If You Want Something Done...

Ask a busy man...

Over the last few months Angela and I have attended a gardening course and a basic botany course. We have joined the Ramblers Association, and I am currently working with the local group the Hampstead Ramblers, to launch a blog attached to their website.

On top of this, I have started doing a GCSE Mathematics course, tutorials for which are clashing with the second gardening course we are currently doing.

Last Friday I had a job interview at my college, and on Monday I was told that I had got the job. So from the first of November I can effectively call myself a Librarian. I will be choosing and ordering books, liaising with teaching staff, cataloguing, managing a subject area collection and putting information up on the online Virtual Learning Environment.

Before I start learning how to do all of this, I have just over two weeks to tie up all the loose ends in my old job. So many things to try and pass on....

I would have written this on Monday evening but overnight a. the power transformer to the wireless router burnt out and b. the hard drive in my main PC died.

All this is a roundabout way of explaining why things have been quiet around here recently. Let's see if busy people really can do more....

Strike While the Oven is Hot

One of the ways of coping with after-work exhaustion is to cook some of your meals in advance. A couple of Sundays ago thats exactly what I did...

Saving time like this can only work if you have been shopping with cooking-ahead in mind. I had bought a piece of boned, stuffed shoulder of pork and some minced beef. I also checked that I had flour, butter and eggs in the store cupboards.The night before I made a batch of rich (2:1 flour to butter) shortcrust pastry. In the food processor this took 5 minutes,no more. I rolled the pastry in cling film, and left it in the fridge to rest overnight.
The pastry went to line two flan tins, was baked blind and turned into vegetable and cheese flans (or quiches, for the more pretentious of us.)
The flans were baked at gas 4, which was also the temperature I roasted the pork at. Whilst these were in the oven I made a beef chilli. Somehow adding the chilli heat and some(tinned)kidney beans makes mince-for-two go twice as far.

All in, I spent about two hours actually cooking, and by the time I finished we had the main ingredients for our dinners for the rest of the week.

I was particularly pleased with a couple of neat bits of technique with the flan cases which I tried for the first time...

More Tomorrow....

Apologies for Absence

Apologies all round for the lack of posts here. For those who have been feeling "sad and pathetic checking your blog for the latest news", can I recommend subscribing to this blog via a blog aggregator, such as Bloglines. You can then just go to one home page and see which blogs have been updated. :-)

What have I been up to?

I have the pleasure of working in one of London's best Sixth Form Colleges. However, anyone who has ever worked in education will tell you the same thing - the first part of the autumn term is exhausting.

No matter how well prepared you may be, when term starts everything needs to be done now, or preferably yesterday.

Most evenings recently have found my lovely wife and I crashed out in the sitting room, with just enough energy left to stroke our visiting cats. Most nights have found us too knackered to even try and find something decent on tv. The energy used up in hunting is rarely rewarded by finding anything watchable.

Even our diet has suffered, with that nice Croatian who delivers the Chinese takeaway becoming a regular visitor.

Things are easing off now though, and I have some posts ready to go.

The Phantom is Back!

What A Gray Day!

My "last Published" column when I log-in says August 26th. It seems like even longer.

Culture shock seems to be the best explanation. Seasonal Affective Disorder struck as soon as our plane opened its doors at Gatwick Airport. Everything and every place seemed so gray. And Dreary. And Tiring.

No energy to blog. Sorry!

As usual at this time of year, my working days over the last two weeks have been filled with getting our library ready to go for this year's intake of students. Tomorrow is when it all kicks off.

We are going to be short staffed, and at half-four on Friday afternoon we heard that our IT department had shafted us big time had last minute problems which mean all our plans for inductions etc will need to be re-drawn.

Problem solving is what we do best. Probably because we get lots of practice.