Weeeeeeee

• Hello, world!
• I’m going to try writing weeknotes. We’ll see how that goes.
• At the weekend I walked along a path that I’ve often walked past and never taken. That’s not a metaphor. I expected it to lead straight up a hill, but in fact it stays flat for ages through the gorgeous valley. Yet another lovely walk on our doorstep and I’m looking forward to going back and exploring some more. When we did finally turn off to climb the hill it was very windy.
• Work has felt a little frustrating this week — some stuff that I thought was done came back for more, and there were lots of bitty pieces of work. Having said that momentum is gaining again on a project I’ve been working on on and off for most of this year so I’m really excited to get that wrapped up and into testing so that we can hopefully publish soon. Also next week is Product & Technology summer rounders and I will get to meet a load of colleagues for the first time which I’m really looking forward to.
• I went to the FT Embrace book club where we spoke about this month’s book: Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I didn’t love the book — I found myself quite reluctant to read it at points, but there was plenty to talk about and it will definitely stick with me. I’ve now moved onto This House of Grief by Helen Garner. Someone, somewhere recommended it to me a long time ago. It’s my first non-fiction read in a long time, and it’s about the murder trial of Robert Farquharson, who drove his three young boys into a dam, and claimed that he blacked out due to cough syncope. It’s predictably bleak, and I’m not sure what the book is trying to be yet, but it’s readable and I’ll stick with it.
• I ordered quite a lot of books from Faber this week (a lot of them are small though, which somehow makes it feel better).
• We got to the “end of term” in Japanese class, which means there’s a test for homework before we head straight on into the next “term”. I knew most of the content from this term already having previously studied Japanese, but it’s been really fun to see colleagues, some of whom had zero prior knowledge of the language, progress quickly to the level where they can read the basic alphabets, share information and ask questions. Starting the course has really got me back into Japanese and spurred me on with Duolingo et al to keep pushing ahead.
• Today sees the second (scheduled, thankfully) trip to the vets for Peg this week — she’s having her vaccinations today. We narrowly avoided a head-on collision with a lorry on Tuesday (I rounded the corner and he was overtaking a cyclist heading towards me on my side of the road, very scary), so I’m really hoping this trip goes better…
• …on that note, maybe see you next week.