Christmas and New Year were good, and I’m glad I got to spend them with my special someone, her family, and my brother who came to visit us in Germany. I’ve got lots of work on the go which is great, so you’d think I’d now be in the “studio” slaving away over a hot keyboard, but I’m actually in the UK on a brief family visit.

The original reason for my trip to England was a two-day business meeting with a client and developer colleague. This happened Thursday and Friday of last week, and was really enjoyable and encouraging despite my having a cold and finding the length of our sessions a little long at times. The two gentlemen who myself and my colleague were meeting are extremely interesting to talk to and work with if you’re into visual methods of communication – this is what their business is all about in the context of teaching/learning – and I’m excited about the things we’ll be developing together.

When booking my flights for the meeting, I decided to stay on for a few days to allow me to visit my family. I’m sleeping at Ian’s (my brother) flat, and have spent some time with Mum and Dad, too. I think Mum really enjoys treating me to some of her home cooking, and so far I’ve had two meals from her: a lovely curry and a roast pork with apple sauce. I’ve also met some friends of Ian’s flatmate at a local pub, which was fun.

Only about a week after I’ll get back home to Germany, I’ll be off again to Austria for a class ski trip with Britta, a few other teachers and about 70 kids. I’ve only done a bit over a week’s skiing myself (slightly more snowboarding), but I got to the stage where I could consistently enjoy a good blast down a slope, so I hope to be of help to the beginners that will be among us.

Unfortunately, a fair bit of the time that’s left in between these trips in January will now have to be devoted to system maintenance/repair, as the PSU in my workstation PC blew up earlier this month. I’m hoping that the rest of the system will be okay once the PSU is replaced, but if, for example, the hard disks are shot then I have backups of data including client work. I wanted to get myself a new workstation anyway, and am in the process of deciding whether to buy the components and build it myself or to buy a pre-built system.

I’ve also been getting a lot of enquiries and requests for estimates for new work, at least some of which are going ahead and are required over the next few weeks/months. (I also had to let one potential new client know I couldn’t help them due to lack of time, but they said they hope to have more work for me to propose on in the future.) So it’s all go. Or, as my father always says when he gets back from the office, “busy, busy, busy!”