The Shock of Good Weather

This summer the weather seems to be running in inverse. Normally we get horrid weekends and bright sunny weekdays. Just to make you feel good about going into work on Monday morning. Last night we drove to our hotel through a deeply unpleasant downpour, pondering nervously our decision to spend a weekend in an unfamiliar town in cloudburst conditions. But today the weather is superb. I now have high hopes for Sunday, and am fairly confident that we are going to get serious rainfall on Monday. Go us!

 

Travelling Man and Wife

Going off tonight for a weekend away. We are celebrating a wedding which took place some considerable number of years ago. So the blog entries might be a bit scarce. I'll let you all know how most of it went on Monday.

 

Results Thursday

A level results today. This hits me at two levels. Son and daughter both got their results. And so do people who have applied to study at my institution. News would seem to be good on both fronts. Son did well enough to get into his desired university. Daughter just did well. And I've already heard from a couple of people who have been very pleased to inform me that they will be turning up in Hull in September. Good stuff. Perhaps I will work out some new jokes. Hmmm. Perhaps nobody will notice.

 

Film Frenzy

Went out to see a film today. So did everyone else. I think it must be the "Orange Wednesday" promotion where you can get two tickets for the price of one. That and the fact that the multiplex that we went to had taken the rather cunning precaution of making all the films in all the theatres start within fifteen minutes of each other. This resulted in a huge queue of people wanting to get in. I wonder if the management were surprised by this?

The delay meant that we missed all those adverts and "coming soon" presentations which I quite like. Although I always feel cheated if the adverts are just big screen versions of the ones on the telly.

The film we saw was Spiderman 2. A very good film as it turned out. Well worth the wait.

 

Olympian Effort

It has proved hard to ignore the Olympics in our house. Although I'm not too sure about watching it number one daughter seems to find it fascinating. Swimmers with unpronounceable names doing unimaginable actions to move through the water. Why were things like butterfly and breast stroke invented? Presumably the human race developed the art of swimming as a way of avoiding the alternative, which is drowning. Once in the water the imperative is often to get out again as fast as possible, especially if being perused (or indeed pursued) by a shark.

So I'm confused about the point in time at which we sat down and said "RIght, we know that the fastest way to get through the water is by front crawl. But just to make things more interesting we'll invent lots of silly strokes which you can use as well. Then we'll invent competitions in these silly strokes and have rules so that we can ban people if they don't swim this way properly".

We don't do it in running. We don't have the "100 metres hurdles walking sideways whilst doing the hand jive". So why do we do it in swimming? And I'm still horribly confused as to how synchronised diving was invented.

 

Back at Work

The summer seems to be ebbing away now. The resit exams start next week and so students are starting to reappear and ask me things. Although the question "What are the exam questions?" always receives an answer which disappoints.

I'm working on a Smartphone course at the moment, whilst keeping a weather eye on all the other things which will need to be in place for the start of the semester, which is only a few weeks away.

 

Sunday Lunch

Our first proper Sunday Lunch for a while. I really like a proper sit down meal on a Sunday. Particularly if I don't have to cook it (but I did take care of the washing up). Quite looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow, lots of plans and stuff to do.