I always mean to do these a bit more frequently, but instead they get further and further apart...
We're now fairly well settled into the new house, and have done most of the things on the short-medium term to-do list, although there are still a few bits and bobs like alphabetising the non-fiction, and getting a cat. It continues to be a great source of joy - I still get a little frisson of delighted "I can't believe I live here and it’s ours and no-one can take it away" every time I walk in the door.
Work is going pretty well. I’m now eight months into my contract heading up the Student Records team at the Uni of Bedfordshire, and both my team and the more senior management seem pretty happy with me. It’s felt like quite a challenge at times, but never so much that I feel unpleasantly out of my depth, and I’ve learned a lot. After a lot of faff and one failed round of recruitment we’ve managed to appoint my permanent successor, who’ll be starting in March, which is ideal from my perspective, as much as I’m enjoying the role, I’m definitely starting to reach the itchy feet stage, and with this contract under my belt getting the next role at management level should be much easier.
In exciting relationship news, since the Piskies voted to conduct same-sex marriages, we’ve started making more concrete wedding plans, including booking Inverness Cathedral for the church service. The plan, since Inverness is quite a long way to ask everyone to travel, is to have a small ceremony there with family and wedding party, and then a blessing and big reception in London the following weekend. Save the dates will come out at some point, but it’s not until summer 2019, so we’ve got plenty of time to plan (although people keep telling me that it will fly by, and I should probably take some note of that…)
In other news, I am implausibly busy at the moment, even by my own slightly ridiculous standards. I wrote about the chorus a few days ago, which is taking a lot of my time. The other big thing at the moment is that Fr Daniel recently handed in his notice at St John’s, so we’re approaching a period of Interregnum. And because these things always work that way, one of our churchwardens has just resigned, and muggins here agreed to stand as her replacement, so now I’m treasurer and churchwarden of a church which will shortly have no priest.
Then there’s Thronescamp 2018, the readthrough of season 3 and 4 of Game of Thrones that I’m organising with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the_alchemist, which I’m getting very excited about, but still needs quite a bit of work on casting and finishing scripts, and all the other little bits and pieces of admin that make a readthrough work. And I’m trying to maintain at least something of an exercise habit, admittedly with mixed success, but I’m still managing a couple of sessions of pilates each week, and recently managed to get out for my first few runs in quite a while, and surprised myself with my first ever <60 minutes 10k, and dropping my 5k PR by about a minute and a half. I’m not sure how I’ve managed to get significantly better at running by not doing much of it for months, but I’ll take what I can get.
I’ve been dating a bit, mostly first dates that haven’t gone any further, but I’ve got one next week with a young lady about whom I’m getting particularly tingly feelings, so we’ll see how that pans out. I’m definitely finding it more challenging than I once did to navigate the whole malarkey, partly because I’m out of practice, and partly because I’m still a bit awkward without the social lubrication of a drink or several, amongst other reasons, but the ratio of fun to angst still puts it in the 'worth doing' category, although whether it’s ‘worth finding time to do considering all the other demands on my copious free time’ is something that may wax and wane.
As ever, I’ve been visiting lots of amazing restaurants, but I’ll either write about them separately or (let’s be honest, more likely) not get round to it until I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve eaten. I haven’t been doing nearly as much piano playing, climbing, drawing, practicing French, or reading as I would prefer, and I’d quite like to rectify this, but I think I might need a Time Turner in order to make that happen. I also keep thinking about taking up dance classes of some kind and branching out into learning the cello, but I’m conscious that although at the moment I’m mostly at the exhausting-but-fun level of overdoing it, it wouldn’t take much to push me over into can’t-cope-and-too-burned-out-to-enjoy-things, so I need to carve out some more space in my life before I’m allowed to take on anything new...
We're now fairly well settled into the new house, and have done most of the things on the short-medium term to-do list, although there are still a few bits and bobs like alphabetising the non-fiction, and getting a cat. It continues to be a great source of joy - I still get a little frisson of delighted "I can't believe I live here and it’s ours and no-one can take it away" every time I walk in the door.
Work is going pretty well. I’m now eight months into my contract heading up the Student Records team at the Uni of Bedfordshire, and both my team and the more senior management seem pretty happy with me. It’s felt like quite a challenge at times, but never so much that I feel unpleasantly out of my depth, and I’ve learned a lot. After a lot of faff and one failed round of recruitment we’ve managed to appoint my permanent successor, who’ll be starting in March, which is ideal from my perspective, as much as I’m enjoying the role, I’m definitely starting to reach the itchy feet stage, and with this contract under my belt getting the next role at management level should be much easier.
In exciting relationship news, since the Piskies voted to conduct same-sex marriages, we’ve started making more concrete wedding plans, including booking Inverness Cathedral for the church service. The plan, since Inverness is quite a long way to ask everyone to travel, is to have a small ceremony there with family and wedding party, and then a blessing and big reception in London the following weekend. Save the dates will come out at some point, but it’s not until summer 2019, so we’ve got plenty of time to plan (although people keep telling me that it will fly by, and I should probably take some note of that…)
In other news, I am implausibly busy at the moment, even by my own slightly ridiculous standards. I wrote about the chorus a few days ago, which is taking a lot of my time. The other big thing at the moment is that Fr Daniel recently handed in his notice at St John’s, so we’re approaching a period of Interregnum. And because these things always work that way, one of our churchwardens has just resigned, and muggins here agreed to stand as her replacement, so now I’m treasurer and churchwarden of a church which will shortly have no priest.
Then there’s Thronescamp 2018, the readthrough of season 3 and 4 of Game of Thrones that I’m organising with
the_alchemist, which I’m getting very excited about, but still needs quite a bit of work on casting and finishing scripts, and all the other little bits and pieces of admin that make a readthrough work. And I’m trying to maintain at least something of an exercise habit, admittedly with mixed success, but I’m still managing a couple of sessions of pilates each week, and recently managed to get out for my first few runs in quite a while, and surprised myself with my first ever <60 minutes 10k, and dropping my 5k PR by about a minute and a half. I’m not sure how I’ve managed to get significantly better at running by not doing much of it for months, but I’ll take what I can get.I’ve been dating a bit, mostly first dates that haven’t gone any further, but I’ve got one next week with a young lady about whom I’m getting particularly tingly feelings, so we’ll see how that pans out. I’m definitely finding it more challenging than I once did to navigate the whole malarkey, partly because I’m out of practice, and partly because I’m still a bit awkward without the social lubrication of a drink or several, amongst other reasons, but the ratio of fun to angst still puts it in the 'worth doing' category, although whether it’s ‘worth finding time to do considering all the other demands on my copious free time’ is something that may wax and wane.
As ever, I’ve been visiting lots of amazing restaurants, but I’ll either write about them separately or (let’s be honest, more likely) not get round to it until I’ve forgotten most of what I’ve eaten. I haven’t been doing nearly as much piano playing, climbing, drawing, practicing French, or reading as I would prefer, and I’d quite like to rectify this, but I think I might need a Time Turner in order to make that happen. I also keep thinking about taking up dance classes of some kind and branching out into learning the cello, but I’m conscious that although at the moment I’m mostly at the exhausting-but-fun level of overdoing it, it wouldn’t take much to push me over into can’t-cope-and-too-burned-out-to-enjoy-things, so I need to carve out some more space in my life before I’m allowed to take on anything new...
no subject
Date: 2017-12-13 10:42 am (UTC)From:Good luck with the busyness. I hope you are able to schedule time off in between all the things.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-13 11:32 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-12-13 11:40 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-12-13 11:41 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-12-13 01:25 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-12-13 02:27 pm (UTC)From:All the best for managing the busyness and hoping it continues to be full of shiny