Rockhound

Right, I thought I'd finally finish off an entry that I've had hanging around in my brain and note form for a long while and put it in PR, before the year catches up with me and I don't have time

But no... I have now spent over an hour last night, and another half hour this morning trying to debug my Guide ML. I used to write web pages in html, I've written guide entries before so why the can I not get this one right? Particularly annoying as I've completely removed some links (which seem to be the main source of the hassle) that I'd like to keep in for the good of the entry. I researched those links quite a long time thank you!

Grrr - *Missing closing bracket in tag - perhaps you've missed a closing quote*

I had intended to 'get back into' hootoo, you know, comment in PR, waffle is Ask, read the Post.... but as is often the case real life comes out of nowhere to bite you on the proverbial and make you pay attention again.

In the space of about 4 hours on a pleasantly warm and bright Friday evening a couple of weeks back I had a prang in my car and found out my Gran had had a major heart attack and was in hospital, unlikely to live for too long. In the end, she died on the Saturday

Granny was hale and hearty and living life to the full - no signs of ill-heath other than arthritis taking a bit more of a hold. Mum reckoned she's got her plans over where she was going for Christmas and New Year all sorted, and she'd also planned out how she's get the bus up to my parents and then they could drive her up to inspect the house me & J moved into earlier this year. Sent me a lovely letter with my birthday card apologising for missing the date - it had arrived one day late and I'd assumed it was the various postal strikes. Bless. Still feel a bit guilty that I hadn't sent my thank-you letter to her, I was waiting to print her off a set of photos of the house etc and our printer was on the blink. Irony was I finally managed to get them done the same afternoon she had the heart attack. They're still on the side as I can't quite bear to recycle them

The crash was one of the those stupid things - so easy to lose 4 years no claims. I was turning right from a queue of traffic, indicator on, checked my mirror, checked the line of traffic on the other side hadn't started moving yet...

and forgot to check over my shoulder. Next I know I have a motorbike on my front wing, drivers window smashed. I must've just sat there in the broken glass for what seemed like minutes. Biker was fine thank goodness - bruised and shocked, obviously, but I was so scared when it first happened, we were both travelling fairly slowly (I'd barely pulled out) he was fully togged up with helmet and leathers. Car had to be taken away that night as it wasn't secure and we don't have off-road parking. Took until the Thursday for the garage to sort me a out a pool car, which though it had some benefits wasn't ideal.

So there we go. And I have all sorts of events and stuff coming up in the next few weeks. So hootoo will have to wait, or rather I'll have to jump on it's sparkly comet-like tail and catch-up as hootoo waits for no man (or alto)

Firstly, though it only got a fleeting mention on the Sunday morning breakfast news, we have a British World Champion in Women’s Bobsleigh. Nicola Minichiello and brakeman Gillian Cooke, take a bow, it was a stunning set of runs on a track which caught several out (some interesting slides through the Chicane). Here’s hoping our skeleton hopefuls Bromley, Rudman etc do as well in the coming week.

Until a few years ago, I was part of that group that got into the winter Olympics every four years, but spent much of the intervening time largely oblivious of the winter sports scene, other than watching Ski Sunday as a teenager. Then, when I moved into my current flat, the TV reception was so abysmal that I signed up to the cable provider, and was launched into many more cannels than I ever thought existed* (even with freeview).

One of the was British Eurosport, which for about four months of the year becomes something of a haven for me, especially on the Saturday mornings while doing the boring chores. Now I delight in being an amateur and enthusiastic armchair expert on the intricacies of Nordic combined (ski jump and cross country skiing), skeleton bob, and possibly my favourite, the biathlon.

Occasional hiccoughs in marshalling aside, it’s relatively straightforward – ski, shoot, ski some more, shoot again, and repeat for as many laps and shooting rounds as a required. This is a sport where 7km is regarded as a ‘sprint’. Cross country skiing is one of the most stamina sapping, cardio-intensive sports around, to then combine it with a discipline that requires steady hands, nerves, control of breathing and accuracy (for both prone and standing shoots) is almost Machiavellian genius.

Missed a shot? Take a lap round the 150m penalty loop. Missed two, that’s 300m extra to ski, and so on until your thigh muscles turn to jelly. No reducing the artistic score by a factor of two to combine with the tariff, multiplied by Avogadro’s constant and the phase of the moon (yes ice skating, I’m talking to you), you missed, therefore you ski further while your competitors head off up the course. Tactics – do you blast off the line in an attempt to destroy your competitors (and risk missing shots in your first shoot that could scupper any chance of world cup points) or take it steady and wind up the action. Could one of the greatest athletes of all time be the Noweigian, Ole Einar Bjørndalen… I’d say have a look at his wiki page, but it has been created by a fan, so not one of the more balanced pages on the site, but the results are accurate and speak for themselves.

*How many of these do I watch more than the 5 seconds required to read the online TV guide while channel hopping - very few. I sometimes long for a subscription where you could pick and choose exactly which channels you got, rather than large, unwieldy ‘packages’ as set out by the cable providers.

Yup, I'm leaving the building : not for good , I like hootoo far to much for that, But my new job starts on Monday, and I'm having issues with broadband at home.

Will try and pop in, but won't be around much for the next couple of weeks.

till I finish at my current job :
I’ve been offered a position as a geologist with a multinational firm: big opportunity, as they do all sorts of environmental stuff, including some cutting edge R&D to do with carbon capture and storage. Wasn’t sure I was what they were looking for… but figured I had to give the application a go – if you don’t apply then you can’t get it

Yes the better pay, and benefits helped in the decision… but the job was soooo cool . And the training and prospects are better.