Sofie and Ian's baby
Sofie and Ian are having a baby (in five or six months time), and I've finally been told I have permission to tell the world. ;) Congratulations to them both!

Semi-retirement is hard work
In my last entry I proudly proclaimed that due to sound lifestyle management, investments, and business decisions, I only really need to do about 15 days of work each year. I could finally sit back, relax, and enjoy a peaceful lifestyle without undue pressure of complications. Therefore it's ironic that my relaxing lifestyle should begin with three months of non-stop, high-stress work.

This coming week I'm conducting a training course. The week after I'm doing the same, for another client. The week after that I'm conducting a different training course for a different client again.

Finishing my three weeks of teaching, I then have four weeks of consulting, followed by anything from 1-3 weeks of training in Sydney, and then a week of training in Darwin. Oh yes, I also have a conference tutorial or two that I need to write.

While I certainly can't complain about having the good fortune of getting so much training into such a short period of time, I am certainly looking forward to taking a break at the end of it.

Min-maxing enjoyment
My leisure activity of choice has recently caused me some confusion. Traditionally all my leisure activities have taken time, and many have taken money. One can convert the money component into a time component using a number of different methods, and thereby obtain an overall score in enjoyment gained per unit of overall time. I would hope that most people do this unconciously to some degree, thereby choosing forms of leisure that are most appropriate for their lifestyle and financial situation.

My regular forms of entertainment have been fairly static throughout my life. Games of all sorts are high on the list, including RPGs, boardgames, on-line games, and regular computer games. Competitive games feature highly, and somehow whenever I find myself playing a MMORPG I often find myself exploiting economic holes for personal gain, often though resource speculation and control.

Social interactions with friends are also a mainstay, although an increasing number of friends have got themselves lives, some going as far as partners, jobs, houses, and even children. Diving has been my high-expense leisure activity for the last few years; it happens infrequently, but it's worth it.

In the last month of two I discovered yet another leisure activity, but one that's been generating money rather than consuming it. The amount that it generates is only a fraction of even my poorest consulting work, yet its entertainment value is moderately high, and the overall income I've been gaining is equal to about half my normalised expenditure.

The downside is that my new leisure activity is socially dull. There's no social interaction to speak of, and nothing in the terms of interesting anecdotes that can be told afterwards. There are also learning curves and sweet-spots that have a significant impact on return-on-investment, so the hobby itself requires a reasonable time commitment to be worthwhile. I'm concerned that it will turn me into a very dull person.

I'm planning to combat this by organising a number of very social, and very geeky, gaming events with my friends once I finish my current glut of work. I'm going to try and tempt them away from their jobs and loved ones to indulge in some really serious gaming. I'd really love to have friends over for long weekend LAN-parties, but I need a little more space for this to do this properly. Perhaps we'll need to do some renovating to provide for more space, our backyard is certainly large enough that we could easily extend onto it.