (which I found via twitter):

"TIL Judith Love Cohen, who helped create the Abort-Guidance System which rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts, went to work on the day she was in labor. She took a printout of a problem she was working on to the hospital. She called her boss and said she finished the problem and gave birth to Jack Black."

The week before last I was back at work after being on leave for a week, and for most of that week I attended SROC (the Student Records Officers Conference) for the first time ever. I am not a student records officer, but some of my key users are, and I've always felt I do better software when I understand my users. I was really impressed by the quality and range of the talks, and I thought the online format with Q&A available in a text box throughout did really well to produce interesting questions and fewer "more of a comment"s.

That was also the children's last week of school before the two-week Easter break. I had accumulated really quite a lot of Easter chocolate over assorted grocery deliveries, so the children got a daily (small) dose of chocolate starting from the last day of school, and culminating in a giant chocolate egg each yesterday. This seems to have gone down well.

Last weekend (the one before Easter!) was full of ice hockey, which I may or may not write up separately, with both SDHL finals and NWHL semifinals and finals. I especially enjoyed the Twitch broadcasts of the NWHL matches, and the social connection of the Twitch chat. The moderators of the chat did a great job of keeping the atmosphere friendly and welcoming, and were fast and effective at dealing with trollish comments about women's sports. I caught sight of one or two before they were deleted but mostly I just saw the "deleted by moderator" notification, which I appreciated. The downside of the US-based matches being so fun to watch was I stayed up way past my bedtime two nights in a row, and didn't manage to make up the sleep immediately. I was a bit tired and grouchy Sunday, which seemed a reasonable trade-off, but then I also got migraine symptoms for a couple of days during the following week. It probably wasn't just the late nights, but they won't have helped. So I need to bear that in mind for future NWHL events and plan better to ensure I get enough sleep.

(Although, the migraine was also an excellent example of how working from home helps me manage my chronic illness so much better than the office allows. I was prepared to call in sick if I couldn't work, but I was in fact able to get a full day's work done both days by keeping my room dim, my laptop screen turned all the way down, and taking breaks as needed to lie down in the dark until my brain settled again. Keeping my camera off in meetings seemed to help a bit too. But most of all, not having to travel at all and not having to cope with a large open-plan office lit with fluorescent strip lights.)

Very excitingly, a new tagalong that I ordered a while ago arrived on Thursday afternoon, so I took some time Friday morning to get it assembled and connected to our standard bike. We've managed a practice ride Friday, Saturday and Sunday, a bit further each time, so I'm hoping we'll be up for school runs with it before much longer.

Yesterday it was lovely and warm and I took both children to the big play area at Lammas Land, where they climbed all the things while I sat and enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air, and occasionally pushed a swing or roundabout as required. My brother joined us for a bit and we indulged in food from the cafe and overall it was a really good afternoon. There were quite a lot of other people with the same idea, but as far as I could tell mostly keeping sensible distances from each other, and sticking to their own groups, so I didn't find it very stressful.

We noticed a horrible scraping noise on the tagalong on that trip, and traced it to the pedal crank scraping on the outside of the chainguard. I asked twitter for help and got some probably-useful responses. However today it's been nearly freezing all day so I have opted against bicycle repair attempts and mostly lurked indoors and enjoyed my day off. Back to work tomorrow!

This week I was aiming for "restful break" rather than "do all the things" while I was off work. I had to leave the house to do the school run twice a day, but in between I read a few books and fics, I managed to watch an actual film by myself (the first Step Up film, featuring a very young Channing Tatum, a fairly predictable plot, and a lot of pretty people dancing), and I ate more chocolate than was strictly wise. I actually achieved feeling bored a couple of times, which is still something of a novelty.

I had another parents evening during the week, again remote using the SchoolCloud platform. I am definitely a fan of not having to leave home, and of having the computer take care of the timings.

Toward the end of the week I finally managed to put all the Christmas decorations away properly (as opposed to shoving them in the back room out the way of the cleaner), and this in turn prompted me to photograph and list on freecycle several things that had been waiting for same and were blocking where the decorations go. I also spent a couple of hours tackling the frankly terrifying levels of clutter in the study; there is a long way to go, but a little bit less now than there was this time last week

Back to work tomorrow: I have been very good at not sneaking peeks at my work email but no doubt there will be the usual time-off backlog to tackle. I'm also registered for a bunch of talks from a work-related conference I wouldn't normally be able to attend due to costs and travel, but this year the conference is both online and free so I jumped at the chance.

Remote schooling is still eating a lot of my time, and I'm still fitting my dayjob work around it, and it's all rather tiring, but I did finally get to the end of the big piece of work that I was blocked on, and promptly chomped through at least three small pieces of work once that was off my plate. Onward and upward for next week!

School highlights this week:

watching Hoodwinked with N because English work was "rewrite Red Riding Hood" and it was an obvious extension to the idea
online Parents Evening: using something called SchoolCloud, it was extremely easy to use and extremely strict about timekeeping, both of which are great for this purpose. Overall it took me under an hour to see all of C's teachers, and I wasn't late and didn't get the time wrong for anyone. By comparison I spent well over 3 hours on the same exercise last year. I made a point of writing to the school to say I thought it worked extremely well and I would totally do it the same way again even without a pandemic.
FoodTech for N, as documented by Tony

I'm struggling a bit with migraine at the moment, it's been nearly two weeks now of either warning signs, actual migraine (two so far), or migraine recovery. I cut out pretty much everything apart from dayjob and school-support and rested as much as I could around those, and I've had a very deliberately easy weekend in hopes of resting my way out of the migraine hole. If I can get to 3 days in a row without symptoms I'll consider starting up some gentle exercise again.

I had a (negative) Covid test a week ago via the symptom study app because it tells me to get one every time I tell it I have a headache and/or mild fatigue. I discovered that we have a new walk-in test centre at the West Cambridge site, which is my closest yet. This was a portacabin setup rather than the giant marquee as at the Newmarket Road site I went to last November. Anyway, I went for the test Sunday morning and had the result texted to me before I woke up on Monday.

I did something painful to my lower back yesterday morning bringing the Ocado delivery inside from the front step, but it seems to be getting better today. Even more reason to rest! Details behind the cut.

( Read more... )

All week I've been getting photos from friends and family Up North of snow; this morning Cambridge managed a few stray patches on rooftops and shaded corners when I woke up, and it was all melted within a couple of hours. The forecast has us staying above freezing until at least Friday, and maybe even reaching double figures Celsius during the week. (which is great, my preferred temperature range is 10-25 Celsius)

My library reservation came through at the local branch library (the one that's 25 minutes walk away rather than the 30 minutes to the central library, with the distinct advantage of not being in a city centre during a pandemic) and socially-distanced book pickup went really smoothly. A+ will do again once I've convinced myself I will actually read library books.

Some time ago I signed up with a mentoring scheme for Murray Edwards alumnae and had my first getting-to-know-you chat with my mentee today and I think it went well. Yes I am now mid-career and mentoring other people, this is wild. Also I passed my 20-year mark working for the university last week and failed to notice because I was too busy, until my colleague mentioned it was her 10-year anniversary.

Remote-schooling remains Hard. I am successfully fending off a migraine that would like to manifest, and semi-successfully fending off guilt at not being able to do All The Things. Watching women's ice hockey remains tremendously engaging, even when my team lose.

( covid19 )

I have worked my last Friday for probably the next 5 years. Officially I start working a 4-day week from January, but I used my remaining leave to book every Friday off from October to the end of the year (hurrah for generous leave). I am really looking forward to it. In the long term the idea is I try to shovel as much school+family+house admin as I can into Fridays and claim back more of the weekend for myself. This will cost us ~10% of family income, but it will hopefully gain us a less tired and fed-up me. In the short term I'm expecting to just go splat on Fridays for at least the first couple of months.

I am getting more used to regular cycling of the school run. I finally got our standard bike back from its service after ringing to ask what was up, and it turned out they had forgotten to message me to say it was ready, sigh. I have yet to actually measure it up for the purposes of ordering a tagalong though. I did take it on a long ride (by my standards) to see lnr and buy a games console from her. We spent a lovely long time chatting in her sunny garden, and getting her sunburned, oops. It was such a long ride by my standards that I needed a nap after getting home again.

I also had a day this week where the cargo bike was out of action and I did the school run as taxi+run in the morning, and run+walk in the afternoon. (I did have the option of taxi or bus if N got too tired on the walk back, but bribery-by-chocolate turned out to be sufficient incentive to get us all the way home.) My legs were properly sore the day after that though, even with proper stretching and hot bath etc.

The weather has turned thoroughly autumnal now, and this morning I was wondering why the house was even colder than expected (everyone else in this house likes it colder than I do, I wear layers a lot) and it turned out to be because the thermostat remote for the central heating needed new batteries. Replacing the batteries caused the house to become less icicle-like remarkably quickly, hurrah.

I have a bunch of library books due back next Wednesday, most of which I can't renew, so my plan for the weekend is to read as many of them as possible. What are your weekend plans?

work

The government's catastrophic handling of school results has thoroughly screwed over my key users in admissions (as well as messing around all the school leavers in what was hardly a year devoid of stress). A lot of my work time this week was spent supporting those users, and attempting to come up with ways to help them get through the massive amount of work they now have to redo.

fitness

Nico is starting at a new school in September and we will be taking him there and back by bike. I barely cycled at all between March and two weeks ago; while I've been working hard to keep up my fitness in the absence of an active commute, it turns out that walking, aerobics, and some very gentle slow running is in no way sufficient preparation for a daily cycle ride of at least 10km, let alone two. Different muscles are in use, for sure. So I have started doing some practice rides and my body is doing its usual adapting thing, and I'm confident I can be ready by the time he needs to go full-time. (I have a planning spreadsheet and everything.) I will at least no longer be complaining about the lack of an active commute in my life ...

I also followed up my friend's genius idea of getting inline skates so I had something to compensate for no ice skating until further notice. I have tried them precisely once so far, and I am very very bad at it. I am so bad that I am going to find somewhere considerably flatter and smoother than my driveway and local street to practice until I get more confident. But all the right sorts of muscles were complaining after my 10-15 minutes of incompetent flailing and falling on the driveway, so I am very motivated to try again. I need a proper helmet though: I borrowed a bike helmet but my head is no longer the same size as my offspring's so this will rapidly become Too Much Faff.

social

I miss people. I have successfully had some socially-distant outdoor visits with friends and I hope to keep organising similar visits while not thwarted by weather (heatwaves, rainstorms). If you are in/near Cambridge and I haven't yet been in touch to invite myself round, do let me know if that would be welcome. It'll probably have to be weekends only, because of work & offspring, but while it remains plausibly warm enough to sit outside for an hour or so, I want to make the most of it. Storing up the sight of people to get me through the winter.

flu vaccination

These are now bookable privately, at least at Lloyds Pharmacy and Boots (though the latter's website Does Not Work for me, and my attempt to report the bug got me a response offering to help if I rang them up, which is rather missing the point). I am almost certainly no longer eligible for free vaccines, and £13 has always seemed more than worth it to not get flu, this winter more than ever. So now I have an appointment booked and am considering booking in the children privately too, rather than waiting to see if/when our GP invites them for NHS ones.

libraries

The local libraries are reopening! On reduced hours and with no browsing, but reservations are working as before, and there is a free service where you ask for N books in one or more genres, and the librarians pick stuff for you.

I found out about this from an email notification that a book I'd reserved some time ago is available for me to collect. I have read exactly none of the books I had checked out in March, which were silently renewed at some point until 30 September, but I am going to make an effort to read at least two before I go collect the new one next weekend.

And since this morning, it is not. Instead it is very grey and wet and thundery (although sometimes I get confused about whether it is thunder or the construction work behind our house).

Anyway, for the first few days I was pretty smug because I have a whole "hot weather" routine, and I'd upgraded the curtains on the south-facing windows, and they seemed to be doing a better job than ever of keeping the house bearable even while outside routinely went over 30C. But then we had a couple of nights where the low was 21C, and my best efforts just couldn't cool the house down enough before it started heating up again, and we started reaching 27-28C by late afternoon.

Yesterday I also went to my office building for a few hours to sort out my desk, which I "cleared out" in a bit of a hurry in mid-March, thinking maybe 3 months ahead at that time. There was indeed some packet food that absolutely needs eating in the next month, which I brought home, as well as a small amount of paperwork that need sorting out here. But most of the stuff on the desk and in my drawers could be binned / recycled / shredded. My desk has never looked so tidy since we moved into the building as it does now! I took a photo from my PC to be a Teams background for pretending I'm in the office, for days when I'm feeling like I miss it.

The building is very lightly occupied, the cooling system it has isn't switched on (and was limited use in the hottest weather anyway), and my fitbit credited me with two hours of "active minutes" during which I was mostly sitting down, or at best standing and chatting (suitably distanced) with a colleague who is one of the few working there routinely. Just my heart beating away because "existing in hot weather" is work.

Cycling there for 8am wasn't too bad - I went a long way around to get my exercise for the day in - but the 12-minute ride home again absolutely drained me, and I really struggled the rest of the day. Didn't help that the house reached 28C by mid-afternoon. When my last meeting of the day was done, I crashed out on my bed with a cold wet scarf on my head, another on my feet, and a series of chilled drinks. Waking very early this morning to actual cool weather was delightful.

It's the weekend! I am no longer trying to work or support school work, and won't again until Monday. Phew.

( review of the week )

The weather was so nice this afternoon that we put the exercise trampoline on the patio for fresh-air bouncing, and that worked really well. I cleaned off its feet before bringing it back inside, and will happily do that every day if this weather continues.

And a short while ago, Tony and Charles and I went into the back garden and saw the ISS pass overhead, thanks to

ceb mentioning it yesterday and linking to https://www.meteorwatch.org/iss-international-space-station-times-uk-spring-2020/. I'm going to try to watch it the next few evenings as well, it makes me feel oddly connected to people outside my house, watching a small metal container of people falling forever past this planet.

Strike days 3-5 I spent at home trying to nurse a cold and not share it with the picket line. As previously mentioned, I rearranged the living room, finished Irish 104, and started Irish 105. I also did a fair bit of overdue housework and watched multiple more episodes of The Good Place while getting paperwork done.

Today I have had four meetings back to back and made the first pass through a week of email. With 3 days in the office in 3 weeks I have to be fairly focused in what I get on with.

Also a colleague has enthused at me about seeing Cyrano de Bergerac live at the cinema last week so I am maybe definitely going to see the encore in Cambridge on 10 March (either I'm on strike or I suppose I could book leave if the strike gets called off).

1. The new work regime is still leaving me tired, in a good way.

2. I've been ruthless about resting outside work, and have thus managed to avoid having any more migraines. This is good because I had a failure of planning and am nearly out of migraine drugs, and the GP silently took me off repeat prescriptions for them, so I had to ring up to discover I'm required to turn up and demonstrate my blood pressure is fine before I can have any more, and then I couldn't get an appointment to do so for several weeks.

3. I visited my brother in Watford, timing it for when my mother and stepfather would also be there. This also let me establish that walking from King's Cross/St Pancras to Euston, or vice versa, takes me+children about 20 minutes platform-to-platform with no diversions or delays. Also the quiet back-streets route has official sign posts and everything, and is very definitely superior to slogging along the Euston Road.

4. I was part of a parent panel to interview candidates for headteacher of the Cavendish School, a free special school for autistic children aged 7-19 opening in September 2021, on the same site as IVC and part of the same educational trust. That was a really interesting experience, and I'm glad to have done it and hopefully contributed to getting the right person to be the first head for this much-needed school.

5. Skating continues to go well. I passed the level 2 assessment this week and am now officially in the level 3 class. I'm enjoying it very much: the classes are physically demanding and require me to be very present in my body and aware of how I'm moving; I'm much more confident just skating around the rink in the public sessions, and it feels good to do so.

6. As may be apparent from Friday's to-read pile post, I have completely and utterly fallen down a rabbithole of reading all of KJ Charles's backlist. Mostly historical m/m romances with magic and/or murder. But not all! A perfect combination of extremely readable exciting stories, being too tired to do much other than reading after work, and being able to afford to buy all the ones I didn't already have. It feels ridiculously self-indulgent, and I'm loving it.

7. When I wasn't reading (mostly) historical magical murder mysteries, I got through the entire first season of The Good Place and intend to get through the other three seasons as soon as I can manage. I also watched and liked the first episode of Picard and intend to watch the rest, although I haven't managed to coordinate with my co-watcher this weekend.

8. Speaking of self-indulgence, Hamilton tickets through to August were released today, so I have bought my birthday-present-to-self again. Royal Circle this time, for the better view of the choreography.

I went back to work last Monday. It's very busy for me: I'm doing a half-time secondment in which I've got a steep learning curve, and I'm having to be brutally strict about time management so my ongoing job gets its fair share. Unsurprisingly I've been pretty tired each evening.

Saturday I had my first skating lesson for three weeks, and arranged to get the bakfiets to the bike shop for repair, and took overdue library books back, and did a half-hour fun skate and some advocacy to the rink management about autism-friendly sessions, and picked up the repaired bike and brought it home. After a little rest I went to some of jack's birthday party before swapping out with fanf.

Possibly this was excessively energetic of me. I woke up Sunday morning with a migraine already in progress, so I applied painkillers and a lot of lying in the dark alternating audiobook / podcasts and napping.

This week I've been back at work, learning-curve & time-management etc, plus I presented a departmental "Diversity Cinema" event on Neurodiversity today: brief intro, four short films (mostly TEDx talks), and a bit of facilitated discussion afterward. It seemed to go down well.

I've completely fallen off the daily Irish wagon since Sunday's migraine, but I hope to climb back on shortly. angelofthenorth is hosting a Languages Cafe with threads in English, Finnish, French, Hindi & Russian, as well as my lonely Irish thread. I've also joined a new community girlmeetstrouble, for the discussion of 20th century romantic suspense, which is starting with a read-through of Madam, Will You Talk by Mary Stewart. This is one of my favourite books ever (one day I'm going to take fanf to Avignon just because of this book) so I am joining in as soon as I've found one of my copies and enough time & brain to read the first chapter.

Borrowing an idea from falena, I keep not having time to blog, so here's what I can type up in 15 minutes.

A few weeks ago I semi-spontaneously joined a social bike ride as part of Camcycle's Festival of Cycling (in that I put it into the calendar with a reminder, the reminder popped up, and Nico said "let's go!"). We got interviewed and the playground was pretty impressive.
Last week, at fairly short notice, some friends offered me a spare ticket to Akram Khan's Giselle at Sadler's Wells, so I spent a happy Saturday afternoon trekking there and back and enjoying really very good ballet from a really very good seat. I had seen the ballet once before, a filmed performance at the cinema (with the same friends!), but I hadn't realised until reading the programme that the awesome industrial themes in it that I had loved came specifically from Akram Khan's choreography, and specifically from Bangladeshi textile factories. (The original is about peasants and aristocrats and evil spirits, rather than immigrant labourers and city dwellers and victims of industrial accidents).
Sadler's Wells has two other versions of Giselle in the next couple of months and I would really like to see them but I am not sure I can justify the time to go.
Especially as I am still falling over asleep early most evenings, and only barely keeping on top of my to-do list. I am hoping it's just shaking the bugs out of the new school year routines combined with the entirely expected very-busy time of year at work. I'm still just about only putting out one fire at a time, but there's very little time between fires.
Although on the equinox it occurred to me that maybe I need to up my vitamin D again as I'm probably not getting topped-up by the sun any more. And also I'd missed a few of my regular doses (see: shaking bugs out of new school year routines). So we'll see if that helps in the next week or two.
For reasons, I have read aloud all six of Ursula Vernon's Hamster Princess books in about 3 weeks, and am now working through Castle Hangnail and, in parallel, the 11 Dragonbreath books. I have Thoughts about these books ok, if ever I get a chance to write them up. Mostly they are swirling around just how well the Hamster Princess books show human-scale villainy rather than vast epic evil, and how great it is to have clear examples for children of that kind of everyday nastiness, along with examples of how to defeat it. Also she is brilliant at working in references for adults reading the books aloud (or very well-read children): I keep giggling quietly at the memory of a very well-placed "Fly, you fool!".

We have survived the first full week of work and school! I have been to Meet The Teacher at primary school; the calendars are set to remind us when PE kits and wellies and homework etc are needed; I have a bunch of meetings and school trips scheduled.
My big work project - that I have been working on all year and had one week in the year where we could go live, or we had to wait to this time next year - has gone live! It has gone mostly smoothly - some issues discovered in the first few days, but I've generally been working on one thing at a time, not trying to put out six fires at once. So go me!
Not very surprisingly, I have been falling asleep early a lot in the last week and haven't really kept up with anything that wasn't work and childcare.
However! I took the children to Macclesfield this weekend for a party to celebrate a Significant Birthday of an aunt. I saw lots of our relatives! And nice friends of my aunt! (many of whom remember me from when I was my offspring's age!) And there was musical entertainment of assorted kinds because that is how that branch of my family rolls. There was even a team(?) of handbell ringers who did a number of lovely tunes, and I greatly regret not surreptitiously recording their Take Five for fanf.
I think we have finally completed all stages of the Water Softener Installation Game, including the side quests to stop a leak under the sink, get the under-sink cupboard repaired, and an exciting post-installation overflow from the cold water tank (Tony climbed into the roof space and fiddled with the floaty-ball intake thingy and it stopped overflowing). So far I mostly notice that I need much less soap to get clean. Oh! We still haven't figured out where to store the cleaning things now that under-the-sink is half-filled with water softening device, so maybe that is one final side-quest.

Today I have mostly spent on the Worldcon schedule, and I have made my final-honestly-that-is-it decisions about what to go to and when to take breaks for eating and sleeping. I am still working through the regret over all the things I'm missing. But hopefully I'll be over all that soon and future-me can just go enjoy the schedule today-me has planned out.

Also today I have bought a new microwave, because our old one has broken and is not immediately obviously repairable. So that was a good couple of hours reading Which? reports and working out what to get and who to buy it from - it will arrive tomorrow. We normally use the microwave multiple times daily so it can't really wait until we get back from Dublin.

I finished work last Friday lunchtime and am not going back for another two weeks. I did indeed finish everything I had to do before I left, which I was a bit worried about four weeks ago. This despite the record-breaking heat of a couple of weeks ago, and TWO evacuations of the office building last week due to a smell of gas. (We are assured there was no actual gas leak.)

Heatwave: yeah, I was too exhausted dealing with it to write about it, but basically I worked a shifted and split schedule so I could avoid the worst of the heat each day and still get enough work done. This required me to be very disciplined about my bedtime, and left me a bit confused about what day it was at least twice. I was quite happy to return to "normal office hours" once the worst of the heatwave was over.

House stuff: we have agreed a date with the gardener! we are awaiting a quote from the carpenter! I finished filing the Giant Pile of Filing! We are without our cleaner for the summer holidays, which means we are totally failing the discipline of clearing the floors once a week so she can vacuum them, but we are not completely squalid yet.

I also managed a bunch of minor administration: cancelling two subscriptions the children no longer read; getting a better contract on my phone; getting a better phone/broadband deal for the house; getting eye tests for me and both children; cancelling our Zipcar membership now they've been booted out of Cambridge by the council (which is a whole mess of its own I haven't had time to look into).

My silly running injury seems entirely healed up now and I can climb stairs as well as I ever did. I've been doing plenty of walking, but I am going to wait until we are back from Dublin before I try taking up running again. I haven't been keeping up my weekly fitness/activity review posts (or for that matter my monthly book buying posts) and although I have all the data, the longer I go without catching up the weekly summaries, the more intimidating it feels. Maybe I should just declare amnesty and start again in September.

For tedious reasons I had to hard-reset my Kindle recently, but this did result in it only having my ten most recent purchases on it. Perhaps relatedly, I have suddenly galloped through several new books in the past week.

Oh, and two days ago went to see Hobbes and Shaw having never seen any of the Fast and Furious films. I got what I went for: ridiculous stunts and a lot of Idris Elba, Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson kicking ass and looking cool. I wasn't expecting the heartwarming family drama, but I enjoyed it.

Yesterday I presented at a national professional conference as a representative of my employer. [1]

One of my colleagues also presented. We had a corporate hire car and split the driving to Liverpool on the way up Monday afternoon/evening and he did all the driving on the way back yesterday. I was very grateful for the latter. It might have been nice to take more time to explore the rather nicely regenerated docklands area, but it was also really nice to get enough sleep Monday night and get home to my own bed last night.

Today I have mostly been Very Tired. Thankfully today was a rather easier one than usual at work because we had our team holiday lunch. (I wore a ridiculous Christmas tree jumper with an optional light show, an excellent charity shop discovery a few weeks ago.) I am sufficiently tired that supper has been delivery pizza and I intend to go to bed soon.

I have matured enough to promptly and sensibly rest when getting fatigued, but not enough to stop feeling completely and utterly resentful about my limitations.

[1] I would link but the conference website appears to be down for me. Sigh. If it reappears later I'll update.

It has been A Week at work. Well, it's been a hectic three weeks since I came back from half-term and the main takeaway is that there's a reason I normally avoid taking October half-term off (in the last 18 years: 1 maternity leave, 1 long-term sick leave, and the two times C started a new school). Just too busy a time of year. I had a meeting in which I had to explain why we still need people who can at least read COBOL, and came out of it to discover that one of the scenarios had just occurred, so there went the rest of my day ...

Out of work, it has been a very cultural week, if less so than I'd planned. I missed High School Musical at the ADC Friday before last due to a miscommunication with Tony, and the Vue cinema's attempt to show the Royal Ballet's La Bayadere on Tuesday managed perfect sound but no picture, so I came home early with a refund and a free ticket. However, I successfully got to see Dessa live at the Dome in Tufnell Park last Saturday, the Bolshoi Ballet's La Sylphide at the Arts Picurehouse last Sunday & a musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night at the Young Vic today. I note that there's a different production of Twelfth Night coming to the Southwark Playhouse next year, and I have the US high school version, She's The Man, lurking somewhere in my DVD to-watch pile.

I am still doing bits of cooking here and there: modified sunshine bread is becoming a staple when I have enough grip of an evening to prepare it, and I tried out chocolate chilli black bean soup this morning to help fend off a looming cold. It was tasty, even if I wimped out of handling actual chillis in favour of the spice jar.

I am trying to catch up on Doctor Who before tomorrow evening - just watched Arachnids in the UK - and my interview about parental experience of seeking SEND funding will be in tomorrow's Sunday Politics show (11am, BBC East). They filmed Nico being adorable so I'm hoping they show more of that than my talking head :-)

We're more than halfway through Tony's absence due to work conference. The house is not entirely disastrous and bedtimes have mostly been observed, but I am very tired. I have finally done Yet Another Tedious Piece Of EHCP Paperwork and it's ready to post in the morning, hurrah. Two short emails related to it to send, and then I can reward myself with something fun.

Next week is half-term, which seems to have arrived much sooner than I expected. I have the entire week off work and some ideas of Fun Things To Do, but I really want to get the children involved in sorting out the plans for the week. I think post-it notes and the whiteboard may be involved.

Of course, that also means I have only today and tomorrow to finish off all the things I need to do at work before disappearing for a week ...

ETA: Did the two short emails, thought I'd start sketching a half-term plan on the whiteboard, but it needs a serious scrubbing. *sigh*

My father observed I hadn't been posting much recently (hi Dad!), so here is an attempt to catch up a bit.

1. Yesterday I went to a lovely party to celebrate

emperor 's birthday. I hadn't realised that the newish Quidditch sculpture lit up at night. That was exciting to discover; I enjoyed the walk there and back, along a dark cycle path across fields, with solar studs marking the edges of the path.

2. Earlier yesterday I got a flu vaccination privately at Boots. This was worth the small fee to get it done early, at a weekend appointment, which I could book online. I mention merely for information. (See also Siderea's Influenza 1918 project.)

3. I am still enjoying Pokémon Go a lot and getting a ridiculous amount of satisfaction from catching small imaginary creatures. I'm getting a lot out of joining the local Discord group and joining in now and again when I can. A couple of weeks ago I joined a locally-organised group on Moltres Day to wander around Cambridge for three hours being low-key nerdy. It was a lot of fun.

4. I fixed the toilet seat last weekend and it seems to have stayed fixed all week. Go me, figuring it out without a manual.

5. I'm giving a talk in December at a UK conference for the software I work on; a promotional email about the conference went out to the events list on Friday prominently featuring my "compelling" talk as a reason to attend. I completely fail at self-promotion because my response was to post an unnerved vaguetweet about it, rather than something like "So pleased to be featured talking about [THING] at [CONFERENCE] on [DATE]". Eh, I can do that next week or something.

6. The massive house tetris I started this summer has stalled on the absence of four very specific spacing washers which I cannot easily source online, so I am probably dispatching Tony to MacKays today to see if they can help.

7. I am quite excited to see Venom (Tom Hardy! Riz Ahmed!). Both the local chain cinemas have helpfully emailed me to say I can book tickets now, so I should probably sort out date night logistics.

8. I am very excited about Captain Marvel next year, and have been watching the trailer more than a few times.

9. We are 2.5 weeks into the new school term and so far it is mostly going ok and we are figuring out and refining the weekly routine. The week before last I trooped along to two sets of parent welcome evenings and made copious notes.

10. Also that week I went to see The Merry Wives of Windsor in the cinema, live from the theatre in Stratford-on-Avon. It was delightful and at some point I may even write it up. I have a bunch of these things booked over the next six months, it's going to be great.

11. I have cautiously restarted Morris dancing, after doing myself an "overuse injury" in the spring and summer. I have physio exercises and instructions to take it slowly, but it was great to be back.

12. I had what I strongly hope is my penultimate quarterly bone marrow checkup on Monday; if anything was wrong they would have called me in within a day, so all continues well. I'm seeing my consultant next month.

A lot to be grateful for this week.

The weather! We have gone from unseasonably chilly to unseasonably warm and I have broken out the walking sandals but haven't quite hit the point where I am uncomfortably hot walking around outside. (yes, it's due to get cold again next week, I don't care, I've had these days.)
Seeing Dessa live in London! (In a crowded basement with insufficient aircon, on the hottest April day in nearly 70 years - everything I was wearing went in the wash and I went in the shower when I finally got home.) She was really, really good, she told a very funny anecdote about her latest album and the genre of some of its songs, and during one song she just got down off the stage and walked through the audience, which parted before her, and she was stood literally in front of me singing to my neighbour, and it was amazing.
Picnic playdate in the park today for me and Nicholas (and Charles for some of it) with A & L
I successfully applied for a place on this 2-day programme for "women with entrepreneurial ambitions" at the Judge Business School and caused them to clarify the wording to include all university staff, not just academics. (They are taking applications until 30 April, but offering places "on a rolling basis", if anyone reading this is also interested; also I can take one woman guest to the networking dinner on the second night, for £38.)
Colleagues at work being very helpful.
Navigating school appeal bureaucracy with encouragement from a fellow parent.

Today I wore:

2 pairs of socks (running socks under normal cotton socks)
2 pairs of leggings
3 long-sleeved tops (running top, thermal roll-neck, casual cotton top)
a long dress
an infinity scarf
a buff
a hoodie
2 pairs of gloves (inside pair was fingerless)

After the first couple of hours I added my big warm fluffy coat that is normally too hot to wear. It only just did up over all the layers! I did not get around to adding the fleece-lined bobble hat with earflaps or the big fluffy infinity scarf, but they were in the cargo bike if I needed them.

My toes were getting too cold by the end of my shift on the picket. I think maybe a third pair of socks and/or a pair of shoes with fewer airholes would have solved that. (I was wearing my trainers because they are comfier to stand in, but they have lots of airholes over the toes).

It actually snowed on us for a whole half-hour and I took some photos and put them on twitter.

It's the kind of work week where I take a break from fixing something terribly urgent in order to fix something else terribly urgent. (And yes, I get a kick from being good at fixing stuff, but it's very wearing when it's non-stop urgency.)

Meanwhile at home and in studying I am behind on everything, so they're both heading into constantly-firefighting territory too. Argh. On the other hand I'm just about getting enough sleep again, and I'm having that lovely feeling of wellbeing that comes once one is fully over a cold, and I remembered to get some vitamin D supplements for this winter.

Three things that amused me recently:

1. Nico knows about high fives, and high tens, but this week he offered me a fist bump and said "High Zero!"

2. The romance novel genre has many many subgenres: regency, shapeshifters, billionaires, SEALs, shapeshifter SEALs, werewolf marines, etc. This week my kindle app offered me "Billionaire Aviators" which tickled me immensely (and reminded me obviously of Top Gun, which I watched at a very impressionable age).

3. We had a team-building thingy at work where we had to anonymously write down something about ourselves and the team had to guess in turn which person had written which thing. The trouble with this is finding a Thing that isn't really obviously me AND that I'm happy to disclose at work. I gave up on being hard to guess and just wrote "My favourite superhero is the Hulk". Surprisingly few people guessed right, several more were like "of course! how did I not guess you!", and then I looked down and realised I was wearing Hulk socks.