Moog's meanderings

Well, a long couple of weeks actually. Last Tuesday there was an announcement made about redundancies at my husband’s company, followed by a telephone call that evening informing him that he was one of the ones ‘at risk’. The meeting with HR on Friday said that they would look for other suitable positions within the company globally, which could possibly mean Australia, Hong Kong, USA, Coventry or Aberdeen. Today’s follow up meeting confirmed that there isn’t really anything available, and gave him details of the redundancy package. After the next meeting (mid August) he will be given his official notice. It’s hard to know what to do, whether to stay where we are, look further afield, work towards re-locating (within the UK or even abroad). And He still has his (part-time) Phd to finish off – 5 years down, maximum 3 to go. Maybe this is the ideal opportunity to work on that while not in full-time employment?

In the mean time, I have known since June that I will likely have to spend about 3 months in Japan up to the end of this year. This last week things have finally been moving on that project, and it looks as though I’ll be out there with my boss and his boss at the end of August (which may make me a day late for greenbelt – sob!). Which in itself is a very good thing. Mostly it’s just management who go off to these things, agree everything, and tell you bits of it when they get back. This way I’ll get the information as I’ll actually be there – which is will be a great help when I am running the project over the next year or two! Of course, my being in Japan isn’t really wonderful timing with hubby’s situation as it is. Not sure about the 3-month thing, either…

I am looking forward to it with a mixture of feelings. It will be great to have the opportunity to explore Japan – I have been 4 times before, but only on shortish business trips, and have seen parts of Tokyo but never other parts of the Country. This time I will presumably have weekends to myself so will have the opportunity to travel. Also, having been learning Japanese at an evening class since last September, I may be able to get by and learn some more. Although what with the alphabet being different, and all of the characters, I can’t exactly say that I speak Japanese. My knowledge is very basic and sketchy at best – not enough to hold a conversation! On the other side of the coin, it means being away for 3 months. It’s hard leaving your spouse behind and going to a foreign country for a long time. I lived in France for a year, California for 9 months, and Canada for 6 months (the latter two since we have been married), so I know it’s difficult. But isn’t insurmountable. And 3 months isn’t that long really. Just 12 weeks. Hopefully I’ll be back for Christmas….

I have two weeks off work in August, and it looks as though I’ll have to cancel the last 3 days. Which will mean it’s not really a fortnight anymore. I was really looking forward to the break. But the Japanese project has been looming for ages, and has been what I was assigned for and building up to since December last year, and it seems silly to fly out without having been in the office for two weeks..

Anyway, on a lighter note, I have tomorrow off (hurrah) and hubby and I are going to Brecon for the weekend, camping (double hurrah!). Although I’d quite like it not to be raining when we put the tent up. The Choir I used to sing in at Swansea will be singing at Brecon Cathedral over the weekend. Under normal circumstances I would be singing with them, but my vocal chords still aren’t right after the operation I had on them in March (another story for another day), so this time I will be listening. But it’ll be absolutely wonderful to see people again – we don’t really go back to Swansea very often.

Hurrah! hubby just rang to say that our Greenbelt tickets have arrived in the post! Yay! I was starting to wonder when they’d come, as we signed up and paid for this year at last year’s festival. It’s so close now – only 4 weeks! and I am really looking forward to it. A wonderful opportunity to meet up with old friends, make some new ones, and get to know some fellow wibloggers face to face, as well as a much needed recharge of those spiritual batteries.

Ok, I want to post some pictures of my beans. I am not sure how to do it, so this is an experiement. Here goes….

Let’s see if that worked….

Hurrah – some of the runner beans are really close to needing to be picked. When I get home from work, I park the car in our garage which is at the end of the garden, meaning that I have to walk down the garden and go in the back door. Which is great, because I have to walk past flowers and our (plastic) greenhouse, and our vegetables. The courgettes are still coming in great numbers, the tomatoes are growing (still green for now, though), and the runner beans are growing really well. I saw one today just crying out to be picked, but what use is just one? You really need a few to make enough to go with supper. So I’ll wait until tomorrow, maybe there’ll be a few more. Even more exciting, some of the sweet pepper plants are flowering, and a couple of the aubergine plants have the small beginnings of aubergines where the flowers have died off! I am so excited!
Growing things is one of the ways I feel that God has allowed us to take part in his creation (as of course, having Children must be, but I haven’t actually tried that theory). It fills me with wonder to think that those tiny dry seeds that I brough home in a packet are now large, lush green plants with flowers and fruit! What an amazing thing! I have hardly done anything to assist but add water…

Thankyou, Lord for the wonder of your world – especially the beauty of flowers and deliciousness of fruit and vegetables!

On Friday I went on a course. It was a free course offered to companies and was about Visual Management in the Worplace. It was all about displaying your goals, performance against targets, putting up graphs and things so that employees are aware of what’s going on. We played a silly game where we were given lego, and we had to deliver a cube every minute for 5 minutes. At the end we were all given scores, but no-one knew how they got what they got! The point being that unless you know the rules, it’s pretty hard to aim to win!
‘Common Sense’ I hear you say. But is it? The course made me think about faith. Sometimes (well, a lot of the time in my case) it’s really hard to know the answers. What we’re supposed to do, say in a situation. What’s the best direction for take, what is acceptable or even good. We have lots of guidance in the Bible, but knowing what God wants can be hard to discern.
It’s really hard to tell other people that what you believe is something that you can’t see, touch, or you have concrete figures showing how it works. It’s not scientific, and it doesn’t always add up. But I guess that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Having faith…..
Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get other people interested. Having said that, what we do is just (try to) set an example. The Holy Spirit does the rest.

I was really excited to get home from work tonight to find that while I was away yesterday (I stayed over in London after my meeting last night) hubby has made significant progress in converting the Cupboard Under the Stairs into a WC. To be perfectly honest, I have done very little towards the whole thing, other than come up with un/helpful ideas. Hubby did all the plastering, then put lining paper up all over the walls. There are a few air bubbles under the wallpaper. But I can’t really make any comment, as I didn’t really do much to help. There isn’t really any space for two to work under there. Well, that’s my excuse anyway.

So, I got back tonight to find that the wallpaper has been painted, and the sink and toilet fitted and working! There’s still quite a bit to do – we need to tile around the sink, fix the toilet a bit more securely (it’s a little wobbly just now), put in a cupboard at the back, and put the carpet back down.

But it’s there! And it works! Hurrah!!!!!

Even better, my parents are coming to stay this weekend (just Saturday night) and Dad has a pretty bad knee, so it’ll be great that he won’t have to trapse upstairs except at bedtime.

So many courgettes! I had really wondered what was going wrong with our courgette plants when my mum told me on the ‘phone the other day that she has courgettes coming out of her ears. Especially bearing in mind that mum and dad only have 3 corgette plants, and we have 6. This evening I went out to water everything and discovered that the courgettes are multiplying. I think that I will find myself in a similar situation to my mum with courgettes coming out of my ears very soon. Not that I am complaining, they are lovely, taste much better than the ones you buy in supermarkets, and go very well with dips, in salads, and lots of cooked dishes.
I am also very pleased that the runner beans are doing really well – there are lots of tiny little beans where the flowers have died off. There are even a few tomatoes now, too! We have experimented a bit with the tomatoes, and planted them in a hanging basket. The packet said ‘hanging basket tomatoes’ and sported a picture of tomato plants cascading from a hanging basket covered in fruit. Ours seem to be very small, short bushy plants, and are not really cascading anywhere! I think we planted too many in each basket, but they seem to be doing ok. Now remains to wait until they ripen and see what they’re like! Tomatoes can be very variable.

Why does it always seem to be Monday? I arrive in the locker room to get my ESD safe jacket and my ESD safe steel toe capped shoes, and wonder how it is possible that Monday comes around so quickly. Today I have a horrible headache – had trouble sleeping last night because it was so warm, and as a result feel pretty drained. Probably not the best way to start the week.

There’s a great line in the film ‘Hitch’ which goes something like ’start every day as though it were on purpose’.

In principle I agree wholeheartedly.

In practice, it doesn’t always work!

Later I will be off to London for a meeting this evening. Should be ok, I am just hoping that it’s not too hot and the train’s not too crowded and that my headache goes before the meeting starts (I finally gave in about 20 minutes ago and took some ibuprofen, so hopefully it will kick it!).

Thanks to Never Conforming for your comment re. Birmingham on Saturday. I was safe and sound at home, with hubby and a friend who does live in the City Centre. He didn’t attempt to go home that night, we figured that trying to get in when the police were getting everyone out wasn’t the best plan of action!

Well, well. I finally have my own blog! Alice told me about her blog a good while ago (probably about 18 months) and I started out just looking at her blog sometimes. Since then I have got to reading different wibblogs and feeling as though I got to know some of you. Happy as I was to stay an anonymous reader, I thought it’d be nice to put some of my own meandering musings in a wiblog. Not that I want to be famous, or widely read, it’s just sometimes nice to articulate thoughts, it helps them to sink in. Also, having read and found the thoughts of others generally helpful I thought that there’s a slight possibility that I might come out with an occasional comment that could do the same for someone else. Having said that, thinking in too much depth makes my head hurt, so don’t hold your breath!

So, in case you’re wondering who I am, here’s a bit about me.

Like some others with blogs on this site, I am an ex-Swanseaite. I did Engineering at Swansea Uni, got married to another Engineer I met on the course, and we stayed there for a while. We moved to Birmingham in January last year (not really our choice, more a case of needing paid employment and the only relevant job for hubby being in Brum). I am a Manufacturing Engineer and spend a lot of hours in the plant. When I am not there my life involves volunteering for the IEE (Institution of Electrical Engineers), listening to music (all kinds but mostly classical), gardening – we are currently growing as much as we possibly can in our relatively small garden – corgettes, runner beans, tomatoes, aubergines and peppers (the last two of which are an experiment as we tried once in Swansea and they didn’t do very well. This time we grew them from seed and so far they’re doing really well), reading and unwisely getting addicted to things like ‘24′ – which is definitely not a good thing because so far I have seen series 1 & 2, both borrowed from my brother and on DVD, which inevitably means spending consecutive nights watching at least 3 episodes back to back until the end of the set. I currently have series 3 waiting to be watched, bit I have agreed with hubby that we shouldn’t start on it until we have made some progress on decorating the cupboard under the stairs (soon to be downstairs loo).

Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. Far from being a brief intro to the Moog, I have managed to ramble on. A sign of things to come, perhaps? In any case, you’ll find out more about me as the postings go up… In the mean time, I am happy to be here and pleased to be a member of this fab community!