Sarah made me a nice cake for my birthday. It was quite an involved process:
It's really nice - it tastes of honey! The icing came out runnier than we'd expected and ran straight down the sides and pooled around the base, but that was only a minor issue.
Hmmm, it appears I have two mental modes when working.
Deeply focussed into something. I block out distractions to hold onto the focus. This is what I need when I'm programming. Once I get into this mood, I get a lot done, since I have all the pertinent information sitting in my head and all the correct windows open on my computer, but it can be an uphill struggle to get started.
Event driven. When I'm dealing with emails, phonecalls, broken servers, and that sort of thing, I'm in a very different mode, agily flipping between things. I come across problems that will clearly need some deep focus, and I have to put them off for later, since it takes me a while to get out of deep mode and into event-driven mode.
This morning I've been event-driven, catching up on email, dealing with a down server, and now I really ought to try moving back into deep focus mode to work on something else, and I'm finding it hard; my thoughts just keep jumping around!
I really want to decrease my dependence on lots of deep thought mode for earning money; part of this revolves around getting an underling to do more of the programming so I can be event-drivenly mentoring them while doing the considerably easier form of deep thought required to design software architectures for them to implement... which is a work in progress as we speak...
The Saturday before Christmas saw me and Al setting out on a fouly foggy night with tendrils of fog rising up like a living creature to ensnear the unweary traverler - mid winter suddenly seemed a very stupid time to be out and about. We where heading to Somerset to visit some fellow geologists laddened with engagement gifts, birthday gifts and Christmas parafanalia not too mention a little something for the house warming 
The fog seemed to be exhuding a foul greasy dirt that was ssticking to the windscreen - we thought that our wind screen wippers had suddenly perished - but no they where fine - was it the road grit/salt as one astrophysicist suggested (namely olly) or some dark influence from beyound - like oil wells being burnt or volcanic eruptions ect...
Still it was a fun party though for some reason I appear to have only taken about two pictures :/
Sunday was the day of our departure from Highgate back to the rural sticks of Gloucestershire and what happens? Al becomes ill - he is headachy and cant think that straight and felt a bit feverish. A few paracetamol sorted most of it out so that about 5 hours late we could actually set out for our trip to Essex to pick up the Jeany who had been visiting mum and dad as this week mum starts her radiotherapy so Jean has spent most of christmas etc... with them.
Once Jean was picked up we headed out onto the road once more and all was going well until....
We discovered M25 south to M4 west interchange was closed - arg! Never fear we thought there'll be some sort of way to loop back on ourselves so that we could go via Reading instead of Oxford or there'll be diversion signs and we'll be fine.... hahahahahahaha. Well there where diversion signs and they took us to a round about where it was obvious that we had to go round and double back on ourselves - easy right? Well it would have been except that it was one of those major ones that has lanes that spiral outwards and you have to pick the correct lane for your destination - except there is no such lane for doubling back on yourself so that we where having to guess and suddenly we where one lane too far over and before we could correct it a barrier divided us off and we had no choice other than to follow the route - to Heathrow Airport :/
We thought there must be some round abouts where we can turn around surely? Right? There's always round abouts - this is England.... no round abouts - we thought we'd found one with lots of glittering lights on short polls around it but no this turned out not to be a round about and took us into a one way system which lead us to a carpart - with barriers that had a minimium charge of £2.30 for half an hour. No way to reverse, no where to turn around - nothing so we paid our £2.30 and left.
This then took a turn towards the strange (especially as the previous night we had watched a Stephen King film) we where directed into a tunnel that looked like was too small for cars and was father long and square in cross section with a green circle lane right down the middle of it and signs sayng the cyclists had priority. Once in this system we had no coice of where to go so we entered this tunnel in the van and too our relief exited without any creepy horror movie antiiques!
We then resumed our journy on wards towards Gloucestershire only now Al was starting to feel sick again - combine this with our windscreen washer deciding to die and random greasy dirt appearing on the windscreen and we where stopping more than we normally would 
We got home about 3 ish and pretty much fell into bed. I awoke in time for us to get Jean to nursery and for me to go to Cheltenham to do the mirade of things that needed to be done today but... it never happened becuase it turned out that I had slept through Al being sick and he was doubled uo with stomache cramps and weak and pasty looking. Not good. After some thought over why he was sick and I wasnt seeing as I am the one who gets sick not him we worked out that he had typed out the contence of the left over non-alchoholic mulled wine I had made on saturday. He had drunk a mug of the stuff with the dregs of the spices and CLOVES that I had used - and becuase time was short he'd downed the stuff including the sluge that contianed all the CLOVES I had put a brew for about 15 people :/
Can anyone else see where this is going?
Yes - I have managed to poison my husband with CLOVES - he says its not my fualt but mew :'( It took until about 4 this afternoon before he could contemplate eating anything at all and he still hurts. Of course this has put us realy teally behind for the week and doesn't feel like a particually good start to the new year :/
On New Years Eve clair came round to where we are staying in Highgate and painted my nails for me including putting on nial gems which took a while and for me has resulted in self control in trying not to pick at them!
We then headed out to Burgess Hill for a geology party (well a party hosted by geologists). Sarah and Simon where in disgrace as they went and got marraide with out telling me! In fact scarily I realised I hadn't seen any of them since Flos wedding just before the birth
It was great catching up and their tree looked fab
Midnight came with a pop by which time me and clair where horse from having sung along to about three cds worth of power ballards 
As you have probably noticed Neil sprouted some facial hair during the night! He then proceeded to dance badly
Sarah and Simon had made mulled wine with chillies in! I'd not come across this concept before - the verticts ranged from wow! To arg my mouth and throat are blistering - I was a chicken and avoided it.
Here are some general picks of party randomness
Alaric decided to a) design chocolate bars and draw pianos becuase Jules Holland was excited on TV with a piano and to general amusement he decided to do impressions of Wallace and Gromite for which he has the perfect teeth!
Some time around 3 am we decided that it was time for cups of tea having all stuffed our faces with warm minni jam filled doughnuts, chocolate brownies (made by one of the Clairs), out cookies (made by one of the Sarahs) and other sundry yummyness! Did I mention that most people at this party where called Clair (sorry probably different spellings I know!) or Sarah! this can only mean one thing! - Clearly they are the best two names in the whole universe 
Coming soon to a blog near you - What else we did over Christmas - as some of you may have noticed the blog was actually broken there for a while hence I am only writing the posts now. It felt disheartening to write the posts when I knew people couldnt get at them to read :/
Again Happy New Year
Jeany-bow was at a family party creating havoc with two contemperies the three of whom where dressed in identical little fairy outfits! I'm hoping someone took pictures for me
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