Holiday Travel OK for Mrs DeeJay

Others may bitch about the NHS but they certainly came through for Mrs DeeJay this morning.
Her GP arranged for a specialist at the local hospital to "squeeze her in" in a full outpatients schedule this morning. We made a point of making sure she was there before the start of the clinic and her saw her as his first appointment, removed a piece of cotton wool from her ear, prescribed some antibiotic drops and gave her the all clear for flying.
All done in 30 minutes - That's what I call service

See you all in 2 weeks

Last Day home!!

Tomorrow we fly all being well with Mrs DeeJay. For several weeks now she has complained intermittently about "an ear infection". I finally persuaded her to make an appointment with the doctor this morning after it flared up again yesterday - "you don't want to have a bad experience in the pressurised plane cabin, or not be able to go snorkelling do you".
It turns out that she has got something like some cotton wool bud stuck in it!!
The doctor couldn't retrieve it so she has an appointment very first thing at the local hospital ENT out patients clinic. Lets hope they can get it out without any serious effort.

I have ben off work a day early today to shop and pack etc. Why do it before when you can do it at the last minute :-). I have now finished and I am going to get in some serious guitar practice as it will be the last for 2 weeks

ABC Wednesday - V

V is for vegetables
This is the sorry state of my allotment this year taken a few weeks ago - nothing but the potatoes seem to be growing well.

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Four Days and Counting

Only 4 days to go (3 at work) before heading off for the unknown of Africa.
Mrs DeeJay and I spent some of the weekend sorting out our packing. Well mine was on paper as I am very much a list person while Mrs DJ spent a lot of time laying stuff out on a spare bed and then putting a lot of it away again to replace it with something else.
I am having awful trouble convincing her to really travel light this year. Eventually the scales will do the persuading as we are limited to 15kg because we have some travel to do mid holiday in quite a small plane, to say nothing of the daily trips between safari lodges.
I was amused to see not only how our packing approach differed, but also the content. Whilst her's was mainly, clothing and feminine stuff like cosmetics and facial cleansing etc, mine was very limited in that respect (OK lay off the jokes about the cosmetics) but was heavily influenced by cameras, binoculars, iPod, iPAQ and all the relevant charger gear. Must be my IT geeky background!

Another week nearer my holiday - YIPPEE

As another work week draws to a close, and a pretty hectic one at that, I will enjoy my weekend even more knowing that I only have to work 3 days next week and then pack my bags.
I can't remember if I told you but Mrs DeeJay and I will be jetting off at the end of the week for a week on safari in Tanzania followed by a chill out for a week on the beach in Zanzibar. I hope to bore you and make you jealous with my photos for quite a few postings to come lol.

Did I also tell you that I had re-started yoga classes after a lay off of some 5 years?
I stopped when the new gym that I joined at that time offered a class that was far inferior in quality to the one that I had been going to at my old gym. Recently, over the past 4 weeks though, they have put on a class with a new instructor who is absolutely fantastic. He trained in India and has such a relaxed teaching style that really seems to get results from us all. Last night he had us in a position called Bakasna that I think translates to "Crane" as in the bird not the building machinery. It looks really hard but step by step he had the whole class doing it last night.


And no that is unfortunately not me as I am not sure I was there long enough for anyone to get a good photo :-)

ABC Wednesday - U

U is for Underwater
This one is 3 of my 7 goldfish in our garden pond
I can't believe the size that they are now compared to the little tiddlers they were when we first bought them.

And these are from a holiday we had in The Maldives, a pity that the camera picks up particles in the water that the eye does not see



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WooHoo - coming home!

I am sitting in the Boston airport lounge waiting to be called for my homeward flight. Should get in around 9 p.m. tonight with any luck as it seems that yesterday's weather delays have been lifted.
It has been a long and particularly tough week this week with many changes taking place at work. I was pleasantly surprised with my own situation which I had expected to be one of planned removal from the project that I have been working on. But have been asked to consider about six different prospects as it seems my experience is still sought. A good end to the week.

Wednesday night was a bit of a stress reliever with some of my team. Something that would be impossible to do home in the UK. One of the team has a veritable arsenal of rifles and hand guns which six of us took to his local range. Now I have shot rifles before when I belonged to a target shooting club in the UK some 15 years ago but I have never shot semi automatic rifles nor the array of hand guns that he had. Some of those were such monsters (e.g. .357 Magnum I think). It was a terrific way to de-stress and to pose a personal challenge.

Less than two weeks to go now for my annual holiday. Mrs DeeJay and I are going to Tanzania for a 7 day safari and then to a beach on Zanzibar for a week to chill and hopefully get some sun, lots of swimming and snorkelling and some new food experiences - can't wait!

ABC Wednesday - T

A bit later this week as I am operating on U.S. Eastern Time but hey Mrs Nesbitt got in really early with a post late on Monday this week as she is at the TT races, so there is no competition really.

'T' is for Tour de France.

Am I cheating by missing off the ‘Le’? Actually I don’t think so and probably don't really care as these are the photos that I have decided to post anyway.

Last year Le Tour De France actually took in some of good old Angleterre and Mrs DeeJay and I set out in glorious sunshine to sit outside of a pub some 10 miles away (and yes we DID cycle there – and I think back again but that is a little hazy) to wait for the super fit cyclists to arrive. They were not on schedule as advertised so many a pleasant hour was spent drinking, eating pub lunch and more drinking before the arrival of the ‘entourage’ selling baseball caps, posters and all sorts of merchandise announced that they were getting close.

And then ….. in the distance – Here they come

Here they are

After about a minute and a half there they were – GONE! With just an army of supporters and spare bikes etc. the only traffic left on the road.

I wonder when they will be back on English soil again, and I wonder if I will bother to go and see them again. I suppose it depends on the weather and the beer!

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Will this be my last Transatlantic business trip?

So I am at 39000 feet once again over the Atlantic with the sunshine streaming in through the, what is it a porthole or a window? I am sorry to say that I am unable to match either the pilot’s prose or the photos of Dave at Flight Level 390

Having just taken advantage of the in flight lunch complete with a G&T (Tanqueray of course) and a couple of glasses of Tempranillo, and before starting some work I thought what a unique position to be in for my next blog posting when I arrive at my hotel and synchronise my laptop.

Another long day in store, having risen at 5:15 this morning for the car journey to Heathrow airport (thankfully still T4 rather than T5) after eight and a half hours it is still only 09:45 where I am heading to on the east coast of the USA. Arriving at just after 13:00 with a couple of hours drive to my eventual destination, I should be there at about 21:00 UK time. As this will only be about 16:00 local time there is no way that I will be able to go to bed so I will shower, check up on emails, post this blog and go out for dinner. I will probably hit the sack at about 22:00 (03:00 local time) and still be lucky if by courtesy of jet lag, I get more that about 5 hours straight sleep.

So will this the be the last of these tortuous trips? Due to major cost cutting, my company has imposed not only a “business critical only” travel policy but also an edict that instead of allowable business class travel for these 22 hour marathon ‘waking to sleeping’ days, we will also have to travel Economy class in future.

I don’t think so!!!! I am sorry Charlie but if you want me to put myself out for two of those flights at either end of a week and to be away from Mrs DeeJay for 5 days then I will not be travelling in that class. Also would I be able to do the work that I am planning to do whilst cramped in Economy – again I don’t think so.