Mike's musings

Difficult news

(backposting) Not for me, but to me, if you see what I mean. I'm due to be taking a funeral service at a crematorium on Thursday, for a a fairly elderly woman who died before Easter. Her daughter, who's been arranging everything, phoned me this morning to tell me that the husband (widower) died today. It's going to make for a very difficult service for the family, and I'm thinking (and praying) very hard about how to manage things. God will provide.

On a happier note, I walked for around 4.75 miles today, at an average of over 5.25 mph. I'm chuffed.

On a less happy note, Liverpool lost to Chelsea in the second leg of the European cup. Darn.

Labels: football, funeral

In-laws

We've got Kate and Mac with us today - they arrived last night while Moo and I were at Jo's dance show. Moo got to watch it, as I watched the dress rehearsal, and this time I got to be backstage doing costume changes. Had a couple of beers and chatted to another Dad while Jo was doing her thing, and it all went well, by all accounts. We got back and grabbed a little food, and I slept rather badly, so this morning, while they headed off to Freeport, I had a bit of a sleep. Afterwards, I went for a lovely 4 mile (well, 4.945 mile) walk in the beautiful North Essex countryside. The sun was out, it was warm but there was a slight breeze, and I walked hard. I really love walking - just taking the exercise - and tend to listen to either podcasts or music while I do. Today it was Arvo P&adia;rt (various) and Bach (motets). Moo's backstage tonight and Kate, Mac, Mel and her mum are watching Jo.

And I've heard in the past few minutes that Liverpool won today against Fulham, and are back at the top of the Premiership table (where they ought to be).

Labels: football, walk

Feet (in various configurations)

Go Liverpool (2-0 up (3-0 on aggregate) at halftime).

And what I thought might be a broken foot turns out probably to have been gout (or pseudo-gout). Embarassing, somehow.

Labels: football, illness

Go 'Pool

You have to win, you _have_ to...

Labels: football

Router fixing

Left home at 0830 this morning up to Kate and Macs. Only took me 5-10 minutes to fix the router: the problem was what I'd expected, and I had notes on what I'd needed to do last time. This time I've saved the config, and written notes on how to put it all back together. So, we had a chance to see them, and Nana Stick, who Moo hadn't spent much time with at the Christening. Back home around 1910 - girls both took a long time to get back to sleep.

I've had a paper accepted at a conference in February, it seems, which is good: but I've had to send a photo of myself, which I hate.

Oh, and Liverpool lost: what _was_ Benitez thinking with that formation?

Labels: computers, family, football, work

Essay done!

Yes, you saw aright. It's finished, and I'm even quite pleased with some of it: we'll see how it goes down with the markers. Got some work done reacting to the HMRC news from yesterday and how it affects us, threw out some old computer cases and bits and pieces to Black Barn Computers, who may be able to do something with some of the newer pieces. Yesterday, they have me a quite serviceable CRT (monitor) to give to Jo's pre-school, which was very kind, so I thought I'd try to send some decent stuff their way along with the, um, rubbish.

Speaking of rubbish, England are 2-0 down to Croatia. We're going out, and deserve to do so on current form.

Labels: computers, ERMC, football

Football!

(backposting) Not only were my parents-in-law at Anfield today watching the Derby match (a nil-all draw, but they were in the hospitality suite and were treated like royalty so had a great time) but we had more football (ranging from 2-a-side to an mean average of 3.5-a-side) at Ditchingham which was lots of fun.

The day was mainly spent doing work on verbatims. I'd presented one about SecondLife, and the other 5 in my group were very supportive and helpful. The other ones were fascinating, and it was an excellent day. It was really hard work listening, reflecting and feeding back, but very worthwhile indeed.

The music at the evening worship was excellent: Tavener, Moore and Holst.

Labels: ERMC, football, secondlife

Watching the footie

For those of you who don't know, I married into a Scouse family, and it was made clear well before we even became engaged that if I was serious about Catherine, then I'd be supporting Liverpool from then on. Given that my only (slight) allegiance was to the (oft-relegated, ever hopeful) Wolves, this wasn't a big ask, but these days I really enjoy following them. They're playing Oporto away from home tonight, and so I settled down with a beer. I'll have some wine in a moment, but it's best to start off with a beer, isn't it?

Moo had some problems with her Palm recently and it's not been syncing. She needs it to work for her job, and we were dreading having to buy a new one, but in the end, we got away with buying her a bluetooh dongle (her laptop's _supposed_ to have bluetooth on it, but it's Windoze XP, and therefore has never worked).

I'm coming to the end of my placement at Long Melford, and need to arrange an end supervision. I've really enjoyed the time, and look forward to going there in the future. Next challenge is that I've agreed to take over the service for the second Sunday of the month at Great Yeldham. I really want to do something really rather different, and I'm looking forward to spending some time with Keith (the incumbent and my supervisor) discussing my ideas.

Labels: church, computers, football

Spoke too soon

We lost. B*gger.

Labels: football

Halftime

Milan 1 - Liverpool 0

Freak goal by Inzaghi. We're still in it.

Labels: football

Champion's League Final

This starts at 1945 BST. Liverpool vs Milan. Let's hope that they don't take us to penalties, as they seem to keep doing.

"Go 'pool!" as Jo and Turtle say.

Labels: football