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This has been one of the most bizarre Christmases of my life. Fortunately, we’ve all been slowly recovering from our illnesses, but none of us was feeling 100%. Over the last few days I’ve been feeling very lethargic – even if I sleep for more than 10 hours a night, my eyes still feel tired and I don’t have much energy. I haven’t really felt like doing much, so it’s unlikely I’ll set up my new website for at least another few weeks, as it’s nowhere near ready!

As for Christmas day itself, I woke up at 8.30am and opened my presents, like I usually do. My main present this year was a new CD player – one which can play MP3 CDs as well as normal CDs. It is fairly similar to the one which Terry bought Mum for her 60th birthday, which is in the lounge. I also received several smaller presents, such as new tops, chocolate selection boxes, CDs and DVDs.

After opening our presents and having breakfast, Mum and I went round my sister Suzanne’s house to exchange presents. Terry usually goes as well, but this year he didn’t feel like it and I think he was also afraid of spreading his illness. We only stayed for about 20 minutes anyway, as Suzanne and her family had arrangements of their own.

Terry still cooked our Christmas dinner as usual, but unfortunately he ended up leaving most of his meal as he didn’t feel like eating much. He has lost his appetite in recent days, and he just doesn’t seem his normal self. I think a lot of it could also be to do with the fact that he is upset about what happened to his Earsham Fencing business. He had been running that company for 4 and a half years (he set it up when he retired from his full-time job as a sales rep), so it must feel strange for him, like he is at a loose end. At least he has been offered a new job though, so he will probably start sometime in January.

On Monday night before Christmas, I went to see my friends Gemma and Naomi at the Railway Tavern pub near where Naomi lives. Unfortunately Naomi’s sister Sarah couldn’t make it as she was ill, but it was still a nice evening. We sat by the roaring open fire, had a couple of drinks and discussed what we had been doing for the last few months (Gemma lives quite far away from us, so we only get to see her about twice a year). During the evening, Gemma mentioned that she would like to go to the cinema to see Madagascar 2. I said that I’d be interested in seeing that too. So on the Wednesday (Christmas Eve) we all went to the cinema. Luckily, Sarah was well enough by then, so she could go too. It was a good film. The only bad part of the day was that we had to run for the bus on the way home from the cinema, and that made me have a massive coughing fit!

I return to work next Monday, so hopefully I’ll be back to normal by then.

It will soon be time for me to do my review of 2008. I always look forward to writing my review of the year – it gives me a chance to reflect on what has happened over the previous 12 months, so that I feel prepared and refreshed ready for the new year.

• I’m wondering why Facebook no longer seems to work in Internet Explorer, although it does still work in Firefox and Opera. #
• I had a good evening yesterday exchanging presents, even though one of my friends was still ill so she couldn’t make it. #
• I’m going to the cinema tomorrow afternoon to see Madagascar 2. #
• I had a good time at the cinema today. I can’t believe it’s Christmas tomorrow! #
• My first update since Christmas day: I had a good time, although I still felt lethargic from illness. My main present was a CD player. #

This has been a weird month, and the last few days have been the most difficult days of the year. The main reason is that our whole household is now ill, just before Christmas. I’m finally starting to feel better (after being ill for 2 and a half weeks), but late on Wednesday night my illness suddenly got worse again, and I felt hot and achy. I still went to work on Thursday morning, but by mid-day I felt so bad that my manager said it would be best if I went home. Also my cough started to get worse again, even though it was previously getting better. I spent most of that afternoon in bed. I was hoping that I would be OK in time for the following day (which was supposed to be my last day at work before the holidays). We were all supposed to be going out for a meal and drink straight after work to welcome in the Christmas holidays. Unfortunately, I was too ill to go, as I was still feeling feverish and lethargic.

I think Friday and Saturday (yesterday) were my worst days. By Friday evening, my nose started to feel stuffy, as if at the start of a cold. I didn’t sleep well that night at all; I kept waking up every 2 hours or so. Then in the middle of the night I had a nightmare that I was walking down the street where I live, when all of a sudden a tidal wave appeared out of nowhere(!) and I started drowning and suffocating. I panicked and I woke up straight away. I realised that the reason for the dream was because my nose was blocked and I couldn’t breathe properly. I then had a really depressing feeling and time was really dragging. I was wondering when this would ever end. From then on I kept having weird dreams – I kept dreaming that I was someone else, and that the illness wasn’t really happening to me. Back on the Thursday afternoon, another weird thing happened – as I was laying in bed with my bad fever and high temperature, I had what I call a “feeling of doom”. The feeling only lasted a split second, but I can remember thinking “Am I really here?” and “Is this really happening to me?” This sort of thing doesn’t normally happen to me when I’m feeling ill (in fact it’s only ever happened to me once before, when I had a sickness bug a few years ago). I think the reason why it happened this time was because I’d been ill for over 2 weeks, had no idea when I was going to start feeling better again, and I was also fed up that my holidays might be ruined.

I did have to cancel a few arrangements – with the IVC club I had been planning to go on a cinema night, and then an ice sculpture trail through the city. I was also supposed to be meeting my friends Naomi and Sarah tonight for a carol service, although they have been ill too so I’m not sure if they still went. Apparently, this has been the worst year for flu in about 8 years.

Thankfully, I felt quite a bit better when I woke up this morning. I still cough quite a bit, but my fever and cold have died down. However, on Friday night, Mum and Terry started to feel ill too – they probably caught the same illness from me. Terry went to bed at 9pm on Friday night and didn’t get up until 11am this Sunday morning, as he felt so bad. So he had lost all of Saturday. (I can never understand why coughs and colds always seem to affect men worse than women!) Thankfully Mum doesn’t seem quite so badly affected – in fact she’s still been into work and out food shopping. I just hope everyone will be well again by Christmas day.

The other bad thing which happened last week is that Terry has decided to close down his Earsham Fencing partnership (which he runs with his son). He said that once he calculated his earnings, it came to less than the national minimum wage. So he has decided that he will close down the company after Christmas and get a part time job instead. Someone has already offered him a job so in the new year he will decide whether to accept it. Mum was more upset about this than Terry himself, because he had worked many long hours erecting fences and building patios etc.

As for good things which happened before my illness started to get worse, on Thursday 11th December I had my departmental Christmas dinner at work. It was held at a local restaurant called Mackintosh’s Canteen. The food was nice, although it wasn’t a traditional Christmas dinner, it was actually a buffet. After the meal we played some festive-themed games, which was fun. I went home about 6pm that evening as I didn’t feel like staying out late.
Two days later, on the Saturday night, I went out with my friend Kay. Most of the people were employees or former employees of the shop where Kay works, but she said I could go along anyway. They were all nice people, but unfortunately we never got to go clubbing. Kay wanted to go, but the others didn’t and I guess she didn’t want to leave them on their own. So we just stayed in the Glasshouse pub until 1am.
This Wednesday evening, I went along to the IVC Christmas meal at the Nelson Hotel (this was just a few hours before my illness started to get worse). The 3-course meal was nothing extra special, and I don’t think it was really worth £20, but it was a good evening anyway and everyone was friendly towards me.

I haven’t been out of the house since Thursday afternoon and I’m starting to feel bored, but at least I should be able to see some of my friends tomorrow evening.

• We’ve just realised our Christmas tree from last year is broken, so we will have to get a new one. So we will be late decorating again. #
• I’m so busy right now, I don’t even know what to do next! At least next week I’ll be able to have a rest. #
• We’ve finally put up our Christmas tree! #
• It seems that everyone in this office is coughing, not just me. It’s become part of the background noise! #
• I’m eating a bag of Lindt chocolate snowballs for lunch! #
• Today has dragged a bit, probably because i’m looking forward to christmas events. I’m going to the IVC christmas meal tonight. #
• I’m fed up as I’ve been ill for 2 weeks and it’s starting to get worse again. All my arrangements will have to be cancelled #
• I don’t feel in a very festive mood. I was supposed to be going out with my colleagues to celebrate the start of the Christmas holidays… #
• …but instead I was in bed ill. #

• We’re now about to go to the Townhouse for a carvery. Haven’t been for a few weeks now; at least I’ll see the Christmas decorations there. #
• I still can’t stop coughing, in fact it seems to be even worse than ever. #
• I’ve managed to do everything I had planned this weekend, except write a letter to one of my friends! I’ll do that tomorrow night instead. #
• My cough seems to have got even worse today. I might not even be able to make it in to work tomorrow. People were commenting about it today. #
• That’s my Christmas list done! By the way, my cough isn’t quite as bad now as it was this morning – I got some medicine. #
• It’s snowing! It probably won’t settle though. #
• I’m looking forward to my Christmas lunch tomorrow. It runs from 12:30pm to 5pm – the longest meal I’ve ever had in my life! #
• We won’t actually be eating for all that time though; a lot of it will be spent on games and whatever else they organise for us. #
• I had a good time at my departmental Christmas party, even though it was a bit crowded, the food wasn’t traditional and I was still coughing #
• Microsoft have cut off my Windows Live OneCare subscription, as I have no way of sending my payment to them. I’ll now find another firewall. #
• @RustlingRagazza I hope Gigi will get better soon. in reply to RustlingRagazza #
• I’ve just been playing emulated Spectrum games! It seems weird playing these old games from the 80s – never thought I would see them again! #
• It’s official – this is the coldest winter of my life so far! http://tinyurl.com/5lcf4m #

This follows on from yesterday’s post, as I didn’t have time to write about everything which happened during the week that has just passed.

This week wasn’t quite as busy at last week, but unfortunately there were a few negative things which happened, for example my sister Suzanne’s cat Alfie going missing and then being found dead in our neighbour’s back garden a few days later, and also being told that it’s going to be a lot harder for me to be promoted to Consultant level at work than I originally thought.

I also picked up a dry cough on Thursday, but I don’t know how I got it and there were no other symptoms at all – usually I only get a cough if I’ve had a cold beforehand. It seems to have got worse over the last few days, and I really don’t want to be ill at this time of the year, as there is so much going on in my life right now. Fortunately, the cough hasn’t caused me any major problems so far; for example I haven’t had to take any time off work or cancel any of my planned outings.

On Thursday I had another away-day at work, but this time it was for my whole department and not just my immediate team like the one in November. It was good, although I have to admit I did prefer the away day I had in November, mainly because it was with my own team so I was more familiar with the people and I felt more confident to speak up. Also, at the away day in November there were about 30 people, whereas at this one there were about 150 people in total. Even though I’m more confident than in the past, I would still feel very nervous about standing up and talking in front of 150 people (I wasn’t expected to do that anyway), so I talked mainly to the people sitting on my table.

As for the bad news which happened on Friday, I had a 1:1 meeting with my manager to discuss my progress. During the meeting I brought up the subject of my Consultant Development Plan (if you have been reading this blog regularly, you will know that over the last few months I have been working towards Consultant level at work). The reason why I decided to raise this is because I thought I had made some good progress towards this in the last 2 months since I had that review meeting back in October when I was told that I wasn’t ready yet. For example, I have been speaking more at team meetings in the last couple of months, and I’ve also raised a few issues for discussion. I didn’t expect to get promoted on Friday (there is a formal process which has to be followed anyway), but I was hoping that my manager would say that I’m getting closer. However, by the way my manager was speaking, it seems that there is still a long way for me to go. For example, he said that even if I managed to tick all the boxes on my development plan (for example, one of the items on my plan is speaking more at meetings), it still wouldn’t be enough unless I could prove that I could do those things all the time. He also said that in order to get promotion, I would have to change my personality to become more outgoing, and to have more of a “spark” about me.

For the first time, I really started to doubt myself – whether I would ever be able to reach Consultant level after all, as I think changing my personality to be more outgoing would be quite stressful and difficult for me. Even if I do ever reach that level, it might take many months or even several years. This made me feel sad, as before the 1:1 meeting I thought that I was getting closer. During my lunchbreak, I took a walk down to the local park to ponder what was said at the meeting. At times I even thought that maybe I should give up on trying to become a Consultant altogether, that it’s not really for me after all, and that I would be happier if I stayed at my current level instead. However, I don’t like giving up on something, so over the weekend I thought about it some more. I came to the conclusion that I will still try and become a Consultant, but that I will strive for promotion at a slower pace so that I don’t feel overloaded or stressed out. I don’t think I have anything to lose by trying to be more outgoing and confident, in fact it should help me in other aspects of my life as well, not just at work.

However, the spooky thing was that this 1:1 meeting with my manager that I had on Friday took place on the second anniversary of what I refer to as my Horrid Day, when my promotion from Adviser to Lead Adviser (my current level) was rejected and at that time I was very upset, as I felt that my dream had been shattered. Although I didn’t feel anywhere near as bad on Friday as I did on that horrid day 2 years ago, there are a few similarities and I did have a feeling of deja vu – for example, my manager said that my promotion from Lead Adviser to Consultant would have to be approved by the people above him and that right now they would probably say no anyway, which is exactly what happened to me 2 years ago.

Earlier in the week, Suzanne’s cat Alfie had gone missing, and she asked me to print out some Missing posters which she put up around the local area. On Friday evening when I came home from work I heard the news that Alfie had been found dead in our neighbour’s back garden, and that presumably he had been hit by a car on the busy road near us. Alfie was the son of the mother Izzy, who is still alive. This is very similar to what happened to us several years ago – we have a cat called Holly and back in 1993 she had 4 kittens, and we kept one which we called Harvey. However, a few years ago Harvey was found dead by a hedge and we think he was killed by a car too. So this is the second case I personally know of whereby a mother cat has outlived her son.

On Saturday night I went to the IVC Christmas Party that I mentioned in my previous blog entry. It was very good and I enjoyed myself (especially the dancing) and it certainly cheered me up after all the bad things which have happened this week. It took a while for the party to warm up, but then again almost all parties are like that, but once everyone had finished eating and they had dimmed the lights, lots of people started dancing.

There’s only 2 more working weeks left until the Christmas holidays start – can you believe it?!

• is unhappy because she can’t find her Starburst Twisted Chews sweets #
• I just went downstairs and found my Starburst sweets in the lounge – but it looks like another family-member has nicked most of them! #
• I’m now trying to make plans for next weekend. #
• I’ve just bought myself some goodies (CDs, DVDs and a game) and a Christmas present too! #
• I really should update my blog, but I just can’t be bothered at this moment in time. Maybe I will tomorrow evening. #
• I’ve just completed this really long online survey about what I’ve been doing since I graduated university. #
• I’m looking forward to my Away Day tomorrow! #
• I’ve been coughing for pretty much the whole day. Of all the times to fall ill, why now? I’ve got so many things going on right now. #
• I’m disappointed that I have to get a taxi to the Christmas party on Sat night – I hate travelling with strangers (no-one else can take me) #
• My sister Suzanne’s cat Alfie went missing 3 days ago, and I’m now having to print out more “Missing” posters. #
• It has not been a nice morning for me. I think i will go to the park to gather my thoughts. #
• Just remembered that tomorrow is the 2nd anniversary of my horrid day when my dreams were shattered. What happened today isn’t quite as bad #
• …but there are a few similarities, and i’m having a feeling of deja vu. #
• Just looked at some old notes, and the 2nd anniversary of my Horrid Day is actually TODAY! This is spooky! Today has been Horrid Day Lite. #
• This old lady at the bus stop just grumbled to me “I’ll be glad when this year is over – nothing has gone right for me!” #
• When I arrived home from work tonight, I heard the bad news – my sister’s missing cat Alfie had been found dead in our neighbour’s garden #
• …we assume he must have been hit by a car on the busy road near us. #
• I’m tired and I’m going to bed now, but I still haven’t done everything that I tried to cram into this evening…maybe tomorrow I will. #
• I’m looking forward to my Christmas party tonight. It will be an expensive night, but at least I will have time to chill out. #
• I’ve just got back from the Christmas party. I enjoyed myself (especially the dancing) and now I’m in a happy mood. #
• I’m currently answering some people’s stupid questions on Yahoo Answers. I can’t believe how ignorant some people are! #

It’s been yet another busy couple of weeks for me since I last updated, both in and out of work. I suppose this is to be expected as Christmas draws near. Last week (ie the week commencing 24th November) my eyes were stinging even though I was getting about the same amount of sleep that I usually get. At work I had a series of 3-hour meetings to discuss our team strategy for 2009. I helped come up with a new project development lifecycle checklist for my team and I also designed a feedback form, both of which I presented at the meetings. The best thing was that on the Wednesday we all went out for a team lunch at the Lucky Star, which is one of my favourite restaurants.

As for what happened outside work, last Wednesday evening I attended my first IVC meeting at The Nelson. I also had a meal (half a chicken and chips). I was quite nervous about this, as I had never met any of the people before, but they all seemed very nice and welcoming. For part of the evening, they sat me with some of the other new members, so we could discuss our interests, for example going on walks, going to the cinema etc. They have got a Christmas party tonight so I am going to that, although unfortunately neither Terry nor my sister could drive me there – Mum and Terry have been invited out for a meal with relatives, and Suzanne is working – so I will have to get a taxi. I don’t really like using taxis on my own as I’m not keen on travelling with a driver whom I don’t know (I don’t mind travelling on buses as there are lots of other passengers, but it would be too awkward to catch a bus to the venue, as it is in the middle of nowhere). However, I’m sure I’ll have a good time at the party.

On Saturday morning I went to a Chocolate Show with my friend Naomi, which was fun. It was the first time that a chocolate show like this had been held in our area, and there were exhibitions explaining how chocolate is produced, several stalls of local chocolatiers, and there were also demonstrations where they showed you step by step how to create chocolate in different shapes etc. Oh and there was also a nice chocolate fountain – I actually put 2 sticks of marshmallows into the fountain. One day I will have to get my own mini chocolate fountain to use at home! Naomi said she’s already got one of those. I also bought some chocolates and a jar of hot chocolate powder from a couple of the stalls. It was a good day out.

So that was what happened last week; hopefully tomorrow I’ll have time to post an entry about what’s been happening this week!