It's been a good company to work for and I've been lucky to make some good friends there. My time there has taken me through a good dozen or so client projects, half a dozen pitches (some won, some lost), 42 Community Days, some very boozy work bashes at some incredibly swanky places in London, and interesting work in such exotic locations as Liverpool, Crawley and even Borehamwood!

The work itself has involved some great technologies and approaches. I got to know some incredibly talented developers and User Experience people here, as well as getting an education in Scrum. Not only that, the projects have involved contact with some quite senior and inspiring people within client organisations.

This was my first consulting job and a great way to get lots of experience very quickly. I was given lots of autonomy and in at the deep end so I learned quickly, but had lots of support so never felt overwhelmed

My colleague and friend Rachel made this for me with the LOLBuilder. Whilst I'm excited about my next job, I, too, am sad to part company with such a great bunch of people.

If you're interested in a job in consulting, have a look at Michelle Flynn's blog on the EMC Blogs site.

The snow's been falling thick and fast all day, and it's been beautiful outside. I'm lucky to live in a very picturesque part of the world with narrow lanes and fields and hills. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

This is just 5 meters from my house. 2 cars were abandoned on the road and the police were called. Now the road is closed. I'm not going anywhere tomorrow.

This is on the fields near my place. Lit up in the distance is St. Mary's Church on the top of the Hill.

Just behind the school at twilight.

• Alcohol is very heavily taxed and anything stronger than 3.5% is sold by Government monopoly stores (Systembolaget)
• The number counter on McDonalds tills only goes up to 99.

Our first stop was the Systembolaget, where we picked up 7 cases of beer and 3 cases of prosecco:

Total price? I estimated this would cost just shy of £200 ($327) in the UK. Here it cost about £550 ($900).

After loading the beer into a cab and taking it back to Karl's place, we did a bit of party preparation before going out to get cheeseburgers for the party. Karl figured on about 60 people coming to the party, so he went up to the counter and said, "I'd like 100 Cheeseburgers, please". They couldn't believe it. "Yes, I'm serious. I'd like 100 Cheeseburgers". The girl behind the counter was a bit flummoxed by this and a committee was formed to work out how to make this happen:

In the end, we had to settle for 99 cheeseburgers:

We took a stroll and came back 15 minutes later:

The two drinks on the counter were a freebie from the manager. I nearly declined the offer, thinking that the drinks at McDonalds are a bit unhealthy. Then I thought how stupid that sounded.

Quite often, the cats have been abandoned or mistreated and it's a little work to get them trusting humans again, as well as not worrying too much about vacuum cleaners etc.

We've had Kitty for about 2 months. In that time, she's come along nicely. We don't think she'd been mistreated; just a little shy. We're happy to have given her to a lovely foster family. Each cat seems to have its quirks. Kitty's quirk was that she loved water and would play for ages with the water running from taps. She would even run expectantly to the bathroom if she heard you were brushing your teeth.

If you're thinking about getting a cat, please consider adopting. If you're in the North London area, please give the Cat and Kitten Rescue a call.

Some people think these things should be kept secret. I don't really see why: if others can enjoy the recipe, then the world's a better place.

This recipe serves 8 very generously or fewer if you want to have it around for a while for grazing:

Ingredients

• 3kgs yellow fleshed potatoes. Charlotte potatoes are good.
• 1 jar pickled gherkins. This brand is particularly good.
• 1 small jar of mayonnaise.
• 1 Large red onion
• English mustard

Method

• Boil the potatoes until soft, but still a little firm so that they can be chopped and not go mushy. Set them out to cool down.
• Drain the gherkins and chop them into small chunks - reserve the liquid for later.
• Chop the onion finely
• Empty the mayonnaise into a large bowl. Stir a little mustard into mayo. Add a little black pepper. Stir in the pickle juice to thin out the mayo a little. Don't make the mixture too thin - just use common sense.
• Cut the potatoes into small square pieces. There should be no need to peel them. Gently stir them into the mayo mixture.
• Decorate with parsley, slices of boiled egg or whatever. Leave it to rest. Like a fine ragu, it gets better with age!

Enjoy! Let me know if you like the recipe!

Sadly, I have allergies and I react badly to many cats, but they seem to be fading. We figured that fostering would be a good way to go because we could see if we could tolerate being around the cat, see if we all got along, and perhaps keep the cat around if things worked out. Plus - we'll be helping look after abandoned animals, which is clearly good for the karma, if not so good for the dogma ('arf-'arf).

After a few hours of sniffing around and hiding in various places in the house, the little cat opened up and is super friendly as well as being quite a boisterous handful. I'm hoping we can sleep better tonight than we did last night.

Summer also means barbeques. Lots of them. It also means some experimentation at Nev's place. Last year we grilled pretty much everything we could lay our hands on, but there was always a trusted favourite that we keep coming back to: the Nev Burger.

I call it the Nev burger, but chances are Nev found it somewhere else. I don't know and I'm not really sure I care. It's delicious.

Here's the recipe. You'll notice that it's a "guy" recipe, in that it doesn't rely on weights and measures in the same way that a "chick" recipe might. In "guy" land, measures are units of booze and weights are things you lift in the gym to pack the burgers you eat onto your Herculean physique.

Back to the recipe (feeds the guys you have over):

• Some ground beef. Maybe half a kilo. Maybe more. Use your judgement.
• Fresh Coriander
• An onion or two
• Garlic
• Some buns
• Lettuce
• Beef Tomatoes
• Creamed Horseradish
• A pack of cheese slices (the plasticky kind)
• Some chilli powder
• Mayo
• Ketchup
• Mustard

Chop the onion and garlic, chuck them into a bowl with the beef. Add some chilli powder and creamed horseradish. The horseradish acts as a flavour enhancer and binder. Chop the coriander. Chuck it in. Chuck some more in. Salt and pepper the mix. Form into patties and chow down with the rest of the ingredients in traditional burger fashion.

Enjoy with a cool, crisp, refreshing beer or a mojito.