burn up

About twice a year, my neighbour cuts down the trees the kids climb and use to catcall from at his 80 year old mother with comments on the cut and colour of her bloomers on the washing line, causing a very upright and respectable old lady enormous upset.

Tonight's the night for one of the biannual bonfires in the carpark, and my dead kitchen has been requisitioned to feed the flames. Heading over there in a minute with the bottle of vino for an impromptu community fire, without the sing-song.

Actually, I think Richard just likes fires.

melt down

Snoopy2 just gave up the ghost with a WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM file missing. Apparently this is getting to be a common problem, and always, always means a complete data backup/restore and rebuild at a place of network safety.

End of ability to work and a 2 day SLA to get it fixed: AFTER I get it to London. there went my plans to get on with some work and go to London tonight to use the free ticket to P******* (name of club censored to protect my mother's innocence)

see ya!

43

I scored 43 on this: and I'm not telling any of you what it means unless you tell me first what you scored so nyer!

1. When do you feel your best...
A) in the morning
B) during the afternoon and early evening
C) late at night

2. You usually walk...
A) fairly fast, with long steps
B) fairly fast, with little steps
C) less fast head up, looking the world in the face
D) less fast, head down
E) very slowly

3. When talking to people you...
A) stand with your arms folded
B) have your hands clasped
C) have one or both your hands on your hips
D) touch or push the person to whom you are talking
E) play with your ear, touch your chin, or smooth your hair

4. When relaxing, you sit with...
A) your knees bent with your legs neatly side by side
B) your legs crossed
C) your legs stretched out or straight
D) one leg curled under you

5. When something really amuses you, you react with...
A) big appreciated laugh
B) a laugh, but not a loud one
C) a quiet chuckle
D) a sheepish smile

6. When you go to a party or social gathering you...
A) make a loud entrance so everyone notices you
B) make a quiet entrance, looking around for someone you know
C) make the quietest entrance, trying to stay unnoticed

7. You're working very hard, concentrating hard, and you're interrupted...
A) welcome the break
B) feel extremely irritated
C) vary between these two extremes

8. Which of the following colors do you like most...
A) Red or orange
B) black
C) yellow or light blue
D) green
E) dark blue or purple
F) white
G) brown or gray

9. When you are in bed at night, in those last few moments before going to sleep you are...
A) stretched out on your back
B) stretched out face down on your stomach
C) on your side, slightly curled
D) with your head on one arm
E) with your head under the covers

10. You often dream that you are...
A) falling
B) fighting or struggling
C) searching for something or somebody
D) flying or floating
E) you usually have dreamless sleep
F) your dreams are always pleasant

POINTS:
1. (a) 2 (b) 4 (c) 6
2. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 7 (d) 2 (e) 1
3. (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 5 (d) 7 (e) 6
4. (a) 4 (b) 6 (c) 2 (d) 1
5. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 2
6. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 2
7. (a) 6 (b) 2 (c) 4
8. (a) 6 (b) 7 (c) 5 (d) 4 (e) 3 (f) 2 (g) 1
9. (a) 7 (b) 6 (c) 4 (d) 2 (e) 1
10 (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 6 (f) 1

on a roll

I'm feeling like a useful and capable person now, all-powerful and properly evil. Not that it's a huge deal, but cancelling direct debits for things I neither want nor need feels good; especially when I get all masterful (or is that mistressful) on the phone and in emails.

cue rant

WHY do we put up with all these 0845 numbers? I'd recommend saynoto0870 if, like me, you pay for a months worth of 'free' landline calls since you still have to pay for those numbers. Check on wiki: "When calling 0844, 0845, 0870 and 0871 numbers, part of the cost of the call is paid to the recipient; this is known as “revenue sharing”". I'd call it charging 2 or 3 times for the same thing (once for the call, once for the service that you are already paying the company for, and again for the 0845), four times in the case of government departments who are funded by our taxes, and the fact that half the police forces in the country make a profit of about £50k a year on them is criminal.

That goes for the lottery lot, who won't unlock your account by email so I sent one telling them I'd cancelled their direct debit, and the plumbing lot who want 1/3 of what I pay for 'unlimited' house and contents insurance and have so many restrictions on what they'll pay out for and limits on everything. That's cancelled too.

end rant

Didn't have the energy to deal with the Woolwich who want utility bills in the name I used to use before they'll change the address back from my mother's OLD address to my own one. Also procrastinating still about finding the key for garage2 so I can throw most of the contents away and give up garage1 which has become a resting place for everyone else's stuff. I suppose I should be grateful the bike IS in there!

Good news in the mail last week when the water bill came through; I used to pay nearly £400 a year water rates and eventually - very eve-ent-chew-ally - got a water meter fitted. They started by charging me £10 a month, reduced it to £5, put it up to £7,, and the last estimate was a whole 3 units higher than the real reading but they already owe ME £45.76. Result!

Good news also on the phone today when the Helphire lot called and I lied a teensy bit saying the cheque for the written-off Mazda arrived today and not Saturday. I was getting rather concerned about how much I might end up paying them since they have my credit card details but it seems I get to keep the car (rephrase - Paul gets to use the car) for 7 days after the cheque comes through. Over to him now to sort himself out a car before next Tuesday morning.

Good news too on last week/end: I camped out in Mark's kitchen most of the week where it was superbly sunny and there was a decent wireless connection so I could work. The desk booking system for the office failed spectacularly when my boss decided to wander in and purloin the desk I'd booked. Anyway, all allegations of skiving are out of court since I did do the working thing most of every day and was in the office till 9:30pm on Friday.

The teensy scars on my hand from the greedy squirrel in St James' Park are almost gone now, little beggar didn't think one hazelnut at a time was enough but Mark maintains it's because I'm Scottish and wouldn't let go. Glorious sunshine almost all week, easy enjoyable company, and dinner cooked for me every night - heaven.

Girlie points from the man coming out to the sticks to watch Six Nations (Ireland wouldn't have won otherwise). I had my voodoo pins at the ready and the Harlequins rugby ball from last year, when the London Irish won, was quaking on top of the cabinet. There was even time to watch the next match before Paul gave us a lift to D&Bs for a more than pleasant dinner on Saturday night. For a wonder I was ready on time, but then (my) normality reasserted itself and I mixed up the name of the road with the name of the village so we got there 'only just' on time.

Mothers Day brought more sun and also my filius and shorts bearing roses and a lovely card; Mark set off to be filial around lunchtime and then the late night and early morning caught up, leaving me in one of those tired, dreamy but not sleepy moods. The next door foreigns had an extended garden party involving a fire underneath a big cauldron suspended on a tripod. None of them had pointy hats but I couldn't understand a word they shouted so perhaps they really were casting spells. It was all quiet by midnight and there don't seem to be any eviscerated animals around; maybe it was just stew.

And as for 'my' local!!!!!!!! I've been there once, about two years ago, with Mark, not having been there for about two years before and with some trepidation since I knew it had gone downhill. It was awful then, half dismantled, half-painted and the landlady sporting a black eye. Luckily he thought it was amusing, including being asked at the bar if he was James Hewitt. This time however ...........

In the interests of confusing the hell out of me and attempting once more to catch me 'on the back foot', he parked outside my house and walked to the pub before calling me. He did say he was getting some funny looks but we agreed to meet up there. By the time I finished my coffee and found my shoes, he was on the phone again, walking back to my house, preferring to watch it there after seeing one 'mate' lay another one out on the floor which they saw as 'just a joke'. Wail! It used to be an ace place to go, anytime. At least I remembered how to switch it the TV and the stereo hookup was appreciated

There, all caught up now, apart from posting the rest of the kitchen pics (sorry, Mother)

boris has caught up with me

A very long time ago, I left London before 8:30 one weekday morning before Westminster's delightful traffic wardens could take lots of photographs of my car and give me a ticket before calling the clampers. I forgot to pay the congestion charge.

A few days later, I signed onto tfl and attempted to pay it. Couldn't. Stupid system won't let you pay it online after the second day unless you have the penalty notice number. Since I hadn't been home, I didn't have the number and couldn't pay it.

OK, get home, no penalty notice. Odd. Maybe I got away with it, however unlikely that might seem. It wasn't top of my priority list, ever. By the time I'd remembered that I was supposed to have sent off the registration doc for the red devil (which wasn't till I had to tax it) I'd forgotten all about it.

Once in a while, I'd twitch a bit thinking it must have been sent to T's old address, and each time decided I would let the canines continue to snore. Well, yesterday, T called me, very worried that she was going to ruin my day. She'd had all the mail from the old place forwarded and found a congestion charge penalty notice addressed to her, and the cost of having a drink or several that night is now an extra £180. Grit! Oh well, my own fault and I suppose I can try to convince them their system sucks and let me pay the lesser amount. Wish me luck.

The good news is there were no letters about roadside snapshots so the devil lives on to eat more open road; better than that, it's getting warmer and I can zoom about with the top down

The bad news is that some vermin were throwing stones at her window, and when she went out to see what was what found the rear screen of her car broken. Wish HER luck! Once those darling 'kids' start they sometimes decide it's a good plan to continue. A police officer asked me once, while "investigating" a winter break in at the caravan I used to have in Wales, "have you been a victim before", as if it was MY fault: I doubt much has changed.

Oh, and I've forgotten my login for tfl, but maybe I didn't have one till I got the oyster autofeed set up last week, I resent having to give my email, telephone, address etc details to every bureaucracy that has a website.

Mouse Juggling

I'm sat at the dining table with three sets of technology blinking in and out of Internet connection. The home one is currently direct wired from the wireless router as it couldn't find a signal.

*update!* Microserf has an update available for D-Link DWA-140 RangeBooster N USB Adapter which is, I think, what I'm using. Maybe, just maybe it'll fix the problem.

Snoopy1, the work laptop, is happy as Larry with a working, constant, secure VPN wireless connection

Snoopy2, the project laptop, is making me sign in to the secure VPN thing every ten seconds to ten minutes because it keeps losing the connection. I should point out it was doing that when both the others were off.

Juggling mice isn't one of my strong points.

Still, on the wire of 5:30 on a Friday, I have sent off the complicated request form to book the conference place on Tuesday that I need to get an OK from my BUM! OK, Business Unit Manager (got that Feb 17th on Snoopy1 email) AND my project manager (got that Feb 27th on Snoopy2 email). Yes, yes, I know, I should have done it before but; last conference I went on I booked and paid myself and claimed on expenses. After several weeks, I bothered to put the claim in, and it got authorised BUT the Injah back office cancelled it because I hadn't used the over-complicated purchasing system. I had to personally chase the damn thing up to VP level to get it paid, all £129 of it sssssssssssssssssake

To get the form and copy the emails involved a LOT of mousejuggling till Snoopy2 would send the email to Snoopy1 so I could forward it to bureaucracy 101. I'll let you know if I do actually get to go on this conference next week; I think it's 50/50

So, what else has been going on? I know I wrote a blogthing on word or email or something, somewhere since Monday and I'll slot it in when I find it - probably maybe

Today ....
G&B left at lunchtime, with hurried goodbyes since I had a conference call; Paul is at his grandmother's funeral *sad* for him; and the insurance company have written off the car as an uneconomical repair (no surprise there). They tell me they will be sending me a cheque for £450 (surprise there if it comes to anything noticeable after they take the excess cover off). O2 or carphone warehouse or whoever they are called me to find out why I'd not followed up on the phone I ordered (for Paul) - last month! Now the phone is due to be delivered tomorrow or MOnday and they're giving me a £20 voucher and 12 months free music downloading thing as consolation.

The kitchen is now sporting new doors, a floor and a windowsill and there is a long list of ermmmm, almost associated things which have happened on the home maintenance front/ The back gate is fixed and has a new industrial strength automatic closer on it, the front door lock is fixed, the numbers screwed on properly and the frame sealed properly. The doorbell is back in commission. The cloakroom and bathroom doors now have kitsch vacant/engaged locks on them. There's a new door to the living room which matches the new kitchen doors. and there's now a rinky dinky binkie to go with the dinky binkie in the cupboard. We really need to stop this endless creation of new interesting bits in the kitchen. (yes, yes, I'll upload the pix soon) Much sanding and varnishing has been done, by Barbara! mostly while I was tarting about in London and Southend working and at the LLM which certainly wasn't work.

Bloody men had taken over our room, much to our disgust, especially since we could see them put away their laptops after a while and settle down to hog the room for all two of them sit and watch bloody football while we ladies were forced to try on the clothes from Vicky's "mobile shop" on the mezzanine floor. We didn't catch anyone gawping but then a city wine bar on a Wednesday evening which has football on big screens obviously uses the entire attention span of those chaps still in the building.

The screaming red full skirt was obviously mine (that's half my Rammy outfit for 2010) and the black fancy riding skirt and partywear beaded top were just icing on that particular cake. Cheers Vicky!!! The cake for Ps birthday went down well, baked and iced by the fair Rebecca and Caro turning up with a tin full of luscious fudge more than made up for the fact the place has lost or upset another chef and there was next to zilch on the menu. A fiver for a bowl of chips, I ask you!

What else : ahhhh Tuesday night I'd decided they could spring for a hotel in southend if I had to be in London late Tuesday afternoon and then Southend for 10am Wednesday. I got into the Camelia Hotel (sic) which deserves a prize for twee in almost every respect. A definite good point was the extremely nice white wine with dinner. I forgot to make a note of it but it was a Pinot Grigio of some kind. Food was also obviously cooked rather than microwaved and I ate it in their almost empty dining room full of tables with pristine white tablecloths and perfect place settings. Post prandial long stroll along the beach in the dark (once the lurid scarlet neon hotel sign was out of eyeshot) continued the rebalancing of wa and a seriously bubbly hot bath listening to good music on some unknown radio station rounded it off nicely. There were masses of oyster shells on the shore and I childishly had to collect some, I think it's in the rules if you're on a beach. Sense prevailed in the morning and I left most of them in the bin.

Work? The meeting? pfuuiii! I'd planned to stay there and use a hotdesk, but they didn't have enough ip addresses so I went back to the London office where there are 3 avaialable. All of which were being used, one of which was attached to bigboss's laptop while he'd swanned off to a long meeting. Just as well the LLM was that evening or I'd have ended up working till silly o'clock once I got on the network.

enough of all this, it's the weekend now

Blissed

Just downloaded the photographs from Paula’s party last night, all but one of Mark in armour. PHWOAAARRRR! OK, so I’m biased.

Clothes, packing, on time, even with having to get petrol on the way.

Hotel, sod’s law; last week, smoking room and no Mark, this week, Mark and no smoking room

~ tag reminders ~ Shoe bonding, Tony watching us do the amateur dramatics tango, Sarah feeing me tequila, me being demanding about a big wine glass for my scotch & coke and then demanding P's personalised one-and-only bone china mug for my coffee the next day.

Mark getting utterly, utterly shitmarac, pleading ‘get me out of here’, at some unknown hour: I wasn't far behind him on the drinking stakes as it turned out.

Neither of us remember the taxi or getting back to the hotel. He doesn’t remember paying it, and must have done since I hadn't taken any money with me.

Not content with wearing one watch, which is pretty strange for me anyway, I ended up wearing two; mine that Mark gave me at Christmas, and his one which he'd taken off during dress rehearsal cos "men in armour don't wear watches". I offered him his watch back in the hotel room and he did the funniest double-take panic when he automatically looked at his wrist and found it naked.

~ CENSORED~

And we saw another fox! Ghosting along the road and looking rather startled by the white cocoon in the window ~ CENSORED ~ nary a smudge on the landscape.

Well, one smudgette but it turned out to be a mere shadow. In telling the watch story at P's, I asked Mark where it was. It wasn't on his wrist, then he couldn’t find it in his many (wearing jacket AND overcoat cos we were sitting in the garden) pockets. I remembered we’d remembered about it in the morning, and he couldn’t find it then. Remembered suggesting his back pocket, but we got distracted because he found his phone there and we'd started trying to piece together how we got back to the hotel.

We phoned the hotel. Said watch isn’t exactly a Timex, you could buy a few thousand cheap watches for the price. They said they’d look and would call me back. After about ten minutes they called back, no watch. I asked if we could come back and look for it ourselves, which was the plan. Remembering his clothes had been dumped on top of my bag in the wardrobe, I thought maybe, maybe, it had fallen into my bag. Trot out to the car, bring in my bag and the other bag now full of books and DVDs heading for London, tip my bag out onto the sofa and ~ zilch. No watch. Rotten horrible thing to happen on an otherwise perfect weekend. P demanded that Mark search his pockets again, and we were threatening him with a strip search when he found it in the top pocket of his jacket.

I was kind enough to call the hotel housekeeper and let her know we’d found it. Apparently the others wouldn't have bothered? Everything back on the green, breakfast to follow, a raid on the eviction order piles of books, lovely breakfast and proper March weather, sunshine, freezing wind, torrential rain, thunder, hail, all in the space of a couple of hours.

~ muchas lateres ~ another remember ~ Mark had bought one of those 3 for a tenner wine deals, drunk one bottle the night before and set off for the car/hotel/party with the other two in a bag; and a bag of rubbish to put in the huge bin outside his house. He slung the rubbish into the bin, heard a death-knell clank as the full bottles hit the bottom of the empty bin and realised he was still holding the bag of empty bottles and assorted trash. Being dressed in properly debonair syle he chose to arrive empty-handed rather than stinking and dishevelled so didn't clamber into the bin to retrieve the wine.

Back home in the late afternoon and, eventually, after a two hour 'forty winks' (hence being awake now) waking nicely in time for G&B coming back. Proper dinner at the dining table with rather a lot of wine and extended conversation. Blissed. Happy weekend. Happy Birthday P!

Sorry, I missed lots of bits in that, and hope I deleted all of the stuff I don't feel appropriate to share. I'm left with a lovely loved and warm feeling ~ might update and fill in some of those gaps later.

Birthdays

Birthday week here, Cosmic Marching fourth and P doing a fifth column slide to have her celebrations today. Am home alone and actually achieving something for a change; weird stuff only I could care about like setting a thousand dried up pampas grass seeds loose in the world so I can add the new ones K sent me to the definitely different container in the living room. I'm covered in fronds of peacock feathers from dusted off and might get round to putting them all back once I've washed the car. It was getting embarrassing driving around in a filthy, dented car. Now it's only the dent that grieves me.

Made it back from Telford by 9 last night (just as well I cried off last night's bash) and did get to Sids, who told me off for bringing my own nibbles! He then fetched out three varieties of my favourite nibbly crackers (black olive variety are top) which I washed down with my share of the wine while we watched "Defiance". For a wonder, I left there relatively early, and relatively sober, probably because I managecd to ignore the offer to open another bottle of vino. The leather rucksack, one of them anyway, was sat stuffed with books and DVDs ready for the next leg of their journey between me, Sid and Mark, and as a perfect parting gift, reflecting my current phrase of the week, a new zippo as compensation for the one I lost (still grieved about that too) - it has a logo thing on it that says "good planets are hard to find" *smothered laughter* The phrase in question is "I think I'll move to another planet, everyone else seems to have one of their own".

G&B are back down, slotting additional kitchen affairs between helping Rachel (just bin it) move house this weekend and seeing Dan & Becky on the way back next weekend. I missed them! Happily my sis is coming down for Easter and I'll have some more quality time with family

~ and now I'm delayed by the chance for a short time with the short people *happy*

mellow

Feeling rather mellow; probably because I feel I’ve sort of caught up with work, done some good stuff with the house and garden (I stacked the dead kitchen so it’s less of an eyesore, and cleared lots of dead growth from the jasmine, sweet pea and lilies so the garden looks a little more reasonable). Telford tomorrow afternoon, not morning for a meeting I’m actually prepared for, Sid’s tomorrow night (must watch and return those DVDs of Mark’s) and a lovely lazy day in a nice hotel, party in the evening and the chance to come back and perhaps see the shorts on Sunday; might even go to that dance class in berko in the evening. I’m sure G&B would like to go.

Let’s see if I wake up happy, haven’t for a while now.

sunny

The technology gods seem to be smiling on me today and the wireless (and no, I don;t know why it's not called radio either) link seems to be holding - shhhhhhhhh! - so I can do some work. It would help if mr bigboss would stop sending me emails and meeting invites on snoopy1 when I'm using snoopy2 secure sign-on though.

Twittering stuff is mind-blowing; blogs for goldfish, I can't keep track of any of it and it reads as entirely surreal. I've visited all sorts of odd people on the basis of typing in a random 'name' and seeing what comes back, it makes just as much no-sense as reading stuff from people I *do* know.

twitter

hmmm, tried to play with it this morning and am not entirely convinced: probably sent entirely the wrong thing to the wrong place but if it does have a 140 character limit, my secrets should be safe.

Not sure who I want to be on there, the world is overloaded with information, most of it trivial, and I simply don't have time to follow those trivialities with any, let alone close attention. I'd rather build up my oxytocin levels. No, it's not a rabbit disease but between blogs, twitters, posts and pictures, rabbit seems a relevant adjective