You’re a lovely city, the weather is wonderful but please, enough already! All it seems I’ve been doing for the last 36 hours is eat and drink!!!!! You’ve been very good to not kill me with my allergies but that doesn’t mean you need to try with volume!
Tag: work
Random act of kindness
Wow… just… wow.
One of my colleagues, who regularly takes the work shuttle bus with Bean and I, has a small torch that Bean likes to play with on the bus. Bean loves it, and is very good in giving it back to him before he leaves the bus to catch the train in Great Chesterford. I emailed him this morning to ask for the make and model so that I could buy one for Bean (to keep the evil robots and spiders out of his room at night), as it seems rugged enough to survive a toddler’s version of love and attention.
His reply:
Hey, there’s one in your pigeon hole ;)
When asked if he was sure about it, he replied:
Of course – I have kids of my own, and torches are a very very important part of growing up!
So… wow.
Sometimes, people rock!
Meeting hell
Why do the powers that be insist on scheduling mandatory meetings that, for all intents and purposes, end up wasting several man-days’ worth of productivity? I’ve just spent 1.5 hours trying, and failing miserably, to look interested in something that I just don’t care about and is of no relevance whatsoever to my work.
Echo! Echooo! Echoooooo!
Both my ears have been blocked for the last week. It’s annoying as fuck, but at least the stabbing ear pain has gone away and the tinnitus has calmed down to some extent. Still, I want to be able to hear what people are saying to me!
Nice to know they care :-D
I’ve been off work for the last 2 days, battling the terrible affliction that is man-flu. When I went to pick up Bean from nursery tonight, I ran into one of my office mates – who shall remain nameless, suffice it to say that he’s part of the Spanish Mafia. His first question was not about my state of health, but rather to know if I was coming in tomorrow and, if not, who was going to unlock the room where the wine is stored in preparation for tomorrow’s wine & cheese.
Everything takes longer with a Bean in tow
The image says it all…
Well, that’s a new one on me…
Email I received from Systems:
There has been an explosion in a network duct in London, causing the loss of the link from EBI to our London data centres. Our network providers are working to repair the fibres, but this may take some time. EBI routing has failed over to our backup connection. We are working to restore web services where possible.
The holidays are over, back to reality now
The Christmas decorations are down. The tree and the village are packed away. It’s not snowing on my blog anymore and the counter has been reset to something else. The last two weeks have been hectic to say the least, but generally good. A full redux post will come later when I have time to write it all down, but for now pictures will have to suffice:
http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/xmas_2011/
Heyho, heyho, it’s back to work I go.
All planned out, over and done with!
In the past few weeks, I have been working on the planning of:
– the PST group xmas party
– the main EBI xmas party
– mince pies & mulled wine for 100 people at work
– booking 50 tickets for Stomp
– booking 150 tickets for a cinema screening
– getting 500 mugs printed for work
and a boatload of smaller tasks, none of which are actually my actual day job.
It’s been stressful, to say the least but the good news is that everything is now done and over. The office paella potluck went down a treat. It was held at the Great Chesterford community center and the comments about the food and the venue were uniformly positive (many thanks to the paella chefs!). The day had a rocky start with a trip to Addenbrookes A&E after Bean dropped a chair on his big toe but bounced back once the food started being served. We already had all of the food prepped and packed in the car, but there was a ton of last-minute stuff we needed to deal with. Still, with a few phone calls, everything got sorted out and in the end, we were in and out of Addenbrooked in about an hour and a half. I have to give mad props to the guys who helped clean the place up afterwards, it was a big help!
The EBI xmas party was last night, at La Raza in Cambridge. The comments I got on the night were also very positive, with people saying that it was a better party than in the past couple of years. I can personally vouch that the food was not only feckin’ plentiful, but very very good as well. Given all of my allergies, the fact that I was stuffed at the end of the night was a very positive fact IMO. The jalapeno poppers were great, but those beef and horseradish yorkie puds were pure crack! Plus, you know, 5 drinks for a fiver is a deal you can’t beat :) The only critiques I would give for the night was that the music the DJ put on wasn’t what I would have preferred for a xmas party. Other than that, and the totally unfounded rumours of a rigging of the raffle draw (hehe!), the night was a success in my books.
Becky had a bit of karmic retribution when Bean woke up at 11 and, realizing that we weren’t there, cried for an hour before getting himself back to bed. Becky was a bit frazzled when she called, I think…
So now, I only have one more week of work before I get some leave time to chill out and cook stuff for the holidays. I’ve already started tonight, with a braised beef topside and some chicken stock that I’m going to use to make a hamhock terrine in the near future. Katy and I are trying to finalize the list of all the recipes we want to try out for new years :)
The prezzies are mostly all bought and just need wrapping, so that’s a load off as well.
Go us, for being productive!
Xmas holiday break, please come soon!
Between organising the group xmas paella, the EBI xmas party and various other events and cabs and mugs and groceries and presents and booze and whatnots, I’m getting a bit frazzled and I’m really looking forward to the holiday break.
The group paella is this weekend, the EBI xmas party is the week after that, and then I’m on holiday from the week after that still. And then it’s xmas, woohoo!
Still, we’ve managed to get a few bits of pre-xmas cheer already. Katy, Bean and I went to see the Victorian Christmas at Audley End house last weekend. Bean got to see Santa (again) and see real life reindeer, and a few not-so-real ones! The stable yard was really cool, because it had a Victorian market recreation, with people dressed up in period costume hawking period wares. There was a gentleman selling a miracle tonic who was simply hilarious.
Best quotes:
See that greyhound? It was a whippet before having some of my elixir!
See that hirsute man with the huge beard over there? He was bald before taking but a spoonful of my elixir! Now, he’s stuffed more than 12 cushions with his excess hair!
hehe :)
We also went to Leicester to see a Bill Bailey doing his Dandelion Mind show at De Montfort Hall. We’d seen in before in London but it changed quite a bit, and he’s always fun to see live. He completely lost the plot a few times when his microphone went batshit (hey! let’s disconnect the Hippie!) and when he tripped doing his Gary Newman “Cars” rendition on the honk organ. His cover of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” was brilliant though.
We also discovered some really cool (but stupidly expensive!) prints from Doug Hyde in a gallery in Leicester. We fell in love with one, but sadly, we didn’t have the £700 to buy it (it’s cheap, considering that the original is going for about £20,000). Still, dang.
