Party?

As I'm in the country, anyone fancy a picnic party?

Location: Lundy Island
Time: 4 pm, finishing off with a communal skinny dip in the sea and listening to ARF
Jobs: Hazel - enormous sound system
Caroline - food
Me - eating food
Everyone else - wild fun

Hope to see you all there...

Connected

Hooray for Wireless Lans....

Connected now, feels so much better. Currently posting from Steve the Aussie Personal Trainer's flat - he lives upstairs and has a LAN that we are sharing. I hope it works as well from my flat downstairs. He also has a far more comfortable sofa than I do, so following my run this evening along the banks of the Main river, I needed some comfort. He says "G'day"...to all of you.

Stayed over this weekend to work and ended up getting invited to a dinner party and a barbecue...can't complain. This week sees the end of some of the last few weeks stress. I'm sure there'll be more from different sources to come, but at the moment it's just nice to see the end looming for one major piece of work.

The dinner party was a very nice international affair...2 South Africans, 1 Macedonian, 3 Germans, 1 American, 1 Peruvian, 2 Brits and a half Peruvian/half German baby. And a mad dog called Mackenzie! We ate traditional South African and Peruvian food - what a mixture. All fantastic though, and washed down by some wine from a vineyard that the hostess used to work for and the host's friend runs. Now they are the sort of friends to have!

...and relax....

Apologies for the long absence. Life suddenly got hectic.
So much has happened, where to start...

I was made interim Finance Director, then I was made permanent Finance Director.
Had a few weekends in Germany.
Company has been taken to court by an egomaniac.
So much work to do I don't know where to start.
Starting to make an impression on people, I think. My team are e-mailing me over the weekend, so they got the strong hints about needing to work the weekend becasue there's so much to do, without me having to actually tell them to work the weekend...always better that way!
If I could just get the month end results completed and presented in somewhat the way I want them and a Profit Forecast done that vaguely resembles what might happen in the rest of the year, all by Tuesday morning, I'll be happy!!!

Seriously though, I already love the industry and the management team are mostly already good friends...makes a huge difference, especially when battling a common enemy in court. (We won by the way...yeehaa!). I'm on an ex-pat contract with the expectation of being out there for 18 to 24 months. But nothing is forever and you never know what the future brings. For the moment I'm challenged way outside my comfort zone - thought my German was quite good until I had to write an Affa Davit in German!!!. In fact, I thought my German was quite good until I had to deal with the German legal system, full stop!
The good thing about the job is that I'm senior enough to have REAL influence, which was lacking at the big T...by the way, did you see the story of the Scouse woman applying for planning permission to have the big boss's house demolished? Crackin' cheese, Gromit!

My biggest challenge at the moment is taking control of my own diary and my own time. When I do it works well. It's a funny feeling to just tell everyone what's changing and then for them all to turn up in my office at the right times!

I'll have to remember not to let the power go to my antlers!!!

I have to do a fitness test on Tuesday that I'm going to fail really badly...that should bring me back down to earth with a moose sized bump. Let me know if you feel any tremors at about 6.30am...

Greetings to everyone...I should be getting an internet connection in my flat very soon. Not that I spend a lot of time there at the moment - I'm either in the office or being wined and dined! And with work the way it is I can't promise to blog again soon, but I will, as ever, do my very best...

Macht's gut!!!

Inspiration

Elder mooselet's birthday on Sunday. Yes, I know....

Maybe the price I paid for the small misleading statement (I didn't actually write that his birthday was last weekend when requesting, just said it was his birthday at the weekend without being specific which one...) is that the first time I got to even try to Listen Again was this morning, concerned that it would already have been wiped in favour of this Friday's ARF. and of course I was right. Anyone with an MP3 file of the 7th March show, please e-mail it to me!!!!!

Had an interesting lunch with the CEO on Friday discussing possible permanent roles for me in the company. We've agreed to keep running as we are at the moment and keep the dialogue going as to future directions. As long as I'm earning decently and enjoying what I'm doing, I have no current need to know what's coming next and am contented to go with the flow, dipping my oar in the water now and again to slightly influence the direction that flow takes me in.

Inspiration has struck on the book front. I am making some progress again on Book 1. I can truly call it that now because I have an idea for Book 2. It's not a sequel as I don't really have any story threads in Book 1 that justify one, but it is a spin-off in that Book 2 is essentially the story of a character mentioned in one line of Book 1. I am at the mind-mapping chapters and ideas stage at the moment, trying not to get too distracted from completing Book 1 ready for sending to agents, but excited at the thought of being at the very beginning of the creative process again. Starting on Book 2 is also important to persuade an agent/publisher that I've got more than one book in me. Plane journeys are impossible to use for the work left on Book 1 anyway, so using the time with my little notebook and my ideas for Book 2 isn't really distraction...convinced? I'm not sure I am...

A wing and a prayer...

Thanks for being my spies. I can't believe he played it!!! I didn't even think my post had got through as I thought the PC had hung.

Little secret though...I did cheat just a tiny little bit...not telling how.

Anna - that'd be Halzephron then...enjoy St Ives in the wind and rain!!!

Hoping that the big storm hasn't made it to London by 7 in the morning and I can get airborne and head east faster than it can...batten down the hatches everyone.

Nobody told me there'd be days like these...

Strange days indeed.

I'm not actually much of a John Lennon fan, but sometimes a song just pops into your head and seems to say it all.

I am still in the office at 8pm, waiting for a colleague so that we can drink beer, eat pizza and chat about the future of this company.

The MD was dismissed today. It seems that a number of other people knew it was coming as well as me. I was in the office early this morning to print a load of the legal documents ready for the final act. I hate having secrets like that - it's really hard to treat someone the same when he's your boss and you know the axe is hanging and he can't see it...

But then not as hard as being the one that gets the chop.

My chat with the CEO was good but non-specific about future opportunities. He was generally full of compliments and we agreed that we would get to know each other a bit over the coming weeks and see what transpires. To that end, I'm back in the UK next Friday for lunch, by which time I have to make my mind up if I want to sh1t or get off the pot and throw my hat in the ring for the dead man's shoes.

I will also have decided how many cliches too many were involved in that last sentence...

Most peculiar Mama.

4 seasons in one day...

Boo!

Just popped in to find so much going on...

First, congrats to Susan...I did have a whisper of your news from Lyndyloo...

Second, welcome to new joiners over here, Dancerjen and Gingembre. Great to have you here. You probably don't know me but I used to be a CLP blogger too until I couldn't be bothered any more. But that's a whole other story. You may think I can't be bothered here any more but I'm afraid it's just being busy and working in Germany at the moment...too much weekend time spent seeing my kids and washing/ironing ready to return on Monday and weekday time spent....WORKING!!! It's all a bit of a shock to the system.

Third, darn, missed the cake. Although my secretary had birthday cake in the office today, so I joined in belatedly.

My big news this week (so far...could get bigger tomorrow...) is that I have moved into a flat. No more hotel living! I don't know the connectivity status of the flat but I'm hoping to get back online a bit more regularly in the evenings.
The flat's quite small but it's much bigger than a hotel room so I'm not complaining. I'm so looking forward to not having to go out every night for tea, being able to do my washing here instead of lugging dirty washing back home every weekend, and most of all, leaving all my stuff somewhere permanent rather than transporting everything between the office and the hotel every Monday night and Friday morning.
I'm about a minute away from the Mainufer (bank of the river) which has cycle paths and running track for miles in both directions. I have a neighbour from the company who is a fitness freak who I can train with...all I need now is a hip that works without hurting and I'm away! Oh, and I have to buy a bike too. Mrs Moose and the Mooselets can come over for a weekend now too.

Have had snow and bright sunshine today...