Many things

Too long since I updated this thing.

The biggest thing that happened in the meantime was my sister's wedding on the 1st March. This was a great success all round. I remember when they told me that they wanted the reception in the local castle, I thought that's going to be a bit tricky to pull off. But they did it.

I had to get my brother from the airport on Friday evening which was a bit hellish with the traffic as his flight landed at 17:35. I then took him to my Dad's house, where he was staying. It was then that my Dad's wife asked me what I was wearing to the wedding, and only then did I realise I had no black shoes apart from my running shoes. I had to wear those and hope nobody would notice.

Yeah, right, the very first thing my sister said when she saw me when I had to pick up my brother from her house in the morning was 'You're wearing trainers to my wedding!' Oh well. The ceremony was at midday in the chapel at the bottom of town and was simple and effective. They had decided to do it half in Welsh and half in English, which was surprisingly effective. After that it was back to the cars and up to the castle for the reception. This was in a marquee in the castle grounds, which was really effective and worked very well. They had a space in it for the catering, including a bar, and then if anyone needed the loo, they could go to the ones in the visitor centre.

The meal was excellent and there were the usual speeches, and then there was a bit of a gap before the evening do, which was a lot busier. It was a great success all round. The only blot on the proceedings was my sister-in-law breaking her foot when she and my brother were investigating the castle before the wedding. So while the ceremony was going on, she was in the hospital having her foot plastered, and had to turn up to the reception on crutches. Ooops. It was good to see the family though, and my sister's new husband's sprawling family are great too.

The running has been going reasonably well. This last week was a bit of a struggle with the jump to two 13 minute runs, but I did something new on Wednesday and went for a run by myself. I found that pacing myself alone is hard so I ran too fast and had to walk a fair bit at the end, but it wasn't too bad. I think I'm being held back by my weight at this point and need to cut back on my eating. Which is being handicapped by being invited to birthday meals and things.

On Thursday I met up with Rob, Em and Andy to sort out some more details about Berlin. We booked the car park, Andy's suitcase, the Reichstag visit (which you have to now book in advance) and some other details. It's quite worrying how quickly it's come round, but Andy and Rob are a bit more worried obviously, as they have to run the half-marathon.

This weekend has been good. Yesterday morning I headed to the gym, which was nice as it was almost completely desrted. I did my usual cross-trainer and some weights and then went on the treadmill where I mixed up walking on a gradient with running, finally making it up to 11mb/h for a couple of minutes, which was good. After that in the evening it was off to Abergele for Dave B from work's birthday meal. We went to the pub and played (in my case terrible) pool and then went to an Indian. I had a new dish called a Deshi Paneer, which was like a cheesy Korma and absolutely delicious. As I wasn't drinking I didn't stay out all that late, but it was a good evening and a good chance to get to meet the helpdesk guys outside of work. They're all new and I'm still a bit out of touch with them.

Today it was down to Rob and Em's for the rugby. Sadly the game was shit, Wales were just pants and it wasn't fun at all. Even the Sevens game afterward was shit as well, but at least that was shorter so the agony wasn't prolonged. After that we ended up eating a Chinese takeaway while watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Netflix.

The other thing I did today was collect up all my vintage computer stuff and put it in the porch to catalogue it and put it on Ebay. I was going to give it to a museum, but they only wanted some of it and wanted it all boxed up and taken to Stoke-on-Trent. Too much hassle so I'm just going to list it all on Ebay as a job lot for collection only. If it goes for a tenner I don't give a shit any more so long as they come and get it.

It's an odd sensation though. All this stuff was so important to me at one point and then somehow I just completely lost interest in it. Not so much vintage computers completely, but having to have the original hardware. It's hard to justify having the physical machines and the space they require when you can just fire up an emulator. There's a couple of things I'm keeping separate to list later, one being a brand new boxed IBM Model M keyboard and the old Acorn A310 which I loved dearly back in the day and can't quite bring myself to sell yet. Not least because I need to take the hard drive out first and can't figure out how.

The need to clear this stuff out though is because there is now finally movement on selling the house and moving somewhere more suitable for my Mum. I'm still feeling the indignity of having to live with an aging parent at my age but realistically at this point, I don't have much choice. Anyway, the house has now been valued and will be on the market before too long.

Oh well. It's a slightly frightening step forward into perhaps a new phase of my life, so I need to try and look forward to that instead of fearing it, although this does fluctuate from day to day.