Still chugging along…

‘dark along the country roads headed north, my tablet resting on my knee and calling out waypoints to the A34.  It may be the shortest route, perhaps the fastest, but at 6:30 am it’s a winding challenge through sleeping forests and villages.  I brushed the screen without looking down, reaching to shift: the tablet obligingly took a photo.

‘good morning, England.

It’s been a busy month, ‘lots to catch up with here in the coming week but generally everything going fine.  The travel schedule has been hectic, and while I am getting lots of time to think, I get all too little to write.  It leaves me feeling stretched and dissipated, and I know that I need to get back to more regular writing (and walking and reading and sleeping).

The businesses are doing well, both still on-track towards product release later this year.  The Notified Body, regulators who approve our products for sale, are coming to audit our facilities in March, and we have a lot of work to do to get ready.  We’re still pressing on with product and business development, investor and supplier meetings.  These always end up happening at their offices instead of mine, but it gives assures that they do happen.  There are, as always, a few procedural backsteps and recalcitrant people, but I’ve learned to put a smile on, head down, and press on.
There’s  been turnover in Poole, Peter the retiree (UK) gone and Jo-Jo and Chiara (Italian) arriving to join Claudia (Romania) and Robert / Christa (Hungary).  I’m getting my wintering container gardens back into the sunlight and fed, easing back to a regular exercise schedule at the Leisure Centre.  I can do my HIIT routines again, but still have a bit of the holidays to knock off my waist.  I should start getting back onto the 5-2 plan as well.
The weather has been horrid, turning bitter cold and stormy wwith gale winds along the shore and flurries in the forecast.  I’m ready: my camera came back from Lewis after 4 weeks away to swap out a lens. My overhead-storage airline bag finally fell to pieces after a Ryanair flight.  It felt momentarily symbolic, but I made a stop in Amsterdam for a new flexible roller at de Bijenkorf that I am really liking.  I’m unfortunately missing Carnival this year, sacrificed to tight schedules.  But, instead, I am looking forward to going to my first Opera this week – a performance of Tosca near London.  And I’ve been gathering notes, pictures, half-finished essays to backfill some of the last month’s gap.

I’ll plan to be more regular in these pages going forward: the hardest part of writing is just getting started.