February 2008 Archives

It was with a 'heavy heart' that I worked my last day at Huddersfield Technical College on Wednesday. It should go without saying that I'm excited about my new job, and the position at HTC was always temporary to cover maternity leave, but I've grown to really like all the guys working on the IT department, and I'll miss them all.

I met with many of the guys for a farewell curry this evening, and a few beers afterwards. I had an excellent night, and I really hope that we keep in touch to repeat the night.

I had my phone with me, and managed to take a few casual photographs of the guys remaining at the end of the night.

Cheers Lads. I really enjoyed myself. An excellent night!

This afternoon, Jilly and Evelyn went to Visit Helen Thornton and the new baby Charlie Max. Charlie was born on Monday last week, as we were in Cornwall, and this has been the first opportunity for Jilly and Evelyn to visit him. Evelyn was afraid to hold Charlie herself, but she loved to sit stroking his hand as Jilly held him, and Evelyn helped to push his pram when they all went out for a bit of a walk.

According to Jilly, during their visit, Helen (struck by Evelyn's obvious beaudee, held her little face close, and told her,

"Oh Evelyn, you're going to kill somebody with those eyes one day!"

"Oh, I'm not going to kill anyone. That is naughty", Evelyn replied.

Laughing, Helen explained, "No, I mean that you're going to break hearts and make boys cry!".

To which Evelyn replied, "I already do make boys cry!"

I am so proud!

P.S. I went to collect Jilly and Evelyn from Roger and Helen's today and, after a couple of irritating experiences with school run mother's (and I do mean "mother's", in the sense that 70's black American superfunky detective Shaft might have used the expression!), I was in a bit of a bad mood when I got there. Consequently (and rather thoughtlessly), I failed to show the required amount enthusiasm about the special liddle guy...Charlie is a liddle beaudee!

Congratulations Helen and Roger. Sorry I was so grumpy!

It was with a great deal of pride that Jilly rang me, this afternoon, to screetch down the phone that Kieran has been offered a place at Greenhead College to study Mathematics with Mechanics, Psychology, Physical Education and Physics.

Kieran says that he has been told that he will need to get 5 GCSE passes at 'C' grade to attend the college.

Jilly and I are both very proud of him.

Well done, Kieran!

It seems daft not to make reference to an event like this one. I was in bed when the earthquake occurred. It was really quite worrying as the shaking of the house woke me. Typically, Jilly slept through it, and can't remember anything this morning. Quite exciting really, but a sober reminder of how absolutely terrifying it must be to be caught up in your actual 'hollywood' earthquake. I've copied the report from the BBC web-site directly into Gingatopia as it will, inevitably, disappear before long...

The biggest earthquake in the UK for nearly 25 years has shaken homes across large parts of England.

People in Newcastle, Yorkshire, London, Manchester, the Midlands and Norfolk and also parts of Wales, felt the tremor just before 01:00 GMT.

A man suffered leg injuries when a chimney collapsed in South Yorkshire.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) said the epicentre of the 5.3 magnitude quake was near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire.

Bev Finnegan, who lives in the town, said: "I was terrified to be honest. The noise was really, really terrifying... it was so deep and rumbling.

"It felt like the roof was going to fall in. There were people coming out in their dressing gowns wondering what it was. It was quite an experience."

"It's the third earthquake I have felt and by far the strongest" - Adam Wilson, Cotgrave, Nottingham.

A Lincolnshire police spokeswoman said the force had received dozens of calls from residents but there were no reports of anyone in the county being injured.

"There is slight structural damage, cracks and a couple of chimneys damaged. There's nothing serious at present.

"Mostly people were distressed by it so there were a large quantity of calls coming in."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7266136.stm - Wednesday, 27 February 2008, 08:32 GMT

Happy Birthday Dominic!

Dominic is FOUR today, and to help the WASSOCKS celebrate, Jilly, Evelyn and I joined in them at their very exciting birthday boy party. Jim and Helen hired a local hall and a bouncy castle. Dom's party had a fancy dress theme (pirates were a great favourite amongst the boys!), and Dominic's gran made him an excellent Pirate Ship Cake...Brilliant!

Jilly and I went along equipment with Evelyn's ball pool, and some felt shapes for the children to make badges/fridge magnet/key rings with (more for Jilly's enjoyment, I think, then that of the children!).

All the children seemed to have a lovely time, and Dom seemed to leave, a very happy young man. HUZZAH!

So, I weighed myself after returning from our wonderful holiday in Cornwall, to discover that I have put on 1.2Kg (which the Boots machine wants to round up to 3lbs) meaning that my weight is now 128.8Kg or 20St 4lbs; not too bad considering the number of excellent cornish pasties I have consumed over throughout the week...

Friday 15 February 2008

Travelodge (Bristol Central)

Having driven from home after work, the stop at the Travelodge (and meeting up with Julie and Ged), came as a great relief. We had a drink or two in our room, and then we all had an early night, ready for the morning's final leg of the journey to Wadebridge. Unfortunately, our sleep was interrupted by a few cerebrally challenged individuals who discovered that they had forgotten/lost their room keys (at midnight) and by a rabble of rowdy revellers returning to their rooms at 03:30!

So, I couldn't help myself! Ever since the diminishing navel incident, I've been desperate to weigh myself, yet again, to discover whether or not I have lost any weight.

The weighing scales at Boots report that I now weigh in at a massive, though constantly diminishing, 127.6Kg or 20st 1lb.

Incidentally, last night saw the fourth night on the trot that I completed a Davina session!

AND! If you look at my spreader, you'll see that I have lost almost 10Kg since I began this attempt to get back into shape. I am now a quarter of the way to accomplishing my target weight loss of 40Kg. EXCELLENT!

On the drive home from 'that new nursery' this evening, Evelyn quoted Homer Simpson with absolutely perfect timing,

"What is this? National Stupid Drivers' Day?", she exclaimed, watching a genius in car (incidentally, it was a BMW!) pull out of a junction, ahead, cutting me up!

That's me girl!

As Jilly and I were watching Horizon this evening, I was absent-mindedly exploring my navel when a peculiar sensation came over me. Eventually, I put my finger on it (quite literally!); it suddenly struck that I was unable to stick my finger as far into my navel as I could the last time I...er...absent-mindedly explored it!

Enough said, then, eh?

So things seem to be continuing nicely, for both Jobley and I, on the lose weight front. I've been on my weekly visit to Boots today, and was pleased to see that I seem to have lost a further 1.8Kg or 4lb in the last week. I'm now weighing in at a colossal 129.0Kg or 20st 4lb (which, by the way, I think is EXCELLENT, given that, 39 days ago, I weighed 137.5Kg or 21st 8lb).

In an interesting twist to this weight reduction saga (Jilly says I'm becoming OBSESSED...I can't think what she means!), I've discovered a site which gives a way of calculating a person's IDEAL BODY WEIGHT given their body fat percentage and weight. Essentially, the idea is that, given a reading of a person's body fat percentage, it is possible to calculate how much that person should weigh if they reduced their body fat to a healthy level.

Jillian recently brought a body fat measuring device home for me and, to my shame, I discovered that 37.7 percent of my body weight is fat. Given that a healthy percentage of body fat for a man is a maximum of 20 percent, I must lose 17.7 percent of my body weight, in fat. The same web-site, calculates, then, that I have an ideal weight of 221lbs (15st 12lb) or 101Kg if I had just 20 percent body fat...but I must lose a further 62lbs.

My new Excel spreader is here

I can only apologise for the length of time it's taken me to post this blog. I hope Nanna and Poppy can forgive me.

Some time ago (I'll amend the blog when someone reminds me when it was!), Nanna and Poppy took Evelyn to visit the donkey that we adopted for Nanna (for Christmas 2007) at the Elisabeth Svendsen Trust in Leeds.

Evelyn, Nanna and Poppy had a lovely day and, during their visit, Evelyn painted a picture of Nanna's donkey. Apparently, over 150 children visit the trust every week, many of them painting pictures of what they've seen, and Evelyn's painting was one of twelve chosed for this year's EST Children's Calendar. FANTASTIC!

As Jilly and I were both working today, we did very little in the way of celebrating my birthday (and, of course, because we've celebrated plenty of the last two days).

After dinner, and when Evelyn was ready for bed, all all settled down to Disney's 'Beauty and The Beast', on the DVD which Evelyn bought for my birthday (I'm not sure about Evelyn, but I'd wanted to see it for a long time, and thoroughly enjoyed it!).

We spent the majority of today at the Royal Armouries in Leeds, which was excellent. Jilly and I were a little worried that Evelyn might find it a bit boring, but she loved all the lifesize exhibits, particularly the elephants. Throughout the day, there was a series of live performances (given, incidentally, by the same bloke, 'Andrew'). One of the fifteen minute monologues was especially moving as 'Andrew' portrayed a second world war veteran of the D-Day landings reciting (in character) the memoirs of a number of landing veterans. His performance was brilliant, really moving.

The same actor also gave a gripping performance from a book entitled, The Witchery of Archery, a first person account of the 'adventures' of a long-bow hunter (Maurice Thomson) in the nineteenth century Florida Everglades. Andrew's performance was so interesting that I'm planning to have a read of the book...if I can find the time, and the book!

Jilly and I have never been to the Royal Armouries before but I, for one, would definitely recommend the museum to everyone reading this...particularly as (Jilly and I were both surprised, and pleased, to discover) entry is free.

Of course, my birthday isn't actually until tomorrow (the fourth), but as Jilly and I are both at work tomorrow, we decided to celebrate today.

Who ate all the (birthday) pie?

And...I weighed myself this morning, before we went to the Armouries.

The weiging scales at Boots now state that I weight 130.8Kg. This represents a total loss of 6.7Kg or 1 Stone and half a pound since Jobley threw down the gauntlet four weeks ago and I had myself weighed at the GPs. According to Jobley's weight calculator, I am now 95.1% of my former self. As usual, I've placed links to The Chart and Webby's Chart here. As I've been toying with my own 'low tech' Excel spreader (for my weight only), I thought I'd add a link to that too. I've saved it as an Excel 97 file, so it should open for most readers...download 'weight' spreader. The red dotted line represents the 0.5% target weight loss, and the green dotted line represents the current weight loss trend. Not too shabby!.

The more observant amongst you may have noticed that my height is also fluctuating. Believe this (or believe it not), the previous heights (measured by the Boots machine), which were recorded over 1.87m, were over that height because of my shoes (which, until today, I have never removed!) and my big hair (which I have recently had trimmed). I'm hoping that these most recent Boots weight/height measurements most accurately reflect my current measurements.

So what do you get if you take a severe weather warning, and add overnight snow in most of Northern Britain? That's right, a very disappointed Birthday Boy!

For months, now, Jilly has had a birthday trip to Kendal organised for me. Nanna and Poppy were going to come up to Gingatopia to look after Evelyn, while Jilly and I went to Kendal, via Ingleton and the Waterfalls Trail, for an overnight stop.

Sadly, further snow is forecast overnight, tonight, so we've decided to postpone our weekend away until the weather improves. I AM VERY GRUMPY.

Anyway, in an attempt to make the most of our weekend snow fall, together (especially since we were going to be with Evelyn now), Jilly, Evelyn and I went for an unplanned walk in the snow. We had a lovely walk, during which Evelyn showed me a snow angel...fantastic! On our return home, Jilly and Evelyn made my a lovely birthday cake in the form of a dart pynt pid (dark pink pig)...IT'S BEAUDEEFUL!