Catching Up

Hey, Ian!  You haven't blogged for over three weeks!  What gives?

Yeah, sorry about that - life has been kinda tumultuous recently, constantly going back and forth to London, where my web access has been limited due to draconian rules in place at the client site and my laptop's hard drive dying.

Ah yes, the new Avanade job - how's that going?

Um, actually it didn't exactly pan out as I expected.  The role wasn't right for me, and nor was the consultancy lifestyle - I missed Yorkshire and I missed my wife :-)  So I handed my notice in after a month or so - Wednesday was my last day.

Crikey!  That was quick!  So what are you going to do now?

Fortunately I'm being welcomed back to Marshalls on Monday morning, where I was much happier.  I should never have left in the first place...  I'll explain more about this whole escapade soon when I have chance to write it up properly.  Suffice to say that the Avanade culture and lifestyle isn't for everyone, and (as ever) I should have listened to my mother.

Fair enough.  But why no blogging at the weekends?

I do have a social life, you know!  At the start of the month I was in Riga (capital of Latvia) for Bruce's stag do.  My writing style won't do justice to the chaotic goings-on of that most excellent weekend, so instead I will direct you to Paulo's Riga Review (spellchecked, but otherwise unedited!), and to some of my photographs from the Friday night and Saturday daytime (unfortunately all my images and videos from the Sunday were lost when the aforementioned hard drive died).

Then more recently Joce and I had a sedate weekend visiting Emma n Marcus in Derbyshire, where we took in the Heights of Abraham and the historic "plague village" of Eyam..

Sounds fun.  So, no interesting techie news for us?  Book reviews?  Comments on newly-purchased LPs?

I've spotted a few cool things on the web in the last week or so, but don't yet have the time to pass comment.  I'd suggest you subscribe to my del.icio.us feed if you're interested in keeping track of the things I've been reading online recently.  Book and music reviews will just have to wait for now - The West Wing is just about to start on More4 :-)