The last few weeks have been busy. I'm really hoping that things will ease off from here on in as I finally have a full team at work. Since my last direct report moved to another team last December I've had four different short term temps which hasn't been easy. Then in July the other member of the team (who reported to LB) also moved to another team. We decided that I should manage both assistants in the future so I'm now responsible for a team of two. The first joined us at the end of August and the second joined this week. It's so good not to have to worry about finding time to dedicate to recruitment and all the admin associated with people joining and leaving. Fingers crossed for a bit of stability going forward.
Piano lessons are going OK. As it's a beginners class and I'm a beginner pianist but not a beginner musician I've found a lot of the theory content quite frustrating. We've spent a considerable amount of time over the past few weeks clapping fairly basic rhythms and discussing time signatures which are all second nature to me. On the plus side, some of it has been a useful refresher and I'm finally starting to recognise notes in the bass clef without constantly having to work backwards from middle C. Recently we've been looking at the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony (better known in the UK as the Hovis music) which is a lovely piece of music. I'm trying really hard to play the left and right hands together so I can at least demonstrate to friends and family that I'm making progress. Our teacher is doing a valiant job at teaching a diverse range of students with very different levels of experience (ranging from people with no music experience at all to someone who got grade 4 piano as a child and it attending as a refresher). If someone is struggling he finds a way of getting us all to work on something together that will benefit us all instead of singling them out. It's half term next week but I'm looking forward to getting back to it in November. Hopefully, we'll be given some Christmas songs to work on.
I've also finally started my attempt to watch every movie featured on the Time Out London list of 100 Greatest British movies. I'll post my review of 'This is England' in a separate post.
My attempts to get out and do stuff are continuing. I now have tickets for Kid Koala in November, Hard Fi in December and The Black Keys in February. After that I guess it will be time to start thinking about festival season again.
I almost forgot to record the most significant news of all... I finally completed the massive piece of cross stitch I've been working on since February. It was meant to be a christening gift for a baby who was christened in April so it's only 6 months late. As someone at work pointed out it'll make a nice Christmas present! I was so proud of myself for persevering with the dreaded French knots. After several false starts I seemed to hit a roll and they don't look at all bad. I also have to compliment the manufacturers (www.dimensions-crafts.com) for the excellent customer services they provided. I miscounted a section which meant quite a bit of silk had to be unpicked and discarded. I then realised that I didn't have enough of one colour left to finish off. As the threads were specially designed for the pattern I had to contact the company to get more. Dimensions are based in the USA so I expected that I'd have to pay postage and packing at the very least. I was pleasantly suprised when they sent it to me completely free of charge.
Now it's on to the next one which should be quicker to complete as it has fewer indiviual stitches. I think that's what could be described as 'famous last words!'
And finally, this week is National Baking Week. As I had some eggs to use up I decided to make a coconut cake for the office. I hadn't done the recipe before so I was pleased that it turned out pretty well. It also turned out that coconut cakes are the absolute favourite of one colleague which was an added bonus. Maybe next year I'll try my hand at something more on this scale: http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2011/10/19/national-baking-week-london-tube-map/ Although someone did point out that my cake was a variation on a Victoria sponge so I was sort of sticking with the theme.
This weekend will be spent running errands and shopping. I urgently need new winter clothes, particularly for work, but I don't like most of the stuff in the shops this year. Needs must though so I'm going to try again on Sunday.
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