Well, in case you hadn't guessed, last Wednesday's dance out was a wash out. Being already a bit tight for numbers, we had a couple of apologies due to dodgy legs, the last straw being the torrential downpour leading to one of our number having to bail out his office to stop the water getting to the server room! I think pretty much everyone else from Sheffield stayed at home, on the grounds that they might not get back otherwise.

On a related note:
Huge respect and congratulations to Pecsaetan who danced the Sheffield Race for Life yesterday afternoon, and I believe raised just under £1500. Congrat's to everyone else to took part too.


Why the comment about washing up, though?
Well, as some of you will know, I am currently working on a project for a company in Hull who sell cleaning products, with a particular focus on "greener" products to wholesale and janitorial market. I was there last week and asked to if I could buy some Ecover laundry, at which point Ian insisted that I should have some of that and a bunch of other stuff free to try out. In consequence I now have the following:
2x Ecover bathroom spray
2x Ecover surface cleaner
2x Ecover hand soap
2x Ecover toilet cleaner
1 box Ecover washing powder (sorry no liquid available)
5litres Maxima Green washing up liquid
5litres Maxima Green surface cleaner (like flash liquid)
2x Maxima Green antibacterial surface spray
2x Maxima Green window/VDU spray
2x Maxima Green woolsafe chewing gum remover (I did think this was getting a bit obscure)

So, if anyone wants to try out some of this (particularly the ones I've got a gallon of!) then stop by and borrow some. Maxima Green brand is a sort of no-frills range similar to Ecover, owned by a consortium of 4 independent companies in the North of England.

The original plan was that I can get staff prices on Ecover laundry powder, and even without, then if a few people are interested then the wholesale price should be better than supermarket. Let me know if you might be interested in joining a small, informal co-op for this.

cheers
PB

Hi All,
Sorry for absence of any sort of posts of recent - have been alternately lacking time or any idea of what to write!

Anyway, just a quick notice (or possibly warning ;-) for now, that morrisment will be happening at the Wortley Arms in (oddly enough) Wortley, tomorrow (Wednesday 10th) night from 8pm.

Two fine teams of morris dancers, Pecsaetan and White Rose, will be joined by the recently formed Five Rivers.

All surviving here, hope you're all well.
Pete

The last month that is.

Was away on management course near Liverpool; required as part of contract, decent, realistic style and a brilliant group of people. Two more over the next 6 months.
Then had crazy week without enough sleep. Also included starting potty training with Alex, who is taking to it really well. Recovered sleep a bit at the weekend.
Have now arrived at the end of a pretty full-on week. More successful than I had expected on some things, but irritatingly minimal progress on others.

What's next?
Weekend: don't know, but it might be nice to get down to the allotment and do some clearing before the weeds start growing like it's going out of fashion. Mothers' Day plus christening for our friends' baby on Sunday.

Next week: Quarterly project meeting to prepare for on friday.
PR job for research group recording a short educational outreach presentation as part of Kroto Institute; no idea quite what they want yet, but we have to do recording this week!
Really need to get lab stuff sorted, both in terms of getting my own stuff ready to go, and indeed having something which does not resemble a pig sty in which to do so. Sigh.

In other news, April is looking busy...
First dance out for the new Morris team on St Georges Day (probably at Kelham Island Tavern), just most of the kit to finish and three dances to get well learnt by then.
Composites conference here in Sheffield, after Easter. Great, but I'm supposed to be presenting some work which we did proof of concept for in October, but still need to do the main tests for. And the autoclave which we need to use has several independently intermittent faults. Hmmm. But as several people have said, all the best papers are written the week before the conference!

Something tells me I'm going to have to start taking some holiday soon to get PhD thesis finished off.

Hope to see you soon,
PB

Current Location: home
Current Music: Snoring baby

... but mainly good.

Starting with the less good:
Last weekend, it was nice to see Alex's godmothers for a few days, BUT it was all the last straw of strangeness for Alex and he was a complete monster all Sunday. I think we had three major strops before I managed to get any breakfast in him! Then he was back to being great on Monday.

Unusual amplification:
One moment of comic serendipity on the same day was the effect of resting Ben, in his moses basket, in the bath. That is an empty bath I should point out, so that I could safely shave and use toilet while the toddler rampaged downstairs and the rest of the house amazingly managed to sleep. As you may be aware, small babies can manage some impressive farting, as Ben decided to demonstrate at this point. However, with the bath acting as a resonance chamber the effect he achieved was something like the Queen Mary coming into Southampton.

Big brother:
Alex is being brilliant with Ben. He likes to cuddle him, tries to make him happy and entertain him when he's grumpy and has even insisted on helping feed him a few times. A bit clumsy and overly squashy, but I am very impressed. Incidentally, I can only suppose that they have started teaching the alphabet at nursery since Alex has suddenly started pointing to and naming any letter he recognises.

Back to work:
Started back at work this week. Not really the most productive week, but some interesting stuff has turned up. It is also a step back towards routine which seems to be good for both Alex and me.

Sleep:
Is still slightly short, but quite manageable.

Breaking news:
Ben has suddenly started being much more alert and awake in the last day or so. He now seems to be being chewy tonight - dummy is not interesting, but very grisly and gnawing my finger is.Teething already?!
Breaking, as in the icecream scoop, by me, a few minutes ago. Bugrit.


Sure there's other stuff I was going to say, but that'll do for now.
PB

Things going quite well at the moment. I am going to try to post a bit more, and keep up with you all. But I've probably said that before so we shall see...

Ben is doing well, but developing a habit of wanting to sleep on me during the evening. Couple of waily evenings, but not bad. Today, Sir has had a lot of awake time and has alternately snored and pulled faces at me in his sleep since Alex went to bed. Alex is being brilliant with Ben, very cuddly and actually gentle - when he thinks about it! Still has stroppy-toddler days, but that seems unrelated to Ben so far.

Unfortunately I have to go back to work next week, so hoping things continue ok.
Bye for now.
PB

Well, Ashridge Trees emailed me a sales invoice yesterday - I checked and they said that means they've despatched it. They then proceeded to say please DO NOT PLANT THEM IF THE GROUND IS FROZEN; they'll be fine if left for a week in a shed, but you risk damaging the roots with hard frozen soil apparently.

Hmmm. Looking at the weather forecast we are due for snow up to and including Saturday, but Sunday should be a balmy 7 celcius! I guess we just have to hope that it warms up and thaws out quickly, or abandon it for a week.

I have made arrangements for a man with a trailer to help me collect a load of free muck on Saturday (I guess I now have to say weather permitting...) and was going to then try to do a bit of clearing and possibly even some trenching out in preparation for planting on Sunday.

Oh well, we shall have to see what happens - thanks guys who've offered help, I'll let you know if we're going to postpone.

Well, well. Perhaps unsurprisingly things are all very busy, so here's a brief summary.

Alex
He's doing really well, weighing about 6.3kg now! Really starting to be interested in things and interact with you, he can definitely focus up to about 4' away and recognise our voices. He's generally sleeping at least 7 hours in a stretch overnight; unfortunately he's currently not going to sleep until about 2am, mainly because he's having a long grumpy stretch late evening while he does a bit of teething.


Fairly recent photo, just after first feed of the morning, hence me in dressing gown and Alex wearing his sleeping bag still.

Allotment
Really need to finish clearing and dig over some more. I placed the order for hedging plants today, which should be delivered in the first week in February, so I shall have to try and organise people to help get them all planted up. Oh and my seed order was delivered this morning, so we shall have fun unpacking that tonight.

Project
Chasing models for diffusion behaviour. I'm currently after a book which is allegedly in the library but the catalogue can't find that particular volume, and a widely cited paper from 1966 which appears to be mythical. Hmmm.

Other news
We're helping a friend sort out redoing her bathroom. Unfortunately having convinced her not to do things by halves, muggins here is now going to be chasing out the wall to reroute pipes for her shower this evening. Doh!

Anyway, enough for now - 'tis teatime.
laters
PB

Yes, well, thought I'd better get around to putting something here. I was usually quite busy without having a baby, so now permanently so.

Firstly, Happy New Year to all!

Hope you've all had a good Christmas holiday period, we have in my house, albeit rather tiring with little Alex having a growth spurt (he now seems huge relative to a few short weeks ago) and generally being rather demanding for a while. Still we are all well, and I'm trying to pick up the project again and get going on some writing and experimental stuff.

Thanks to you guys who have already added me as a friend, presumably in the vain hope that I may write something eventually - I suspect that my posts here will be somewhat, shall we say sporadic? We shall see.

Enough for now, I'd best get on -'tis nearly teatime already.
cheers
PB

Current Location: Department
Current Mood: busy
Current Music: Glorystrokes - Bar Room Brawl