T'eyla Minh

Just a quick update to say that I am still breathing (just), but have been AWOL thanks to going off sick from work for a fortnight with gastric flu or something similar... Essentially, I was already feeling horribly run down on the Friday (28th October) and then thanks to a dodgy takeaway managed to give myself food poisoning, which saw an opening in my already knackered immune system and pounced. I actually only anticipated being off for a week, but it came back for a second round over the weekend.

To top that off, once I'd finally recovered from the gastro-enteritis, on Thursday (10th November), I slipped on a wet patch of floor whilst doing the washing up and fell flat on my arse, horribly winding myself and catching my arm on the cupboard door on the way down. I now have a lovely bruise and a very sore tailbone (I've had to bring a cushion into work as my chair is rubbish at the best of times)...

On the plus side, thanks to not eating anything / not keeping anything down for more than five minutes, I have managed to lose about half a stone. :P Unfortunately, I have also lost two Christmas shopping weeks in which I would ordinarily have bought wrapping paper, cards, tags, etc., and gym attendance is on hold until the new year because I'm insanely busy from now until January.

Also, in order to actually afford Christmas this year (the trip to Paris ate all our savings and most of my spare cash, and my salary increase back-payment got mostly eaten by tax/NI/pension), I have had to get a loan from the bank. The APR wasn't too bad in the end (and cheaper than they offered Paul), but the plan now is to use most of it to pay off the credit card and save the rest. We will both be paying it off, and in any case the repayments are less than the minimum payments on the credit card since they jacked the APR on that from 11.9% to 19.9%! Anyway, we can now use the credit card to pay for Christmas (presents/food) and have a bit more spare cash, and my account will be out of the red again at least.

I very much like online banking - none of that hassle of actually talking to someone and the loan was sorted in five minutes.

Oh, in other news, on Saturday we had the traditional fireworks-for-Paul's-mum's-birthday at our house because our garden is mahoosive, except we didn't manage to build a bonfire. We got a huge box of fireworks (by the skin of our teeth as the bloke at the shop was actually closing up on Saturday) for £40 and there are still some left for New Year's Eve. :D Paul was going to smash up the garden table on the patio that we thought was broken, except it turns out not to be broken at all, just requiring some bolts to assemble it. That will now save us some money as we only have to buy chairs for the summer... Paul also discovered a trampoline behind the shed!! If it's still in good condition then I'm totally using it. :D

Fireworks were quite fun; David got very excited about it and volunteered to light nearly all of them. Jade and Louis decided to buy a bottle of Cactus Jack's apple sour stuff (after three shots it tastes disgusting), and Patrick got to light his first firework with his uncle Paul. At one point David and Louis became Dangerous Dickenson and his Fearless Assistant, which was quite amusing. Less amusing were the failing rockets and the catherine wheel which decided to fall off the shed and chase us, but it's become a tradition to have some life-threatening danger...

I haven't been at choir for two weeks (and had to miss the 90th birthday concert thanks to sickenss) and because we're now doing entirely new stuff it feels like I've been off for months. Weird. Anyway, time to get organised and into Christmas mode now.

Okay. So on Thursday I got it into my head to Make A Change. I have been suffering lately with... well, I suppose one might call it "ennui". I get this thing sometimes where I just want to DO SOMETHING, like get a new job or move house or shift furniture around (see also: "spatial cleansing" tag). So on Thursday night, out of morbid curiosity, I had a look to see what sort of typing jobs there might be in Birmingham which paid reasonably well.

Obviously there was bugger all in Birmingham - plenty of "typing from home" stuff and a lot of temporary / part-time positions, but most of the full-time positions are on what I was earning in BCC when I first started, and quite frankly I'm struggling as it is. Then I spotted one via Reed for an audio typist position at a legal firm in London, for £20K a year.

First I was like,"Okay, what's the catch here?" and then figured out that actually, £20K in London is probably the equivalent to what I'm on now here, and if I were to live in London I would be worse off, and if I didn't it would all go on hotel/lodging and travel. Aside from that, (a) job stuff is terrifying and (b) 147 people had already applied for it.

So instead I started house-hunting again. After several fruitless hours Paul and I discovered a "three-bedroom cottage" on Barn Road, which is literally five minutes away from where we are now, for £525 a month. For Kings Heath / Moseley that's insanely reasonable. There was no photograph on the website (always a bit dubious) and the website for the actual letting agent (Easy Lettings) was rubbish, and aside from that we couldn't find it anywhere else on the internet except the one "catch-all" website it was listed on.

So on Saturday we walked down to Barn Road to look and see if there were any houses to let. Riiiight at the very end of the road we did indeed find a house to let, with an agency called Midland Housing. On getting back we Googled them. They're asking for £800pcm, which frankly is extortionate for a three-bedroomed house, but I presume it's because the postcode falls under the all-holy Moseley and thus they can charge what they like. I think they'll be sitting on that one for a looooong time.

That was disappointing, to say the least, as if it had been anything up to £600 we would actually have considered it, if only because it was a lovely house and would be SO EASY to move into. Boo. :(

I've spent a couple more hours tonight searching on rightmove.co.uk, scouting out all of Birmingham and the outskirts (including Bearwood - there are loads of houses on the road where I grew up, and at least Sandwell Council aren't complete bastards like BCC), and have come to the conclusion that if I want to live in a nice area, in a house with a decently-sized kitchen and windows which are not pointlessly tiny, I need to pay about £100 more than if I don't. There are plenty of good-sized, affordable and attractive houses - and they're all in the shit bits of Birmingham. I don't want to live in Erdington/Sheldon/Perry Barr/Hockley/Handsworth/etc. I know that doesn't leave me much option, but I don't want to end up somewhere awful, with terrible neighbours or a high street where I have to look over my shoulder...

I am probably insanely over particular. We tried searching Kings Heath and Moseley and came up with nothing (except tiny houses, obviously), and there was a BEAUTIFUL place on Russell Road in an old Georgian house with the most AMAZING kitchen I have ever seen... but it was a shared house. The rent was stupidly cheap, too. I want to live in that kitchen. :(

Soooo yes. Still fruitlessly hunting. I am also constrained by my inability to drive and my reliance on public transport, so every time I find a house which is affordable, in a nice area and looks remotely promising, it turns out to be in the Arse End of Nowhere. Considering we can't afford a proper place to live until they either bring back 100% mortgages (not looking likely), we win the lottery or someone gives us money for a deposit, renting is currently the only option and even THAT is being scuppered, mostly by my desire to actually live somewhere I feel safe at night and can bloody well get to.

BEING A GROWN-UP IS HARD.

PS: Seriously, landlords/builders/converters, stop it now with the tiny kitchens. Or with the massive kitchens with NO BLOODY CUPBOARDS. Is it such an alien concept that people actually WANT TO COOK THINGS? Jesus.

I have no idea when I last updated or what it was about, but here is what I've been up to...

( Birthday Stuffs )

After that Paul and I both had a week off work. The beginning of the week mostly involved doing nothing, going to Aldi, and watching Duckula, in my case anyway. I've got through the first two discs so far.

On Thursday we headed off to London for a couple of days. ( London Stuffs )

In other, more positive news, TAX REFUND, BABY!!! Apparently for 2008-2009 I overpaid over a grand in tax! Considering I had to extend my overdraft again last month just in case I spent too much money in London, this little windfall is very much appreciated. In addition, I achieved my pay increment at work and should be getting a chunk of backpay tomorrow in my wages, which initially I was going to spend on an eye test and new lenses. Instead I'm going to use the tax refund to pay a chunk off the credit card and pay for the eye test, and hopefully spend the backpayment on something NICE for a change. :)

I anticipate something horrible will happen to me in due course when Fate realises she made a horrible error in judgement. But in the meantime, it's nice to have a bit of luck for once.

Also, I started watching Damages on Monday night and I'm about nine episodes in. Quite enjoying it, though I can't decide if Patty Hewes is pure genius or pure evil... Whichever it is, Glenn Close is sheer awesomeness incarnate, but we already knew that. :)

I think that'll do. :)

I haven't been updating. Not properly, anyway.

That's because I know nobody's interested in my money woes, or the contents of my brain.

Normal service will be resumed when I stop wanting to hibernate / run away.

803am - is Friday 26th February okay for you to come up for your birthday? Any point over that weekend is fine, as I have the week afterwards as leave.

We did our quarterly Asda shop last night because we had literally run out of food. We've not been able to properly stock up whilst Paul was unemployed (save for a couple of trips to Aldi for some basics). The fridge and freezer were bare and the cupboard contained only gravy, stock cubes, pasta and tuna. (You could argue that the last two constitute a meal in itself, but not all the time. :P)

Just over £200. But now the fridge, freezer and cupboards are quite literally full. The stuff that wouldn't fit into the freezer without rearranging the space-time continuum are in the fridge, so we had pork chops last night, then again tonight, and roast chicken at the weekend. It's quite lovely to open the fridge and be greeted with a choice. :)

So, we have a freezer full of MEAT and some fish (when some of the meat has dwindled I think perhaps a trip to the fish market is in order...), a fridge full of vegetables, condiments, cheese and sandwich fillers (paste and deli-style), and a cupboard full of tinned beans and tomatoes and yet more gravy, and stir-fry sauces and Super Noodles. YAY FOOD. We've been very lax in healthy eating of late simply due to a lack of choice, so hopefully now back on track...

Oh, and because Asda is the only place to do big tiger bread loaves (everyone else does piddly little ones for double the price), we got one of those, too. Even though white bread is horrendously bad for me and I'll be suffering for it by the end of next week. It just smells sooooooo goooood. Also makes fabulous toast.

So, this weekend I shall attempt to finish another Christmas decoration (hopefully) before we head out for Paul's mum's birthday surprise meal (mmm carvery) followed by possibly some fireworks somewhere. Must remember to charge the camera. There's nothing happening on Sunday, thankfully.

I should really start thinking about Christmas shopping and book off my 'shopping day'...

PS: If anyone wants a Christmas card, drop me an email with your address. teylaminh at yahoo dot co dot you-kay.

Bit of an up-and-down one...

I spent most of Friday (because it was fairly quiet) constructing an LJ entry which never saw the light of day. On re-reading this morning, I'm somewhat glad. I was exceptionally cranky on Friday, frelling exhausted and fed up of the world in general. I think perhaps it's just a weird effect of my current Pills, whereby they stop any and all "wimmins" but still occasionally sting me with PMT just to remind me that my hormones are as angry as ever. Also, Paul's (lack of) job situation is exceedingly stressful, as evidenced by the fact that over the course of the weekend my fingers have started peeling.

Anyway, just be glad I didn't post my rambling angst. There are days when I feel like I'm going slowly insane, but perhaps it's best not to share these things with an unwilling audience.

So, on Friday night Paul did his usual trick of having "two drinks", whereby I ended up leaving him six missed calls and a snarky text ("How long does it take to have one drink?! I'm hungry!") because as ever he had stayed out longer than intended and left me hanging on to eat until he got home. The way this is supposed to work is that he just outright tells me that he's going to be late instead of fobbing me off with "two drinks" so I won't moan at the time, so at least then I can just have some food and leave him to it. It's getting kind of boring now, having the same argument every single damn time.

( The weekend )

Aaand back at work today, somewhat quiet, hence the entry. Actually not as tired as last week, thank goodness. Apparently everyone was tired last week - I blame the bank holiday.

Over and out.

At the moment it feels like my creativity and productivity are being sapped from every direction by apathy and total exhaustion, which kind of sucks. Also, this weather = depressing. I'm moving to France. I'm pretty sure the shock of being able to get a train in the snow would wear off eventually. :P

We went to Matalan last night to get Paul some work stuff - shirts and trousers - and ended up spending £93. Admittedly, £15 of that was on a proper set of Cole & Mason salt / pepper grinders, as the ones we got from TK Maxx some time ago are rubbish, and I got two tops I probably shouldn't have done, but they are very funky - one is bright electric blue and asymmetrical (I'm very much loving the 1980s revival right now) and one is in shades of brown and orange, asymmetrical panels and Oriental-like. The rest was three shirts, two pairs of trousers (a bit too small so will have to go back - we didn't have time for Paul to try them on) and three ties, so really not too bad. I wasn't expecting to spend that much so it's gone on the credit card. Meh. So much for paying it off before Christmas. :(

Also at around 6.45 I found a voicemail on my phone from - AGAIN - the bank. The usual spiel of "We really do need to talk to you". I'm not even going to bother ringing them back. I've had two sodding account reviews in almost as many months - I had one in June and another one back in about April or May, and I know full well they're just going to call me in, sit me down, say everything's fine and then proceed to try and sell me a loan to pay off the credit card. If it's that desperate they'll ring me again at some point, and the last time I 'forgot' to ring them back it took about a month for them to try again. So, yes, it's clearly OMG SO IMPORTANT that they had to speak to me.

FFS, I didn't have this bloody trouble when I was a student. They didn't even bug me when I went over my overdraft. Now I'm in gainful employment they want to talk to me all the time. Just... bugger off, bank.

( Aforesaid Small Drama )

Anyway, hopefully all of that will blow over eventually...

It's still busy at work but I'm just not in the mood. I'm basically stuck in this endless cycle of grey, rainy days, trudging through the working week so I can enjoy the weekend purely because I don't have to get up early or go outside. :(

PS: The man just came to fit the part for our half-broken printer. Bear in mind it took a month to produce an invoice asking us to pay £25 before they could even order the part, which was the little pick-up roller on the paper tray which grabs onto the paper to feed it through. So. £25 to clip a small plastic device onto an axle. I'm in the wrong job. Seriously.

That was quite pleasant. Paul was working silly shifts this weekend (2 til 10 both days) so I basically had the weekend (and the computer!) to myself. Despite that, I was even marginally productive - cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, planted the kitchen herb garden pot, and got some bits of shopping on the Sunday.

Of course, the rest of it was spent on the PC. ;)

I've spent most of the weekend indulging unashamedly in Sunset Boulevard fandom, basically - re-reading old fic, e-mail tennises with sweeterthing and Jenny (from Georgia) about SB fic and introspection, and chatting to Eni on YIM after scanning the old UK tour brochure. Which reminds me, I must scan the APR libretto pictures, too.

Sunday was mostly spent working on my new layout, which I'm still not entirely happy with... haven't even attempted to code it yet. I was going to use the 'Expressive' layout but the CSS looks really bloody complicated, and I'm somewhat out of practice, but I think I can achieve the same effect using 'Bloggish' - i.e. a background and a header banner. I have the background sorted, but need to work on the banner. As ever, these things look so much more impressive in my head, and would be a lot easier if I could draw. My Google image hunt was less than fruitful, to say the least, though I did have a second option for the picture that I might try... :P

As a result of re-reading the e-mail tennises with Jenny, I was randomly reinspired last night to make a start on our SB / Breakfast at Tiffany's crossover, the unoriginally titled "Sunset at Tiffany's". I think that was actually going to be the real title, too, but I might come up with something else... This was the thing which was going to have four different endings because we couldn't decide which one we preferred. I imagine Mr Capote is turning in his grave, but probably no more than Mr Wilder is. ;)

( Random fic details, for those who might be even remotely interested... )

I absolutely cannot find words to express how glad I am that I got to see the London production of Sunset. It is a fandom that is very high on the list of favourites, and I can't believe I fell out of it. I felt so ALIVE on 28th February; I've not enjoyed a show like that since... I can't remember. The Woman in White, probably, as after that point things started to go downhill. Before seeing SB again I was almost about to give up on writing completely (as a result of too many issues to mention), but it has reinspired me to the point of absolute ridiculousness - for fanfic, for icons, for thought-provoking discussion, for general creativity. I can't explain why, and I don't want to analyse it. There's just something about the story which has always captured my imagination and never let go, and somehow, I'd forgotten that.

( Glumness )

Meh. Sorry, this started out as a positive post. In any case, many many thanks to Eni for putting up with my inane messenger ramblings of late...

Anyway, in other news, this month is horrendous for birthdays and events, including Mother's Day. And then in April its our anniversary (four years!), and hopefully after that I should have some money. I say this every year, of course. One year it might be true. :P

Right. It is now lunchtime, so I shall post this and have my sandwich.

£245.00 in total.

I went for the 2-for-1 deal in the end, as there were two styles I liked. The 'everyday' pair are purple and almost the same shape as my current frames, except slightly narrower across and slightly larger in terms of the lens area. I picked those because they should (hopefully) be easier to adjust to my ridiculously small head.

The other pair are RED, with blue arms - narrow and square-ish. Should be pretty much impossible to adjust to my size but we'll see. As they will inevitably be too big I'll save them for special occasions. Both pairs are by Osiris.

I've had two pairs in the past and only ever worn one, but since this one pair has lasted me four years, hopefully two pairs will last me eight, in which case they'll pay for themselves.

(Breakdown of that cost, by the way: 2x frames for £125, plus two pairs of lenses @ £60 each... for the ultra-thin and anti-reflective coating.)

HOWEVER, I did get my lovely bit of backpay, and it worked out as an extra £166.44, which is very much appreciated. If I hadn't had to buy glasses, I would have put half of that in the savings account and spent a bit of it on either an MP3 player or a new printer, but it'll have to cover the majority of my glasses instead.

Also, despite minor panic attack yesterday, they should be able to fill out the VDU-user eye test form retrospectively, and I'll get the refund in my wages, so that's £20 back at least.

I'm going to collect the specs later, so will take photographs once at home to share the expensive glory. (The red ones are pretty funky, if I say so myself...)

Incidentally, I found it quite amusing that there was a "Gok Wan Recommends" selection of frames, all of which were frameless. Mr Wan himself wears big, black, emo-style frames, natch. (I've tried frameless before and they just don't suit me. It's an epic experience finding frames, actually: too wide and I look like Dame Edna, too round and I look like Su Pollard. It's a nightmare.)

I went to get an eye test this afternoon, having realised things were looking blurrier than usual. I was going to hang on until January, but I don't want the same spate of headaches as I had last time, and figured it was best to get it sorted.

Tests are now just under £20. For some reason they also tested my peripheral vision, which has never happened before... apparently it's fine, though.

I'm going back tomorrow afternoon with Paul to pick out frames. Despite the horrible expense, I will probably end up going for designer frames again. I've had these for four years and they've served me well; besides which, anything under £80 just looks old-fashioned or boring, and after wowing people with my current frames, I would be slacking in my duty to the general public to go for bog-standard boring frames this time around. Anyway, it'll probably be another four years before I buy new ones. I had a bit of a look after the test but nothing immediately grabbed my attention, and besides which there were assistants hovering everywhere, which always makes me feel uncomfortable.

Designer frames would set me back £125, plus an additional £60 for thin and anti-reflective lenses. (Otherwise they look like bottle-bottoms.) Meh. Trust designers to jump all over this particular disability just because it's obviously external... why stop at trainers and jewellery when you can have your logo emblazoned on someone's face, after all?

I had a quick look in Evans at the boots - the endless quest for sensible winter shoes continues - but they were all too high or too expensive or just ugly. Besides which, Evans don't really solve my problem; they fit in the leg but are far too wide in the foot. I've moaned about this enough times over the years and should change the record, but yeah, it's just one of many things which is generally irritating me at the moment, which falls under the general umbrella of "The world is geared towards rich, thin, pretty people and I am none of the above", which... yeah. Self-esteem has never been high on my priority list, but at this time of year it's especially depressing. I am somehow horrifically overdrawn again, also, which isn't helping. I have absolutely no idea where my spending money for EuroDisney is coming from, given there's barely anything in the savings account and I'm completely skint.

BAH.

Bugger off, universe.

Still haven't decided how to pay for new spectacles as yet. Originally I was going to put them on the credit card, but also originally said credit card was only to be used for 'emergencies' and Christmas shopping, which fell flat on its arse. I suppose I should just buy the glasses from my own money and figure it out later. We should be getting some back-dated pay this month* so that might cover at least some of it.

I'm surprisingly not stressing about Christmas yet, but that's because I have a vague plan, the annual leave situation is sorted (I got the only days I wanted: afternoon of Christmas Eve and 2nd January, and then I'm off for the entire following week because of Disney), and I'm doing the majority of my shopping on Wednesday. I'll just be glad when this bloody Beethoven concert on Saturday is out of the way so I can properly focus on the Christmas stuff - we end up having very little rehearsal for it, which is an awful shame...

I brought the heater down from the attic earlier to put in the hall. FED UP of being cold.

This wasn't meant to be so rambling; I intended to do a guess-the-lyrics meme. Ah well. No-one ever plays anyway. :P

*The majority of people in my office also received a random extra £60 a couple of months back, but I did not. Obviously, I do not exist. We'll see what happens on Friday with regards to this apparent back-dated pay, shall we?