Christmas!

Christmas; A time for renewal, rebirth and celebrating the way in which God enters our lives in the least threatening ways that he can, as a baby. Once he's in there he starts turning everything side down. In his ministry he waited 30 odd years. He's started early on me - I'm only 25.

It's sometimes difficult to picture God as the helpless baby who just needs to be loved and cherished. All to often he's the man I want answers from. Generally not the answers that he gives me though. Ho hum. Such is life.

This week has been great. I've chatted to people, slept and generally unwound. Maybe that's why today has been so hard. Visiting elderly Grandparents is difficult; I know that people get old but it's still hard to watch. It was hard with Great-Grandma and I remember thinking then that it was a scene I was going to have to watch over and over again. One day it'll be my parents. That's something I've got years and years to try and prepare myself for.

It seems to me that it's all connected to Christmas but I can't quite work out how. Maybe the way in which they need to be protected and loved until God's timing is complete.

And now on a less serious level; Alice claims she's getting here tomorrow by 4. It's here in writing as evidence. Mainly because I don't believe a word of it... :-)

BLUE!

The world is a very odd place without the colour blue. Everything looks red and green. Most bizarre. You don't realise how much you miss it until it's back.

Our TV feed did odd things last night, meaning we had no blue colour. Watching 'Strictly Come Dancing' with no blue is a tad random. After all, half the fun is commenting on the dresses...

However what was more weird, and still on the same theme of Blue, is that watching William Hague this morning on Sunday am he sounded sensible and normal. The conservatives seem to be sounding sensible. Not that sensible but more so than in the past. Scary stuff.

Oh deer

So does anyone know how much it costs to replace the front headlight (drivers side) and plastic radiator bit on a polo?

A deer decided to say hello to my car this morning.
It will no longer being saying hello to anyone else.

And I’ll calm down soon too.

Cars, People and smoke.

On Friday I sorted out the tail light on the car. Simple. Open Manual. Yes, that looks pretty simple so I bought a bulb.

Now I want you to imagine something. Imagine me. Sitting in the boot of my car (with legs dangling) holding up the parcel shelf with my head, trying to get the lighting unit out of the slot so that I can replace the bulb. Now imagine that I’m in halfords car park in Selly Oak.

It’s a miracle I wasn’t arrested!

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The rest of the weekend was less eventful. Saw zillions of people and nattered to a few more. It’s nice to get up to Brum once in a while. On the way back down I stopped at Mike/Mic/Michael’s (Can’t remember which spelling to use!) for lunch and we went to the nicest pub and ate really nice pizza. Mmmmmm. If I could remember what’s it called I’d tell you all to go there. Due to the fog I stopped in Oxford as well to break up the journey further and see Alice. She fed me muffins. So by the time I got home I couodn’t be bothered to cook so I had beer. Beer counts as food right?

All in all a really nice, relaxed weekend.

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Followed by the commute from hell this morning. Yes, it’s a big fire. No that’s not smoke from it. So many accidents today; I swear people are looking at clouds wondering if it’s smoke and driving into each other. Grrr.

Well that was fun.

Useful meeting followed by a rather nice meal, some rather expensive red wine (which we discovered this morning not only tastes nice but you don’t get hangovers) and a few beers in the Walkabout afterwards.

As the only woman there I was a little apprehensive about going drinking with 15 men, but it did mean that they could remember my name, if only by process of elimination. "oh you must be Mary…" And to be fair, they did decide not to go into the table dancing club. It was at that point that someone said in surprise "You can be very assertive can’t you". Most of the people who read this blog may well have realised that one already. Although the word commonly used is ‘stubborn’.

For much of the meal the construction end of the team tried to headhunt me for site experience. My lead design engineer was trying to bribe me to stay put. I’ve explained I only take bribery in the form of money, but he did insist on trying by just refilling my glass. Although on the plus side, he did claim that if I found the bonus scheme stuff filled it in and told him who to send it to then he might do it. Trying to decide if I’m really that cheeky. And if such things should be taken as meant after a few too many glasses of wine.

Weird thing about drinking with colleagues. Even at the end of the evening we were comparing drinking beer to the flow control devices we’re going to be using on site. There’s something very wrong about that.

And I wish I could remember how the conversation at kicking out time went that moved from me not wanting another beer, to a closed gate flow control valve to me probably not really being menopausal yet.