Anyone for Croquet?

Just got back from an extremely relaxing Bank Holiday weekend away at the Four Seasons in Hampshire, about 40 miles from our house. We arrived on Saturday and left this afternoon, and spent the intervening time reading by the pool, playing croquet on the lawn, eating (did a little too much of that) and generally forgetting about work for a few days. Today we had a full day in the spa, including a fantastic facial, full body massage, foot treatment and jacuzzi bath. We finished off with half an hour by the pool then left just before 5pm. Perfect!

Another Breakthrough... of sorts

Just wanted to say a big Congratulations to Keri and Keith on the birth of Corgan Alexander on Wednesday, a little brother for Annabelle. Keri was blogging from the hospital, keeping her friends and family up to date with events! You'd never find that at a British hospital... The name is a tribute to Keith's idol, Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. Corgan was a couple of weeks early, and Keith was supposed to be at the meeting here in Southampton this week, so it's a good job he didn't come in the end!

Well done Keri, I'm looking forward to meeting him in December!

A Breakthrough

Yesterday I didn't have time to exercise. I had been to the gym on Wednesday evening, and I'm not so committed that I wanted to go again the following morning. I took my gym gear with me to work with the thought that I would go on the way home, but I ended up staying at work until almost 20:00 then going for dinner with the guys who are here this week for the meeting. I got home at 22:30 and went straight to bed, but I felt terrible. Really... well, the best word to describe it is 'bleurgh'. True, I'd just eaten a big meal and was going to bed on a full stomach, but I've done that plenty of times before and haven't felt like that. I put this feeling down to not having exercised, which for me was a real eye-opener; an epiphany, if you will.

Up to now I've been exercising because somewhere in my mind I know it is good for me in the long run and it will help me to be healthy and feel better long-term. But yesterday was the first day I realised that exercising actually helps me feel better in the short term, on a day-to-day basis - I feel far better in myself on the days I exercise than on the days that I don't. I sleep better too - and if I've exercised before work, rather than afterwards, I have that smug 'I've already exercised today' feeling all day...

So it was with a relatively light heart that I got out of bed this morning and went for a run. And since this revelation came to me last night, I haven't been able to get 'Breakthru' by Queen out of my head...!

Personal Trainer Session Number Two

My second PT session with Ben was this morning before work. I haven't exactly been very good with the healthy lifestyle in the last few weeks - for two weeks out of the past four, we've had visitors, and have therefore been out for quite a few meals, and I haven't really kept an eye on what I've been eating. At the same time, because we've had people staying, I have only been exercising about 3 times a week - which isn't bad, but it's half as often as I was doing a couple of months ago. I've felt like the exercise I have been doing has only served to counter the amount of food I've been eating. Of course, I'd much rather see my family and not exercise as often, but now that our period of having visitors is over I'm going to concentrate much harder on keeping healthy.

Last time Ben gave me various exercises to do, but no real goals to work towards; this time I have to record everything each time I go: when, how far, how many, which level, how long etc, so we can measure whether I'm making progress. Hopefully I can stick at it a little longer this time...

UPDATE 22 AUGUST: 6 or 7 colleagues from around the world have flown in for a meeting at the new office this week. Rob, Adrian and I, as 'hosts', are responsible for making sure they all get fed. I've arranged a buffet lunch to be delivered to the office every day, last night we went out for Chinese and we'll be doing something similar every night this week, and Rob and I are going away on Saturday for the weekend. But next week will definitely be better... ;)

So it's not exactly 'cool', but...

...I'm 30 years old; I stopped worrying about what was 'cool' a long time ago. When I was a kid, my Mum taught me embroidery, and I really enjoyed it. In the last few years, I've done a couple of embroideries in my spare time and still enjoy it.

A couple of years ago, my Mum gave me this embroidery that she had done for us to mark the first year of living in our old house. Earlier this year, I thought it would be good to start a project of sorts, and do an embroidery for every house I've owned. I've only owned one other house before, and for the past few years I've been renting it out, but I sold it to raise part of the deposit needed to buy the new house, so I thought it was all the more important to have a reminder of my first house.

My Mum drew up the pattern for me from a photograph of the house, and I finished it before we moved down here, but I'm terrible at framing so I had to wait for my Dad to visit for it to be framed. So here it is: 15 Windmill Avenue, Salford, my first house.

Mum's very kindly drawn up a pattern for me for the new house (thanks Mum), so I'll be making a start on it soon.

A Wicked Weekend

My sister Jenny flew down from Leeds/Bradford on Wednesday night. It was her birthday on Thursday, and today we went up to London to see Wicked, the musical that tells the story of the Witches of Oz, based on the book by Gregory Maguire.

One of the advantages of living in Southampton is that London is only just over an hour away on the train. We got to Waterloo at 10:30 this morning and went to Borough Market, a food market next to Southwark Cathedral. It's a great place for getting something to eat without actually having to buy anything, as all the stalls have samples. Jen and I tried cheeses, breads, jams, olive oils, vinegars, muesli, cherries, strawberries...

We had booked for the matinee performance but we still had plenty of time before it started, so we walked along the south side of the river, past the replica of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. We went into Tate Modern, frankly just because we needed the toilet, but we found that there was an exhibition on called Global Cities, so we went to have a look. It focused on 10 cities in the world and compared them in terms of shape and size, style, population density, infrastructure, etc. Did you know that Mumbai has a population growth of 45 people per hour, and by 2050 it will have overtaken Tokyo as the world's largest city, with over 40 million inhabitants? The exhibition was excellent; well worth a look - and it nicely filled in an hour or so of time we had to spare. We walked past the Royal Festival Hall and London Eye then got the tube to Victoria.

I had expected to enjoy Wicked, but I have to admit that I expected it to be just average. How wrong I was - it was fantastic. Kerry Ellis, who played Elphaba, had a voice to die for. The songs were great, the story was excellent, all in all a really good show. Plus we were back home by 19:30!

More Pictures

Here's the latest round of pictures of the house. This is the den before it was decorated (and while we were still using it as a store room).





Here it is again, after its makeover, from the same angle:







and from the other side of the room. Rob's Dad did the painting; mine did the flooring. Just need to get some furniture in there now...





Here's our bedroom, which isn't the largest bedroom in the world, but we chose this house because it had lots of living space downstairs, so we'll only be using the bedroom for sleeping. Sounds like a silly thing to say, but Rob used to spend a lot of time in our huge bedroom in the old house watching DVDs on his laptop when I was watching the TV downstairs, but he has the den for that now.

Again, Rob's Dad did the painting; my Mum made the curtains and my Dad made the door fit back into the frame!





This is the view into the en suite from the bedroom - we'll be having the whole room refitted so this will serve as a 'before' shot.






Finally, here's a picture of the spare room, which is the largest of the bedrooms, and if it weren't for the fact that our room has the en suite bathroom, I would happily have this room as the main bedroom. We haven't decorated in here; I quite liked it how it was so I just bought bedding to match.


My parents left today; as well as laying the flooring in the den, they also painted the utility area while they were here, and put up some pictures, and cooked two barbecues, and assembled the TV unit and the bedroom furniture... thanks Mum & Dad!

Nearly There...

We've had a couple of weeks of limbo in the house - after the initial unpacking was over, we reached a point where we couldn't unpack any more stuff until various other things happened - for example, we can't unpack stuff into the spare room because it's already full of Rob's clothes, and we can't move them out of there and into the main bedroom until the bedroom furniture is delivered and assembled, and there's no point in assembling bedroom furniture until after the new carpet has been fitted, and so on...

The bedroom carpet was fitted today, and I've made a start on assembling the furniture - a super king-size bed, chest of drawers, wardrobe and 4 under-bed drawers. The carpet's really nice, lovely and thick, but a side-effect of that is that the door doesn't open and close over the top of it, so I've asked my Dad to bring his planer with him so we can shave a little off the bottom of the door. Mum and Dad are arriving this evening and staying into the middle of next week - Dad's going to lay laminate floor in the den tomorrow while Mum and I finish putting up bedroom furniture. Once the flooring's done in the den we can move the big TV back in there from the dining room, and put up the AV unit that has been in the conservatory for the last couple of weeks...

We also had two bookcases, a coffee table and a nest of tables delivered on Tuesday for the lounge. These are now in place and I unpacked 6 boxes of books onto the bookcases yesterday. Things are finally starting to come together - pictures after the weekend.