Many wonderful things have happened in the last while. I met some good and hospitable folk while in the US, and kinda wish I was still there. I was becoming a bit of an emotional wreck towards the end and missed my children enormously. It was getting to the stage where I was going to pick random children on the street and start playing with them. But I made it home in time. Just. My pathological inability to read a timetable gave me a bit of a scare on the day of my departure, and I had a stress filled few hours. But it was all ok in the end.

Prior to that I had a weekend in San Francisco and it was just like in the movies! Only no-one shot at me or got in a car chase or jumped of the Golden Gate or fought at the top of it or fired rockets from Alcatraz. But otherwise, just like the movies. Prior to that I received and gave training at our posh offices in Silicon Valley and before that again I had a weekend in Las Vegas.

Vegas (baby) is weird. But you knew that. And hot, but you probably guessed that. There, I met many imaginary people and put faces (and voices) to a motley collection of login names. Which was a bit weird all in and of itself. All the hotels are about a mile on a side and forgetting something and having to go back to your room is twenty minutes of your life you'll never get back again.

Since returning, things have been a bit dull. Work is OK and my boss is in a very good mood and so on and so forth. Things at home are a bit repetitive and yet relentless too. It's looking more and more likely that my workplace will move an hour further away from my home and that is really a bad thing. It's still not 100%, so I'm refusing to make any decisions and that's causing some exasperation in other members of the family. Still, we're having a few jaunts around the country in the next while, and we're going to hire a couple of boats with some old friends next month and pootle around a lake somewhere. All good.

But some good things are illusory and transient. When we were in Figueres at the Dali museum, there was a school tour from France there and there were a lot of very nice looking young French women, many of whom were smiling and looking at me fondly. This was very pleasing but when I gave Roisin to Sally later on, the approving looks vanished. Along with all my illusions.