mbernardi | Entries tagged with snow

A bit delayed but better late than never.
March was pretty cold with snow at the beginning of the month. Even allowed to leave early due to snowpocolypse warnings (which didn't happen). Dance practice was also cancelled.
Have been using Metro card to catch the bus to my sister's house - finally got it unlocked so I could access details on ticket usage on the website. Visited her the weekend after the thretened snow. Danced together (both ballrom & line dancing)
Bought 3 World Book Day books from W HSmith (£1 each). Booked attending membership for next year's Eastercon (Ytterblum).
Managed to break my iphone screen (it fell of the kitchen table, when the alarm went off). Got the screen replaced later in the month.
Ballroom classes continue on Tuesday, though J had limited ability to dance. Learned a new Sequence Dance - Bambi Blues
Also started going to Line Dance classes every Wednesday, hard work (and would have been almost impossible but for the previous beginner class I took last year. Good fun though the 1:5 ratio of men to ladies is odd.
Made a walking staff from a broom handle, varnishing it required it to be hung from the ceiling!
The ceiling on the upper floor at work partially fell in, which required all the staff on that floor to be relocated to the ground floor or working from home.
The Brighton SF Reading Group discussed Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which I'd read when it originally was published, but didn't complete the recent re-read. Fairly lively discussion.
On Saturday 17th went to the Horsham Drill Hall (it was snowing), to meet my mum, sister C and her friend D; for the Strictly Vintage Tea Dance - with a big band and high tea!
Did a fair amount of dancing with both D and C (also line dancing with the latter - got a group of people line dancing during one tune). Mum didn't dance ;-).
I won a prize as best dressed male! Due to my Cuban heeled shoes (and embroidered by my sister; shirt and tie).
Stayed over for the rest of the w/e but woke in the night with chest pan for over an hour, also out of breath so not a heart attack!
On Sunday C & I did line dances for an hour before lunch and then taken home before it started snowing again.
Had the hard back edition delivered from amazon to work, first time that I had used this address, but a useful option for stuff that can't be delivered to a local Amazon locker.
Didn't got to Eastercon (Follycon) this year as I was unable to get Thursday off work, a shame as it appears to have been a fun event. However as a result I was able to go to the Social Dance on the last Saturday of the month.

I've been going to Rewards Training in Haywards Heath when ever I had to go there (or further north) and been working on my ECDL Advanced (spreadsheeet) module. ie when I have to sign on, or when I go dancing.

In the morning two Tuesdays back, my new dancing shoes arrived. They have a slightly narrower and higher heel than I'm used to, but fit well and are comfortable. Once I got used to them they were great to dancein. It was also my sign on day in the afternoon, (you no longer get a set time, its arranged in the previous meet, the day is the same though.) I then went to Rewards and spent time on learning about spreadsheets. I am actually learning new stuff in this module, unlike the standard ECDL where it was mostly refresher material. The following day was dance night so I stopped for more training early in the day. Neither partner turned up so I was danincing with the teacher duting my one lesson.

Friday I had a review with CDG in Crawley (got my train fair refunded), discussed job searching and made next appointment for the new year. I discovered the Crawley ASDA and bought some new clothes.

Fictionwise.com is closing this month, I've been buying stiff from them since Nov 2000 (though my last purchase was April last year). I tried to download ALL my ebook titles (all 576) and I managed to get most of them. I also hope to transfer them to the Barnes & Nobel Nook Books store but...

Last Monday I went to see "Rise of the Guardians" at the cinema. I originally went to see the early showing, but when I got there I realised I'd left my wallet at home and the change in my pocket was not enough to pay for a ticket ;( So home I went, but decided that I still wanted to see the movie so left again, with wallet, and hour and a half later. It was fun, though I do wonder if the Easter Bunny is a major character down under.

I also bought a Kobo mini ebook reader from WHSmiths. It was on special offer and I bought the last one in the store (it was just closing and the price was going up in the morning). It can read epub and PDF format and uses the kobo books store. However there is a simple web browser which allows purchased from elsewhere on the net. It wieghs about the same as my iPod but is twice the screen size. Uses eInk so a charge lasts a while.

Last Tuesday I visited the chiropractor, I must reduce my ipod use (especially in my left hand). It should be zero but... My thumbs do hurt, also my back has started to pain me intensely again.

Last Wednesday was busy. In the morning it was snowing as I went to training at Rewards in Haywards Heath. It was a light dusting and had all gone by lunch time. Then it was off to the Library for the monthly Book Club discussion. Two other people turned up so we decided to keep going. Then it was off to Crawley, I bought a new sheet at ASDA, there is nowhere locally to get bedding (without needing a car). Then dance lesson, K was there P was not so I didn't dance in the early lesson. It was all revision of the material we had been learning over the last year. including the new steps of the jive, and most of the sequence dances.

Friday I was back at Sussex Oakleaf, while J was there first (she was not feeling too good) I did use my keys to open the other office! I finished off the address database and generated labels in a mail merge, and showed J how to do it herself (it's not that hard once you know how). I also fixed the wireless printer (both office printers had the SAME IP address, so would only work when the other one was off) and it now prints fine.

Just discovered Sir Patrick Moore died yesterday. Space just got smaller.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

Current Location: At Home

Last post was about Filkcon, this will end with Picocon.

Patches of snow stayed around for about a week, an things have generally been frozen. I got my first book from Amazon in a while. I used to get 2-4 books a week, now it's that number per month!

When I imported my ebooks from Stanza to ShuBook I chose the wrong switch and all the books were imported with the title in the Author field and vice versa. I have just finished changing the last of these around! A long winded process but now all the books by a particular author are together.

I did a bit more training/mentoring at work and entered the first data into the live system. So far so good but it's taken over a week and it hasn't moved to the next step yet! Fingers cross this will happen soon as I'm the guinea pig of the session!

Last Saturday I was at Picocon 29 and next week is my Dad's birthday so I haven't been able to do any weekend shopping. I have had to stop over on my jurney home so get a few bits and bobs that had run out (and other stuff too).

Picocon 29 "Apocalypses" had all the bits a Picocon has had for low these last many years. Unfortunately I couldn't enjoy it as much as I might as I had a cold! Anyway the guests were Adrian Czajkowski/Tchaikovsky was enthusiastic and entertaining (I need to look for his work) Justina Robson was more introspective and Tricia Sullivan was also new to me, but hopefully a new read at some point.

During lunch I dashed off to Forbidden Planet for old times sake and bought 4 books, though when I'll read them I don't know. Since I started listening to podcasts as I walk around, and my train journey is ony 20 minutes I don't have long periods where I'm static and can't do anything but read!

I left Imperial just after 4:00pm and made my way home in the rain!

Current Location: At Home

I just checked my last post and the details of landing and getting home were missing.. So I left you hanging while I was trying to sleep, I failed and spent a while playing on my iPod. We were served a rather pallid breakfast an hour or so before landing. Touchdown was 6:55 and I found that it was foggy and snow was all around the verges. I got through passport control quickly, and had to wait quite a while for my bag to get ejected from the carousel. After a 20 minute wait it appeared at 7:45 then straight out through customs to the shuttle bus, (the connecting train between north and south terminals is being replaced) then to the train station. My train arrived a bit late at 8:23 and I got home just before nine. D then let me know that the UK had been under a foot of snow since I'd left. No traffic had moved until the thaw started two days earlier. There had been a leak in the kitchen, so it was a good thing he was around!

I was totally fried, not having slept much on the plane, and went to bed for 6 hours. I would probably have slept longer but I had a chiropractors appointment and had to get there by train and given the weather... In the event the trains ran on time and I got seen early.

On my return I hoped to have my normal Friday Fish and Chips supper, but my local chippy was shut ;-( So I had a microwaved shepherds pie instead! While in Atlanta I watched a number of episodes of NCIS, there are multiple seasons running on different channels there too. I did see the two most recent ones, so when I discovered that while away I missed one, I went searching on the net and found and watched "Faith", this year's Christmas episode.

It rained all day, which melted most of the snow, but I decided to stay in (especially as tomorrow's forecast is better). My Dad phoned to confirm that they had been snowed in and had to survive on food on hand. He also indicated he had suffered from a kind of snow blindness.

Most of my day was spent reading, but I also discovered that "Guards Guards" by Sir Terry was being serialised on BBC Radio 7 (and I was able to listen to the first 2 episodes via iplayer). The next one is on Monday. I also discovered that Wyrd Sisters was ending, unfortunately Episode one had expired, and I think I'd heard this version before.
If anyone has a paid LJ account and can create a bbc_radio_7 rss feed from http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/bbc_7/popular please let me know, so I don't keep missing these sf&f gems.

While in Atlanta I was told that Pat C Wrede had started blogging, so I've added her rss feed pcwrede_feed to my friends list and am now plowing my way though her archive material. Well worth checking out at http://www.pcwrede.com as she writes on the process of writing and being a writer in an insightful manner.

Current Location: At Home

Current Location: At Home

So Santa vs the Snowman was imax and 3D, then to the Embankment where I had a 12" meatball sub of the day, then on to the National Theatre, there was a jazz group playing he the foyer, (Anita Wardell Trio) then at 19:30 saw Nation (based on the Terry Pratchett book), despite having the cheapest seats, I sill had an excellent view.

Then, as may have been mentioned elsewhere, on Thursday night we had between 8-10cm of snow. Given the previous track record I expected all the trains would be canceled, however imagine my surprise to discover my train was only 7 minutes late arriving in London just over a half hour late.

Mum called to check I was coming over and when to expect me, and where to get me from.

Friday night froze the snow, so I was late getting to see my chiropractor. Then directly home. I had to get the train into Burgess Hill as the pavement going up the hill was icy. Even the short fairly flat walk was very slippery and I managed to fall to one knee, but no damage.

I've finally broken down and have started ordering books from amazon again.

Current Location: At Home

Current Location: At Home

A month since my last post and I only just got back from the US! My first 2 days back at work were spent in VMWare training. I wish I've had time to actually do some hands on since I finished.

I got a new Palm TX, this was my third and according to Amazon the most expensive! It's probably due to Palm not creating a new device, and stock running out. But I've been using Palms for 7 years and I think I'll continue to.

While staying with filkferengi I was introduced to Leverage and I've been grabbing them off the net over the last month or so a bit silly but fun.

Farringdon station is in the middle of being rebuilt as part of the Thameslink Programme and so far the most visible change is a re-built bridge across the tracks. (Photos may appear at some future date).

On the first of February it started snowing, and it kept snowing all night such that on Monday morning the country was covered. Being the good drone I am I walked carefully to the railway station, only to discover that no trains had run that morning and that none were expected. So I decided that I'd return to the warm and Work from Home. This turned out to be a good idea as no-one in my team did manage to get in to the office, and neither did most of the rest of the London workforce, as both the Underground and buses didn't run.

Apart from testing out remote working, successfully, I managed to build a small snowman during lunch (it survived nearly a week). I did get back in to work on Tuesday!

The next / first weekend in February was the uk filkcon AXXIdental in Grantham and they still had inches of snow everywhere. While there was a risk of further snow on Sunday, the light dusting we did get meant there were no traveling problems, when I left on Monday.

Guests were Ookla the Mok and Richard "Hitch" Wheatley with double concerts from each. Hitch' sax triplet was eye opening.

The High light of the con, for me at least was the live performance of the Before the Dawn filk musical. 2 hours of musical theatre.

Next year Van Der Filk returns to Grantham.

My actual ECDL certificate finally arrived, It will be hung on the kitchen wall when I get around to it! The wreck that had been sitting next to my garage for the last few years has now been removed.

And now I'm only just over a week behind real time, more later?

Current Location: At Work

Current Location: At Work

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30	31

Michael's Meanderings

Occasional comments on my life

March 2018

Its really Winter

From Con to Con

Home safely

Home safely

Snow and stuff

Snow and stuff

After Atlanta

After Atlanta

Profile

July 2019

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags