The Light At The End of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train)

^^ Ahhh, the sound of the early 90’s in brand spanking new 2011 form. That lot have just released their debut Ellll Peeee and right good it is too.

I know, I know, I can’t come swaggering back onto the blogosphere without an explanation of blog inactivity. Where do I start?

Poker.
The year finished with a healthy 5 figure profit. Sadly the last few months have been pretty much flat line breakeven and also looooow volume (reasons coming up). I’m getting back in the swing of playing recently with some sessions on the previously posted ‘fish heaven’ site I’ve found. This HUD-less site seems to be doing good things to my game as I’m making a lot more read-based & note-based decisions rather than HUD stat based.

Health.
Been unwell for a fair while. Not good. Unfortunately not been able to sit in bed being waited on because of…

Work.
The industry I work in went mental with the recent cold snap. Job numbers were higher than ever before because of it. On top of this we bought out the contracts of a ‘rival’ company in November. The deal was incredibly good as it instantly landed us huge extra turnover for the price of employing a few of their staff. The downside? A tonne of extra work for myself and my colleagues. We coped until the lady I work with basically buckled under the pressure and is currently off as a result. Long term perhaps. So I have been doing the work of a minimum 2 people for sometime now. Remembering I’ve not been well myself its resulted in me running on virtual empty. We are recruiting to help the situation, but it’s going to be a while before it all settles down.

Briefly I looked at the job market before Christmas. I have a load of experience and thought it would be simple to find a better paid (less stressful) job. I spotted a near-perfect job, but upon getting the job specification saw that they listed a professional qualification as essential. Looking into other decently paid jobs brought up the same stumbling block. Only one thing for it…

College.
I’m now well into a home learning course to get a professional qualification. My company are paying for it too (we’re big on training here). I have that much experience I was exempted from the first levels of the course and the starting point I’m at is p!ss easy. Looking ahead at some of the course material there is some stuff that I’ve never really done much on so it will be worthwhile in the end.

And Finally.
Pool. We won our league for the first time ever. We sat on P14 W13 with two games left and just needed to beat the 2nd placed team (who were on P14 W12) to win the league. Losing would have us on the same record but heavily inferior ‘goal difference’. We lost. This meant we had to rely on them losing a re-arranged fixture against the 3rd placed team in the league – a team they seldom lose to – and we had to beat the same team in our final game. Well the miracle set of results happened and it was I who won the ‘glory’ frame. I know it's hard to believe, but much ale was consumed. We’ve already begun our new season with a solid win over last seasons runners-up (nice opening day match-up there from the fixtures computer).

Snooker. Is gay.