A weekend away

Guess what? Our lives have been rather busy recently... the problem with choirs and bands is that they have concerts, and sometimes we end up with lots of concerts in a short space of time. This means weekends have been taken up with musical activities and we've not seen a great deal of each other. To make up for this, and seeing as we had a free weekend, we took ouselves off to Kenilworth for a nice weekend away, courtesy of laterooms. We spent Saturday wandering round my old haunts in Leamington, and spending large amounts of money in FOPP. Then on Sunday we took ourselves off to Kenilworth and had a wander round the castle - in the rain, which was lovely after all the hot weather!

Flowers!

Much excitement in our kitchen this evening, as our Hoya has got its first ever flowers. We've been watching the buds develop slowly over the last couple of weeks, and this evening they've opened. The plant is a cutting given to me by my Aunt and I've been nurturing it for over a year now. It seems to like the kithcen windowsill as it's been growing lots of new leaves and sending runners out along the window frame - which are quickly controlled! Our patience has finally paid off - wonder how long it will be until it blooms again?

Two days in to the new job, and so far it's going really well. I'm working with a great bunch of people, the company seems to have a great 'buzz' to it, and the work looks like it will be very varied and interesting. Mind you, they have been known to read this blog, so what else could I possibly say? ;-)

I had a good final week in my old job, tidying up loose ends and saying goodbye to everyone. My boss tried to find some embarassing stories for his speech, but seemed to end up embarassing himself instead! My old colleagues made some nice comments about me and it was good to feel that I'd made a difference in my time there.

I celebrated my temporary unemployment over the weekend by singing in a concert - Vivaldi's Gloria and Karl Jenkins requiem, which includes lots of percussion, a shakuhachi and some japanese haiku, just to keep us on our toes. The concert was livened up even more by one of the double bass players fainting - it really was very warm. Thankfully, he (and his double bass) were fine. We were all very glad of the extended interval outside, complete with strawberries and champagne - summer is definitely here!

I have two more concerts over the coming two weekends, and Tim has a village fete to play at - again, a sign that summer is here. What with that and my new commute I'll be a bit busy for a while. But I'm looking forward to getting into a new routine with the new job, and seeing what happens next.