Personal Roundup (a bit late I know)
Thu, 22 May, 2008 – 5:54 pm
I know, it's Thursday, a bit late in the week for last weeks roundup. You're probably thinking I've been spending all of my time out playing with my new lens but alas that's not 100% true! Things have been a bit manic this week which I'll explain below. However, back to last week.
Last week my small win (small compared to what could have been, but big to me!) cleared in my bank account so on Wednesday I had a nice old spend online. I spent about £700 within the space of an hour! My first stop was the camera lens that I'd been wanting since the start of the year. I couldn't justify the expense up until now but with unexpected money I figured it was time I spent a little on myself for once! Whilst I was looking at the lenses I knew I'd need a better tripod for macro shots, as you just can't get away with hand holding the camera. My current tripod is quite large and isn't easy to carry, so I got myself a new compact tripod that's pretty sturdy and still opens out to a fullsize tripod. It comes in a shoulder bag too so it's easy to carry around.
Next on the list was a long weekend away. We've not been away since Rome in January, and even then I didn't get to rest and take it easy. So I booked us in for 2 nights in Bowness by Lake Windermere. It's quite a plush hotel, my parents have stayed there before and they liked it. I'm hoping for two restful days of lazying, taking a few photos and not doing much at all. On the Sunday we then head over to Northumberland where we're stopping for a night at a B&B run by someone we know.
So that ate about half my winnings, but after a bit of thinking I also decided to get us a dishwasher, as we don't have one here and neither of us enjoy washing up, plus it's more hygenic in my opinion. We can fit a slimline dishwasher in the gap we have next to the washing machine, and the plumbing is already there. Annoyingly though, this arrived yesterday but the top was cracked so we have to wait for a replacement to come on Saturday now 
My Tripod and Lens both arrived last week and I've grabbed a few photos with them. I've yet to leave the house with it though! It's a fabulous lens in my opinion, the detail it can give is so amazing. The tripod is pretty cool too, I just need to buy a small ball head to go on top of it, probably with a quick release plate.
This week has been extra manic with work. On Monday we had a meeting with a new client which has resulted in new work and a potential source of future work as they are a web design company who just need to outsource once in a while. Monday evening our wireless connection went down and as I could connect to the web directly via the modem (through a cable) we assumed the router had died, but the next morning even I couldn't connect. So after calling NTL (our ISP) we had an engineer out about an hour later who fixed everything (something about too much power coming in to the modem from outside, couldn't cope with it so it kept dropping the connection). Not bad customer service really, first time we've had to call them and it was fixed on site within 90 minutes! However it did put us back somewhat. I've now got more work on my hands plus the new work starting next week and an existing client informed me they had just bought a new company and needed a website for that too! No rest for the wicked I guess!
Besides all that I'm eager to get a couple of my own sites finished and up and running but it's just finding the time and energy right now. We have a bank holiday weekend coming up so I may be able to spend a few hours doing my own stuff, despite having Dave's sister over for the weekend. I just also need to find some time to get back to my Wii fitness too! Busy, busy, busy… roll on the weekend 
