Strange Notations From a Laborious Life

 There cannot be much in life better than lying in bed in the morning whilst watching an entertaining stage of the Tour of California. Linda was going to work later than she usually does and took Monique to school so I was able to watch the coverage all the way to the finish.
 It was quite a tough stage although short at 132km which isn’t much by Pro cycling standards. It finished up a 6km climb overlooking the city of San Jose. Much of the countryside looked similar to what we find around here which is interesting. Will have to get there one day.
 Pretty sobering though that the stage was won by Chris Horner, an American who is nearly as old as me! Whilst I’m lying in bed he is winning a stage  of America’s biggest bike race! I think the secret to longevity in cycling is getting your head right. If you still have the enthusiasm then it takes a bit longer for age to catch up.
 Andy Schleck who is the big co-favourite for the Tour de France this year finished second at one minute fifteen seconds but didn’t look that great. Whether he was foxing or not I don’t know. Rory Sutherland from Canberra who only rides on a domestic US team finished third or fourth which is a great effort. He used to ride on a top European team but had a run in with the drug testers a few years back which has kept him exiled in the States. He wouldn’t be a bad pick up for top Euro squad now though.
 So that has been my morning. Quite relaxing.

 We got our carpet in on Tuesday which is a relief. One job out of the way. Dad and I moved all the furniture out on Monday and I don’t think the girls appreciated not having TV in the lounge room or the internet in the dining room as it was full of our furniture but they toughed it out okay. The carpet layer only took about an hour and a half and did a good job but it took me all day to get everything back in order to an acceptable level. Managed to get the miles of extension leads connecting TV”s, DVD players, computers etc back in the right sockets so everything is relatively normal again.
 I had the day off in order to get the job done. I felt a bit guilty about having a sickie but I don’t know why. Plenty of other people bludge off for a day and never think anything of it so why should I? I soon got over it!
 So it was back to work yesterday and it is all quiet there. There was an email going around to the SMO’s revealing that we were operating well above the national average with our productivity. Unfortunately none of the managers felt the need to inform the rest of the staff. You know, the one’s that actually do the bulk of the work. They are pretty quick to let us know when something is going wrong but there is no pat on the back when we do it right. You have to wonder about the management’s people handling strategies. Maybe they just like us to keep thinking that we are hopeless which is what they intimate most of the time.
 That’s just a short blog for today. Although it’s cold the sun is out and it may yet be a nice day. I feel like doing some exercise so will get off the computer and get out there. Have a nice day.