Diddly diddly!
Music night yay!
Got a music club at work and we're having a sesh this evening.
I will be mostly playing tin whistle 'cos I'm too shy to sing ;o#
Should be fun though.... I shall report...
Books!
Phew!
Working from home Thursday and Friday means that I have built the site pages and what a relief it is.
So I could go to the bookshop on Saturday and browse (or as I usually call it read coffee and drink books). I chose a couple of books to browse on impulse and got
laughed at - OK it was quite funny. One book was called 'How to look at paintings' and the other 'Ways of Seeing'.
Hmm... well the 1st one was about
analysing paintings and the other was about surrealism and how people's experiences and knowledge affect the way they interpret the things that they see. Both seemed very interesting from the back cover, I just didn't pay attention to the titles until it was pointed out to me. Haha!
Oh well, had some very nice wine on Saturday night and stayed up far too late listening to music... was a little woolly headed on Sunday I have to say!
Unproductive? Me?
Waaaaaaaaa!
Less than 3 and a half weeks to go and I haven't started building pages yet!!!!
I'm getting scared. I'm also getting completely distracted by other work whilst I'm here and I can't seem to get out of it!
I'm going to work from home tomorrow and not even look at my email inbox...
This is serious now!
(honest)
The funniest thing I've heard in a long time!
I bought my manager a thank you present for fixing my computer over the weekend, it was very good of him and means I am able to work from home because I have a monitor that displays the things I expect instead of a very pretty and unintelligible pattern.
The present is this book:
Laugh? I was nearly sick! Seriously, I kept trying to walk to the kitchen and had to keep stopping because I was almost losing the ability to stand.
The thing that tickled me was the series of crap English sentences with missing commas and commas in the wrong places, the kind that you find on signs made quickly to advertise things or inform/warn you of something like:
"For sale: A high chair which turns into a table refrigerator microwave pair of shoes size 8 fur coat with large collar" (this one isn't exact but you get the picture!)
"Elephants please stay in your cars"
"Sheep, please keep your dogs under control"
"Automatic washing machines: Please remove all your clothes when the light goes out."
"Wanted man to take care of cow that does not smoke or drink"
"We will sell petrol to people in their own plastic container"
"The box contained old Enid Blytons sex books and videos"
Even has some things from doctor's notes:
"The patient states there is a burning pain in his penis which goes to his feet."
Honestly, it made me cry. I know this isn't the kind of thing that will reduce everyone to tears but it seriously tickled me. Possibly because I've also read the book it's a parody of (
Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss) which is a very good book too...
It was just what I needed after my crap afternoon of non-productive work.
Argh! Work! Rant!
The pressure!
Can I take any more?
I have 3 and a half weeks to build the pages to use as templates for the Intranet, there are lots of pages of content that need to be created based on them, we have less time that we should because something took a long time but we had to do it. I have to stop being distracted onto things that absorb my time and concentration and people are having a stress about whether email should be spelled email, e-Mail or e-mail!!!!
I DON'T CARE!
Well, actually I do. That's the sad thing about it all.
I care that we should not use e-Mail because it doesn't make sense, it's harder to type and makes it stand out unnecessarily (there is a logic to this choice - it's the same typing convention used to name the Company's products - but generic email isn't one of their products). I'm totally unconcerned about choosing one of the other two but this is the one that's being fought for...
There are now 3 and a half weeks until the 1st phase of the Intranet is due to be delivered.....
Christmas is going to be me rocking in a darkened corner...This is me now...
Even colder!
We've had a string of menthol days... even the air was frozen this morning
The tree this morning
The street this morning
Yesterday morning (all day the sky was this colour with vapour trails criss-crossing all over it, it was really pretty)
This morning's frozen air
The frozen street and field this morning
The pig is back now too so we're going for a frosty walk in Bow Brickhill woods...
Educating Nita
I am being educated. The Colleague I'm person sitting has discovered a range of films that I haven't seen and I'm being put to work to catch up.
Each night it's like the scene from A Clockwork Orange with me staring at a screen with my eyes taped open!
So far I've managed:
Metropolis which was just great (if you don't know it it's a black and white silent film from 1927) which is soooo good for the time it was made, excellent effects and really enjoyable to watch (even as a silent film).
Apocalypse Now which was good. A very good bizarre war film, incredibly long and especially because of the REDUX version we were watching some bits were irrelevant and interminable (I was allowed to skip those, thank God!).
Tonight the colleague will feel very much at home as we're going to see the new Harry Potter film. He can reminisce about their scarf tying lessons, 'how best to wear a cape', 'the keeping of owls' and other such things...
Person sitting
So, as I said earlier I have found myself to be person sitting the Pig's Colleague.
If you've followed any links related to this blog or the Pig's you'll know that his
Esteemed Colleague has a tendency to vent pure bile on humankind whilst taking in vast quantities of caffeine.
Well, it turns out he's not really that bad as a sittee.
The vitriol that he writes in his blog is actually delivered by him in person, but with such cheerfulness that it sort of helps it to be digested...
We swapped pics of various trips (including the epic ones that Neil and I had been on that left me terrified on one and injured on another) and swapped music and we even went out for the day on Sunday and visited his old university, pictured above.
It was a really nice menthol day with a crisp blue sky and fresh bright air and I took quite a few nice pics...
Looking down the river Cam
Inside King's Chapel
Outside King's Chapel
The building next to King's Chapel (I don't know what it is)
The ceiling inside King's Chapel
The side of King's Chapel
King's in the sunset
Looking down the Cam at a different spot
We went to a service in King's Chapel and it sounded brilliant (it was Remembrance Sunday).
Of course, The Colleague claims he went to King's College not Hogwarts but I don't believe him. Especially since I peeped in a window and saw afternoon tea laid out on a table in a red walled room with an open fire.
Yeees, very Hogwarty, especially with all the wearing of gowns and scarves. We even visited a shop that sold these garments and I could have sworn I heard an owl hooting in the back!
Well, it was a stunning day in Cambridge and there are more pics but they take such a long time to load up I'll have to put some more up in another post.
Well, been back a bit then
Well, where to start eh?
I've been back from Seattle for almost a month and there's still no sign of the Pig...who was meant to be back the week after me....
So why haven't I said anything for this time?
I haven't been in.
Is the short answer.
I got back on the Monday was away at a friend's in Leeds the following weekend and then at another friend's in Oxford the weekend after that. That weekend was when the Pig's esteemed colleage arrived back from Seattle to discover a '
change' in circumstances. I found myself person sitting.
Then the pig came home. For one half day. Then he went to Barcelona and he's still there, he'll be back this weekend. So I've been visiting, person sitting, working and being ill.
I had a strange flu like virus thing which made me feel shivery and then hot and achey and nauseous, I was even sick at one point which took me completely by surprise (but I made it to a safe place, just, so there are no horrid stains to deal with).
I have no pics from Oxford because we talked the whole time, hadn't seen Mimi for about 2 years and we'd both had 2 jobs since then so we had a lot to celebrate (plus her husband passed his MBA)... not much picture taking but much talking and drinking ;o)
I have pics from Leeds which I shall put up in the next post, they were of a halloween party.
I also have pics from a day out in Cambridge as part of my person sitting duties... which will follow the halloween pics...
So, I have proof that I've been out and about and have had reason to be silent...
But I'm back now!
