I wrote this a few days ago and meant to publish it before the new year but… well. more fun things got in the way 
ok. so. 2.5 months since the last post. I’ve done a lot in those 10 weeks! how to fit it in to one post? lets see how it goes. Lets skim.
Panto!
The panto has now been and gone. if you didn’t go, you missed out. it was actually really pretty good! I’m looking forward to little shop of horrors in the summer. Rehearsals start soon. auditions feb i think?
Work stuff
Work has been crazy busy. I have been involved in all three of the really big projects of the year, from the datacenter move, going on to the hardware upgrade project and finally the DR test. Add to that the the ‘usual stuff’. Software releases, other smaller projects and keeping all the developer tools i manage going, and things have been pretty hectic. It’s all gone ok though, and 2010 looks like it could be equally exciting. I will be heading up a project to improve our continuous integration systems by making it more reliable, more scaleable and generally work better. And a lot more of the usual stuff. But I should also be getting someone soon to help me out with that Enough of work…
Holidays
I had an obscene amount of annual leave to use up before the end of the year so i decided to use it in one huge block from December 15th to the new year. The first week was one of christmas parties.
On the Monday, a group of us went to Hyde Parks Winter Wonderland to take some photos. Many of the ones I thought were worth keeping were fairly… experimental, but they are on Flickr anyway. Have a look, leave a comment!
Tuesday was the Quay Players christmas meal. Very nice food and good to see everyone for a final time of the year.
Wednesday was the warehouse team christmas meal! Again, delicious food. i had steak tartare for the first time. Fantastic. i would have it again.
I had a night off on thursday. Very much needed for a bit of R&R.
Then Friday was Poker at Shahabs new flat in Canary Wharf. It didn’t go well for me. Dale cleaned me out with a couple of full houses. Bastard. Fun night none the less. I’ll get him next time.
Saturday I was up fairly early. I went up to Hampstead Parish Church (my aunts church) to give them a hand putting up their gigantic christmas tree. In the afternoon I headed out to Victoria Coach Station to go skiing. It didn’t quite go to plan… snow had broken the channel tunnel. Annoying. So we didn’t go that night. They did ring the next day to say that the hold ups on the shuttle had cleared though, so Steve and I headed off on the sunday, a day later than intended. We still got three good days of skiing in though, and the snow was great. With both legs stills intact, we arrived back in the UK on Christmas Eve morning at 7:30am. just in time for me to head home, have a shower, dump my ski kit and get on a train to Halifax for christmas with Tim (B) and Tim (S) and The Suttons.
Christmas Eve and Day were basically just awesome. Tim and I had an amazing time in Yorkshire, and the food, drink and company was amazing. The Tims and Katie and I all went out on christmas morning for a snowy walk. We then had one of the longest meals in history, all of it delicious.
On Boxing day Tim and I got up really early (6am! after all that eating and drinking!) and got a coach back to london for Christmas Dinner no 2. Again – delicious. Two days of turkey. Amazing.
Tim and I went out shopping on the 27th to buy a new TV. It’s pretty fantastic. 37 inches of 1080p goodness. The one small mistake we made was carrying it back from the west end to the flat. We managed, but it was… interesting.
We saw Avatar the next night, and then he was off back to Southampton. I met up with Zippy + various other friends of hers over the next couple of days before we both went down to Southampton, with her flatmate in portugal, Heather, on New Years Eve.
I probably shouldn’t go in to too much detail about the party… But there was delicious food made by Tim S, a LOT of drinks of various sorts, and some really fun people. We had fireworks at midnight and lit chinese lanterns to see in the new year. then off to mangos over the road for a few more drinks!
That’s it for now though. A better ‘New Years’ post later.
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