Author Archive
On the road at Christmas
Friday, January 1st, 2010Run the Pubs 2009
Monday, December 21st, 2009Yesterday saw the continuation of a recent tradition: a run around all of the pubs that hosted us following our Tuesday night runs in the summer. This year that entailed taking in the Beaulieu Road Inn, Oak Inn (Bank), Sir Walter Tyrell (Rufus Stone), Royal Oak (Fritham) and Fighting Cocks (Godshill). Seven of us gathered at the first of these at 9 o’clock on a frosty but sunny morning. We set a leisurely pace and stuck to a well trodden path bar a minor detour where the Forestry Commission had closed a ride for ‘consolidation’. Refreshements on route were provided at Minstead courtesy of the Yeos (although sadly none could be persuaded to join the run). I handed over to Christine at Fritham where Peter Smith also retired. This left Sue Sleath, Stuart Boden, Neil Broderick, Roderick Johnstone and Peat Allan as the five to complete this year’s run in its entirety (just over 17 off-road miles in a smidge under 3 hours). Neil continued with his form of recent years by finishing with blood running down his leg from a fall within half a mile of the start (albeit an injury actually sustained a week early!).
Cranky competition
Sunday, December 20th, 2009Snow arrives
Friday, December 18th, 2009Nursery Sing-Song
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009I took a couple of hours out of work this afternoon to go along to Emma’s nursery for their Christmas performance. I picked up Christine, Emma and Duncan from a friend of Emma’s birthday party and we drove to the nursery. Christine stayed outside feeding Duncan so, having handed Emma over to the nursery assistants, I had the pleasure of joining the audience of parents on my own.
The children were led in at the front of the room and all obediently sat on their coloured spots on the floor. Their subsequent rendition of various Xmas themed songs wasn’t as bad as you might imagine from a bunch of under-3s. One boy was in particularly fine voice much to the amusement of the audience. Emma was partly obscured from my view by one of the assistants but I could see that, despite having told us most of the words to the songs they were going to sing, she didn’t sing a word. She just had this look on her face as if to say “what are all these children doing?”.
After the singing was over the children were released to their parents and we filed out past Father Christmas. True to her word, Emma wasn’t scared of him this time. She wouldn’t say anything to him though and just stared at him intently. Having been told that he would park his reindeer outside she was a little disappointed to discover that they weren’t there when we left!
Second to Sam
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009On Sunday we were up early for the SOC event at Queen Elizabeth Country Park. Sufficiently early that by 9 o’clock Emma wanted to go home! It was, to be fair, bitterly cold and the orienteering parking was on the opposite side of the A3 to all the Christmas tree and playground action at the Visitors’ Centre. Perhaps more importantly for a recently potty (but not yet bush) trained child, the toilets were also quite a long way away!
Scared of Santa
Sunday, December 13th, 2009On Saturday we took Emma to see Santa in the clubhouse at work (obviously where he hangs out at weekends). There was a bit of a queue but the guys had done a good job of providing entertainment once you made it in to Santa’s grotto: snowing Christmas trees, dancing Santas – that sort of thing. Emma’s favourites were the toy trains. Unfortunately, when the moment came to meet the big man Emma’s nerves kicked in and she just cowered behind me.
I was suitably impressed by the monetary value of the presents that Santa was doling out although, given Emma’s present was aimed at 12 months – 3 years, you can imagine that it might not keep the attention of a bright 2.5 year old for a long time. Emma also wasn’t too impressed by the magician whose voice was blaring out of the speakers in the sports hall. They were also out of mince pies so we just retreated to the playground outside. Once we were safely at home Emma declared that she wouldn’t be so scared of Santa next time. We’ll find out on Wednesday as I believe he’s due to be visiting nursery then…
WebSphere ESB V7 available
Friday, December 11th, 2009WebSphere ESB (and Process Server) Version 7.0 is generally available as of today which, amongst other things, means that I’m free to blog at will about the product content. As is traditional, I’ll start with an overview of what’s new in this release of the product (and the associated WebSphere Integration Developer tooling). Over the coming weeks I hope to cover each of these areas in more detail.
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