Tuesday 6th October 2009, 20:11

Yep, that's right:

EEEENGAGED!!!

Like anyone who's going to read this doesn't know that already. Assuming anyone does read this of course, given my current mean-time-to-post is measured in months :-/ But anyway, it's all very exciting - here's where we're planning to get married:

And the bar in the place we're planning to get married:

And of course the wonderful, fantastically lovely girl I'm marrying (and me):

So all this excitement does of course come with a hellish amount of organisation, but of course we're well on top of it. In the months since I proposed, we've* managed to organise the following:

• Pie-charts showing groom/bride guest split (guess who loses)
• Guest database
• Save-the-date fridge magnets!

* (well, Kate has)

So, at this rate I reckon we're on course for an awesome wedding around June 2015. However the target date is 18th September 2010...meh, I'm sure we'll get into gear a couple of weeks beforehand. One way or another it should be a great party, so I hope you can all make it :)

Saturday 3rd January 2009, 19:35

Woo, we've reached 2009. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I thought I'd post this picture of a gift we recently received from our local Indian restaurant:

That's a long time to establish a restaurant by anyone's standards. Still, it gives me a fluffy warm feeling to realise I've actually been living in Heartfordshire all this time...aww.

Tuesday 25th November 2008, 19:23

Yes okay, I fail. So in one the last two years and ten months I've:

• Gained a girlfriend (yay)
• Moved
• Left Microsoft (aww)
• Gained a guitar (woo)
• Moved again
• Joined a bank (my timing sucks)
• Spent 90% of my free time on Guitar Hero and .09% on practicing the guitar

There, much better than lots of boring blog entries. Hopefully that'll keep Kate happy for another couple of years...

Tuesday 10th January 2006, 03:13

Yet another large gap between entries (nice that people are still bored enough to check back now and then though :-p). At least I have a reasonable excuse this time, I've had little time to pause for breath in the past month or so. Moving house, starting a new job and flying to the States for the first time all within a few days of each other has just been crazy.

So anyway, I have a flat...on my own now, after *someone* dropped out on me :-7 But it's probably worked out for the best, given I can leave all my junk everywhere and not have to worry about it. Of course I'd probably have to unpack some of it first, given I didn't actually move in until the day before I started work it didn't leave much time to pack stuff away neatly. Thankfully this is where parents who know how to do things like assemble furniture and put things in drawers come in very useful. The flat is nice, fairly small but perfectly adequate for my needs, and a 10-15 minute journey to work is pretty sweet.

The new job has been great so far, in that I haven't actually had to do anything. A couple of days induction included a Ricky Gervais video on company values (okay so I never really got The Office, but it was fairly amusing), and being told that we weren't allowed to abseil off the top of the buildings. Shucks. Otherwise it's just been a great deal of trying to remember faces and names, admittedly with limited success but I'm getting there.

The flights out to the States were fairly uneventful thankfully, and there were plenty of distractions on the plane (though I can't decide whether the little map that constantly informed me we were at 36,000 feet was a good thing or not). Definitely had it better than the sales and marketing grads who missed their flight, and then had a catering van crash into the next one. Whoops.

Over here has been fun, currently staying in a pretty nice hotel in Bellevue which is ten minutes or so from Seattle. Some things are taking a while to adjust to (four lanes of traffic each way pretty much everywhere, customer service that's actually genuine), and we found time to visit the Space Needle on Sunday which was entertaining. Today has mostly been catching up with the grads from the other 35 countries or so involved in the scheme I'm on, and sitting through a barrage of PowerPoint presentations whilst attempting to assimilate at least some of the information coming my way.

Anyway, apologies if this post has been less than exciting or coherent but I'm still shaking off the last of the jetlag. Hopefully I'll get the chance to pause for breath and write something better when I get back to the UK. Oh, and happy new year all (especially to those who I didn't see or don't remember the party :-p)

Monday 7th November 2005, 14:46

Okay, I admit it, I got bored of journalling. Chronicalling the activities of someone who leads even a vaguely exciting life is one thing, but there's only so many times you can write "got up, played games, applied for job, played games, got rejected, played games, went to bed". Once the job-hunt was over there was even less to report. I played games. I occasionally went out, for example when there was a power cut and the sun wasn't shining too brightly. I made feeble efforts to shuffle the junk in my room around to give it the appearance of near-tidiness.

And suddenly it's less than two months until I start work. Visited them a couple of weeks ago for an induction day, and it finally hit home that I really have a job and I'm really going to be expected to do actual work. How I'll adjust to this after almost a year of hardcore mooching I don't know, but I'm looking forward to finding out - the repetitive boredom of doing very little week in week out is getting a bit much. I start on the 4th January and fly out to Seattle on the 7th, which is very cool but also very daunting.

Headed to Newcastle over the weekend. Whoever designed that city's road systems had clearly just been dumped, and therefore decided to take out all of their pent-up rage and frustration on the hapless drivers in the region. Main roads randomly split up and change direction, traffic calming measures clearly designed to infuriate even the calmest of drivers are liberally scattered across the city, and low walls are hidden around every parking space and driveway to ensure no car remains unscratched. Still, we made it there somehow, and much fun was had and drink imbibed.