Lack of posts = busy times

For my regular readers I apologise for the lack of posting. I've been incredibly busy since getting back from Bangladesh. I note that the stats are up a bit with around 25 people every day reading this blog. I wish I knew who they all were! I know about 75% of them are not first time readers, some even come and look everyday... I also know some of them are friends and family just keeping up on what is going on. I posted a few items on technical issues with my Nokia N95 and these seem to be leading to increased hits from unknown people, so may move them out to a separate blog... if only I had time.

Taking on 2 week business trips inevitably leads to a build up of email, much of it requiring urgent attention. I've not had a problem keeping on top of work email before, but have done this time. The way I manage it needs changing. Until now I have been running a bunch of rules in Outlook and automatically move incoming email to folders which relate in someway either to who sent the mail or the subject matter. This leads to scattered unread messages throughout my Outlook folders. This is failing me. I am now constantly finding that I've missed messages from people, because I didn't see their message amongst the mass of unimportant unread messages. Any suggestions on better ways to deal with lots of incoming email would be welcomed!

Meanwhile stuff has been happening.

Since my last posts on family members, Millie has learned to crawl properly. Keeping her in one place is getting hard! She's also learned to stand up at furniture and walk along holding onto it. She can say "Dadda" and makes "woof" noises at the dog and "miaow" at the cat. She says "Mumma" (mummy), "num num" (food). Huw broke a bone in his finger this week. He fell in the tennis courts at school apparently. Liz stopped being a school governor. Mabel is getting ready for ballet exams and doing very well. Martha has started the long run of GCSE examinations, and seems to be doing fine. Nelson continues to fail to understand that he's not allowed in the lounge during the day, either that or considers the challenge to be part of the fun.

My traveling shows no signs of stopping with confirmed trips ahead to Sao Paulo, (Brasil), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Uganda all before Summer starts properly here. I'm hoping that the Brazil trip may be multi location but timings look out to get via Bolivia, Paraguay and Florida on the same visit. That would be an amazing trip for sure, but may not be viable from a business perspective. Given the work we are doing in Bangladesh too, I could well end up back there before long.

Summer holidays seem a long way off but one has to book holidays now, or we may even be too late. A friend who lives in Bulgaria has suggested we go there, a cottage may come up in Wales we heard this week too. I quite fancy visiting the coast of old Yugoslavia having seen a bit of what it may be like form my trips to Slovenia. For the first time in I think 6 years we're not going to Herm. I feel a bit sad about that, but hopefully we'll find something new to focus on in the next few weeks.

The garden is coming back to life, and for the first time in months I've been woken by bird song with the daylight coming before its time to wake up. Even in the evenings now it's almost light still at 5pm. Not long now till the clocks change and the house martins return. Bring it on. I'll be clearing my vegetable plots later today and getting them ready for the coming season's new plants. I've got in mind some different things to try and grow this year including Salsify and red cabbages which we love.

Last night I cooked a delicious curry again, and really must get round to working on publishing some recipes here and cookery videos. Its amazing how many searches hit this blog with the words "how to make curry"...

Many years ago (1997-onwards) I ran a website for villages in the UK. Sadly the server I used to host it on was hacked and everything was deleted and I've never had an opportunity to get it all back on line. A colleague at work showed me a cool new technology this week, which may be just what I need to re-awaken that. When I did it last time, I spent ages getting a complete list of every village name in the UK. I still have that and can't help feeling it must be possible to generate some income from that while I sleep! I also own the domain villages.co.uk which has to have some value... watch this space. Work conspires to keep me busy so be patient!