Frantic

Well, today was the busiest day yet - at one point it got so frantic I nearly had a 'run for the hills' sobbing moment but I pulled myself together and ploughed on and finally left the office at 7pm, having started at 7.00am.

My brain was fuzzled by the time I got home so I was grateful to Peter for having stuck the tea in, a yummy pizza,and being able to flop on the sofa and watch undermanding TV. 'Have I Got News for You'was brilliant - just the tonic I needed.

Tomorrow, is supposed to be super sunny so I'm looking forward to a chill out day.

Pals and Amazon's fall from Grace

Another frantically busy day, I can wait until the Ofsted inspection starts now as the preparation is all consuming and none of the regular work is getting done. I worked another straight through day, with no breaks, but made sure I went on time as I had arranged to meet a friend and quite frankly I still need a life! I was like a coiled spring when I arrived at Carol's but after a few minutes chatting and much fussing over her beautiful dog Daisy I was calmed back to normal.

Something drastic happened today, I have fallen out of love with Amazon. They have been my favourite online retailer for years and I have always been so impressed with their efficiency. Like Ebay, Amazon don't seem to be listening to their customers. I don't like the fact they are shipping everthing from Jersey now and using someone called 'Indigo Starfish' to process orders. Their packaging is rubbish now and a CD I ordered turned up today in a thin jiffy bag and the plastic casing was smashed. Amazon used to pack CD's very securely in cardboard packs - not anymore! The way I see it, when I place an order with Amazon I expect it to come from Amazon and my contract should be with them. Their returns policy seems to be much harsher now too. Not a good move.

This evening there is nothing at all on the box so I shall be reading again.

Blasts from the Past & Tantrum Toys

Part of my birthday present from my brother was a home made CD and on there are some of the classic Supertramp tracks, 'Long Way Home', 'The Logical Song' etc (the intro. to both of these tracks is so unique and memorable that I believe I could name that tune in '1' if I heard either of them on the radio) - anyway, I'm playing them both to death in the car at the moment. There are two groups that I wish I had gone to see in 'my youth', Supertramp and ELO - arhhh the memories. Having just turned 44 I worry that my mid-life crisis is happening a bit late - shouldn't this have happened at 40.

Bit of a manic week this week, it being pre-Ofsted inspection week. Yesterday worked 7.30am to 6.00pm straight which was a bit of a marathon and quite stressy but hey I'm building up my 'time off in lieu' hours nicely so there is a silver lining.

Today was equally busy but by 2.00pm I felt I was making headway and was at the 'checking' everything stage so that was a good feeling. I popped down to Hotel Services to check all my room booking and catering - they have a laugh in their office I think as they were proudly showing me a bear that they throw around the office in times of stress and various squashy tantrum toys on their desks (I didn't mention that I had a voo-doo boss doll in my own desk drawer though - some things are best not mentioned!)

What weird weather it has been today, this morning it was pouring down, and so dark, and by the afternoon is was really warm and when I got home I was able to sit outside in the garden and soak up some rays whilst reading a book. I've got three books on the go at the moment 'Losing You' by Nicci French which I'm loving, 'And then we came to the end' which is a very humorous look at office life (it's laugh out loud in places as I recognise different things that happen in offices - like the classic of sending a email rant about a dull meeting not to the your office pal, as intended, but to the meeting distribution list), and 'The Adventures of Diet Girl' which is a book based on a blog by a girl who successfully dieted away half her body weight (inspiring stuff and very comic).

This evening I'm going to chill out with The Apprentice and a bottle of Koppaberg - a treat indeed.

Ladies Who Lunch

Peter wasn't feeling too good today so I set off to see friend Wendy on my own. Firstly we went to my favourite second had book sale (too wet to sit outside to have a coffee today though). I picked up a few gardening books and books on churches for Peter but none for myself this time as I got some for my birthday and have some lovely vouchers to spend still :-).

At the sale I bumped into one of my mum's childhood friends, Beryl, who is a real character. She is always at the sale, without fail, with her son in tow. They buy masses of books (to sell on Ebay) and she always tells me a tail or two about what's happening in her life. This week she was telling me she has been invited to a wedding but she can't find a hat because she has such a big head - she is funny.....

After the sale we went to pick up friend number two, Julie, who gave me a late birthday present (Robert Plant and Alison Krauss CD 'Raising Sand') and then headed into town for a Chinese. The Chinese we go to is an 'all you can eat' style with a central help yourself hot plate with lots of yummy things; luckily they had two of my favourites - prawn balls and crispy fried beef shreds with chilli. We went up twice to fill our plates and also had some banana fritters with ice cream - all for £5.80 plus £2.00 for a drink - you can't really beat that! Yes, I know what you're thinking dear reader (for that price it must be cat?), well I hope not :-(.

After lunch we headed back to Julie's for coffee and more gassing before going back to Wendy's and then home to Peter who was feeling much better.

Peter and I sat in the conservatory for a while catching up on the day's papers and watching the birds in the garden. It's so nice that the evening's are so much lighter now.

On the box we watched Dr Who, Britain's got Talent and Pushing up Daisy's (well half of it in my case as I couldn't stay awake!)

Good Things Today
Seeing friends
Good food
Suprising Peter with some books
A relaxing evening
A late birthday present

Bargains and Lock Outs

This morning we went to a suburb of Southampton to get our fortnightly food shopping done. We went to a shop called Farm Foods, well I think it's a long time since their food was anywhere near a farm but it's very cheap and cheerful, which is just what we need at the moment. We had a good mooch around the shops which are highly dominated by charity shops and bought some bargain cosmetics and 'Human Traces' by Sebastian Faulks, plus some audio books for my mum (all John Grisham novels).

We got home just before the heavens opened and spent the afternoon reading and watching a movie of Ian Mcewan's 'Enduring Love' which was ok but I think it was a very difficult book to film.

This afternoon's drama was me going outside to put some rubbish in the wheelie bin and the front door slamming on me. I knew Peter was in the shed at the back so I was on the doorstep for about 15 minutes ringing the doorbell constantly trying to get his attention - I did get a bit worried when the heavens opened again and I thought I might have to go and shelter in a neighbours house. Lesson learnt - always, take key or wedge the door mat in the door before stepping outside!

This evening we shall be watching Gardener's World and the new series of 'Have I Got News for You'.

Beautiful Birthday

Well I had a lovely birthday. We both had a bit of a lie in and then got up and sat in the conservatory and Peter brought in a pile of lovely pressies and cards. Peter gave me a box set of Stephen Poliakoff DVD's which has been on my Amazon wish list for years, some wonderful comedy DVD's (Gavin & Stacey and Still Game), REM's latest CD, Nicci French's latest novel, a book entitled 'And then we came to the end' which is a humorous look at working in an office (can't wait to read it) and a huge station style clock to go in the garden. Other pressies included a book token (thankyou so much Anne), some posh new lap trays, 'Blood River' by Tim Butcher, an Amy MacDonald CD and some M&S vouchers. I also received some lovely cards, including one from a group of girls at work which was unexpected.

During the day we went to a wildlife park and saw lots of otters (so cute), tame deer which came up to you to be petted, wild boar (which thankfully didn't) and lots of beautiful owls. We had lunch there beore heading off to the cinema for the afternoon to see the Film 21, staring Kevin Spacey, which was pretty good.

During the evening we sat out in the garden and ate our first course of dinner; after it got too cold we moved inside and waited for about an hour before having our main course and pud whilst watching some of my comedy DVD's (Peter is rationing me on the episodes, otherwise I'd be watching them all in one hit!)

Peter gave me a very special day and I'm lucky to have him (arhhh).

End of a 3 Day Week

Well, that's the back of work for this week - what a nice feeling that is indeed. This week the College has been very quiet with so many of the senior management team and lecturing staff on leave because of the student spring break. As I have been pulling together some many things for the pending Ofsted inspection it's been great to be able to do this in relative peace and quiet without more jobs piling on top of it. Next week will be a different matter when everyone is back with just one week until the big week. But I shall push such things to the back of my mind and enjoy the next 4 days.

Last night my best friend and her husband and eldest daughter came round for a visit which was nice, we indulged in cups of tea and Sainbury's very posh biscuits (we know how to live you know!). Having had visitors (and therefore a pre-cleaned house) it means we can relax over the coming days without doing the drossy jobs we normally do at the weekend. However, Peter did comment that he wished that he hadn't bothered to clean the two loos as no-one actually went! Ah, a man's logic :-).

When I came home this evening there were two Policewomen doing 'door to door' - apparently a man had approached someone a few streets from us at 10.00am this morning and threatened them with a knife - the Police were looking for witnesses and asking people to check their bins and gardens for the weapon. It's always pretty unsettling to hear of such incidents so close to home.

This evening I shall be glued to The Apprentice - my TV highlight of the week - although it has to be said that the follow up programme on Beeb 2 'The Apprentice - You're Fired' is much more hilarious.

Blog Catch Up

A really busy week at work this week but the challenge of getting through it, and getting everything done that needed to be done, was rewarding and I have accumulated 11 hours of 'time off in lieu' over the last few weeks, which I shall use for some afternoons off work to become a lady who lunches with my friends.

Yesterday I came home with a very bad headache so kicked off my shoes and went straight to bed. I texted Peter to tell him tea 'was off' as far as me getting it on the table (well on the lap tray really) was concerned and the thoughtful soul brought home a take-a-way which was most welcome.

Today we surfaced late and Peter has gone to footie; I've done the household chores and have been out in the shed, transferring plants into bigger pots (we now have two baby fir trees on the back steps - who know's, one of them could get big enough to be a Christmas tree in a few years). This afternoon I've been catching up on some Internet stuff whilst watching an amazing hailstorm - I love watching extreme weather, it's awesome.

Peter has asked me what I'd like to do on my birthday (we both have two days off work next week - hurrah!). I've decided I'd like to go to a wildlife park near us that has lots of otters :-)(one of my favourite animals) on one day and then a NT property on the other, probably Stourhead, I'm really looking forward to it

An Arse of a Day

Sorry Anne, I stole today's title from one of you blog comments - as it sort of summed my day up too.

The day started off well enough, I dropped into our newly designed Premises Office on the opposite side of the campus to have a look around and I was so jealous of their new place. Two of the offices have brand new furniture and their own sliding patio doors leading out to a small patio with views across a private grass area. I was so jealous, if I was in there, I'd have a table and chairs on the patio in a flash and a bird table erected. I had a nice chat with the administrator over there which made a nice start to the day anyway.

From there on in the day turned sour, my main task at the moment is extracting sections of Ofsted reports on other college inspections into a Word document and it's taking me ages. As the documents are in PDF format and I don't have PDF formatting software, I'm having to cut and paste into Word and of course all the fonts change, the margins go haywire etc. I estimate I am extracting 75% of each report so why my suggestion of just printing each whole report and hi-lighting the relevant parts wasn't taken up I really don't know. Common sense people, common sense please! As well as my own tasks I'm handling two other people's email, phones and work so I really don't need things to do that are so time consuming and ultimately illogical.

At lunch time my computer broke and I had to call IT over who thought it was a loose wire, probably in my brain I'd expect....

I was going to put in an hours overtime tonight but I just couldn't face it as I was so tired and frustrated.

Drove home in a mood and got stuck behind a guy wearing a hat and driving gloves who did 40 mph all the way and gave way to all on comers at the roundabout even when he had right of way - grhhhh

By the time Peter came home my ire had dissipated and I was calm again. I sometimes think that me getting home an hour before him is a good thing in many ways as it gives me chance to settle rather than letting off steam to him as soon as he walks in the door.

Tomorrow can only be better.

Snow !

I woke up at around 7.30am and made my way downstairs to make a cup of tea, half way down the stairs I noticed a whiteness shining through the glass front door and rushed back upstairs to tell Peter it was snowing (gosh, I am a big kid!). Shortly afterwards I drove out to get the papers and everywhere looked so pretty coated in a layer of snow.

Sadly the snow had cleared by lunch time (boo!)but we still had a pretty lazy day indoors mostly reading the papers and listening to the radio.

Sunday night TV has deteriorated even further this week with absolutely nothing on I want to watch so we will probably watch a DVD I purchased at the charity shop of the 'Manchurian Candidate'.

Saturday

Today we went over to see my parents as we haven't seem them for a good few weeks. On the way we called in to our favourite charity shop and I bought a pile of bargain women's magazines (they were all April 2008) and they cost me 10p each - what a bargain! I also bought a perfect condition Dick Francis novel for dad and 4 audio book tapes for mum.

On the way to mum and dad's we called in to see our friends and nattered for a bit longer than intended which means we didn't arrive to my parents until they were just about to serve up lunch - whoops!

I think mum is covering up a few health problems which I tried to wheedle out of dad without much success, I will have to try harder to have a chat with mum when I can get her on her own.

We stayed until mid afternoon, watching the birds in the garden and chatting, before heading home and settling in for the evening to watch the box.

Perfect Post

Another busy day at tut mill but I have managed to struggle on top of the work load -my measure of whether I'm really on top of things is how high my filing pile is and today I got it down to about an inch - hoorah! Next week could be a different situation though as my 'across the desk' colleague is on leave and another colleague has a poorly mum so she may not be in either, so I could have three bosses to work for next week - will I survive I wonder?

Anyway, back to today. As soon as I got home I tackled the mowing (phase 2) in the front garden and it was pretty exhausting. There are sloping bits and mossy bits out the front which makes it hard going and I had to have a sit down after tackling that. It was warm enough to relax in a garden chair in a t-shirt so that was nice. The garden does look much tidier now, so I'm pleased with my efforts.

Today we both had 'nice post' which makes a change from the usual bills. Nice post to us is our subscription magazines (Good Food, She & Good Housekeeping for me) and various transport and birding magazines for Peter. Yes, it's an extravagance but we don't have many - so it's worth it.

I phoned my parents tonight and arranged to see them at the weekend as we haven't seen them for about 3 weeks (which I know is a long time in my mum and dad's eyes). The weeks when you are working zoom by but when you are retired I think time, understandably, takes on a different perspective.

Tonight I shall be glued to episode 2 of The Apprentice; as Harry Hill would say "my TV Highlight of the week".

Mayhem and Mowing

Gosh, a busy day today; I worked from 7.45am to 5.00pm non stop. I crammed a sandwich down my neck at lunch time whilst still typing with one hand - not good! and I wonder why my keyboard is covered in crumbs!

After work I felt the need to de-stress so after chucking our tea in the oven I got out into the garden and mowed the back lawn, gosh it really needed it too. It was amazingly windy out so I did get a bit discheveled but it certainly blew the copwebs away and everyting looks reasonably tidy now. I may tackle out the front tomorrow - weather permitting.

Now that the evenings are lighter and it's actually been sunny for a few days, I've been enjoying spending a bit of time in the conservatory in the early evening to read a book and to have our evening meal - it does the soul good I think.

This evening Peter has gone to watch a local football match so I am catching up on some internet stuff and watching 'Damages' from the other night. There is ony one episode left in the series, another thing I'm addicted to which is ending - sniff sniff. Oh well, at least there is a new series of Doctor Who on at the weekend.