martes, 1 de diciembre de 2009

I'll just stay put then, shall I?

So, the 2 other people in my department want to leave and go work in other departments. I suspect mostly because they can't work with the boss.
I'm guessing my proposed shuffle over to the Planning & Buying dept is on hold, right?
However there's no way I'm staying on my own either. Oh well, at least it's kinda sorted now.

domingo, 29 de noviembre de 2009

Sangria-swilling jessies


Today's bike route was up in La Sierra (Torrelaguna) which is always a bit colder and wetter than town, but you would think we were in the middle of a hurricane by the reaction of the rest of the club. Okay it was raining and a bit windy but we'd already got all the way up there - surely we could at least try but I don't think they were ever going to be convinced. I nearly did the route on my own but I didn't know where it was so probably wouldn't have been a good idea! Instead I came home, stuck the car in the garage and went straight out to Casa de Campo for a couple of hours. As they say here "I enjoyed myself like a dwarf"! Maybe it's because I've been riding on dry dusty trails for 6 months but the mud and the puddles (including those disguised as sand) just made it all the better. I didn't want to stop but the grinding from the drivetrain told me it was time for a shower.



The situation at work hasn't really changed - I'm still in Client Service and I suspect I'll stay there as my boss won't want me to move to Planning & Buying as originally planned. CS have much more contact with the client and it's a more strategic role so in the long-term it will be better for me to stay. Having said that I don't want to stay at the company long-term but now is not the moment to be leaving and looking for something else. What do I want to do? No idea but certainly something in a smaller company than the current one - large companies seem to be unmanageable (or maybe just this one).

miércoles, 14 de octubre de 2009

well the weather got colder and then hotter again (as it always does around the Día de San Miguel) and now seems to be cooling down a bit again.

A re-structure at work has left me feeling in limbo...apparently I'll be staying in Client Services for the time being (though I'll have no work to do and will only be able to be given work by the Account Director). At some vague undetermined time in the future I'll (probably) move to Planning & Buying (of which I know nothing). Despite all the talk of "aligning people's profiles to job functions" there appears to have been a quite determined effort to move people into departments which they dislike intensly, have no knowledge of, or both.

On the plus side, the English classes picked up at the beginning of October and I now have a pretty full week. In fact I'm currently trying to avoid taking on another class at work as I don't have time (and it would be a nightmare class!).

Riding was a bitch on Sunday. We did a red route for the first time (mainly because there was the promise of food afterwards) and we suffered. 47km (we've done longer) but speedier than we usually go and with plenty of hills meant that we were both dying towards the end and I needed to accept the kind offer of a gel from Agus to get me home. Food afterwards was good, although the bar didn't actually have a kitchen so we had to collect the food ourselves from the owner's wife's kitchen up the road!

martes, 25 de agosto de 2009

a cool day

...temperature-wise. We're having a 24-hour respite from the heat and it's nice but it's going to get hot again tomorrow :-(

Had a nice anniversary weekend away in Guadalajara. The hotel (Posada de los Pantones) was lovely and although it was in a small village it was nice to just sit in the square with a drink watching the locals (who were mostly doing the same).

I tried to get to grips more with my camera while we were away. I had been thinking of doing a photography course (and still haven't completely rejected it) but 600 € for 3 months is quite a lot and most people say you can learn as much by looking at photography sites (and practicing). So I have a better idea about depth of field and capturing movement than before - maybe the course isn't necessary and I can spend 600€ on something else (like a lens!)

jueves, 20 de agosto de 2009

Fit

..or at least we will be soon with last night's purchase of the Wii Fit. The plan was to go to the cinema but that was ditched in favour of a quick Chinese meal in the underground car park and then an hour of Wii Fit (having already spent an hour in the gym!). My yoga programme is off to a good start - let's see if I can keep it up.

It's our anniversary today! We're off to a hotel in Guadalajara for the weekend and I need to book an activity for Saturday. Sailing? Horse-Riding? Nocturnal canoeing? Who knows..

miércoles, 19 de agosto de 2009

seriously, give me work to do

it's not something that you will usually hear coming from my lips but this is just silly. It's August in Spain and that means holidays. We've had ours already - Galicia for a wedding then Asturias Cantabria and Bilbao before returning to Madrid via Navarra to see Dave and Carla - but everyone else seems to take about 3 weeks off in August. I don't remember it being this quiet last year but maybe that's because we had some work to do - this week there are 3 of us in the team twiddling our thumbs...no bosses...no clients...no motivation. So I'm writing my blog.

We took our holidays in the last week of July and first week of August to avoid the usual heatwave but it seem's to have waited until we got back! This week is about 37 degrees and it's not cooling down at night which makes it uncomfortable - apparently it will cool down this weekend (when we're going away for our anniversary).

must try to post more regularly

sábado, 30 de mayo de 2009

I love food, me

a whole trolley full of fish and fruit & veg today - I love this time of the year here for the fruit especially - water melon, strawberries, raspberries (a present from the guy at the fruit stall), loads of cherries. the fact that you can't get it all year round makes it special for the couple of months (weeks in the case of the cherries) that you can.

and lunch was a plate of fresh grilled sardines with bread.

brilliant

martes, 26 de mayo de 2009

the fourth round of the Mountain Bike World Cup was held in Casa de Campo at the weekend so we went along on Sunday to watch the races. We went last year too and I'd forgotten just how exciting it is. We met a couple of friends from the club and rode around the park stopping at various points to watch the action and take (loads of) photos (look over there on the right to see if I've managed to link to flickr or something). They are terrifyingly good. Not even the huge thunderstorm on Friday night which made the course muddy and slippy could stop them getting up La Subida Infernal. The crowd were awesome too - there were hundreds of them cheering the riders up the hill, several wouldn't have made it without the support.

One of the guys from the club also brought along his trailer for me to try on the back of the bike. As we're wanting to do the Camino de Santiago next year we need a way of carting our stuff around. We originally thought we would get panniers but after speaking to Agustin, he recommended a trailer instead and offered to let us try out his. So when we met on Sunday morning I hitched the trailer to the bike (it has its own QR which you put in the rear wheel instead of your usual one). It was GREAT! You obviously notice a bit more weight when carrying the girls' rucksacks up a hill but other than that you hardly know it's there - we did climbs and descents and rocky bits and it handled them all without a grumble. We handed it back at the end of the day but it's definitely the way forward for next year.

martes, 19 de mayo de 2009

just shut up

I like the Spanish, really i do, but they don't shut up, do they? I'm thinking particularly of meetings and presentations at work - at any one time there are about 4 different conversations going on around the room which makes it much harder for me to understand any of them (and contributes to meetings laster longer than WWII's reparations negotiations.)

ups and downs

on sunday evening sandra and i popped out to casa de campo for about an hour for a quick ride (we'd done a route on saturday morning so it was really just a quick spin of the legs) and had one of those rides that will be filed under "just-about-perfect". It was a lovely warm spring evening, the trails were dry, we found ourselves in a part of the park i didn't recognise (the first time in many months that that's happened) and the bikes were clearly in a good mood.

not being able to think about anything else subsequently has made work a bit of a slog but then that's why they call it work, i guess

lunes, 18 de mayo de 2009

first post

I guess this is supposed to be some sort of introduction...but all that will have to wait.

First things first - how the hell does this thing work