mattwhite.me

i went for dinner round at al and ruth’s last night, it was an excellent
evening with quite a few glasses of wine. strangely i felt a little under the
weather this morning!

it’s the first east anglian derby for a couple of years today. although it
doesn’t mean much to the rest of the country, round here it is very important
as it confers bragging rights for the next six months to the winner.

then this afternoon it’s off to witnesham to have a family dinner and get a go
in mum’s new car.

all in all a pretty relaxing weekend given how stressful work is at the moment.

i haven’t written anything for a couple of weeks. i am, as usual, very busy at
work and there are numerous other things going on.

i won’t try and detail everything here but i will try harder to put messages up
more frequently.

one of the things on my mind at the moment is the sale of my flat which is a
bit of a rollercoaster ride. i have accepted 2 offers so far but both have
fallen through for one reason or another so i am back at square one.

on the good news side of things my sister is getting married in a couple of
weeks and she and her other half have just bought their first flat together.
also my mum is achieving one of her dreams (now that we have all left home…
finally) which is to own an mg sports car .

the long weekend was great all round. the wedding on saturday went well and we
were relatively lucky with the weather on sunday for the bbq… well everyone
was thrown in the pool at least.

i realised how quickly my sister’s wedding has crept up on us, only four weeks
to go now. apart from that work is insanely busy and i am spending rather too
much time dealing with the sale of my flat.

after a bad week last week i had two offers yesterday which i was not
expecting. one was a bit cheeky but the other seems quite serious, just a
couple of bits to sort out.

i was up early this morning to finish off the work i was doing in the garden
last night. anyone who knows me also knows how much i hate gardening so i have
put some bark chips down on all the flower beds to try and stop weeds growing.
it took ages but it looks pretty good now.

it is tom and andrea’s wedding today, a group of us are off to the reception
tonight. it should be good fun.

tomorrow is the traditional august bank holiday barbeque although the weather
isn’t looking wonderful. just have to hope that it stays ok as one of the
things which has happened every year for the last 15 years is that everyone
gets thrown in the pool at some point during the afternoon.

of course the most important news is that ipswich won yesterday 6:1 against
leicester. if that isn’t promotion form then i don’t know what is.

i’ve had a very busy few days. flew to amsterdam last wednesday until friday on
business trip. the good thing about going to amsterdam is that you know the
evenings will always be pretty good fun. the trip was a success overall but i
was fairly tired when i got home on friday.

saturday was very hot and a group of us went to the races at newmarket for the afternoon. my recent luck
didn’t hold and the best i could muster was an each-way win at pretty poor
odds. still it’s the day out which is most fun.

the rest of the weekend was taken up with catching up on work missed while in
holland and a couple of barbeques to make the most of what little summer we are
getting.

the football season has started already. ipswich won their first game on saturday at a canter but
i still think we will struggle to get automatic promotion this year.

the weekend turned out to be much nicer than was expected so i spent a large
portion of it sat outside playing with a new
application which i am writing to help with my studies for the java
certification.

this week is going to be fairly manic as i am off to amsterdam for a few days
(a purely business trip you understand) and then have to get back for a stag do
on friday night, races at newmarket on saturday and then, possibly most
exciting of all, preparation of my vat return for next month.

it was the funeral of a very close family friend today. i won’t say too much
about it on here but it was very well attended and very well done by the local
vicar. i don’t think you could ask for a better way to be sent off.

fiona and simon are staying with me for the weekend. yesterday we had possibly
the most relaxing day ever. we went to see austin powers at the
cinema in the morning and then headed round to my parents and sat around
catching up on news. fionas sister, helen, was there as well. the day rounded
off with a 4 hour evening meal with a few bottles of wine. a rather good day.

it was by far the hottest weekend of the year here. around 29 degrees both days
and it was great. unfortunately we had a thunderstorm at 04:00 this morning and
as i had all of my windows open i got rather damp!

saturday was possibly not the best day to be building desks in my office but
that job is finished now and it has made a huge difference, loads more space
and a lot tidier too.

sunday on the other hand was pure laziness. i went into ipswich in the morning
and read the sunday papers while having breakfast at a cafe in the town
centre… very european. just spent the afternoon lounging around reading and
watching the cricket (which we should win today).

these are the weekends which you can look back on from the depths of winter and
be happy about.