One wedding, seven teenagers and almost my funeral.

Before I start, can I just point out, more for my benefit than anyone else, that it is 25 days until we go to Florida!

This is not a gloat, well not solely a gloat, but more of a wake up to me that this thing is close now.  The whole new job thing has really taken my eye off the clock watching, agonising minute by minute countdown analysis that is normally going on around now.

With my first week at the new place under the belt, my eye is now drifting back, slowly to the very pleasant task of awaiting our latest trip.

Oh, I bought our park tickets!  I know I have dragged that out for weeks now, but with the realisation that we don’t have long to go, and a minor rally on the Dollar rate, I took the plunge.  I used Orlando Attractions in the end, and got an 8 day Magic Your Way Base Ticket, with 2 days for free.  We will not do ten days in Disney, but it gives us a couple spare in case we want to pop in for an evening etc on a non planned Disney day.  Add to that the 14 day 2 park Universal ticket and we are sorted, and all with change out of a grand!  I was happy.  Well as happy as I can be parting with that amount of cash!

So, this new job then, how did it go?  I know you will not have slept with worry all week, so let me enlighten you.  It was OK.

Now what else happened this week….

Oh, more detail perhaps?  Well, it was OK, with most people being very welcoming, and I certainly know more now than I did last Sunday, but there lies the rub for me.  For the past many years I have been the guru, the gnu, the expert, the one with an answer for any question.  So to transport me from that to being the bloke who is still opening every cupboard in the kitchen area trying to find a cup, well its a culture shock.

By Friday however, I was feeling like progress had been made as I did make a couple of contributions that were remotely useful.  Hope is high that I may do the same again next week.

The week itself consisted of training on Monday, London to see a customer on Tuesday, another customer meeting, but this in the office on Wednesday, and then Thursday and Friday a series of internal meetings and getting stuff sorted to respond to customers.

The view to the left is a snap I took on my walk from the car park to the office on Monday morning.  The offices are at Salford Quays, so it is all penthouse apartments, pink pound and expensive coffees, but the views are certainly better than the last place which was a business park in Bury (no offence Bury).

Having avoided being uncovered as the charlatan I am in one whole week, we’ll see if we can do the same again next week and take it from there.

Emily returned from Berlin on Friday evening after another 24 hour journey from hell.  She had a great time, but was glad to be home.  When she posts her photos (obviously on Facebook) I will post a link here if anyone wants to have a look.

She was zombie like and hadn’t eaten properly in about two days, so we did the decent thing and ordered a load of Dominos pizza.  Her early night drifted to 11pm of course, and she is still struggling now to be honest.

This is mainly because she had her birthday “do” yesterday.  This involved seven teenagers descending upon us at lunchtime Saturday.  We quickly deposited them at the cinema to watch Toy Story 3, whilst we did the BIG SHOP, and prepared things for the evening.

This involved buying three tonnes of junk food, preparing it, supplying a few horror DVDs and then buggering off out for the night.  We tried a local restaurant for the first time having driven past it a million times threatening to eat there.  Desperate to escape Teen City, we arrived early, and had the place to ourselves initially, but very soon the place was buzzing as an Asian wedding was taking place.  We were enthralled to be honest.  The colours, dress and all round showbiz nature of the event was great to watch.

With all the hullaballoo, we couldn’t leave the restaurant as we would have had to walk right through the video and photos, so we just sat and watched.  This meant that we missed the film we wanted to watch at the cinema, Inception.  So we had to kill 45 minutes until the next showing with a glass of wine and J2O.  I will let you guess who had which!

The film was great…I think.  It is so complicated it was hard to tell.  I was almost afraid to breathe in case doing so distracted me from the story line and I lost the thread.

So we didn’t get home until midnight, to find our lounge looking like Beirut, and smelling worse.  So we shut the door and went to bed like the responsible adults we are.

Next thing, we are awake at 8.30am, by shouting and giggling from downstairs, and I am soon on bacon butty duties.  An enormous amount of getting ready happens and finally they all stumble out of the door around 10.30.  I see this as a chance of escape, and run away, I mean drive to the gym.  Having being operated on a little while ago (what do you mean you forgot?), I have not been to the gym since.  I have used our treadmill at home a few times, but that is quite gentle really, so I was fearing the worst to be honest.  I was right.

Five minutes in to my normal routine I was seeing my life flash before my eyes, and as most of it seemed to involve seven teenagers and an Asia wedding, peppered with highlights from Inception, it didn’t make much sense.  I somehow made it to half an hour on the cross trainer, and then shuffled for a further ten on the treadmill.  The sit ups I ended up with were less than elegant, and I dragged my wheezing frame into the changing room before I presented the gym with the highlights from last night’s curry!

As for the rest of the day, well the kids are out, probably taking crack somewhere, Louise is happily ironing away upstairs, so I think I’ll take my lead from Henry, and join him in a bit of this….

 

Till the next time…..