An interesting day...

...in which I have what my manager terms a "genius moment".

As you will know if you've been following my exploits thus far, I am currently working away from home.  This usually involves getting up at 4:30 on a Monday morning (all together now: "aww").
This week, however, I phoned the taxi firm a bit late in the weekend so I had to make do with an earlier time slot.  Since I need a cup of coffee just to be semi-functional in the mornings I had to get up about 4:10AM.  

As usual I sat at the PC messing about on twitter and facebook for a bit while drinking my coffee and waiting for the taxi, but when I stood up to go and get my shoes on I managed to trip over the mouse cable, which had somehow coiled itself around my foot like a deadly snake poised to strike.  I went flying across the front room, but managed to prevent myself falling.

The taxi turned up and as I was doing my usual last-minute inventory I realised I didn't have my phone.  I'm sure you'll be familiar with that horrible sinking feeling you get when you realise that something you need is missing and you only have a short amount of time to find it...anyway, I remembered it had been in my shirt pocket so must have flown out in the trip wire incident.  I managed to find it under the sofa after a couple of minutes of frenzied searching.

Things went back to normal after that; I got to the station in plenty of time (30 minutes early, in fact), where I sat wishing I'd worn warmer clothes for a bit.

On the London train this week there were no charging sockets, and the train was a bit manky compared to the usual standard, but the journey continued as usual until I got off at Banbury for my first change.

The train was a little late getting in, so I only had a minute or 2 to make my connection. As I got off I heard the announcement saying the 7:55 was departing from platform 2. That's not the platform it usually goes from (it usually goes from the platform I get off at), but I assumed that the train I'd just got off was in the way so they'd sent it to a different platform.

I didn't hear the announcement when we stopped at the first station as I was in the vestibule at the end of the carriage and the speaker seemed to be broken.  However, when we got to the next station I saw the sign.
"Coventry". 

Hmm. You know the awful feeling you get when you've just done something incredibly, monumentally silly? The sort of thing you know people are going to laugh at you about for years, and eventually needs counselling to get over?

I'm sure you can see where this is going. It is rarely a good idea to get in a train that is going in the opposite direction to where you need to go, but that is what I had managed to do.

Fortunately the later version of the train that I should have got on at Banbury was at Coventry, so I managed a mad dash across the bridge and then a dive onto the "right" train with about 2 seconds to spare.  I was an hour late for work but they were all suitably amused by my stupidity.

At Reading (going in the right direction) the train stopped, as trains do at stations. A man got on, went to the loo and then got off again while the train was waiting. That seems like quite a risky strategy to me, but perhaps all the loos at the station were out of order.

My wife was very sympathetic when I told her about my day...once she stopped laughing (which took quite some time) she said "trouble comes in threes so something else had to go wrong yet".  Thanks for that, darling.  However, I hold that the tripping incident and the phone incident were separate, and that I am therefore now safe.

Anyway, running and stuff. Yesterday I went for a run with Nicky, of skinnyblog fame (see link on left, I can't do them on phone). We did 4.3 miles in about 50 minutes, including having to climb through a hedge to avoid an overflowing ford.  That's really pretty good, especially as that's the first time I've done that distance, but I do need to up the speed some to beat the 2 hour mark for the half marathon.

Right, apologies for all the spelling mistakes I've no doubt made and the lack of nice formatting. Phones are not an ideal medium on which to type blog posts, but needs must when you're faced with your own stupidity...

A quiet week...sort of

In which I can't think of anything much to write.

I've had to get my brother with his enormous ladder (no, that's not a euphemism) around yesterday.  This was because Mad Middle Child had decided to throw the front door keys onto the roof.  This may require some explanation, I realise.

A little while ago he (Mad Middle Child (MMC), not my brother) bought himself a new bike with his pocket money.  As children will he's treated it quite roughly, but this week the handlebar stem snapped, which I'm pretty sure is not supposed to happen unless you drop it off a building or something. 

The people in the shop were very apologetic about this and replaced it, despite the fact that he'd taken the "peggies" off and it was generally a bit wrecked.  They also said he should wear a helmet in case there was an issue with that specific model and the new bike does the same thing - it could have been quite dangerous, after all, and they gave us a free helmet for him.


To say that MMC was a bit upset at us telling him he couldn't go out on his bike without a helmet on is like saying that the sun is a bit hot.  Incandescent would be about the most gentle word you could use for it.  So he decided to grab the keys to the garage, and when I went to stop him getting the new bike out he threw them on the roof.  At least it's better than the times he decides to throw shoes at us.


He's still refusing to wear his helmet and we're still refusing to let him  out on his bike without it.  It's a war of attrition that will be won by the side with the greatest willpower. 



If you don't have children yourself and are planning to tell me how to deal with this in the comments, feel free; but I suggest you get some children first - it will be the last time in your life you have all the answers.


Right, where was I?  Oh yes, training and dieting and stuff.  I've been skipping the fried breakfasts this week and eating quite disgustingly healthily at lunchtime and dinnertime, at least most of the time, and I've been for 2 5.5k-ish runs with the guys from work, which is more than I've run in any week since starting training.  So I was a bit disappointed to find that I've only lost a pound this week.  It's quite important for me to lose weight since the heavier I am the harder it is to run, but at least it's going in vaguely the right direction (just slowly).

 On the plus side, I'm not feeling so tired after runs and am generally managing OK.  My legs still ache a bit, but I don't have to virtually crawl up the guest house stairs when I get back; and on the second run this week we managed the distance in less than 40 minutes, which I felt very proud of until I realised that to make my target for the half-marathon I have to do 4 times as much distance and each 5.5k needs to take less than 30 minutes.  Oh-oh.


I have a week and a half left at my current contract before I go off to a place even further away.  In one way I'm looking forward to it since I'll actually get to use all the software development stuff I've learnt over the years, but in another way I'm approaching it with some trepidation.  I know it won't be such a relaxed environment as I'm in now, and I doubt the people I have to work with will be as nice (but we shall see).

They have sent me the source code for the application they currently use; I won't go into technnical details, but if it was a building it would be on a show with a name like "return of the worst cowboy builders from hell ever - the baddest of the bad".   This is code that was not so much written as perpetrated.

I think I'm starting to ramble a bit now, so it's probably time to sign off.  Until next time, folks...