Yesterday was a busy day. Today I’ve done nothing.

Went to the opticians in the morning, to pick up new contact lenses. Only I only picked up one. He has now decided I only need one special one, and he will order one normal one for the not so bad eye (which will be cheaper for me). I have to go back in 2 weeks anyway, to check this new lens.

I am not too happy with it - it is uncomfortable, although he did warn me it wouldn’t be as comfortable as my old lens because it is made of more rigid material - but the vision isn’t as good as my old lens.

He has, however, given me a letter so I can have a nice big monitor at work (they wouldn’t take my word for it, it has to be on headed notepaper. Nothing like working for a company which trusts you.)

Then, after lunch I went shopping with Krazy K. She *is* bonkers. But I like her. We went to a craft shop which had a cardmaking demonstration, and both managed to spend about £20 - her on things she doesn’t have, me on things I really don’t need, but oh make me oh so happy owning them.

I suggested, expecting her to say no because she doesn’t like things sprung on her, likes to know well in advance where she is going and when, but I suggested we visit another craft shop. Even though neither of us knew where it was, and so we might not even find it. To my surprise she agreed, but we had to know where we were going. So we went into the library.

One of the librarians tried to tell us there was one of these shops in our town, but I knew there wasn’t. But they were very helpful, and found us the address and the phone number, then actually rang the company to find out if there was a shop in our town. There wasn’t.

We stopped to look at the book sale, and I decided to buy one of the hardbacks (at 20p - got to love those library book sales), and the lady said I could have it free of charge, because she had tried to give me duff information about the craft shop. How nice!

Krazy K and I spent another £20 or so each in the other craft shop - marvellous! We were gone for about 3 hours, and it was fun.

Then, when I got home, just as I had finished my dinner I got a text from LELI saying he was bored. So, I headed off to pick him up, and we went searching for a pub. Neither of us was up for town (not on a Saturday night anyway), and we were both a bit fed up of the pubs in his area, so we went on an adventure. Wound up in a fairly nice ‘local’ pub, where we weren’t looked at too strangely.

Today I have done nothing.

Well, not strictly true - I finally got around to emptying the box that is hidden away in my kitchen cupboard - god, I have got a lot of glasses! Even more surprising is the bottle of blackcurrant rum I had totally forgotten about, and half a bottle of vodka!

I had a weird dream again last night. Unfortunately I didn’t write it down as soon as I woke up, but I do remember some of it. I am recording it here, not because the dream was so weird, but more the timing of it.

I dreamt I was sightseeing in a nice little touristy town with Mosh, it was all very picturesque with cobble stones and old brick buildings. For some reason I was wearing his toon army top, with “Mosh” on the back.

We stopped at this coffee shop for a drink, and I was mortified because my mother-in-law was in there, and I was trying hard to hide. Not easy in a black and white striped top with “Mosh” emblazened across the back, especially when she is attuned into such tops.

Then either the dream jumps, or my memory does, and we were still in the coffee shop, only there was a room further back, with stairs leading upstairs from it. We went up there, and it was full of old biddies playing cards. Then we went back down.

Jumps again, and I go upstairs on my own this time, only while I am up there Mosh piles a huge stack of cushions on the stairs to stop me from coming down, and trap me upstairs. Only I manage to push them over, and come back down, where we both carry on as if nothing has happened, both pretending it wasn’t him who put the cushions there.

Now this is the weird bit, because as I was coming upstairs to come and write my blog post, I started thinking about when I met him. And it’s a year ago today. One year ago, Mosh came to Wales, and I met both him and Andy.

So, happy anniversary you two!

I am so busy at work, and it’s only just starting. S if finally letting go of some things, which I think is actually quite hard for her, since for many years this has been her niche in the company. However, she just can’t do it all - it’s physically not possible - and finally today I persuaded her to let me do something while she did something else.

Wish I hadn’t bothered.

It’s a taste of what is to come. Tedious, mundane, but incredibly time consuming jobs, which you have to complete against the clock. Even A, who has been managing to find jobs which mean he has to sit at the PC next to the ’special’ one when I am having to sit there, commented today on how patient I appeared to be, when it looked to him like an incredibly boring thing I was doing. “You don’t know how much I am holding back from just putting my pink boots through the screen.”

I also told L today that I had no intention of applying for her job. And I told her why. She seemed a bit shocked, launched into how much better Z is now, and how she has given him feedback voicing all of the concerns I have raised. I said I still didn’t want it, that my sanity was worth much more than having a promotion.

I didn’t tell her I am looking elsewhere for a job.

Was taken out for lunch by the client today, which was so nice. He lives in Brighton, and works with someone I went to Poly with oh so many years ago. We talked a bit about Brighton, and I mentioned I haven’t been back there since August 2003 (god, that makes it 3 years ago now). He said that next time I am down there, him and P (the poly guy) would take me out on the town. Sounds like a plan to me!

Things are starting to get very busy at work. We have a new platform being installed of some software, and the way it’s built into the mainframe means we have to spend the next 3 months testing it. Yesterday and today I have been putting in test scenarios for all the new features. I have spent a lot of time with ONB today, showing him how it all works, so at least there will be 2 of us who know sort of how it fits together.

S is still annoying me. She is playing the “woe is me, I am so busy” card, yet when I offer to do something for her she says no. Last night it transpired there were several more test things to input than I had already been doing. I didn’t even know about them, yet she was complaining about how she had less than one day in which to get them all in. So, I offered to do some of them. No.

Until 5 o’clock tonight. When she asked if I could maybe do some of them, since she wasn’t going to get them all finished. I am irritated, because she could have said yes last night, and I would have had more time to put them in, put more thought into them. I just know that not everything will have been tested properly because of the rush job we’ve done.

Went to lunch with one of the PA’s today. She is so sweet. She has been looking for a job elsewhere, and only heard this morning that from a short list of two, the other one got chosen. Poor thing. But the interview went well, so she was actually feeling pretty upbeat - the manager who interviewed her had sent an email to the agency for them to forward to her, saying how well she had done and what a difficult decision it had been.

Tomorrow I am out for lunch again with one of our clients. I say “one of”, but in reality he is the only person outside the company I ever dealt with. I have only met him once, but have a very good relationship with him, have worked closely on a lot of things with him. He said back in August he’d take me out to lunch next time he is here, but this is the first time since then he has managed it. So, lunch tomorrow is for most of the team and him, and he is conning his manager to pay for it! Marvellous!

This morning, I was waiting to hear about the software that was broken. At 11, still nothing, so I rang the IT guy. No answer, so I left a message.

At 12.30, A turned up at my desk (a bit of a surprise, since he wasn’t supposed to be in the office this morning, a problem with a taxi taking him to the station so he missed his train….). I told him there had been no joy, and that I would ring him after lunch.

I ring his mobile this time, and this time he answers. I ask him when he’s coming to fix the pc, to be told he’s not even in our office, he’s at the other site. I was quite cool, considering, told him that the software had to be fixed by the end of the day, and if it wasn’t then there would be a further delay of 3 months, and, again quite politely, I expected him to pull his finger out.

About an hour later A comes over. “The pc is fixed - well, it is for me, do you want to come and check it?”

Hoorah! It worked.

So, there I sat, trying desperately hard to remember the course I had been on before Christmas. I even manage to pull up some of the keys which are already there, and are similar to what I want to input. But I am buggered if I can remember what to do. I call ONB over. He looks at it, scratches his head a bit, and then admits defeat. He can’t remember either.

I sit there and try and find I want for another 30 minutes or so. Then I call over to S. “S, can you remember how to do this?” “No. And I’m too busy.”

Not even an attempt to come and see what it is I am doing.

Yet she expects me to drop everything I am doing to sort her problems out when she hasn’t a clue what to do. I have spent about 2 hours over the last few days sorting something out for her - something which she has known about for months, yet hasn’t bothered to do.

Well, maybe not next time.

It’s a full week this week, and I am sick of it already.

This morning I didn’t manage to do one single bit of my own work. I had hardly got my coat off and T was asking my advice on how to do something (he had somehow managed to overwrite one of the files ONB creates for him, and wanted to know how to recreate it). That took about half an hour.

Then S calls me over - one of the programs I helped her write is not running, and she can’t figure out why. Another half an hour.

Then ONB asks my advice on something for Z (who also manages to stick his nose in). Another half an hour.

Then back to S - something else that doesn’t work and more advice needed. Another half an hour.

That made it 11. Time for a team meeting.

Then lunch. A is back, so I ended up going to lunch with him. He is starting to make my skin crawl.

Then back to my desk, and more help with S.

It was about 2 o’clock when I finally started to do some work of my own. And I didn’t even manage that - we have new software, which is installed on a stand-alone PC. I tested it before Christmas (with A watching over me, because I couldn’t be trusted to check it myself, and it gave him a chance to sit next to me for 20 minutes or so). The bloody thing won’t load. So another 20 minutes with A sat next to me taking it in turns to log in, to see if it’s a PC problem, or something which has changed about our usernames.

Turns out to be a PC problem. The guy in charge of the installation is in the middle of “doing a laptop”, apparently, but will be down shortly. At 4.30 I went to ask A where he was, to be told that he had gone home.

Fucking IT people.

So, in the end today all I actually achieved was half filling in my self-assessment for the year, and helping ONB fill in his self-assessment. Bless him - he has to give feedback on his line manager, and he filled in the box for both me and for L. I had to give him a “constructive” feedback point for me (sometimes easily distracted) because he said he couldn’t think of one, and he thought it looked unfair that L got one and I didn’t. He could only think of nice things to say about me!

I’ve gone a bit mad with cheese buying.

It started off in the farm shop, where I planned to buy just two types - Caerphilly, and some extra strong Welsh cheddar. The farmer, with his best ’salesman’ hat on, talked me into buying some camembert as well.

So that’s 3.

Then I went to Tescos to get the bits and pieces I can’t get at the farm shop (worcester sauce, condensed soup, that sort of thing). They were ’selling off’ some cheese. So I bought some Wensleydale, some Y Fenni and some Five Counties.

That makes 6.

I already had some cheddar and some German soft cheese I bought last week and need to eat pretty quickly.

Good job I have some fine wine to go with it.

LELI will complain though - no Italian cheese!

My house is a tip. But LELI has just accepted my invitation to come round for dinner (I was expecting him to say no) so now I have to run round like a blue arsed fly making the kitchen at least *look* like its clean!

I am probably getting cats.

I will have to take lots of care I don’t smell of wee.