Rowan Manning

Euan’s back in the country for a couple of weeks so we’ve been extra social.

Back to work, it took a while to get back into it tbh but got lots done at the end of the week.

The place we were staying this week was on the Tarn and the river dominated the week overall.

This week we met a new cat sitter who lives nearby and introduced her to the lads.

Alison stayed over for a few days this week, was nice to see her.

The decorator came!

We’re having a very flat and lazy week.

Here we are at another arbitrary milestone, 200 weeknotes 🚀 I’ve written nearly 72,000 words of them so far.

We were in Great Malvern from Sunday until Wednesday, and most of our time was spent doing long walks across the hills in slightly too-hot weather.

It’s been a quiet and lazy week which I think I needed.

We were full into No Plans Week this week, it was quite busy but not too busy and was nice to be spontaneous.

It feels like I spent a bit too much of this week hungover.

I started the week dropping off a friend’s artwork at a gallery where she’s exhibiting.

I picked up Cities: Skylines II again this week and played a little bit in the evenings.

What a week!

Short weeknote, I cba to add a lot of detail because I’m trying to watch We Are Lady Parts at the same time.

This week was the annual FT rounders game where several teams from Product & Technology either ran around Regent’s Park or sat on the grass and ate/drank.

It’s been a quiet week post-holiday, I’ve not done a lot at all.

We had a very relaxing week in Türkiye, I spent most of it doing absolutely nothing except reading by the pool, occasional swims, and making use of the swim-up bar.

This week was fairly quiet, keeping it chill ahead of our holiday.

On Monday I braved the vet by myself to get the lads checked up after their operations.

This week Tom Barnaby and Douglas Fir had the snip, poor lads, and got microchipped.

Ugh, Eurovision.

I don’t think I could have hoped for a better result RE the council elections.

I’ve been feeling quite smug at work this week.

Our new hob got delivered this week but the fitters couldn’t fit it because they’d need to switch the oven over to a standard plug to make it work and didn’t seem to fancy it.

Charlotte continues to be sick (but improving) and I have managed not to catch it but I am just very tired all the time.

I’m going to keep this brief because I was up until 2:30 on Sunday and I very much want to crawl into bed instead of writing weeknotes.

We finally got our leaky kitchen tap sorted by replacing it.

We had a deliberately relaxed week without too many plans, we’re both quite tired.

The kittens are settling in well, they now have free reign of the office, bedroom, and living room during the day but are kept in the living room at night or when we’re out for a short while.

The kittens have arrived!

We said goodbye to Rocky this week, he went home on Wednesday.

This week was the first FT Boardroom (boardgame night) in a few years, it was so much fun.

We’re getting two kittens!

So.

It was a pretty ordinary work week aside from having a minor debate with our CTO about the use of generative AI in programming.

I’ve set up a regular call with Mum so that we talk a bit more out of habit.

This week was Engine Room, the FT’s internal tech conference.

We watched Saltburn, loved it.

Happy New Year!

Here we are after another year (and a few months, I couldn’t be bothered to write this in November).

Christmas day was nice and relaxed.

Work’s over for the year!

This week included Christmas Party #2.

I’m very tired.

The highlight of the week was Friday – we’d taken the day off work to head out of London but the trains were fucked so we cancelled the trip.

For anyone waiting with bated breath for my third yearnote, I’m moving it to the end of the calendar year because I can’t be bothered with it yet.

Back to work this week!

Phuket is beautiful, we spent a week mostly inside the resort with a few trips out to bars and the beach.