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Wisdom, I’ve got it!

I’ve turned 32 since the last post; I’m pretty sure that’s when you get given your wisdom booster, right? So from now on you should just trust me. Consider me as an oracle, if you will. Good, I’m glad that’s settled.

As my first piece of oracular advice, my bank details are …..

Those are one of my birthday gifts in the top image, by the way. Mismatched colourful socks, best!
Belying my now-assured credentials of wisdom, I was asked by a work colleague just before my birthday what age I’d be. I had to sit and literally (yes, that’s the correct use of the word) work it out from my year of birth. It must have taken me 15 seconds, and to make it worse, thinking back afterwards, I’m not actually sure I gave the right answer! Ahem.

I feel like I say this every time but: phew, it’s been a busy {period since last blog post}. Every time I look at our calendar I almost can’t believe how much {stuff} we’re lucky enough to do, and how far in advance things need to be booked in. Friends and interests, eh? What an odd concept, I’m not sure it’ll ever catch on.

As has become usual we hosted or were hosted for quite a lot of dinners and afternoons of gaming. I count 7 events at ours, 4 at others, and another couple of pub-based things. I had the pleasure of spending many (many many) hours in the kitchen in preparation for the events at ours, and cooked many a delightful food item. The only downside I’m worried about at the moment is that I may run out of interesting podcasts to listen to, but I’m sure the internet will provide.
Anyway, to start us off, here’s a picture of some people (probably) enjoying themselves at one of our food-and-gaming Saturdays.
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We’ve been out to see and experience a few different things. Briefly, they were:

  • “I Need a Doctor: The Whoosical”. This was a lighthearted unofficial Dr Who musical(ish), a nice bit of fun.
  • “One By One”. An interactive theatrical…experience?… where each participant is taken through the act on their own. It’s pipelined – the shows started every ten minutes and you’re passed from one actor to the next every 5-10 minutes, 5 or 6 in all. It was very different, quite well done, and the subject matter (your personal data and its accessibility) was quite thought-provoking.
  • Richard Herring (stand-up). We’ve seen him do a couple of shows before and while his new one (Lord of the Dance Settee) isn’t quite up to the same standards it was still an amusing evening.
The phone box is behind the curtain, oh the suspense!
The phone box is behind the curtain, oh the suspense!

Back to getting older, I turned 32 on the 19th of April, a Sunday, and we both took the following Thursday off as well. Who doesn’t need a two-day birthday?? I didn’t really want anything other than a low-key “celebration” though, and a couple of days with Erin just doing our own thing was plenty good enough for me. Sunday was a bit of a rubbish day so after just a small ~2-mile walk along the Thames we ate lunch at a nice Michelin Star restaurant near Tower Bridge. Thursday, though, was thankfully quite nice so we managed to tick off another leg of the Capital Ring walking route – Beckton to Hackney, about 13km – and capped it off with a very pleasant lunch-and-cocktail in a canal-side bar. Pictures of both days below.

First the Sunday lunch:

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It’s a bit windy, and I’ve got this selfie thing down.

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And then the Thursday walk and pub:


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Speaking of walking, I’ve recently started walking to work in the morning instead of my usual routine of going for a run and then taking the tube. It’s almost a perfect distance for a pre-work walk – just over 9k – and I cover it in about 75 minutes. Some of it is quite nice, too, all the way across the top of Victoria Park, and it’s kinda remarkable how close it is to as-the-crow-flies from door to door. I intend to keep that up for a while, although I don’t want to get out of the habit of running either; I want to post a good time at the annual semi-competitive corporate 5.5k coming up in July!


Capture

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Still speaking of walking! We went on a weekend hiking/walking trip to the Welsh border and stayed in a 900-year-old castle which is now used as a hostel – St Briavels. The all-day Saturday walk was roughly 22k, then Sunday’s morning walk was an easier 13k. We were there with a group so the walks were guided and we saw a fair bit of pretty countryside. Also some cows and sheep; the cows in particular made it easy to separate the people who didn’t have much prior interaction with the countryside – no, seriously, DON’T RUN!!
While we stayed the first night in the castle/hostel we decided – separately, great minds thinking alike – midway through the walk on Saturday to try to switch to a B&B for the second night. Neither of us had slept super the previous night (snorers, oh god) and after the long walk we’d definitely appreciate (and let’s be honest, need) a good night’s sleep to recover. We managed to find one that was convenient, and moved in, only to rather embarrassingly discover that we didn’t have enough cash and there were no ATMs for miles. Luckily the owner was gracious enough to accept our sheepish promise to send a cheque for the balance – £5! – when we got back to London. Oops!

 

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There was a mediaeval banquet on the Saturday with a purportedly-authentic-for-the-time menu; that turned out to be simple-but-hearty fare (lots of meat), well-appreciated after the exertions. I think at that point anything with a high proportion of protein and carbs would’ve gone down similarly well, though, and needless to say we both slept soundly that night.


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Overall the weekend was quite good: the weather was fine and the walks were interesting. I think if we were to do a similar thing again, though, we’d do it with a smaller group. There were 40+ of us which meant there was inevitably a bit of herding cats required, and too many people to really have a chance to get to know anyone in particular.

One last thing to add: I was really impressed by Erin managing to go the full length on both walks, and even among the faster people on both. I think she surprised herself as well, the walk on Sunday had never really been in the plan for her. We both had a sore few days at the start of the week as repayment though!

Work continues much as it has been. I’m enjoying it, it’s sometimes tiring, it’s definitely keeping me busy. The major approaching milestone is the end of my six-month probation period, second week of June. While I’m as confident as I can be that my boss is happy with the work I’ve been doing I’ll definitely be thankful to have that weight lifted, so fingers crossed.
UPDATE: between starting and ending writing this post my boss told me that my probation-passing letter should be in the post shortly, even though the 6-month period isn’t fully up. Yay!

Major house building work approaching fast! We finally chose a builder and the work starts on June 1st. The final selection was slightly agonising as there were two very good candidates, but since deciding we feel more and more like we made the right choice. Hopefully we’ll still feel that way in about 4 months when the work is due to be finished! I’m getting quite excited about it now that it’s so close, despite the 3 months of extreme inconvenience it’ll involve. Although I may go slightly stir crazy from not being able to cook properly for that long. We’ve bought a microwave so the next couple of weeks will have me doing a bunch of big-batch cooking to man the freezers full. That, at least, will be fun!

I’ve also been continuing to work on my recipes website/database, bit by bit by bit. I think since the last post I’ve added images to recipes as well as some nice stuff on the backend. And a couple of dozen more recipes, of course! There’s only one major new feature I want to add on the database side – being able to apply arbitrary searchable/sortable tags to recipes – and after that I’ll move on to trying to pretty it up a bit. Once that’s done I’ll take a step back and figure out where I want to go from there; there are dozens of features I can think of adding that would be awesome in various ways, but they need some prioritisation! Even now, though, I’m ridiculously happy with how it’s all come together. It was a non-functional pet side-project for quite a while but as soon as it became even basically usable it just ignited my eagerness to do more and more with it.
And the link, again, just because… RecipesManager

My Dad’s 60th is this month and, like I did for my Mum’s earlier in the year, I popped back for a 36-hour weekend to surprise him. Very tiring (5am start on Saturday) but worth it; it was good to see the family, and I do like inflicting surprises! We’ll see them again at the start of July – myself and Erin’s gift for their combined celebration of becoming old was a weekend (with some comedy) in Kilkenny and we’re coming along as well. Something to look forward to, and for Erin and I it’ll be one of the few chances we have to really get away this year!

Finishing off this post on the flight back to London, there’s a couple behind me who have been having a right go at each other for the entire flight. An airplane seems like such an odd place to have an argument, although to be honest this one sounds like it’s been going since at least Friday. I’m still not sure quite what they’re arguing about but he’s definitely called her stupid a few times. Good move, guy.


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