hehehehe (by sarah)

Last night saw me and Al doning a uniform and taking on secret identitie, I in fact have two!

Alaric is Akela, I am known as Otta and Skip (though no ones actually called me Skip which I'm sort of greatful of as it sounds - well a bit silly). Yesturday was much fun with helpers not turning up on time - more children than last week turning up and it being a perants evening!

I couldnt find the story about what beavers really are so spent yesturday afternoon combing all the childrens animal books for pics, consulting wikipedia and the pice to la resistonce - Scottish Beavers! I saved the pictures to my laptop and showed the Beavers and told them about the re-introduction project. I was blagging most of it though - making games up off the cuff - fortunatly I had the soft play kit so that was easier than it could have been.

Akela was seen running backwards and forwards participating in games of various sorts, including a game of crab football - then he wondered last night why he was so tired and felt like he'd run a marathon!

Well I also discovered I know a lot of the rules of cricket as I invented Softy Cricket which cam as a huge shock! We also played Softy Volly Ball.

The Scouts insisted on playing musicial chairs which seeing as we had no sound systtem ment I found myself singing the hamster dance theme :/ I also found myself singing the little chicken song and getting them to do The Animal went to the fair in cannon - which was hilarious - imagine 10-12 yr olds trying not to be uncool whilst enjoying themselves doing 'lame' things.

Residual Current Blues (by alaric)

Bah. Yesterday the RCD tripped, shutting off the electricity supply to the house, while I was standing in the kitchen.

This means that, somewhere, something's leaking electricity. An RCD measures the current that goes out to appliances on the Live wire, and measures the current that comes back via the Neutral wire, and if they differ by more than about 100mA (in the case of our unit), then it knows that coulombs of charge are going awry somewhere - which is usually a dangerous situation, since it means either a short to ground of some kind (which can start fires due to electricity flowing through things it shouldn't and making them hot) or a short to ground via a human being, which is usually rather unhealthy.

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Life changes (by alaric)

My life has been changing a bit recently...

Firstly, I've resigned from the last company I don't own that I was an employee of. I used to be a full time employee, but nearly a year after the company decided to "downsize" drastically to save expense and stay afloat (ditching all of the staff apart from myself, the MD, an admin person, and the production guy and abandoning the office in favour of us all working from our homes, and cutting our pay by 10%), I went part time to start pursuing a freelancing career. Well, I've now resigned entirely, although I may take on freelancing contracts from them.

The difference will be that such contracts will have a beginning and an end; the reason I've resigned is that the work had become a constant stream of quite menial work, most of which came in with very little notice and tight deadlines, meaning it was an endless distraction. Also, if I spent all of my time on it I'd earn enough to feed the family at the end of the month, while freelance contracts would take months to pay back, which combined with the depleted state of my savings after the move, birth of Jean, and Sarah's illness meant I had to spend most of my time working as an employee to pay the bills. The proper lucrative interesting work had to be squeezed into the evenings.

So I'm hopeful about this change. The finances will be a bit tight for the next couple of months, but my pipeline is filling already.

The other change is that I've become a cub scout leader. This is because our village is restarting a scout group, with all three ages - beavers, cubs, and scouts. Sarah got involved, but the person who was going to be doing cubs backed out. Now, I'd always planned to do something voluntary for the community; either rejoin St John Ambulance or see if the Air Cadets take civilian volunteers (I was in the Combined Cadet Force at school, in the RAF section). Being a scout leader hadn't occurred to me, but the village needed one, so I decided to give it a go.

I was very nervous up until our first meeting with the children; but now I've met them and know a bit about them, I can start to actually have some idea of what they'll enjoy, so the fear of the unknown is ebbing fast. We have to go through a lot of training before we can run the group alone; we're being heavily supported by other groups in the area and central district resources, and while I'm sure the training will be useful, what I'm planning on doing is asking if there's a nearby cub pack that meets on a Tuesday and could do with me as a helper for a couple of weeks, so I can learn from others directly. I learn fast that way.

All of this means that I'm moving rather fast along my Life Plan.

• Married - check
• Father - check
• Self employed - check
• Doing some volunteer community activity - check
• Have employees - WORKING ON IT
• Become a magistrate - SCHEDULED FOR 2009
• Implement ARGON - WORKING ON IT
• Rule the world from an orbital battlestation - STALLED DUE TO POOR AVAILABILITY OF ANTIMATTER

English Music Festival (by sarah)

Me and Al unfortunatly cant go to this but it looks fun 🙂

http://www.englishmusicfestival.org.uk/

Minnie finds a new place to sit! (by alaric)