Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Things stressing me out:

  • My Exams - They're four weeks away and I'm so far from prepared that it's not even funny. When I sit down to study I just can't concentrate. I have a million other things on my mind that I need to stop distracting me, on top of the general stuff people do to distract themselves from studying (you have to make yourself a cup of tea, the living room needs to be tidied right now, the filing that you've put off for months suddenly becomes of the utmost importance!).


  • My Work - My work is pissing me off so much right now. I'm not happy and I don't know what to do.


  • My Cardboard Boxes - this is such a stupid little thing that it barely warrants being commented on, but even the little things are stressing me out. When I moved in, I had loads of cardboard boxes that needed to be put in the rubbish. I've been having discussions with the council about getting them to come pick it up, but they'll charge me £50 to do it! No way! We have a recycling bin, but it only gets emptied every few weeks and it only fits one third of the boxes. It was supposed to get picked up yesterday, but was left because it was "contaminated" ie had a bit of sellotape left on it. I've arranged for them to come back, but it still leaves two thirds of the boxes. They've already been sitting there for a month and they're likely to be sitting there for longer and I'm worried about annoying my neighbours. I need a car to move them myself, which I obviously don't have, so I'm left to the mercy of the council recycling people, who are totally annoying.

    See? Really trivial.


  • Other flat stuff - My TV is still not working and the thought of having to deal with my estate agent again makes me anxious. So I keep putting it off, which just makes me more stressed I need to get an engineer out because I think it may be a problem with the TV, but I've decided to leave it till after my exams. But I feel like I should call the landlord now to let him know what I'm going to do because if it turns out it was something the landlord could have fixed, I plan to bill him for it (they've already had his people out twice, so it's not like I didn't give them a chance to fix it).


  • And the perennial favourite, homesickness. Again. This time triggered by the Scotland vs England six nations game that my friends went to together and had a blast at, texting me and sending me pictures. I just really wished I was there.


I know that most of these things are really trivial and logically, I can't understand why I'm getting so worked up. But together, it's a bit overwhelming and I just feel a bit stuck. I'm sorry about this. I just needed to vent a bit, I guess. Although I'm not sure I feel any better for it.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Scotland 18 - England 12

Backdated because this is my first chance online since the game.



WE WON!!

Thursday, February 23, 2006

My Poor Baby

Clarence the Super-Machine is very ill (yes, that's really what I called my computer). My poor baby. I was quickly checking the WD yesterday morning before I got stuck into studying and it was running really slowly. Then it switched itself off, and when I switched it back on, I got an error message saying some file or other was corrupt.

I have a Collect & Return policy with Dell, so I thought it'd just be a case of calling up and arranging for them to come get it to fix it. Noooooooo! I spent the next four hours on and off the phone, running this test and that diagnostic. It was 12.30pm before the technician decided that, yes, it was irreparably damaged and they'd have to replace the hard drive. Finally! So after wasting a precious four hours of my study day, I arranged for them to come pick up Clarence on Monday. So I had to call up my boss and book a last minute holiday, which has the added advantage of giving me a chance to catch up on the studying I missed yesterday. Although I hate using my holidays for study.

I'm trying to remember if I had anything important saved on my hard drive that I'd be gutted to lose. I think most, if not all, of my photos are saved on yahoo, so that's ok. My music could be a pain. It's all on my iPod, but I don't know if you can transfer music from iPod to iTunes, or if it's just the other way round. I don't relish the thought of copying my CD collection again, and I'd lose all of my downloads. I think my CV and covering letter are saved on disk somewhere. It's just a case of finding them. Other than that, it's just little bits and pieces that I'm sad to lose, but I can live without.

Feel better Clarence. :(

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

A New Era Begins

OK, I've caved. I'm going to give blogger a whirl. I'm not guaranteeing that I'll stick with it, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've spent the last couple of days fiddling around with the template and trying to work it out.

Sorry, what's that you say? Work? Pfft!

Anyway. It's not finished. I'm not convinced with the colour, or the title, or whatever, so expect it to be a work in progress as I'm posting to it. Don't be surprised if it looks different from the way it did yesterday. If anyone has any comments or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Please! I'm a blogger novice!

I also want to transfer my back entries over at some point so that my archive doesn't look so pathetic. But that will be for another time when I'm not so busy. Or when I'm skiving off work/study. Unless anyone knows some really handy, quick, super duper way to do it? [hopeful]

I'm keeping my Blurty account, if only to keep track of my dear Blurty buddies. I may use it occasionally for private entries, but I'll really try not to because that's just a pain in the backside for my stalkers! I'm also keeping it in case I decide to give up on Blogger (which isn't beyond the realms of possibility).

So welcome! Take a look around, make yourself at home. Tea? Coffee? Vodka?!

Monday, February 20, 2006

falling down is also a gift

Three and half years after being introduced to the world of fodding/blurtying/blogging/etc, I've only just started reading the blogs of people I don't know.* I suppose I could count people like Min and Selange under this category since I got to know them through their blogs and then on the WD, but I don't. I'm talking about people completely separate from the WD (expect that I was probably directed to their site by a WD friend).

One of the blogs under this category that I've recently discovered is falling down is also a gift. It belongs to the mother of a child who was born with Biliary Atresia, a liver disease that affects newborns. The child, Annika, who is five years old now, has undergone several serious operations, including two liver transplants, and while recovering from a shunt operation before Christmas, has just been put on the donor list for a third transplant.

I've known about this blog for some time thanks to Annika (bettie-Annika), but I've never really taken the time to read it. But an entry caught my attention at the end of last week, and since then I've been reading through the archives from November to catch up on the most recent bout of surgery. The writing is very good. Informative, funny, thoughtful and very often, extremely moving. I've only been reading for a couple of days, but already I feel like I know the family and I care about what happens to them. Not only that, but I've been reading the blogs of people Moreena (the mum) has linked to, parents of other critically ill children. I would encourage everyone to at least go and check it out. I've spent a lot of the weekend crying over some of the things I've read, but I feel better for it. I feel good knowing that I know Annika and her family, even if it is anonymously through the internet.

* I count people I know through the WD but have never met as people I know.