As I wrote in the last post, this month began with a wedding. And what an amazingly happy occasion that was :-). It has, alas, ended with a funeral. But in no way should this be an excuse for me to indulge in melancholy thoughts! Anything but, in fact. It feels instead, like an appropriate time to reflect on life in its various seasons and flavours.
For a start, that cake turned out beautifully :). As did the weather and everything else in the week leading up to the wedding! There was some amount of trepidation as the 5 storey, two foot tall cake was being put together, then transported into the fridge at the venue, but it all went swimmingly. Unlike last year, there was enough left over for us to even bring some back to Norway with us :D.
Working in Norway in July is a weird sort of experience. Thanks to the school holidays, most of the country goes on holiday. This is also the time the national rail system chooses to do annual maintenance. For me this translated to finding alternative transportation to get to work. Ignoring the rail replacement busses, I managed to find a more or less okay route that didn't require me to make a zillion changes and still got me there in only twenty or so minutes longer than usual :|.
On the up side, sort of, there's hardly anyone left in the office! This means, a) you get to know the people that are sticking around a whole lot better, b) you can actually go ahead and do stuff you want to without being pulled into other things every few minutes :). All in all a good few weeks. But now people are slowly beginning to trickle back in. Somehow working for a large multi-national as I did before had definitely dampened this effect.
Somehow though, in between travel and what have you, didn't really get going on the active agenda. There were a few walks around, and I did manage to run three times while in the UK, (even started feeling pretty good by the end of the week) but no concerted effort at running or cycling once we got home :|. On the up side, it's beginning to cool off a bit now, after hitting 30 degrees, so maybe now would be the time....
No post about July 2019 could possibly be complete without at least some mention of the sport! I mean, seeing how I actually follow sport :). I try not to spend too much time watching sport, 'cos otherwise that's all I'd end up doing all day :D. Even just following tennis and cricket and F1 and football in many of its forms via online scores and what have you ends up taking quite a bit of my day. So this is just to explain why I didn't bother with a subscription to watch the Cricket world cup :).
Anyhow, that particular Sunday, you'll know which one soon enough, I'd watched four sets of the Wimbledon final and then thought, well, that's enough. (Had watched Nadal loose in somewhat lacklustre fashion to Fed earlier, but was still leaning towards supporting Fed as he seemed to be playing better.) Had prior plans to watch the Silverstone GP, so I headed off only to find the two Englishmen I was going to watch the F1 with, glued to the cricket final! I figured, well, why not, and thus followed the most singularly crazy hour or so of cricket I have ever watched :D.
I mean, you couldn't help but feel for the Kiwis! And Fed, seeing how he blew a couple of championship points. And all that followed by a superb race. Which has been overshadowed by Hockenheim since, so yeah! The sports is going well :). And soon the English football season starts in earnest and the Ashes...
In the mean time I'm two thirds of the way through Dust of Dreams. I'm out of superlatives, just hanging on for dear life. In sight of the end of this epic, epic story. What can I say, beyond that I'm really looking forward to the end. And even though I briefly regretted not reading the novels of the Malazan Empire series, especially given the gap between Toll the Hounds and Dust of Dreams, I'm definitely looking forward to finishing with the Books of the Fallen first. And then maybe on to the novels next :).
