The End Of Summer

This is it.
Today is officially, as far as I’m concerned, the end of the summer holidays.
This is the last day I’ll spend in work without the company of teachers and/or children.

To celebrate, it’s a lovely 3-day weekend with the Bank Holiday on Monday and then it starts.
The teachers arrive for an INSET Day on Tuesday before the kids start piling in on Wednesday and Thursday and the school year begins once more.

It’s been an OK summer. I’ve had better.
I’ve got as many of the things I needed to do done and there isn’t much left over I can’t battle through over the first few days of terms. The important things are there, though, including 198(-ish) new Year 7 children.
I’m finding myself being much more organised. Lists, files, boxes. Everything like that has made the summer slightly easier and I’m going to build up this organisation so everything runs smoothly.

It seems strange having an office to myself again. My colleague has “defected” to the teaching side and so I have the place to myself. A lot more room, I have to say and, as mentioned earlier, I’m able to organise my time and my space so I work more efficiently.

The cats need feeding now. They’re meowing incessantly at me.
Here’s to a good last day and a good school year to come.

BYL.

Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular

I've just left Liverpool on the train after seeing Walking With Dinosaurs: The Arena Spectacular at Liverpool's Echo Arena with my little girl.

Spectacular is certainly an understatement. It was absolutely amazing!

We arrived at the arena just before the doors opened at 10am for an 11am start. This is my first arena experience so hunting for the right door to get in the place was the first job. Thankfully, it's pretty obvious. It has a City Side and a River Side entrance. We were River Side so we made our way to the door - second in the queue.
A ten minute wait and we were in.

Block 12; Row KK; Seats 299-300
Surprisingly easy to find after we'd made the necessary trip to the toilet.
Walking through the doors the arena opened out before us. Seat on three sides with a blank space at one end surrounded by dinosaur teeth. In the middle of the arena space was what looked like a rock formation with space around it for the dinosaurs, presumably.
Our seats were brilliant. Around 20 rows from the back with an excellent view of everything.
It was 10:15. We had 45 minutes of waiting yet.

There's no point in me going through the entire show. We were led by a paleontologist who described everything about the dinosaurs we were seeing - and we saw some amazing dinosaurs.

Every single dinosaur had some sort of animatronic components to it from the small raptors to the massive Brachiosaur which was about 30ft tall. Every one moving as if it were real. Reality, I believe, would be the next step.

The highlight for both me and my daughter was the dramatic entrance of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The storyline for it's entrance was based on it saving it's child from being bullied by other dinosaurs. The arena grew dark and quiet. Then came a deep rumbling before the loudest roar and in it came. It was huge and moved, like the other dinosaurs, so smoothly you wouldn't think it was robotic. It wondered around the arena roaring and snapping at the other dinosaurs. Amazing.

There was also a touch of humour added to the event.
The paleontologist rummaging through dinosaur poo; the big T-Rex interrupting the narration with a massive roar; the baby T-Rex taking the limelight and a bow of his own at the end.

Overall, a truly amazing spectacle.
You don't think about how things are done or what you see that show they're not real. They're so huge and realistic in their movement and their actions you're drawn into it all.

A brilliant day and a highly recommended show.

(Check out these photos from the day - http://bit.ly/IuZ4z)

(See videos on my YouTube channel - http://www.youtube.com/pdsharpe)

BYL.

Rubbish films... are great!

I seem to have developed a habit of recording horrendous films. I tend to watch them on a Saturday morning or while my girlfriend is at work (she doesn't appreciate my taste in rubbish films).

Late at night, certain TV channels tend to show the most awful horror films ranging from the 70s rubbish to more recent bilge. For instance, the film I put myself through this morning was "The Hive". It was a fairly recent film about flesh-eating ants. Rubbish plot; rubbish special effects; awful acting... but brilliant!

Sometimes you need an awful film to watch. Sometimes, they can be better than the good films. I'll be scanning the TV guide today for more tripe to record.

BYL.


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Post courtesy of BlogPress for iPhone

Frustrations

Venting. I like venting. Venting on a blog is good because you can write your heart away. Although, if you use your real identity on a blog, you have to be careful with names, etc. This is why, in this venting session, there will be no names or situations mentioned; just a series of "aaaarrrrgh!"s.

I'm venting because I can't give a verbal bashing to the people who need one right now. I can't because I've agreed not to and I'm perfectly fine with that. However, it doesn't stop my frustration.

This short vent is to people who cannot organise time, who are unsuitable in management roles because of their lack of organisation and, as a result of both of these things, upset people by not considering situations, the people who they are upsetting and STILL think they're doing a good job.
Annoyingly, it seems simple to me to resolve these time management and managerial issues. Whenever I hear of them, I come up with a simple idea which, I believe, any idiot would suggest. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with me and so it is not my place to say.

I don't think I can go on now without actually going into the situation which I shouldn't do.

Some places will remain with people in charge who couldn't run a tap.

BYL.

Feel Like Using Your Phone While Driving?

I've just seen a post on one of the forums I visit and it showed the following video.
It's a very shocking video but certainly sends home the message about not texting or making phone calls while driving.

No matter how good a driver you think you are, with something like this there can be no "it'll never happen to me" attitude.

Please, don't use your phone while driving:

... and the second part which has just as much of an impact:

Some Time To Post

Work has been particularly productive since the summer holidays started.
To Do lists have been made and worked through each day, most of which have been completed by the time I leave. I've actually enjoyed it.

Once again, I'm running the ship alone as my colleague has defected to teaching. This means I have an office to myself again so there's been some major reorganisation. My desk has been moved. It seems like I have more room and the office is now looking more "homely".

As I work through these lists, I've needed music to keep me going. Inspired by the closing track in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, I've been listening to the likes of Survivor, Journey and REO Speedwagon. All complete legends of their time. For example, I'm writing this to "After The Fall" by Journey. It just makes the day go that little bit quicker and keeps the smile on my face a little longer.

The weekend is closing fast and it needs to hurry for on Sunday I'm taking my daughter to Walking With Dinosaurs: The LIVE Experience at the Liverpool Echo Arena. If you haven't seen the various YouTube videos floating around about this, I suggest you go and watch them. I'm really looking forward to it. It promises to be an amazing show. The camera will be at the ready.

12:53 - I best carry on with work. Quite a bit to do today so I'm staying on until 15:30 instead of 15:00.

BYL.

Holiday Posts... FAIL

I need to take a lesson from my fellow bloggers, those who don't necessarily blog regularly but those who, when they do post, write some interesting things. They manage to fill out their posts to keep readers interested.

I tried that with a few posts about my recent holiday. As you can see, they've gone. I haven't deleted them but just put them into draft. For some reason, I either forget or just don't bother to update it. I was on holiday about a couple of weeks ago now. I started writing the blog via my iPhone to keep on top of things but that soon stopped. When we came back, I thought to carry on. I wrote a little here and there but then started forgetting.

So now, they're in draft with a possibility of being revisited sometime soon.

That's why they're gone.

BYL.