Another busy week between work, band activities/events and other personal things that needed attention this week. Meanwhile it’s another week nearer Christmas and other than ordering my Christmas turkey, I have so far not had time to do anything else in preparation for Christmas, so yes I’m beginning to get stressed about that!
We managed to finally confirm at the start of this week that all parts of our testing environments were successfully upgraded as part of the essential maintenance we did last week. This allowed us to confirm the essential maintenance work to our Production environments would go ahead Wednesday/Thursday this week – It took a bit of negotiation by one of my colleagues to agree that we would not start the work first thing on Wednesday, but instead would start at 11:00. This meant it was going to be more of a challenge for us to complete the essential maintenance and fully test the solutions were working so that our users and customers could then use our systems once again, by close of business on Wednesday.
End of sprint/start of new sprint week at work, always seems to come round way too quickly, as those weeks are always very busy looking back over the previous sprint and then planning workload and sprint goals for the new sprint. This week was no different, and in fact seemed more stressful than usual because of the many other meetings I needed to attend on top of the end of sprint/start of new sprint activities and discussions.
Over the last week it’s also been a busy one for me with Bellshill Salvation Army Band events, and more preparation for our Christmas events – Both for our social media platforms (what music to share, Wednesday devotions) and the devotional thoughts for during some of the events. I always find this quite a pressured time, as there’s always so much to do to make sure the band’s ministry is shared with as many people as possible. We may never know the impact something we share may have on someone’s life, so that’s why I always want to ensure we share relevant, and maybe challenging messages, in the hope they are just what someone needs at that time.
On Tuesday night I was out with an ensemble from the band at Giffnock South Parish Church and last night it was our annual Music For a Christmas Evening Christmas concert – this year in aid of the Accord Hospice. Tomorrow the band head to Forfar to share the Christmas message there. It’s a very early start as we need to be at Bellshill Salvation Army by 07:00, so we can load the bus, so we can head off by 07:30. It’s a long day, as we’re not anticipating being back in Bellshill until 22:15 at the earliest. I have done my usual though and taken Monday off work so I get a chance to rest and recover from the busyness of tomorrow! Hopefully on Monday I will get a chance to start my preparation for Christmas!
The Distinct Dot 