This week (and the one before)

Life

We took the opportunity of the Australia Day long weekend, and the dying days of the summer school holidays, to get away to Torquay for a bit of a change of scenery. I could quite easily live in Torquay. Well, apart from having to be in the city most days for work — I’m not that much of a fan of the long commute. Maybe when we retire…

The weather was absolutely perfect — sunny, calm and not too hot. Even the water didn’t seem as cold as it usually is. Did I mention I really like the Surf Coast?

And now everyone is back at school and family life is returning to some sort of more or less normal routine. Which, once you account for basketball, swimming, various equestrian activities and Jo’s unpredictable work, is best characterised as barely contained chaos.

Work

This week has seen a major watershed in my career: for the first time in my life I have “manager” in my title. In reality, I have been “post technical” for most of the last year at least, but putting a label on it like this makes it more real somehow.

Being called “architecture manager” is a slight pivot from the “delivery lead” role that I was previously aiming for, but in practice it will probably amount to about the same thing. But it does change the emphasis slightly from “managing delivery of work” to managing a team of people doing the work.

Training

Big week in training! Not a large number of rides, but they were long and fast: 200 km along the Great Ocean Road followed up the next day with 111 km of Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race — at over 30 km/h, including about 35 km/h for the first 50 km into Torquay. Ouch!

The 200 km was hard but it was really rewarding (and surprising) to be able to back it up with a strong effort the next day. I did fade a bit in the second half of the 111 km though.

I’m finally starting to feel like I’m making progress. After a quiet recovery week, I’ve felt significantly stronger going up hills this week. I still feel like a sub-10 hour 3Peaks is probably out of reach, but I have a few weeks to continue working towards it. Who knows. I’ll probably be happy just to finish.

Theatre

The rubber is now hitting the road. Luckily it’s a fairly simple show, both in terms of set and required cues. And I’ve been able to reuse large chunks of the previous show’s rig, which makes it all a lot easier. Everything apart from a few specials is now hung and patched, and I’ve roughed in most of the cues, so “all” that remains is to tidy up the focus and fix any glaring problems that manifest during the last few rehearsals.

I find the process of lighting is a little bit like riding up big hills: it’s often excruciatingly painful and exhausting when you’re doing it, but immensely rewarding to have done it. I guess many things in life are like that.