A very busy Month
Sep. 7th, 2012 10:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
same_differenceSo a little while ago I completed an exceedingly busy month and had some time to write about it. Then I did some other things, so now I'm finishing it off. So since getting engaged I've finished my time with old job, started my new job, gone to a wedding, gone to a convention then ran a weekend long larp, then had a relaxing couple of weeks.
So I've been doing my new job for about a month and a half now now, and it's going well. The site is very peaceful and the area is picturesque, which makes me for a very pleasant working environment. Everyone I'm working with seems to be very nice, and so far I've spent the majority of my lunch breaks playing card games, which so far have been various flavours of munchkin, fluxx and gloom. I've also taken advantage of the nice weather to go for a couple of walks.
Changing job has definitely been the correct move. I was worried before leaving my old job, because I'd been so very demotivated at work for the majority of the year, and I wasn't sure I'd have the motivation to do a full days work after moving. Turns out I really shouldn't have worried, as all my motivation returned the moment I left my old job, and I've been working very well every day so far at the new one.
On top of that I'd found that I was a lot more motivated outside of work as well. I don't think I realised how much my dissatisfaction with my old job was affecting me. Given the other things I had to do over the weeks leading up to the larp, having that motivation a lot sooner would have been a big help. Still it was good to get the drive I needed to get the important things done.
So after starting my new job I had one weekend at home before the weekend of Rachael's young sister's wedding. It was always going to be an interesting day, as it had been largely organised by Rachael's mum (seeing as her sister and her sister's husband had only graduated a few weeks before the wedding). So there was definitely opportunity to feel out how Rachael's side of the family would be when it came to our own wedding.
I have to say, all credit to her Mum for organising the day as it generally went well. There was only one point where the compromises were obvious; the deserts. Three mini desert portions: chocolate cheesecake for the benefit of the bride and groom; panecotta for the mother of the bride's taste; and sticky toffee pudding as the father of the brides preference. In all fairness to Rachael's mum the panecotta was the best of the three.
The much feared drama, largely expected to come from the grooms parents who had a very acrimonious divorce only a couple of years previous, thankfully never materialised.
Rachael looked amazing in her dress, even if her Mum's insistence on it being strapless caused her to spend a non-insignificant portion of the day readjusting much to the best man's delight...
Her dad gave an excellent speech, though I gather there had been a certain amount of vetting before hand, and thankfully the best man's speech was much less coarse in general that in the welsh wedding I'd previously attended.
The photographer can only be described as militant and french, and I did briefly wonder if she'd use her much favoured step ladder as a weapon to assist in herding guests. The photos appear to have come out well, and the idea of getting the guests to take pictures with a personal message written on a chalkboard was definitely a good one. There was one rule: the message had to be nothing boring. Rachael and I went with "2014 Ours will be better!".
The funniest moment of the day was probably Rachael's mum chanting 'Kiss, hug, move on' in an effort to speed the pace up of everyone meeting the bride and groom. Something that may have contributed to the telling of stories about how the parents of all her mum's pupils and ex-pupils (her Mum is a reception teacher) use the threat of Mrs. Ward to get uncooperative children to behave.
All in all a lovely day, and also the first time I've felt excited at the concept of having a wedding myself.
So the weekend immediately following the wedding was Amecon. The time spent up to this point (with my new found motivation) was primarily focused on construction of the dragon prop for the larp. So getting back on Sunday I focused primarily on getting the Cabbage Merchant costume (from Avatar: Legend of Aang) ready for the weekend. I had planned to have more costumes than that ready for the con earlier in the year, but lack of motivation pretty much put paid to that.
It was certainly fun being part of a big group, even if I did feel like I was trolling things slightly, by having picked a minor joke character. I also felt a little guilty that I seemed to be stealing a lot of the attention. When I was in costume, I could regularly hear people going "Look's it's the cabbage man" and not mentioning the other characters the people around me were dressed as. Then there was the masquerade where I audibly got much louder applause than the rest of the group. Then again I've often noticed that with big groups, it's always going to be the big impressive costumes, or the silly joke characters that the fans appreciate the existence of that will get the biggest applause.
The 36 hour I think I'll write about separately in the near future.
So I've been doing my new job for about a month and a half now now, and it's going well. The site is very peaceful and the area is picturesque, which makes me for a very pleasant working environment. Everyone I'm working with seems to be very nice, and so far I've spent the majority of my lunch breaks playing card games, which so far have been various flavours of munchkin, fluxx and gloom. I've also taken advantage of the nice weather to go for a couple of walks.
Changing job has definitely been the correct move. I was worried before leaving my old job, because I'd been so very demotivated at work for the majority of the year, and I wasn't sure I'd have the motivation to do a full days work after moving. Turns out I really shouldn't have worried, as all my motivation returned the moment I left my old job, and I've been working very well every day so far at the new one.
On top of that I'd found that I was a lot more motivated outside of work as well. I don't think I realised how much my dissatisfaction with my old job was affecting me. Given the other things I had to do over the weeks leading up to the larp, having that motivation a lot sooner would have been a big help. Still it was good to get the drive I needed to get the important things done.
So after starting my new job I had one weekend at home before the weekend of Rachael's young sister's wedding. It was always going to be an interesting day, as it had been largely organised by Rachael's mum (seeing as her sister and her sister's husband had only graduated a few weeks before the wedding). So there was definitely opportunity to feel out how Rachael's side of the family would be when it came to our own wedding.
I have to say, all credit to her Mum for organising the day as it generally went well. There was only one point where the compromises were obvious; the deserts. Three mini desert portions: chocolate cheesecake for the benefit of the bride and groom; panecotta for the mother of the bride's taste; and sticky toffee pudding as the father of the brides preference. In all fairness to Rachael's mum the panecotta was the best of the three.
The much feared drama, largely expected to come from the grooms parents who had a very acrimonious divorce only a couple of years previous, thankfully never materialised.
Rachael looked amazing in her dress, even if her Mum's insistence on it being strapless caused her to spend a non-insignificant portion of the day readjusting much to the best man's delight...
Her dad gave an excellent speech, though I gather there had been a certain amount of vetting before hand, and thankfully the best man's speech was much less coarse in general that in the welsh wedding I'd previously attended.
The photographer can only be described as militant and french, and I did briefly wonder if she'd use her much favoured step ladder as a weapon to assist in herding guests. The photos appear to have come out well, and the idea of getting the guests to take pictures with a personal message written on a chalkboard was definitely a good one. There was one rule: the message had to be nothing boring. Rachael and I went with "2014 Ours will be better!".
The funniest moment of the day was probably Rachael's mum chanting 'Kiss, hug, move on' in an effort to speed the pace up of everyone meeting the bride and groom. Something that may have contributed to the telling of stories about how the parents of all her mum's pupils and ex-pupils (her Mum is a reception teacher) use the threat of Mrs. Ward to get uncooperative children to behave.
All in all a lovely day, and also the first time I've felt excited at the concept of having a wedding myself.
So the weekend immediately following the wedding was Amecon. The time spent up to this point (with my new found motivation) was primarily focused on construction of the dragon prop for the larp. So getting back on Sunday I focused primarily on getting the Cabbage Merchant costume (from Avatar: Legend of Aang) ready for the weekend. I had planned to have more costumes than that ready for the con earlier in the year, but lack of motivation pretty much put paid to that.
It was certainly fun being part of a big group, even if I did feel like I was trolling things slightly, by having picked a minor joke character. I also felt a little guilty that I seemed to be stealing a lot of the attention. When I was in costume, I could regularly hear people going "Look's it's the cabbage man" and not mentioning the other characters the people around me were dressed as. Then there was the masquerade where I audibly got much louder applause than the rest of the group. Then again I've often noticed that with big groups, it's always going to be the big impressive costumes, or the silly joke characters that the fans appreciate the existence of that will get the biggest applause.
The 36 hour I think I'll write about separately in the near future.
