So I've been re-acquainting myself with the 'home office', and remembered one of the great things about working from home. Since the good IT folks at zavvi rumbled me for listening to BBC iPlayer and using up all the company bandwidth, I've been blocked from listening to Zane Lowe. This afternoon, while tweaking my cv for the umpteenth time (I'm up to version 7.6), reviewing some agency contacts and talking to a recruiter, I've been listening to Zane Lowe's New Year Mixtape - stonking.

Eagles are flying

Oh, did I mention that The Eagles won in Minnesota? I stayed up with James and a couple of his friends to watch it, and although it looked like it could go either way at half time, just like the Rangers game earlier the second half was a lot better. Next stop, Meadowlands.

The office

Weird, going into the office this morning. Suddenly the place I worked in every day was a strange, empty place.

And a horrible place. They've started to clear out our side of the building so there was hardly anyone there. It was good to bump into a few friendly faces but frankly, I couldn't wait to clear the rest of my stuff and be out of there for good.

Had a nice lunch at Frank's with Lee, Suzanne and Steve, bumped into Ana on the way to the tube, and made my weighed-down way home...

I'm due to speak to a couple of recruiters this afternoon so Project Melvin starts in earnest now.

One down, one to go

In the end, a comfortable win, kick-started by Pedro Mendes' wonder strike 24 seconds into the second half and followed by two typical Kris Boyd goals.

Now it's up to the Eagles.

Sporting Sunday

So a big day for my two teams today. In a few moments Rangers take on Inverness Caledonian Thistle, buoyed by Celtic dropping two points yesterday. We need to win to keep any title aspirations alive.

Then an even bigger game. The Eagles travel to Minnesota for a playoff game that looked unlikely a week ago. No margin for error and everyone will need to be on their game. Thankfully the game is on Sky so I'll be able to watch it, unlike last week. I remember some amazing games on the way to the SuperBowl in 2005 - here's hoping for a repeat starting tonight.

Philadelphia on my mind

Naturally, there's been a lot of contemplation recently. Apart from anything else, I was pretty much flat out at work for most of last year so there wasn't a lot of 'me time'. Not that I'm complaining - it was a great year.

For some reason I've been thinking back to my time in Philadelphia. I spent a lot of time in Philadelphia from 2001-2005. At one point I even had a visa to allow me to work full time if I wanted. I used to fly over for a couple of weeks at a time, staying with my good friend Steven or in various hotels or apartments. After a while I started to use my spare time to explore the city and the area, and it started to feel like a second home to me.

Now Philly isn't the most beautiful city in America, and you wouldn't want to stray too far off the beaten track in some districts. But it has some beautiful parts and important historical landmarks, an amazing Museum of Art (the steps to the gallery are the ones that Rocky Balboa runs up in the original Rocky), Philly cheesesteaks and South Street.

It has the schuylkill river and the boathouses, its own twin towers and its bridges to New Jersey.

And it has The Eagles. Philadelphia is a real blue collar sporting city, with baseball, basketball, ice hockey and American football teams all in national leagues. In fact the Phillies are baseball's reigning world champions. But when it comes down to it Philadelphia is a football town. They'd swap the World Series tomorrow for another shot at the Superbowl. Can it happen this year? Maybe, but highly unlikely. I'll be watching on Sunday anyway in hope.

So where's this all heading? I was saying that I was thinking about Philly. Specifically, I was thinking about a time when I borrowed a car and was driving back through the city after a day out. The radio was on, I was cutting through the heart of the city, and I captured a few moments on video...

Happy New Year

A very happy new year to my multitude of readers and followers.

Wenge and I had planned to actually do something this year, and had even been invited to a couple of parties. However, what with everything that's been going on, and me having flu over the whole Christmas break, we decided to just have a quiet night in with some good food and a nice bottle of wine.

As it turned out, both Laura and James now have the same thing I had, so they didn't go out last night. In the end I cooked some ribeye steaks with stuffed mushrooms, pureed carrot and baked potatoes with sour cream, and opened the bottle of red that Laura had brought me from Montpellier earlier in the year. Then we all watched 'Blood Diamond' until it finished - bizarrely -at 11.59 just in time for the bells and the fireworks.

It was the best new year's night in many years.