Friday Five!

Remember what I said about taking pictures!  Fill up your phone!  Just the view from sitting at your desk.  The view walking into your workspace.  The view walking out of your workspace.  All kinds of mundane shots.  Photos of the Greek retaurant you're going to.  The people... ALLL the people.  Document document document.  (You're a historian... I trust you'll do this right.)

I just made a video!! Documented it all. 

I just made a video!! Documented it all. 

Not gonna lie... that video will make you cry when you watch it.  BUT you'll also be glad you have it.  There are so many things I wish I'd documented better.  Pretty much going back my whole life.  And people, of course.

Not gonna lie... that video will make you cry when you watch it.  BUT you'll also be glad you have it.  There are so many things I wish I'd documented better.  Pretty much going back my whole life.  And people, of course.

Got my boss and co-worker acting the fool on it too. I'm going to miss this so much.

1.  I'm probably going to jinx everything to hell by even *thinking* this, let alone writing it down for all to see... but we *might* be buying a new-build flat and be moving BACK TO GLASGOW!!! 

Yay!  Any chance that'll mean you can get a pup when that happens? 

Yay!  Any chance that'll mean you can get a pup when that happens? 

It wont be a *perfect* environment for having a dog, but it would be miles better than trying to have a dog in our current flat, so I would be seriously considering ways to make it work, if we go ahead with it.   

It wont be a *perfect* environment for having a dog, but it would be miles better than trying to have a dog in our current flat, so I would be seriously considering ways to make it work, if we go ahead with it.   

That would be fantastic!  

Yay, holidays! Yay, video games! Yay, potential puppies!

1. Friday! And the official start of my holiday! Mexico, here we come! ... On Monday.

2. Work was good today.  I feel like I was fairly productive, and I didn't feel the urge to walk into town (~1 hour) to catch the bus home because I was just so. angry. like yesterday.

3. Went out for dinner and drinks with the team after work today as part of my master plan to get everybody gellin' again.  The team has been a bit... off..  lately, but hopefully this means we are on the right track.

4. Woke up with a song in my heart this morning and really enjoyed my ukulele time. I am not very good, but it makes me happy, and that's what's important (right?).

5. Found out today that we are moving offices at work.  Completely.  Different part of the site altogether.  Granted, this won't happen for at least 4 months, but I am excited and ready for the change.

Happy Friday, everyone!

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1.  Hectic week at work, but I just need to get through today, and then I'm off till next Wednesday!
2.  Trip to Costco planned for this weekend.
3.  I bit the bullet this week, and pulled out of 2 situations I had committed to, but REALLY did not want to do.  I know |I have disappointed a few people, but I myself am feeling much less stressed now, so I think I've done the right thing.
4.  OH is staying in tonight, for a change, and we're having ribeye steaks!
5.  I hate Sarah Millican's voice.  Not her accent, but the actual sound of her voice.

1.  Hectic week at work, but I just need to get through today, and then I'm off till next Wednesday!
2.  Trip to Costco planned for this weekend.
3.  I bit the bullet this week, and pulled out of 2 situations I had committed to, but REALLY did not want to do.  I know |I have disappointed a few people, but I myself am feeling much less stressed now, so I think I've done the right thing.
4.  OH is staying in tonight, for a change, and we're having ribeye steaks!
5.  I hate Sarah Millican's voice.  Not her accent, but the actual sound of her voice.

#5.  OMG.  YES!!!

1.  We have had a BEAUTIFUL week in Switzerland but it is pouring cats and dogs now.  And supposed to last all day.  So a duvet day for the last day here.  Hopefully it’ll drop the temperature tonight as it has been very hot at night and hard to sleep.  We’ve absolutely loved it here and I’d come back in a heartbeat.  But I’d bring a lot more mosquito repellent.  They are eating us alive.

2.  Tomorrow we go to Bellagio on Lake Como and then onto Milan on Sunday.  Back home Tuesday.   

3.  I miss Sobe.  Cat sitter has been loving all over him and sending me photos and videos.  He’s been farting and burping for her like a proper old man.

4.  I can’t believe my baby girl starts school a week from today.  Next Friday Five is bound to be an emotional one!

5.  I start teaching dance next Saturday!  I need to learn the syllabus!

5.  I hate Sarah Millican's voice.  Not her accent, but the actual sound of her voice.

I genuinely think that might be standard...LOL I have definitely laughed at her jokes when she's been on panel shows, but her voice isn't exactly music to my ears haha

1.  We have had a BEAUTIFUL week in Switzerland but it is pouring cats and dogs now.  And supposed to last all day.  So a duvet day for the last day here.  Hopefully it’ll drop the temperature tonight as it has been very hot at night and hard to sleep.  We’ve absolutely loved it here and I’d come back in a heartbeat.  But I’d bring a lot more mosquito repellent.  They are eating us alive.

2.  Tomorrow we go to Bellagio on Lake Como and then onto Milan on Sunday.  Back home Tuesday.   

3.  I miss Sobe.  Cat sitter has been loving all over him and sending me photos and videos.  He’s been farting and burping for her like a proper old man.

4.  I can’t believe my baby girl starts school a week from today.  Next Friday Five is bound to be an emotional one!

5.  I start teaching dance next Saturday!  I need to learn the syllabus!

It might actually be quite nice though to have a nice, relaxing duvet day! 

The thing I hate most about travel, hands down, is that I miss my pupperino. It can be SOO weird waking up and NOT taking her for a walk or being pestered by her for treats...but thankfully she stays with my In-Laws so we get photo updates. It's nice when you get those photos, but it can make you want cuddles badly.

AHH How's she feeling about starting school?!

You going to start teaching us all how to dance as well?!


My Friday 5:

1. Shitting bricks over my test tomorrow. At this point, I won't be shocked if I fail (either because I totally panic and go blank, or I get too many questions about the topics I'm rubbish at - I.E. sports/Olympic medallists). OOOORRRR they may spot my proof of address is a print out and not let me sit at all. That is a very real possibility as I know how picky they are. I received a reminder email with what to bring and they specified it couldn't be printed out but I was supposed to have my bill in the post already and haven't received it so I'm going to just walk in and play it cool....but we'll see. I've not told family to spare the embarrassment of having to tell them I didn't pass like I did the first 2 times I took the driving theory...If I pass, I WILL be getting a taco bell though.

2. We've gone into overdrive with the house to get things up to scrap ASAP so we can list our house (despite the unfortunate timing with the neighbour). It's difficult for me to stay focused because I've got so much on my plate I'm stressing over, so hubby was great to not give me a hard time last night about studying and moving stored boxes out of the way vs. actual painting. Hopefully somebody can lay the carpets quickly so we can get this sucker listed.

3. I'm going to tell my boss today that I need to back out of some initiatives I've been working on outside my project because I'm already struggling to stay afloat with the stuff I'm given on my projects as is. I've effectively been slotted into a spot the project team that's one pay grade above mine (with my line manager's thought that it's good development and will help my career progression) but the guys also on the team doing that role are performing the role of a paygrade above them (as am I, as that's the expectation). Effectively I'm doing a role 2 paygrades above my own (so I'm doing a project manager role as a PC) but the actual project manager on the project isn't actually running the project, he's just acting as the team lead and delegating all the projects out to us. He's not really great at being a team lead because he's too wishy-washy when thing are raised to him. It's just creating a hell of a lot of stress that I don't see myself getting financially compensated for. My specific project team has had 2 or 3 people previously go off for stress and I can totally understand why, so hoping I can talk to my line manager today about options....

4. Sorry for being such a negative nancy. I'm a bit of a grumpy guss (more than normal), but here's a bit of positive: WE'RE GOING TO PIZZA HUT FOR PIZZA BUFFEEEETTTT It's our office's "family fun day" but it's not very fun for the non-families...It's planned by a bunch of people who have been around for ages and only want to do what they've "always done" vs liven it up at all. We can't even have an ice cream truck because the food vendors we use (who can't even properly cook a sweet potato!) don't get upset as that would "take away from their business" (we also can't have CANCER CHARITY CAKE SALES in our cafe because it "takes away from their cake sales....that makes me FUMING) so we decided we'd go out to have pizza because everybody likes pizza!

5. If I can just get through the next few weeks unscathed, I will be in Japan! 30 more days I believe it is! This month is just insane. I have my friend's wedding next weekend, then a live podcast taping the following Friday with camping for a night on the saturday, then the following weekend that appears to be calm before the storm, THEN JAPAN! need to get back on properly planning that trip a bit more after Saturday

Friday AGAIN?!?!?

Ok. Well, aside from the same-old, same-old:

1) Tried the dill pickle experiment pickles, after waiting the obligatory 4 weeks. AAAKKKKK, awful!!! Patooie! Binned. Need to try again. Ordering more baby cukes from Tesco for next week's shop.

2) The Daughter is gone to a friend's who lives in one of the Uni dorms and has to be out today (she's going home) to help her tidy with the promise of coming back with a blender and some small kitchen articles. Hope so, as then I can spend my John Lewis gift cards on me instead of a blender.

3) Joined a walking group. Walked for an hour yesterday with them. Made it home alive. Nothing a Naproxin and the heating pad, and a short nap, didn't cure. Wow, I am really out of shape. The 80 year olds are leaving me in the dust! My legs are sooooo tight today! 

4) We have finished week 5 of the diet. I can't decide which I need more - a pizza or chips-n-cheese. As in, a dumptruck full of either. (Sigh)  The clothes I wore when I arrived in-country fit again. The Daughter looks definitely slimmer. And my feet have stopped swelling and turning blotchy. So, that's all good. Except the part about the dumptruck full of chips-n-cheese or pizza.

5) My first go at growing lettuce, spinach, and rocket in those rock-wool hydroponic cubes is underway. Half the lettuce is up, none of the spinach, and all of the rocket. Hmmmm.....  So anyway, my bedroom is like Old MacDonald's farm, without the livestock or Old MacDonald.  The japenos are turning red - time to harvest and roast and dry them for those days this winter when it's cold and miserable out and we need something with some flavor for dinner.

Both my pension and my SS arrived early because it's Labor Day Weekend in the States. So I'm temporarily rich. Woo.

4) We have finished week 5 of the diet. I can't decide which I need more - a pizza or chips-n-cheese. As in, a dumptruck full of either. (Sigh)  The clothes I wore when I arrived in-country fit again. The Daughter looks definitely slimmer. And my feet have stopped swelling and turning blotchy. So, that's all good. Except the part about the dumptruck full of chips-n-cheese or pizza.

Why not both?

3.  I bit the bullet this week, and pulled out of 2 situations I had committed to, but REALLY did not want to do.  I know |I have disappointed a few people, but I myself am feeling much less stressed now, so I think I've done the right thing.
...
5.  I hate Sarah Millican's voice.  Not her accent, but the actual sound of her voice.

I'm gonna say this again to someone else in a few seconds, but good for you!  If you're over-committed, you're over-committed.  You can only do so much.  Also, yes.  Sarah Millican's voice... ugh!

4.  I can’t believe my baby girl starts school a week from today.  Next Friday Five is bound to be an emotional one!

Awwwww!  She'll be dressed up in her little uniform, and everything...!  She's gonna be so cute!

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KoD, you'll be fine tomorrow!  You showed me the site you were using to prepare, and it was harder than the questions I prepared on.  You're surely more than ready (I think the computer only puts in one or two of those sports/celebrity type questions per test... if you know everything else, you can afford to guess wildly on those ones if needed).

Also, good for you for backing out of that extra work that you don't appear to being compensated for!  Two pay grades above your own... "career development" carrot?  Tell them to promote you, then you'll do the work. 

1) Tried the dill pickle experiment pickles, after waiting the obligatory 4 weeks. AAAKKKKK, awful!!! Patooie! Binned. Need to try again. Ordering more baby cukes from Tesco for next week's shop.

Both my pension and my SS arrived early because it's Labor Day Weekend in the States. So I'm temporarily rich. Woo.

I am so sad about your pickles!  Thank you for continuing to crack that, though.  I'm living vicariously through your industriousness.

Yeah, I was sitting here thinking how it was Labor Day Weekend, so maybe... so I checked.  I has the monies!

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MY FIVE!

1.  My husband has his work schedule for October now, and he has to work on the two weekends that have things going on that I want to go to.  I love his job, and everything about his job except for one thing:  he works 4-1/2 days a week, Monday through Saturday.  This is good, except the 1-1/2 days he doesn't work varies, and sometimes the Saturday is the 1/2 day that he has to be at work.  The first two Saturdays in a row in October are like that, so we won't have a proper weekend until the third weekend (20/21).  (On the other hand, sometimes it works out that Friday is the 1/2 day and then he gets 2-1/2 day weekends, so swings and roundabouts?)

2.  I was using my laptop for 3D CAD/CAM in the workshop, but we recently sorted out a laptop that a friend no longer needed when he bought a new one, so I had a dedicated computer for out there, and didn't have to lug mine out every time I wanted to do CAM work.  It was really great for about a week. Then the video output died right in the middle of a job last week.  So my husband dug out a dinosaur of a laptop from the loft to see if it still works, and he brought it back to life, but it's running Vista (!), and we don't have any other OS to put on it that isn't machine-locked, and the most recent version of Firefox that is Vista-compatible can't run WebGL, which is necessary for 3D graphics display... *sigh*  So, I'm back to lugging my laptop out to the workshop when I have CAM work to do.  Which is now.  Can I just go back to making drawers for the workbench, please?

3.  I spent a small fortune on groceries this week.  I'm not sure where all the money went... that only got us two bottles of very cheap wine, and apparently an entire crisper drawer of various types of lettuce (what was I doing?!).  Seriously, I have two heads of iceberg, a twin-pack of romaine, a twin-pack of Chinese leaf, and a head of cabbage.  My crisper drawer overfloweth.  There was no room for the rest of the veg.  My avocados are hanging on the back of the door in a paper bag.  The carrots are up on the cheese shelf.  The potatoes are suspended in a burlap sack hanging from the loft ladder in futurekitchen (to be fair, that's just where we keep potatoes, anyway).

4.  I have clear blue skies and sunshine again this week, after thinking last week that we'd had a good run, but it was time to accept that summer was over.  Now it feels like a proper Central California autumn... I'm ready for Back-to-School time.  Also, I love Wales!  It's so pretty!

5.  Tomorrow marks the start of Birthday Month!  Yay for September!  I had a friend who celebrated birthday week, and I though, "Oh, hang on... if you can extend the celebration, let's really extend it!"  So, Birthday Month, it is!  It starts on the first of the month and ends on my actual birthday, so if you were born on the first, your birthday month celebration will be short.  Sorry.  I get nearly 4 weeks of celebrating, though!  Wheeeeeee!  I already got (one of?) my present(s?) from my husband, though... I mentioned before that we got a really great offer on a worktop deep fat fryer, so we've had chips like an unhealthy number of times in the last week or so.  Oops.  Happy birthday to me?  (I guess I'm trying to reduce the number of birthday months I'll have going forward...)

1   Had a rather busy day at work yesterday… we had heavy snow showers and gale force winds through the day, so I was dealing with various questions and phone calls from the customers, plus we had unexpected visitors in the office, and I had requests to give extra briefs… which meant that it took twice as long to get my normal workload done (and I have deadlines for that work right through the day).

2   One of the unexpected visitors was the base photographer who wanted to take some pictures of us at work for the base Facebook page. They were online within a few hours of him leaving our office:

3   I normally try to swim as many miles as I can while I’m down here, though the long tiring hours doesn’t make it easy… I was doing pretty well by last weekend (9 miles) but then I caught a mild cold on Monday, which put the swimming plans on hold… feeling better now though, so hoping to go today

4   Earlier in the week, I was looking forward to watching the new season of Bake Off… only to remember it’s not on BBC anymore (we have BBC1, BBC2 and ITV here, but no Channel 4)… then I discovered that the British Forces TV channel (which airs a combination of shows from different channels) was showing it at 7:15pm last night… so I ate an early dinner and had a night in to watch it .

5   I am exactly halfway through my overseas tour today – 32 days down, 32 days to go ... oh, and it's payday!

1   Had a rather busy day at work yesterday… we had heavy snow showers and gale force winds through the day, so I was dealing with various questions and phone calls from the customers, plus we had unexpected visitors in the office, and I had requests to give extra briefs… which meant that it took twice as long to get my normal workload done (and I have deadlines for that work right through the day).

2   One of the unexpected visitors was the base photographer who wanted to take some pictures of us at work for the base Facebook page. They were online within a few hours of him leaving our office:

3   I normally try to swim as many miles as I can while I’m down here, though the long tiring hours doesn’t make it easy… I was doing pretty well by last weekend (9 miles) but then I caught a mild cold on Monday, which put the swimming plans on hold… feeling better now though, so hoping to go today

4   Earlier in the week, I was looking forward to watching the new season of Bake Off… only to remember it’s not on BBC anymore (we have BBC1, BBC2 and ITV here, but no Channel 4)… then I discovered that the British Forces TV channel (which airs a combination of shows from different channels) was showing it at 7:15pm last night… so I ate an early dinner and had a night in to watch it .

5   I am exactly halfway through my overseas tour today – 32 days down, 32 days to go ... oh, and it's payday!

Wow!  Those photos!