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November's Journal
January's Journal
31/12/2023
Not really written on New Year's Eve, but what can you do? I had a lot of
things going on.
The day after I wrote last month's entry (or at least listed-date-wise) I
headed off with Rel and her mum to the Lake District for the latter's birthday
weekend with all of the immediate family. We drove, and it's very lucky we did
on the day we did as the snow came down hard just after we arrived,
and didn't let up for almost a day. There was travel chaos, abandoned cars,
and people trapped in places for hours. The only thing we suffered from was
not being about to keep a dinner reservation... but we don't think the
restaurant was able to open anyway, as their staff probably couldn't make it
in. In lieu of that we went for hikes in the snow, and had a lovely dinner at
home. To get out on the Sunday Rel and I did a serious amount of snow
shovelling, and had her brother drive the car down the (steep) hill to the
main road. Luckily, the snow removal took so long the gritting truck beat us
to the punch by about five minutes (we watched it go by). Once we were on the
main roads everything was fine, although as we drove out of Windemere we
passed a lot of abandoned buses and cars, some of them right in the middle of
the road.
The following week at work was pretty uninteresting, until the Friday when I
LEAPPed two production Oracle DB hosts before 09:00 with no safety net of VM
snapshots (they're physical machines). Thankfully both went flawlessly, but it
was a tense early morning. The next day (Saturday!) I V2V'd a host to our
VMware cluster from an external one, and that went perfectly too!
Week three of December started with a visit from Rel, which is always lovely.
Then she was off to crew for someone doing the Centurion Winter 200 (mile!)
race. Not much sleep, and a lot of standing around. But at least the weather
wasn't terrible.
Before I headed off for Christmas there was the work Christmas meal (which
felt horribly like a super-spreader event, but thankfully wasn't), a haircut,
and very much trying not to start anything that would impact on operations
before the break. All of those achieved I jumped on a train on the 22nd to
Rel's, thence to Rel's mother's, and after seeing all of their relatives,
a Christmas Day parkrun with Rel's mother (her first), and lots of food, Rel
and I then headed to my parents' for the post Christmas/pre-New Year time to
spend some time with them. This Christmas was all about one present each
(Secret Santa), and donations to worthy causes otherwise. That seemed to work
well, if feeling a little odd. Rel and I still got each other a present each
though.
We headed home (my house) for New Year's Eve, where we're spending it quietly
doing very little and having lovely food and drink.
The next year should have some interesting things in it (I'm going to try and
run a fair number of half marathons), as well as (I hope) some fab holidays,
and some quality time with Rel.