Three Peak Challenge

On July 4th I will have the opportunity to take part in the three peak challenge with some friends from work. It has been in the planning stage for a while, so I didn’t really want to post about it until it’s all confirmed.

This is a huge opportunity for me to tick a couple of things off of my bucket list. I get to travel to Scotland, and I get to climb a mountain – three in fact!

The total round trip will be approximately 1360 miles, and we are doing it in my car!

Route

We will use our place of work as the base for everyone meeting up, and from there we will continue forward on our journey up to Scotland. We have found an amazing location to stay and prepare ourselves for the first climb in Scotland.

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I am really excited and pumped to be doing this challenge. It will be a real test of stamina and perseverance not only for me but the others in the group as well. The best thing is we are doing this to help raise some money for charity (one has yet to be picked), so if you would like to help then a page will be set up so you can donate if you wish to.

Throughout the entire journey I will be documenting it, but have yet to choose the method so others can view everything we are doing. At the end when we finally reach home I will collate everything and put it up on here for all to see.

Have you ever done the three peaks challenge? How did you find it? Is it something you would like to do again? Did you manage to complete all three peaks in under the 24 hours? If you didn’t what held you up?

Construction Skills Certification Scheme

Finally things at work are moving forward a bit. Last week I went to a meeting to help evaluate one of the depots that the Maintenance Response Team work out of, and afterwards I was invited down to the depot to meet the guys and see how things are done from their perspective.

While having the invite is good, as I get to meet the guys I wouldn’t really be allowed to do anything with them unless I had a certificate to say I was aware of Health & Safety regulations. Thankfully three of us have been put forward to get our CSCS (Construction Skills Certification Scheme) cards, which allows us on site while they are working and to pitch in to experience what they do and how they work.

I have my test on the 7th May, and have been given the go ahead to go down to the depot on the 14th May. I have to say that I am quite excited to get out with the guys on the roads.

In the mean time I will be revising for my test, so I can definitely get to go out with the guys on the roads!

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I love my job, but I also like variety. I wonder if I can have the best of both worlds?

They’ve gone

The kids have gone back home to their mother again now. I already miss having them here so much. We all had so much fun while they were down. I don’t think I will ever get used to being apart from them.

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Have you noticed what the modern family is turning into these days? It seems most children are growing up in a broken home with either their mother or father living out of the family home and away from the children (I have no figures to prove this, but that’s what it seems like).

Obviously there are some situations when the parents can’t be together, but this shouldn’t affect the children in the family. Speaking from my personal experience I was almost forced out of the family home with nowhere to go except my parents. Unfortunately for my children that meant me moving over 100 miles away from them, and as I don’t have a regular income it means I am not able to constantly travel back and forth to see them. It’s heart breaking for me not being able to see them for such long periods of time, which means missing out on a lot of events and parts of their lives.

When I finally find a financially stable job I want to be able to get my own place much closer to the children. I want to be in a position where I can see them every day. I don’t want to miss anything. I want to be able to pick them up from school. I want to be able to take the afternoon off of work and go see their school play. I want to feed them their dinner. I want to be able to take them to the local park after school. I just want to be with them.

Despite seeming happy all the time I do put on a brave face around other people when the conversations steers towards their children or even my own children simply because I can’t do what they do. I can’t cook them dinner every day. I can’t tuck them up in bed. It makes me sad, so my way of coping with it is when I am with my children I try to make their time with me as enjoyable as possible. I neglect all other things and concentrate almost 100% on them.

It makes me sad when I’m talking to friends when they start moaning about doing stuff for their children. I would give up a hell of a lot just to have what they have.

If you’re in a similar situation with your children or know someone who is how do you / they deal with not being able to do a lot with their children? What are your / their coping mechanisms? What advice can you give others?

Camber Sands

Hot weather definitely means it’s time for the beach, and that’s exactly what we did today. I took the kids to the beach at Camber Sands. Unfortunately the tide was out pretty much all day, so we didn’t really have a chance to play in the water, but there was plenty of sand, and I don’t go to the beach with out buckets and spades!

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Dene Park

Dene Park is a lovely wooded area not that far from Tonbridge. I discovered it last year just searching around on Google Maps for new places to explore not that long after moving to Kent.

I took my sister there late last year when it was still a bit chilly. This year I wanted to take the kids so they could explore with us. It was that nice even jackets weren’t needed!

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Dover

It was a lovely day today so we decided to go down to Dover and look at the boats entering and leaving the docks and then explore around the White Cliffs.

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Call of Duty – Advanced Warfare

I have had my Playstation 4 for around 6 months now and I believe I have adapted to console gaming quite well. When I first had a console it was in the year of Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, Alex The Kidd, Street Fighter and Coolspot. Console gaming has advanced to the level of PC gaming now, so I thought it was about time I had my turn with it.

When I first started playing games properly I was a dedicated PC gamer, but it’s an expensive hobby to keep all my equipment up to date, and I just don’t have the time or money to do that now. Now days I don’t have the time to spend hours and hours playing, so it’s a just a once in a while thing, and with console gaming, you don’t need to update any hardware yet you can still play all the latest games unlike with a PC

You can see how far I have progressed with my console gaming from the two videos below.

The video below is from October 2014. It shows one of the better runs I had at the time. It’s still quite crap though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL39fN9ygAI

Now compare it to how I play now. As you can see from the video below there is quite a difference. Not only in play style, but in technique and ability too.

I’d have to say that I’m quite proud of myself from going from a PC gamer to being able to play on a console. It’s quite a dramatic change.

Bedgebury Pinetum

I took the kids, niece and my sister to Bedgebury Pinetum yesterday for the day out. The kids had so much fun playing in many of the purpose-built play areas. Some of which are brand new for this year. At least I think so, as I didn’t see them there last year when I went with the kids!

If you or your kids like going to forested areas for walks, trails, playing or what have you then I would definitely recommend Bedgebury Pinetum, however you should be aware of the parking charges. It’s not too expensive, and it’s well worth it.

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Home

Home-Movie

I took my two, my niece and sister to watch Home at the Odeon Cinema in Chatham this afternoon. It’s a pretty good film, and much better than I expected it to be. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves too, which is always good when spending money on them. If you have kids I would recommend taking them to see it before it leaves the cinema.

The plot as quoted from imdb.

When Oh, a loveable misfit from another planet, lands on Earth and finds himself on the run from his own people, he forms an unlikely friendship with an adventurous girl named Tip who is on a quest of her own. Through a series of comic adventures with Tip, Oh comes to understand that being different and making mistakes is all part of being human. And while he changes her planet and she changes his world, they discover the true meaning of the word HOME.

Have you seen it yet? What did you think of it? Did your children like it?

The Facebook lies

Last night I was browsing Facebook and noticed someone had posted the following image.

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According to the image every 823 years there is a phenomenon that occurs where there are 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and if you pass the image or at the very least the information on it according to Feng Shui you will receive good luck.

This lie that is making the rounds on Facebook is so easy to debunk is hardly worth doing, but I was bored and wanted to destroy it.

Lets start with Feng Shui. Feng Shui is something you do to help with the flow of energy through a house or apartment. It suggests arranging the furniture in a specific way to help channel the energy or Chi in a positive way to help. Help with what though I can’t say. I can honestly say I didn’t look into it that deeply!

Having 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays only happens every once 823 years. You can find this information out simply by looking at a calendar. Take May of this year for example. It has those exact same 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays that this myth talks about.

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It’s a phenomenon. No it’s not! If there are 31 days in a month and the first of the month falls on a Friday then it is guaranteed that there will be 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in the month. It’s really rather quite simple.

I still can’t get over that I am seeing people post utter crap like this. If you do some simple fact checking on the lies you find on Facebook you will find that they are nothing more than that. Lies. Myths. Fiction. Crap. Bupkis. Stop believing everything you see posted and the more people who adhere to this the less likely you are to see this crap posted again. It’s a win win situation!

Obviously there are many more other examples of crap that I see posted on Facebook, but I’m not going to post about those right now. However I do recommend that you visit http://www.snopes.com to see if you can find the ones that have you or your friends have fallen for.