Well its been a very busy few weeks at work lately. A lot of deadlines all due very soon. So apologies for the gap in my blogs.

I was toying with the idea of starting vlogging lately, but I think I might not bother as I can’t see myself having the time to edit all the video footage on a regular basis. I would like to get some recordings of something though to practice video editing on just out of interest and .. well.. fun I suppose

It’s also been a very baby filled time since coming back from France. We went across to see our friends Andy and Vicky who are expecting (I think the baby is due today in fact) to have a catch up dinner with them which was lovely. Its great to see them again as I don’t see them very often since Andy left Kalamazoo. Sarah and Greg also announced they were expecting recently, which was wonderful news, so we went across to see them for dinner to have a good catch up too. It would also be nice to have them over to ours sometime soon, as it has been quite a while now since we last had them over.

I’ve had a bit of a gaming marathon lately at home with the LAN parties. We usually have one weekend every few months when myself, Phil, Stuart and Sar all get together for a big gaming session, however we’ve been working through Borderlands (my second play through the game, but the first time for the group). Sarah decided not to join us for this as she has a lot of studying to do at the moment, so it was just myself, Stuart and Phil. But luckily this game scales itself very well for the idea of having 3 people instead of 4. So we’ve had 3 weekends in a row of gaming, which has been great fun. I really enjoy having the house bustling with people, even if it does mean I get a bit less sleep over the weekend than I was expecting This weekend however Sarah and I are heading back up north to see my family to celebrate my fathers birthday! I’m not really certain what the plans are for this weekend yet, it might be quite a quiet one, but we would still love to see my dad for his birthday rather than just send something through the post.

Mits has had his first episode with big fireworks. There were a few quite grand and loud fireworks going off quite close to home on Wednesday to celebrate Diwali. Whilst these were great to watch at the start, I suddenly wondered where Mits was in case he was out and worried about the noise, so I popped out to the garden to see Mits shoot out from under a bush at the back of the garden and dash behind the shed. As I tried to go get him there he lept over the fence before I could get especially close to the shed, and hid underneath my car on the drive on the otherside of the fence, so I managed to fish him out from underneath and spent a little while reassuring him back inside, and locked the cat flap for the rest of the night. Unfortunately all this meant that I missed the rest of the fireworks (even some very big ones – it sounded like anyway) but at least I managed to calm Mits down and get him purring again.

We also recently went out on duty with St John’s to cover the Birmingham Half Marathon. It was quite a nice relaxed event. We got a moderate number of people into our station, all with sore knees – as you might expect at a marathon, and we sorted pretty much all of them up with Ice Packs and bandages and a lot of them got back on their way quite soon after (one against suggestion, but then we can’t prevent them from continuing if they want to). Only 2 people had to drop out at our station – unfortunately for them. One due to a previous injury of a dislocated knee that was giving a lot of complaint again, and another person who was quite dehydrated as well as sore who took our suggestion to call an end to the non-competative marathon for themselves