Chicago?

For those that read my blog and are not aware of the exciting news, we're all off to Chicago for 5 months over the Easter Bank holiday.

Whaaaattttttt?

April's been asked to cover someone else's maternity leave over in head office so will cut hers short.  That means I will take my planned shared parental leave a couple of months early and then extend that out until Florence's 1 year old.

April's company will put the three of us in Chicago but the cats won't have to fend for themselves, a friend's work colleague is looking to move to Tonbridge in the near future and is available to pay our bills and look after cats.

Flights start at around £350 return so if you'd like to come over for a visit, book you time in our diaries now.

Pestering IT does work

I've been pestering IT as my work PC only had 4GB Ram.  It's not really a problem as I do 90% of my work on big servers that have 128GB.  I do have issues when i've got a number of local workbooks open, outlook and Chrome so thought i'd see what they can do.

I've now got 10GB!

My windows experience index has gone up from 5.7 to 6.7.  Whoopie!

Thanks IT.

Winning is expensive.

Guess who won the poker?  And I won the darts!

Poker night 3 was a success for.  I ended up winning!  It was agreed the punishment for winning was to buy all of the drinks in the pub afterwards.  My £80 winnings didn't last long and I think I made a net loss of about £60 for the whole night.

Anyone for some blue food?

I'm making some chicken and vegetable soup and bought some black potatoes (because they looked interesting).  When I cut them open they're actually purple, so too now are my fingers.  I'm hoping they don't turn my soup blue too!

2 cats went in, 1.5 came back

Haircut

Consoling herself with some food

Not much cat left

Took the cats to the vets for their annual C.A.T (jabs), poor Biscuit left there with a mohawk.

Toughest on the pitch

Who would have thought that my position at rugby was made up of the toughest men on the pitch (gets the least injuries).  And before you point out that the winger in position 14 has less, this doesn't count as they make a point of avoiding contact at all costs.

Position	Concussion	Blood	Neck	Shoulder	Knee	Muscular	Total
1	7	28	26	28	22	23	134
2	20	33	29	22	28	22	154
3	7	29	13	24	22	23	118
4	12	20	8	19	15	10	84
5	5	25	13	14	12	13	82
6	17	26	6	15	13	18	95
7	15	31	11	16	16	18	107
8	8	18	13	21	17	22	99
9	16	25	8	21	21	18	109
10	24	17	26	14	8	24	113
11	14	10	14	11	15	15	79
12	8	5	9	8	14	18	62
13	10	13	9	8	8	19	67
14	6	3	7	8	13	23	60
15	6	15	11	16	19	20	87

http://www.rugbyworld.com/takingpart/fitness-takingpart/study-in-france-reveals-findings-on-frequency-of-rugby-injuries-by-position-54325

Fuck you dieters

We get free cereal at work and occasionally I have a packet of Alpen in the morning if i've not had much to eat the night before (like last night where I only ate 2 babybels, plus 4 Kronenburgs).

I usually use  original Alpen but this morning I took a look at the packet with no added sugar.

With sugar 374 kcal,
Without 375 kcal

Not only are you eating sawdust, but you're not even saving on calorie intake.  I don't think it's worth it.

Eating on your own isn't much fun

I had Monday and Tuesday off from work as was feeling pretty ill.  I was generally feeling better in the evening on Tuesday so popped out.  I was also going stir crazy!  I was the only one in for the first 30 mins.  The Thai was good though.  Might try it again tonight as I have nothing in the house.

Not the best valentines day

I even had a lovely conversation with some twat on twitter.  That was a mistake.

At least Liverpool won 0-5 against Porto

Adjustments to the fridge magnet wall

Bored yesterday so added a little change to our magnet wall

Lloyd's has gone very PC

Gender neutral toilets on my floor at Lloyd's.  They've just renamed the previous disabled toilets.

Pub steal

I picked up this menu holder in a pub last week.  That will go nicely in the bar.

Last day with Florence

Florence has landed in Australia after about a day of travelling.  Here's a photo of us on Sunday at the farmers market.  Brr...  Last night was my first without Florence.  Only another 11 to go.

It's around 35 degrees along the Gold Coast.  Urgh...

As promised

Little Flo has a moustache!  That's if this plastic pacifier one counts.  Was it worth £6?

Probably not.

The best £6 I will ever spend?

Doubt it...

But watch out for a Florence photo update soon

Cat attack!

 

Florence was upstairs asleep, the cats decided to attack!

Snow in Tonbridge

Snow in Tonbridge, not really enough to settle in the town but the countryside looks nice.  And definitely not going to be a snow day.  Boo!

Correlations in the new version of the model

This month I have the exciting task of converting our models into the new version of ReMetrica (the capital modelling tool we use).  This is what the new version of the model has done to our correlations.  It's almost pretty.

I'm sure it's a magic eye thing.  If you stare long enough into it you will see a dolphin or if you're luck a naked lady.

Moonlighting

I was watching a clip of Rick Stein yesterday and it looks like Sue Perkins has been moonlighting at a restaurant in Vienna. 

Annual clean

Our car had it's annual clean (service) with Audi yesterday. 

A nice day off

I had yesterday off as I was down to watch the superbowl on the Sunday night.  We had a couple of call offs so decided to watch the rugby and football at a more sociable hour.  I had a rough night with Florence (my turn) and ended up going to bed before 9pm anyway.

I went for a long walk with Florence in the morning before meeting April in Fuggles for lunch. 

After that we headed back home to watch Bladerunner.  Now to watch the new one with April before she heads off to Australia.

Sound like me?

 

I use swift key as my input on my android phone, it's analysed the words i've used.

DIY master?  I don't think so!

View from Lloyd's

 

I left home early last night as I had a physio appointment later that evening.  Here's the view from the lift on the way down.