Awwww

Four years, four months and thirteen days ago I lived in a lovely little flat in downtown Princeton, sharing it with my lovely flatmate Sally, and just generally having a brilliant time. That night specifically, we went to the Spring Formal, a sort of semi-formal dance / party event organised by Princeton Uni. We got picked up by my gentleman friend and I wrote about the event in my blog post (*klick*) at the time.

What I didn't write then though was that on arrival at the pre-games there were only couples! And when Sally pointed that out to me I looked around and identified the only single guy in the room. "That guy's single" I think I said to her and pointed at him. She went for it and took him home with her.

Well, they are getting married next year, and I'm taking full credit for it!

Talking

Do you ever have this nightmare where you are asked to give a talk together with your boss and your boss agrees to do the main part and you're doing only a little bit at the end, and then on the day he doesn't show up and it's just you and you haven't prepared his bit and all you have is his cryptic slides without any notes or idea what he meant to say?

This is how I was introduced today at a seminar talk my boss and I were supposed to give.

We care, honest!

My boss and I are moving divisions next week. We are currently working in the centre of the Scottish Government, the Office of the Chief Statistician. This will change as we are getting moved away from the centre to a policy area, Communities Analytical Services, the poverty statisticians. This makes sense, since what my boss and I do is identify areas in Scotland that have concentrations of deprivation. It will be good to work near the people who know all about the different facets of poverty. This also means that we have to leave our nice office in the city centre and commute to Leith instead, 3 miles north.

Germany

I'm on holiday in Germany to recover from my stressful life in Edinburgh and to warm up. What I'm doing to spend my time:

• sleeping
• napping
• reading
• complaining about the heat
• eating wurst

Disks

Whoa. I just replaced my faulty laptop hard drive with a solid state disk. It only took 2 minutes, and  the laptop still works!

Saves me from buying a new one. Over the last 6 years I've got used to this one!

Hexenschuss

I'm having lower back troubles. I spent a big part of last week either lying flat or being in pain or both. But whining is boring, so here comes the bright side:

• I have found a new appreciation for my (usually) good health, and indeed, life in general.
• I have discovered new things that one can do lying on one's back.
• I had the perfect excuse for watching loads of TV and doing nothing else.
• The film "Griff the Invisible" is quite sweet.
• I have become more determined than ever to strengthen my back through regular, targeted exercise.
• My flatmate bought me chocolate biscuits, and her partner did my dishes.
• People, including strangers, who recognised the pain from my funny walk have been incredibly kind to me.
• My boss is the nicest person imaginable.

Assessment Centre

Today, I attended the first of two assessment centres in May. This one was for the Scottish Government (SG) Graduate Development Programme, a 4-year programme with placements in different SG divisions, to build new leaders.

And Lastly in April

In other news, I'm helping to run a big Statistics Conference on Wednesday. My boss is pretty much in charge and quite useless to do anything else until it's over, so I thought I might as well make myself useful and help. There will be drinks afterwards.

On Thursday, I'm going to a reception in the Scottish Parliament, hosted by the organisation through which I first got my internship at the Scottish Government. There will be drinks.

On Friday, I'm first going to someone's leaving drinks (drinks!), and then to a gig in Summerhall, Rozi Plain. It's possibly a date.

And finally, today I went to the first prep meeting of the volunteers at the next Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival. This will be my third year of volunteering there and the goal is to top my efforts from last year, when I went to roughly 30 gigs in 10 days. I will take half days off so I can sleep and party!

April For The Win

After a quiet first three months, 2015 is slowly but surely picking up speed.

I got an email on Friday asking whether I wanted to go on an adventure trip that weekend. How could I possibly say no to that?

April News

So, what else is new?

• I'm now on Twitter: @mwldm

April in the Pentlands

Howdy!

It's April! I'm in Scotland! Stuff is happening!

Nerdland

I don't believe I have mentioned my new job yet. From mid-March on I will be entering Nerdland. Nerdland is where people love their spread sheets, laugh about Dilbert (*click*) and XKCD (*click*),  and get excited about a good graph. I think I will be very happy there.

Challenges

It's only early February, and I am already embarking on a number of challenges for 2015.

I started a barbershop quartet last week, and the first rehearsal went surprisingly well, even though none of us had done anything like it before. Mind you, my bass wanted a voice recording of his part instead of the piano recording I had made at home over Christmas, to put words and music together. As I couldn't find any recording software on my computer, for a while I was contemplating to just call him and leave it as a voice message. But then I ran into my friend Ronnie on the bus, and his pal Mike suggested Audacity, which is a free recording and mixing software. So home I went and did a quick and dirty recording of the bass part, one octave higher of course. Singing on my own in front of people was challenge number one. To be fair, doing karaoke the other week had helped to lose some inhibition.

Travel for Work

For a number of reasons I am reluctant to write a lot about work, but my job does come with a few perks. I must have mentioned Flexitime at some point, which allowed me to take thirteen additional days off last year.  Another one is the trips to the north I do for work. These pictures were taken on the Glenlivet Estate around Tomintoul in the north of the Cairngorms National Park last week where I went on a site visit with the team.

Chrismanay

Having spent most of Christmas indoors, cuddled up by my parents' wood-burning fireplace, I came back such a wuss that I couldn't sleep in my bed anymore without the heating on. I was permanently cold and boring, and felt very much like just sitting it out, hibernating until spring. But it only took one motivational blog article (*click*) to get me up on my feet again, go outside, and do winter.

Tap dance is boring

Not this one though:


Just watch the first 2 min and that should get you hooked. And that's even before the band starts playing.

Adventuring

I'm in need of some adventuring. Any ideas?

This year, I did the following things which were new and exciting and at least a bit scary:

• An intimate evening of reading poems to strangers
• Online dating - the second most terrifying thing I have ever done in my life
• Dance performances (*click*, *click*)

The previous year I also did some scary stuff:

• Stand-up comedy (*click*) - the most terrifying thing I have ever done in my life
• Crashed a networking event (*click*)

Ideas for next year:

• Spending a night outside on a hill
• Starting a barbershop quartet
• Singing in a band

What interesting and scary things have you done this year?

The 1000th comment. Again.

I can't believe I announced the 1000th comment over a year ago (*click*) and then again in February (*click*)! I guess that was a bit ambitious.

But now, we're nearing the one thousand for real! It's less than 100 comments away, and that shouldn't take longer than 6 months, right? Right?

On books

Book recommendations? Haven't done that before! I think I have just put too much on my plate when ordering War & Peace from the library while still fighting the whale that is Moby Dick.

Argyll

Quick update. Work has been busy, interesting, challenging. The best part is that people around me are actively looking for a new job for me with the government for when my contract ends in March.

Also, I spent a lovely weekend on the west coast with the best Scotland has to offer: Views of the calm sea and islands, sea lochs, sunny November days, sunsets and sunrises, and a Scotsman with a campervan who takes me to these places. It was stupidly beautiful. And I forgot to bring my camera.
Anyway, the Scotsman took a few pictures with his phone: