one way street

Constantly heading up a one way street.
The flow is going the other way.
The prevailing sensible choice is going the other way.

But somehow you keep on going, against the tide. Hit it headlong and like a bull at a gate, and the force of everyone else will throw you back, like surf breakers on a beach.

Make your way, gently, slowly, building confidence as you go, bringing people on board gradually so that they understand what you want, and why you want it, and that, even if they can’t understand, they can see that you desire it so much that you’re going to carry on regardless. Eventually, you’ll get to the top. Won’t you?

The top, where it’s busier, the traffic is flowing in both directions, but despite that, there is a natural sense of harmony. Everything just feels right some how.

But, when you’re still on the one way street, there’s something missing. A glimpse of the light at the end of the tunnel, the much needed sense of tranquil calm and satisfaction which the top promises is enough to spur you on.

A hint, a touch, a kind word. It’s enough.

Wipe out

I am shattered... just finished my second 14+ hour day in a row, and I'm set for another one tomorrow too.

I'm counting down the days... 8 working days until it all changes, and therefore hopefully improves (although it's a shallow hope, I think it'll just be different rather than better)... and 22 days until Vegas. I've not quite gone to the extreme of working out the amount of working hours left to go yet, but give me time!

Wireless

I'm beginning this post thinking it will be a long one, but let's see what happens...

I'm currently sitting on the sofa, drinking wine and watching West Wing. A regular Saturday night in then... albeit that I've not actually done this for longer than I can pin point to remember. My Saturday nights are usually spent in various places not involving being at home, so it's quite refreshing to be here. I feel like I'm catching up with myself. I was originally planning to spend this weekend seeking the assistance of Marty to wash, t-cut and polish my old car, ready for it to be sold, but he's visiting parents... so I've diverted to a favourite pastime... painting!!! We're having a red wall in the lounge, and a nice cream colour in the bathroom, probably with a Griffiths original painting on one wall.

I love painting and decorating. Sad huh... but, there's something very theraputic about spending a few hours making a radical transformation to something and then assessing the effect at the end of the day, and for however long it lasts into the future, until you decide to change it again! Whilst I would most love to be decorating my very own flat/house, I'm content for now to be helping Stephen out.

As I said, I'm currently in the lounge... very much enjoying my new laptop with the cool wireless technology. I've got this and my old desktop linked so that I can access everything from both... and I was even able to have MSN conversations from the bathroom earlier - whilst I was painting, rather than doing anything else!

It has, as usual, been a big, bad, mad week at work. But, I'm counting down the days, firstly to the end of March (10 working days), when everything changes, and secondly to the 13 April, when I, along with Na and Helen, will be Vegas bound! Can't wait. The high point from this week though was that my manager managed to get some feedback about me out of the big boss. Who, apparently, although I think this makes him certifiable, thinks I'm exceptional, performing astonishingly well, tackling difficult issues which no one has ever taken on before, and he can't think of anything negative at all.

I was quite literally gobsmacked and speechless, which as anyone who reads this knows (as does my manager), is a very rare thing. A pretty good way to end the week though, and a very good boost at a difficult time.

In celebration, I toasted Tim's birthday with a number of these. They are passionfruit beer, from a rather good Belgian bar called the Dovetail in Clerkenwell, which has the biggest range of Belgian beers in London, including the rather amazing passionfruit one in the picture. Had I not been totally knackered from the night before, many many more of those would have been consumed!

And, the final paragraph. My last post was rather emotional... and rather jumbled up and confused. I was also in danger of revealling rather more than would have been sensible about some of my inner most thoughts... and I remain very thankful today that I didn't.

Normal service is resumed.

Take a look at me now

You're the only one....

We've shared the laughter and the pain, we've shared the tears.

There's so much I need to say to you, so many reasons why.

Ahem.

Just spent a fab girly night in... with my male flatmate. Steak and chips and red wine for dinner, finished off with plenty of red wine, Baileys, and season 1 of Cold Feet. It's been emotional. He's split up with his girlfriend, and there was nothing for it but a good girly cure all session. He's gone to bed much happier, which leads me to conclude that girly treatment can work for boys too.

And, above all, it proves that girls are not, contrary to the opinions of some, evil.

Hasta la vista baby... hasta luego amigos

Yum

Managed to escape from work at a reasonable time today, so have just cooked myself this:



Totally yummy. One of my favourite meals ever... and the best thing is that it involves using a glass of wine to flavour the rice, so what's a girl to do but drink the rest!

Obsessive

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, and have been prompted to put it up today by an incident with coasters on a coffee table…

We have laughed for some time about Marty’s obsessive compulsive disorder-esque obsession with having the remote controls neatly lined up on the coffee table… so much so that he once gathered four remotes from completely different places in my lounge and left them lined up on the sofa for me! The portable phone must always be on the stand in their house too (unless it’s in use of course), and today I learnt that the coasters must be in the four corners of the coffee table.

Others have similar obsessions too… Richelle can’t bear the toilet roll being on the wrong way round, or sunlight breaking through curtains in the morning, Steve can’t bear wearing crinkled shirts and must squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom (not to mention the fact that he can’t bear polystyrene and cotton wool) and Rich must have the rug at the bottom of his bed straight…

I think my equivalent oddities are that when I’m reading a book, I always turn over the corner of the page at the mid point, and when I’m at work, I always have to have my bottle of water in exactly the same place on my desk, no matter how cluttered it is.

I think the second one is partly to stop me from knocking it over and ruining all my papers though!

We’re all odd.

Normal

Wellllllll........ after a truly horrendous and amazingly complicated week, this week has at least started off a bit better, and I'm hoping (very much) that it's going to stay that way.

Had a very good weekend doing nothing very interesting, including recovering from a stomach bug which gave me the most delirious dreams ever... like changing the time and stopping the Home Secretary from doing a speech... WHAT?!

Also had some fun on Saturday night (photos on Flickr as usual). But actually, the best thing about the weekend was that I did normal things, like washing, ironing, cleaning, sleeping, going out for a walk... you know, all the kind of stuff you take for granted, at least until you come close to losing your possibly already a bit fragile grip on all the balls in the air, and then the boring stuff becomes the most important stuff in the world, because it's normal. And being normal is good. I realise now that I was probably very close to breaking point last week (well, I was closest at 3.30am on Friday morning when I was convinced that I was never going to feel well again, and that I was also never going to be able to sleep again!), and I'm kind of glad in a way that I had the bug, because it forced me to stop and sort myself out. I just hope things don't get that bad again. I don't think they will, but well, you just can never really tell in this job.

Still, on reflection, I love my job, and I love my life, and everyone and everything in it. And I utterly value my friends and my guiding lights in getting me through and allowing me to be me, offering encouragement, support, comment, constructive critism and praise at the right time. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, thank you all.

Big hug x

Hollow

So, it's a Moeker gig night, and I'm not unleashing a drunken post into cyberspace... something a bit wrong there. I think it must be a combination of a few things: the fact that they were on stage at 8.15, so there was no warm up drinking time; the fact that I'd double booked myself and had to leave straight afterwards; the fact that it's totally completely freezing outside; and the fact that, despite having had both beer and wine, neither appear to have had much of an effect on me.

Talking of the cold, does anyone know whether it's possible for headphones (or possibly (and more expensively) I-Pods) to freeze? Mine was doing seriously odd things on the way home,

I've had a truly horrible day at work dealing with some really shitty issues, and culminating in upsetting a very good friend. I was dealing with the situation to the best of my ability. Today I learnt that sometimes your best just isn't good enough.

But, I did have an excellent weekend in Scotland. Apart from the losing the rugbt and the utterley completely horrendous hangover on Sunday (which was still around yesterday) that is.

A pic, as we've not had one for a while:



And another, of the Scottish drinking gang:



Time for bed.

Words

This very cool website created this (found here - it's a pictorial representation of the words found most often in my blog entries.

Interesting.

I've exhausted my blog inspiration (probably for the rest of the month) on the previous post, so I don't have anything deep and meaningful to add today. My thoughts are dominated by something deep and painful - an ear infection. Sob.

Moments

I've been thinking today about the nature of 'moments' of memory. I think what I mean is best described as those snippets of memory which suddenly come back to you when you're in the middle of something, and they have a persuasive effect of distracting you. They happen to me in meetings, when I'm reading, and of course most often at random (and usually inconvenient) times when I'm supposed to be concentrating at work.

They come in different forms. Sometimes they make me chuckle as I remember a comedy moment (the foam ceiling springs to mind here), or they are touching. Perhaps the most distracting ones are the ones which are fixating. They are often recalling the briefest of moments - possibly the moments which I wanted to last longer, or I think I could have handled differently... or I wonder 'what would have happened next if...?'. Those times where there is perhaps just a millisecond of something, and it leaves you wondering what it means.

No point wondering 'what if' though eh. Sometimes I have to remind myself that there will be a lot more 'moments' to be created and then recalled, and they all add to the catalogue. Of course there are some which would be best forgotten, either because they are cringeworthy, embarrassing, or just really don't deserve to be recalled. And of course, these are the ones which come back to haunt me at the most inappropriate times... but I can usually block them out. It's the 'brief moment' ones which stay around... sometimes the tiniest snippets of recollection play on my mind the most. I find myself rehearsing them over and over.

Sometimes I wish I had a thought stick or a dream collector which works on day time thoughts (I'm thinking BFG by Roald Dahl here). I could just get rid of them... or find somewhere to store them until I want to reflect - or until things have changed so much that they paint a different part of the story.

Anyhow, on that note, I'm in five-hours-sleep-a-night-mode at the moment, so tis time for bed. I am trying to make the most of the few hours, and reading for a bit before I go to bed to calm my mind for some serious sleeping. Driving to work does make things much better though - and the sense of victory I feel when arriving at work at 6.59 and therefore avoiding the congestion charge is disproportionately good.

There should be pictures of the car, but as it rained for most of the weekend, there aren't any. In fact, there's been an absence of pictures of late. Must rectify that in Scotland this week - although I fear the quality won't be that high!

Oh yes

The car is all mine. And it's very cool and very fast.

And now I have more beer.

Oh yes.

Skunk

So. Today I'm not so sober. A rather nice few beers after work has much improved my mood, especially as they were with good company (although I'm never with bad company really!) in a very nice quiet setting where we had table service and were really able to chill out. It's been a hard week that's for sure, and I'm very much looking forward to having a good weekend (including getting the new car of course!)

I did have one of those 'I love living in London' moments on the way home, when I saw my building all lit up and being used for an event, which has also helped to improve my mood. And now Sliding Doors, which is a fab movie (which in my usual style I've seen loads and loads of times) is on the tv, so that helps too.

I think actually that if I redistributed my film watching I'd have watched a lot more - I've watched a few films a lot of times, rather than a lot of films. Still, it's film night at No 28 tomorrow, so that will add some new ones to my list. And they will be accompanied by pie, rice pudding and beer. Sounds like a good way to spend a Saturday night to me.

Eek

Well. The balls are still falling, but at least I haven't tripped over any yet and had a disaster. I've learnt recently that the best approach to my work is to be solution focused (which is interesting given that I have had some interesting theories on being solution focused in personal situations in the past - some of you know what I mean!) - but at the moment I just can't see the solution. It's not even as if we've identified the solution but just can't reach it - we simply can't think of it!

Anyway, I had a happy moment today when I realised (albeit slightly inappropriately in the middle of a meeting!) that it was 5pm and still light - that means the days are getting longer and summer is getting closer, which is a very good thing.

Balls

I'm dropping some. At work, that is. Usually I can just about keep them all in the air, but they are all falling down around me...

and usually I can cope ok with the stress, but today I had a weird panic attack type thingy - and had to take myself off somewhere quiet to calm down. My boss calls it mid-term-itis. Trouble is, I've only just got over the beginning of term-itis, and then it'll be the end of term-itis... but then at least it will be time for Vegas and some proper real life relaxation.

But hey, I'm ok - I always am.

Mine. Mine. Mine

It's mine. Well, at least it will be once I've collected it on Saturday, and providing that everything doesn't go completely wrong in the meantime that is!

My blogging inspiration is running low again at the moment, have hit a difficult time at work again and that's kind of absorbing me at the moment. More once I have some booze no doubt!

Maybe Cooper S...

Most of my weekend has been dominated by thinking about buying a new car... and I've much umming, ahhing, deliberating, advice taking and calculating, I have concluded that, subject to a successful chat to the dealer tomorrow, by Saturday I should be the proud owner of this:



Shiny.

P. B. 4

Moeker gig tonight. And we know what that means... oh yes indeedy, I'm drunk.

There's been a history on this blog of drunk post-Moeker gig postings, and I thought, what the hell, might as well keep up the tradition. I worked out today that I've not missed a London Moeker gig since November 2004, (the only one I've missed was the Horn in St Albans in August last year, and that was because I was in Jersey), and as I now have a signed copy of the album, I think that might just make me a dedicated follower. Oh dear. I think only Steve B has a better attendance record than me, and that's only because he made the Horn gig when I didn't.

We had great renditions of Walking in Circles, Transmission and Third, but felt slightly cheated by the lack of Unlucky AND Breaking You.

So, Moeker, next time, you're dedicated followers are putting in a plea for at least one or the other, but preferably both. Thanks muchly.

WFH

Today I've been attempting to work from home, to have a bit of peace and to get stuck in to some work without having to travel in, because the big boss is away, and because I need some quiet time.

I did pretty much stock up on that yesterday though, as I spent most of the day in bed, and didn't get out of my pj's all day! Very much enjoyed Sally's birthday do on Saturday night (of which more here and here and pictures here). A good time was had by all, and Sally particularly liked the cream. Hee hee.

Can't believe we're in February already! I also can't believe that I now have four weddings this year (April, July, August and September). Who's going to get married in May and in June so that I can have one a month all summer... eh, come on...?!

Run out

I've run out of blog inspiration, again!

It must be the lack of booze I think.

A pic though, from a walk around Docklands at the weekend:



and more inspired blogging to follow soon, promise!

Yeehaa... I'm back.

Two bottles of wine and a packet of crisps.

And yes, it's Monday.

And yes, I'm going to have a hangover tomorrow.

And yes, I did just fall asleep on the DLR and had to change at Cutty Sark to get back on the right side of the river.

But still, I had Moeker to accompany me home, so what more could a girl want....