Category: Personal

Since I managed to procure a parking space nearby my current contract, I’ve been driving to work instead of taking the bus. Even with rush hour traffic on the Edinburgh bypass, it cuts my commute down from an hour each way to half that. I do like getting home earlier in the evenings, and having a bit of extra sleep each morning, but I have also lost an hour of reading time from each day. If you have a look at my quick book reviews for 2004, you’ll see that in the first half of the year I’ve only managed to get through 14 books. Eek!

When I did my summing-up of 2003, I was terribly disappointed to find that I’d only read 37 books last year, and I was determined that I’d get through 50 this year. At my current rate I’ll be lucky if I crack 30. Damn.

However, aided by a postal DVD rental service (ScreenSelect), I’ve been burning through films like a wild thing: I’ve seen 39 new films this year already. That’s more than I watched in the whole of 2003. At least I’m not slacking off entirely in my consumption of entertainment.

Another side effect of driving to work is that I’m now a lot better informed about British current affairs than I have been in ages. I listen to the Today programme in the mornings, and to PM and the 6 o’clock news on the way back home. As a further consequence, I’m now less clued up about American politics than I used to be. I find that I can only cope with so much spin, double-talk, and outright lies in a single day, and I don’t need to supplement my daily dose with a helping of political blogs in the evening. The only American political blog I still read regularly is Talking Points Memo, and I usually catch up on it once a week.

Despite the usual stereotype of drivers being more stressed-out than non-drivers, I think that I’m actually more relaxed because of my drive. It’ll all have change when I next switch contracts, though.

At the end of last week, the possibility arose for me to go and work in Belgium for a short while. We discussed and investigated this opportunity over the weekend. With Abi still on maternity leave, it would have been (just) possible for all of us to move there for six months, and come back in time for Abi to return to work in November. However, we came to the conclusion that it would be too much stress in too short a time, for not enough tangible benefit.

But because we are still interested in moving to a different country so that Alex and Fiona can be exposed to another language at an early age, we came up with a different plan: move to a bigger house here in Edinburgh this summer, spend the next three years getting Fiona up and running, getting Alex launched into school, getting myself more experience as a technical contractor, and getting Abi cross-trained on something other than mainframes, and then move to the Netherlands in the summer of 2007.

Note that this is still a provisional plan, and is subject to change.

What it does mean is that we’ve started the search for a new house. It’s a daunting prospect because the Edinburgh property market is insane, and finding the space we want at a price we can afford is not going to be easy. We have identified a couple of target properties already, though, and we plan to take a look at the first one tomorrow evening. More details when we have them ourselves…

James and Katriona have got theirs! Congratulations to them, and welcome to little Sandy!

While Kenny was staying with us earlier in the month, he did an oil portrait of Fiona. It came out spectacularly well, capturing the essence of our little girl while she sleeps. The way her little face squishes as she lies in her chair is just right.

Kenny has most recently been on display at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in Santa Monica, CA. Have a look at his own web site, too: www.littlejohngallery.com

The due date was yesterday, but there’s still no sign of the baby yet. In the meantime, here are some pictures before, during, and after installation of our new garden shed. My dad and I spent most of last Monday shifting earth from the back corner of the garden to level it off, and burying old railway sleepers (you can see them on the first photo) to provide a solid foundation for the shed to rest on. The shed itself was delivered and put up on Tuesday.

As of this afternoon, I’m the happy owner of a new Motorola v525 phone. I haven’t had much time to play with it yet, but the colour screen is nice, the built-in camera is nice, the polyphonic ringtones (with the option to install my own MP3 to play) are nice, the user interface (which I’d been warned was complicated) is nice, the battery life is very nice, and the overall size and feel of the phone in my hand is, well, nice.

I haven’t actually called anyone on it yet, so I don’t know what it’s going to be like in actual use, but I’m sure that will be nice, too.

Also, from early next week, we’ll also be owners of a new Fiat Punto. Whether we’ll be happy owners remains to be seen. We’ve resisted having a car for so long that it’s going to be very odd having one again. With a new baby (forthcoming) and a toddler, it’s going to be undeniably useful, and with me making the move into IT contracting (more on that soon), it will increase the range in which I can operate. But we’ll have to constantly remind ourselves that it’s easier to walk, or cycle, or take the bus for many journeys in and around town.

(But on the other hand, it’s a new toy. Toys are cool. The new car is shiny, and it’s black. It has a CD player, and adjustable lumbar support in the driver and passenger seats. Groovy.)