Catching up

Oops – it looks like I’ve been having one of my occasional blog hiatuses. My apologies! Since my last post in May, the following exciting things have happened:

• We (i.e. Clive, with occasional help from us & Claudia) started (and pretty much finished) building the conservatory.
• Phoebe had her first birthday.
• After nearly ten accident-free years, we had two minor bumps in the car. First, I pulled into a Cornish field entrance, skidded on gravel and hit a rock. Two weeks later, I hit some metal framework (From a lorry? A tank? A roadsign? Who knows?) on the A36 near Warminster while travelling at 60mph, damaging the suspension arm, floorpan, exhaust and sill. The first bump was knocked out by the garage but the second required an insurance claim, lightening our bank account by £350 (Note to self: negotiate a smaller policy excess next time). Talking of the garage, they managed to completely miss the damage under the car when we took it in for a service, despite the fact that I told them I could see damage to the floorpan and sill. We weren’t best pleased, I can tell you.
• I turned 31. Not in itself notable, but I suppose I’m properly in my thirties now.
• There have been two more Bradford-on-Avon Geek meetups. Photos of the last one are on Flickr.
• Phoebe has started walking; we’re glad we got the stair gates fitted! She can also repeat, parrot fashion, many many words, so Kathy and I have to be careful what we say. She can also say words in a non-parrot capacity, like “milk”, “up”, “down”, “no”, “more”, “please” (Yay! She’s a polite girl!), “bowl” and lots more.
• Kathy has started child-minding, for the child of a co-worker of mine who was in our NCT class. The nice early start means I get into the office by 8am, giving me scope for a lunch break.

So that’s it really (I think!). Work carries on apace: we released another web site back in June; we’re now scratching our heads over the eternal “build vs buy” conundrum vis the way forward. Lead times for new sites need to be reduced, it seems.