easter

Well, last day of the working week today as it's Easter.

I must say it's kinda snuck up on me this year.  I think a big part of that is because of the weather - it feels like it's rained continuously for almost an entire year, and the seasons have virtually disappeared, so it's almost weird now that it's actually spring-like.  It feels kinda sudden, somehow.

The training thing yesterday was horrendous.

Not because it was badly done (though the food at the venue was horrible - rather dried out and sorry looking), but because they'd crammed what should have been two days of stuff into a day - less than a day, actually, as it ended at 3:30.  It was in London so it was a very long day as well.  And then I couldn't get to sleep until quite late, so I'm pretty knackered today.

Oddly, it's the Chinese grand prix this weekend.  I say oddly because usually they time the grand prix so that they don't land on "other" days.

China is usually a good race and I think the new engines will suit it so I'm hoping it will be as good as Bahrain.  Unfortunately the BBC is only showing highlights on the TV again, but I'll listen on the radio.

My other plans for Easter are pretty minimal as I'm trying to save pennies for Canada.

I'll probably do a bit of a swap around with some stuff that's out in the shed - if the nice weather continues I'll need to get my shorts out and put away jumpers and stuff.  I'll also probably do a full back-up (I keep all the drives out in the shed too).  These aren't quite as firm as my landlord recently told me he is actually going away a few weeks after Easter and it's usually easier to mess about in the shed when he's away.  However, the weekend that this covers I'm also booked to go and see a friend.

irony

I'm going on a training thing tomorrow for work.

It's something to do with some new EU regulations, so I'm sure it will be highly exciting.  It's in London, which makes the travelling painful, particularly as they've scheduled a start of 09:30.  It does mean it ends early, though (about 3:30), but I'm obviously no going to blog.

And speaking of work, I found this quite amusing a little while ago, and very relevant to why I'm looking for a new job.

One of my bosses got an e-mail the other day asking if we'd be willing to send them a tool they'd seen us using to help make bid/no bid decisions.

The first point of amusement was that my boss clearly didn't know what he was talking about, even though I've shown my boss the tool several times.  So the boss asked him for some more details "to help pin down what he was talking about" and then forwarded to me to essentially ask what he was talking about.

I pointed him straight at the tool and suggested it was rather cheeky of them to be asking for us to just hand it over.

The boss took a look at the tool and then we had a very brief chat, where the boss echoed my opinion that it was cheeky for them to ask for it.  However, the boss also said the tool looked "like quite a good bit of work" & "clever".

Which all seemed quite ironic - here's a tool I put together that the boss clearly hadn't ever bothered to look at properly before, but then when somebody else asked for it, looked at it and thought it was quite good.

So it's a tool that helps to make bid/no bid decisions, something we're woefully (indeed wilfully) bad at, that the other company could see the value in, but that my own company cannot.

Which kind of sums up why I don't really want to stay - what I do is not in any way valued.

fat lad

I wrote the following last Friday, but failed to post it:

No change in my weight last weekend, so I still weigh 20 stone 10 pounds.

This was obviously a little disappointing, but not entirely surprising.  As previously mentioned, I'd bought way too much food and this spilled over into the full weekend as well as the following weeks itself.  In other words, I was eating pretty badly all week, not just on those few days off I had.

I've not eaten particularly well this week either, so I'm expecting some horrors when I get on the scales on Sunday.

Easter is rapidly approaching - I've got a few days book as leave for my birthday too, so I now enter a period where I'm not doing a full 5 day week for ages.  However, I'm a bit nervous this will also impact the diet situation quite badly.

I need to clean my bedsit this weekend - I don't generally clean when there's a grand prix on and it's been a double-header, so things are getting a bit mucky.  I'll probably do a spring clean over Easter, but another week is a bit long to leave it.  Plus cleaning this weekend will make the job easier next week.

---

In actuality I weighed in on Sunday morning and found I weighted 20 stone 8 pounds.  So, in other words, I'd lost the two pounds I put on.

I have absolutely no understanding how this could be the case - I ate really badly all week and it was nothing special in terms of exercising.  I mean, we went to the pub on Friday as it was two people's birthdays, and both brought in biscuits and cakes, which I partook in.

I even had a small donor kebab on Wednesday evening!  I do my washing on Wednesday evenings now and I wanted something cooked and would usually have had a portion of chips to satisfy this need, but the chip shop was open so I went to the kebab shop next door, which was expensive but nice - the salad was very fresh, which is a good sign in a kebab shop.

So yeah - no idea how I lost 2 pounds :/