Life was improving

I so wanted this week to be a more bubbely positive post. As my cold dissapeared life brightened. I met a colleague who is off with burn out at the moment and he seems to be on the mend. And has given me the details of his psychololgist that I am thinking of looking into.

Played squash on Thursday with friends and colleagues, and for once did well. The running has really built up my stamina which helped with the squash.

All was great.

Then on Friday I had what is probably in the top 5 traumatic experiences of my life so far.

In the middle of the afternoon we heard ambulances, nothing special there we work close enough to the ring road of the town to hear them as they pass.

Then someone asks me to move my car as there has been an incident in another part of the building and they want to park the ambulance where my car is. No problem, got up to move it assuming someone had fallen or something and they needed the space to move them.

Then came another ambulance to the building, in our room someone joked that there had been a fight and that two of them needed help.

Then the owner of the company called the 100+ people into the canteen. Turns out that one of my colleagues had a chronic condition and he collasped with an aortic embalism. He was revived by a first aider, and then again by the ambulance staff. We would be told if more news came through. I left shortly after, and checked my mail once I got home. There was just a simple email asking everyone to go down to the canteen again. I knew immediately what the meeting would convey, and went into deep, numbed shock.

I was surprised at how shocked I was - it's quite a sized company and I didn't work that closely with the guy, but just could not function for the rest of Friday night. Thursday before leaving we were sharing champagne for a long running project that had just gone live. Now he's gone. A close colleague of mine was the first aider who tried to help him was distraught when I left on Friday (he was being looked after by his wife and some other members of his department). I hate to think what he went through this weekend.

Obviously I am not looking forward to having to go into work in the morning.

All I can say thought is that my deepest sympathies and thoughts are with his family.

Seriously what is wrong with some people

Unusual for me to do two posts in one week but I had to get this out of my system.

Was watching University challange last night and there was a transsexual team captain. It piqued my interest and I did a google this morning. One of the first things in the result set was this thread from digital spy:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=1077081&page=1

I just can't get over the mindset of some of the posters there, espcially this comment:

Originally Posted by Bfriars
There is a time and place and a captain on Uni Challenge isn't it!!!!!

WTF. Really WTF. I almost made a login just to put my thoughts there, but decided that it would be useless...

Is it any wonder that TS people have anxiety issues when there are 'people' (And I use the term losely) like this.

Slow down, you're driving too fast

I just finished an hours online gaming - Forza 3 on the xbox, with a few (real world) friends. I sucked. Lots... I don't get it I can play in single player mode, but put me against a few other people and suddenly I'm terrible. Still it was good fun...

Unlike the rest of my life the last week. With my head full of the stinking cold (and no lemons in home for my hot toddy pick me up) I seemed to be in a real downward spiral.

Work was not going well - I spent the last week trying to fix a server in the office (only to have to give up and get the thing reinstalled). And whilst spending all of this time fixing the server my other work was getting further and further behind.

The bathroom people cancelled without any prior warning. I called 1/2 hour after the appointment should have been to be told: 'We tried to contact you since Friday, due to a warehouse mixup he's not coming'. When I asked what number they had tried I was told that they had thrown it away as it seemed to be wrong. Something smells fishy there to me...

The whole TG thing was just getting on top of me totally. Once at home with my other half I'm not too bad - not totally great but almost. But when I'm not it seemed to be ripping me apart. Maybe it was just everything stacking up...

Hopefully this week the cold has gone and things will improve. Certainly over the weekend they were better - but that was spent 90% of the time with my other half, and as I said that's not too bad.

In fairness even with an appaling journey on the train to the office this morning - Fire alarm at Schiphol meant that all trians that run underneath the airport were late or cancelled, and when my intercity arrived it was only three carrages instead of it's normal 12 - I feel great at the moment. Fingers crossed.

And appologies to all out there who I have not had time to comment on. With everything that's going on I've barely had time to read the blogs, let alone leave the comments I've wanted to...

(And appologies for the random, rambling nature of this post - felt good to get it out though :) )

'Tis Healthy To Be Sick Sometimes

According to 'Henry David Thoreau'.  Be?  I'm not so sure (and could have lifted that quote entirely out of context :) )

I sit her typing this whilst yellow goo keeps trying to escape my nose, with my whole body - including teeth- aching.  (Sorry for the mental images there :) )

It's been another hectic week.  After a weeks vacation I was still very relaxed on Monday, and into Tuesday morning.  By Tuesday afternoon I needed another vacation - my most inportant project should be going live soon, and the business *still* do not know what they want, and like to try and blame IT for not reading their minds.  Ho hum I supppose.

I had a moment of personal epiphamy this week.  Unforunately that has caused more issues than it solved, including a number of almost sleepness nights, - still not sure where I am going with it...  Whilst I wanted to share that I had the moment of clarity - I am not sure I want to go into details just yet.  Maybe when I realise what to do with it I'llshare more.  I also need to beable to think it through more (which isn't that possibe with a thick head).

And to end of a brighter note.  It's christmas in 6 weeks.  That means that I get to start baking my christmas cake (well should have started two weeks ago, but was too busy sorting the house out for my parents visit).  I love this time of year - and normally spend the next 6 weekends in the kitchen making mince pies (with home made, Delia mincemeat) christmas cake - or truding around the shops trying to think what my other half would like for a gift.

Well my cup is empty, so it's time to malke another cuppachino - and juding by the sound on the windows it's pouring with rain again...

Evening Tanya, been a while

Well it has been a while (since blogging and since watching Lock Stock) - and writing this is about the only time I have had to myself since then.

The household chores are finally finished (for now). The bathroom is almost done (except the ceiling and window frame - which can both wait), the spare room no longer has a hole in the wall (from fitting the sink waste in the bathroom) and has been completely redocorated. And in record time I think - 4 evenings to strip the old wallpaper, put up the new (fibre-galss) wallpaper and give it three coats of paint. It was finished literally hours before my parents flight touched down - thankfully the smell of fresh wall paint doesn't bother them.

Spent a wonderful week with my parents, took some real time off of work - haven't read a single email in the last 8 days and won't until Monday morning on the way to the office. We didn't do anything special (except for a meal celebrating my other halfs birthday with her parents as well - first time both sets of parents have been together since our wedding day I think), just spent a few days together. Was quite sad when they took off again to go home. I thinkt the best thing was to see just how well my dad looks after his heart attack 10 weeks or so ago. That has put my mind to rest quite a bit.

After the failed shopping trip a couple of weeks a go I finally found a black dress that I liked (and fitted my rather limited budget - hurrar for H&M, they had lots). Was interesting buying it though. I was shopping with my other half (she was looking for jumpers, me a dress) and she surreptitiously, whilst "checking" the label, held it up to check the size. I have to say that was the least enjoyable part of it - size 44 in order to get a waist of the right size. And yet I can get away with skirts of size 40. Hopefully I can pull it in a little if I lose a little weight running...

Well... I think that is my head emptied again, and I need to start my studies - going for an MSTS DBA exam in the new year and have yet to actually start the training book.