Two weeks back I was supposed to board a plane to NY where I was going to spend a week with Shawn. We were both looking forward to that trip which was rudely interrupted by a volcano 1000 km away. I was meant to fly out on a Monday and it was mid-day on the Tuesday when the airspace over the UK started to reopen. At that point all the flights were booked and there was no way to get to NY as the earliest flight would have me arriving on the day I was meant to leave.
I made peace with the fact I wasn’t able to go. The weather in Leicester was warm and sunny and I went for walks around town and in the country that straddles the side of town. It was along the River Soar that I caught a glimpse of our replica Statue of Liberty. Why we have one, I have no idea.
As it happens, it ended up being a fairly good thing I didn’t go away. On Friday at around 11am I went into the living room to grab the phone and I discovered there was a water leak coming down through the light fixture in the centre of our room. It was soaking an area of around 2-3 metres in diameter. Our rug, one of the leather couches, our coffee tables (and the magazines and books on it) were all drenched as was the wood floor. Luckily, I discovered it when the owner of the house and his contractor were 
onsite and they helped me put down buckets and disconnect the light from the house’s electricity.
I called Nina to have her come home in the middle of the day to help with the clean-up. We had to move furniture out of the way and we carried our rug out to our courtyard to hang on the laundry lines. Had I been in NY as I was supposed to be, Nina wouldn’t have discovered the mess until that evening when it would have been much worse. And, she wouldn’t have been able to move the necessary furniture or 
lift the water-logged rug on her own. It would have been disastrous.
It took the owner and plumber a few days to figure out what caused the problem and to get it all sorted out. It has now been a week and we just got the ceiling light fixed. Today we will put all our furniture and rug back in place.
Stefan was flexible enough to give me work during the week I had booked off for my cancelled holiday. However there wasn’t much to do so I filled my time planning my June trip around the 
Mediterranean. Over the past month or two my plans were firming up and I needed to make time to sit down and work out all the details and make the required bookings. The week I was supposed to go away seemed as good a time as any as it helped make me feel better about the whole situation (including the water leak which rendered our living room a disaster zone for a week).
On Thursday June 3rd I fly to Barcelona to meet Dad, Marie and Andrew at their Uniglobe convention. I will volunteer at the convention 
through the weekend and on Monday I will spend the day with Marie as Dad and Andrew will be in meetings. Tuesday the four of us will spend the day together in Barcelona before we each leave on Wednesday. Dad and Marie have decided to spend a week on the Côte d'Azur where I will also start my holiday so we may find some time to meet up.
After spending almost a week in Barcelona, I will fly out on the Wednesday to Marseille. I have booked myself into a hostel for 3 
nights which will give me time to enjoy Marseille as well as go on a day trip to Cassis.
I will move along the coast to Cannes for 1 day and spend the night in an old fort that sits on an island just off the coast from the historic town centre. On this trip I have taken care to avoid any cities I have already visited, however, for the sake of making connections, I had to bend my rules a tad. From Cannes I will take a bus to Nice’s airport and fly to Rome; two cities I have previously been to.
Initially I wanted to go from Barcelona to Sicily by train so I could take in the beauty of the vast coastlines. In theory, this was a very romantic idea. In practical terms, it would mean I would spend the majority of my time in transit. With only 12 days to make the journey, I sadly realized it would make more sense to hop on planes as much as I could to leave more time enjoying the locations I stopped in. I was a little taken aback to note the distance from Barcelona to Sicily (along the coast) is akin to driving from Vancouver to the Ontario border! Or, from Vancouver down the coast to the Mexican-California border.
Rome’s airport sits outside of the city in the coastal town of Fiumicino where I will spend the night. This is the section of my trip I am really excited about; 2 uninterrupted weeks in Italy. The next day I will board a train to Naples. Upon arriving I will make my way to the harbour where I will board a ferry to take me to the town of Amalfi on the famed Amalfi Coast. I have booked myself into a hotel for 2 ½ days in the centre of Amalfi, just a stone’s throw from the beach. I have earmarked one of the days to partake in a trip to the little island of Capri, just off the Amalfi coastline.
I already fear 2 ½ days will not be enough on the Amalfi Coast, but I have already booked my flights and hotels. I will head back to Naples on the same ferry and spend half a day there before flying to Catania in Sicily. I have one day in Catania before I take a bus across Sicily to Palermo where I will spend 2 more days. This will bring me to the end of my 12 days and the solo portion of my trip. I will fly over to Pantelleria where Nina will be finishing her month-long field season. We will stay for another 6 days enjoying one of the most southern points in Europe and the late June weather. We will celebrate Nina’s birthday in Pantelleria and then fly home together which will wrap up my 3 ½ week voyage.
During the past week or so the temperatures have been around 20 degrees. Last weekend Nina and I sat out in the back garden of our house on lawn chairs. It felt great with the sun beating down on us and when I closed my eyes and concentrated, I was almost able to imagine what June along the Med would feel like.
The flowers are in bloom and it’s a beautiful time of the year so I took my camera out and snapped some pictures as I went about my chores and appointments. One of the appointments I tended to last week was a trip to the Royal Infirmary Hospital. I have decided to take part in a flu vaccination study for the H5 bird flu. One of the conditions of participation is that I must have a family doctor, so I signed up at my local health clinic and now have one. That caused Nina to upgrade her reminders (read: nagging) that I must see a dentist. I am almost ashamed to admit I cannot remember the last time I saw one. I would be in the right ballpark to hazard a guess it has been 15-20 years. I know; it’s terrible. Here in the UK, dentist visits are covered by the National Health System so there really isn’t an excuse. I made an appointment.
I was quite nervous about going, as is understandable. However over the past number of years I have been very diligent about flossing and ever since I started working from home 2 years ago I have also been good about brushing after most meals. Before walking over to the dentist I brushed feverishly one last time fully aware it would make little difference.
The dentist was astounded with what he found in my mouth. He said I had been doing an excellent job of taking care of my teeth and they were in great condition. He took X-rays which he looked over and (to my great surprise and relief) all my teeth were in need of was a fluoride cleaning. He told me he recommends patients come back every 3 months when they have bad plaque. If it is moderate he recommends every 6 months and if there is little plaque; every 9 months. He told me to come back in 1 year for another cleaning.
I was tempted to go back into a dormant state for another 20 years since I received confirmation I was doing everything right. However, I must follow the advice of my dentist. If I do have a problem in the future and I didn’t go for my advised yearly checkups, I will not be covered by the health system. So I made an appointment to return in a year.
The dentist himself was a younger Sikh man. He had a long black beard and a warm smile. Every time I looked up at him he was smiling and was genuinely friendly. His practice was in an old house and the chair overlooked the garden. Considering dentists are supposed to be evil and scary; he blew that stereotype away and made the experience as comfortable as possible.
I have started cycling more often now and am trying to head out 3 times a week. I have gotten over my trepidation about riding on the streets and have ventured out into the countryside. Around Christmas we went to Nina’s professor’s house and met some of his neighbours. One was an elderly gentleman who is an avid cyclist and has been a great resource for me. He frequently Emails me new websites he finds including some wonderful interactive sites where I can map out my journey and it even makes suggestions for which roads to take regarding how cycle-friendly they are.
I have gone on a few different routes to the east and south that take me through quaint little towns and villages. Some of these hamlets are so small and insignificant they are barely more than a church surrounded by a few dozen houses that give way to farmland. I will take my camera out with me one of these days as you have to see them to believe how charming they are.
One of the prominent features of Leicester (and probably other parts of the UK as well) are terraced houses. They are rows upon rows of houses that are all attached and identical. On one block you can have a constant stretch of houses that spans the city block without a break in them; just a series of windows and doors that goes from one end of the block to the other. I took this picture in our neighbourhood of the blooming cherry blossoms with the terraced houses that go off into the distance. It’s a perfect example of a typical Leicester street.
In the UK we are in the middle of election fever and I have watched 2 of the 3 leader’s debates on the Internet. It is amazing this is the first televised leader’s debate the UK has ever had!
In Canada I have never voted for the NDP and so there was little chance I was going to vote Labour here. Not to mention they have had a good 13 year run and it’s time for a change. That left two parties to consider; the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. As I have always been prone to voting Liberal in Canada, the LibDems were more attractive to me. They didn’t have much of the vote in previous elections, however the televised debates has gone a long way toward increasing their profile and exposure.
With Gordon Brown’s gaffe with the ‘bigot’ comment this past week, he put a solid dent in his credibility and, according to some of the analysts, went a long way toward sealing his fate.
It’s now May and at the end of this month I will be presenting my website usability workshop for the University of Derby. It is undergoing a certification process to allow attendees to receive university credits upon completion. To tie in with the workshop, I created a website for myself. I don’t know how far it will actually go to helping me promote my business to the uninitiated. However I thought it would be useful to have in case an attendee of my workshop asks if I have a site to see if I practice what I preach. I will also hand out business cards at the workshop with the hopes the attendees will check out my site and, perhaps, seek out my help with any changes they choose to make to their sites.
My website is www.AccessUsability.co.uk.
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