Snow

You may have seen the headline news over the past couple of days (and especially this morning) that snow has reached England. Last night here we had a dusting of icing sugar, but at least today it resembles what we'd get in the North East - even if only in the first 20 mins of snowfall. Our house in Aberdeen was incredibly well insulated so ironically we're slightly colder here! Consequently we're making good use of the tartan blanket we were given by Fred and Lisa (at my old work) as a leaving present. It also makes the house feel a little more Scottish, which is good :)

I decided to be a big feartie today and walk to work instead of taking the bike. For all my praise of Loughborough's cycle paths, unfortunately they don't get gritted and cycling alongside a load of cars with drivers not used to snow didn't appeal. This did give me the chance to take some pictures though, so for the doubters out there, here is some evidence of the snow in Loughborough this morning...

The view to the south of the university, just round the corner from my building...

The start of a half-mile long queue heading the other way in to town. Surely if the snow makes it harder to stop, everyone should get where they're going faster?

top 10 things I am looking forward to after the birth...

First, for those that want to see, a picture of my bump...



Sandy was concerned people wouldn't know which bit was the bump so here is helpfully pointing towards the bit of me with the bump!!



However the real point of this post is for me to give you my top 10 things I am looking forward to after the birth of our baby!!

1. Meeting the baby and getting to know it
2. Caffeine! More specifically, diet coke but also tea and coffee in general!
3. Sleeping in any old position I like, most of all on my back :-)
4. Walks in the park with the baby
5. Eating proper meals again, getting to stop the grazing all day habit I have had to develop
6. Taking a deep breath without it being inhibited by the baby being where my diaphragm used to be!
7. Cuddles with the baby, I am very excited for cuddles!
8. Throwing away the many bottles of gaviscon I have had to start leaving in strategic places for myself
9. Fitting into spaces that I used to fit in and no longer do (I have a scratch on my bump from where I thought I could fit between a box and a door - I couldn't!)
10. Settling into a new baby routine!

Bus

Picture the scene. I'm sitting on a bus full of students, we've just passed through Loughborough College on the way to the university. The roads are quite busy and there's a bit of a jam as we leave the college, going round a tight corner. At this point, a bus coming in the opposite direction slows down and stops, much to the frustration of the long line of drivers waiting behind it. The window rolls down and its driver leans out, and a blast of cool (I won't say cold, we don't even have snow here yet) air indicates that our driver's window is down too. Our driver leans out and yells "poatato". The other driver smiles, windows roll back up and buses proceed on their way.

I can't believe it took this many blog posts to have a "randomness" tag.

We're getting there

The house is getting slowly but surely more ready for the arrival of the little one, in the last few days I have been concentrating on the baby's room through an irrational fear that the baby would need to live in a Shore Porter's box! Thought we would share some photos with you

If all else fails the baby can sleep in this beautiful moses basket (which was gifted to us by the Gregorys) for the first wee while, it is already set up in our bedroom ready for the baby to arrive!



We thought though, that it would probably be best to get a cot for the baby, this was very kindly bought for us by Edna and Alasdair (Sandy's Mum and Dad, for those who don't know). Sandy was very excited to build it (I think more to do with the building something than it necessarily being because it was a cot). You can see him busy at work here!)





You'll notice Sandy is very proud of his workmanship!

Here it is in all its glory!



And once Jay got to put some "things" in it! All this bedding is from Karen and we are very grateful for it, much of it can't be used when the baby is newborn but I really couldn't bare to leave the cot empty!!



There will be more photos of the room soon, but it is still a bit of a box dumping ground so it is hard to photograph anything other than boxes!!

In other news, we will be back in Aberdeen in less than 4 weeks, looking forward to catching up with as many folks as possible!

Baby things!

Let's start with a picture of the "baby's room".



Because the baby wasn't coming imminently we started with all the other rooms, they are not necessarily quite finished, but they are quite livable in, as you can see, poor wee baby doesn't have anywhere to go right now!! In the midst of trying to get on top it however, I have made a list (because that is what I do) of all the things we have.

Now, I am going to share with you all some "holes" in our inventory, things we still need. I want you to know though that this is not me asking for stuff, it is definitely not me telling people to buy stuff. I know though, that there are certain people out there who will want to buy the baby some things and I thought I would try and guide them towards the things we need. So the general rule is, if you weren't going to buy anything then read on but don't go and buy anything, if you were going to buy something we would appreciate (but don't demand) if it was something off the list. If you have already bought something, we will love it, don't take it back under any circumstances!!

The baby already has lots of toys, certainly enough to occupy a newborn, it has baby gyms and things to hold although it does not have too many soft toy type things, if you want to get something like that, I'm sure it will become well snuggled in time!

We have all the baby paraphernalia we could imagine needing, however we do still need a couple of dummies (just in case!) a couple of bottles (I want to breastfeed but I might express some so Sandy can help with those night feeds, if you want to get these can you get in touch, I have a strong preference for a particular type/brand that I have on good authority and have seen in practice are good for babies that are both breast and bottle fed)

The main thing our baby needs is (are?) clothes, we have only a few things that are newborn/0-3 months at the moment. I'll a list a few things that are high on my priority list but all of you are able to use common sense!!

at least 1 more 0-6 month winter grade (2.5 tog) "grobag" (link only provided for those who might not know what I am talking about!)
Socks! Baby currently only has 3 pairs!
A few more 0-3 month vests would be good, although we have a fair few 3-6 month ones!
Also, a few "normal" clothes - like jeans/trousers/jumpers etc, I know they pretty much only sleep for the first long while but I like to think the baby won't need to only wear pyjamas to get it through that phase!
Some mittens (poor wee thing is being born in winter after all!)

The last couple of things are really things that I (Jay) would like so they are being listed separately, I will happily receive these as Christmas presents as I don't see them as essential for baby at all!!

a Hooter Hider
an device for expressing, I have one (thanks Joe and Trina) but it has an American plug on it and I have heard mixed reports on it's ability to work, I'd love to have one I know is working from the word go! (A hand pumper is fine!)

So please refer back to the beginning of this post, I am not expecting anyone to buy us anything, but if you would, then these are the things we most need!

gluten free dairy free baking

Sandy and I went to see his sister, Heather, last weekend. While we were there she told me about a cook book that might be good for me, despite all my weird food "issues", that did cakes and stuff like that. She showed me the book and I flicked through the pages with a great deal of skepticism; people recommend such books to me or Sandy every so often and more often than not, they are not great, either needing too many specialist ingredients or going over the top with foods to avoid or being dairy (but not gluten free) or vice versa. This book is different though, I flicked through and looked at a few recipes at random, and almost every one was suitable just as it was, or with minimal "fussing". I was so excited that the very next day I went to my local branch of Waterstones and bought myself one. The book is called Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood and it takes a different look at cake recipes. Instead of using lots of butter or flour, the recipes all use vegetables as their base (for this reason, I recommend to anyone who buys it to actually read the introduction, the author does an amazing job of explaining her philosophy and how to change things if you don't have a particular recipe! Coincidently, most of the recipes are low fat (because they use the vegetables instead of butter for moisture) and many are low sugar (because they use the natural sweetness of the vegetables).

Last week I made a chocolate and pistachio cake, it used courgette as it's base and was absolutely delicious. This week I thought I would make myself some chocolate and peanut butter cupcakes - yum! I thought, as mundane as it seems, I would blog about it, so here are some pictures and thoughts. I'm not going to post the recipe in case Harry Eastwood comes and shouts at me for publishing her recipes but there is still plenty to be said. At various points I got so carried away with cooking I forgot I wanted to blog, so sorry if there are holes in the photo story!



The recipe in question, one great thing about this book are there are loads of pictures which help you get a grasp for the end product.

My cupcake tray doesn't see much use, here it is patiently waiting for me to actually cook something!!



whisking the sugar and eggs (the one "standard" cake ingredient still used in this book, not sure if you happen to be vegan how easy that is to deal with...)



Butternut squash was the base of this recipe



All the ingredients mixed up and ready to go, including the pulverised peanuts



Peanut butter frosting - yum!



Straight out the oven...



The finished article, having been cooled and iced.



Sandy and I can vouch for these also being delicious, this cookbook is already a firm favourite!!

Work...

So, for the fourth time in my life I'm working for a person named Jon (okay, the spelling's different this time, but that doesn't spoil it). Not that this is somethings to worry about, they've all been very nice people... I've now been at Loughborough University for nearly three weeks and have started settling in pretty well now. I've even got a permanent desk! Just waiting for the computers I'm going to be using to arrive now - until then I'm on a temporary but perfectly good laptop. I'm slowly getting back into the habit of reading academic papers; this took longer than I thought but it's coming along nicely now. It's quite nice to be able to spot interesting things and know I'm going to have the time (probably) to read about them properly instead of a quick skim at best. There's no experiments running yet, though we're pretty close - I've implemented an algorithm and a few test problems, and there's a screenshot of it running below - each one of those dots is part of the population that's evolving, and the blue ones are the best ones.

One of the cool things about being in an engineering department is that there are lots of cool machines to look at - I got a little tour and they have loads of stuff. There's a cube-shaped machine about 10m in size that can make 3D models of buildings (they likened it to a 3D inkjet printer). There's a laser lab, and a sun-machine which puts out extreme light levels for testing solar panels. There's a room completely filled with a model valley that has water jets for simulating flood plains. Plus there's this collection of water pumps outside - I saw these on the day of my interview.

Yesterday Jay drove down to have lunch with me at the university (that's something we didn't really get the chance to to in Aberdeen). She brought the large box of research stuff from my old desk at RGU that's been gathering dust for the past couple of years. It's been quite odd going through my old notes and waking up some of those ideas again. There's also a few things which cheered me up greatly - my executive toys for restful moments of distraction and a bunch of memory items like the poster advertising the seminar I gave at Stirling Uni. There's been a lot of digging up old memories as part of the move and it's a shame the rest of the experience is so expensive and stressful because that bit is quite nice!

Finally, here's some pictures of the University. Well, actually some pictures of the Civil & building Engineering Dept, as that's where I am. There's also a picture of my desk before I did much personalising of it (it's getting untidy at an exponential rate...)