 blog from a broad* |
| blog from a broad* |
| august 31, 2002
From today's Register: Yerk. Glad I got in when I did. :\ 4:56 PM --
More Cambourne news for you all to read and enjoy. The lock on the door to our room seems to be broken. The cleaners haven't been in here for the past week and my bin is getting full. We're out of bread in the first floor kitchen. That is all. Thank you. 3:25 PM --
To emphasize the fact that this is "not strictly a work-related site but it does have a daily diary of Cambourne office events", here is your daily update of the important events around our office today. Someone has been taking multiple cans of pop out of our free vend machines home with them. Similarly, someone has nicked a pizza and some ham from the first floor kitchen. This is very naughty indeed and I'm sure goes against our Citrix philosophy. Oddly, I notice that no one has taken my food and I think it may have something to do with the fact that everything that's mine is labelled "light" or "low fat". My advice to fellow workmates is this: if you want to keep your food safe, stick it in Tesco Healthy Eating packaging and it'll never get eaten by anyone else. In other news, staff enjoyed free cake Friday this morning. One employee admitted an addiction to a pastry called "bear claws" and proceeded to stick his finger in the pastry and wave it around in the air. A good time was had by all and wackiness ensued. Big discovery of the day: interns get paid! No, really! Not only do these students get to enjoy as much free toast, fruit, and pop (one can at a time, mind you) as they want, they apparently receive a paycheque each month as well. Who knew? Am now off to a meeting for an hour. More news to come. 10:53 AM --
In a strange twist of fate, my evil boyfriend got hold of my keyboard and sent a note to Pete stating "I love you have my babies". Now all sorts of rumours are going to circulate around the office. Bah. 11 of us are heading out to Restaurant 22 for dinner tomorrow night. Despite the crap web site, it's supposed to have excellent food and wine and I've been wanting to try it for ages. I may bring my camera, so stay tuned for the possibility of "I'm trying not to get drunk so I can enjoy/remember this food" shots of my friends and loved one. 7:48 PM --
So there I was at the petrol/gas station last night, with my head under the bonnet/hood of my car. After putting air in my tyres/tires, I decided to top up my windscreen/windshield fluid (don't you love this simultaneous translation?). A guy around my age popped his head round and asked if I needed any help, but hastened to add, "I'm not asking because you're a woman! I just thought maybe you need some help." I assured him that I was okay and thanked him for asking, he left with a smile and later drove by and gave me a wave. Stuff like this restores my faith in humanity. 2:59 PM --
Ah, always so fabulous to be back at work after a long weekend. We had a brilliant weekend away in lovely Warrington (in a village outside of town, actually) and the rain wasn't as bad as expected. The BBQ was good fun (only my second one this year) and we knew we had indulged a bit too much when tequila sunrises were served and we couldn't really taste the alcohol. Someone brought a 1 litre bottle that was divided up into about 10 drinks, which made everyone else cough and splutter but Paul and I didn't find them strong at all. Frightening. I did, however, have a massive hangover the next day and had woken up in the middle of the night with a throbbing headache. The next night we went to the tackiest club I've ever seen - the DJ was like someone you'd hear at a really bad wedding reception. It was mostly 70s and 80s music, which would have been good if it's wasn't all the worst hits of those two decades. I mean come on, "Living on a Prayer"? So many 80s tunes to choose from and they played *that*? At any rate, because it was so naff, it was really fun and apparently would have been a lot more fun if we were a lot more drunk (we both paced ourselves after the night before). We had a quieter day yesterday, sitting in our friend's garden eating bacon butties (that would be bacon sandwiches to you North American types) enjoying the sunshine that finally appeared. Since we don't have an Ikea close to Cambridge, I wanted to visit the one in Warrington. So far I've been to Ikea in Croydon, Montreal, Toronto, and now Warrington - a veritable world tour of flat-packed furniture. Paul bought a couple of things, but I didn't find anything I wanted. After a very sunny and hot drive back to Northampton, we settled in for a night of Simpsons episodes as Sky One was showing a "Top Ten" for the evening. And now I'm back at work, and there isn't enough tea in this office that'll wake me up at the moment. My mate Gary is on a mission to get this site unblocked at work. They've updated the firewall at my office and a whole whack of sites are no longer accessible from work, including this one. He's had to submit a business case for unblocking the site and said that it belongs to an employee and that "she writes a journal about things that happen at work". I will be more than just a little amused if they actually accept this reason. 11:51 AM --
Last bank holiday until Christmas, so let's make the most of it. Except for you North Americans who don't have a bank holiday on Monday. You can whoop it up on Labo(u)r Day, Thanksgiving, and whatever other holidays your country/religion entails until Christmas. We're off to Warrington this weekend to see Paul's friends (yes, it will rain buckets all weekend long), have a BBQ, go out for a big night on the town, and enjoy a weekend of not cooking/staying in a hotel. Warrington is about 20 miles southwest of Manchester (more west than south, actually) and very close to Daresbury where I've been known to appear every now and then over the years. In keeping with the travelling around the country theme... (and please feel free to do the same with your country of residence or any other for that matter) Top five places to visit in Britain: 5. The West Country (Devon and Cornwall in particular)
Yesterday, a workmate (we'll call him "Pete") grabbed hold of another (female) workmate's PC and sent a message simply stating "I love you" - to another female workmate. So in keeping with that theme, I suggested that Pete send "I love you" messages to random people today. So far, he's sent love-themed emails to three men: two of whom have responded (one rather gracefully), and the third has yet to reply. This is latest one Pete sent: So Adrian, if you're free, come to Cambridge and keep Pete company. 3:22 PM --
Rightyo, let's get a top five week going. Okay, so the week's almost over - humour me. Promise not to alienate single people. ;) Top five ways to relax when you're really stressed: 5. Take a bubble bath, light some candles, bring a glass of wine, and a trashy novel.
august 198.38 PMthe psychology of food Standing in a queue in Tesco and the guy in front of me has the following in his trolley: one chicken madras ready meal, naan bread, lager, and three packages of Pot Noodles. Ah. I'm guessing a single man. I love looking at what people buy at the grocery store. It's like going through people's medicine cabinets (not like I do that, mind you) - you can learn so much. I saw a woman with the following in her trolley: Healthy Eating ready meals (Tesco's brand of low fat dinners), Diet Coke, Mueller Light yogurt, bags of salad, and a package of chocolate croissants. I'm guessing that this woman is perpetually on a diet and can't figure out why she's not losing weight. Has someone written a book or article about this? Or am I on to something here?
Well, okay. Personal things may appear on this page, but not personal personal stuff 'cos things are just getting weirder by the day. May I just take this opportunity to say (*warning: swearing eminent. Please avert your children's eyes) that it's more than just a little fucked up to post someone's email address on a usenet news group without their permission or knowledge. Fine, I understand that any shmuck who knows this URL can figure out that you can write to me by putting anything in front of @wittydomainname.com, but that's not the same as posting something on usenet explicitly asking people to contact me using this information. I guess this partially explains why I've been inundated by spam at various @wittydomainname.com addresses. At any rate, I'll leave you with this thought: unless you're a complete psycho, you wouldn't post someone's postal address or phone number without their permission, so why think it's okay to do that with an email address? Another tip: usenet posts are cached on Google for people to see for years to come. Don't think that people won't stumble across rubbish you write because you've posted it to a news group that your friends don't read - it'll still show up on Google searches. So all your messages you think are only being read by your fellow alt.inflatible.sheep-love posters are indeed visible via search engines. Modern technology, eh? You learn all sorts of things. That, and it helps having friends with way too much time on their hands who Google for all sorts of stuff. On a far more pleasant note (because it's a lovely, sunny Friday), I had a smashing time last night with my mates doing the "introduce the boyfriend" thing. We drank. We ate. We drank. We got shushed by some miserable git. We drank some more. I woke up at 3am with a massive headache (which made me whiny and pathetic, but somehow got me sympathy and some ibuprofen), and I'm trying to figure out a way to block out all the sun coming into this room today. Off to Northampton again this weekend, wherein lawn mowing (him, not me) and film watching ("Sum of all Fears") will occur. Probably won't have wine with dinner tonight, though. *blergh*
Definitely, absolutely, positively will never write stuff here about work-related things anymore. Except for unsubstantiated rumours about workmates. That'll be in here for sure. I think this also brings an end to more personal things appearing on this page. Except for lengthy diatribes about things like the disappearance of orange Kit Kats and how Nathalie Portman's tummy defies nature. That'll be in here for sure, too. Today's topic: how come you can't buy chunky orange Kit Kats anymore, but you can buy those large multipack bars of orange flavoured regular Kit Kats? What's up with that? I'm stumped.
It started with one workmate, then another as I recounted the story of how I came up with this lame domain name, then of course I told my bf/workmate about it. As far as I knew, no one else at my office read this site. Now I'm getting various people coming up to me and either joking/taking the piss about stuff they've read on this page or commenting on my house from pictures they've seen here. Apparently this site is also the topic of discussion at pub quizzes. Ay yi. Yes, this is a page read by lots of people (some I know, some I don't) and it's linked to lots of other people's pages - so I'm not really going out of my way to keep this a big secret. But, there's something kind of odd about discovering that a whole whack of people I see every day are reading this page. It's bad enough they can hear me pee, let alone read all this nonsense I spew out on a daily basis about my mundane life.
I've passed the 3 month mark at work today, so I'm now officially over my probationary period. This means that they can't sack/fire me for no good reason. Wahey! An especially poignant concept in light of the fact that we got rid of 10% of our staff recently. They could have told me to sod off without any severance pay or reason during those redundancies. I sent an email to my manager to ask if I was now out of the probation phase (I wasn't sure if it was 3 or 6 months) and she replied, "Of course you passed. We think you're fab!" How nice is that? Keep in mind that I used to work for a manager who was, for lack of a better phrase, a complete and utter maniac. I also worked under people who told me that "Arts graduates can't do anything technical" and (as you may remember from previous blog entries) "you don't speak English - you speak American". A real bucket o' laughs, that was. So needless to say, I am thrilled to bits with my present manager (and team leader - the fabulous Andy). I also received an extra allotment of stock options recently because they're happy with my work. Granted, the stocks aren't worth a hell of a lot right now, but that's not the point. It's very nice to get a pat on the back instead of a snide remark and criticism. Stating the obvious here, I know. I made a very unsettling discovery today: you can hear people in the bloke's toilets when you're in the women's loo. A lunatic workmate (if you work with me, you'll know who this is) started to follow me into the loo, and after I protested, ran into the men's toilets and proceeded to talk to me through the bathroom walls. How disturbing to know that my male colleagues can hear me pee. And vice versa. Ewwwwww.
Gotta keep awake while the laundry spins. Just to keep my eyes open for a few more minutes, here are some more fun facts for you to enjoy. The "P" stands for: Paul
For those of you who haven't known me for several years, I used to be fat. Like Orca fat (thanks to "Usual Suspects" for that line). Just to reiterate this point, here's a picture of me from the mid-1990s on the left, and me on my web cam last summer:
Why am I sharing godawful pictures of myself with you all? I'm trying to remind myself of how far I've come (over 40 lbs. lost, to be precise) and to motivate myself to get the rest of this flab off. I'm down to the last stretch and I really can't be arsed to watch what I eat. Eating and drinking are just too much fun! Excercise, not so much. So, here's somewhat of a declaration that I'm getting back on track and will get this last bit of weight off. No, I won't turn this into a diet journal 'cos those are so painfully awful to read. No one wants to know what I'm eating every day and how I gained .25 lbs. since 9am this morning. I hate diet obsessed people. They're boring and frankly, if you can't enjoy eating, you're missing out on a hell of a lot. I want to be healthy and I don't want stuff to jiggle when I move. Most stuff, anyway. So, back to lifting heavy things and skipping in my garden, and paying attention to what I stuff into my face every day. Erm...of course anything I ingest on Thursday at the pub and the Hotpot doesn't count. Shaddup.
Had a smashing weekend in Northampton where we played a smaller scale version of "Meet the Mates" - P's mate and his mate's girlfriend visited for the weekend. Much wine, beer, and a few margaritas were consumed, Mexican food was also consumed (we've got the whole salsa/guacamole thing perfected), and we had a night out on the town. Okay, so we hit one bar and a pub but that's the most bar-hopping I've done in ages. I liked them a lot and they liked me, so it was a hit overall I'd say. Even the sun came out, which is always a nice thing. Coming soon: "Meet the Mates: The Cambridge Edition".
Rain, rain, rain, rain, and more rain. With a 100% chance of rain. Possibilities of a downpour, followed by showers. And some rain. Yeah, I know I live in England and this is how it is here, but man. It's getting depressing. Then again, we never get -35C weather in winter or 40C with the humidity in summer, so I can't really complain. Oh wait, yes I can. Canadians and Brits are really good about complaining about the weather; it's one of the things our two cultures have in common. That, and an obsession with beer. I'm meeting a couple of P's mates this weekend, which makes me a wee bit nervous. I'm not normally fazed by meeting new people, but ever since I moved here, I'm a lot more conscious of my North American-ness. The sound of my nasally accent grates on some people, I've had people correct my pronunciation ("It's 'tom-ah-to'!"), and I irritate even myself with smatterings of "like" and "you know" that I can't seem to stop putting after most sentences. Now I have some sort of weird mid-Atlantic accent, use a lot of Britishisms, but still say things like "garbage" and "cookie". When I go home, people ask where I'm from because of this mutating accent I've acquired. Then again, when people here ask me where I'm from, I'm never sure if I should say Toronto (born there and lived in various places in Ontario until I was 20) or Montreal (city I've lived in the longest and where I came from before moving here). Help. At any rate, I am very much looking forward to 5pm when we head out into the elements, westward to Northampton. After the magaritas on Saturday night, I don't think anyone's going to care about my nasally accent.
Summer in England has been cancelled. Please notify your friends and loved ones. Get thee to a holiday in Spain.
P, as summed up by me. Name: Has one, yep Why do I feel like I've just written articles for a teen magazine?
Me, as summed up by P in response to a relative who wanted him to spill the beans. Name: Lisa MacDonald No bad points? Ah, the drugs I've been slipping into his wine and tea must be working.
The last company I worked for announced that they would be making people redundant yesterday. Fortunately, it won't affect my ex-teammates but obviously it still sucks because other people are going to be out of a job soon. Ed's idea of giving it all up to live on a carrot farm is strangely appealing, except replace "carrot farm" with "villa by the sea in France" and I'm so there. Now to find some way to become independently wealthy without having to marry a rich old guy.
I really shouldn't do this anymore. This whole drinking and staying up late on a schoolnight malarky. I'm doing it again next week, but it's on a Thursday night - somehow Fridays are a little easier to handle than Wednesdays when I'm feeling like this. Ugh. What's worse is that I didn't even drink that much, and I still feel like poo. Still, we had a fun evening of wine and curry with a couple of friends. I love nights like that; having a few people over for food and drinks, especially now that I have a house big enough to entertain dinner guests. Of course now I have a sink full of dishes I've got to contend with when I get home tonight... I'm starting to think that we're stuck in some sort of weird Star Trekian time rift, 'cos this has been the slowest week ever. Roll on Friday!
I feel like I'm functioning on 3 brain cells today (only about 2 less than usual, actually). I hate when I get like this; I can't even have a basic conversation without long lapses of silence. Luckily, I came into work with another non-morning person who probably didn't mind the lack of incessant chatter. Three teas and one Diet Coke later, I'm expecting a bit more energy to return this afternoon. That and a lot of trips to the loo. I had a nice weekend in sunny Northampton, which is about 50 miles west of Cambridge for you non-UK type people. I had dinner made for me on Saturday, we went shopping and picked out a couple of paint colours for P's nearly-finished kitchen, saw Men in Black 2 (not nearly as good as the first which isn't really that surprising, and the special effects were ho hum), and had a curry delivered for dinner. I'll be in Northampton again this weekend, as part of the "meet the mates" festivities. I get to meet some of his mates, then he gets to meet most of mine the week after at a drunken Hotpot outing. I'm hoping that none of my mates will drink a yard of ale and vomit on anyone. Or worse - tell embarrassing stories about me. Not that there's anything to tell. *cough* Right, back to this riveting functional spec. Need more tea. Mmmmmmm...
So, so, so not in the mood to be here right now. At least I figured out what to make for dinner tonight and have already made my way to Tesco's to get everything. Right, a few minutes of silliness, then it's back to project planning for me. Time to kill time doing the Friday Five: 1. What is your lineage? Where are your ancestors from?
The concert last night was absolutely fantastic. My throat still hurts from shouting and singing, which is an improvement from when I saw Hole and my head was hurting from a combat boot due to a wayward body surfer. Ah, folk festivals - where people are hairy, smoke a lot, but don't tend to mosh. I picked Chris up from work (not literally - he's a bit big for that sort of thing) and we headed over to the venue. A short walk later, we arrived only to be informed that we've got to stand in a massive queue to exchange our tickets for wristbands. Chris suggested that we fashion our own wristbands out of leaves from nearby trees, wheras I suggested that we put on the neon vests that were lying around and run through the gates pretending that we're doing crowd control. We waited in the queue. The wristbands have "property of Cambridge City Council" stamped on them, which is more than just a little unsettling. We wandered over to the beer tent and found Jim (shocker), then wandered over to find some food. Call me crazy, but I'm not too keen on the idea of buying meat products from people in trailers, so I opted for a veggie burger covered in fresh salad and lovely chunky potato wedges. Incidentally, it's really hard to eat a big burger with one hand whilst standing. The BBC 2 tent was rather small, and they didn't bother to open it up to let more people see the stage. It really sucks to be 5'4" when you're trying to see a stage in a standing room only crowd. I got to watch the back of some guy's head for about an hour, while Chris and Jim told me what was going on onstage (which mostly consisted of "it's not Billy Bragg yet"). The opening act was rather amusing: a woman on fiddle and a guy on accordian (who may or may not have been cute - I couldn't get past the fact that he was holding an accordian. It's like a man with a tuba. Not sexy.). At one point, the bloke's mobile rang ("Say hi to Nigel, everyone!", he said to the crowd) and at another point, the woman started coughing and had to stop singing to recover. Oddly, a lot of people left after this band finished. I couldn't believe that everyone wasn't there to see Billy Bragg. Anyway, this meant that we could move a lot closer to the stage and hallelujah, I could see! Billy Bragg came on next, played old and new songs, talked and joked with the crowd, swore a lot to piss off the BBC, and put on a fabulous show. In academic news, I've been offered a place in the MA programme. Go me! :)
Just sitting here biting my nails, waiting for Sheffield Hallam University to ring me. I'm doing a phone interview today as I've applied for their MA programme in Technical Communications. Nervous, me. Tonight, I will be mostly jumping around in the mud to Billy Bragg. It's the Cambridge Folk Festival this weekend, and we're off to see Billy tonight. You know you're getting old when a) you're concerned about where to park b) you're concerned about whether there will be anything to eat and c) you're seeing Billy Bragg 'cos you really liked him as a teen.
|
wonder no more
by the skin of my teeth
sabotage
back to reality
august 14
