more mu

I don't really have time to post this week (although I do have plenty to post about!), but I did do 3 more of the mini reviews:

Z/X: Ignition
As I understand it, this is based on a collectible card game.  However, from what I've seen, I'm guessing it must be an electronic version?  Certainly the cards in the anime are actually a sort of digital mobile-like thing.  I have to confess I'm not 100% sure why I'm still watching this.  Generally these types of show are horrible and this is certainly rather wonky in many places, but I dunno, there's an odd charm to it.  Certainly you have to ignore the stuff that doesn't make sense (and there's a lot of that), but I don't find it bad enough to drop.  Plus the angel character is very cute.

Nobunaga the Fool
I think is probably among the most disappointing shows of the season.  It feels epic in scale and it's got a fair amount of mecha action (about the only show that does this season that I've seen).  But it also just feels a bit flat.  It's one of those shows where they mash up historical characters, but in this case, they feel so utterly irrelevant to the actual characters it basically hurts, rather than helps.  Also the characters are way too thin - I really don't care about any of them.  However, it does have mecha so that's why I'm still watching, but given how long it is I'm not sure that will last.

Wizard Barristers: Benmashi Cecil
I'm not sure I've really taken to Wizard Barristers.  The show is very nicely animated.  Some of the battles are a bit CG heavy, perhaps, but generally speaking the action is the highlight of the show.  However, if I'm totally honest I don't think that's enough.  One of the problems I have with the show is the character designs.  I find the way the eyes are done quite weird, and they freak me out a bit.  There's also a sprinkling of fan-service that I find a bit wrong.  Teh fan-service is all focused on the main character, but she's supposed to be this young girl (she looks a lot younger than her character age) who's quite badly affected by her mother having been put on death row - it just feels weird perving over her, and in such an obvious way.  Plus the episode pacing is horrible, and many of the other character sho coudl be interesting are virtually not in the show.  I'm not keen.

one is better than none

So my weigh in this Sunday showed I'd lost one pound.

While 1 pond is disappointing, it's better than staying constant and way better than gaining.  I therefore now weigh 20 stone 8 pounds.

I have to confess I was a bit disappointed at losing only one pound, but also not entirely surprised.  It was another good week exercise wise, but I wasn't quite as strict with my diet.  I mean, I didn't go nuts or anything, but I also didn't stick completely to it.

There was also a slight gross issue last week, which I guess if you're a bit squeamish you should probably not read.  But basically it wasn't a normal week so I was a bit puzzled as to what impact it would have on the whole weight loss thing.

I had a weird sort of constipated then not week.

Basically from Tuesday to Thursday my bowel movements were quite dysfunctional and I felt quite "bloated" and backed up.  It was a bit like one of those adverts for laxatives aimed at women, tbh.

However, on Friday the dam kinda burst and from Friday to Sunday I had 11 bowel movements (I usually have 2 per day), all of which were significant and relatively "normal".  I mean, I didn't get the shits or anything, I just seemed to have all the poos I'd not had earlier in the week.

The weird thing is I can't work out what might have caused it.  My food consumption at the weekend hadn't been particularly unusual, and as I say, I hadn't gone bonkers during the week, so I'm a bit lost as to what it was that ceased me up.

new mu

I've been trying to keep up to some degree with this season's anime.

This has mainly revolved around me making sure to watch the newly released episodes on crunchyroll each week that they come out.  I've been doing well, though there are a couple of shows I haven't looked at.

I therefore thought I'd do some mini-reviews as it's about a third of the way through the season.  Plus I couldn't think of anything else to blog about.

Hoozuki no Reitetsu
I'll start with one I found quite disappointing.  This is a very "talky" show - it's about a middle-manager in hell.  I don't mean a middle manager who has been sent to hell, but a demon who is a middle manager in hell.  I dunno, there are quite a lot of jokes revolving around cultural elements (both in terms of mythology and management culture) that I basically didn't get, and since that's all it is I basically dropped it.

Tonari no Seki-kun
There are quite a few short shows this season.  I don't know if that's normal or if crunchyroll usually picks quite a few up, the three I've watched have all been okay.  All three are basically gag shows and this is probably the one I like the most - the idea is it's about a boy who takes time-wasting in class to epic levels and the girl who sits next to him who we see things through the eyes of and usually gets in trouble for reacting to his antics.  It's possibly a bit too long per-episode, but it makes me chuckle.

Onee-chan ga Kita
This is one of the other short shows.  It's probably the closest to being one of those shows you could see as being a full-length show that actually they've made as a series of short episodes.  I mean, each show is self-contained, but could easily be expanded up into a full-episode, or several combined together to make a full episode.  However, the shorter length does seem to mean an improved budget, as the show looks good (not true of the other two short ones, where short probably reflects cheapness).  The subject matter is a bit odd - big sister (but via marriage, rather than genetically) who is in love with the main character.  However, for me it stays just the right side of freaky in most places.

Strange+
This is the last of the short shows, and is by far the weirdest.  It's basically a spoof of detective gang shows (I think) - it's very short and tbh is really more like a series of gags strung together.  One of the things I'm not keen on is that each episode seems to basically start at the end/middle and sometimes it's too confusing, especially given within just a few minutes the episode ends.

Saki: Zenkoku-hen
I quite enjoyed the original Saki.  There's been a sort of off-shoot show, which I haven't actually watched, but this is the proper continuation.  And it really is a continuation: it actually confused me to start with as it almost picks up as it it's a next episode and it's been several years since the end of the last series.  It also seemed to decide to go on a splurge of introducing new characters, which made me feel a bit lost, as well as constantly throwing them into hot springs type baths.  Now I've nothing against that, but Saki is really all about the OTT Mah-jong and so I got a bit bored while it messed around with this.  It's back to Mah-jong now, so I'm enjoying it more.

More mini-reviews in future blog posts when I can't think of anything to post about!

sick

I don't feel very well.

I felt a lot worse yesterday and actually feel better today.  However, today isn't help by the fact I woke up at 2:30AM and couldn't get back to sleep.

Quite what's wrong with me I'm not 100% sure.  It had some of the symptoms of a cold, but not all.

So my throat felt like I'd been gargling with razor blades, but I didn't actually get a cough.  And my head felt muggy, but I didn't have a running nose.  I also had hot and cold flushes, but they were very slow motion, rather than the quick changes you usually get when you're not well.

I'll probably be okay tomorrow, but it's all a bit annoying: I wasn't ill enough to stay home, but not really well enough to be at work.

not for the chop

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm not getting the boot at work.

I think if I'd not been here so long and therefore not built up quite the history and track record then I would have been in a lot more trouble.  It was seen more as a moment of madness (and this is pretty much the case).

But then the flip-side to that whole point is that I wouldn't have found myself in a position for what happened to happen if I hadn't been here so long and gotten sick of it all.

Which doesn't mean I wasn't in trouble.  I will be getting an official written warning, which goes on my file, and I have to write a formal letter of apology.  And I am sorry - well, sorry for lying to one of the bosses.  That was a ridiculous and stupid thing to do.

I'm not sorry for the original event, even though that was what I then lied about.  That may seem odd - if I wasn't ashamed of it, why lie to "cover up"?  Well, the reason is that I was trying to cover up the underlying motivation for the decision I made, not the event itself.

This is what I mean about if I'd not been here so long it wouldn't have been an issue anyway.  If I hadn't known it would have been a gigantic pain in the arse doing something differently in relation to the original issue then I wouldn't have had any of the subsequent problems.

It's all a bit difficult to explain without giving proper detail, but I guess the point is I'm not suddenly going to be plunged onto the scrapheap.

It was also indicated in the meetings that there's a hope a new senior guy who's meant to be coming to the company will "turn things around".

I'm still continuing to look for a new job, though - I don't really care if this new guy really is the second coming or not, tbh.  History here suggests that even if he was, he'd achieve nothing anyway.

no change

There was no change to my weight when I weighed in on Sunday morning.

While this is disappointing on one level, it actually kinda represents me dodging a bullet.  Diet-wise, last week was very bad on the whole, but the increased exercise regime has, it seems, counteracted this.  I therefore still weigh 20 stone 9 pounds.

I'm always left wondering with weeks like last week, where one aspect goes well but the other not, what would have happened if I had done okay with that aspect rather than badly.

So why did it go badly?

Well, there were a couple of smaller things.  On Wednesday someone came in to the office and bought in a load of pastries - more than were needed for us to have 1 each.  I therefore had two.  However, also on Wednesday I do my washing and that usually means I buy some shop-bought sarnies to have for dinner, so Wednesday is not a totally good day in the first place.

On the up-side, when I do my washing I go for a short walk and on this particular Wednesday I'd already done a few reasonable walks so I was way over 10,000 steps for the day.

However, Friday was the real problem.

I'll talk about it tomorrow, but that's when I had the review meeting and it turned out I wasn't going to get fired.  As such, I kinda let things slip a little at lunch, buying some cookies.

However, I then also bought some cream cakes when I went shopping in the evening.  And I mean some cream cakes - these were full-on naughty and they were on offer, so I ended up with four of the things.  Each must have been at least 600 calories each (I didn't dare look!) and of course that was on top of the cookies.

I always buy some pain au chocolate to have on Saturday as a mini-treat, and I didn't compensate in any way for the naughty stuff, so I had these too.  Overall, then, it was a pretty bad weekend diet-wise.   I mean, I did have salad for my actual meals and of course did full walking at the weekend, so even though I consumed at least 4,000 extra calories (the best part of 2 pounds in weight-terms) my weight was unchanged.

Things should hopefully go a lot better this week.  It's odd actually, but when I first started my dieting I had some similar patterns - a really good week, followed by a non-week, so I'm not too worried I've slipped already!

the big day of horror

So today is the day of the meeting to discuss my disciplinary.

Well, I think that's what today is.  It's all a bit unclear: imagine that - a lack of clarity where I work.  It's as if the whole organisation is an appalling shambles!

It'll either go horribly or be horrible.

I guess the real question is over whether I'll loose my job or not.

I'll keep you posted.  I guess at least with it being Friday I'll have the weekend to come to terms with it all, though it's been quite unpleasant having to wait so long.

roadworks

Going back even further into stuff I should have blogged about at the time, I've been experiencing quite the horrible time with traffic lights.

It started about 6 months ago when they started doing some work in Farnham.

It appeared to be water works, but it was quite widespread.  Indeed, they shut off Upper Hale Road, which is a pretty major route and takes a lot of traffic - particularly at commuting time.  There are a couple of ways around, but most are fairly long-winded.  They diverted traffic around, but it sent it into the clutches of more of the same roadworks, so the roads got pretty busy for a while.

And then they got worse.

You see, at the exact same time some work was done on the house that's on the corner of that upper hale junction.  This necessitated lights as they had to block off one of the carriageways, so now you've got traffic being diverted that's also being subjected to temporary lights, and temporary lights are always a traffic snarl up.

Okay, no problem, I can take a slightly longer route along Weybourne Road that allows me to avoid that whole junction... except they then started some work at the cross-roads there that also necessitated some temporary lights.  So you've now got people who know the ways round the original lights adding to the originally busy traffic that's also subject to lights.

To get around these I had to use one of my super long cuts, which meant I still had to go through the lights, but I was coming at them from a direction with a lot fewer cars, so I had one long wait, rather than 3 or 4.  However, it was a good 10 minutes plus longer journey time anyway, so I wasn't really saving anything.

And then things got even more fun, as they started some work on the roads near Farnham station and suddenly we've got temporary lights on the A31 and a load of displaced traffic as well.

Honestly, it felt like they were attempting to block me in with roadwork's - it eventually got to the stage that I couldn't even contemplate a super-bonkers "drive in the opposite direction" route to get avoid roadworks as they had some in the other direction as well.

I copied the following pic from a website that shows works. I'm not sure it's 100% clear, but you can see all the roadworks in what is a very small area so you get the point.

The thing is, though, once they'd finished all that in Farnham, they've decided to dig up Alton as well.  It's water works again, so I'm guessing they're doing the same sort of thing.  They're certainly slowly making their way up a road, but with these Alton works they're doing them across one of the main routes in from the A31.

Indeed, while there are some rat-runs you can use, they're huge extra distance.  Plus they're on quite minor roads, and it can be quite painful if cars are coming the other way.  I actually swore off using one of them some time ago for these reasons.

With how early I come in in the morning, it usually only adds about 5 minutes to my journey, but in the evenings if I'm not hanging round it can be a good 10 to 15 minutes.  On a half hour journey that's pretty significant.

At least with these they're not really doubling them up.

consequences

So they've decided we're going to have some sort of meeting on Friday about the situation of my fuck-up.  I think I'll be officially reprimanded/disciplined in some way.

Unfortunately, this can't happen until Friday, as my line manager only does 1 day a week (one of the many classic ridiculous situations my company seems to generate).  I've therefore been quite stressed with it all.

My personality type is one of those that focuses on the negative.  I do my best to change my thinking patterns and not to dwell, but it's quite difficult.  Particularly, I think, given my life is quite a solitary one - my hobbies are generally ones that I do on my own.  I understand having more "RL" stuff in your life is quite helpful in helping you get perspective on things.

Anyway, point is I've been quite worried.

Last Thursday, when it happened, I was actually worried that I may get the sack.  I am not quite as scared of this as I was then, but I think it is still a possibility.

A big part of the problem really is that the boss managed to make a massive mess out of it.  Now I was the root cause of that mess, so I have blame, but a way to think about it is if my boss basically punched one person (normal person level reaction) versus dropping a 50 megatonne "Tsar Bomba" on a city.  That therefore escalates the slice of shit I'm required to eat.

See, part of the problem is we should never have been fucking bidding this in the first place.  There were numerous points were they'd said "If x does/doesn't happen then we'll no bid".  Every single one of those happened, yet we kept going.  We also received several other pieces of information that meant we should not have bid, but of course that didn't stop us.

I therefore think my boss seized on this as a way to get the competition pulled, so my boss leapt straight in with heavy boots and of course, it became a giant mess.  Now there is a whole strand of argument as to quite what this really achieves - if you want to piss a customer off, getting their competition cancelled is a pretty good way to achieve it, but that's a bit beside the point.

What is the point is that I'm sick of working here.

take that fatso

So last week I weirdly gained 1 pound.

This week I pleasingly lost 4 pounds.  This means I now weigh 20 stone 9 pounds.  That means my BMI is still in the "morbidly obese" range, but only by about 2 or 3 pounds.

I've reached a good way below that before, as I've said.  I got down to about 19 stone 6 pounds at best, so I've still got 1 stone 3 pounds to get back down to that level.  In other words of the 1 stone 8 pounds, which is 22 pounds, I needed to loose to get down there I've lost about 7 pounds.

My ultimate goal is a fairly significant range.  My target is 18 stones, which will put me half-way up the "obese" range (BMI 35).  I will be very pleased if I get down there.  My kick-starter-style stretch target is 15 stone 5 pounds, which puts me just on the cusp of being "overweight" and obese (BMI 30).

I'm fully aware BMI is not seen as being the best of measures.  The whole waist-size ratio thing is supposed to be a much better simple measure, for example (the really good ones are not ones you can measure at home).  However, there's also a problem there that I am one of these people you see on the extreme weight loss programs where they end up with loads of extra skin.

As such, waist is going to become quite the deceptive measure for me.  Now of course it also impacts weight as you're carrying around all this extra skin, but that's kinda a bonus thing in a way - I'll know that I weigh less than what I apparently do, if you see what I mean.

Plus I'm a long way off from either measure really mattering in terms of fine details.

So yeah, I'm doing okay.  Still no real explanation for the "up" last week, but if going 4 steps down, 1 step back, 4 steps down isn't too bad.

I have, however, had to work quite hard at it this week.  I've been going for particularly long walks first thing in the morning and there were a couple of days where I ate quite minimally.  In particular when I was at the height of worry over this job thing I found my stomach a bit too "churny" to eat.

i fucked up

So I've fucked up at work.

Basically, that work I did last weekend was for a framework submission.  There's a lot of background, but basically it seems I made an error right at the beginning that meant the template document we were working from was wrong.

Specifically a group of questions were missing.

We then worked on this basis, but when I finally came to upload it I discovered this omission. But this was Sunday lunch time. And I didn't know what to do.

I had two basic options:

1.    I could call my boss.  This would have caused an almighty flap and waving of arms and I would have gotten in trouble.

2.    Or I could just generate answers for the missing questions and upload it and cross my fingers that no-one would notice.

So I did the second.

And it backfired mightily.

Yesterday it transpired that the portal was messed up and they sent us an e-mail listing the questions out and saying they would be assessing it manually.  Of course, this list included the questions I'd missed... and someone noticed.

Initially (and this was where I compound the error and it becomes a fuck-up) I lied and said I hadn't seen the additional question.

What I hadn't realised though was that my boss would instantly launch into an attack on the people whose tender it was saying we'd never seen the questions and the whole competition should be pulled.

And so I had to come clean.

I mean, I could have gone on lying, but there was too much evidence that I was lying.  Truth be told I kinda new it would all come out eventually.  I never catch the lucky breaks.

So I fucked up and I await the consequences.

box damage

Before Christmas I ordered a few bits and pieces on amazon.  They were pretty random and included some glycerin soap (for shaving), ear plugs, a page-a-day sudoku calendar and 100-disk cake boxes of both CDs and DVDs.
Nothing particularly unusual there, but the condition these turned up in was.

The box was utterly destroyed.

I don't just mean a bit bent and damaged - it was so badly beaten up that there was little in the way of structural integrity to it: it kinda flopped like a sack when you picked it up.  It also had a huge hole in it, through which you could see the box contents drifting about.  It looked like it had been used as a football or dropped down an entire flight of stairs.

Every item was damaged except the ear plug, though in the case of the calendar and soap it wasn't significant.  The significant damage was to the CD & DVD cake boxes - as you can imagine from the state of the box, they'd been pretty much destroyed.

For one of them the spindle that holds the CDs was completely snapped, for both the outer cover was damaged.  On both a significant proportion of the disks were scratched and several actually had dents and chips on them.

I took some photos, so you don't have to just take my word for it:

I complained, obviously, and amazon were quite good: they sent replacement cake boxes straight away via royal mail (I wasn't fussed about the other bits).  They initially said I had to return the broken ones, but I then sent them the photos and they said not to bother and just throw them away.

I blogged the other day about how the amazon free postage service was causing me some problems and this was the real killer.  The other issue I've had was with delivery times: it's taken way over the estimated time for stuff to get to me.

The manga I mentioned buying took a full week longer than the estimated date, and the estimated date was already 1 week after when I paid.  In other words, it took 2 weeks for them the books to get to me.  And 1 of those boxes was also bent, and the other was basically so loose you could just slip the side open and take out the content if you had wanted to.

manga mania

I bought some manga!

Now that may not seem anything particularly unusual -surely I buy manga all the time, right?

Well normally that would be the case, but for about the last year I've been on something of a "fast".  There have been a couple of reasons for this.

The first, and most important, was financial.  Unfortunately, with the adjustments to the VAT laws, the little loophole that amazon was exploiting to discount its manga has disappeared.  This means that all the mange I buy has gone up by several pounds.  This isn't a lot individually, but obviously if you buy dozens of them it soon adds up.

It also makes the situation a bit complicated in that the amazon prices now aren't guaranteed to be cheapest.  Also, I've had a few problems with the free postage service recently so if the free postage is now basically not worth using then shopping around becomes wise, and I couldn't really be arsed.

However, also, more obviously I've been struggling financially, so I didn't really have money to spare for manga.

The other key reason was that I wanted to catch up with some of the normal books on my shelves.  I've got quite a few that I hadn't read, but in particular there's a couple of series I've been reading that I was getting way adrift on.  I'd gotten to the state where I was reading so many manga series that they were all I was reading - whenever I got the pile low, new volumes would turn up (all pre-ordered on amazon, you see).

So why have I bought some manga?  Well, it's been a long time since I read any and I have been doing okay with the normal books, so I fancied a change.

Also, for Christmas I got quite a few amazon gift vouchers, so I needed to spend those anyway.  I also got a bonus payment so I figured I could loosened the belt a tiny bit and it would be okay (I actually only spend about £60 to buy £120 of stuff, so I figure that's not a bad deal.

However, the manga I bought was quite focused on series that have either ended or that I have been collecting and selling the volumes as I go.  That means that I will recoup some of the outlay later - indeed, it sort of helps me down the road, as selling incomplete series is particularly tricky on e-bay and it can be a little risky to leave it too long to buy volumes that have been released in case they sell out.

up - not down?

So I weighed in on Sunday morning and I'd gained a pound.  My weight is now 20 stone 13 pounds.

I really couldn't make head nor tail of this.

I mean, don't get me wrong - it wasn't the perfect week by any stretch, but I at least figured I would come out neutral at worst.  Gaining a pound seems bizarre.

In terms of walking I actually did more steps than my targets.  And this is with my newer upwardly revised targets of 7,500 steps on Tuesday - Thursday.

Eating wise I was pretty good all week, though things went a little pear shaped on Friday.  Obviously, we went down the pub as I mentioned and had carvery (we always have carvery nowadays - the boss is not an experimental eater and assumes we're all fine with having the same thing over-and-over, but also it's relatively cheap).  However, that evening I also had packaged sandwiches, crisps and 4 small éclairs bought from Tesco.

I usually shop on Friday evening, but on this occasion it was after a 12 hour day where I'd not slept particularly well the previous 2 evening.  Usually, lack of sleep seems to "help" the weight (you obviously burning more energy in "wake" mode) but I don't think it did this time, so Friday was a bad day, but I honestly didn't think it was so bad I would put on weight.

There are a couple of excuses I could give.

Saturday I seemed to be a bit constipated (Friday's food was obviously quite rich) and on Sunday had (not wanting to get too biological) some large bowel movements after I'd weighed myself.

I also didn't go for a walk on Sunday.  There were several reasons for this - I had to go in to work to finish off and wanted to do it early.  But also, when I was finishing at work someone came in to do the cleaning and I thought best to leave, rather than go for a walk then.

However, I was also swayed as I have been having a bit of trouble with my ankle, as it's been a bit uncomfortable when I've been walking just recently.  I suspect I might have strained it a bit last week - I need some new walking shoes more urgently than I thought as the souls are worn smooth and it's been quite icy on a few mornings recently so I've been slipping.

Lastly, the scale doesn't give detail beyond pounds.  I could easily have been 12.4 pounds last week (round down to 12) and 12.6 this week (round up to 13), which would appear like a more significant gain than it really was.

However, these are all excuses - I mean, I could have been 11.6 last week (round up to 12) and 13.4 this week (round down to 13), for example - so I'll just have to see if it helps me stick more closely at it this week.

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.

lull

So, first week of the year is over.

It's really been a week of "plus sa change?", which is to say, I went back to exactly the same shitty issues that have been getting me down over the past couple of years.

It's weird - staying was clearly a mistake, but then going to the company who made me the job offer I had would have been a mistake (I can't really say in the blog, but take my word for it).  The real answer would have been to take the pay rise and just keep looking, but instead I thought stuff would change.

I was wrong, and, indeed, stuff got worse.  It felt quite a lot like getting shat upon, so not I just want to go.  Problem is I'm a bit trapped.

Anyway, weekend ahoy and next week I will definitely explain all about the big event next year and how it's left me not sure what to do about stuff like moving and finding a new job.

rest of christmas

So what did I do over the rest of christmas, then?

Not much.

I had quite a short to do list:

• Couple of friends to see.
• Do my file back-ups.
• Sort my gaming machine - it had developed some problem where it crashed constantly.
• Try to make a dent in all the recorded stuff on my PVR.
• Watch some anime - preferably downloaded fansubs in order to clear the hard-drive I use, which is full.
• My traditional New Year's "full clean" of the bedsit.
• Do plenty of walking.
• Work out plans for next year.

I did most of these, though not fully in most cases.

I saw most of the friends, but unfortunately the weather poxed up some of my plans, with cancelled trains and blocked roads.  The weather also poxed up the walking plans, obviously.  I've put on 4 pounds across Christmas - obviously this was mainly due to the over-eating, rather than not being able to walk, but this won't have helped things.

I did an "update" file back-up, rather than a full one.  this was mainly because I decided that the gaming machine problem was software based and the cleanest solution was to wipe and re-install.  This was fine and appears to have worked perfectly, but of course it took well over a day with all the updates and putting the games back.

I did make a significant dent in the PVR, though it still groaning with stuff.  I now have about 35% of the drive clear, with about 65 programmes to watch.  I know this is a lot still on there, but you have to remember that over Christmas there was a lot of stuff to watch and none of this was left.  Also, I focused on things that didn't have ad breaks, so although the programmes are mostly 1 hour, there are a lot of adverts that will reduce the actual watching time.

I also watched a chunk of anime fansubs.  If I'm honest this was one of the least successful areas, though, as it wasn't a big proportion of all that I've got.  However, I also had a sort out and there's stuff I could take off for other reasons (OAVs of series I didn't like, have been licensed so I only need a 2 episode sample, rather than the full series, sequels so might as well burn them to disk for later, etc, etc).  I still need to attack them, but I've certainly created a bit of breathing space.

I also did the full clean, though this seemed more hard work than I remember from last year.  It took me 2 full days (one for the Kitchen & Bathroom and one for the living room / bedroom) to do the actual cleaning, but the impact was more extensive - they weren't consecutive days, as I was shattered after doing the kitchen.  After the bedroom I was basically crippled - I'd put my hamstrings through so much that I could hardly walk the next day.  This was due to the hoovering, mainly - I go at it with a special attachment and it's really effective, but also inconvenient to use and so I end up bent over in a bad way.

The "plans for next year" was the really big failure.  I've not really got a plan, and will have to give it some thought - there's a big event that I'm not really sure how I'm going to work around.

So the holiday was pretty mundane - nice to not be at work for an extended period, but not exactly exciting, and mostly poxed up by the awful weather where it might have been.

There was also some unpleasant stuff.  My landlord has decided to put up my rent by 5%.  This is particularly annoying as it now means the bedsit is uneconomical, but I'm left in a quandary as to moving, owing to the aforementioned unclear plans for the year.  I also scratched one of my alloy wheels on my car - some penis pulled up in the station in front of me at the petrol station rather than wait the 10 seconds it took for me to pull away and in going around him I caught the curb.  There was also a break-in where I live: they only got into the garden, rather than the house or shed and didn't take anything, but another reason for me not to stay.