Christmas is coming...

No I haven't got the date wrong, it is still November (just) but you definitely get the feeling that Christmas will soon be upon us. Obviously the decorations have been in shops since Halloween was done with and the ads are beginning to appear on television with greater frequency. Other signs are the appearance of Christmas lists round at Mum and Dads and of course the Christmas music is out with the bands. SCWB are doing a Christmas concert after the Turner Sims one last weekend (which went very well all things considered) and SUCB have got the now traditional festive encore. The major downside was that we had to play Sleigh Ride tonight, and though I was more comfortable getting the notes under my fingers, it's still never going to be my favorite piece to play.

In other news I managed to get a few games of badminton this week for the first time in around a year+. Still some of the old mistakes but some damn fine shots (even if I do say so myself). The muscles definitely let me know this morning that I'd done it, but a bit of exercise can't go amiss.

Finally we got v7 out the door and so there are drinks tomorrow \o/. It's always good when your manager sends out a meeting notice with a location of the local pub :)

and the decorating goes on...

Hopefully there will be a blog post soon which doesn't contain an update on decorating, but while it's going well and every little change brings a smile I don't think I'll be letting up. The border went up today again with help from Dad which has meant it's gone on right and again looks great. Fortunately we only had to do one joining up of the pattern on the massive wall and that will be cunningly hidden by a room divider.

New sofas were always on the cards, but I had planned to buy them a bit later (possibly after Christmas). However having seen one I liked in Homebase it suddenly turned out that the parents had got a voucher for 15% off which had to be used this weekend. So in about 4 weeks there should be some new sofas in my front room, which does give a bit of a deadline for sorting things out like carpets but that's ok as it'll help with my Christmas deadline(ish). Of course the credit card is not out of commission, what with the new fridge and putting my car through it's MOT.

My freevo box was brought back to life after shifting everything round in the front room. Some slight hacking was then involved to get it back to the original state and I still can't get the listing guide updating as automagically as it used to but it's usable for when I need it.

Finally I've managed to upload the pictures from the fireworks last night and the TP jolly to London which I completely forgot to mention last week. That saw us going round the London Eye (some great views) and then a meal on the Dixie queen while travelling up and down the river, the free bar didn't go amiss either.

Interesting/Different Weekends

The last two weekends have been different from what would have been considered the norm for the last month or so. Firstly we had the Colchester event with the O&S which was my last event as a player. After all the planning that had gone into the event and the concerns as to how well everything would work, I would have to say that the event was a success. The concert sounded fantastic and there was even an orchestral piece to keep us non-singers happy. Walking on stage while playing the solo in Bolero was probably one of the most challenging things I've ever done as a player, but nailing it in the concert (after a few false starts in rehearsal) certainly felt like an achievement. Now that I've officially left as a player there's plenty to be getting on with in terms of the management stuff but that can be discussed in a later post.

As you probably noticed last weekend was fireworks night, and in keeping with a tradition there was a firework party hosted by Zippie and Debbie for the support team from Greenbelt. Having gone through the previous weekend (see above) which was very hard work and then everything that's been going on in the office it was really good just to hang out and chill with some friends. Plus I got to do some different things like make wooden stakes and chop wood for the fire and most importantly light some fireworks :D It's really good to be able to hang out with groups of friends for no other reason than to hang out.

With all this *relaxing* done there's a few Christmas concerts coming up and now that my front room is really beginning to look good I ought to pull the stops out and get it all completed. Ah well, life goes on...