News in Early October
We are much more settled. Our clothes washer/dryer was finally delivered this week, so we're quite happy. We've got our household systems up and running, so we can do many of those things you take for granted but we haven't been able to do in months, like mopping a floor, or washing clothes and hanging them to dry. We're still working towards advanced-stage settled activities like cleaning a bathroom tub and dusting, but I'm confident we'll reach that stage very shortly.
We've also met all of our immediate neighbours (the three others in our building) and more on our street. I'm especially hoping to forge friendships with the other parents on our street.
Margo has just earned her drivers' license. Now she drives a Hyundai instead of a Vauxhall, but we only pay £100/month instead of £80/week, so it's a big improvement in our finances.
This week she had her most difficult client experience so far, absorbing many insults and threats from a woman reluctant to come to terms with her situation. Margo's supervisor is impressed with her work so far and it will probably just be a short while before she is promoted to a more senior/supervisory position.
Sarah is now telling us about many of her classmates by name. She's also earned several Humpty Dots, has her name in the Green Circle (as opposed to the Orange and Red Circles) and has even been awarded a Gold Rectangle. I'm sure the Nobel committee has taken notice already. Yesterday I helped out in her classroom on a walk through the neighbourhood (to learn about types of housing: flats, detatched, semi-detatched, bungalows, and terraced) and was given some of the wilder boys to supervise; Sarah looks quite well-behaved in comparison.
Sarah will repeat the Duckling swimming class because she's still very reluctant to get her head under water. However, she did put her face in the water today, so to honour a previous agreement with Margo, we'll have chocolate cake for dessert tonight.
I am keeping the house very clean. I also know the downtown shopping streets quite well. I'm learning the pubs but that will take more research. And perhaps a bit more even afterward.
I've recently purchased my iMac and am setting up a Java development environment on it. I've set up the Eclipse IDE and I have Tomcat and Ant configured but I'm still struggling to get my .war files properly deployed. I'm used to developing on Windows so I'm working through the hurdles of working on UNIX, such as ensuring proper permissions and remembering my case sensitivity. I've also been boning up on the Spring MVC framework and I look forward to getting more familiar with the new Java 5 language features. When I have time, I want to keep practising my Ruby and perhaps play with Rails some more. Don't worry if this is gibberish to you; it's intended for the 0.5% of the software development population to whom this remotely concerns.
I've also enjoyed having free time, though I can say that there's never enough of such a thing. I've just read a biography on Depeche Mode, and flipped through the Factory Records graphic album. I'm currently reading Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy, a delightful juxtaposition of modern crime writing and nursery rhymes, as well as Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, a sequel of sorts to H.G. Well's The Time Machine, in addition to a collection of Swamp Thing comics by Alan Moore. These are all British authors whom I've read before, but it's great to read them in their native land - the references make more sense now.
I've just begun seeking work, now that we've procured an after-school daycare placement for Sarah. I have an interview Monday for a contract in Bury St. Edmunds, half an hour away by train, and am pursuing a position here in Ipswich. I (almost accidentally) posted my CV on a job-match site last week and have fielded many calls from recruiters about opportunities; unfortunately, they're all in London, which would be at least an hour and a half commute each way, and as much as I'd like to work in London, I just don't think we can coordinate our schedules with Sarah's school schedule, since Margo is already commuting half an hour away and has a fairly fixed schedule herself. I'd need to leave London by 4pm to get back to Sarah's daycare to retrieve her by 6, but I'd need to start my working day much earlier, which I'd like to avoid. I'd be sad to give up more free time, but it would be nice to be working again.
We've also met all of our immediate neighbours (the three others in our building) and more on our street. I'm especially hoping to forge friendships with the other parents on our street.
Margo has just earned her drivers' license. Now she drives a Hyundai instead of a Vauxhall, but we only pay £100/month instead of £80/week, so it's a big improvement in our finances.
This week she had her most difficult client experience so far, absorbing many insults and threats from a woman reluctant to come to terms with her situation. Margo's supervisor is impressed with her work so far and it will probably just be a short while before she is promoted to a more senior/supervisory position.
Sarah is now telling us about many of her classmates by name. She's also earned several Humpty Dots, has her name in the Green Circle (as opposed to the Orange and Red Circles) and has even been awarded a Gold Rectangle. I'm sure the Nobel committee has taken notice already. Yesterday I helped out in her classroom on a walk through the neighbourhood (to learn about types of housing: flats, detatched, semi-detatched, bungalows, and terraced) and was given some of the wilder boys to supervise; Sarah looks quite well-behaved in comparison.
Sarah will repeat the Duckling swimming class because she's still very reluctant to get her head under water. However, she did put her face in the water today, so to honour a previous agreement with Margo, we'll have chocolate cake for dessert tonight.
I am keeping the house very clean. I also know the downtown shopping streets quite well. I'm learning the pubs but that will take more research. And perhaps a bit more even afterward.
I've recently purchased my iMac and am setting up a Java development environment on it. I've set up the Eclipse IDE and I have Tomcat and Ant configured but I'm still struggling to get my .war files properly deployed. I'm used to developing on Windows so I'm working through the hurdles of working on UNIX, such as ensuring proper permissions and remembering my case sensitivity. I've also been boning up on the Spring MVC framework and I look forward to getting more familiar with the new Java 5 language features. When I have time, I want to keep practising my Ruby and perhaps play with Rails some more. Don't worry if this is gibberish to you; it's intended for the 0.5% of the software development population to whom this remotely concerns.
I've also enjoyed having free time, though I can say that there's never enough of such a thing. I've just read a biography on Depeche Mode, and flipped through the Factory Records graphic album. I'm currently reading Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy, a delightful juxtaposition of modern crime writing and nursery rhymes, as well as Stephen Baxter's The Time Ships, a sequel of sorts to H.G. Well's The Time Machine, in addition to a collection of Swamp Thing comics by Alan Moore. These are all British authors whom I've read before, but it's great to read them in their native land - the references make more sense now.
I've just begun seeking work, now that we've procured an after-school daycare placement for Sarah. I have an interview Monday for a contract in Bury St. Edmunds, half an hour away by train, and am pursuing a position here in Ipswich. I (almost accidentally) posted my CV on a job-match site last week and have fielded many calls from recruiters about opportunities; unfortunately, they're all in London, which would be at least an hour and a half commute each way, and as much as I'd like to work in London, I just don't think we can coordinate our schedules with Sarah's school schedule, since Margo is already commuting half an hour away and has a fairly fixed schedule herself. I'd need to leave London by 4pm to get back to Sarah's daycare to retrieve her by 6, but I'd need to start my working day much earlier, which I'd like to avoid. I'd be sad to give up more free time, but it would be nice to be working again.
posted by Michael Nelson at 9:27 am
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