It seems like ages ago since I last updated, but yes, we did have a white Easter in the end. In the last 3 weeks, we’ve visted the restaurant where my Mum works (The Townhouse) 3 times! It was recently taken under new management, and it has improved a lot since then. They do a nice roast dinner on Sundays, and last Thursday evening we went to the Curry and Quiz night, which was fun. The questions were quite difficult though (they were mainly about celebrities and old films from many years ago), so we only got 26 out of 60. The last round was a “wipeout” round, whereby if you get even just one question wrong, you will get zero for the whole round. So if you’re not absolutely sure of an answer, it is best to leave it blank. This wipeout round caught us out, as we thought we knew the answer to a question, but it turned out to be wrong, wiping out our entire score! It was still a good night though and I liked the curry - I had a nice chicken korma. We plan to go again this week.
I’ve met my friend Naomi twice in the last week or so. We met up during my lunch-hour and we went for a meal at KFC in the local mall. It was quite busy and we had to queue for a while and by the time I finished my main meal, I realised there wouldn’t be enough time for me to queue up again for a ice cream. So we decided to go to the Walls ice cream parlour downstairs instead. I had a chocolate ice cream which came in a huge cup! I couldn’t eat it all by the time I had to go back to work, so I ended up having to take it into the office with me! I was a bit nervous that the security guard might not let me in, but no-one said anything about it. So I sat at my desk eating it, and as I was trying to do my work at the same time, it took me nearly 20 minutes to finish it!
Work is going well at the moment - I was recently moved into a new Process Improvement Taskforce, where I’m responsible for speeding up and improving existing reports using macros and VBA in Microsoft Access and Excel. I’ll also be learning new programming languages such as SAS.
When I logged in to write this blog, I noticed that Wordpress 2.5 is now available. From what I’ve heard about it, it sounds good. I’ll have to try it out in the next couple of days or so.
So, we didn’t get a white Christmas, but it looks like we could well get a white Easter - the weather forecast says there will probably be heavy snow tonight.
Yesterday I had my belated birthday party. Three of my best friends came along. We started off by having a meal in the Castle Cavery, which serves roast carveries every day, not just on Sundays. I chose the roast turkey and stuffing. It was the first time I’d ever been there, and it was really good. Afterwards we went on to play ten pin bowling - unfortunately the main bowling alley in the city has been closed for several months due to structural problems, so we had to go to the old one on the edge of the city instead. We still had a good time though.
Not much else has happened recently, which is why I haven’t blogged for what seems like ages. On Thursday evening last week, I went with Mum for a meal at the Waffle House. It’s quite a small, cosy restaurant which specialises in savoury and sweet Belgian waffles. For my main course I had a bolognese waffle and for dessert I had a pecan nut waffle.
Something very strange happened last night. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling very startled, although at the time I wasn’t sure why. I just had this uncontrollable urge to leap out of my bed at the speed of lightning and to get out of my bedroom. I started rattling my bedroom door, as if I was trying to escape but because I was still half asleep I felt disorientated so I didn’t remember that my door was closed completely. After pushing the door for a few seconds, I suddenly felt more alert and I thought to myself, “What on earth am I doing standing here rattling my bedroom door even though it’s closed? What am I trying to escape from? Why am I even awake when it’s still pitch black outside?”. I glanced around my bedroom and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. My panicky feeling started to die down, and I assumed that I had just had a bad nightmare but I couldn’t remember what it was. I got back into bed, and I noticed my alarm clock said it was 12:58 am. So I had been asleep for 2 and a half hours, maximum. I eventually managed to get back to sleep again.
In the morning, when I went downstairs to have my breakfast, Mum and Terry said to me, “Did you feel the earthquake last night?” I thought to myself, “An earthquake, are you kidding me?!” You see, we very rarely have earthquakes here in the UK, and even when we do, they are usually very mild and confined to a particular town or county. There has never been an earthquake in my area during my lifetime. Until now, that is. I then looked at the newspaper and saw that it was true - there had been an earthquake, and it happened just before 1am. It was also the main story on the TV news.
So that explains why I woke up feeling startled. I must have heard and felt the tremor in my sub-conscious while I was still sleeping and it must have frightened me so much that I felt an urge to get out of my bedroom. By the time I had woken up properly, the shaking had stopped. However, now that I’m thinking about it, some of the memories from my sub-conscious are coming to the fore - now I can vaguely remember hearing a loud rumbling noise, and the doors and windows rattling.
The earthquake had a magnitude of 5.2 on the Richter scale, and it is apparently the largest shock to hit the UK for 25 years. As I’m 24 years old, this means I can say this is the first major earthquake of my lifetime. Also, it didn’t just affect our area, it affected pretty much the whole of England and Wales, although the epicentre was a town called Market Rasen in Lincolnshire which isn’t too far away from here. Here is one of the news reports:
I’ve also been searching on YouTube to see if anyone has got any live footage of the earthquake actually taking place. Unfortunately, this has been quite hard to come by, and of the few home-videos I have found, most of them appear to be fake or staged. I was thinking that surely someone somewhere must have genuine footage of it, even if it’s just a CCTV camera from a 24-hour shop. However, this is the most realistic video I have found. It’s not brilliant, but it’s apparently CCTV footage from a shop in Lincolnshire (ie very close to the epicentre).
As you can probably tell from the amount I’ve just typed about this, I’m fascinated by earthquakes and other natural phenomena!
I do remember a time when I was about 12 or 13 and I was in a geography lesson at high school. The teacher left the room for a couple of minutes to go and fetch something, and all of a sudden the floor started vibrating and I could hear a faint rumbling noise. It stopped for a few seconds and then it started up again. Nobody was sure what it was. I assumed it was an earthquake, but then I overheard someone asking one of their friends (who was in a class in another part of the school at the time) whether they had felt anything. They said no. It seemed to be just the geography classroom that was affected, and there was certainly nothing about it in the news. To this very day, I still don’t know what caused that vibrating sensation. One of my theories was that maybe it was workmen doing some work on the school building, but from what I could see, there were no workmen on the school site that day. However, if I remember correctly, the geography classroom was directly above a science lab. Maybe some people in the science lab were doing some kind of weird experiment which caused the vibrating sensation? I’ll probably never find out.
Now onto non-earthquake related stuff - on Saturday evening last weekend I was invited to the wedding reception of one of Mum’s co-workers. It was held in Drayton and they had really nice food and a disco. I had a really good time. You should have seen the selection of cakes and buns that they had - I had to check that I wasn’t dreaming! (I have a very sweet tooth).
Then on Sunday we went to Raveningham Gardens for a snowdrop and daffodil walk. It was very pretty, and in my opinion much more interesting than the walk through Felbrigg woods we did a couple of weeks earlier.
This coming Sunday will be Mother’s Day. I’ll buy my Mum her favourite Amy Winehouse CD (it’s OK, she doesn’t read this blog anyway), and then I’ll take Mum and Terry out for a meal at our favourite restaurant - Malaysian Delights.
Yesterday (15th February) was my 24th birthday. I booked the day off work and had a quiet morning/afternoon at home. In the evening, I went to Zaks restaurant with Mum and Terry for my birthday meal. I had half a fried chicken with fries, coleslaw and sweetcorn. The chicken was massive! I managed to eat quite a bit of it though, and it was a nice meal. For dessert I had a “Mint Mountain” ice cream sundae, which was good. I also noticed on the menu that they had maple-flavoured milkshakes, so I decided to try one of those, too. I’ve often had maple syrup on pancakes, but I’d never had a maple milkshake before, so I thought it would be nice to try one. However, it was really sweet and sickly and I already felt quite full from the main course and dessert, so I ended up leaving most of it. I had the feeling that if I’d have tried to drink all of the milkshake, I would’ve been sick. Overall, it was really good. But in future, I’d stick to vanilla, chocolate or fruit-flavoured milkshakes.
This year, most people gave me money or cheques for my birthday, as they weren’t really sure what to get me. (I am quite difficult to choose presents for). Today, I went into the city to spend my money on several CDs and DVDs. They should keep me busy for a while!!
As the weather is starting to get better now, we have begun going out more at the weekends. Last Saturday we went to the cinema to see the film Juno. I really liked the film, but annoyingly the fire alarm went off part way through, so we all had to stand outside for an hour until we were told we could go back in. The entire mall had to be evacuated and not just the cinema. It turned out to be a false alarm, and we didn’t miss any of the film as they started it from the same point where we had left off.
Then on Sunday we went for a walk round the woods and grounds at Felbrigg Hall. It was nice to get some fresh air, but there wasn’t much colour as hardly any of the flowers were out yet and most of the trees were still bare. I still took some photos though, and I’ll upload them to my Flickr account shortly.
Work has been going well - my first online report finally went live on Friday a week ago. There were a couple of issues with it, but luckily we managed to resolve them on the same day. My second report is currently in test, so hopefully it will also go live very shortly. A week ago on Thursday, I had my second CII Certificate in Insurance exam. I passed with a score of 92% (pass rate 70%) so I’m really pleased about that. I’ve got one more exam to do in May or June, and if I pass that the course will be complete and I will get the certificate.
My new job is going well so far. Now that I’m more used to the software, I’m getting through the development work more quickly than I could last year. This new team that I’m part of may even become a permanent team in the future. I’m settling in OK. Last Wednesday I went out for an introductory lunch with the team, which was good.
A week ago I bought a DVD recorder. You may remember I mentioned in a previous post that my old DVD player had broken down. I decided that this time, I may as well buy one which can record as well as play discs. The good thing is that the one I bought has even got a hard disk drive built into it, and it’s also got the facililty to pause and rewind live TV!
Other than work-related stuff, I’ve had quite a quiet time recently. I’m already starting to think about what to do for my 24th birthday party in February. Sadly, it seems likely that only one or two of my friends will be able to make it this year. One of them is currently at university away from home (she is in her first year), so she probably won’t come back until Easter. She is about 150 miles away so it’s pretty certain she won’t be able to make it. I will probably end up asking my nieces to come along, as it would be boring to play ten pin bowling with only 2 or 3 people.
Last week at work I had some good news. I’ve been selected to join a brand new team (still within my current department) to help put some of our reports on the company intranet. One person from each team within the department was chosen, and I was picked because I already have experience of using the Microsoft Reporting Services software, and my managers know that I enjoy technical work. It is a temporary secondment, and will last until at least the end of September, or possibly December if necessary. I actually start the new job tomorrow. This meant that last week was ever so busy, as I had to write training manuals for my current work so that I could hand it all over to one of my co-workers. He will be responsible for all my work whilst I’m on secondment. I had to do this on top of all my regular deliverables, and as this is the busiest time of the month anyway, it was a big challenge. I’m looking forward to starting the new job tomorrow.
Over the last few days I’ve been to the cinema a couple of times; firstly to see I Am Legend, and then St Trinian’s. I Am Legend was creepy but it was still quite good. St Trinian’s was funny although it was a bit over the top in parts.
I haven’t really got much else to say at the moment, but I’ll post later in the week about how my new job is going.
So, it’s time to do my review of the year again. 2007 has been a mixed bag really, although there were more positive events than negative ones. At the moment, I’m not really sure whether I preferred 2007 to 2006. It’s strange: at the end of 2006, I thought that it had been quite a difficult year, but now that I look back on 2006 from a distance, and the problems I had during that year are fully resolved, it doesn’t seem so bad after all. I guess that as time goes by, you become more able to put things that happened in the past into perspective.
One of the most positive aspects of 2007 was that I moved forward in my career and I finally achieved my goal of becoming a Lead Adviser, which is something I couldn’t do in 2006 due to a prolonged re-structure and promotion-freeze. In 2007 I also had a couple of nice holidays, visited several new places and took up hobbies such as cookery.
The worst aspect of 2007 was maintaining contact with my friends and former co-workers. When the re-structure happened in February/March, I was split up from all of my co-workers, many of whom I had got to know quite well in the preceding months. As for my friends I have known since high-school, I have found it harder to keep in touch with Naomi as she often works evening/weekend shifts in her catering job, meaning that I can’t see her as frequently as I used to in the past. There was no sign of my other friend Kay, in fact neither Naomi nor I saw her at all during 2007; I haven’t seen her since July 2006. Funnily enough, it seems that not even her own mother has seen her for quite a while, although it she says Kay is safe. It is as if she has cut herself off from everyone. However I always maintain hope that she will come back to us one day. Sometimes I even dream about the old days and seeing her again.
The highlights of 2007, as they happened:
From mid-December 2006 to late March 2007, I undertook a secondment to the IT user-acceptance testing (UAT) team at work, working as a Test Analyst. I was involved in testing a major new IT system and I really enjoyed it. It was more technical than my previous job, and it enabled me a brief reprieve from the re-structure problems of my old team, as well as being a higher-level job. In this job, I felt more at ease and happier in myself. When the secondment ended on March 26th, I was sad to leave, but I had no choice. However, I learnt quite a bit about the principles of user acceptance testing, and I’d be very happy to do a role like that again should I ever need to look for another job in the future.
In January I heard the news my Dad and Stepmum have had their new baby girl and that they had named her Layla. In the same month I bought my new computer, a Packard Bell iXtreme 2969, which I’m very pleased with.
In February it was my 23rd birthday, and as I had to work that day (IT project teams are quite strict about when people can take time off), I brought some cakes into work for everyone to share. I had an evening out with my friends to celebrate - we went to the Townhouse restaurant for a meal and then went ten-pin bowling. It was fun, although unfortunately only 2 of my friends could make it (Naomi and Sarah). My main birthday present was a couple of Software Testing books to help me with my Test Analyst secondment.
It was also in February that we discovered a really good buffet restaurant called Malaysian Delights. We liked it so much, that ever since February we have been going there about once a month, usually on a Saturday evening.
In March I had my holiday to Thailand to visit my Dad and step-family. I went with my Aunt and Uncle. It was really good as I got to see my Dad’s house and also my baby sister Layla for the first time. Towards the end of March I began a new permanent job as a Reporting Analyst, following the re-structure in my old department and the end of my Test Analyst secondent.
There were lots of good films on at the cinema in 2007, especially during the first half of the year. My favourite films of the year were Night At The Museum, Flushed Away, Mr Bean’s Holiday and Ratatouille. Throughout Spring and Summer we went for several walks in the countryside, and I took photos to add to my Flickr page.
In May we had a big party round our house to celebrate Terry’s birthday. We didn’t have our traditional “big feast” on New Year’s Day of 2007 because a couple of relatives were working and wouldn’t have been able to make it. So we decided to have our big feast on Terry’s birthday instead, when everyone was able to attend. It was a really good day.
In June I started doing home-baking, for the first time since I left high school several years ago. Every few weeks I made a different type of cake or bun. It’s a nice hobby, so I’m glad I’ve taken it up again. In the same month I also enrolled on the CII Certificate in Insurance course at work - to get the qualification I have to study 3 modules over 12 months, so I should hopefully have passed by June 2008.
In July I had my mid-year appraisal at work (my first appraisal since I had started my Reporting Analyst job) and I was pleased as I received positive feedback from everyone with whom I had worked. The only negative feedback was that I should try to be more vocal when dealing with people (it seems inevitable that this comes up in my reviews, as I’m naturally a quiet person. However, I do tend to liven up a bit once I’ve been working with people for a while. It just takes me a while to really get to know people.) I’ve enjoyed this job so far, and during the second half of 2007 I learnt to build reports in Microsoft Reporting Services.
In August it was my Mum’s birthday, so Suzanne organised a surprise barbecue round her house, to which the whole family was invited. For the last two weeks of August, we had our holiday in the Yorkshire Dales. We were staying in a cottage just outside a small town called Hawes. The scenery was spectacular.
At the end of September I took the exam for the first module of my CII course. I
achieved a score of 96% which I was really pleased with. I’m currently studying the second module, and I hope to take the exam for that in February.
Towards the end of October, I was walking home from work one Friday evening when suddenly I heard a voice call out “Victoria!” The voice called again, and then I realised it sounded like my Dad’s voice. I thought to myself, “It can’t be!” (My Dad, Stepmum and family have lived in Thailand since April 2006). But I turned round, and there stood my Dad! I was so surprised to see him. He said he decided to come back for a couple of weeks to visit all his family and friends. I met up with him several times over the next few days.
In November we went to a local firework display to celebrate Bonfire Night, although it was a bit of a disaster because the website listed the wrong starting time, so we arrived too late. The gates were already closed so we just had to stand and watch the fireworks from the road, which wasn’t as good as we were a bit too far away and obviously there was no real atmosphere. Also in November, I went to a Calvin Harris concert with my sister Suzanne, niece Anya and a few of her friends. It was really good.
December saw Christmas and the 2 parties with my work colleagues (one with my immediate team and one with the wider department). Also in mid-December we moved to our newly refurbished city-centre offices, which are much better than the the old offices in which we were temporarily based whilst the refurbishent was ongoing. My main present for Christmas was an LCD TV with Freeview, and I had time off work to spend time with my relatives.
The lowlights of 2007:
In late February, the outcome of the re-structure on my old team at work was finally announced. The number of staff at my level was cut from 5 to just 1 and all 5 of us had to fill in an application form so that the senior managers could decide which one of us they wanted to keep. The other 4 people would have to either move to another team or else leave the company completely (be made redundant). I was very anxious at the time; I knew it was unlikely that I would be chosen as the one person to stay, as I was one of the most junior members of the team. Most of the others had worked there for several years and thus had more experience. I tried not to spend too much time worrying though, and I drew up an action plan to apply for other jobs within the company. It turned out that I wasn’t the person chosen to stay in the team, but as I mentioned in my “highlights of 2007″ section above, I successfully found a new internal job as a Reporting Analyst.
Although I really enjoy my new job, throughout the year I have really missed my old co-workers. I don’t get to see them very often now that I’m in a completely different department. Furthermore, for a large part of 2007 my new department was temporarily located in an office on the edge of the city, whilst the inner-city offices were being refurbished. This meant that I couldn’t even see my old co-workers at lunch times, as they were still in the city centre (in different buildings) and it would have taken too long to walk there and back. I also felt quite cut-off from the rest of the company, and the office on the edge of the city wasn’t in a very nice area. I particularly didn’t like having to walk down the dark, secluded streets in the winter when it began to get dark early. Fortunately, we moved to our newly-refurbished city-centre offices in mid-December.
Also in February, this site got hacked into, and I had to spend 3 hours putting everything right, as all the index files for all the directories had been deleted. Fortunately I had back-ups of the most important files, although I did use this as an opportunity to get rid of parts of the site which weren’t used very often - for example I deleted my message board and several old PHP scripts which I had written a few years earlier. Then in March my webhost closed down without any warning. To make it worse, it happened whilst I was on holiday so I couldn’t do anything about it. This meant my site was offline for several weeks until I could arrange hosting with a different company.
In May I had an embarrassing situation as I hadn’t switched my mobile phone on for a couple of days (I keep it switched off at work during the day, and sometimes I forget to switch it on again in the evenings). One evening when I switched my phone on, there was a text message from my best friend Naomi, inviting me round her house to celebrate her birthday. I’d missed it by a day! I felt really bad that I had forgotten her birthday.
So I sent Naomi a message back apologising for my non-attendance at the meal. On the following Saturday I went to the shop and bought her a present (a big box of really good Swiss chocolates) and belated birthday card and took it round to her house straight away. It was a nice surprise for her, as I didn’t tell her I would be bringing a present round. Fortunately she was very forgiving and thanked me for the present and card. I’d never forgotten someone’s birthday like that before and hopefully I’ll never do that again!
In October one of the girls in my department found a new job in another department. I wasn’t particularly close to her, as we both worked on different projects, but she always seemed a cheerful, friendly person, so naturally I was sad that she had decided to move on. At the end of her final week, I sent her a message wishing her good luck in her new job and that I hope we will be able to keep in touch. I also asked her how she was getting on in her new job so far, and where she’d learnt the recipes for her leaving cakes, as I really liked them. Sadly, I never had a reply, and I haven’t heard any more from her. We were never really close anyway, but I was hoping that maybe I would be able to get to know her better and that one day we could become friends. Maybe my hopes were unrealistic - after all, if we didn’t manage to become close friends whilst working in the same department, what are the chances of it happening once one of us has moved away? I was disappointed that she didn’t reply to my email, not even to say how she was getting on in her new job, but I guess she just didn’t feel all that close to me so she didn’t want to stay in touch. I had probably mis-interpreted her pleasantries and cheerful smile, thinking it meant she wanted to become friends with me, when in reality she was probably just trying to be polite and amicable with her co-workers.
November was quite an unpleasant month, as I fell ill twice in the space of about 3 weeks with a bad cold and cough. The same happened to Terry too, although my Mum never caught it.
As the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, I remembered my determination to be happier in 2008, and to try not to worry too much about anything. We are now 4 days in to the new year, and it’s been a good so far. On Wednesday (my last free day before returning to work), I went to the cinema with my Mum and nieces to see the film Enchanted. I liked it; it was quite funny too.
Just like last year, I had a fairly quiet Christmas Day - I stayed at home with Mum and Terry for most of the day, where we had our turkey meal. However, after opening our own presents, we all went round my sister Suzanne’s house for about an hour to give out our presents.
My main present this year was an LCD TV for my bedroom. It has Freeview, which means there are about 40 digital channels and numerous radio stations and it is also HD ready. It’s one of the best Christmas presents I’ve ever had. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to get until the actual morning; the plan was either a Nintendo Wii or an LCD TV, so I did have an idea it would be the TV, especially as Nintendo Wiis are in very short supply at the moment so I wasn’t surprised I didn’t get one of those. Anyway, Terry said I would be able to use a TV every day, whereas I probably wouldn’t use a Nintendo Wii quite so often.
My other presents included several CDs, a couple of DVD games (The X Factor and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire), a new nightdress and 2 DVD films - Charlotte’s Web and Pirates of the Caribbean 3. I also got a couple of chocolate selection boxes and some toiletries.
We spent Boxing Day round Suzanne’s house, where we had a big buffet. We also played a few games, including my X Factor DVD game, which was fun. Sadly it doesn’t seem to work on my own DVD player, in fact I think my DVD player has stopped working completely, which is a shame as I’ve only had it for just over a year. I think we will have to make sure the heads are clean, and if that doesn’t fix it, I will have to buy a new one. If I buy a new one, I’ll probably choose one which can record as well as play DVDs.
Tomorrow will be the last day of 2007. It will soon be time for me to write my review of the year. I’m not sure what the plans will be for New Year’s Eve; for the last few years we have always had my nieces round to stay the night, as Suzanne usually goes out, but I’m not yet sure if that will happen again this year. Anyway, on New Year’s Day we will be having our annual “big feast” round our house for all the family. We couldn’t have one on New Year’s Day 2007, as a couple of relatives were working and couldn’t make it, so we held a big feast on Terry’s birthday in May instead. Fortunately, this year everyone can make it, so we’ll be able to have the big feast on New Year’s Day as usual.
Sorry I haven’t updated for several weeks, but I’ve been ever so busy recently, going to Christmas parties, buying presents, meeting up with friends/relatives and I’ve also been trying to get all my major projects completed at work before the holidays begin.
Three weeks ago on Friday evening, we went to see the film Ratatouille. I thought it was really funny; it was nearly as good as Flushed Away, which I saw earlier in the year. Then on the Sunday, I went with Mum, Terry and my grandmother to the Malaysian Delights restaurant for a meal in the evening. Even though we have been there several times this year, it was the first time we’d been with my grandmother, and she really liked the food.
On the following Saturday, I went round my friend Naomi’s house. I hadn’t seen her for a long time as she does shift-work which means that when I’m at home in the evenings or weekends, she is often at work. Unfortunately her sister Sarah wasn’t there, as she was away at university at the time (her holidays didn’t start until later in December). We exchanged presents, had a meal of roast chicken and then we watched the film Mr Bean’s Holiday. I had actually seen it before, but because it was so funny I wanted to see it again.
On the Sunday, I baked some chocolate butterfly buns, following a recipe in one of the Sunday newspapers. I’d baked plain ones several weeks earlier, but this was the first time I’d ever made chocolate ones. I really liked them. I hope to cook some more cakes over Christmas.
On Wednesday last week (12th December) I had my Christmas meal with my whole department at work. It was held at The Nelson Hotel, and the food was nice, but it was a very long day. I stayed out until after 11pm, which is a long time if you consider the day began at 9.30am. We didn’t stay in the same place all day though; we went to a couple of bars after the meal.
Last Saturday afternoon I went to the cinema to see The Golden Compass. It was really good, in fact I preferred it to Stardust, which was also a fantasy film. However, it is part of a trilogy (based upon a series of books), and we will have to wait at least 2 years for the next film to be released, that’s if they even produce one at all. Then in the evening we went to see some of Terry’s relatives as they had invited us round for a meal.
This Monday I moved into a new office at work, which is much better as it is in the city centre. For the last 8 months, I had been based in an old office just outside the city centre, whilst the new one was being refurbished. The old office wasn’t in a very nice area, and I felt cut off from everything, as the distance from the city centre meant it took quite a while to get to cafes for lunch etc. I’m much happier now I’m based in the new city centre offices.
Yesterday I had another Christmas meal, this time with my immediate team at work. It was held at The Reindeer pub, and I actually preferred the food to last week’s meal at The Nelson Hotel. It was a carvery, so I could choose whatever I wanted, and the food was cooked nicely. I couldn’t stay out too late though, as I’d made other arrangements to see my friend Gemma in the evening (when I made the arrangements, I’d forgotten that it was on the same day as the Christmas meal!) I had a good time though, at both events.
I’m on holiday from work until January the 3rd. In case I don’t post again within the next couple of days, I’d like to wish everyone who reads this blog a happy Christmas!
When I mentioned on my last post that I was feeling better after my recent cold and cough, I think I must have jinxed myself, as about an hour later another cold started!! It was quite a bit heavier than my first cold, and it seemed to come out much more quickly. Whenever I have a cold I almost always get a cough a few days later, and I did this time. It was so bad last week that I was sent home from work, as I had a coughing fit and everyone in my team started asking if I was OK. They then suggested I should go home. They were concerned about me and they must have also been concerned about whether I would spread germs. I said that this was the second time in the space of three weeks that I’ve been ill, and it seems that virtually everyone in my office has been ill in recent weeks and most people have had to take time off work. I dare not say if I feel better now, because I’m afraid of what might happen, lol!! However, I went back to work again on Monday.
On a happier note, I went to see the Christmas lights being switched on at City Hall. Mum and I were in a shop and we didn’t realise what the time was, so we came out and we were half way up the street when the fireworks started going off (they always have a short blast of fireworks just after the Christmas lights have been switched on. As we were half way up the street, we weren’t in the best position to see what was going on, although I could still see some of the fireworks.
On Saturday (late afternoon) I went with Mum and Terry for a meal at the Marsh Harrier restaurant. It was good, but the menu had changed since the last time we had been. I always used to have lemon chicken with chips, but that was no longer on the menu so I had a Scottish beef burger. The dessert was very good - I had vanilla ice cream with fudge sauce and cream.
On Sunday evening I went to see my niece Anya perform in one of her dance shows. It was a Christmas special (for some reason they always seem to have them in late November). It was held at a different venue this time which holds more people, but unfortunately it’s difficult to see the stage unless you are lucky enough to be in one of the first few rows, as the seats aren’t sloping like they usually are in a theatre.
It was still a good night though and I liked the curry - I had a nice chicken korma. We plan to go again this week.