Brain-dead

My head hurts. After two days at the start of the week listening to presentations about the company on the staff induction, a busy day on Wednesday trying to do a week's work in one day, and two days at the end of the week in Pukekohe listening to all sorts of stuff on soil science, arable farming and aspects of animal health products such of supplements and anthelmintics my brain is dead. It was nice to have a non-mentally taxing day yesterday. Really what I needed.

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the week. It was great to meet some of the other new staff and spend time with the new group of account managers, it's just that it was kind of full on. Plus there was the eating out every night with no time to unwind really.

The last two days, the course up north, were really interesting though. For me it was just interesting context and background while the rest of them on the course actually have to know the stuff as they're the ones who will be face to face to the farmer trying to advise them what's best for their farm, trying to balance an economic optimum scheme with a biological optimum one, and all the while trying to persuade the farmer that they know what they're on about despite only being in the job five minutes. I don't envy them, but they are all keen and excited about the prospect, which is good. Half of the group were just out of uni after completing agricultural degrees or commerce and agriculture degrees, a few had experience working on or owning farms while a couple had worked for other companies in the mrarket. As such they all had a deeper initial knowledge of the content than me. As I said on the first day, I last studied biology when I was 14 and where I grew up I could see a field. I was definitely the benchmark for the tests we had to do. If anyone finished below me there would have been questions asked. But, as it was, they didn't. Maybe that shows our recruitment policy works, eh? I passed though, which I was pleased about. Not bad for a beginner.

On Thursday I got an email from Joanne to say that Shirley, her mum, would be flying down to stay with us for a few days, which was a nice surprise. We certainly didn't get surprise visits from my mother-in-law when we were in London. So we currently have our first house guest (other than the birds), which is nice. The first person to stay in the guest bedroom. I think we approves of the house. She had only seen it empty before.

Ooh, and speaking of the house, we have some blinds up now. The lounge/kitchen/dining room bit (I never know what to call that room - the family room maybe?) has all the windows done, which is nice. It means that we aren't being watched whenever we eat at the dining table or sit down to watch some TV now. The rest of the blinds and curtains should hopefully be here in the next couple of weeks. I can't wait to get the newspaper down off the windows!

I've been messing around with graphics packages, trying to turn photos into interesting stuff we can stick on our walls recently. We have an awful lot of wall space and not enough pictures to go round, I think. This is one I'm quite pleased with. What do you think?

We've got Monika and Barry and the kids coming round for lunch after church today. There is a ride-on model train thing that goes on opposite our house either every Sunday or every other Sunday and we'll head over there for a look after we've eaten. Ariana and Xavier will love it.