This day...

...two years ago was crap.

This day last year was pretty cool.

This day this year was bloody brilliant.

Firstly my Anthony's visor finally arrived (it got lost in the post and bounced back to Monaco)



Then a bit later on Jane came up to me and said "A lady's just walked in who looks exactly like Michaela Strachan, but it can't be her, can it?"

But it was.

And she was lovely.

And we all ended up so totally giggly and star-struck that it's almost unimaginable. (we nearly had to send Richie-Fingers upstairs to have a little lie down).

Then when it was time to go home my very lovely man came and picked me up so I didn't have to walk the mean streets of Wolverhampton with his precious visor.

At home there was a large parcel under the doormat that turned out to be my prize from Lovely Caroline. I won a signed limited edition copy of The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske that I am really really looking forward to reading.

So today was a very very good day and I enjoyed myself very very much.

Thank you universe for lovely friends and lovely people and meeting childhood idols and discovering they're just as lovely as you thought they were.

(apologies for the overuse of the word lovely in this post. But it is lovely and I do love it)

Once again...

...Richie Fingers made me laugh today.

There I am reserving a copy of The Magical Adventures of the Wishing Chair for a customer and vaguely aware that there is a lady waiting behind him.

The lady waiting was holding a gorgeous bouquet of flowers.

Flowers for me.



Flowers with a card...



...and what did Richie say?

"Does your Anthony know that you're getting flowers from a bloke called Nelson?"

When I stopped going scarlet and gasping for air I explained a little.

Then Richie took over the book reservation for me, explaining to the customer "she just got flowers from a F1 driver, yeah."

I have always loved...

...mucking about with spreadsheets. That is until recently.

The changes at work resulted in two redundancies, we lost a full-time position and a part-time one. Another colleague had her hours reduced. She opted to leave and so Don has stayed, although he now only does 16 hours a week rather than full time. The three part timers that we used to have were all working overtime to do full time hours anyway since we are a full time member of management short. These changes mean that we have gone from having 4 full timers to 2 part timers and since we still have that vacancy...it's all a bit of a nightmare.

In order to free up some of Richie's valuable time I volunteered to take over doing the rotas.

I now loathe spreadsheets!

Here are some lovely photographs of what I have gotten myself into.




(sorry about the quality, had to use my phone camera - and they're not worth looking at in detail anyway as THEY MAKE NO SENSE!)

Once we have filled that vacancy the rotas will work well, in fact I have already worked out the base daily rotas. The problem at the moment is that because of the vacancy we can't use the base rotas as it would result in there being nobody there to open the shop...hence all the crossings-out and bizarre extra shifts.

Apart from me now being not so keen on spreadsheets it is also making me want to stay as far away from any type of typing as possible (and putting me behind with my OU work, but that's another (eventual) post).

So many apologies (yet again) for being a crap CRAP blogger.

I will be back with you at some point, probably once I have started sleeping properly rather than lying awake worrying about only having 4 staff on a Saturday.

(and I also spent most of this afternoon being convinced it was Wednesday...)

I have been utterly...

...neglectful in not blogging about the Chinese Grand Prix sooner. This is partly due to the fact that Anthony has been here every evening (and distracting me) and partly due to the fact that I'm having a bitch of a time at work at the moment (and unable to vent/blog about why).

Anyhoo.

So on Saturday morning I got to watch Sebastian Vettel sticking his Red Bull on pole and being rather happy about it. Then I went to work and had a rather better day than usual due to the God that is RichieFingers and the comic talents of Donal, our resident Irishman.

Sunday morning I got myself up to watch all the pre-race chatter and saw something come up on the screen that I wasn't sure if I'd seen correctly. Nothing about it popped up on Twitter, and although Martin Brundle mentioned it in his grid interview of Vettel, Sebastian didn't expand that much on it and they didn't repeat the shot.

Then after the race I found this on the red bullog.



I did see it. I wasn't imagining it.

Sebastian Vettel has a sticker reading "Kate's Dirty Sister" stuck inside his cockpit, just above the steering wheel.

But who, or what, was Kate? And why exactly was his car named after her sister? Her dirty sister...

The man himself explained later:

"Like a ship, a car should be named after a girl as it’s sexy.

My original car was called Kate. But then it got smashed at the opening race in Australia. So we called this one Kate’s Dirty Sister because it is more aggressive and faster"

So there we have it. I got smashed in Australia...and Emily has won a Grand Prix. I'm so proud of her.

Kate's Dirty Sister Google Search.

This week I was supposed to have...

...four days at work before then having nine days off.

Then I got a letter from the hospital informing me that my appointment time had been changed AGAIN!

So I phoned them up and ranted a bit (and cried quite a lot) and the end result was that I could either take the new appointment time or wait until July for a new one.

So I then had long confabs with Anthony and with RichieFingers (who is a Rota God, seriously) and the end result is that Anthony and I will be at the hospital for our appointment time of 10.55.

I am stupidly scared and nervous. Although I know that it is very unlikely, my mind is already running through all of the worst-case scenarios that it can think of. The stupid thing is, even if one of them happens it won't have prepared me for it.

But we are prepared.

Anthony has Series 6 of Pokemon, I have Ashes to Ashes, Numb3rs, CSI:NY and Eleventh Hour (which I haven't seen any of yet, but it's got Rufus Sewell in it!) on the V+ box. Of course, we both have WoW for when the other one is watching TV.

I also have this:


It was in the Thornton's sale for £10 (from £30) and I couldn't just leave it sitting there...

Update: Home now. Got to see consultant a mere hour and 15 minutes after appointment time. Then she made me cry when she demanded to know why I wasn't currently taking folic acid.
Her - "But if you're trying to get pregnant you need to be taking it."
Me - "I'm not trying bloody anything til I know what went wrong last time, and that's what this appointment is for!"

The blood tests were all fine, the chromosome tests were also all fine. The only one that was slightly iffy was the blood protein one and so off I trooped to have some blood taken.

So basically, no idea what went wrong. But at the same time it's not a case of "give up, there's no chance".

Now I am going for chocolate egg and beer (the sun's past the yardarm) and since it's sunny I shall probably sit in the garden too.

Snowy morning...

...walk to work.



The Work Walk Set

I do apologise for that shot of RichieFingers...I hope no one was eating when they looked at it. ;-p

Yesterday was supposed to be...

...Blue Monday.

(At least it was according to some strange formula which made the news full of it)

The most depressing day of the year.

It could very easily have been.

It was the day before my payday - which used to mean 19p toast for lunch (except that the Tesco Value sliced loaf has rocketed up to 40p since I last bought it) - but as we had thought ahead I had lovely galettes filled with cheese and ham instead.

The shop was very very quiet - which could have meant us all worrying about our jobs - but instead we wrote reviews, pulled returns and made suggestions for Richie Fingers' display of adult picture books (sick puppies, this kind of book, not that kind of book).

I got incredibly broody over an adorable little girl - which could have ruined my whole afternoon - but instead I thought that although I don't have that right now, I will in the future and so it's something to look forward to, like a holiday is.

Oh yeah, did I mention? I'M GOING TO MONZA!!!!!

*ahem*

Today is also going to be a very good day.

I have just slathered Marilyn all over my hair so that it currently smells gorgeous, and in 5 minutes it will look gorgeous too (once dried anyway).

I have two houses to go and view just up the road. I still want to move and even if they're no good I like looking at houses.

I plan to do some nesting things and some bookish things and with any luck Keris might have Joe while I'm at home to read the updates! (although not looking promising so far)

I've gone online to do all my banking and remembered that I don't have to pay any Council Tax this month! That makes me £71 richer than I thought I was. I'm going to be good too and not just go straight to Etsy with it...I shall pay off my book club instead.

And Nie is posting again.

Life is good.

In the last two weeks...

...there has been a fair bit of singing at work.

Every now and again a little snatch of a tune will escape from Richie Fingers and then he'll go "Kate, what's the next line?!?"

It's all about Flanders & Swann. Now raise your hand if you've ever heard of them (not you Emily...we know you have).

The song below is not one of the ones we have been singing, but it's the one you're most likely to recognise.



The one we have mostly been singing is this one, but unfortunately this video is all stop/start on my PC, hope it works for you!