creamed-coconut.org

I’ve been meaning to update this all week, but haven’t felt like it until because I’ve been feeling tired and my eyes have been sore almost every day this week. Anyway, more about that later.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, my friend Kay added me as a friend on Facebook, which I was really pleased about as I hadn’t seen her for over 2 years. We arranged a night out last Saturday, which was very good and it was just like the old days again. She brought along Rachel (her friend from work), along with Rachel’s sisters Sarah and Charlene. There were also 2 other girls whom I hadn’t met before. We all met up in the Glasshouse, which I have to admit isn’t one of my favourite pubs as no music is ever played there. We probably stayed there for nearly 2 hours, but it went quite quickly as Kay was talking to me about what had been happening in her life for the last couple of years. She explained that she had recently split up with her boyfriend and she is now living back at her parents’ house. While she was with her boyfriend (about 3 and a half years in total), she didn’t go out very often and that’s the reason I hadn’t seen her for such a long time.

Later in the evening, we moved on to Lloyd’s at Riverside which is much livelier. However, at about 11:45pm everyone else decided to go home early, so it was just me and Kay on our own after that. Once the others had left, we went to the Chicago Rock Cafe for dancing. We would have gone to a different nightclub, but unfortunately I didn’t have any ID on me. (The minimum age to get into most places is 18, but apparently a lot of door staff have become much more strict in recent years and they will ask for ID even if you are well into your twenties). As I’m 24, I just didn’t think to bring any ID with me. A lot of the other girls had one of those credit card-sized driving licences, but as I never learnt how to drive, I obviously don’t have one of those. Therefore, I would have to take my passport with me in future, which does seem a bit awkward but that’s the only photographic proof of age ID that I have. It was still a good night though, and we hope to meet up again soon.

The following day was a Sunday, so I didn’t have to worry about getting up early in the morning. In the afternoon, once Mum had finished work we went to the Townhouse for a carvery, which was nice.

For some reason, I felt extra tired for most days last week and my eyes were stinging. Sometimes I find it difficult to motivate myself to go to bed early enough. One night I might be busy doing something which means I go to bed late (eg 11pm), and when I wake up the following morning to go to work I still feel sleepy and I think to myself “I will never go to bed that late again!” But then later in the day, I don’t feel quite so weary and then in the evening I get caught up doing something else (eg watching a TV programme, reading an addictive website or reading a magazine which I just can’t put down) and then I end up going to bed late yet again! So then I end up with sore eyes the next day as well. I wish I knew how to get out of this trap!

Additionally, this week at work has been quite difficult for me, as I’ve been having problems with certain databases (date formats in Access can be very annoying at times!) and also I’ve had to spend quite a bit of time trouble-shooting existing work, which limits the amount of time I can spend on new work. I’m currently putting together a troubleshooting guide to help people know what to do if there is an error when they try and run a database macro. I decided to do this of my own accord, and I’m hoping this will mean that in future, people won’t need to ask me for help quite so often and then I will have more time to spend on new work.

However, the week has ended well, as I managed to resolve some of the problems I’d been having. Also, one of my managers has told me that she is going to nominate me to be promoted to Consultant level (I’m currently what’s known as a Lead Adviser). Every 6 months or so, the head of the department asks all the team managers to nominate people who they think are ready to be promoted, and it seems like the nomination period is currently open again. So, for the next few days I have to gather evidence and examples of how I’ve been fulfilling the consultant-level competencies for the last 6 months, and I also have to gather feedback from other people I’ve been working with. Then on Thursday I will have a meeting with my manager to discuss the evidence/feedback, and then she will be able to complete the nomination form and submit it to the head of department for the decision to be made. If this bid succeeds, it could mean I become a consultant before Christmas! However, at the same time, I’m trying not to get too excited because I don’t want to get downhearted and disappointed if my bid doesn’t succeed this time. I realise how difficult it is to get promoted in this company and that if it doesn’t happen this time, it may well happen early next year. It was difficult enough getting promoted from Adviser to Lead Adviser (as my blog archives from the latter half of 2006 testify), so I expect that this may be even more difficult. Being a consultant doesn’t involve managing people or anything scary like that; it’s just a higher grade within the company. For the last 6 months, my Process Improvement lead adviser role has required me to organise meetings with co-workers (all within our department) to discuss the current reporting processes and how they could be improved. Two or three years ago, I would have found that rather scary, but I’m getting more used to it now.

Finally, I’ve managed to get rid of the “splash page” on this website. It had been there since 2004 when I first set up my blog. It served no real purpose, so I’ve wanted to get rid of it for ages, but it was only a few days ago that I found out how to get rid of it easily without affecting the rest of the site. I just went into cPanel and set up a re-direct, so that when someone keys in creamed-coconut.org into their browser address bar, it automatically re-directs them to creamed-coconut.org/wp, which is the main page of this blog. It works nicely, so now when someone visits this site, they get to the content straight away instead of having to click on the “Enter” button on the splash page.

That was a long post! I’m feeling hungry now, so hopefully dinner will be ready soon!

As mentioned in previous posts, my sisters and I arranged a spa day to celebrate Mum’s 60th birthday. This took place on Wednesday, and we all really enjoyed ourselves. The spa we went to was Clarice House in Bury St Edmunds, which is about an hour’s drive away. It is open from 9am to 5pm, so we woke up at about 7am and started the journey about an hour later, so that we would have the whole day there. It was a new experience for me, as I’d never been to a spa before. In the morning, we spent most of the time in the swimming pool and jacuzzi. There was also a steam room but I didn’t like it much as I find it difficult to breathe properly in a very hot atmosphere, so I only stayed in there for about a minute.

In the afternoon we had a nice 3 course lunch and our treatments – the first one was a back massage, then a facial and finally a manicure. I think my favourite treatment was the facial, although I’d never had one before. The manicure took place at 4pm and we all chose a nail varnish and had our nails painted. However, I was disappointed because even though we let the nail varnish dry for half an hour before doing anything else, mine got chipped and scuffed when I was changing back into my normal clothes. (We wore our swimsuits during the day, and we were each given a bathrobe and pair of slippers to wear which we were allowed to take home with us). Overall, we really enjoyed the day and we plan to go again next year.

My Mum had yesterday off work, so I met her in the evening and we went to the cinema to see The Stepbrothers. I liked it and I thought it was quite funny, although it was sillier than I expected it to be. Mum wasn’t quite so keen on it though as she thought it was quite silly and the characters were too childish. Afterwards, we had a meal in Malaysian Delights, which I was pleased about as we hadn’t been there since the beginning of July.

This week I had my blog turned into a printed book and all my entries from January 2005 up until the entry just before this one were included. I ordered it from BlogPrinting.com. It arrived yesterday, so I had fun flicking through it and seeing all my blog in print. I also showed it to Mum and Terry, although neither of them have got round to reading it properly yet. I just thought it would be nice to have a printed record of all my blog entries, so that I will always be able to keep them. It also means that members of my family who aren’t familiar with computers can still read my blog. I could have printed it out myself, but it wouldn’t have looked so smart that way as the one I ordered from BlogPrinting was a professionally-bound book. Knowing that I can have my blog turned into a book has inspired me to update my site more often, as it means I will be able to get it printed out once a year or so. In this way, I will be able to look back on what I’ve written for years to come.

Something funny happened on the bus on the way home from work this evening. We were passing through the city in the slow traffic, when all of a sudden over the hustle and bustle I thought I could hear someone outside in the street singing. I turned to my left, and there was this strange man sitting on a ledge outside a shop holding a radio up right near his mouth, and it sounded like he was singing along to “River Deep Mountain High” in a really weird voice. Everyone on the bus suddenly stared towards this man in bewilderment, wondering what he was doing. I have actually seen this man in the city a couple of times before, over the course of the last 3 years or so. It seems that he always carries his radio with him wherever he goes, and he sings along to whatever song is being played at the time.

The first time I ever saw this strange man was just over 3 years ago. I was still working as a temp in those days, and it was 5pm on a Friday evening so I was walking to the agency to hand in my timecard showing the hours I’d worked that week. I can still clearly remember it was a sunny day, and I was walking down the street daydreaming, when all of a sudden I could hear this strange noise. I looked to my left, and there was this strange man walking in the opposite direction to me, holding a medium-sized radio up near his chin, and he was singing along to the Prince song “Party Like It’s 1999″ in a really weird Mr Bean-style voice. Even this lady who was walking just in front of me looked round at the man with an astonished look on her face. Even after he had gone, I couldn’t stop laughing all the way up the street. Whenever I felt the urge to laugh, I had to put my hand over my mouth as I was worried that other people who hadn’t seen the man would be wondering why I was walking down the street in fits of giggles. The thing is, trying not to laugh only made me want to laugh even more.

Nothing particularly exciting has happened in the last 7 days (well, nothing worth blogging about, anyway), so I thought I’d do an online quiz to see what it says about me…

Your result for The Perception Personality Image Test…

NBPS – The Idealist

Nature, Background, Big Picture, and Shape

Take The Perception Personality Image Test at HelloQuizzy

I’ve had a very busy week since I’ve been back from my holiday, both at home and at work. I spent a lot of time last weekend uploading my photos and videos to my computer and catching up with my emails and the online forums that I visit. At work there was a big backlog for me to get through (as there usually is after being on holiday for 2 weeks), but I managed to get quite a bit done, so hopefully things will be back to normal this week. I went to bed late most nights last week as I was busy getting things sorted out (at home, not at work!) This meant that by the time this current weekend arrived, I still hadn’t caught up on the sleep that I’d lost during my holiday! So, this morning I stayed in bed until nearly 12pm! I never usually lay in that long on a Sunday (I usually get up by about 10am at the latest), but I knew that this would be my last chance to catch up on my sleep before the new working week begins tomorrow.

There has been some good news this week – my friend Naomi has been offered a new job working as a chef in a nursery, designing and cooking healthy meals for babies and young children. She has been looking for a new job for several months, so I’m very pleased for her. I know she will enjoy this job more than her current catering job, as she always said she wanted a job that involved either working with children or with food. In this job she will be able to do both!

Also, my friend Kay added me as a friend on Facebook a few days ago, which I’m really happy about as I hadn’t heard from her for over 2 years. I had searched for her on Facebook in the past, but it seems that she only set up her account a few days ago, so she found me first. I’m trying to arrange an evening out with her – it will be good to see her again after all this time. Hopefully things will go back to how they used to be, before she drifted away from us. I had no other way of getting in touch with her, as I didn’t have her current phone number or address, but I was always confident we would meet again one day.

One really bad thing happened this week – my sister Suzanne’s boyfriend Paul was involved in a motorbike accident a week ago as a car crashed into him and knocked him off his bike, and he had to stay in hospital for several days. Luckily he is OK and we went round to visit him today, as he is now back at home. It was mainly his ribs and foot which were hurt. There is some good news though – they announced today that they plan to get married in May next year. I never thought they would get married for quite a while, but Suzanne said that the accident has changed their outlook on life.

Today I took Mum, Terry and my grandmother for a meal at The Townhouse. I must admit, I missed my carveries while we were on holiday!