Work

What a week! First and foremost, it marks the beginning of a new job. I’ve moved on from the company I’ve worked with since leaving University (before leaving actually) to a new employer up in Cambridge. It’s a significant one for me. My last job always felt like a simple extension of University, in a sense this is my first real move into the “real” world… maybe. Leaving was a very tough decision to make, especially after 5 years. But in the end it was working from home for a year on the opposite side of the planet from all my friends-cum-colleagues that did it. Working from home is truly overrated.

My new company seems a most excellent place. It’s up in Cambridge, so I don’t have to subject myself to London. I like London, but don’t want to go there every day – poor Kat 🙁 Now I’m a commuter of course, and the journey is at least an hour each way. I should be able to keep it down to that once I streamline the travel process and get a bike up in Cambridge (a faster way to get around the town than the buses.)

So, first week down and rather good.

Windows

Unfortunately this week is the week the landlord decided to replace all the windows and doors in our place. They did it all in 2 days, impressively speedy – now I’m just waiting to see if they all fall out. That’s 2 doors, 8 windows, and 2 huge front bay-windows. They left the place in a mess too, not happy about that. Not much we can do about it, except tidy up. It is nice having secure windows though, and being able to see out of them is a nice bonus. We’re told the previous double-glazed windows were the first in the street, they were installed 20 years ago. That probably explains why they were all misted up.

Devon

To add to the business of the week we’ve had a trip to Devon planned since far before I decided to move jobs. It’s part of a little ritual of ours. We’re keen attenders of the Watford LUG meetings. When we lived in Rickmansworth this was our closest LUG, it was pretty close to home in fact. Moving to Hitchin puts us a 40 minute drive away – and we don’t own a car. There are closer LUGs now, and maybe in time we’ll attend one or two others, but we want to try and stick with Watford as long as is practical. So, our little ritual is to hire a car on the first Thursday of every month so we can go to the LUG meeting on this night. Then we have the car for the weekend and drop it back on Monday.

So we get a weekend of mobility about once a month. To to cap off the week I drove the 3ish hours to south Somerset (just above Devon) after work on Friday.

This weekend we’re going to Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall’s River Cottage HQ in Dorset for a “festival.” That’ll take up most of today, then we stay in Weymouth for the night and explore the coastline on Sunday before driving back up to Hitchin.

A long and busy week, but a good one!