It's A Picnic!

Another very quiet week as we hit another weekend and poker has been pretty much as my last post really. For the record, Ladbrokes has increased to show a profit for the month of 35$ and my Bodog 'challenge' has just reached my 100$ target!! Toot Toot Toot! This puts my Bodog account over $220 up for the month in total, so really pleased that my catious play is paying off!I wasn't too sure if I'm playing a little too cautiously at the moment but it seems to be building a steady increase in my months BR.

I'm really tempted to step up from the 10 or 25$ buy in I've been playing at Bodog, but want to build up my BR a little more (hopefully!) first and see if the standard is similar at the 50$ and 100$ buy in level. I did tell myself that I would play a month of low level games and kind of 'go back to basics' and I don't want to break a steady run so far.
I'm thinking back over last 2 months, and August was very good for me, probably my most profitable month ever, and maybe I got a bit too full of myself and lost a little bit of control. Sure, I had some pretty horrific beats, but maybe if I'd been reading the game better I may have prevented some.

Off the tables, I'm now 3 weeks into my new job and really starting to get into it and make a difference. It's a call centre with about 30 staff at the moment, though I have just taken on 5 more staff that start on 23rd October (3 guys and 2 girls - we need a few more blokes around the place! The girls are nice, but they don't know anything about football or drinking Guinness).
The company are the 2nd largest UK hotel booking agency in the country (turnover £220million last year) and have contracts with some big companies such as Marks and Spencer, Boots and Orange as well as some smaller ones that are equally lucrative, but not so well known. They use us for all their UK hotels, so if M&S are sending a group of sales guys to a particular area, they book their hotels with us.
We also have a conference secton so when Orange or M&S host a company conference or training week, we arrange everything for them from big conference facilities, delegate rooms to the sweets on the tables.
They set up the Northern office in October last year as the head office in Taunton isn't the best location. The basic plan is that we will deal with all the Small to Medium size business that need a little more attention and are generally more demanding, and Taunton keep the biggies.

I am the Operations Manager and my job is to take over once the sales guys have won the contracts. I meet with the client, find out how they want to work, get them set up on our system, communicate this to our staff and then evaluate and report business achieved. I also have to oversee the running of the whole office from Health and Safety, Staff Training, etc etc.
It's a really interesting job and I seem to be having an impact early on which is great. It helps when my predecessor wasn't very well liked and had a really hard management style which rubbed the staff up the wrong way. I have a more 'hands-on' appproach and talk to people about what I want from them, instead of banging fists on the table and demanding it. Seems to get the job done easier all round if you ask me.

Anyway, just waiting for this sunshine to dry off the damp ground a bit before it's wellies on and off to Dunham Park with a picnic. Yes, you heard me right. It's the middle of October, the sun is shining and Mia and I are off to the park with a picnic. Great isn't it! Also glad to report that there are no bumps or bruises to tell you about, though I think we are going to get a bit wet in the park!