end of hiatus

Hi all.

Sorry for not blogging for a really really long time but I was a bit busy and also a bit scared of being sacked from work. I am now not so busy but I think I really need to find a way to blog without the risk of being sacked for not actually doing any work. I guess the best thing would be to buy a laptop and sit in the lunch room to blog or do it at home. OK so I admit, I am never going to do it at home. Andrew and TV are far too distracting. I guess I will just have to get a laptop (bummer).

Home for mothers day

I decided that this weekend was an ideal opportunity for my dimonthly visit home to see my family what with it being mothers day and all. The amount of work left to do on the house and for the wedding has been worrying me for a while now as the deadlines for both draw ominously closer. However I managed to convince myself that going away this weekend would result in being able to stay in Sheffield for Easter, thus providing twice as long to complete said work and I did actually manage to get quite a lot done this weekend after all. So far I have bought the fabric for the bridesmaids dresses, bought my slightly expensive wedding shoes and am about to go and visit a couple of guests to drop save the date cards off and catch up with what they are doing.

This should probably be in the wedding blog come to think of it. I really have to get better at updating things.

Anyway, if there are any of the 'bankers' out there, I really feel like I haven't seen you for ages and I am starting to miss you guys quite a lot.

Money for a load of old...

Urine. Yes that's right urine. Those of you who regularly read my other halfs blog will know that we have both volunteered to take part in a medical study involving urine monitoring for the princely sum of 30GBP. After a selection of bizarre phone calls involving the lovely Dr Patel accusing an irate Katharyn of being Andrew's wife (we're not in Somerset now!) I finally got to meet him on Wednesday last week.

He furnished me with a small black box with three buttons on it, a paper bladder diary and a 500ml jug to wee into. The plan was for me to wee in the jug, measure the volume, record the volume and time on the piece of paper and press the appropriate buttons on the black box to do the same.

The trial went pretty well except for the constant fear of Katharyn or andrew pressing the yellow button so that Dr Patel thought I had wet myself and the obvious embarrassment of carrying a jug round to wee into at all times. I am just glad I am not drinking.

Anyway, I am not £30 better off and we got paid a week early this month because of the 'year end'. Woo. Go weeing in a jug. Oh yeah and I know a lot more about by bladder capacity.

My Brain

At the moment I often look to my friends (the bankers) on a night out and think "I haven't seen these guys for over a week, isn't it really nice that we are all together again" sortly followed by " what have I been doing? Oh crap nothing. What am I going to talk about for the rest of the night?" This fear is heightened by my sobriety and usually ends up with the same conversations being repeated with the same people. Don't take this the wrong way guys, none of you are in any way boring, I just think that we are all in a bit of a 'meet up once a week' rut.

It makes me reminisce for the days of yore. The happy carefree days when we would start drinking at 12.00 on a wednesday as it was sports training. I felt very old when me and Chris M were in the interval the other day for lunch and a young girl asked for a pint of snakebite and a sambuca. It was 12.00 !!! That is always too early for Sambuca surely! I think i need another 12.00 drinking session to remind me why we don't do them any more.

Ah well I guess being a bit older has it's benefits. No more loud noisy clubbing and a nice not studenty house (ish) and the ability to occasionally go out to a restarant. Now I just need one of those mono slippers and a nice TV screen magnifier and I will be sorted.

Just incase you were interested. Friday night drinking usually results in me boring the pants off everyone with wedding talk and getting over excited about painting. Don't think i haven't noticed you guys looking more and more vague every week. i wonder how much longer I can keep it up?

Erratic posting

I seem to have developed a very erratic method of blogging. I think this may be due to recent periods of illness and general business but mostly I think it is because I find change very difficult. I often try to alter the way I life my life on a day to day basis in order to 'better' myself and invariably fail after a few weeks and return to my old ways. This has led to a belief that i am a bit faddy and don't really tend to stick with things for very long which probably self perpetuates the problem to an extent.

Examples of things I have taken up for short periods of time include:
Ballet
Horse riding
Piano
Guitar
Singing in a band
Cross stitch
Patchwork
Making jewellary
Tapestry
Ceroc
This punch hole thing which I can't even remember the name for
Warhammer (it seemed like a good idea at the time)
Collecting Sylvanian families
Reading Sc-fi
Anime
Salsa
Gymnastics
Swimming
Running
Aerobics
Horse riding part deux
Blogging... etc etc.

I now have a house full of hobby accessories which are almost completely useless but i just can't quite brin myself to get rid of because I might use them again and throwing them out is an admision that i just don't have any sticking power.

This is really cathartic.

At the moment I have stopped drinking for lent. This is for many different reasons including thriftiness, weight loss and a determination that i might just not be quite as flakey as I think. Abstenence for lent is different from other lifestyle choices though as it has a distinct finish point which seems to help me to focus my energies. Maybe I need that disinct goal to get me started in my new exciting enthusiastic kate life. Or I might just carry on assuming that i will become the perfect wife post wedding and that everything will sort it's self out magically on the 1st of july.

Better week

This week is a lot better than last week. I think I have managed to work out what the problem with work is... It sucks. However I am great and I do not suck and I only spend 37.5 hours of my life at work each week so it is really not worth going 'postal' over.

I wonder if there is any way of avoiding office politics? My theory is that if you are a boy it is a lot easier to deal with as you are not expected to share a psychic link to all of the people you work with and know exactly how everyone will interpret what you say. I would be interested to know if anyone else agrees with me or if I am just a little frustrated by my recent work problems.

Bad week

I can quite honestly say that the last seven days has been the worst seven days of my entire life. I don't really feel like going into too much detail at the moment so I am just going to say that work is beyond bad and apparently, although I am still not sure why, it is all my fault. The situation seems to be resolving itself slowly now so there may be some light at the end of the tunnel.

If I was a boy I am prety sure it would never have got this bad.