What is it with household appliances these days?

Let's see what we bought since 2003 and what happened to it:

Advertisements work!

No idea what the original colour of this car really was, but I somehow doubt that it was pink.

Not quite. Just holidays and plenty of stuff to do. The last two weeks simply flew by. See in the Photo Gallery what I was up to:

Of course I also had my last working days in the meantime. Weird, but I didn't cry on my last day. I was simply too busy.

I am keeping a bit of a low profile here lately, as I am often simply shot at the end of the day.

The last days at work require a lot of documentation, finalising, sorting, passing on of information, basically anything that will make it easier for a new supervisor to step into my shoes or for other people to pick up some of the things I used to do. I am sure a lot of it will be in vain, as nobody ever reads the fucking manual. But at least I will have the feeling of having done my best, to pass on some basic information. And of course there also is a huge amount of information that I simply cannot pass on, as this is simply experience from 11 years in one company and learning especially the web job from the very beginning. How will they fare without me - I am not replaceable! Or so I wished…

Then at home, when I sit down, baby wakes up to do its daily gym exercises. It feels like this: "let's kick the belly a couple of times to show her I am here, then I will turn to the bladder for special impact, and after that I can kick some other randon areas that mummy won't feel as much… " At least that way I know that baby is doing fine. I am also waking up a lot at night lately, I am sure that's also partly due to baby activity.

Christmas is nearly here, I am going to see my family and some friends. And not too long after that, I'll move to the UK. Scary, how quickly time passes and how life can change so completely in just a few months.

Earlier this week I noticed that I am not able to pull in my belly anymore as much as I used to be. Before that I could pull it in and you wouldn't see that I am pregnant at all. Those times are over!

Now I am sitting here with what seems like a football in my belly and sneezing has become really painful! And it's not going to get any better soon as I am only about half way into my pregnancy.

Every now and then baby kicks me and I can feel it's getting stronger ever since I felt this sensation first on 11 November. This will be very interesting in a few weeks time…

"It's going to be a bumpy ride" was how the Brave Merchant's captain finished his statement. And my gosh was he right. But let me start at the beginning. (more…)

Today I went to the hospital again for another scan. This time I got two photos. One looks like an alien grinning at me:

The other shows the baby happily sucking its thumb:

Don't you think too that the forehead is just like Frank's? I fear for the worst when it comes to head size!

All looks well so far and it's always very exciting to see the baby move on the screen. I also saw the little heart with all its chambers beating away and the spine with the rib case. We were trying to see whether it's a boy or a girl, but baby was successfully obstructing the view by lifting up its legs. Seems to be into yoga and surprises…

I am still shocked: our web server in Dublin gave up last week!

Thankfully I have a great home network admin who happened to be on home leave at the time. He took the hard drive with him to England and applied all changes of the web site to the back-up server that was already over there. So, until the domain name of sylkeweb.com is transferred, welcome to brathahn.demon.co.uk!

What else is going on?

Yippeah: We are selling our house and looks like the first and only viewers will be getting it. They made an offer straight-away!

Sigh: I'll be driving over to the Eastleigh for the first time soon. Gosh, this is an undertaking! I am planning to take a first load of my stuff over. Sofia will be going with me and I was hoping she could do some of the driving. To hire a van and take it to England I had to make quite a number of calls. Turns out, you need to have your own car insurance to drive the van, which means Sofia won't be allowed to drive. So first I'll need to get my car insurance transferred for the time to cover commercial vehicles, secondly I need to get some special travel insurance. All of those I can only get once I know the registration number of the van. But the van people can't give me that until very shortly before I get the van. I can't even book the ferry without the registration. For Goodness' sake, is anything easy in this country?

The added problem is of course my pregnancy. It's very tough to pack boxes and carrying them is a complete 'nono'. I have to say I know some very generous people who kindly agreed carrying all the stuff into the van on Thursday night!!!