Bathroom fitting epidemic

Everywhere I go at the moment someone is sure to say ‘I’m redoing the bathroom at the moment’ or, as a variation on the theme, there are a few people redoing their kitchens. It’s right across the board, both friends and colleagues. It’s getting to the point where I can occasionally make intelligent sounding comments about them, which is a little worrying.

So, is it me? Am I somehow subtly affecting the people around me and making them want to redo their bathrooms?

And if that’s the case, is there any way that I can change this effect into something of more practical use to me. Instead or ‘redo bathroom’ it could be ‘give Mary chocolate’ or perhaps ‘give Mary a hug’ or even more useful ‘stop Mary volunteering for things’. Although I've been trying to talk myself into that last one for years - it never quite seems to happen...

It's 4 New bathrooms & 2 new kitchens at last count.

Office phones.

I have two phones on my desk. One is white. One is grey.

The grey one is a fancy new IP phone. The old white one is not.

Last week the white phone worked for everything I need a phone to do and the grey one did not.
Today the grey phone works, and the white one does not.

They both have different phone numbers. The number that people call me on is the one that doesn’t work.

I’ve tried calling IT about it, but I can’t call them from either phone.

My Old School

I was lucky enough to go to a very good state school - The Holt School, Wokingham. As with any school it had it's problems (Through winter, it was quite standard to heat the science labs by lighting all the bunsen burners that we could find), but I came out of 7 years there with some pretty good (if I do say so myself) qualifications, which set me up for Uni and my following career.

So I find it horrible to look at an article in the news today about the state of the school now. A lot of girls study there, and academically it's still a good school.

How on earth can any council allow it's buildings to get into such a state? Buildings, no buildings, should be allowed to get to this state of disrepair. It's a waste of money for one thing.

The scary thing is that this is a prosperous part of the country - what are schools elsewhere looking like? Surely there are people who can see the cost and social benefit of looking after the assets they have? Or do we really live in such a short sighted political climate the only short term budgets and projects can be considered?

Pictures of the school.

I'm peeved, both professionally as an engineer and personally as an old girl.

Blackboard paint

I found this link on Boingboing.net

Blackboard paint. I could have so much fun with that.

Imagine the scene. I've just got home and there are a million things that I should be doing, but I can't remember what they all are, but joy of joys - they're all listed on the blackboard paint :-) I can lose pieces of paper, but I'd have to be really unlucky to lose an entire kitchen cupboard :-)

And it'd bring a whole new level of excitement to parties - everything ends up in the kitchen anyway and you could have a fantastic work of art by the time everyone else goes home :-)

All I need now is a house of my own so that I can do it (I'm assuming that most landlords might have issues with it). Now there's the first time I've found an incentive for trying to get on the property ladder (reasons not to buy my own place include finances, and not wanting to live on my own as I need someone to get rid of spiders for me).

Which Harry Potter Character Are You?

You are Hagrid. You're an outcast with a heart of gold. Despite your own problems, you always find time to help those in need.

link

32.

I’ve just written a list of ‘urgent’ things that I haven’t done. There are 32 things on the list.

So, if I’m meant to have called you, sent you something, emailed you something, organised something, given you something, written up something, sorted out something, detailed my opinion on something, RSVP’d to something or just haven’t spoken to you in a while please accept my apologies.

I’m not quite sure how it all got this far out of hand.

Oops.

I'm tempted to leave it until there are 42 items for HHGTTG reasons, but that seems a bit of a self destructive attitude.

I'd like to apologise to my colleagues in the Red Cross...

...but let's be honest, you really shouldn't have let me stand on a step ladder with a bucket of water. It was always going to be asking for trouble. The Vehicle is now clean, although it needs polishing, and a white touch up stick (anyone got a faded white, mercedes benz touch up stick?). We even did the inside.

I also washed my jeans and J. and B. ended up with a fair amount of water all over them too.

Apparently I'm going to get cold in my kidneys too where my t-shirt didn't meet my jeans. If I do I suspect it'll be mostly to do with S. poking me in the back with a mop...

So tonight we decided to wash the First Aid Vehicle. The mould growing along the side really wasn't giving us a very professional image. Anyone who saw us actually washing it won't have seen a very professional image either.

However, the season is upon us - so anyone who sees us out an about will, as ever, ask us how much we get paid and where the toilets are. People are always suprised that we're volunteers as they can't understand why anyone would spend 10 hours at a time sitting in a field with an ambulance. It's a fair call. We don't know either. But at least this year we won't have a mouldy vehicle.

Tired.

For over a week now I’ve been tired. Sleepy tired – you know that feeling when you’ve just woken up and could just drop straight back off again? That kind of tired, except almost all the time. But sleeping doesn’t seem to help.

Given that I spend my life being tired you’d think I’d have got the hang of it now.

It’s probably a lot to do with getting bored at work and doing too much and not getting enough exercise – all the normal culprits.

So basically, I'm feeling sorry for myself. How attractive :-s

Ho hum.

The end is nigh

You know it’s been an ‘interesting’ work period when you take a complicated set of drawings to a colleague for him to action, say ‘they’re ready to go’ and he looks you straight in the eye, shakes your hand and says ‘Congratualtions’.

He’s as glad to see the back of them as I am, although I’ll be surprised if they don’t return with comments from the contractors about something I’ve overlooked.

It’s one of the great things about my job – you never know what problem you’re going to be faced with next, and there’s never an off the shelf answer. However, with this set of drawings there have been lots and lots of options that don’t really quite work. Most of which I developed at some point in the last few weeks.

Now we just have to see if they can build the thing.

It’s the last big bit of work on the project. Two years on this, and we’re almost done. It feels a bit like bereavement. I wonder what they’ll do with me next – The electrical engineer told me yesterday that I’m ‘going places’. I think I’d upset him .

Sitting in the sun.

Surely that’s got to hurt? It's hot and massive.

I spent much of the weekend doing it anyway.