Heading towards 4th year or post grad/jobs

[Xenia]

Continuation of the previous thread for those of us with children who are just finishing their 3rd year at university (so either "graduating" in 2020 or going into year 4 in Autumn 2020)..........

My twins' degree results will be out in late July. Good luck to everyone else waiting for finals results.

My parents and in laws would be happy to take the risks if we could get them on a plane! They are all in their late 70’s but healthy without an underlying medical conditions.
They both live in beautiful places but really want to see us and their grandchildren.

The state is not allowing people to make their own choices which is a pity.

Meanwhile since I had my first child in 1984 I am just as busy with work as then, every year the same, everyone else seems to wind down to Christmas and I have clients clamouring for stuff up until the very end of the 24th.

My dmum ( 86) has made the decision she wants to still come for Christmas but as she is scared of breaking Boris's rules that means I have a nearly 3 h round trip to collect her Christmas morning, and the same again in the evening for either DH or myself. Hopefully the A1will be quiet.

Oh dear, that sounds very stressful. I hope it all works out for you.

Definitely no winding down for me either @Xenia - I work in General Practice and we have started our COVID vaccinations this week.

@Nanniss, do you mind me asking - how are people being categorised for their Covid vac?
I know a recently turned 80yr old, who has already had the first jab. I also know a 95 yr old, same GP practice, higher alphabetically (if that's relevant! 🙂) who is getting theirs soon - either this week or just after Xmas.
I'd have thought they'd start with the oldest age group first and work down?
Just curious, that's all. 🙂

Sorry for the detail, folks... 🙂

I meant derail, bloomin' autocorrect...

@Horsemad - I can only tell you how we have done it at my practice. We are working as a network with 5 other practices. Between us we have 975 doses of vaccine to administer this week. Our practice allocation of this is 215 doses. We have nearly 900 over 80's registered with us so we had 5 members of staff calling patients and we literally divided the alphabet up and each started at the top of our list. For this very first cohort we did not call anyone with a noted drug allergy (our vaccination centre is a hotel, not an NHS site).

My 83 year old mother has had her vaccine. However ... no appointment has been made for the second vaccine and her GP practice seems a bit vague about how that will work 🤷‍♀️.

DD has an assignment due in during the first week of January. At the moment she seems to be mainly sleeping 😂.

@Nanniss - DH is a GP - I’m not seeing much of him at the moment and don’t expect to for a while. They are in a hub doing the vaccinations but two of the GP’s holding the fort for the regular work have tested positive this weekend.

Thanks for coming back to me @Nanniss. 🙂 I hope all goes well with your vaccinations. 👍

That's interesting @Nanniss. Our GP surgery sent out a sort of don't call us we'll call you message about flu jabs when they got rolled out but nobody's heard a peep about the Covid jab from them yet. Do you happen to know if the higher tier areas are being targeted first?

Not getting any less busy here. IN fact this morning from 6,30am seems to have been busy every few minutes other than my short break now to eat some lunch after posting my older son's Christmas presents ( he is not coming on 25th as we are tier 4, even though I think he is in a bubble with us as a single person with no one else). I was really surprised that there were only 2 people ahead of me in the queue and the parcel apparently will arrive tomorrow!

Meanwhile at lunch time my son exchanged contracts on his first house (one of the twins) with a lot of help from me, arranged insurance for that too, countless deliveries at the door today and my first trip to the tip at 9am. I managed to book tomorrow too - we have loads to take there too. Our solicitor said it was his quickest exchange of contracts for years - 17 days from instructions to exchange.

The twins' law work is paused as the exams are over and the next term does not start until about 10 Jan so they can have a nice break.

Well we’re organised for the new style (hopefully never to be repeated) Christmas. We’ve ordered Christmas food from Cook - rack of lamb this year. Is due to be delivered tomorrow. Feels very weird with only three of us instead of the usual 16. No bedrooms to get ready this year. DS has been to Tesco’s for the drinks - he didn’t think we had enough so he’s happy.
We’re doing Zoom calls on Christmas morning with the missing family members once we’ve worked out what times work best with the different time zones. Normally this is my last week at work for a month as DH and I usually go on holiday for January but obviously not this year and DH is full on with doing the vaccinations. What a horrible year! I hope everyone managed to see family and still enjoy themselves.

@Parker231 and @Nanniss, I hope your DHs get some downtime at the end of the week.

I'm quite enjoying my holiday and trying not to think about online teaching in January. DDad, DDs and I went to collect the turkey this morning. We are in Tier 2 so I persuaded my DDad that we needed a Bill's breakfast. We were in the city centre by 8.30, had a lovely breakfast then DF and I went to M&S for the turkey/bits and the DDs did some shopping. We came home then DD1 & I went to do the final supermarket shop.

Exciting news here is that DD's literature review from year 3 was apparently very good. Her supervisor suggested that she and the other student doing the same topic get their heads together over the summer and amalgamate their work. It was submitted before term started for publication in a journal and was published with no revisions yesterday. So she now has an academic publication to her name. I am obviously delighted; DH just saw it as an opportunity to moan about how few publications he has to his name from the last 10 years (he was working in industry for most of that and then trying to set up a business). Sad when you are jealous of your kid..

In case I don't post before, I hope everyone has a restful and healthy Christmas

Malbecfan a published journal is really exciting. Is it anything to do with childcare and youth, as I might be able to cite it 😃.

@Malbecfan
A publication is a big deal, very well done to your dd

Well done on the publication. That is very good.
My son had a nice chat to a university friend who he had not spoken to since the summer and who had been working abroad for the last few months and I think is now back in the UK looking for a proper graduate job (although the one in Italy was pretty interesting - 4 or 5 months tutoring one child with free board etc provided so quite a nice post graduation job whilst deciding what to do).

I saw queues of about 20 distanced people in cold driving rain outside our butchers today and was grateful I just buy our meat at the supermarket in a few minutes! No queues for us when I took my son to Waitrose earlier. he and I have the delights of an NHS dental checkup tomorrow, first since about February with new measures of waiting outside the building until your turn etc.

Congratulations @Malbec 's dd and a happy healthy Christmas to you all too.

Very impressive on the part of DD1 Malbecfan - congrats!

We're in Tier 2 and my neighbour (80yrs old) has had the first Covid jab over a week ago now. I also heard an elderly lady in the nearest town complaining yesterday that she'd had the jab but that it was a 'con' because apparently the consent docs she was supplied with made clear that she could still get ill even after having had the jab. She was very, very irate so much so that I think she might have marched on Downing St to rail about her 'con'.

Well good luck with that parcel Xenia. I paid £26.60 to Parcelforce on Friday for Next Day Delivery, allegedly guaranteed by 1pm, to get DS1's presents to him in London so that they arrived on his day off (he's a doctor working right through from now until beyond Christmas) and the lovingly wrapped parcel just sat in London East depot for well over 48hrs, thus being delivered when no-one was home to take the delivery, so back to square one. £26.60! It wasn't even that big!

DS2 managed to get several months of tutoring a lovely young child in Mustique while waiting for his GDL to start. Own villa, own pool, great family, good pay. Came back incredibly relaxed and healthy, much richer and with a great tan :)

Oh wow, thanks everyone. @SMaCM sadly not. It's about spiders, which is funny because DD is arachnophobic!

@goodbyestranger. I can well imagine your DS2 doing that. He was always rather a charmer!

@Xenia I hope the dentist goes well. I had a checkup in September. They were meant to take my temperature on entry but the zapping machine failed. The nurse was really worried but the dentist was fine about it. "Malbec, do you have a temperature?" "No". "Have you been abroad recently?" "No". "Where were you yesterday?" "At school". "Fine, in you come. Nurse, change the batteries in the thermometer".

I am, as ever, in awe of those DC who are already making a mark. Only one of DD's friends got a job after graduation. The rest are doing voluntary work or continuing in education.

The NHS dentist was lovely. She was so helpful and this time she even did a full cleaning of my teeth which normally the hygienist does on another day. She did x rays too My son's teeth were fine too. There was a lot of PPE. My only issue was we had to fill in a new form by hand and with a mask I couldn't see it so had to keep "un-misting" my glasses with my sleeve about 20 times. We passed the temperature check - the first one I have had for about 15 years as I never seem to get ill and I have not been to bars or restaurants (where they take it or did before we in tier 4 in London stopped having access to those too).

Second twin has now applied for this Legal Practice Course place for Sept. 2021 too in London (living at home like his twin) this morning which is not hard to apply for and I am sure he will get a place as his twin has done. So I am glad that is out of the way. We were looking at his course dates for next term too and when is Easter and that kind of thing. It is possible his sister's wedding will be with 6 or 15 people in that bit of the year - so hard to plan a wedding. I suppose the list of priority starts with the couple and priest, then the parents, then your siblings and by then you've probably got beyond your quota (although currently in London all weddings are banned anyway unless you are dying).

My son's friend who was doing the tutoring in Italy was working for lawyers who do my area of law and who apparently know me which is a huge coincidence. I don't recognise the names.

Next job I am off to the council tip at noon and was there yesterday - you have to book, then back to work.
I hope everyone's Christmas preparations are going well.

Well done to your DD, Malbecfan! What a fantastic way to end the term. 🥂
Glad the dentist went well, Xenia. You've prompted me to phone mine again and see if they're seeing people for check ups again.
I'm off to the hairdresser soon and I'm having my nails done too. I normally do them myself, but after a term of constant hand sanitising and not being allowed nail polish for work I fancy a treat.