Oh crikey

I've done it. I've booked for a holiday in San Francisco and LA next February. Both hotels, my flights and a San Fran city pass are booked. I should feel excited but instead I feel nauseous. I think its my inner cheapskate kicking in. £850 down the tubes just like that. Eep! I haven't even booked for the convention or my travel insurance yet.

*shakes*

On a fun note though I did notice something on the Lastminute website. In one corner there's a little link that says 'The boss is coming - look busy' and if you click on it it brings up a fake graph. Tee hee. They're so silly. I love them. Unfortunately Expedia had a better range of flights at the times I wanted them so I booked through them.

I wonder how long it'll be before I stop feeling anxious about the amount of money I've spent and start feeling excited about my hol? Probably on the flight over...

Actually, no. Probably on the flight back.

Pix

Note to self: Don't try adding lovely pics to your blog late at night. It takes fecking ages and you'll keep getting error messages.

*sigh*

Winter warmer

The first cold snap of autumn/winter and I've had a completely shitty day at work. So what am I cheering myself up with tonight?

1) El cheapo spaghetti bolognese ready meal from the corner shop.
2) A french fancy or two.
3) Singing Black Horse and the Cherry Tree at the top of my lungs with my headphones on, not caring if I'm in tune or not (and er, in our house of course).
4) Reading a thankyou card from the babies Farrow. Very cute.
5) A cup of tea.
6) My big woolly snuggly cardie.
7) Silly stuff on the net.

And shortly...

8) A snifter of Southern Comfort & lemonade.

Thank the lordy that tomorrow is my last day at work for a while. I'm having next week off. Hurrah! My mate Sarah is coming up from Birmingham on Saturday and we'll be out clubbing that night. Monday I should be going out for a carvery lunch at the Britannia Hotel in Manchester with my Mum & Bro. Tuesday will hopefully be spent doing sweet, sweet FA. Wednesday night me & Bro are going to watch some play thing based on two MR James short stories at Bury Met. Dunno what else I'm doing for the rest of the week but I think I'll take a trip out somewhere. Kendal maybe. Oh and I hope I'm going to watch some firework display somewhere at the weekend but I don't know where. I've a choice of the chav-tastic Leverhulme Park in Bolton on Friday or Boggart Hole Clough in Manchester on Saturday. I'd like to do a big official organised one this year. The last few years we've either had one at ours or I've been to the theatre peeps do's. As long as I get to go 'ooh' and 'ahh' and eat black peas and baked potatoes with gay abandon I don't care.

Hours of fun

Thanks to Garvin on the Outpost Gallifrey forum for providing me with hours of maddening entertainment last night by posting this link. I finally got them all just now with the help of a couple of clues. Not all are horror and not all are films but quite alot of them are so silly and tenuous you'll be slapping your head raw each time you get one.

Gnash!

There's nothing more guaranteed to make me feel utterly utterly stupid than having to report a technical fault to an IT Support helpline. Particularly if the person on the other end is a c**t. (Sorry about the C word - I thought I'd overused twat). I thought it couldn't get any worse than speaking to someone halfway across the world in Bangladesh who, as well as having a strong accent, speaks very quickly and knows alot more about computers than I do, using technical terms that leave me flummoxed. No, what's worse is speaking to some work-shy inbred sexist c**t in Cornwall. I'm not really very good at explaining things at the best of times but trying to log a fault on my work PC is even more difficult. FFS I couldn't even remember the phrase 'dialogue box' until a colleague prompted me. There's an Access database I use every day for my work. Populating two particular fields with a date should trigger a dialogue box, the contents of which I then print off. Except that it frequently doesn't trigger and I have to exit out of the database & go back in again to rectify it. Its been happening since before I even started with the company and my boss who (importantly) used to be an IT bod is well aware of it and has been trying to sort it out with the Engineer who periodically visits from Cornwall.

Anyhoo, boss is off for two weeks, engineer is due in on Monday and we've had an email saying that if we want him to sort anything out we have to log it with the helpdesk. Hence me logging the call. We think its a problem with the hard drive. Cornwall c**t thinks its the database itself. Today he rang to ask who created the database. I thought it was my boss but I wasn't sure,

"Well if you can find out which chap created it, they'll have to sort it out themselves."
"But everyone else uses the same database & never has a problem. We think its my hard drive." "Mmmmmm, no don't think so."

I ring back a little later.

"Its my boss who created the database, Joanne XXX"
"Well ask John..."
"Joanne!"
"Oh so its Joan...?"
"No Joanne."
"Maybe she doesn't understand what she needs to do?"
"She used to be an IT Support assistant. I think she understands perfectly."
Snort of derision from Cornwall c**t.
"Yeah well, we'll take a look at it but I don't think there's anything we can do."

Tosser.

At least I defended my boss's honour. I wish I could've done it the traditional way though. You know, by taking a very sharp, very big sword to the uncouth knave and running him through.

The world's greatest living comedian

Is me. Or so it seems. One chap I speak to on a regular basis at work laughs at every single thing I say.

Every.

Single.

Thing.

I never knew I had a gift for comedy. He's been sending me these faxes every day for the last few days and not ringing me up beforehand to say that he's doing it. I inevitably get a phone call from him hours later apologising for sending one & not ringing. "Well," I say, "You keep saying that but you keep doing it!". Hahahahaahahahaahahaaaa! replies the dickhead. Yes its all absolutely fecking hilarious. I'll say the most routine, mundane thing to him regarding work and he laughs his tits off. Is it that I'm unintentionally hilarious? Is it my delivery? Maybe its my comic timing - they say its all about that.

Or is he a twat?

There's only one other person I know who does the same thing and he's a twat. The kind of twat who thinks its funny to ask me if I've ever been to Ohio just because it says Ohio on my T-Shirt. The one that I bought from Next. Unfashionable twat.

Maybe they're related.

It strikes me that this might have been an entertaining thing to send to that big mass blog thing that was being recorded for posterity yesterday. Though I'm not sure the repeated use of the word twat would've been quite the thing they were looking for.

Tarting and farting about

Just thought I'd brighten up the place with a few piccies of Swansea.

Sunny jollies

I find myself here on the PC attempting to book hotels and transport for a few days off I have at the beginning of next month. I haven't had enough holidays this year so I decided to take a week off with the idea of popping off to London for a few days to catch up with chums and do some touristy stuff. Now, I've been looking at train tickets. There was much publicity a few months back about the confusing range of train tickets available and the conditions you had to observe to get them. Like anyone would want to go for anything other than the cheapest tickets available. Very often these days its cheaper to get two singles and indeed, for my trip out on Thursday I can get one for £12.50. Marvellous. Sunday is a different matter. Nothing under £50 unless you want to travel really late and run the risk of your train being cancelled or getting to your destination so late that one has to get a taxi home (and it aint cheap from Manchester to here in a cab). The journey on a Sunday already takes upwards of 3 1/2 hours by the looks of it. No doubt due to engineering works. Joy. I did think of getting a train there & a flight back. It'd be cheaper and quicker. But the cheapest/best flights are either from Stanstead (too far) or leave too late in the day. Humph! So a three hour journey on the train it is. Now I just either have to ring up & see if they have any cheap tix or traipse to Manchester Piccadilly to get them in person. Despite it being more convenient to buy tix online I often end up buying them in person because that's where I can get the best deal. 21st century my arse.

So, then to hotels. I haven't had a huge amount of luck with hotels in London. Most places I have been able to afford have been decidedly dog-eared when I got there. Peeling paint, dirty carpets, bathrooms so tiny you couldn't swing a gerbil never mind a cat and one room with a faintly odd smell. The last one I stayed in was about the best. Very convenient location and it was clean and not too pokey but the bed!!!! Oh dear oh dear. Ever seen that episode of Father Ted where they're trying to give stuff up for lent and they get a nun in who replaces Ted's mattress with bricks? I think she'd been let loose in my hotel. Such a pity as it was the nicest so far. And recommended in my Lonely Planet book too. This time I've got my eye on another one from the LP book. Its in Kensington which is a little bit out of the way but in such a high falutin' neighbourhood that its got to be good, surely? And lots of readers love it apparently. The price makes me a tad suspicious though. Far too cheap for that area ie £35 a night. I'll still give it a go though if they've got a room spare.

One thing I really, really must do is finally decide if I'm going to go to San Francisco and LA next February. Some chums go every year to the Gallifrey Dr Who convention in LA and it sounded like so much fun that I wanted to go too. But I don't just want to go to LA for a Con. I've been told by a few people that LA isn't much to write home about anyway and is really awkward to get around on public transport. So I decided I'd go to San Fran for a week first then spend a few days in LA. Flights look reasonable and the LAX Marriott where the Con is held is also within my budget I think. I'm having trouble finding a hotel in SF though. There's so much to choose from. I think I've got an idea of which one to stay in but I'm wondering if I'd have the same problem in SF as I have done in London ie the cheapest hotels are deeply dodgy. And what with everything else the cost is mounting so rapidly that my purse is cringing with fear. I'd love to go. I've even kept those couple of weeks free just in case. Of course, what I could do is forego SF altogether and just go to LA for the Con and a few touristy bits. SF sounds much much nicer though. Oh what's a girl to do? I have to decide sharpish as time is really getting on and before I know it'll be Christmas and my finances will be depleted.

Talking of Christmas and hotels though (sorry to mention the C word) our works Christmas do is going to be very posh indeed. Never ones to do anything by halves we're having it in the new Hilton hotel in the very new Beetham Tower skyskraper on Deansgate. And there's talk of a few of us staying over. Rooms are upwards of £110 a night though. We reckon if we can persuade 10 people to stay over we could pay £11 each. Lets see, two, maybe three in the bed, one in the bath, one in a chair or sofa (if there is one) and that leaves six kipping on the floor. Ooh its like my twenties all over again. Bagsy being in the bed though. And preferably with my boss. Snigger.

Patter of tiny Farrows

Hurrah hurrah and congratulations to my friends Jac and Nick who I've just found out had two beautiful bouncing baby boys yesterday morning. Well, Jac did obviously. Not Nick. Mother, father and babies doing very well thankyou.

New illness

Ooh I've discovered I've got this problem with my jaw thanks to the Bupa website. And on the first google hit too. Hurrah. I've been having problems for a while but the last couple of days my left jaw joint has been particularly bad. It comes as no surprise then when I say that this week has been a bit hectic and stressful at work. And at home actually. I was away staying at my mums last week as my best friends mum sadly passed away at the beginning of last week due to motor neurone disease. My best mate was also in a play at the time and decided to carry on with it since that's what her mum would have wanted. So I went to the theatre every night to be there for her and helped out a bit serving tea & coffee while I was there. My dear sweet lovely girl was ever so strong and together. More so than I expected her to be. This week she's also had a school inspection to contend with. She's sailed through it with ease but dear god, as if she didn't have enough to cope with. Bless her heart.

Its the funeral tomorrow. I wish I could be there for her but I have to be content with sending a supportive text message or two and letting her know that I'm thinking of her and love her lots. I'm not good with words of advice. I'm a great listener but when it comes to words of wisdom I fall short. I get so self conscious that I'm talking complete and utter shite. My shite seems to be working so far though so I can't be all that bad. Still, the important thing is that she knows I'm here for her and psychically sending her love and hugs (or attempting to).

See, I'm even talking shite now.