graculus: (Default)
Apparently I can just recycle subject lines from previous years and they still work. :P

Yes, it's February and we're officially not part of the European Union any more. What a shitshow this has all been. Decisions made based on lies peddled by the media and lapped up by people who want to believe that somehow the EU has been holding us back and we're just going to gambol back into the sunshine as an 'independent' country now they can't do that any more. Bollocks. We're stuck with a government which is massively uncaring (if not openly hostile) to much of the population and little sign of that changing any time soon.

I'm currently also chewing over what to do personally in terms of holidays, as there are plenty of places I want to visit (and have to go for years, in some cases) but there are all sorts of philosophical wheels churning in my head. If I don't see these places soon, some of them might just not be visitable in the future because of climate change and general human fuckery, but if I go then I'm contributing to climate change etc, but if I don't visit them then the people who rely on tourism will suffer. Jeez, life is so much easier if you have no conscience about these sorts of things, isn't it?

Work has settled down a bit, despite the best efforts of the IT changes we're currently undergoing to make how we do our jobs as complicated as possible. I currently have 2 work email addresses and can only print anything at work by emailing stuff to one of them, which account currently takes me 7-8 minutes to log into at work because of the process involving in actually getting in (multi-factor authorisation and so on). After a further run-in with the QA woman, which led to her complaining to my boss about me, I've decided the best way forward is to ignore her completely.

Started the new year in fencing terms with two competitions on the same weekend, which I won't do again if I can possibly help it, especially as there was driving between the different locations involved. The first was against a mixture of UK and European fencers and I had the pleasure of running someone off the back of the piste, as well as roundly beating another who did very well in the national veteran's championship last year. She was having an off day, but I'll take that result anyway! It took forever to then get to the DE fight and I'd checked out before it started, so I didn't do particularly well. I then fenced much better on the Sunday but ran up against someone in the DE who usually has one really good competition result a season and happened to inflict it on me this time around. My next competition is this coming weekend and I'm looking to improve on my result last year, where I finished DFL.

I'm back to working on my overall fitness as well, with attempts at getting into a routine of going to the gym. January is rarely great for this, as the gym is full of new folks with resolutions, but I know what I need to do and it's just a case of going regularly, doing more each time I go, rinse and repeat. At least I have a reason for going, as I can see the difference in how I fence when I'm fitter overall, I just need to keep reminding myself about this!
graculus: (Default)
This year's summer holiday was a trip to Ireland, first to Dublin for WorldCon and then off to the west coast for a few days. To be honest, if it hadn't been for the convention I would have jumped the train to the coast after 2 days in Dublin, as I'd pretty much done all the tourist stuff last time I was there and it was just noisy, crowded and I didn't enjoy it all that much. Probably not helped by discovering that the hostel where I was staying was on a street where idiots people were making noise till 3 or 4am every night. The hostel itself was fine, as I was staying in a 4-bed single sex room, and definitely didn't want to spend the kind of money it costs to stay in Dublin in August. I had thought Helsinki was expensive!

Enjoyed the con a lot, which is good because it'll probably be the last WorldCon I make it to unless Glasgow wins the bid for 2024. Can't see me making the trip to the US any time soon and I'm definitely not off to NZ for next year's edition. Though it probably won't suffer from the horrendous queues that Dublin did. The other downside was that there was nowhere to sit and actually have a conversation, which is always a good part of any con.

Then I got the train to Sligo, as I figured it would be less busy than Galway, and it was great. A beautiful part of the country, some of it very reminiscent of the national park nearest to me - lots of sheep and heather and rolling limestone hills. I got to go kayaking, though only on Lough Gill as I didn't organise myself too well, and the highlight of the trip was definitely the neolithic stuff. There's a big concentration of megalithic stuff in that area, including a cairn on top of a hill that I didn't make it to which I could see from my hotel bedroom window.

I went to one particular place called Carrowkeel, which has a number of passage tombs dating back to about 3600BC and which were way less attractive to passing tourists because you have to hike for a mile or so to get to them. Next time I'd like to get a proper map of the area, as there were more neolithic elements around that area which I didn't get to see, but you can go inside the cairns which have been excavated. The best, you have to crawl into down a passage that's about 3' x 3', then it opens up into a central chamber where the roof is about 8' or so and you can stand, with other smaller chambers and shelves off it. There's another one like it, where you have to squirm in past a stone that almost blocks the entrance, again where you can stand up inside.

And then it was back home, as for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to get the train back to Dublin rather than flying back from the regional airport near where I was staying. Not sure what I was thinking when I organised all of that.

We're not officially back at work yet, though tomorrow is the date when we're officially supposed to be 'available' for any meetings etc. though ours all seem to be on Friday. This meant I couldn't avail myself of the bargain trip I was offered to go on the whale watching survey again, as it doesn't finish till Saturday, so I'm trying not to torture myself too much at the moment by reading the posts from that trip. Grrr.

I'm also trying to get ready for the new fencing season, which means regular practice and trying to get a routine of gym attendance as well. First competition of the season is in 2 weeks and so far the line-up in my weapon is all veterans (myself included) and the 2018 national senior champion. She was almost the 2019 national senior champion as well but lost in the final. You can probably imagine how much I am looking forward to possibly fighting her!
graculus: (coffee)
We're in the last throes of the academic year, with exams to mark and just 2 more classes to teach then that's it for the summer. We're supposed to be doing mandatory CPD stuff next week but I have already reached my hours for the year and also there's absolutely nothing being organised that is of any interest or relevance to me - there's stuff via the internet I can log which will be much more useful in the longer term, I'm sure.

I have my timetable for September onwards, so I've been able to start planning exactly what I'm doing in terms of both work and generally. I'm still teaching on Saturdays but have told my boss this is the last year for me, as this will be my 4th year and it feels like it's someone else's turn to do that. It's also been a bit of a pain to try and organise around competitions, as any Saturday I book off is just added onto the end and we also have weekends we're not allowed to do for various reasons - it's technically possible to get cover but I like things done the way I want, so I've never even tried to do that. I'm still in the good books though, as I've agreed to take on an evening class (another thing many people don't want to do).

I still have planning to do for September and really want to at least make a start on it this month so I can have August off completely. However, as I am the queen of procrastination, it might not happen! At least I've organised my trip to Ireland, with WorldCon in Dublin and then a week on the west coast, which I'm really looking forward to. At the moment I'm not taking any books for signing as I don't think anyone I want to fangirl at is going to be there except for people I've already done that with. This makes the weight limit on the flight much easier to achieve!

Had another good survey at Easter, with fantastic weather every day - makes spotting much easier if the seas are calm and you don't have rain blowing into your face! Some great sightings, including minke whales closer than I've seen before, but one of the highlights for me was on the way back into port when a white-tailed eagle flew right across in front of us. I'd seen them at a distance but never really thought about how bloody huge they are till I saw one about 15 feet away lumbering across the Sound of Mull. Taking a break that way was definitely the right decision.

It did mean I missed the regional championships, which was a bit annoying, as it was also a qualifier for one of the national competitions. Next year, then! However, I did fence quite well at the British veterans nationals and am now really working towards the new season from September. Unexpectedly, this weekend I got a call-up to the regional squad for a long-running national team competition and got my regional badge (which you can only get by being selected). This competition is often dominated by folks in their teens and twenties but we lost a few fencers to a national achievement camp so I got asked this week if I was available. We did really well as a region, considering the panicky last-minute nature of the call-ups, finishing 4th out of 11 teams overall. I only ended up fighting 4 bouts and just managed to win 3 of those 12 fights but they were all against people ranked higher than me, including one woman who's just been called up for the GB veterans world championship team. :P

So now I've sewn my regional badge on to my jacket as I continue to prepare for the veteran's version of the same competition, which is in September - I've already been called up for that one and had thought that was the only one of these I'd ever get to do, since it's a bit more self-selecting!

In other news, I've been working my way through the Hugo bundle and reading all sorts of stuff. There's nothing fannish which has particularly grabbed me lately, although I recently binged my way through the 3 seasons of Versailles, which I missed first time around. I was dragged into it by Tumblr, I must confess, with the promise of an OT3 which very much lived up to what I wanted from it and therefore does not generate fic ideas at all. Boy, that theme music is massively annoying though, with the whiny vocals. *shudders*

I've also been getting back into podcasts, even though I don't really drive as far as I used to - there's some really excellent ones out there and I think I'll do a separate post on them in the next couple of weeks, in the hopes this account doesn't get left to lie fallow all summer. No promises, though!
graculus: (oh please)
Yes, it's another one of those.

Currently off work for the Easter holidays after a flurry of exams and enjoying the lovely weather - hopefully this will continue, as I'm off to Scotland in a few days and another boat-based survey. The forecast is mostly good and I have a new pair of wellies after my old ones split during the last trip. I'm spending a couple of days up there before we sail out, partly because I wanted to visit Kilmartin Glen, which is a massive collection of Neolithic and Bronze Age standing stones, stone circles and rock art. And there's also a site where beaver have been reintroduced in the same area, so I'm hoping to spot them too!

Fencing continues to be very up and down but I've managed to tick off another of my wishlist - this weekend I fenced my first veterans competition and managed to come 6th out of 17. I missed out on getting a medal by one hit, as I lost my round of 8 fight 10-9. We have the national veterans championships in a few weeks, so I'm feeling like I won't be completely out of my depth in that competition after all.

I've been offered a bit of a change for September, as I've been asked to teach an evening class twice a week. That means a move from two days teaching morning and afternoon to two teaching afternoon and evening - there's a few hours between the two and it doesn't interfere with the nights I fence, so it doesn't really make a great deal of difference to me (not having commitments around children and so on, like some of the other folks I work with). Anyway, we'll see how it all looks when the timetable gets finalised in a month or so.

Lots to do before I head north, as I've spent an entire week being a sloth and it's been lovely. :)
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Sorry folks (the few who're still reading this), I'm not sure what happened to January at all as I'd been meaning to post an update but it just didn't happen. So, let's talk about life and all that...

First off, I now am significantly poorer but also have central heating that actually works. This, along with a big fleecy jumper, has been a godsend on a few days here but so far the winter has been pretty mild in this part of the UK. A few miles further north, where it gets hilly, there was snow for a while but I've literally had just a sprinkling here and nothing more. Still, I'm completely sold on the concept of heated windscreens for cars, as by the time I've scraped the other windows, the screen is clear and I'm ready to go.

I did some work for the local university but not as much as previously, due to my other commitments. We're reaching the tipping point there between 'this money is useful to pay for my expensive hobby' versus 'I hate getting up at the buttcrack of dawn' - the next big lot of exams isn't quite so bad because at least it would be daylight when I got up, but we'll see how I feel after that.

Work trundles on as usual, except for the fact that I now have two job-sharing bosses instead of one single one. The single one has been talking for years about retirement anyway and the appointment was from inside the team, so someone who knows how we work and doesn't want to fix a system that's not broken. That seems to be the more senior management's job, which is one reason I didn't put myself forward for a minor job enhancement opportunity that came along recently - extra work and the hours to do it but otherwise just what looks like a lot of hassle. I'd rather spend my time and effort getting as good at what I'm doing now as possible than try and take on more, especially potentially-stressful more.

I'm still fencing at two clubs, which is working out well even though I was so cold at one of them last week I had to give up early and throw on multiple layers instead. The epee coach is back, though there's still things she can't do, but I cooled down so much during the group lesson that I just couldn't get going again after and felt really rough. This week (tonight) is looking like being much warmer so I need to get my practice in, as I've got a competition coming up this weekend.

I'm still creeping up the national rankings and am just outside the top 200 in the country, so a good performance at this would hit another target for me if I jump inside that bracket. I'm massively inconsistent, though - had another competition a few weeks back with 2 rounds of poules where I did quite well in round 1 but failed to stick the landing (to mix sports metaphors). However, even the worst competition performances tend to come with silver linings; I finally beat the woman who's been my nemesis for a while and who I often end up fighting in poules - we started fencing around the same time and she's at least 20 years younger than me but this time I absolutely thrashed her.

I also need to get on with planning my holidays for this year. I've got an attending ticket for WorldCon in Dublin but haven't sorted anything else out yet - the hotels are fiendishly expensive, making Helsinki look quite cheap, which was a bit of a revelation. I also want to visit a few other places in the country (neolithic stuff, mostly) and would also love to get over to the west coast, but need to really sit and figure out what's realistic. If it weren't for WorldCon, I definitely wouldn't be there in August, which is crazy tourist time anyway. I'm also thinking about doing another survey at Easter but might run out of time to organise that, we'll see. It's half term soon, so I can do some proper planning then.

The weasels are fat and healthy, with big winter coats and shiny eyes. I need to get some current pics of them and spam everyone as they are so pretty. Hard to believe they'll be two in April!
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Well, that subject line's probably not completely fair because what I just experienced wasn't directly caused by me, but the concept still stands...

In which my holiday gets affected by a Canadian who didn't live up to the stereotype )

Apart from this, I enjoyed myself and got a bit sunburned, as well as seeing lots of minke whales, harbour porpoises and Risso's dolphins (a new species for me!). I also got to go back to Lunga and visit the puffins again, this time when there was literally just us there and not a boatload (or two) of tourists!
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Yes, I survived Christmas, the space between Christmas and New Year, and have now made it into 2018. Happy New Year to everyone (if there's still anyone out there, anyway?) and here's hoping 2018 treats you kindly.

My plans for the year are pretty simple at the moment - finish the course I'm doing, carry on working, take some épée lessons in the hope of getting through the first round of a competition at some point, get to the gym at least once a week, get out walking at least once a month, finish off the long-standing fic WiP. In the summer, I'm signed up to do a boat-based whale and dolphin survey with the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, which I'm looking forward to very much indeed! Then, in August, I'm planning to go to Nine Worlds again, after missing it last year because I was in Finland for WorldCon.

Back in December the weasels were spayed and seem absolutely fine afterwards, even though they still have nice rectangular bald patches on their bellies which meant no frolicking in the snow, just in case. Their winter coats are really good otherwise and one of them also has a lot more dark hair, which means I can tell them apart now (this was a problem when I first got them). They are also much less bitey, good manners cost nothing! ;)

We've had two weeks off fencing over the holiday period and I really missed it, just like last year. I got to play with all the electric weapons last weekend, as we were doing the kit audit and needed to check everything, but it wasn't the same as actually stabbing someone. We start back on Thursday, with my next competition in about a month, so I need to get into the habit of actually asking for one-on-one lessons - they're not a problem, I've just not asked before.

Anyway, onwards into 2018! Alas, I have an assignment to finish for next Monday, as well as schemes of work to review, so must stop binge-watching TV shows and actually get on with something...
graculus: (coffee)
You'd be forgiven for thinking I didn't go on holiday this year, since I may have mentioned it in the run-up to actually going but then haven't posted anything about it over here - folks who follow me on Twitter will have seen some flailing about the trip, for reasons I'll detail in due course, but that's it.

A couple of years ago, I went to WorldCon in London (that's the World Science Fiction Convention, in case anyone reading this was unaware) and at the time there was a bid in to host a future WorldCon in Helsinki, Finland. In its lengthy history, the majority of WorldCons have been in the US and I was keen to support the idea of it being this side of the Atlantic again, so bought a supporting membership. The bid was successful and 2017 was therefore when it was due to happen - in 2014, it seemed like a long way away! Anyway, I felt I should support this plan in person and, if I was going to go to Finland, it seemed like a good idea to have other things to do...

Which is how I ended up with this year's holiday - first off, a week's hiking in a National Park near the Finnish-Russian before heading back to the Baltic, a few days in Turku (medieval capital of the country) and then back to Helsinki for the con and whatever else I felt like doing. That was also how I ended up getting up at 4am to drive to the airport to get a flight to Amsterdam, then to Helsinki and then another flight north, to Kuusamo. Or at least that was the plan, until Finnair overbooked my third flight and I got stuck in Helsinki for 18 hours.

I've travelled quite a bit and this is the first time that I've ever been caught by overbooking. I think I've been lucky in that I once got stuck in Paris on the way back from a trip to Canada, but that was because the flight in was delayed and I missed the connection, not the airline selling something it didn't actually have. What other business is allowed to work that way? The only positive thing I can say about Finnair was that as well as organising a hotel & meals, they gave me compensation there and then, while other airlines have a bad reputation for expecting you to claim later and then, oddly enough, taking forever to pay you back for what you've spent.

My main concern was that I was due to join a group and knew that they'd already left the Kuusamo area and travelled into the middle of nowhere, as well as being due to go bear-watching that afternoon and that was one of the main reasons why I'd chosen that particular trip! In the end, I spent the majority of my compensation on a very long taxi ride from the airport (200km, to be precise!) and arrived just in time to bolt down a cup of coffee, run to the loo and then go bear-watching. The bears were awesome and I'll post some pics at the weekend.

The rest of the week was spent hiking 10-15km a day, with our luggage being taken to the next place we were staying, then sauna and a swim in the lake if you felt so inclined (which I did, in two different lakes, while others in the group younger than me chickened out). I also had a go at canoeing for the first time - I've kayaked before, but this whole thing with one paddle and switching hands is far too much work! The only downsides to the trip were the mosquitoes, which loved me greatly despite bug spray, and that it was too early in the season for cloudberries by about a week! They were everywhere in the bogs we were crossing and I only found one that was ripe the entire trip. :(

Then it was a flight back to Helsinki and a train to Turku for a couple of days. It's a nice, compact little city and I liked it very much, though one of the main attractions was being able to go kayaking in the Baltic for the day. The trains in Finland are significantly cheaper than in the UK (though this isn't difficult) and I definitely recommend them.

Once back in Helsinki, we had a complementary travel card for the bus and tram system as part of being a WorldCon member and this got used a lot - I was staying in the city centre, near the train station, and could either get a commuter train (10 mins) or a tram (25-30 mins), usually depending on whether I could be bothered to walk to and from the respective train stations, since the trams were also frequent. I only managed to get a bit lost once, waiting for a bus that never arrived and then deciding to walk (and walk and walk) before spotting my hotel from a distance and navigating towards it by guesswork. That was also partly caused by my not trusting my instincts, as partway through this journey I'd got on a tram that was actually going the right way then second-guessed myself and got off a couple of stops later.

I was also pleasantly surprised by how easy Finland was for me as a vegetarian, though I think being a vegan might be significantly more difficult. Helsinki in particular seems to have embraced soy as an alternative to meat - the local burger chain, Hesburger, was doing soy burgers and tortillas, for example - while I ate a lot of potatoes and vegetables, it wasn't anything like as one-dimensional as my trip to Newfoundland a few years back where I pretty much lived on grilled cheese sandwiches for most of my time there.

Anyway, back to WorldCon. I think my main criticism would be about the panels, but that's probably because I've been spoiled by other conventions, NineWorlds in particular. The panels were short, scheduled for an hour but really limited to 45 minutes to allow for people to get to the next panel, which then turns into 30 minutes plus time for questions. There was a problem on the first day about getting in to some of the panels as well, with the convention having to organise some additional panel rooms for subsequent days, which meant that even then people were leaving panels early - I don't really see the point of going in the first place if you're going to do that. As a result, most of the panels I went to felt a bit lightweight and at least one suffered from a lack of robust moderation, or a moderator who wouldn't shut up and let the panellists talk. It was ever thus, I guess!

I knew a few people at the con but felt the lack of people to chew stuff over with, which I've become used to. Anyway, the next European WorldCon is going to be Dublin in 2019, so I guess I'm going to Ireland again in 2 years time! Hopefully more folks I know will go and help keep me entertained.

In general though, I'm glad I went and Finland is a very beautiful but expensive country. I ate a lot of chocolate and licorice, although the salty licorice they love so much (salmiakki) is vile and I don't know how anyone can eat more than one piece. I wish I'd been there for cloudberry season and also that the mosquitoes didn't love me so much. And yes, I did sauna naked - it's traditional, you know! - but put on a swimming costume for the lake because we weren't the only people there. I highly recommend the sauna + lake combination if you ever visit...
graculus: (Default)
We're almost at the stage of finalising my classes for September - it always seems a little odd to be thinking that I'll know my routine through to well past this time next year that far in advance, but it's the only way to do it, so there we are. From preliminary discussions, it's looking very much like a re-run of this year, two weekday mornings, two weekday afternoons and a Saturday morning class but less of them so I can enter some fencing competitions and have room to manoeuvre dates as required.

I'm starting to get disorganised in my head, because we're really on the home stretch now and I can almost taste the end of term. One more week and then it's half term and, at the moment, I don't have as many commitments in terms of invigilation as usual - I'm not quite so stretched for money and am teaching more hour, so I didn't offer as much availability as usual. At the moment I only have 3 exams for the actual half term week where previously I've worked all day pretty much every day, but I also have a bunch of stuff I need to get finished for my college course so there's plenty of reasons why I'm not so worried about that.

I also just picked up another, short-term, class through to mid-July but that's relatively stress-free as I've been given the okay to do without exams and it's easy for me to just re-use material I already have for a new audience. It's also extra money on top of my existing hours, so that's nice and will go a good way to paying for my expensive Finland trip. Of course, I made that trip (hello, WorldCon!) more expensive than it needed to be by adding on a hiking expedition beforehand and some time in Turku too, but I figure I may well never visit again so why not?

The only problem is that I also made the mistake of watching a documentary series about the Hebrides so now I want to go back and am wondering if I can squeeze a week in Scotland in there too before I start work again in September, though I may have to skip a potential competition to do it. I need to have a look at the dates and figure it out.
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Sorry, this blog is probably going to be quite fencing-heavy for a while now. *shrugs* For some reason I'm finding it hard to concentrate on books and nothing has really grabbed me, while other than the [community profile] picfor1000 challenge I've signed up for again, no writing is going on. I've started booking my trip to Finland this summer, so perhaps more on that later?

So, an update on the club competition - my team lost by one hit. I'd been told it was close but hadn't realised quite how close it was! I could have been sharing the very ugly team trophy this time around (and yes, it's really hideous, it's a glass thing of indeterminate shape rather than a proper cup or something) if not for that one hit.

The regional comp is now a week and a day from now and I've finally succeeded in my quest to get some of my fellow newbies to enter too. I'd been badgering them for weeks, as I didn't really want to go on my own (not that I wouldn't, but I'd rather have company!) and finally a combination of pleas and pestering has carried the day. So there's going to be 4 of us in all, maybe even 5 if someone else gets his arse in gear in time. \o/

Of course, since a foil competition is coming up soon, our coach decides that last night was an ideal time to start teaching us epee instead. Which is basically 'where would you like to stab your opponent today and it's okay if he stabs you at the same time, it totally still counts'. None of this ridiculous right-of-way and who attacked first business, so much easier to referee in that you just see whose light goes on. I'd been thinking about doing epee some time this year anyway, since there seem to be a lot more competitions, but I wasn't really thinking quite yet!

Anyway, more news after the competition next weekend. ;)

As mentioned above, I've also started booking stuff for my trip to Finland in the summer. As well as going to Helsinki for WorldCon, I've booked a hiking trip beforehand (including bear watching) and then a few days in Turku as well. So far I've booked internal flights and my Turku and Helsinki hotels, so just the main flight and Turku-Helsinki train to go. Though at the moment July seems a long way away and I'm currently trying to decide if I want to go anywhere before then, even if just for a few days.
graculus: (Default)
*sung to the tune of 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco*

Yes, I have returned and (in the time-honoured philosophy of going on holiday after a hectic period of work) managed to get sick while I was on Mull. Which wasn't too bad for the first couple of days but then I probably TMI )

As expected, the weather ranged from absolutely baking through rain and midge swarms to 'a combination of all of the preceding' but at least I got to do most of what I wanted to do regardless. I'd organised to go on a trip out specifically looking for otters and spent about 5 hours watching said critters quite close to where I was camping. I'd already seen one by pure chance earlier in the week, but only for about a minute, whereas this was the real thing. Fortunately, at this stage I wasn't coughing too badly. Said critters were too far away for my camera to get a good shot but here's one of them from the people I went with:



I also got to go and visit the puffins on the Treshnish Islands where, as the guy running the boat trip says, they've been involved in studying Homo Sapiens for quite some time. You can literally sit and they'll land or waddle around within a couple of feed of you, which makes (hopefully!) for some great pics when I get through all of them. Pic spam to follow...

So, in short, good holiday which probably would have been much improved by my not being ill, also more consistent weather (but hey, it's Scotland so that's a bit much to ask). Also, I like the countryside but this has reminded me why I also like wi-fi and 24-hour supermarkets. ;)

E.T.A. Can't believe I forgot to mention one of the other highlights of the trip, namely being in a tent in the middle of a massive thunderstorm. We'd already watched the first part of the storm roll over and lightning strikes on the coast opposite, only for the next bit to be literally overhead. It was like being inside a drum, with massive flashes of light pretty much constantly - awesome!
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Finished everything in terms of work on Friday, now to get off on holiday. Tomorrow I'm off to the Scottish island of Mull for about 10 days, though given the weather forecast it's quite possible I may decide to come home before then, as I'm camping and the forecast is Not Great. Still, as long as I have coffee and books, I shall struggle on heroically and see how it goes!

I've got a couple of trips planned, but didn't want to over-organise myself and I'm also hoping to use my newly-refreshed navigation skills at some point - I've actually used them already, since I went out to the Peak District and got slightly turned around so then had to use map & compass to re-orientate myself. For map nerds like myself, discovering WH Smith were doing a sale on Ordnance Survey maps was just too much to resist, so I now find myself the proud owner of maps covering the entire Peak District National Park and also Mull (for obvious reasons).

Today is packing day as I'm leaving early tomorrow and driving up to Scotland, though I also need to go and see Ghostbusters this morning and drop the lone ferret off at the local pet place - they're looking after him and the woman who helps run it is so excited about having him. She has ferrets herself but this is the first one they've had to board, after a false alarm a few months back when someone called about boarding a parrot and she misheard them. It's literally over the road from the local vet, so if old and cranky turns into old and sick, he's as close as possible. All my washing is done and I want to pack the car tonight, though I'm still wondering if I've chosen enough books for if I do get stuck on a waterlogged island! ;)

Photo spam on my return, assuming that I didn't spend the majority of my trip underwater! :P
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Nearly at the end of term, thank heavens.

First off, the student teacher did not come back. I'm hoping it's been suggested to her that perhaps teaching is not really her thing and she ought to consider something else, but I have no idea if that's the case or not. I'm currently in the middle of organising and managing exams, not to mention encouraging folks to sign up for classes in September (with 4 of my students joining one of my classes already, which means I'm 25% full on that class with people where I already know what they can and can't do, which makes my life much easier).

I've also managed to snag a few more hours from September of what was going spare, though I didn't want to take on too much and also wanted to keep a day off in the week if I could - in order to manage both of those aims, I've agreed to teach a Saturday morning class, but at a higher level than I've taught before so that's going to be interesting. It's very grammar-heavy at that level, which is no issue for me, except making sure that I know how to explain the rules (which I've discovered is quite a different thing from knowing if something is right or not when I read it). Teaching on a Saturday means that I will now have Thursdays off completely and also no teaching commitments on Mondays before I head off late afternoon to college for a few hours each week.

I realised a few weeks back that if I didn't get a wiggle on, I wasn't going to actually have a holiday this year (since going to Nine Worlds doesn't really count, even if I sneak off to a museum or two instead of going to panels now I'm going to be in central London) so I've been organising to go to Mull for 10 days before the schools all break up. I'm also going to be camping, though camping when you have a car is a little less Spartan since you don't have to carry everything with you wherever you go. I've booked a couple of trips when I'm there, but tried not to organise myself too much just in case - my main plan is books, coffee and beer, and wandering about. It's prime otter territory, apparently, but that's what they said about Skye too and I never saw any otters there!

I also recently took a refresher navigation course, since I live very close to the Peak District National Park but haven't really explored it properly. I'd done map and compass navigation many years ago but had forgotten most of it, so I went off the other Saturday and spent the day re-learning how to do stuff and also would like to get back and do more later on in the year - the same guy does navigation in poor visibility training, which could be very useful in the coming dystopia. ;)

You may notice I have not, to this point, mentioned the referendum. I'm really not sure what there is to say about it, other than that one side was vigorously campaigning on what's turned out (to the surprise of nobody on this side of the situation) to be a tissue of lies and half-truths at best. It's also validated the views of a small bunch of horrible people who now think that the majority agrees with them about 'foreigners' and people who are British but not White, making them feel bolder about being arseholes in public. The folks who 'won' clearly didn't expect to, because they had no plans on what should happen next, so we're stuck in a bit of a limbo at the moment while political power games carry on and everyone on both sides of the House try and jockey for position.

It's all a bit pathetic but also quite worrying because nobody really knows what's going to happen - the referendum was, after all, advisory (another thing that seems to have been glossed over by and to the folks who want to leave the EU) so could be ignored by government if they want to do so, though that would probably require significantly more backbone than most politicians possess when faced with unpopularity. Whether or not I'll have folks to teach in the longer term is another matter, but for now nothing has immediately changed, so we'll have to see just how deep we're all in the shitter.
graculus: (Default)
I managed to lose my house keys yesterday so had to call a locksmith, which I don't recommend not because said locksmith wasn't a really nice guy (he was) but because it cost a load of money. Since he couldn't pick the lock, he had to drill it out and replace it. And I'd just picked up my car from its MOT and was rejoicing over the fact that it had passed without needing anything done to it. Knowing how my income works, all I could think was 'well, that's x hours teaching'. :(

I'm very much enjoying working part-time but the drop in overall income is not so enjoyable - I used to travel a lot more, but now what with teaching in term time and the money thing that hasn't really happened. However, we have a couple of people retiring in July so their hours should soon be up for grabs. We run a load of ESOL courses every week (weekday mornings, afternoons, late afternoons, most evenings and even Saturday mornings) at various levels and in four different centres so I'm really glad I'm not the one who has to timetable it all!

I'm trying to get out more on my day off and also really want to have a proper holiday at the end of our year (the week before the schools break up), to the point where I've been offered the possibility of more work by the university but they want me to do more training and I'm probably going to blow that off in favour of going to Scotland for a week. Going to conventions is nice but it's not really a holiday, you know?

I also got invited to stay behind this week at fencing and train with the rest of the adults for the first time, so I must be making progress; that means I got out of warming up again, as I was still very much warmed up from my lesson! At the moment, there are only two women turning up regularly (both of us relative beginners), so that means I got to fence a couple of teenage boys this week in addition to my fellow learners - I don't mind losing, though it's frustrating, as long as I've given it a good shot and hopefully taken at least one point off them. I'm now about halfway through my first set of lessons so I can definitely see myself carrying on past that, though I plan to delay buying any equipment for as long as humanly possible.
graculus: (Default)
Oops, how has it been a month since I last posted? Anyway, last time, I was making plans to go down to London and then do some work, first for the university and then getting back to teaching again.

I highly recommend the Cosmonauts exhibition at the Science Museum, in case anyone here has the chance to go and hasn't yet - all sorts of cool stuff from the history of Russian space exploration, though the gift shop was shockingly lacking in cool stuff I wanted to buy (except for all the posters, where I could have pretty much cleared the wall if I'd let myself). What I wanted, more than anything, was a mug with the Valentina Tereshkova poster artwork on it, but nope.

Since I've been back, I did a week at the university and then started shadowing the folks who're currently teaching the course where I'm taking over the ESOL part when it runs again from after half term. Getting the other tutors together to review this (since it was a pilot) was a nightmare though, since there are 4 of them and nobody could do the same times as everyone else, so we've ended up having two meetings to cover that. I suppose I should probably be grateful we've managed it with only two!

Meanwhile, I've also picked up another course to teach, starting the same time, which is excellent news in financial terms. I'd like to say I've been prepping stuff for both of them, but that'd be a lie, though I have been organising what I already have so I can actually find what I'm looking for. And I also got given a load of stuff by one of the tutors who retired, so I have no shortage of possible material, only needing the time and concentration to look through it and see what's still useful.

I also did a solid week's worth of invigilation in January, so I'm looking forward to getting paid for that this month. In related news, I was in the supermarket and bumped into the woman who organises the medical school exams, only for me to completely blank on where I knew her from (since it was utterly out of context) and have to blag that I remembered when I didn't. *headdesk*

Meanwhile, in terms of health and welfare news, I signed up for something last year through my local council which offered free gym and classes for a year if you met certain criteria (which I did) and am trying to improve my overall fitness. Not quite a New Year resolution, since it started in November! I think I'd got to that point where anything like fatigue was a toss-up between 'am I ill?', 'am I just getting older?' or 'is it just that I'm not very fit any more?' (like the question about whether there was something going on with my thyroid function, which came back as not proven) and decided the best way to sort out between the two was to remove one of them as a possible factor. Sadly, it wasn't 'am I just getting older?', which nobody can do anything about! ;)

Anyway, I've been going to the gym although I find the cardio aspect of it incredibly tedious, and also trying out Pilates, which can best be summarised as 'I was never very coordinated when I was younger and that has not improved'. This week I was also persuaded to attend a circuit class, which would have been fine if I hadn't been the only person to turn up - free personal training is not fun, my thighs can tell you all about it two days later!

Longer term, I'd also like to get back into some kind of regular sport and am currently looking at what's feasible for me considering age and attention span. I played hockey (field hockey to the folks across the water) for more than 10 years but don't really fancy getting back into that again, even though there are 'veterans' teams. One thing I've been looking at is fencing, since there's a local club that does adult lessons quite reasonably priced and it's something I've always wanted to try. But improving my basic fitness comes first, I'll make some enquiries after Easter about that and see where things go from there...
graculus: (Default)
Final reminder for London-based or London-adjacent folks that I'm off to that London tomorrow for a couple of days and you are welcome to join me/meet up for dinner and/or mooching around various museums with myself and other folks who've already indicated they can get with the program!

Please message me if you want to know the finer points of our agenda, though it roughly looks like this:

Wednesday - Black Georgians exhibition in Brixton, pumpkin curry

Thursday - Cosmonauts exhibition etc. at Science Museum, Tintin exhibition at Somerset House, also food

Friday - Celts exhibition at the British Museum, also food
graculus: (Default)
I can't believe it's December 6th already, what the hell?

Anyway, I've started organising myself for going down to London in January, since otherwise it's not going to happen - the hotel is booked (with a 24-hour cancellation policy, since knowing my luck it'll be snowpocalypse that week and I won't be able to travel), as is my rail ticket. So, I'll be in London from the afternoon of Wednesday 6th through to Saturday 9th January.

At the moment my itinerary is looking roughly like this, so if anyone wants to tag along or meet for dinner, please let me know:

Wednesday - Black Georgians exhibition in Brixton, then as much pumpkin curry as I can inhale without exploding.
Thursday - Cosmonauts exhibition etc. at Science Museum, later off to Tintin exhibition at Somerset House (which is open till 9pm, apparently)
Friday - Celts exhibition at the British Museum
Saturday - run away back to the Midlands
graculus: (the cleaners are not happy)
So, because I am dumb and didn't realise that the con actually starts bright and early on Thursday (tomorrow! eep!), my train doesn't get into London till about 3pm. Which means, by the time I have schlepped across to my hotel (Travelodge London City Airport, in case anyone was wondering) and then back to ExCel to register, I'm aiming for 6pm as a reasonable time to actually make it to a panel.

It's far too boring to list all the panels I'm looking at, but if anyone fancies getting dinner one evening, this is where I'm likely to be of an evening-meal-eating time:

Thursday - Capital Suite 9 from 8pm (two panels in the same room from 6pm!)

Friday - Capital Suite 7 from 9pm (after the 'Beyond Bechdel' panel, which I am determined to attend...)

Saturday - Capital Suite 14 from 8pm

Sunday - looking tricky at the moment as I currently have panels from 12 noon right through to 8pm when the Hugo Awards start. Clearly something will have to give!

Monday - Second Stage at 1.30pm. Maybe Monday is a good day for fannish get-togethers, if we haven't managed it already?

And on Tuesday I'm planning to go to Greenwich, for both the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime Museum, with a side-trip to the church I included in one of my stories to check out some details on it and a visit to Mamuska for some lovely Polish nosh. Anyone wanting to tag along to any of this, please let me know!
graculus: (Default)
In work-related stuff, I am giving in my notice tomorrow. Technically I only have to give a week, but because I am not that much of an arsehole, I am giving them notice that I will be leaving in mid-September when the course I am teaching on finishes. So that's about 8 weeks' notice so they can try and get their disorganised selves in order and hire a replacement if they want.

My current employers are shockingly disorganised, to say the least. I mean, what kind of training company runs out of paper for the photocopier, not once but twice in 2 months? We've already all been called in to be informed that the manager is leaving, with no job to go to, which we think is financially-driven. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the company goes belly-up in the near future, so I feel like it's a good thing I won't (hopefully, though there's still time, I guess!) be around to see it!

Yep, I got the job I was interviewing for, with the folks with whom I used to volunteer, so it's all good. They have already started emailing me with offers of training though I haven't even signed a contract yet.

In other news, I am also going to be starting a college course in September, which is specifically designed for folks teaching ESOL. It's 4 hours a week minimum, so some more flexibility about working hours is going to be a good thing all round.

And last, but by no means least, it's almost WorldCon! \o/ Got a little space round the con itself to try and get some touristy stuff done too - the new galleries are going to be open in the Imperial War Museum and I've never been to either Greenwich or the Museum of London, so I have a few ideas on how to fill my time, not to mention a couple of restaurants I want to check out. Any London peeps/fellow Worldcon visitors want to play tourist too sometime, or just meet for dinner?
graculus: (sarcasm)
*points to title of this post* Though I'm not certain it's really a Bank Holiday as the sun is shining...

Been back just over a week from my trip to the Outer Hebrides but still haven't quite got my bearings yet or indeed unpacked completely. It was an odd trip, mostly because I'm not that used to staying in B&B - hotels have been much more my thing and it's quite a different approach, particularly for the anti-social amongst us (me, in other words). The only downside about travelling on your own - which is otherwise great, because you get to do exactly what you like, no need for negotiation or compromise - is that you get to listen to the inanity of other people without any kind of buffer.

The Hebrides themselves are extremely beautiful. I have hundreds of pics I need to sort through and that was despite the fact there were a couple of days where the weather limited what I could do. The way of life is like stepping back in time - the resident population of the entire archipelago is only about 28,000 and even when you add tourists (considering I was there at the start of their tourist season) it's never going to be that busy. Most of the time, wherever I was, I had the place to myself. The top half of the islands, everything is closed on Sundays and even outside there, most shops close at 6 and restaurants don't serve food after 9.

There were lots of people cycling the islands (which seemed like quite a masochistic pursuit to me - they're not that hilly, but the weather is very changeable and the wind can be evil) - not to mention the hordes of folks with campervans. This is a place where the majority of the roads are single track with passing places, which takes a little getting used to, as does the cavalier attitude of the livestock to the concept of vehicles. I'm used to sheep, though the Hebrides sheep are much more cocky than any I've encountered before - I'd been told that sometimes you have to 'nudge' them with the car to get them to move, but fortunately I didn't meet any that were quite that recalcitrant - and then there's the Vatersay cows. Yes, the cows on that particular island are notorious for their liking to lie down in the road, not to mention apparently making a special detour to it when it comes time to defecate, since there seemed to be more cowpats on the road than in the surrounding fields.

I'd hoped to get the chance to do some kayaking while I was up there, but sadly it was a little too early in the season, so if there's anything that gets me back there then it'll probably be that as much as anything else. That and just how relaxed the place is, if you get into the swing of things there, not to mention the fact that while it's supposed to be one of the best places in the UK to see otters I didn't manage to spot a single one. :(

In other news, before I went away I've been doing some work on the house and garden, discovering yet more joys of BIY (bodge it yourself) from the previous owner. This is a guy who thought it was a really good idea to just plaster in water pipes running along an outside wall without insulating them first, so that when the inevitable burst pipe happened one winter I ended up with a massive mess before I could get the burst fixed. Those pipes have now been boxed in instead, in case of future calamity.

He'd also built a raised bed in the garden which was falling apart, so this year I decided to pull it to bits and replace it. Digging down, I discovered that he had pulled up a bunch of paving slabs underneath it (fair enough) but had then just thrown the resulting rubble into the raised bed with the earth. I now have a nice pile of broken slabs to dispose of, but I do have a proper raised bed in which I am attempting to grow vegetables. At present, pumpkins (which are finally coming up even though I planted them before I left for Scotland, delayed by the poor weather), garlic and beans.

I had all sorts of plans for catching up with various shows and writing too while I was away, none of which really amounted to anything, though I did read a lot of fic. When it came to updating the recs pages on my website, I discovered all sorts of issues with them which led to a complete overhaul and this led to a general sort-out over there. All sorts of things were on AO3 that weren't on my site and vice versa, though the latter is mostly stuff I can't quite bring myself to re-read (SG-1 fic, I know your ears are burning...) and I'm not sure if it should be more widely shared. Or if there are even still people reading that fandom, fcol. ;)

Also I have written a thing, (a Magnificent 7 fic) which makes me hope that I can continue to make some progress on the other stuff I need to finish.

Okay, I think that's sufficient rambling for now...

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