Early Departure

Today I was headed into work, and after that as we were meeting up with friends in Woking for the evening, with today being New Year's Eve, I had carefully arranged to meet Chrissi in Woking and then proceed from there.

This dedicated research included planning routes on Google Maps, even using the Street View (which I am fast falling in love with) to check as to exactly what the exit sign says so I knew what exit I was coming off at. I would meet Chrissi at Woking Station at precisely 6ish, and then we would proceed from there. All well and good.

This plan immediately disintegrated around 1:55pm - just when I was thinking to myself "I've pretty much done everything I had planned for today, how am I going to fill another three and a bit hours", and the ops manager came round and said to everyone that we were closing the office at 2. So I happily left, drove home and sit here writing a blog in comfort, preparing to go out again later - this time no meeting or planning really necessary!

Backlog Clearing

The other thing to update from yesterday is that we caught up with the Molloys, who are down for Christmas - this had long been planned but only actually came to fruition on the Friday evening that we finalised plans. We'd planned to meet for 1pm and then head for lunch - by virtue of our speedy drive down south we had plenty of time to go home first, drop off all our bags (it's surprising how much you take with you when you have the space), and then head on out again.

I was doing the drive over to Woking as I knew the roads slightly better, which was in part the reason why we swapped drivers midway back. It was strange driving on roads that you know very well but haven't driven on for 9-10 years, if at all.

The main event was obviously seeing Mark and Sophie, which was very nice - we decided not to break with tradition or be adventurous, so ended up at the Bridge Barn (see 'Badger Rib' entries from many years ago) for a spot of lunch - which was pretty decent. We then returned to theirs - well, to Mark's parents, as it really is now - and played a couple of games before heading on as they were already booked up for the evening! We will be seeing them again tomorrow night for New Year's Eve, so will have a chance to see them again before they return back Northwards post-Christmas.

Homeward Bound

I tried to think of a band or song to equal the use of 'Journey' for the trip up to Chester, but failed. Although considering the multitude of bands that exist somewhere, to resort to cliche like I have means you're still fairly likely to stumble across one by accident.

Today's journey back was interesting to say the last. We left early, a little after 7am, to make the most of roads mostly free of traffic. It was raining as we left, but just as we started to get onto the motorways it was heaving down. Visibility was ridiculously low - you could barely see in front of you - and it was not very pleasant driving! Luckily everyone was being sensible about the driving and were all tucked in, leaving huge distance and not going more than about 50-60mph.

I had said to Chrissi that there were services in 5 miles, and if it continued like that I was going to pull over there and have a break - that weather couldn't last too long, and it'd be sensible to wait it out for 10-15 minutes as opposed to keep driving in that. As it was, within 5 miles it had cleared up and was only heavy rain (which now seemed laughably straightforward). I drove the M53-M56-M6-M42-M40 leg, and at the first services on the M40 we stopped for a stretch of the legs and breakfast.

From there, Chrissi drove the rest of the way back home (M40-M25-A3 leg) - including the M25 not being entirely ground to a halt, a near miraculous occurance. We made it home at a little before midday, which was a decent effort.

Return Leg

Tonight should be an early night, due to an early start in the morning - we're due to drive back home (and depending on traffic may well detour and head directly to Woking). We are scheduled to meet Mark and Sophie for lunch at 1pm, so if the journey is taking longer than expected we may abandon the plan to return home first and instead drive directly to Woking to meet up with them.

I'm still pencilled in for the drive back - considering the first paragraph of this blog was written before we ate and this paragraph was written having just come up to bed, the time should suggest that I failed miserably with the opening sentence! More on this tomorrow.

Working Remotely

Today I was working again - which wasn't particularly exciting, as you don't get the interesting work stories to fill the blog with when you're in a little office of your own a couple of hundred miles away. The day passed without incident and without significant achievement (some progress on documentation but nothing to write home about).

This evening Rachel joined us, having travelled up by train. Her journey provided a frustrating contrast with ours - while typically train is more straightforward and less time consuming (but more expensive) and car is slightly longer but less constrained and cheaper, particularly for two - Rachel's journey up did not demonstrate this. She took a little over six hours to make it having had a mess with her ticket printing, a signal failure, another delay and then failing to make a connection. All rather ridiculous, and throws the train vs car decision into sharper relief - at least you never have to worry about not having the right tickets for your car or not having printed them correctly!

Rained In

Today is December 26th, or Boxing Day as it is known here in the UK. For my non-UK readers, which make up at least 50% of my audience, perhaps more, this is a bank holiday and so the second of our days off (we don't have Christmas Eve off).

Today has been marked by ... so far very little. We had planned on going out for a walk - the idea being that some fresh air and a bit of exercise were probably overdue following our eating the previous day. However, the elements conspired against us as the rain fell continually - at some points it was perhaps bearable, but it never eased up long enough for it to become a serious prospect. [Considering the flooding taking place in some parts of the country, it seems a little churlish to complain about the rain affecting our potential exercise plan!]

We instead sat around, ate a little, played a game and as you can tell, then retired to our respective entertainments - I am currently writing my blog for the day, and wondering whether to cheat and put one in place for tomorrow already.

Tomorrow I'm not quite blessed with as much free time as I'm officially working again. Once more I'll be working remotely, and hoping to avoid the issues that affected me on Monday, which should be straightforward enough as long as I steer clear of the caps lock button! I have a few things to do for work tomorrow, but failing that it gives me the opportunity to start on many other things that I'd like to do but never find the time to do it in. A couple of days of isolation may be just what is required for this.

Christmas Blog

My dedication to a blog-a-day effort has extended as far as to be blogging even on Christmas Day. I thought this was the first time that I'd done so, but a quick check back through my archives revealed that I'd also spent a little of my Christmas in 2007 making a post.

Five years later, here I am again making the effort once more. Today has been a pleasant day - spent with family, relaxed and not too much really required. Some nice gifts were exchanged, but it was more about the enjoyable company than anything else particularly. We also had the rare achievement of balancing out a Christmas meal which was at a sensible size - I say we, as if Chrissi and I had some part in it, but the cooking this year was handled by Dad.

One thing we were remiss on - amongst all the relaxing and eating, that we didn't actually get to watch Doctor Who! As in Chrissi's mind this is one of the key events of Christmas Day - and in fact how she got hooked on it in the first place when she watched it here several years back on Christmas - this is quite surprising. We have enough time over the next few days to catch up with it though!

Working Remotely

So today I was working from home - or rather, working remotely, as instead of working from my own home I was working from Dad's home. This should have been straightforward but I did have a minor hiccup in the morning.

Having got up, got my laptop set up and connected to the WiFi, I had issues hooking up on the VPN into the work network. Of course, the problem of this is that all the FAQs, instructions and even the helpdesk number is all stored on the intranet. Which I couldn't get into, as I was unable to connect to anything - from either my laptop or from Dad's computer, which I appropriated to test this.

I had to call into work, to speak to someone and then get them to pass me the service desk number for me to call up. It turned out that my account had been locked at some point during my failed attempts (I'm suspecting due to a caps lock issue having entered the WiFi password in ALL CAPS) - and on none of the subsequent efforts to enter my password did it bother to inform me of this! Having got my account unlocked and got in, the work day proceeded without any significant incident!

Journey

It's tempting to start a new theme of post titles where I have a band as the title, but I'm not sure how long I'd be able to keep it up. Anyway, today's is an obvious reference because we took a trip up to Dad and Gill's for Christmas.

While we had the luxury of driving as opposed to relying on trains, we were also battling many other rival travellers on the road, spending a little over 90 minutes moving between different parking spaces on the M25. From there we progressed at a decent pace until we hit Birmingham, where it once more slowed down as we hit the M42 and then the M6. At this point we came off and stopped and a had a bit of a break, and a long discussion as to who would drive the rest of the way (neither of us really minded if the other did, so it ended up being Chrissi who finished the drive and I stayed as navigator).

The rest of the trip went mostly without incident until we came into Chester - and missed our turning which was never signposted. We had gone somewhat through Chester and were only signposted towards North Wales. It was only when I happened to recognise a shop that we realised where we'd ended up - and after hastily directing Chrissi to the opposite side of the roundabout she'd planned to head to, we were quickly on the right track. The route we took was actually easier than what we were directed through, as we came out to the same place without any actual directions that took us round several other roads!

It seems that I'm going to be handling the drive back at the end of the week, though, as Chrissi took the opening leg. For some reason while driving so far hasn't bothered me, I feel more pressurised knowing there's someone else in the car too!

Oh, And The Other Detail ...

The one thing I meant to add to yesterday's blog I remembered this morning - the most important decision of the new car, namely the first song and CD to play. Chrissi and I had in fact discussed this at some length on Monday, before arriving at different decisions - as a result of us both having our first drive independently.

I'm not sure what Chrissi eventually settled with - she had discussed some random song by the Beach Boys which I had never heard of, and we passed over the obvious (Cars by Gary Numan).

However, for my part I made the decision to go with Feeder's Buck Rogers as the debut song for our vehicle. A sound choice, I think.

Driving Introduction

As mentioned earlier in the week, we now own a car. As Chrissi is currently a lady of leisure - still to start her new job - I had the luxury of driving to work both yesterday and today. I wanted the chance to do a bit of driving on my own before the trip at the weekend, at the least - and also it'd be an easier trip to work, and make it easier for me to get to poker yesterday.

Mixed results, but here are some of the highlights:

Directions: On five trips up and down the A3, I've left at the right exit three times. Of those, I made a wrong turn not long after - meaning I took a scenic route to work yesterday, and in the evening I took a loop around Raynes Park to get back to nearly where I started. Only one missed turning yesterday, however, which is an improvement - and that was as it suddenly became obvious as I was going past it and didn't feel quite like making a sharp turn.

Lighting: I may have forgotten to turn my lights on at the beginning of my journey back yesterday. This did not happen today.

Rain: First trip yesterday morning was in heavy rain. While this may have meant flooding and problems elsewhere, it did mean that I had to play about with lights and wipers and other such details which I had been hoping to avoid on the first day. But glad to get it under my belt too!

Most embarrassingly: For this I blame the automatic which meant I had less to think about when pulling away, but I managed to forget to take the handbrake off. Not only this, but I blamed the automatic, thinking it was a bit jerky and harder to control than using the clutch of the manual. I managed to do a three point turn, get to the end of the road and pull onto the next road before I realised the revs were too high and I simply wasn't going up the gears, and suddenly became aware of what had happened - strangely enough, that made it easier to control. Haven't done that again since ...

Poker Final

Tonight was the poker final. For the final, your starting chips are composed based on your performances over the year, so a better performance results in a higher starting chip count. I'd finished the regular season in a narrow second place, so started with an above average chip count but a little behind chip leader.

There were only seven of us, not the expected eight (one couldn't make it), and the dynamic is much more interesting with (a) different starting chip counts, meaning people are playing in different ways and (b) the notion that you have to try and win. You can't go out in second place and improve your overall standings, as you may try and just hold on in a regular monthly game to finish one or two places higher and outlast other players.

This was the reason why I ended up going out fairly early - or first, as it's otherwise known. I was chip leader and lost a good chunk on a cracking hand (pocket 10s and flopping a 10 first up, which lost to pocket Js and a J on the turn). My downfall was on an AQ hand with a decent pre-flop raise. The flop of 10 A 8 set me nicely but I didn't do anything on it - an A on the turn really commited me, and a couple of raises back and forth (three As with Q kicker? Going for that!) had me nearly all in and the only bit I was holding back was because my opponent was all in! Ended up losing to a full house, and went out after an all-in on the next hand - to three aces again!

It was still the right decision to push on that hand - I wanted to win, and taking out another player and to grab a huge lead early on would have been really valuable. So I don't regret the decision, but I'm not best pleased about the result!

Paradoxical Lateness

This morning I arose with mild alarm to discover that I had massively outslept my alarm (it was 7:23 - I should be at least awake and about to get up at 6:30, and leaving the house by 7:15). This left me with an odd conundrum - I could drive and be on time - or close to - or take the train and be guaranteed to be late.

Considering I thought it was wiser to not drive as I was still mostly asleep, I ended up taking the train and being a fraction late - not that this mattered hugely. This proved a good decision on the way home as I fell asleep on the train - this is better than when you do so behind the wheel, I hear.

Tomorrow I'll try again with an earlier start, but as parking is in short supply in Godalming I'm a little afraid of spending hours driving around in search of somewhere to park! Which could be not particularly fun.

Titbits from Today

Several random points to pick up so to address in no particular order.

Train Farce: This evening was another joyous journey home - resulting in me getting in the door a little after 9pm, around 90 minutes after I should have returned. The cause was a fatality at Earlsfield, but after having multiple trains come into Woking (where I change trains), stop, mis-announce where they were stopping, let you board, force you to return to the platform it became clear that noone had any semblence of a clue as to what was actually going on. To add a final mockery to the journey, as a train finally arrived that was headed to Surbiton, which I boarded - a second train pulled up on the neighbouring platform, announced it was going to Surbiton also, closed its doors and left before my train did.

Car Update: So we're the proud owner(s) of a car now. Chrissi went about the purchasing of said vehicle today, went to do a shop with it and then returned home later on to park it. I will likely try and drive to work tomorrow morning - which makes me a little nervous, although not the thought of driving itself - mainly that it's an automatic. While that should make it easier, having not driven one I'm not entirely sure what to expect, bizarrely!

Christmas Preparedness: It's now a week until Christmas and I have little done or organised that I should have done. Fortunately with Chrissi having finished work, I can helpfully let her take care of much of our joint gifts to other family members.

Something Random You Don't Know About Me IV

So today was one of those rare days when I did something I'd never had to do before in my life. In theory this should be exciting or at least momentous - in reality it was merely comical.

While I shouldn't have to clarify my non-hirsuit nature to any of my readers, this was demonstrated today when I had to purchase shaving gel. In my 27 years I have never had to do this before - one container was purchased for me while I was still living at home, attending sixth form college. Over ten years later, I've finally finished it and needed another. That shaving gel lasted longer than my current relationship has so far.

I'll see if I replenish this one before 2022. I may do - we'll see!

American Idiot

This afternoon Chrissi and I headed into London to catch the American Idiot musical, based on the music (and aforementioned album) of Green Day. As one of my favourite bands I was intrigued as to how their songs would be translated into a musical - while there is now an increasing number of rock-musicals (Rock of Ages and We Will Rock You to name but two), it's still not the most natural translation into a musical.

American Idiot was particularly difficult because the album it's based on was very much a concept album, at least two-thirds of the way to being a rock opera in itself. Some of its inspirations were from musicals - so to take that back and forth in formats struggles in the translation.

For the first part of the show, as they went through the album songs in sequence - with a little fleshing out of characters but not hugely - it felt almost like a concert with added choreography. There wasn't a musical in the form of songs interspersed with plot - and as the songs were already in this structure and there was less work to 'fit' a discography into a musical format around a story, the majority of the plot was told through songs, more of a rock-opera.

It did develop well and it was entertaining - but I'm still not quite sure that it works. The paradox is, as I pointed out to Chrissi, that their best tracks are from their earlier albums, while the most suitable songs for the musical were from their latest albums (3-4 songs from 21st Century Breakdown were added to the American Idiot tracks). This was clearly proved with the strength of the closing, post-finale song, the supreme Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) which was the by far outstanding effort.

It was a good afternoon's entertainment all being said, however - I'd recommend you to have a look for yourself, but as this was the last day it was playing in London you might struggle to do so!

Theme Ended

So I've been playing about with titling themes over the past fortnight, and decided that it's distinctly too limiting to try and summarise each blog in a single word, starting with a pre-set letter. Considering I've been only doing this for 14 entries based on two common letters, it makes you wonder how authors stayed sane while trying similar linguistic tricks - the famous lipographic effort of the novel Gadsby which contains 50,000 words none of which holding a letter 'e' being the most notorious example of this.

Today Chrissi and I were looking at cars - with more purpose than the last time we were browsing. We test drove two vehicles - I say we, but Chrissi was the one behind the wheel - and I got to impersonate someone who knew about cars by walking around it, looking at it and testing various things to make sure they were in good working order. The impression looked convincing enough to Chrissi!

After having the hard sell from one dealer who was desparate for us to walk out of there with the vehicle then and there, and a softer sell from a second dealer - it was admittedly quite pleasureable trying to negotiate down their prices or to force them to increase what they were including - we didn't end up buying anything on the day. We wanted a little time to look over the options again having had a bit of reflection and the make the decision later without the pressure of someone sitting beside us as we discussed it!

We have likely picked out the one we want, however - and as Chrissi is off this coming week she will be able to go and handle the purchase, collection and delivery!

Self-Reflection

This evening was the work Christmas party, but it was odd for me because I left somewhat early - a little before 11 - so as to get home. I ended up having drastically overestimated my time to journey to the station, ending up there about 12 minutes before my train departed (meaning that I could have at least stayed for another few minutes).

The twelve minute wait for my train left me with a fair amount of time for thinking (I didn't particularly feel like digging into my pockets and trying to sort out hooking up my earphones to my phone in the cold to listen to some music). Oddly despite the fact I'd enjoyed myself at the party, I was feeling oddly self-reflective and poignant. Not sure why, either. Perhaps it was because I'd ended up leaving relatively early, or had had to rush off to make my train (or hadn't had to rush off, as hindsight proved) and had not had the chance to say goodbye to many people as a result.

I'm still in a reflective mood even now. I think it may be simply because I just don't go out as much now as I used to. The last year I've just not gone out after work for drinks as I commonly did a couple of times a week before, in a large part due to the different culture and groups of people at my new work. I don't spend much time catching up with people, despite knowing I should and often trying on occasions. Perhaps it's something I can work on better over the next few weeks when people will be around more, and in the new year going forward too.

Or maybe it was just me over-thinking things in a cold evening while boredly waiting for a train!

Success

So today was my third driving test, and the first one I've taken for a little over nine years - when I failed for the second time a couple of weeks before I started university. It seems a long time ago now considering everything that's changed in my life since then!

Overall, learning how to drive (or perhaps refreshing myself with how to drive is more accurate) was much less arduous this time around. In part it's due to having been on the road that much more, as a passenger and pedestrian, and being that much more familiar and aware. In another part it's not having everything that surrounds learning to drive as a teenager and the freedom / responsibility / independence that it represents.

It was probably this as much as anything else that led to me being not at all nervous for my test this time. It was comfortable, relaxing and I never had any real problems - it all went very smoothly, was over quickly and was in hindsight rather straightforward. I even had time for an impromptu emergency stop (well, they should all be impromptu!) when a schoolgirl walked out without bothering to look in front of me at a crossing that was red for her and green for me.

As the above paragraph and title may have implied, I passed comfortably with only two minor faults in the test. Now I need to start considering getting a vehicle of my own and driving to work instead of relying on the trains!

Septuple

In landmarks I never expected to reach, this blog marks my septuple century, as I have now written 700 posts - a not insubstantial achievement.

To add to the numerical neatness, this seven hundredth blog is posted just seven days shy of seven years since my very first. It's not even as if I had to work for those numbers to line up - pretty impressive, if I don't say so myself.

As this means I'm averaging a fraction over 100 posts per year, it means I should hit my thousandth blog in the buildup to Christmas 2015. We'll see!

Sorcery

I'm trying not to add too many spoilers because I know Merlin doesn't show on BBC America, and as a result Carisa won't be able to watch the current (and final!) series until the new year. However, I was going to write about this at the weekend and then got delayed, so didn't.

So with ten episodes gone, we now have only three left - as the final two should be a two-part finale, as they typically are and have been, this means that next week's episode should be the setup. This week's episode should be building up to it. Except that at the moment it seems to be wandering still.

We don't have a proper antagonist in this series. Morgana is sulking about in the background, walking moodily from place to place wearing a black cape and with only her raven for company - it's horribly cliched. Mordred is earnestly proving how loyal and reliable he is, which should leave the suspicion gnawing away at you as to his true motives, but instead is just rather boring.

Merlin himself is not exactly helping things on - his fixating on what might be happening is now taking at least half of the episode, as he sullenly wonders whether Mordred fated to kill Arthur is fated irrelevant of his moping around thinking about it and if anything he can do to stop it or only make it come to pass. It drags. In an amusing juxtaposition of plots, Morgana is having a similar sulk-fest in the opposite corner, as she harangues everyone and anyone for a clue as to who Emrys is. Considering that he's fated to be her doom and destruction, she seems pretty keen on meeting him.

Hopefully it'll pick up next week, and leave us with a good couple of episodes over Christmas to finish on a high. It'll be interesting to see how they resolve it, but it seems that all the story writing resources have been absorbed into the grand finale and the journey along the way has become a bit lacklustre.

Storytime

One thing that I meant to note on Friday that escaped my memory at the time was that I spent a large amount of time on Friday writing stories. Sadly this isn't as exciting or as much a literary achievement as it would appear from the title. This was work, and as of such it wasn't particularly exciting - or at least no more so than usual.

The 'stories' are pieces that we are putting together for a development team elsewhere, which uses a slightly different documentation approach to us. To help them get to grips with the content, we're writing functionality as simple narratives of user journeys - what people want to do, what they do and what they see given certain conditions.

It's actually quite annoying to write - perhaps because I'm not as familiar with the format as I am with my standard documentation - but as you have to be particularly succinct and to the point, you end up spending a lot of time cutting down your writing as opposed to building it up.

So yes, I was writing stories at work. Another line I never expected to write on here.

Sleeptime

I've admittedly cheated again this weekend, and had to reissue blogs that had never been written on time. This is mostly due to my new sleeping pattern - I would usually blog towards the end of the day (giving me more time to actually find something to write about), and when I'm tired and fall asleep unexpectedly this tends to mean I miss out.

I'm trying to avoid repeating the same pattern now - it's a little before 9:30pm but I can feel myself flagging. I want to stay up for another couple of hours, or at least until between 10 and 11, to avoid waking too early. Today, bizarrely for a Sunday, I was awake from around 6am and eventually got up at 8. As per yesterday's blog, the main achievement of this early rise was that my morning was filled with daily quests.

Chrissi and I did also do a lot of research into potential cars that we would be due to purchase - she will need one to get to her work, and it makes sense to start hunting as it will be easier to have it in place before the Christmas period so we can make trips and visits with greater ease.

Scheduled

My weekly schedule has become somewhat relaxed, surprisingly so - I've gotten myself into a pattern where I'm up early, and as a result I'm tired earlier in the day. I go to bed earlier as a result and so - surprise - am awake early the next morning, and so the pattern continues.

Following the early night last night, I was awake around 6am on the couch, still sleeping there from the previous night. I'd planned to get an early night and be up early, as I had a driving lesson scheduled for 8am - but I hadn't quite planned on such an early night and on such an early start.

Admittedly, while this did leave me with an entire day to do as I wished with, I took no advantage of this whatsoever and mainly spent time catching up on WoW instead. New pets for 5.1 patch can be collected from old raid bosses, thus neatly combining in one my preferences for revisiting old content, collecting pets and collecting achievements - all good fun. Three pets out of a possible nine dropped, and I won one of these.

Rip-roaring

This evening featured another high point of my week's sleep schedule as I came home and fell asleep on the couch at around 9:30pm. Chrissi and I had been watching the Adventures of Tintin film, which wasn't all bad - I was impressed with the effort they went to in portraying so many of the characters as well as they had been in the books. There were nice shots in the background too, particularly the caricaturist at the beginning when illustrations from the books were used.

Today is December 7th, which gave me the opportunity to inflict my fascinating fact for this date on new people. As all will know, December 7 1941 marked the attack on Pearl Harbor - a lesser known fact is that December 8, 1941 marked the beginning of the Japanese invasion of then-British-controlled Burma. However, as a result of the involvement of both timezones and the international date line, the invasion of Burma - nominally a day later on dates alone - actually took place two hours before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

I warned you it was fascinating. You were unprepared, admit it.

Retention

One thing that I've managed to hold onto this week, much to my lasting surprise, is my feeble attempt at a moustache. For some reason I've grown attached to this, in more than just the literal sense, and am reluctant to let it go. Particularly as it came in better than last year, there's almost something to consider keeping.

This was kept in the first place beyond the end of November to confirm to people at work that I had continued the effort to the end of the month - and with this week being mainly filled with sleeping and not much else, I've not got around to getting rid of it and Chrissi seems not to have noticed.

Of course, if I leave it too long there arises the prospect that I actually have to work out how on earth to maintain it at some point, as it will grow beyond a point where just leaving it sorts it out fine.

Ridiculous

This morning there was a smattering of snow - as I left the house with Chrissi, we were delighted and amused by this. Enough to cause things to look pretty, not sufficient to cause problems.

Or so I thought.

My journey was problem-free until I reached Woking. As the train approached, it stopped just outside, as it always does to allow the previous train to leave the platform. Then it stayed stopped. For an hour. There had been breakdowns at Woking on both the fast and slow lines downstream, so no trains could move anywhere. We had little choice but to wait for them to clear one of the trains away and move us into the station.

At this point it wasn't a matter of simply resuming my journey - there was too much of a backlog. So another 40 minutes of waiting until the train I needed to catch arrived. The net result was that I was at work at a little after 10 instead of around a quarter to nine as usual.

Irritatingly, this was not the end of my travel hassle. On the return journey my train was delayed by 20 minutes, meaning that it didn't catch any of the connections; to add further irritation the next set of trains were also delayed, meaning that I waited at Woking for 40 minutes for the second time that day for a new train to arrive (at least this time I was able to wait in the warmer waiting room as opposed to on the cold platform). I eventually made it back into Surbiton at 7:35, nearly an hour after my normal time.

To say the least, I wasn't best pleased. It wasn't the best use of my time, and as I'd annoyingly forgotten my phone charger I used up most of the battery in the morning and didn't have enough phone battery left to entertain myself on my return journey. I resorted to staring moodily out of the window, which helped to pass the time but could have been better!

Reversion

As I'd mentioned, I fully expected that I was back into the routine and that there was little in the way of continual problems for my sleeping pattern. Of course, it wouldn't be that simple.

Last night I slept for only about three hours. I'm not sure why - I just wasn't tired, despite feeling fully tired, and so simply didn't sleep - despite, as far as I was concerned, wanting to quite badly! This had a knock-on effect where I was tired and struggling at work - not noticeably but I could feel that it was more of an effort than it should have been to stay awake and focused.

Hopefully this is something that gets sorted out promptly and doesn't drag on all week! Early nights to ensure nice sleep are in order, I think!

Routine

So today was the first day back at work, and it was surprisingly easy to get back into the routine. What surprised me most was my (wait for it) conquest of jetlag - watch as I look back on this at the end of the week and complain at my false bravado.

As our flight was relatively early (scheduled to depart at 4pm PST, or midnight GMT) I was pretty awake when it left - particularly as I'd only arisen from bed at about 10:30, so not particularly early, and had a decent night's sleep behind me. Predictably I slept not a wink on the plane, staying awake through the entire journey until we landed (around 10:30am GMT).

After we arrived home, I had fun with unexpected tidying (see yesterday's entry), did a token bit of unpacking and took a shower - then lay back on the couch with Chrissi and caught up with the three Merlin episodes we'd missed, nodding off and on through the last of these. Realising that sleep was winning but having fought hard to stay awake up to this point I felt I could finally concede defeat, and went up to bed for about 8pm.

The result was that I fell straight to sleep and woke up the proverbially bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:10am, fully refreshed and back on schedule. I was able to idle on my phone for an hour, get up and still leave early - a very pleasant turn of events. I was fully awake throughout the day and starting to feel tired again now - so maybe I'm back into the correct routine already. It'd be surprising, but possible.

Watch as tomorrow I complain about a night wide awake staring at the ceiling!

Return

So we landed around 10:30 this morning, made our way back through the airport - collecting luggage along the way - and via bus back home, returning at about 1:30 eventually.

The main event of today has so far been the cleaning of the fridge. I had gone to the freezer to take out the milk, to place in the fridge to thaw ready for breakfast tomorrow morning. I was greeted by an unpleasant smell, and it looked like there had been an outbreak of mould throughout, not to mention some of the milk seemed to have spilled across the tiny freezer.

I set about cleaning this up - wiping down all the surfaces, taking out and washing the shelves and door sections, all of which considerably easier as the fridge was mostly empty. When I got to the freezer itself, I discovered that the base was not covered with frozen spilled milk, as I had thought, but instead a pool of water. It was clear that it had not been on the entire trip away - which might explain the mould and the smell, now revealed to be two-week old milk.

A brief investigation revealed that the fridge was not faulty, at least. Instead on a tidying spree just before leaving I had accidentally caught the socket and switched it off at the plug. That might have been the cause!

So the unexpected story of today was a sudden cleaning spree, but it kept me busy and awake so I can't compain a huge amount!

Replaning

For today's title I decided to mock the word 'deplaning' (which annoys me - what's wrong with the good ol' disembarking?) as we are waiting to board our flight back to the UK - hence we are 'replaning', as I have now coined it.

It's already off to a good start, as while we should be boarding at 3:15 we received an announcement that we're delayed by about half an hour - no major issue though. We also had the surprise and minor nervousness caused by our names being called for the gate - it turned out that we were just having our seats swapped around to the other side of the aisle, which was no great concern.

It's been a good couple of weeks, mostly relaxing without me having to do too much. I even found myself getting bored at points and seeking something to do, which is rare enough for me. I did a good chunk of reading and a decent amount of writing, by my standards at least. Overall it was a pleasant trip, and I will miss the weather when we land, I'm sure!