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I’ve been home from my holiday for over a week, but as I’ve been so busy catching up on things it’s only now that I have some free time to update my blog.

This is actually the 4th time that I’ve been on holiday to the Lake District, although this time my 2 nieces Anya and Emily came as well. (Last year they stayed with us for a few days, but not for the full holiday, as they had other things planned).  There was no mobile phone reception available in the holiday cottage where we were staying, so I kept a paper diary instead of using Twitter.  At first I was a bit disappointed about that, but at least it meant there were less distractions.

At the beginning of the holiday (Saturday 7th August), we arrived at the cottage in Grasmere just after 3pm.  Much of the evening was spent unpacking, although we did go for a short walk by the local rock stream.  I had a nice big bedroom at the cottage – in fact I think it’s the biggest bedroom I’ve ever stayed in! The following morning, we went for a walk up to Easedale Tarn.  We do this walk every year, but on the first full day of the holiday I’m not usually very fit and it takes me a couple of days to get used to all the climbing, especially as we live in an area with no hills at all! Therefore I was dreading going to Easedale Tarn on the first day, as there are some steep climbs involved.  At one point during the walk I thought that I was going to be sick and I felt dizzy and light-headed, so I had to stop and drink some water.  Luckily I felt better once we’d reached the top of the mountain (where the tarn/lake is).  I never had any more of those dizzy feelings during the holiday.  Later that afternoon, we went to the Cumbria Carvery (which is favourite restaurant in Grasmere) for a meal.  I had a Yorkshire pudding filled with Cumberland sausage, chips and gravy.  That is a typical local meal in the Lake District.

On the first Monday it rained heavily, so we didn’t go on any proper walks.  Instead we visited a village called Hawkshead and we went to the Beatrix Potter Gallery.  There wasn’t that much to see, so we walked round it fairly quickly.  We also looked round some of the local shops and had some sandwiches and a piece of cake in one of the cafes.  On Tuesday we walked round Rydal lake – this was a walk that I’d done 5 years ago, but I still enjoyed it.  Luckily I didn’t get too worn out this time!  The first part of the walk is all uphill and quite tiring, but after that it is OK and the scenery is very good, and you get a nice aerial view of the lake.  On the higher path, there is a big cave – I’d actually forgotten just how big the cave is, since the last time I’d been there!  It started raining really heavily and all our clothes were soaked right through.  At the end of the walk we went to the Rydal cafe and had a quick walk around the Rydal gardens.  On Wednesday we went for a walk at Thirlmere, which is a reservoir near Coniston.  There was also a woodland walk where we saw a waterfall and a really big old tree (European Silver Fir), which was about 200 years old.  Later that afternoon, we went to an internet cafe in Grasmere, but there was only one (really slow) computer, so I didn’t have a chance to do much with it.  I just checked my email and that was about it

Thursday was Mum’s birthday so we all gave her birthday cards in the morning.  We spent most of the day in Ambleside, which is a town near Grasmere.  We walked to a waterfall and we had lunch in a pub.  When I’m on holiday, I always miss my weekly takeaways, but this pub served chicken makhani curry with rice and naan bread, so I had that and I enjoyed it.  After dinner, Emily and I played on one of the quiz machines.  We walked around the town and we went to a chocolate shop where I bought some chocolate truffles and some jelly beans.  On Friday we went for a really long walk up to Codale Tarn (which is the second tarn after Easedale Tarn).  We’d been there 5 years ago, but this time we took a different route.  It took much longer than I thought it would – in fact we were walking for over 6 hours, making it the longest walk of the holiday.  We saw many streams and waterfalls along the way, and it was a very pretty walk, even though it was steep and slippery in parts.

On Saturday we went to Coniston for the day.  We hired out a motor boat for an hour on the lake and we had a meal at Harry’s restaurant afterwards.  There was a meteor shower that evening, and as there was a clear sky, we were able to see the shooting stars.  It looked very pretty and I took several photos of the stars.  When we are at home, we can’t see the stars so well in the city due to the light pollution.  On Sunday we did another steep walk – this time to the Lionhead and Lamb in Easedale.  We did this walk 5 or 6 years ago and the path at the start is very steep and not very well laid out.  However it was all worth it in the end, as we had lovely views all over Easedale and Grasmere.  From the top, we could see Easedale Tarn and Grasmere lake, along with Windemere and Coniston lakes.  On Monday, we got up early to go to Aira Force, which is one of my favourite walks in the Lake District.  We walked amongst the waterfalls and woods for 2 and a half hours and had a picnic at the top of the waterfalls.

On Tuesday we went back to the cafe in Rydal but this time I had a white hot chocolate with cream, marshmallows and a flake.  It was one of the nicest hot chocolates I’ve ever had in my life!  We parked at the cafe and walked into Ambleside.  I bought everyone a meal at the pub, where I had the same chicken makhani meal as before.  On Wednesday we went to Derwentwater and had cream scones and milkshakes at The Grange cafe.  Afterwards we walked around the village.  On Thursday we visited John Ruskin’s house at Brantwood, which was very interesting.  We walked round the gardens as well.  On Friday – our last full day – it rained very heavily so we didn’t do much.  We had been planning to walk up to Easedale Tarn again but it was too wet.  We had a meal at the Cumbria Carvery, bought some gingerbread at the Sarah Nelson gingerbread shop and then we walked to the top of Sour Milk Gill (the waterfall leading up to Easedale Tarn).

Several exciting things have been happening since we arrived back from our holiday.  On Tuesday last week, Anya received her GCSE exam results.  She did very well and she got 8 Grade A’s and a Distinction for ICT.  We went out for a meal at The Oaklands in the evening to celebrate.  It was a really nice carvery.  On Friday evening Mum and I saw Toy Story 3 at the cinema – unfortunately it wasn’t being shown in 3D, but we still really enjoyed it.  Afterwards we had a meal at Malaysian Delights.  On Saturday night I went clubbing with my friend Kay.  Today Terry and I went to Norfolk Lavender.  Disappointingly, the lavender fields weren’t open (as they’d already been ploughed) but we still walked around the gardens and farmyard, and we also had a snack in the cafe and I bought some lavender oils.  I also had a piece of lavender cake and a little tub of lavender ice cream, which was nice as lavender ice cream is very rare.

For the last month or so, we’ve been having a heatwave!  It hasn’t been quite so warm for the last 7 days, but before that it was very hot, with temperatures frequently reaching 30 degrees C.  Late last month, we went for a walk at Hoveton Hall Gardens, which was a nice way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon.  One evening a couple of weeks ago, I bought Mum and Terry a meal at Malaysian Delights.

Last Sunday (probably the hottest day of the year so far) we went to the beach at Sheringham.  We sat on the beach for a while, but the tide soon came in, so we couldn’t sit there for too long.  It was amazing how quickly the tide came in!  We had a lovely walk around the town too.

The good thing is that it won’t be long until we go on holiday to the Lake District.  We will be staying at a holiday cottage in Grasmere.  We have stayed in Grasmere before (in 2004 and 2005) but this time we are staying in a larger cottage as my nieces Anya and Emily will be coming as well.  Near Sour Milk Ghyll there are 2 cottages side-by-side, and this year we will be staying in the larger of the two.

This week (on Wednesday evening) I went round my friend Naomi’s house.  We had an Indian takeaway and we watched the film Van Wilder.  The film was very funny and I enjoyed the evening.  Naomi’s sister Sarah was also there, as she is currently on holiday from university.  It was good to see them both again.

A few really bad things happened this week.  Firstly, our cat Holly has fleas, so we’ve had to spray the house to try and get rid of them.  Also, my step-dad Terry has really bad back pain.  It first started a few weeks ago when he was leaning over to cut the hedge.  He had back pain for a few days, but it wasn’t too bad and it soon went away.  However, on Thursday morning the pain came back with a vengeance. On Friday he could hardly move – he couldn’t walk very far and he couldn’t drive either.  As he can’t drive, he hasn’t been able to visit a chiropractor.  On Friday evening we looked through the Yellow Pages and Terry phoned a chiropractor and he was told to use a hot water bottle and an ice-pack on his back (alternating between them every few minutes).  The chiropractor said that eventually Terry should feel well enough to be able to drive their practice.

Late last week we heard the news that our local woodland could be cut down by property developers.  There is a link to an article about this in the local newspaper here.  If you scroll to the bottom of the article, you will see that I’ve added a comment of my own.  Everyone in my family is very upset and angry about the proposals, particularly my grandmother as she often walks her dog there.  Last Saturday we went for a walk through the woods – this could be our last chance to do so before the houses are built.  Fortunately, the proposals haven’t actually been given the go-ahead yet, and we are hopeful that the local planning authority will reject the plans.  Here is a link to some photos I took of the woods last week.

Work is still going well – I am currently working on new websites for several weekly London newspapers.

I enjoyed my Easter holidays last week (I had Good Friday and Easter Monday off work) and I went on a couple of daffodil walks.

For Good Friday, we spent most of the day taking Easter eggs to our relatives. On Easter Saturday, we went for a walk at Burlingham Woods, which is somewhere I’d never been or even heard of before.  It was a very enjoyable woodland walk and it was nice to be out in the fresh air.  I took several photos whilst I was there.

For Easter Sunday, I had a quiet day at home.  Mum bought me a Mars Easter egg and Terry bought me a Lindt Lindor one (which is my favourite chocolate).  On Easter Monday, we went for a walk along the riverside in Norwich.  There’s always lots of daffodils there every spring, in a wide variety of colours.  When I was younger (up until the age of 10), I often used to go and visit the daffodils there as my Dad lived in a flat just across the road from the river.  I always used to enjoy running amongst the daffodils and I even used to pick some and take them home.  Click here to see the photos.

Last night I had my belated birthday/Easter party with all my best friends – Naomi, Sarah, Kay and Gemma.  We had a meal at Frankie & Benny’s – the awkward thing was that they would only accept a booking for 5.30pm (they had another party booked for that table at 7.30pm), whereas Kay doesn’t finish work until 6pm.  So we had to book the table for 5.30pm and we had our drinks and starters while we were waiting for Kay to arrive.  Kay arrived at about 6.20pm.  Luckily it all worked out fine and we finished in good time – we even had enough time for dessert.  Then at 8pm we went to the cinema to see the new Nanny McPhee film.  It was very funny and we all really enjoyed it.  We also exchanged Easter eggs, which led to me getting 2 more chocolate eggs – a Crunchie egg and a Dairy Milk Buttons egg.   It was good to meet up with all my friends again – due to a couple of them studying away from home, it is only once or twice a year that I get to see them all together.

Work is still going well.  A couple of weeks ago, I went on a week-long Prestige training course which was held at the office.  I learnt about the Prestige system and how it interacts with the Polopoly content management system that I use in my day-to-day job.  I also learnt how to use Adobe InCopy and InDesign.  Although those programs are mainly aimed at print designers, it is still useful to know and InDesign does share several features with Photoshop.

I’ve also completed my first full website, for a weekly newspaper based in Hertfordshire.  It has been tested but it is not live yet – hopefully it will go live some time in the next few days or weeks.  In the meantime, I’m working on a website for a Devon weekly newspaper – I’m currently about 80% of the way through it.

I’ve also been studying some web development books in my spare time in the evenings and at weekends, in order to learn more about JavaScript and PHP.  I’m particularly interested in learning more about jQuery – one of my colleagues uses it a lot and he says it’s very good.  Overall, I’m very happy with the way things are going in my new job.

The last few days have been very exciting, with several good things happening. Firstly, my Dad and step family have come over to visit from Thailand. They originally moved to Thailand in April 2006, as mentioned in my old blog entries here and here. Until last week, I hadn’t seen them for 2 years, so I was very pleased to see them all again. I was on holiday from work last week, so I was able to go out with my Dad and step family – on Tuesday we visited some friends and relatives, on Wednesday we went to Yarmouth and on Thursday we went to Sheringham and Hemsby. I like being by the coast, although it was too cold to sit on the beach. On Sunday we had a carvery at a restaurant in Hethersett, with Dad’s friend Alan and his wife. I went back to work yesterday, and fortunately there wasn’t too much of a backlog. My Dad and step family won’t go back to Thailand until Monday though, so I will still be able to see them this weekend.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been hard at work on my new online portfolio. Yes, I’m still a bit worried about what I will be doing in terms of a job next year, as there’s a chance my secondment will end in April and as my previous department was involved in a re-structure, I have no other job to return to. So I thought it would be a good idea to get my portfolio sorted out early. My online portfolio is mainly focussed on my web development and programming work, although I also have my CV and testimonials from co-workers on there, so I can mention it in just about any job application.
The website is almost complete now, in fact all I have left to do is finish the testing. During my testing I discovered that the layout doesn’t work well in Internet Explorer 6 – in fact it looked completely ridiculous in IE6! This created extra work for me, as I had to set the site up so that the default WordPress theme is displayed for IE6 users. The default WordPress theme (Kubrick) is very boring, but at least it seems to display correctly in all major browsers. Some people may say “Why bother catering for IE6 users at all, if they can’t be bothered to upgrade?”. Unfortunately, many internet users are forced to use IE6 and they have no choice in the matter – for example, where I work, everyone has to use IE6 on their office PC and we’re not allowed to install any other software. Of course, on my home PC I can install whatever I want. I imagine the situation is the same at many other major companies. Therefore, I have to be careful to ensure that my site is accessible for everyone. Once the site is fully tested and I’m happy with everything, I will put the link on a Twitter update.

On Monday my step-dad Terry bought a new LCD TV for the lounge. It is an LG with a 37-inch screen and built-in Freeview. It’s much bigger than the old CRT screen we used to have and the picture is clearer too.

I arrived home from my holiday on Saturday. I had a really good time in the Lake District with my family and I was sad when it was time to go home. As you will see from my previous blog entries, I was able to update my Twitter status whilst on holiday, so I’ve got a record of what I did each day.

We stayed in a holiday cottage in Torver, a small village near Coniston. The weather was rather wet for the first week of the holiday, but the second week wasn’t quite so bad. We spent most of the holiday going on long walks rather than visiting indoor attractions such as stately homes/halls and castles etc. There were 2 walks which I particularly enjoyed – there were some woods not far from the cottage where we were staying which led down to Coniston Water, the local lake. We went on that walk several times and we also hired a boat for a couple of hours. My favourite walk of all was in the area surrounding Aira Force – this was a very beautiful area full of trees, streams and waterfalls. I’ve been to many places in the Lake District, but Aira Force seemed extra special. We also visited several nice restaurants and cafes during the course of the holiday.

One thing which made this holiday different to my previous holidays was that other members of the family came to stay with us as well, so it wasn’t just me, Mum and Terry. It was just us 3 for the first few days of the holiday but on the first Wednesday, Suzanne and her husband Paul and my nieces Anya and Emily came to stay. There was a large open loft area above the dining room, and Suzanne and Paul slept there on an airbed. Anya and Emily slept in a bedroom with twin beds. The cottage had 3 bedrooms in total, plus the loft area. Suzanne, Paul and Anya had to go home on Sunday due to other commitments, but Emily stayed with us until the end.

Several funny things happened on this holiday:
1. When Suzanne and Paul were on their way to stay with us, their satnav misdirected them to the entrance to the Coniston ferry. Once you are in the queue, you can’t turn round, so they had to pay to use the ferry.
2. One day we got up at 6am to go on the walk from Grasmere up to the Easdale Tarn, but when we arrived at the Grasmere car park it started raining really heavily, so we ended up sitting in the car for over an hour! We didn’t actually start the walk until 10am.
3. When we arrived at Easedale Tarn, Emily was holding one of the large umbrellas. All of a sudden, there was a really strong gust of wind and Emily nearly got blown into the tarn as she was holding on to the umbrella! The spokes of the umbrella ended up broken.
4. On the way back down from Easedale Tarn, Suzanne and Anya both fell into some water at the bottom of the mountain, in front of other people who were waiting to go through the gate.
5. Just as we were about to go through the gate near the entrance to the farm at Easedale, the grumpy farmer told us off! He said to Terry, “Are you having difficulty in reading? Do you think you own the Lake District and you can walk anywhere you like?” Because of this, we couldn’t walk past the farm and we had to walk by the stream instead, which was badly flooded. People kept falling in the water and at one point Paul was holding onto a branch of a tree. Anya was really grumpy as she fell in the water a couple of times, and she had a really fed-up look on her face. Luckily I didn’t fall in, although my walking boots were very wet after having to wade through the stream.
6. Mum bought a big bag of nuts for the birds outside our cottage. We kept the bag of nuts on the windowsill in the lounge. One morning when we woke up, there were nuts in our walking boots and some of them were scattered on the floor in the lounge. No one knows how they got there, so we think it must have been someone sleepwalking.
7. Mum fell asleep in the lounge while we were all watching the X Factor. She had a really miserable look on her face. Everyone was laughing but she didn’t hear us. Then Terry tapped her on the shoulder and she awoke with a start and she shrieked really loudly. This made everyone laugh even more.
8. One day we went for a walk near Torver Beck. There were some sheep on the other side of the hedge and we could hear one of them baaing in a weird way. It sounded like a bit like a gurgling noise. I’d never heard a sheep make a noise like that before and it made me laugh. Mum said it was probably trying to eat at the same time.
9. The power shower in the bathroom at the cottage made a strange humming noise whenever anyone used it.
10. One evening we went to the pub in Coniston for a meal, and a large group of old men (they were mainly men, but there were a few women as well) came in. They were very noisy and they were congregating all around the bar area. They were all wearing T shirts with strange slogans on them, such as “hasher with large weapon”.
11. Emily and I had profiteroles for dessert at the pub. They were served in a tall sundae glass rather than a bowl, which made them more difficult to eat. So we both ended up getting the chocolate sauce on our chins.

You can see photos of my holiday on my Flickr page.

It’s now less than one week to go until my holiday in the Lake District. There’s a good chance that this will be my last proper update until I return home at the end of August, although I will still post updates on Twitter to describe what I’m doing. (That’s if there is any mobile phone reception where I’ll be staying).

I’ve had a really busy week at work – the first 2 weeks of the month are always extra busy, because everyone always wants their reports as close to the beginning of the month as possible. So the first week of the month is always frantically busy and the second week is very busy. The second half of the month is still pretty busy, but not quite as bad as most of the monthly reports are out of the way and we are mainly working on ad-hoc requests by then.

Tuesday was especially busy – in addition to dealing with a heavy workload, I also had 2 appointments to attend. The first of these was a hairdressing appointment in my lunch-hour, and the second was an eyebrow-wax appointment in the evening straight after work. I went to a different hairdresser at a different salon to normal, as my Mum recommended it. I had to complete an urgent report before I could leave the office at lunchtime, so I was a couple of minutes late for the appointment and I had to run up the road! I liked the way this hairdresser cut my hair, but I didn’t like her personality. At the beginning of the session, she asked me how I wanted my hair styled, so I said I wanted a short, modern hairstyle and that I’d leave the specific details up to her. She said a few things which made me feel uncomfortable. She was asking me a lot of questions, such as why I stopped going to my previous hairdresser, which made me feel awkward. Then she said it’s a wonder none of my previous hairdressers had ever made a mistake with my hair as I’m very quiet and I don’t say much about how I want it styled. I’m always quiet when I meet someone for the first time, but I don’t really know that much about hair so that’s why I left most of the decisions up to the hairdresser. The weirdest thing was that she asked me how old I was, and when I told her I was 25 she said: “Oh, so you’re actually younger than me! When you first came in, I thought you were older than me!” O_O There were a few other things she said that made me feel uncomfortable, but those were the main ones. Apparently, she has said weird things like this to other customers as well. So even though I like the way this hairdresser styled my hair, I don’t think I’ll go back to her again.

On Friday, our department had a half-day away day from work. We went to a local pub (The Unthank Arms) and took part in various team-building activities and quizzes. It wasn’t a particularly sunny day, but it was dry, so we stayed outside in the garden for the whole day. The first activity was based on the concept of speed-dating, where we all had to stand in 2 lines and we had 2 minutes to speak to the person opposite us to find out more about them, before moving onto the next person. They had to ask us questions as well. When the head of department first mentioned that we would be doing this, I was a bit nervous, but it actually turned out to be fun! We all had sheets of paper with prompts on them, so I was never stuck for a question to ask. Examples of questions included: “What would your ideal job be?”, “What do you dream of?”, “What is most important to you in your life outside of work?” and “What is your worst habit?”

After that, we were all split into teams to take part in a “Who am I” quiz where we had a list of “secret facts” about all the staff in our department (which had all been prepared in advance) and we had to guess which member of staff said which secret fact. My secret fact seemed so mundane compared to most other people’s! I can’t really think of anything that I’ve done in my life that is particularly daring or shocking. In fact I was having trouble thinking of a secret fact, so I just said that I had a cat called Holly. Some other people had secret facts about meeting celebrities or that they’d patted a tiger or something equally shocking/surprising. Our team didn’t manage to guess many of these correctly, unfortunately.

The next round was a pub quiz, and I really enjoyed that. The first part of the quiz was general knowledge, and I knew quite a few of the answers. In fact I was answering more of the questions than most of the other people on my team. I felt proud of myself for that. In the next round, each team had to draw a design on a bowling ball. I let this other woman in my team do the drawing on the ball, as I didn’t think I’d be so good at that. Then each team had to nominate someone to bowl the ball, and the team who got their ball closest to the target would win. I was the person chosen to bowl, and I did quite well at that and scored several points for my team. After that, we went back to our tables to take part in a second pub quiz. I did better in this pub quiz than the first one, as most of the questions were about history, geography and science and I like those subjects. I answered quite a lot of these questions too. I felt pleased with myself because I was the youngest person in the team and I seemed to know more of the answers than the older people did!

At the end of the quiz, we had to swap our answer sheets with another team so we could mark the answers and add up the scores. When we got our answer sheet back, I could see that we had scored 68.5 and there was one category (I think it was Geography) where we had scored full marks! Our team should have won. Alas, when all the teams’ scores were announced, it turned out that another team had scored 68.5 as well. So we had to do a tie-breaker. The organisers had never even anticipated there being a tie, so they didn’t have a tie-breaker prepared. The organisers decided that we (the 2 joint-winning teams) should do another game of bowling, and whoever scored the best of 3 would win. The man from the opposing team bowled his ball first, and it landed a metre from the target. I then bowled my first ball, and it also landed about a metre away from the target, but in the opposite direction. It was hard to tell whose ball was closer, so the organiser had to use a tape measure. It turned out that the opponent’s ball was just a little bit closer than mine. The other man then had his second go, and his ball landed really close to the target. At this point, the pressure was starting to get to me, as I didn’t think it was likely I’d get my ball any closer than his. This was in spite of the rest of the members of my team saying “No pressure!”. When I had my second go, I didn’t throw the ball very well and it didn’t travel that far at all. It was at this point that I realised I’d ruined everything. The organiser then confirmed my worst fear by announcing that the game was over and the opposing team had won. I felt bad for losing, but the rest of my team still seemed pleased with how I’d done anyway.

The winning team was then given their prize. It was a big box of goodies that they could share out amongst all the members of their team. There were some decent things in there, like iPod Shuffles, drinks, books and bars of chocolate etc. I was pleased for them, but I still felt bad about losing, especially as my team was so close to winning. Then the leader of the winning team got out his domino set, and he invited people to play dominoes with him. He said that whoever wins would be allowed to take something out of the prize box. I decided to take part, even though I can’t remember playing dominoes since I was about 6 or 7 years old. Somehow, I managed to win the second game of dominoes. I think it was pure luck. I was really pleased that I had managed to win a prize after all, even if it wasn’t in the way I was hoping for. I felt better after that. I picked out a bar of Marks & Spencers Swiss Chocolate to take home.

At 7pm we had our evening meal. It was still nice enough for us to sit outside in the garden. I had fish and chips, and ice cream for dessert. We had originally been planning to go to the Waterfront for the 80′s night straight after the meal, but then the other members of the team said they didn’t want to go there after all so we all went home. It was a really good day out and I think it was one of the best away-days I’ve ever had in the 4 years since I’ve been with the company. What I really like about my current department is that we take part in a lot of different activities, whereas my previous departments didn’t do this so much.

Overall, July was a pretty good month. I’m feeling a lot more settled and happier in my job now, especially now that we’ve had a few team social events, so I feel that I know the other members of the team better. In May I was feeling enthusiastic about starting my new job as it was a fresh start and a chance to try something new, but in June I have to admit I did start to miss my old job and my old department. During June, there were even some moments where I wished I could go back to my old job. In July we had a team evening out at the local bowling alley, and we also went out for lunch together one Friday. I really enjoyed that.

I also feel more confident about the work itself, and I’ve been given the opportunity to work on projects I enjoy, such as helping to develop the team’s intranet site and building self-service reports in Oracle Discoverer, in addition to the normal monthly and ad-hoc reports. I had my mid-year appraisal recently and I received positive feedback, so I’m happy about that. For all the above reasons, I feel happier now and the negative feelings I had in June have disappeared. Most of the people in my old department who were made redundant have now actually left, so even if I could go back to my old job, it would never be the same again anyway as a lot of my favourite people are no longer there.

A couple of weeks ago, I was scared that there might be a re-structure in my new department later this year, so I started looking for other jobs. I found a few internal jobs that interested me and I was thinking of applying for them. I even started filling in the application form for one of them. I also found an online advert for an entry-level web developer job (via an employment agency) and I submitted my CV. However, a few days later I was relieved when we had a team meeting and the manager said that even if there was a re-structure, it probably wouldn’t be until the end of 2010. My secondment contract ends in April 2010 anyway. Because of that, I decided not to apply for any of the internal jobs. As for the web developer job, nothing came of it anyway – I think that might be because I mentioned in my covering email that I wouldn’t be able to start until September, and the agency probably wanted someone who could start immediately. I never actually heard anything from the agency, other than an automated email to say that they’d received my application.

As for all the other things I’ve been up to during July, they’re mentioned in my weekly Twitter update posts, so there’s no point in me going through them all again, especially as that would take me a very long time.

Yesterday I bought a new mobile phone – a Nokia XpressMusic 5800. I can safely say it’s the best phone I’ve ever had – it has a touch-screen and it can hold 8GB of music and other files. I now no longer need to have a separate MP3 player, as I can listen to music on my phone instead. My old MP3 player could only hold 1GB worth of songs anyway! It is also WiFi enabled so I should be able to connect to the internet in cafes and other similar public places. At other times, I can use the standard 3G connection.

It’s now less than 2 weeks until my holiday in the Lake District! I’m getting really excited! This time, the whole family is coming – in addition to Mum and Terry, my sister Suzanne, her husband Paul and my nieces Anya and Emily will all be coming to stay over in the holiday cottage for a few days.

I’ve had a very busy week since I’ve been back from my holiday, both at home and at work. I spent a lot of time last weekend uploading my photos and videos to my computer and catching up with my emails and the online forums that I visit. At work there was a big backlog for me to get through (as there usually is after being on holiday for 2 weeks), but I managed to get quite a bit done, so hopefully things will be back to normal this week. I went to bed late most nights last week as I was busy getting things sorted out (at home, not at work!) This meant that by the time this current weekend arrived, I still hadn’t caught up on the sleep that I’d lost during my holiday! So, this morning I stayed in bed until nearly 12pm! I never usually lay in that long on a Sunday (I usually get up by about 10am at the latest), but I knew that this would be my last chance to catch up on my sleep before the new working week begins tomorrow.

There has been some good news this week – my friend Naomi has been offered a new job working as a chef in a nursery, designing and cooking healthy meals for babies and young children. She has been looking for a new job for several months, so I’m very pleased for her. I know she will enjoy this job more than her current catering job, as she always said she wanted a job that involved either working with children or with food. In this job she will be able to do both!

Also, my friend Kay added me as a friend on Facebook a few days ago, which I’m really happy about as I hadn’t heard from her for over 2 years. I had searched for her on Facebook in the past, but it seems that she only set up her account a few days ago, so she found me first. I’m trying to arrange an evening out with her – it will be good to see her again after all this time. Hopefully things will go back to how they used to be, before she drifted away from us. I had no other way of getting in touch with her, as I didn’t have her current phone number or address, but I was always confident we would meet again one day.

One really bad thing happened this week – my sister Suzanne’s boyfriend Paul was involved in a motorbike accident a week ago as a car crashed into him and knocked him off his bike, and he had to stay in hospital for several days. Luckily he is OK and we went round to visit him today, as he is now back at home. It was mainly his ribs and foot which were hurt. There is some good news though – they announced today that they plan to get married in May next year. I never thought they would get married for quite a while, but Suzanne said that the accident has changed their outlook on life.

Today I took Mum, Terry and my grandmother for a meal at The Townhouse. I must admit, I missed my carveries while we were on holiday!

We got back from our holiday yesterday afternoon. It always feels weird for the first few days after arriving home from a holiday. For the first time this year, I updated my blog while I was on holiday, via WAP on my mobile phone. However, I didn’t have a chance to do any more updates from Monday onwards, so here’s a summary of what we did during the last week of the holiday:

On Monday we went back to Goathland (known as Aidensfield in the TV drama Heartbeat). As the weather was much better than when we visited on the first Monday of the holiday, we were able to do quite a bit of walking around the village. There is a really nice cafe in the village and we visited it twice in one day – first for a mid-morning snack and secondly for a meal in the early evening. They do good milkshakes there too (I really do love milkshakes!), so in the morning I had a vanilla milkshake and in the evening I had a strawberry one. During this holiday, I have become addicted to scones with clotted cream and jam – they serve them in most of the tearooms and cafes in Yorkshire. When we went back to the cafe in the evening, all the tables indoors were occupied, so we sat in the garden outside to eat our sandwiches. A family on a nearby table had a dog which kept running around – it was so funny when the owners kept calling it back to their table, as the dog’s name was Music. For some reason, the thought of a dog being named Music made me want to laugh! Even stranger, whilst one of the people on the table was calling the dog Music, the person sitting next to him was calling the dog Misty!

On Tuesday we went to Thirsk to visit the World of James Herriot museum. James Herriot was an author who was also a veterinary surgeon in Yorkshire, and his books were all about life as a vet. He died in 1995 and his former house and veterinary surgery was converted into the museum.

On Wednesday we visited Sledmere House and Gardens. They were the best gardens I’d ever seen, so I took lots of photos. The house was really nice too, so it was well worth a visit.
On Thursday spent the day in York – we started off at the National Railway Museum, then we had lunch at a nearby bar. After that, we moved on to York Minster, where we visited the crypt and undercroft. We also visited Treasurer’s House and York Castle. We were very pleased as we had managed to visit a lot of places that day.

On Friday, our last full day, we went to Scarborough. We spent some time on the beach and we also went on an open-topped bus tour of the town. Afterwards we visited Peasholme Park.

I’ve uploaded my holiday photos and you can see them at my Flickr page.

This will almost certainly be my last post before I go on holiday on Saturday. We are going to stay in a holiday cottage in Pickering, North Yorkshire for 2 weeks. Tomorrow evening when I get home from work, I will have to start packing my stuff. On Friday evening I am going out with some of my co-workers, as 2 of them are moving to a different department soon, so this will be their leaving party. We are planning to go for a meal at the Spice Lounge restaurant and some people will be going for drinks afterwards. I’ll be going straight home after the meal though, as I will need to be up at about 5am on Saturday morning for the holiday.

This week has been really dragging as I’m looking forward to my holiday so much. For example, today seemed like Thursday when it’s really only Wednesday.

Yesterday evening my sisters and my nieces came round to celebrate my Mum’s 60th birthday. We had some fish and chips, with some cream cakes for dessert. We also told Mum about the spa day coming up in September (see previous post). As it will probably be about a month until the spa day, I decided to buy my Mum a box of chocolates, so that she could have a present on her actual birthday as well. My sisters and nieces brought round birthday cards for Mum, and one of them was quite funny. On the front, it says: “That’s you – my super duper number one nana” alongside a cartoon picture of a woman. Then in large letters it says “My lovely nana”. The font was difficult to read, so at first glance Mum thought it said “That’s you – my super duper number one hand. My lovely hand”, because the “n” looked a bit like an “h” and the “a” looked like a “d”. We were all laughing about that!

During the evening, my Mum’s bosses from the Townhouse and their daughter came round to bring some presents.

It’s unlikely I’ll be able to post another update until after my holiday. I’ll be back on the 30th of August. However, I might still be able to update my Twitter site while I’m on holiday with brief updates on what I’m doing – depending on whether there is any mobile phone reception in Pickering.