why the fuck do i still work here?

See, this is part of why I gave up blogging: it just becomes the same thing over and over again.

I hate working here.

It's so fucking frustrating.

I even stayed very late last night and came in early to get some of the stuff done, yet one of the bosses seems determined to a) fuck it up & b) piss me off.

Deep breaths are the order of the day... and we're supposed to go to the pub this lunchtime to celebrate two people at work's birthdays.  I think I'd rather stick a needle in my leg.

What makes it worse is this whole thing is an utter waste of time.  We cannot possibly make money on it, yet we're throwing effort at it like it's the answer to all our problems.

Fucking idiocy.

Anyway, the A31 was flooded this morning, which was quite a shocking experience.  The time I was driving through it it was quiet in terms of traffic, but it also meant it was proper dark.  That meant it came up on me completely unawares as I couldn't see it, but also, because there weren't many other cars, I didn't get clued in that it was bad.  On the upside it also meant when I swerved into the middle of the two lanes to avoid it (it's a dual carriageway) there was no-one else in the way.

de-munch

As part of the preparations for the trip, I've decided to get back on it properly with the diet and weight loss.

I mean I never really properly stopped, and I won't say I was doing the whole yo-yo dieting thing where you quickly put all the weight back on, but certainly I've gained back quite a few pounds.

At best I got down to about 19 stone 6 pounds, but my weigh in after Christmas was 21 stone 2 pounds, so that's a gain of 1 stone 8 pounds.  It also took me back into the morbidly obese range, so I needed to pull my finger out.

To be fair, Christmas has always been a period when I've loosened off with dieting and put on anything around half a stone, but basically just recently my weight was staying a bit too constant.  I've been walking, so that's helped keep it in check and means I'm still as fit, but I feel I need to get back on it.

It will also help longer term as I will be able to buy some nicer clothes - particularly for work and, more pertinently, interviews.

My weigh in this weekend was 20 stone 10 pounds.  This means I lost 4 pounds, though to some extent that's a pinch of salt number - as mentioned I tend to put a lot on over Christmas and when I stop the excess a few pounds usually go automatically.  However, I definitely did step things up in terms of consistent walking and the diet got a bit better - I unfortunately had a few things to finish off from Christmas, but these are almost all gone and I even had salad all weekend (I'd forgotten how I enjoy it Saturday lunch, but then it gets repetitive the next two Saturday dinner & Sunday lunch).

I'm going to get some new walking shoes though.  I was going to need them for Canada anyway, but I think I'll have to get them sooner as my current pair are worn almost flat in places.

I'll try to keep the blog updated with the progress.

canadian gp 2014

So the big reveal of the thing I kept alluding to last week is that I'm going (with my family) to the Canadian Grand Prix this year!

I'm really looking forward to it, though as I was mentioning it's caused me some issues in terms of plans.

I mentioned in the blog before that I'm back looking for a job.  I'm also not sure that I mentioned I want to move - the two are linked, obviously in that I would like have to move for the job, but I wanted to move more immediately as I really don't like where I like anymore and want to move on.

This has been particularly brought to a head due to the break-in and the fact my rent has gone up by 5%, making it less economical.  This is made worse by the fact the electricity pre-pay meter rate recently went up (I blogged about how they decided to charge me for a non-existent debt - that got sorted, but it doesn't change the fact the cost of it went up) and the laundrette up the road recently put up their prices (again). So I'd be much better off financially living in the town where I work and also from a piece of mind point of view.

However, both of these become particularly difficult with the Canada trip, which is in early June.

For one thing I need a good ten days of leave, so I can't really use random days to go on interviews or to move.  Also, Canada will not be cheap - I will need around £1,000 to spend.  Canada is quite expensive anyway, but also I obviously want to have a good time.

Add in that clothes is one of the biggest areas of my life where I have "economised" so will need to buy stuff for the holiday and need some new bits if I'm to look smart for interviews and you can see I'm going to have some big drains on my purse over the next few months.  This makes it difficult to see how I can afford to pay for petrol to travel to interviews, but also how I could afford 2 months (or whatever) deposit to move - plus I'd need to overlap the rents so I'd have time to transfer all my stuff.

So as you can see I'm left in two minds quite what to do - do I keep going with the job hunting and start looking for somewhere to live?  If I do I don't know quite how it would work.  If I don't I am adding in a huge delay - more than 6 months before I even re-start.

time dilation

Why do weekends go so quickly when weekdays go so slowly?

It's more than a bit of a cliché to make such an observation, but as I sit here typing this I can't honestly say that the past two days really felt like two days.  It felt more like about 6 hours.

Which isn't to say I did anything particularly different or interesting, it's just that time seemed to basically evaporate.

Not that it was all rosy.  For some reason all Saturday I had a bit of a "pulled muscle" feeling in my stomach area - like if you've been doing some lifting and tweaked a muscle, but not so bad as to put you out of action.

However, I think I must have compensated weirdly, as Sunday I had muscle pains in my back instead.  These didn't really ease today; however, I think that might be more due to the fact I had a terrible night last night so my body's not really had a proper time to recover.

For some reason I just couldn't get comfortable in bed (I don't know if this was related to the back - it didn't feel so bad when I was lying down), but also I just didn't seem to be able to switch my brain off properly.

So I kept napping and then waking up again.  Today I don't feel like I had proper insomnia, but I am tired.  I think to some extent it might be an after effect of the fact I slept really well and for a really long time on both Friday and Saturday nights.

I'm wondering if perhaps I "overslept" then and so didn't really need as much sleep on Sunday.  However, the reason I'd slept so much was that I'd had proper insomnia on Thursday night and only got about two hours sleep.  This was an insomnia that was actually prompted by the temperature.

for some reason this year I really seem to be struggling with sleeping when it's cold.  I mean, obviously there always been the odd occasions when it's been really cold and it's woken me up, but this year it seems to be happening a lot.  In particular this year it feels like there are cold breezes blowing across my face, though I can't identify where the heck these might be coming from.

Part of the problem is also that the bedsit is like a leaky sieve when it comes to heat, so even if you get it really hot before bed it cools right down after just a couple of hours.  And of course I can't sleep if it's too warm, so I have to turn the heating off.  I thought I'd cracked it on Saturday when I used my oil-filled radiator and put it next to the bed.  This is much more adjustable, but it has a bright light when it's on.  As mentioned, on Saturday I slept really well, even though it was really cold outside (thick frost on the cars), but as I also mentioned, this might have been more to do with being tired.