Hello.

I haven’t blogged very much recently. There isn’t a very good reason for this, apart from the fact that I have now reached Level 56 of Farmville.

Twelve months ago, we were busy agonizing over whether or not we were going to get the mortgage on our house. Now it seems hard to remember a time when we didn’t live here. We have installed a lot of ducks.

So many things have changed over the past year. I’ve learnt to ride a bike. I’ve even suffered my first puncture, and currently bear the scars from falling off it for the first time. I’ve become slightly addicted to wrestling, developed a strong aversion to milk in my coffee and discovered the purpose of deep fat fryers. I’ve survived a business trip to Germany, drunk enough wine to go up entire dress size and come to terms with the fact that I am incapable of makin my own sandwiches. I could go on…

Of course, some things still haven’t changed a bit. Don’t ask me whether I have started learning to drive yet. It’s good to still have one or two unachieved goals on life’s to-do list

Auditing continues to slowly gnaw away at my will to live. April and May disappeared in a blur of mediocre hotels with lumpy mattresses and over-priced breakfasts. The low point came when I found myself eating porridge in Victoria station at 7am, despite the fact that I neither like porridge nor had a train to catch. Crazy times! All hopes of a payrise may still be in vain, but my annual appraisal passed off without incident a couple of weeks ago, which was nice Apparently I am “reliable and capable” which, for an accountant, is high praise indeed; on a level with Simon Cowell telling a wannabe popstar that they have the X-factor. People in general have commented that I seem a lot more confident these days. Confidence is a difficult thing to measure, but I reckon that the frequency with which I turn red and shake is reducing.

Esperanto continues to be, well, Esperanto. My right hand is thinking, “Why the hell did I volunteer for that?!” whilst my left hand is already signing me up for something else I don’t actually want to do ;) We’ve been to some fun renkontiĝoj this year though; a bizarrely successful JEB meeting in Cardiff, a sunny British Congress in Llandudno and more recently, a very civilised seminar with John Wells in York. In August, Babel and I are going to Toulouse for a fortnight; partly to visit some friends of his and partly to attend FESTO. In preparation, I am halfheartedly failing to learn French.

I won’t promise that I will blog more regularly from now, but I may try

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Random rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.