Bank Holiday Weekend
Had a lovely August Bank Holiday weekend, visiting my friend Tiger and his wife, Cat. They recently announced that they are expecting, so I had to go up and See them, while she is still reasonably mobile. I have invited them to the Hallowe'en Party and hopefully they will be able to come. Cat is considering dressing up as the 'Phantom Pregnancy'...
She's starting to show progress now, seventeen weeks gone. She's a midwife, so she knows all about the process from start to finish. From her description of some of her colleagues, they seem to be all-too-familiar with the start. :-)
Tiger and Cat are off to the Dominican Republic for a wedding next week and Cat's pregancy is causing a bit of a problem with the bridesmaid's dress. We stopped off at a friend of her's house on the way to Hebden Bridge on Saturday to drop off her dress and the matching cravats. Her friend is a bit of a wiz with the needle and will try to use to enlarge the dress a little bit. The technical details are a bit beyond me, though.
Hebden Bridge is a Quaint town, in the same way that many of the old northern mill towns are called 'quaint'. The stonework is really lovely and it is interesting to see the drastic change in colour where it has been sandblasted. You really get the impression that these towns were wreathed in sooty fog when the industrial revolution was at its peak.
We went to the Runcible Spoon cafe. I couldn't resist asking for my ice cream "with a runcible spoon", to which the waiter politely laughed and pretended he'd never heard that one before. Of course he was ready with the answer to the inevitable question that Cat couldn't resist putting to him... What does Runcible mean? The word appears in 'The Owl and the Pussycat' by Edward Lear and some claim that he made it up. The waiter in the restaurant suggested that it was a spoon with three prongs, to which the Wikipedia agrees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runcible_spoon
I made up a word once, while I was at Sixth Form. I decided that a Unit Of momentum needed a special name, because I was sick of saying "kilogram metres per second". I never managed to capitalise on it, though, like Edward did with 'Runcible'. My poetry isn't Great!
Saturday night I went to a birthday party with Tiger and Cat, Sunday we met his parents, brothers and granny for Sunday lunch. Tiger's brother was having a flying lesson at Barton Aerodrome that afternoon, so we went to see him take off.
Sunday evening I caught the train from Manchester to Congleton, which turned out to be a bus. I've got nothing against this fact, per se... In fact, rail replacement services are the best example of integrated public transport I have ever seen! However, when there are some perfectly good rails between two places, I honestly think you should run a train along them and not use slower, noisier, more rickety buses.
Monday I chilled out at my parents' house for a bit, but I ended up doing some VBA macros for my little sister, which I wrote and tested in a couple of hours. I was quite pleased with my work because I was totally in the software engineering mindset when I did it. I dug out an Excel spreadsheet from several years ago that did 90% of what she wanted, then did the modifications and set it up to be as user-friendly as possible. She seemed pretty pleased with it. I told her it was her Christmas present. Tellingly, she suggested it would be more appropriate as her birthday present (which was last month). I have a terrible record of keeping track of birthdays. For that reason alone I need a girlfriend! ;-)
Back at work this week. I've started to do more high-level things in my job. I reviewed a senior engineer's C# code and found about twelve potential faults with it. He's on holiday at the moment, though, so he won't find out until about a week and a half from now. I also had two procedure drafts reviewed by my manager and the departmental manager, which will hopefully become departmental law and lore.
So, all that is left now is to let this lovely CD play out and then make some dinner!
She's starting to show progress now, seventeen weeks gone. She's a midwife, so she knows all about the process from start to finish. From her description of some of her colleagues, they seem to be all-too-familiar with the start. :-)
Tiger and Cat are off to the Dominican Republic for a wedding next week and Cat's pregancy is causing a bit of a problem with the bridesmaid's dress. We stopped off at a friend of her's house on the way to Hebden Bridge on Saturday to drop off her dress and the matching cravats. Her friend is a bit of a wiz with the needle and will try to use to enlarge the dress a little bit. The technical details are a bit beyond me, though.
Hebden Bridge is a Quaint town, in the same way that many of the old northern mill towns are called 'quaint'. The stonework is really lovely and it is interesting to see the drastic change in colour where it has been sandblasted. You really get the impression that these towns were wreathed in sooty fog when the industrial revolution was at its peak.
We went to the Runcible Spoon cafe. I couldn't resist asking for my ice cream "with a runcible spoon", to which the waiter politely laughed and pretended he'd never heard that one before. Of course he was ready with the answer to the inevitable question that Cat couldn't resist putting to him... What does Runcible mean? The word appears in 'The Owl and the Pussycat' by Edward Lear and some claim that he made it up. The waiter in the restaurant suggested that it was a spoon with three prongs, to which the Wikipedia agrees:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runcible_spoon
I made up a word once, while I was at Sixth Form. I decided that a Unit Of momentum needed a special name, because I was sick of saying "kilogram metres per second". I never managed to capitalise on it, though, like Edward did with 'Runcible'. My poetry isn't Great!
Saturday night I went to a birthday party with Tiger and Cat, Sunday we met his parents, brothers and granny for Sunday lunch. Tiger's brother was having a flying lesson at Barton Aerodrome that afternoon, so we went to see him take off.
Sunday evening I caught the train from Manchester to Congleton, which turned out to be a bus. I've got nothing against this fact, per se... In fact, rail replacement services are the best example of integrated public transport I have ever seen! However, when there are some perfectly good rails between two places, I honestly think you should run a train along them and not use slower, noisier, more rickety buses.
Monday I chilled out at my parents' house for a bit, but I ended up doing some VBA macros for my little sister, which I wrote and tested in a couple of hours. I was quite pleased with my work because I was totally in the software engineering mindset when I did it. I dug out an Excel spreadsheet from several years ago that did 90% of what she wanted, then did the modifications and set it up to be as user-friendly as possible. She seemed pretty pleased with it. I told her it was her Christmas present. Tellingly, she suggested it would be more appropriate as her birthday present (which was last month). I have a terrible record of keeping track of birthdays. For that reason alone I need a girlfriend! ;-)
Back at work this week. I've started to do more high-level things in my job. I reviewed a senior engineer's C# code and found about twelve potential faults with it. He's on holiday at the moment, though, so he won't find out until about a week and a half from now. I also had two procedure drafts reviewed by my manager and the departmental manager, which will hopefully become departmental law and lore.
So, all that is left now is to let this lovely CD play out and then make some dinner!