Catching Up

A varied weekend post to catch up with a week to forget!
I was in the U.S., Connecticut to be exact, last week for a series of meetings.

• I got food poisoning on the plane or in the airport lounge on the way out
• The temperature was around -6 degrees before the wind chill factor that took it to -13 degrees
• they were a tough set of meetings
• I took the dreaded overnight red eye flight home so that I could be home in time for the Aison Moyet gig and hardly got any sleep
• I arrived home with a cold that was being shared by several people in my meetings (how kind!)

Still, I got to the Alison Moyet gig with Mrs DeeJay and a fine performance it was. Although she appeared to get off to a shaky start with the first two or three numbers she soon warmed to the obvious delight of the packed house and seemed to really relax from then.
She performed for almost two hours with classics such as Love Letters, That ole Devil, All Cried Out and Only You. She was quick to point out that although the Flying Pickets had the number one spot with the latter it was Yazoo that did it first even though only getting to number two.
Incidentally Alison and Nick Clarke are getting Yazoo (Yaz for my American readers) back together again for a tour starting in March 2008.

Did I mention red-eye just now, well to cap the week off, I managed to poke myself in the eye this morning and now have a very bloody eye.

Mrs DeeJay took me out for a birthday celebration dinner last night (it's actually tomorrow) and that was really good even though I was having to wipe my nose every ten minutes :-)

Back to the office tomorrow for only a week before we are off skiing in Italy where the snow is still good. I can't wait!

Another glorious weekend spoiled by Monday morning

What a weekend of great weather again. Mrs Deejay and I spent much of it in the garden cutting back shrubs and some seriously overgrown grasses. In fact we decimated the grasses and have decided that after 10 years they have to go!

We have plans for the area that they occupy which is somewhat dead space with very little sunshine, which is why they were there in the first place. So we have decided to pave it and have a terracotta pot bed with Phormiums, Yuccas, Crytomeria etc

I am writing this in the BA lounge at Heathrow once again where unfortunately I have failed to get successfully connected to the wireless network so this won’t get posted until I arrive. No exotic destinations such as Tokyo this time, just the usual once every six weeks trip to Head Office in Connecticut. A short trip this week returning on the Thursday overnight flight – oh how I hate that flight!

I checked the weather report last night and it looks as though I am in for some cold evenings – forecast for -8 degrees tonight

Decision Time

Well actually I think I have already made it but I am conning myself into thinking that I am going to take the rest of the day to finally decide about trading in my motorcycle for a new one or not.
I am sure that I am going to call in to the dealers on the way home tonight to sort out the paperwork for a March 1st 08 plate VFR 800 in Candy Red. Well I will have to go for a shade of red again or else I would need to replace my leathers and my winter clothing with something to match either black or silver which are the only two other colours available. Amazingly the Honda Candy Red is remarkably similar to the burgundy red of my car.

I returned to my guitar lessons last night after a two week break to concentrate on home practice.
It seems to have worked. I thought that my strumming rhythm and my speed of chord changing had improved as well as the noticeable improvement in the cleanliness of the chord sounds. Well my tutor confirmed this last night and promptly proceeded to make life difficult again with two new techniques to practice - 'add9' chord additions and 'pulling off'. No that is not what leapt into your unclean minds!

A sad sporting weekend

Oh dear what a let down in the rugby against “the old enemy” at that, however I must concede that we didn’t deserve to win after the abysmal showing in the 2^nd half!

I was so glad that I didn’t have a ticket as I think my first ever visit to England’s Headquarters for such a sad scoreline might have put me off for ever J

Also my adopted team (New England Patriots), who play with the same shaped ball but in another world, lost in the final minutes of the SuperBowl to the New York Giants thereby ending their unbeaten run of 18 wins and the elusive record of a 19-0 season.

On a brighter front, this weekend being much nicer on the weather front, although a little too cold for my liking, saw Mrs DeeJay and I doing more garden clearance and buying this season’s seed potatoes. 1^st Early = Maris Peer, 2^nd Early = Maris Piper, Main Crop = Desiree and Salad = Charlotte. All we need now whilst they are chitting up is to get some decent weather to dry the allotment which is doing a great impression of a bog at the moment so I can dig in some compost.

I also went back to my local Honda dealer and managed to beat him up to improve his trade in offer for my current bike and it is looking like I will clinch the deal for a new model later this week. Oh, and yes I did take all of your kindly offered advice and have discussed the impending purchase with Mrs Deejay. But you knew I would anyway didn’t you?

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