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Well – this weekend my good lady @BarefootMahala has gone off for some well-earned gallivanting with her colleagues at Barefoot Books in Toulouse, France. She’s taken the baby (she’s breastfeeding) so has left me looking after Bian and Bashi. So far things have been relatively lovely; Bian has helped me look after things and has been cheerful and such – Bashi (while she’s sleeping more than usual, during the day) has mostly not changed her behaviour due to the missing Mummy & Bob. Today Bian is going to spend a few hours with his mate from school, playing Skylanders and generally being 7… so that’ll give me some time to clean the living room and put some laundry away I suppose!

I’ve started work on the high “D” flute, and I have a couple of others in the process at different stages. Hopefully I’ll have some real crackers ready for the Lin Dhu festival in August! (Oh, didn’t I mention that? I’m going to be selling and playing flutes at Lin Dhu in August ;-) )

So it’s going to be a weekend of housework and time with the kids – and I’m pretty down with that to be fair! It’s the first time Mahala has been away from Bian and Bashi for more than a night or two, it’s the first time she’s flown on her own for many years; it’s the first time Bob has ever flown, it’s the first time I’ve had Bian and Bashi on their own for 5 days… all sorts of firsts this weekend and it’s GOOD.

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This week, I am mostly working in Germany. Which has brought to light a very interesting phenomenon. I have been without a German lesson since 2010 – and the last time I was in Germany was late 2009 on a three month working trip. So imagine my surprise when I find out that all the things I found difficult in my German lessons; all the things I had to twist my mind up in knots to achieve… all of these things suddenly seem a whole lot easier to get right. I still make mistakes, sure – and I’m still far from fluent at speaking (even less at understanding)… but I’m better than I was, without having done any real practice. I guess all the stuff I learnt has just consolidated itself and arranged itself in my head – and I actually quite like it.

german_guyLast weekend I’ve taken an order for a flute; but it’s a bit different, this one. It needs to be in the octave ABOVE the one I normally work in; and this is going to call for some design changes. I’m working through the changes I need to make, and should be able to start making the flute this weekend. It’s going to be fun… and I’m going to learn a lot doing it.

In the meantime, I have several things to do which are absolutely vital to my survival here in Teutonic Land… most of them come in a glass ;-)

 

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Sometimes, there’s just one of those days, isn’t there? When you’re in a pretty good mood, things are going OK, then you get to work and someone decides to piss all over your cornflakes… yeah that. This morning I saw an email from the project leader who urgently needed something… and this was while I was giving Sidley-Bob a bottle before I took Beano to school… so I wasn’t exactly in a position to help. It’s OK I thought – I have access to some people who can… and I know they can and I’m pretty sure they will. So I replied to the email with my phone, saying “I can’t help right now, but <x>, <y> and <z> probably can”. Dropped the boy off at school, and about an hour and a half after replying, got into work. To find that the colleague I had asked said she can’t do it because our team aren’t the responsible team. Now I don’t know about you – but when I, two years ago, spent a month and a half negotiating a

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new process with a whole bunch of very important people and got it signed off; and have been successfully using that process ever since (with our team as the responsible team) I get a bit confused when someone in the same team tells me we’re not responsible for it.  In fact, for “confused” read “bloody furious”. Angry that this person doesn’t know that we’re responsible for it (she should have been properly briefed) and in equal part angry that when I explain to her the proper process, (of which she’s clearly not aware) she tells me point blank that I’m wrong. Errm, WHAT? No, dearest colleague, I am NOT wrong. Cue a MASSIVE rant, of epic proportions, copying all sorts of people in… oh dear. The day DID improve from then on in – but I tell you there must be something in the air today because almost every one of my friends who I spoke to today had a bloody awful morning with lots of anger and bad moods. Link me up to your morning bad mood blog!

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Today has been preettttty OK, actually. Started off slowly (as you’d expect on a Sunday) – and we all sort of held back getting dressed until 10-11AM. We were planning that all of us were going to the Forest for a lovely walk around, but it turns out that my OH has really bad sinusitis (to cap off about 3 months of unwell-ness) so instead of going to the forest (which we like to do all together) I took the kids to the local resevoir for a little walk about. It’s SUCH a revelation to be able to do this after the bitterly cold recent months. We walked around the lake, chucking stones in and generally enjoying ourselves – just for an hour – and then came back.

The Summer months are going to make my 8X365 pics all the more interesting I feel… Oh! I probably haven’t told you about that… I’m part of a project inspired by the HTC Windows Phone 8X – a project where we take a self-portrait each day with the front-facing camera of said phone – and sometimes use software on the phone to edit/enhance the pic. You can catch the whole project at http://droider.nu/8X365 – do drop in and have a look/tweet/share it on Facebook.

Now, however, I’m feeling a bit crap and I’m going to go and relax myself to sleep… goodnight!

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Today, I actually made a concerted effort to begin making flutes again. It’s been a very long time since I went out to the shed and actually DID something. Today, I took Waonze’s low “D” Cherry flute and shaped it; in the process I appear to have broken something because it won’t play “in octave” – it will only overblow. I need to work on it now to try to get it working again – but I’ll start by making its bird and sorting the nest out and go from there. I also began a new flute in beech – the wood works easily and looks beautiful. One thing I do need to do in there is 

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TIDY UP – the place is an absolute disaster and also full of little unwelcome visitors. It started off tidy when it was first built – but it’s got worse and worse as time has gone on.

Anyway – the rest of the week has been a blur of work, babies, dishwashers and sleep – I’m very tired. HTC Elevate is moving to a new website, and I’m still a complete HTC fanatic. Sidley-Bob has put on a good amount of weight last week, and the way he’s been feeding we’re expecting similar this week. In things which

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make me wonder: Why is it that the guy who pulls out on you is always a slow driver? Why is it never the guy who wants to get the hell out the way? And while I’m wondering, what is it with pulling up to the lights in the outside lane, and then accelerating like a tired sloth when the lights go green? Dude, if you’re on the outside, GO QUICKLY… LOL.

Anyway – that’s about all I can think of for now – I daresay one day there’ll be a theme… or something.