Stinsy- where is he?

[Tinbum]

Any ideas, not been active since the 22nd March and not posted since the 8th.

[Joeboy]

That's weird, I was literally just thinking that 5 seconds ago.

I hope he is OK.

[Stinsy]

I'm still alive!

Lots going on in my personal life at the moment which means I don't have as much time as I used to. Hopefully I'll have things more under control in the next month or two.

[Joeboy]

I'm still alive!

Lots going on in my personal life at the moment which means I don't have as much time as I used to. Hopefully I'll have things more under control in the next month or two.

glad to hear it!

[dan_b]

I'm still alive!

Thank goodness!

[Fintray]

I'm still alive!

Lots going on in my personal life at the moment which means I don't have as much time as I used to. Hopefully I'll have things more under control in the next month or two.

glad to hear it!

[openspaceman]

I'm still alive!

Lots going on in my personal life at the moment which means I don't have as much time as I used to. Hopefully I'll have things more under control in the next month or two.

glad to hear it!

Me too, I never had time for much extra curricular activities till the kids left home, now I have the time but not the energy

[Tinbum]

I'm still alive!

That's good to hear.

[Joeboy]

Shall we go off on the whole staying out late without telling us thing?

[Stinsy]

Hi all!

I hope you are all good! How've you been getting on without me?

It has been 6-months I think! Apologies for the extended absence. Lots has been going on in my world over the last year (child number 3 born in January with a few health problems, wife unwell too, parents have suddenly become that bit more frail, child number 1 going to secondary school) etc.. None of which was overwhelming in and of itself, but it all added up to the point where I'd maxed out the number of things I could think of at the same time! Turns out there is a maximum number of plates I could spin and I'd exceeded that number. So I (not entirely consciously) applied some tunnel vision, dealing with the task in front of me, then the next one, with distractions removed.

Anyway, none of the above has gone away but all of them are under control. So I have some breathing space.

At the same time, child number 1 has put on his Xams list: a rack to display his JuJitsu belts. I found the ones for sale to be somewhat lacking so an offcut of oak kitchen upstand was selected from the "spare wood" pile and I've made something of my own design. It is currently primed, has undercoat drying, and will have topcoat applied soon. This process has reawakened my love of having a "project".

I have always enjoyed very much putting myself out of my comfort zone, researching, learning new skills, gathering materials, and building something. This has manifested itself in: buying renovating and letting some rental properties, building a garden office (many years before they were "cool"), installing solar on the aforementioned garden office, messing with storage heaters, installing an A2A HP in my house, etc.

I don't have the bandwidth to actually undertake something big myself, but found myself missing reading about projects you chaps were cracking on with. I also recently found myself wondering about a few things that you chaps could've helped me with (the electricity supply crunch the other day why couldn't Octopus have stepped in? (I see you have a thread on that), and I've heard that Tomato Energy have a 5p/kWh ToU tariff (I'll start a thread on that if there isn't one).

So here I am. I'm not accustomed to laying myself open in this way, but I've found the process of writing this to be helpful for me, and I feel it wouldn't have been reasonable to disappear then come back without explaining.

Like I said above: I hope you are all good! How've you been getting on without me?