Blog

The first week of the school holidays, which means that my sabbatical is now a different thing entirely. Now, no longer at home, getting jobs around, my time now it spent with the family venturing off places.

And, although none of this should be any kind of surprise, I kinda didn’t really plan for it.

(more…)

My 8th week on sabbatical has been and gone and… what a week.

It’s been a combination of heatwave, school and every small thing that you can throw into the mixing pot.

The week started, as I talked about last week, with the predicted heat wave. If Monday was hot, Tuesday was, a few degrees higher, unbearable.

By Wednesday, though, the temperature had dropped dramatically.

To get through Monday and Tuesday I drove my wife and daughter to/from school. I also decided that putting the oven/hob on for long periods of time in the evening to make dinner probably wasn’t the best idea, so I treated us to takeaway on Monday, ordering enough that we could have the same on Tuesday.

Otherwise, I did very little on those days. Before it got too hot each day, after I’d returned from the school trip, I went to the gym. But that was it for the day. The rest of it was sitting on the sofa, playing Apex Legends and eating ice lollies.

But Wednesday returned to normal, which is what I spent much of the day doing – getting everything back. Opening windows, putting away extra bedding, and generally putting the house back to how it was.

I’ve been having on-and-off network issues with my Netgear Orbi mesh routers for some time so decided to take the opportunity to try out an alternative – in this case Linksys Velop. However, I had issues with these too. It seems that although 2 routers should be very much enough for my house size they just don’t quite work. In the case of the Velops they said that connection between the 2 was great, but the app showed a weak Wi-Fi link between them. This all culminated in our rear outside camera dropping off the network and then a total drop-off of everything from the second router, all without it reporting any issues. Bleurgh. So that’s going back for a refund.

Anyway setting these all up and configuring them was something I spent some time on Wednesday doing.

Thursday was “The Day of the Bike Rack”. I bought a carrier to put on my bike, which I decided to fit on Thursday morning, as it was raining first thing. It went well but it seemed to sit a bit too high on the back of the bike. Half way to the gym, I had to re-mount the bike, caught my right knee on the carrier and hurt it quite badly (let’s say, there was blood).

Nearby was a bike shop, so I took it in to get their advice. Basically, it’s the wrong type for my bike, not that I was ever told this when sold it. It sits too high and can’t go any lower – I need t a different type. So, Thursday afternoon involved taking the rack back off, packaged it up to send back, and also spent some time adjusting the bike more generally, including raising my seat a bit further.

On Friday, it was raining. Not too bad, so I biked to the gym, getting a little damp on the way. When I came out, it was pouring down. I got soaked getting home, which wasn’t great.

Lucie’s school finished for the year at 1:30, my wife joining the teachers at the nearest pub, so I had to go and pick her up.

Yesterday, Saturday, I went to see my mum for the day (with a cheeky stop at McDonald’s for tea on the way home). Today, we’re going over to an old work friends of mine for an afternoon of board gaming.

Now that school has broken up, my weeks are going to be a lot less regimented, with lots of things for us all to do planned during the week. Where I can, I need to try and fit in some of my sabbatical jobs as well (oh, and the gym).