Well, I hope so anyway.

Today I went to the now two monthly craft demonstrations they have in the craft shops around the area. They are run by a national crafting company.

Obviously I always go to at least one of them, and obviously I always buy the ‘goody bag’, plus often lots of other things, just because I can.

I didn’t have much time today (off to my belly dancing), so ran in, as the woman was doing her demonstration. She greeted me like an old friend - I guess I am pretty distinguishable, and she has seen me several times over the past few years.

She made a joke as she spilt a bit of glitter about not affording to waste her crafting items. Some other woman asked, “You don’t have to buy all your demonstration things do you?”

“Oh no,” replied the woman.

I piped up, “So how do you go about getting a job?”

She looked at me. “Seriously, if you want one, write to them. I am leaving, and they need someone in this area. Send them some of your things you have done - preferably using their products, but it doesn’t have to be.”

Something similar happened a while ago, and I did nothing about it. But tomorrow I will take some photos of some of the cards I have, and email that to their website. I will ask what I would need to do next, and then see about sending off some of the things I have done to them.

And, fingers crossed, I can have a part time weekend job, being paid to make lots and lots of cards, doing lots and lots of crafty things, using lots and lots of free craft stuff!!

Go me!

I have just got back from a 3 hour belly dance workshop. It was great.

I haven’t been belly dancing for a while - I have been going to aerobics instead, I figure I need that more than the dancing to lose some weight. But I do miss it. So when the teacher emailed me about this workshop I jumped at the chance.

It was quite hard work, for 3 hours with just a 5 minute break to drink some water. And I had to stop near the end, when we were doing Turkish gypsy dancing, because it was much too bouncy for my ankles to cope with (my left one is killing me), but it was such a lot of fun.

And it was a superfit male teacher.

Gaydar pinging off the scale unfortunately.

And tonight there is a ‘hafla’ get together, where hopefully I will see more of the people who used to go to my class (I only knew my teacher there this afternoon).

It’s been really busy at work the last few weeks. Not made any better by the people from my old department, rather than accepting what I am doing to try and make their life easier, having some understanding of their problems, keep demanding more and more.

Last week, one particularly smarmy guy smarmed up to me. “Woman, can I have a quick word? It should only take a few minutes…..” and pulled me off to the comfy seats by the lifts.

“Well, you see, the reason is this project our department is involved in is having a 2 day workshop next week - and I am really annoyed at the short notice, and I will definitely ensure this will not happen again…..” My mind is already wandering. This project is nothing to do with me. It has been made plainly clear that it is the old department only, they want nothing to do with the other departments which may have been interested - and in fact my current boss, at the start of the project was really pushing for it to be a ‘global’ project, rather than limited to just one department, and had been told to bog off.

I eventually tune back in.”……. so, this workshop is Wednesday and Thursday next week, can you go?”

“Erm, well, no, it’s nothing to do with me.”

The smarm was sickeningly turned up a notch.

“But Woman, there is nobody knows the data as well as you, we really need your expertise, there is nobody in our department with such good knowledge as you, blah, blah, blah.”

I smile. “That may be so, but surely it’s up to your department to make sure your people have this knowledge?”

So, realising the smarm was not working, he turned to threats.

“Well, the rest of the business, while not directly involved in the project have now declared they will support it, in recognition of how important this project really is. I was hoping to avoid this, but I will have to go up to Z, who will speak to your department head A.”

“That’s fine. In fact, I think that will be best.”

I went back to my desk, and told my boss. Her face was a picture. “I have a meeting with A in half an hour, I’ll warn him this is coming. No way are you going up there for two days on a project which is nothing to do with us. They should have thought of this months ago.”

Did I mention I love my boss?

Upshot was I didn’t go. They tried to hold an hour long meeting, with me and one of the techie guys - also nothing to do with the project - which I attended the first half hour. I also agreed to be on the end of a phone line should they actually need it. Not sure what I’d have done if they had rung me.

I have also now been invited to another meeting next week, and helpfully a list of their questions was attached. The answers to which are things they really should know. Or at least be able to get from the people in their department (of which there are now in the region of 60 people - note, my team is me and S1 and S2). I replied tentatively, saying I didn’t know how necessary I would be to the meeting, giving suggestions of people they could contact to answer some of their questions.

The response was “I think you should come to the meeting, as it will help you for when you have to go to all the other workshops when the project gets moving in earnest.”

I hit the roof.

With the aid of S2 I managed to write a reasonably polite email back, basically saying that, if necessary I would come for the first half hour to answer any relevant questions, but if they needed any more then they would need to plan this through the proper channels.

Is it any wonder that last weekend I had a dream that I was donating a kidney to someone who was dying, and rather than them saying thanks, they were insisting once the operation was over, and I was allowed to move out of bed I had to deal with the damp in the wall of the room where I was staying.

Some people are just plain stupid.

First are the people willing to pay over £12 for a lipstick on ebay. Not only that, they will pay to have it shipped to Australia. And are extremely excited about it.

And then there are the people who bid, and then moan because I don’t take Paypal. Well duh - I might if I was selling big stuff, but when I am selling things for £1 a go, and it costs 20p per transaction, that’s a big chunk of my profit gone. I also state quite clearly on the description that I don’t take Paypal, so if you then think I take Paypal it’s not that’s the stupid one.

That said, my total amount now stands at £92.91. With a further 18 items still to be sold (and a few more to be added, I just couldn’t be arsed).

I should have listened though - sold not a single magazine, and only 3 of the books. So that’s off to the recycling and the charity shop then.

My mom wants me to sell her makeup now.

Somebody visited my blog today, after asking Jeeves “can a woman finish a bottle of wine and live?”

Some people are incredibly innocent!

He’s been visiting his family, and got back on Sunday (he texted me just as Jason was about to come on stage, and when I texted back where I was he came back with “Who?”). We went out for a drink last night, and bless his, he’s brought me back some sweeties, for the first time ever.

I always ask, tell him he should bring back goodies, as he is always one of the first to partake in holiday goodies from others, yet never brings any back himself, but he always refuses.

So this time I played the, “But it’s nearly my birthday….” card, and he brought me back two packs of sweeties. I thought they were going to be those amoretti,almond biscuits.

Oh no.

These are gorgeous chocolatey selections.

I have eaten half a packet already - and I didn’t go to aerobics tonight, I was was feeling too tired. Naughty girl!

Anyway, I texted him earlier, asking him how his first day back in the ofice was. An hour later, he rang me. Seemed it went okay, until he had a run in with his favourite member of staff.

I always try to be neutral, and often will play devil’s advocate in these situations, but I am finding it really hard to justify what she is saying to him. I get the feeling he is quite upset by it, although he is trying to shrug it off. But he asks her to do something in a particular way, she will go and do it another way, and her justification will be, “The way you asked was wrong, I;d have thought with a maths degree you should know that?” And she has said similar things to him, about how he should go on a time management course as he obviously can’t manage his time, and how he should learn to do analysis.

These are things I wouldn’t say to someone who worked for me, let alone someone I worked for. They are just plain rude.

Now, I am sure working for LELI would try anybody’s patience - he can be extremely anal about the smallest of things - but that is his job, if he wasn’t like that, he wouldn’t be doing that job, and there would be someone else just as anal in that postition.

I have just been on the phone to him for 40 minutes, listening to him rant.

Ebay watch - who in their right mind would pay over £12 for a lipstick on ebay? With 4 days left to go? At least two people, if the bidding war that’s been going on is anything to go by. And I am definitely not complaining.

Well, that was fun! It didn’t even come close to being one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever been to - but then I didn’t expect it to be. But it was good fun. He really is a genuinely nice guy (and I’ve been to some concerts where the sinders were far up themselves it was untrue).

Twenty feet away, that’s all we were.

The place was, as expected, full of 30 something women, all reliving their youth. I was surprised how many non gay men there were though. There were two men in front of us, and had decided they were gay, but then their girlfriends came in (obviously going to the toilet in pairs). One of the guys knew all the words to all of the songs, it was weird. Very weird.

I screamed, obviously.

Ebay watch - after most of my items now ending (although I have relisted some of them), the total now stands at £38.63 for 27 items. Plus bids of £4.25 on itens yet to finish. Not bad, all in all. Be nice if I can make that much again on what is outstanding. I could get addicted to this.

I often comment on how different I am from the rest of my family.

However, I might have to admit to being very like my mom and my sister in some ways.

Today I took two boxes full of things to the charity shop, as I am finally getting around to sorting out the spare bedroom. And rather coincidentally, the charity shop is very close to my favourite craft shop of all time, so I just had to pay a visit while I was there, didn’t I?

I bought -

• Goody Bag for Scrapbooking, leftover from last demonstration
• Folder containing 24 coloured peel-off stickers
• Two packets of rub-on flower transfers
• Box of multi-coloured card

When I got home, I rang my mom to tell her about my purchases.

Turns out her and my sister had been shopping this morning, and both had bought the exact same goody bag, and folder with peel-offs.

How weird is that?

Ebay watch - £13.93, with one day left to go on most things, I’m definitely into profit, it’s now just a question of how much!

Part of my job is to make sure people clear out a lot of their crap computer files. To help me do this, I have a little program which runs, finds the crappy files, then fires off an email per file to people, asking them to run the attached code, which will delete the said file.

I noticed that LELI had two such crap files. LELI is on holiday.

I rang one of LELI’s colleagues to ask if he had LELI’s user id, so he could delete them for me, and he passed me over to another colleague.

This second guy has a pretty common name (better get that in quick).

We were joking on the phone, because I was saying that LELI had a big one, fnaar, fnaar, and I needed J’s help in getting rid of it. Life is just one long Carry On film for me.

Anyway, J agreed to delete the files if I would send him the emails, which I duly did.

I then looked at what was remaining, and noticed that J also had a large crappy file which I had emailed him about in the morning, and he still hadn’t deleted it.

So I rang him.

“You’ve got a big one too,” said I.

Pause.

Longer pause.

“I’ve rung the wrong J, haven’t I?”

“Yes, I think you might have, but thanks, you’ve made my weekend.”

It doesn’t take much to make me blush, but I was as red as my tshirt!

Ebay watch - £9.46, and hopeful for more….

No, not that stupid telly programme (not that I’ve seen it, honest!).

But Sunday night, I am off to see Mr Jason Donovan in concert, and I am very excited about it!

Ebay watch - bid’s up to £8.97 - at least I’ve covered my costs!