Many visits

WOW, am I glad I make it routine to copy my entries onto my clipboard before I hit save; OD logged me out when I saved my entry and when I logged back in, the whole thing had gone! I would have been so peed off if I had to write it again; thank goodness for copy and paste!

It’s been a while since I last wrote, I have been quite busy recently.

Two weekends ago my dad and my nephew, Rob, came to visit. Dad was having his third attempt at his balloon flight which I bought for his 60th birthday 13 months ago. The weather has to be almost perfect, which is very hard to achieve in the UK, so we’re going to be lucky to get it just so. Sadly, it was cancelled again so he’s going to have to try and book it again.

But we still did stuff. I’d won a pair of tickets to the Great British Guitar Show in Birmingham, so we went there and Dad paid for Rob’s ticket.

Guitars made out of cigar boxes

Slash amp

Giant car filled with guitars. I couldn’t believe how big this thing is! A right gas guzzler I’ll bet.

And a Sunday game of Lord of the Rings Monopoly.

Last weekend we went to visit Jay’s dad and his wife Jan in their house in Hathersage in the Peak District. I don’t mind country lanes, but 50 miles of tiny, winding pot-holed addled roads that take about two hours to drive along is really tiring and hard work. It was such a relief to finally get there, where we were attacked by their long-haired dachshund, Ella.

If you look closely here, you can see her little pink tongue poking out, licking his head.

I’ll just get comfortable here.

This was the attic room we were staying in, I love it.

And this is the view out of the window. I miss the countryside; you could even see stars at night time and everything!

Lovely place

I had my annual appraisal at work last week and my boss couldn’t praise me enough, saying I always go over and above what’s expected of me. She couldn’t believe that I’ve never had a day off sick and that I even went in when it was snowing. I replied that I’m hardly ever ill, and I went it when it was snowing because there was no reason why I shouldn’t. If my car got me there, I’m not going to have a day off for no reason.

She said I always do everything that’s asked of me without complaining, so I said I’m not going to say ‘no’ to something for no reason, if I’m paid to do my job, I’ll do it. Honestly, I don’t see why she was getting so excited about the fact that I go to work and do what I’m paid to do, does everyone else skive or something? She’s German as well, you’d think she’d expect people to be industrious and hard working, lol.

So yeah, basically I’m awesome. Shame I’m not awesome enough for a payrise though.

Oh and I’m permanently going to be in accounts every Monday from now on. They did try to get me there every Monday and Friday, as if I’m doing nothing for 40% of the time and just have two days a week to spare. But Anja said no, mainly because I take minutes on a Friday.

The thing is, there’s an email inbox which is extremely busy and there are supposed to be seven of us working on things in there, but 90% of the time, it’s only me who does anything out of there. We even had an admin meeting on Monday and it was mentioned that everyone needs to spend a bit more time working on this inbox and they all agreed. Only to completely ignore it. I’m interested to see what happens to it now that I’m not going to be available on Mondays.

My car failed its MOT again the other week, always on the same things; bodywork needs welding and suspension needs work. It doesn’t help that I have to drive over a million speed bumps every day. It cost £400 to get it to pass and there was also a list of 12 advisory items (!) No way am I forking out for those 12 items this time next year so, sadly, this is the year I need to get a new car. I’m going to miss my little Ka, it’s been good to me. But, apart from it now falling apart, I’m going to need to get an estate if I want to start dog walking so it’s a good time. Now I have to start car shopping, urgh, pain in the arse.