T'eyla Minh

There is a serious shitstorm approaching in the next couple of days at work and it's far too long and complicated to condense into a tweet-thread, so unfortunately I'll have to post about it here. I didn't want my first post of 2019 to be a work rant but here we are...

( Can I retire yet? )

TL;DR: we suck at implementing changes in a stress-free and seamless manner and I am tired.

In more positive news, I really want to do a celebratory post about Farscape turning 20 (even though that makes me feel So Old), which I will probably create on Facebook in the first instance and then maybe copy over here as well. Watch this and that and all the spaces. (If I'm not dead by then from sheer incompentence.)

More moaning. Choir, this time. Other than to say I'm getting fed up of people picking and choosing which work they want to type as it's happened on no less than six separate occasions this week. The urge to kill is rising. ( Choir moaning under here. )

Blah blah moan moan.

Interestingly, in the midst of relating the Transcription Fail to Paul on Friday night, he asked me what I thought my nickname might be amongst my colleagues, if they were to adopt the same approach as me. At this juncture, I suspect it would be Moody. :P

I meant to do this last night but had lots of photographs to post on Facebook so didn't have time. :P (If you're interested, there are pictures up now of our trip to Dudley Zoo and the four days in Paris.)

I have two other things to update about in the meantime; tonight I will attempt to get some of the Fandom for February backlog under my belt just to get it out of the way. :P

( Recipe: Turkey Roulade Tapenade )

Now a minor, petty work annoyance, briefly mentioned on Twitter, in the form of ( Cake Rivalry )

After the Farmers / Arts Market, Paul and I headed into Birmingham for translucent's leaving drinks. We went to Las Iguanas first because I wanted Mexican food, where we made a headstart on cocktails before heading to Island Bar for the drinks in question.

Despite drinking about six or seven cocktails, I was actually surprisingly not drunk, just absolutely shattered. We left about ten-ish and managed to convince a taxi driver to cap the fare at £12.00 (bonus!). I think perhaps the highlight of the night was catching up with Clare as I haven't seen her since... wow, I was still at uni. Maybe about eight years? So that was lovely because she hasn't changed in the slightest. I tried to convince her to join CBC, also. ;)

On Sunday we mostly did nothing. I had a migraine kick in right as EastEnders started, which was a pain, but thankfully the Migraleve didn't mong me out so I was able to set the Wii up on our new wireless broadband (WOO!) without any fuss, then spent the evening after dinner catching up on overdue internet-related admin. :P I do still owe Eni some Thoughts, so I'll try and tackle those tonight. :)

I think that's about it. Hopefully updates will now be more forthcoming and regular, rather than every two weeks.

Well, it's been a while...

( Once again that quote from Scar is oddly appropriate... )

I know it's petty. Thankfully Forgetful has been off this week so I've not had to contend with her moody-arsed attitude. The IKEN thing is seriously pissing me off, though. If anyone had actually said anything then perhaps it might be okay, but the sense of being forgotten about is disconcerting and worrying.

I wasn't really in the mood for the gym yesterday and was quite stroppy about silly things like not being able to find a pair of 2kg dumb-bells and the step for the step-ups being too high, but the good thing about weights machines is you can imagine, for example, that you're crushing someone's head between your legs. :P Subsequently I wanted comfort food for dinner so we went to the chippy and ruined all the effort. And this morning I felt a bit sick so that just made it an even worse decision.

To make matters worse, there was a spider on my desk earlier. Only a little one. I squashed it under a Pret napkin and scraped it into my bin, and then spent the next hour or so feeling paranoid, with over-sensitive and tingly skin. Stupid phobia. I'm getting better at dealing with the actual bugs, in retrospect (I didn't shriek or ask for help), but the after-effects are the same as ever. I'm guessing they're a delayed reaction...

I might get some lunch from the food festival today... Just wish BCC had put it on for longer than ten days, the skinflints...

Last week was horribly stressful for no apparent reason, Friday especially so. I started writing a review of Black Swan, which we saw on Wednesday, but I couldn't finish it thanks to being busy and on reading it back it sounds horribly pretentious, so now I can't be bothered. In any case, it was a truly brilliant film and the highlight of my week.

( It can only get worse, unfortunately. )

The WPO's are meant to be moving to the 2nd floor this week. I am dreading this more than you can imagine, and still have seven weeks to get through before my leave in April. If things get exponentially worse I am seriously considering getting myself signed off with stress, if only to poke management into some kind of action - when the inevitable question is asked, I won't hesitate to say what's stressing me out.

On the plus side, we tried out the Wii Fit this weekend and it's knackering. Paul's Wii Fit Age came out as 51, mine was 31. ;) Also my centre of gravity is almost completely central, which was nice to know. We tried some of the balance games and some yoga stuff (half moon is painful!) and if the aches I am suffering today are any indication, it must be doing something. Also I weighed myself twice by moving the board to a different bit of carpet, and the weight came out the same both times, so at least I have some functional scales now - at least until I live somewhere with even floors.

On Sunday we went to my mum's for lunch - quail wrapped in Parma ham to start (mm, tastes like a slightly gamey chicken), followed by one of Jamie's 30-minute-meals, which took an hour. :P It was pork loin with catherine-wheel sausage, celeriac mash and a sauce made of smoked bacon, chicken livers, rosemary and cream. Amazing. I was a bit wary of the celeriac mash because my mum said it tasted like celery, but it was actually surprisingly nice... So that's something I can add to my list of potato alternatives, anyway.

(Oh, and on Saturday I decided to use up the muffins in the fridge by having eggs benedict - Paul poached the eggs and cooked the bacon and I made the Hollandaise sauce, which for a first attempt wasn't bad at all. Mmmm, lovely.)

We had a go on Wii Sports Resort (obviously) and demonstrated Mario Galaxy and Epic Mickey. In the morning we also swapped our duff second-hand controller for another one (which works this time), and also the duff DS game for another Wii game, which looks quite pretty. I will probably have a go at it tonight.

Anyway, that's about it. Work is poo and I'm trying to get through the day-to-day without killing anyone, and I don't think it's going to change... There is good stuff, but it's hard to focus on that when I'm constantly exhausted.

If I don't post for ages, that's why. The fandom meme will resume when I have the energy. It annoys me that I only lasted two weeks before giving up on it, and that's making me even less inclined to finish it, but yeah. We'll see.

Unfortunately, given that one of those idiots is me... I doubt there's any escape for the foreseeable. I should probably update about what I've been doing with my time off (answer: not much) but instead you'll have to make do with this rant...

( Part the First )

TL;DR: Virgin Mobile suck.

( Part the Second )

TL;DR: work are stupid sometimes.

( Part the Third )

TL;DR: GP surgery fail.

Anyway. I shall re-read my application thingy, find a smart-looking shirt that still bloody well fits, and hopefully by venting all of this stress it will go away.

For some reason lately, people have been infuriatingly dim-witted.

( Cut because it's stupid and petty but I need to vent it before I hit someone. )

Nowt else to report, alas. I finished my fifth Christmas decoration embroidery last night (five more to go - argh!) and took photos of that and the fourth one, except our internet was down and I couldn't post them. Will do that tonight if it's back up.

Things are looking up today, as Paul has an interview this afternoon (at 1.00pm) for a job at Auchinleck House on Broad Street. His agency rang yesterday to let him know. I'm crossing all my fingers and toes and would ask everyone else nicely to do the same.

I hadn't even been at work an hour this morning when my chair decided to break. I wasn't even doing anything! Just sitting there happily typing away when the left front corner of it suddenly dropped a couple of inches. It's been quite wobbly for a while, admittedly, but yeah. I'm not taking any chances. I borrowed a spare chair (Adults Team use it to sit by the filing cabinet, it would seem) and have since been brought a different and somewhat more comfortable spare from downstairs. There might be a brand new one in the innings if it's approved, as they need to order another one for someone else.

( Some brief work annoyance. )

The other annoying thing was trying to order food last night. Firstly we tried one of the many new southern-fried chicken places which sprang up in Kings Heath in the wake of KFC. We attempted to order from them shortly after they'd first opened, only to have their phone ring through to voicemail; assuming that was just an early opening glitch, we tried again last night - same result. So we won't be trying them again.

Then we tried another chip shop which had put a leaflet through the door advertising free delivery (we are lazy, you see), only to have them tell us they don't deliver. Er... okay then.

Eventually we went back to our usual delivering chippy, which we probably should have used in the first place. That or gotten off our backsides and walked ten minutes down the road. ;)

I got soaked on the way to work this morning. Was that the summer, then?

It still amuses me how much Britain panics when we have any extreme of weather; I mean, we had a proper extended heatwave in 2006 (i.e. that one which made me ill) and then we get one in 2009 for about two weeks and the warnings start being issued by the Met Office. ;)

Which reminds me, I think I forgot to mention that we caught the majority of Michael Moore's Sicko the other week. Conclusion? Move to France. They have things good over there.

Nowt else to report, except that I'm hungry and about to have my lunch...

Edit, 16.23: Paul thinks the interview went well; they'll let him know tomorrow.

In other news, we're going to try out the new griddle pan tonight on some steaks. I should not be so excited about this. :)

People trying to book their easter / summer leave already has resulted in a massive fuss over nothing.

Last week various people were wandering around checking with the WPO team so they could try and book leave. People have deposits to pay on caravans and holiday cottages which are only available certain times, fair enough. Except unfortunately our line manager is off sick and has been since before Christmas, and apparently nobody is allowed to authorise our leave in her absence.

Actually, it's because they're trying to book EASTER and SUMMER leave, which are notoriously difficult times. Because if it were actually the case that no-one can authorise leave, I wouldn't have come in this morning to discover I can't have the week off in February that I wanted because someone snuck two flex days in when I wasn't looking, thus taking the amount of people off up to three. It's partially my own fault for waiting until this week to book it, but still quite annoying.

As it transpires, I've now had to book it from 9th to 13th March instead, which means that for the entire of March our team is going to be one typist down. Noor is off the first, third and fourth weeks of the month (in the same boat as having lots of leave to use up), and me the second. Hopefully it won't be too horrendously busy and/or stressful, but still, I'd rather not have had to book it off then, as I'd rather have it in February.

It also buggers up the plan I had, which was to book the Sunset Boulevard tickets for 13th February and then have a week off after that (although it was dependent on Paul being able to get the leave also). I need to book the tickets before the end of January to get a special half-price offer, also, so I'd rather the leave situation be sorted first.

The thing which irritates me more, though, is that they're bloody moaning in the first place. I know it must be frustrating when there's only a certain time period in which you can book your precious holiday cottage, but for God's sake, at least you can afford one. I would take whatever days I could damn well get if I could even afford a long sodding weekend somewhere, let alone a whole week. My last proper holiday (by which I mean the hot country, lying on a beach kind) was back when I went to Crete. Annual holidays (even twice a year, in some cases) are a privilege, not a right.

Although if it's this bloody stressful to try and get the time off, it's probably just as well I'm not going anywhere.


In other news, the road through Kings Heath was open and running freely this morning, despite being closed all day yesterday. I imagine they had no choice but to re-open it, or it would cause absolute chaos. Things were bad enough on Saturday, though possibly my experience was somewhat exacerbated by going in and out of Birmingham three times over the course of the day...

Also, I appear to have lost another two pounds, though it's admittedly difficult to tell with our cheap scales. I should really get some digital ones.

Despite bemoaning my failure to keep resolutions, I have a few vaguely achievable plans for this year.

( Which I'm sure you don't care about... )

Gah, it's quiet here today. Just had an email to say our manager is back in tomorrow and will sort the leave out as a matter of urgency, thank goodness. I'm just waiting until it all blows over when it comes to Easter, quite frankly...