what's the matter with you people?

i haven't had a post from anyone since 11th Feb. Come on, get it together people!

Had my 2nd day at my 6 week (ish) secondment store today. Think I might survive it. Seemed a lot better today than my first afternoon which left me feeling apprehensive. The front of the store is beautiful with those big thick glass curved windows that make me think of Victorian Christmases for some reason - probably all those festive pictures of sentimentality. Had a thrilling afternoon taking the staff on a white knuckle ride into virgin territory of cluster reports and genre bestseller lists. I mask my nerdish nature with faux cynicism.

in which a first is discovered and alcohol is a recurrent theme

to date i've not had the experience that many people have of waking up the next morning and remembering nothing after a drinking binge. until this evening when i discovered that i had been fed a bowl of miso soup between being dressed in someone else's pyjamas and lying down in a bed in derek jarman's old house. each of the latter i remember perfectly but not the miso soup. how freaked out was i when i found out this evening? this was virgin territory for me and felt really odd finding out.oh woe is me for i am not omniscient springs to mind for some incomprehensible reason. having learnt about renaissance man's ambition to know everything i've never been quite the same again. so anyway, i discovered this over my 2nd large (thank you NY3) glass of red.

found out interesting things like a good mate of mine, who for purposes of anonymity we'll call Mary, is friends with Peter Jackson and has his home number and has been to his house in NZ .

oh and i went to a management training day for work. i knew there was a reason i wound up at the blue posts!

party hair

Went to an engagement party this evening. Some mates of Mr K I didn't know very well. I wore a very expensive skirt and made up some party hair for the occassion. It turned out to be a very exciting party if you knew everyone there. I knew Mr K and mini-me. Plus a handful of other acquaintances. After a couple of hours of playing invisible drawing games on the paper table cloths with mini-me we ordered a taxi home. AND what do you think happens the moment the taxi arrives? They start up a chocolate fountain. Sorry but all sensibilites went out the window at that point. I was front of the queue slurping up chocolate and marshmallows while carrying out a somewhat muffled-mouth-ful conversation with Mr K. -The taxi's here - I know - the taxi's here - yeah but have you seen - yes i know but the taxi... - yeah yeah look, can we have one of these? - no, the taxi's here - scoffscoffscoff.

out there

essentially the great outdoors ain't a place for this girl but this afternoon i did this cool thing with masonry nails and wire in the back garden so my new passiflora can have somewhere to climb. sometime soon i'll get round to doing the same on the other wall so the purple droopy headed clematis can do the same thing.

chocbug

chocbug
Originally uploaded by kumquat7.

A Christmas present from my sister that I finally allowed myself to eat today.

networking

HELLO PALIMPSEST!!!
have just found out about kickRSS so have subtly themed this post for you all! hee hee.

14 FEB

i got a flower for my bud pot!! plucked by my own fair hand off ebay and paid for by the fair hand of mr k :)

olney wine bar

is a good place to while away a couple of hours with an old mate you haven't seen since uni.

My best mate, alimal, is flying to Syria tomorrow!http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/
country_profiles/801669.stm
So this evening we ate indian take away together and played a silly board game. I lost. Very silly. She's off to see her sis and bro in law who live there. Very exciting. Wish I was accompanying her. But which sane person would give up the chance to sit on the M1 morning and evening in favour of flying to Arabia?
I'm going to miss her a lot even though she's only gone for 2 weeks.

logs

logs
Originally uploaded by JodyDigger.

How cool is this picture by Digger? Just thought I'd nick it from her and promote her flickr site at the same time.

Clever girl.

second second ment

looks like i's gunna be chucked outta the nest again for 6 weeks to help another branch. this is of course top secret so i've only potentially told the whole world by blogging it! soon as i'm allowed to talk about my life without fear i will fill in the details.

so the 2 days of fasttrack was fun and made me feel like thursday was monday. now i have a whole weekend off to veg out and read. rushdie's going well but i keep buying new things to read. another graphic novel by sacco, 'stuart: a life backwards' just because i happened to walk past the author and so i took the opportunity of getting him to write in the book for me and he drew a cute picture too.

bored of typing now. am going to celebrate weekend off by staying up late, after watching dr. strangelove with mini-me, to play inane computer games online.

tarra.

positively ancient

it's my birthday...oh actually, it just ended 18 minutes ago. drat.

anyway i had a super dooper time at a workshop on finance today. what better way to celebrate?

thankfully i had drinks out with one set of friends in london (where some rash confessions were made to me in front of lots of people by someone who i hope will wake up tomorrow morning and cringe with embarrassment).

then i had drinks out with a 2nd set of friends back home where they'd brought in a chocolate cake to the pub and had candles and all!!

lots more to say like a storm porch full of flowers and clay monsters but my birthday ended 21 minutes ago and i have another early train to catch in the morning. off to set my alarm for 6:15.

night night.

tuesday evening

mole & JJ, if you were still thinking of coming down to london tomorrow evening....change of plan. hr can't get me a hotel so it's not going to happen. soz....

race for life

http://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/am_i_crazy

Took 'Berts out for her first driving lesson today. A completely new experience for me having a learner drive my car round the Oasis car park! She loved it and was really excited to be actually driving!

That's definitely not me on the far right in pink pringle socks and a flowery pringle blouse. Nor is that Mr K next to me in genuine plus fours, diamond cut socks and brylcreemed hair!!
Secretly I thought, while everyone else was laughing at him, that he looked pretty darned dashing, like a pre-war gent as seen on all those period dramas.

If you don't know the rules of pub golf they amount to drinking lots, fast. Honestly pub crawls do nothing for me but we had such a crack last night. I ducked out around midnight 'cos we had people coming over today and I needed to be marginally sociable...or at least sober! Mr K and a mate who was sleeping over rolled in around half three, singing and talking absolute rubbish for 45 minutes.

It was a close run thing but we managed to get the house looking like we're a normal regular family by the time our friends arrived for dinner and not, in fact, like a bunch of crazys who have friends crashing over and singing Ramstein as they lie on the top landing and discussing molluscs and walruses.

pub golf

i was the first to woos out. pictures to follow. i was rather proud of my pleated skirt and pringles blouse and socks though!

considering i'm not really an out on the town getting bladdered kind of girl, i had a really good laugh with a big group being raucous and merry.

brunch

Had brunch out this morning with some folks. I would say the 4 day old baby stole the show but unfortunately Alimal just had to get in there and make it more memorable by standing in cold scrambled egg and having the cat run up and start licking it from the sole of her socks. D'you see how this post looks like a fried egg?!

"mmm, nice."

Went out for Jazz and wine on Thursday night. (blogged it the same night but it disappeared.)
Fresco's coffee shop turns into a wine bar once a month in the evenings and I've been meaning to book up for ages.
Mr K had a hideous migraine, throwing up in a bucket and getting pins and needles but still insisted I went out. Being the cold blooded creature that I am and also knowing that he just needed to sleep and the best I could do was empty sick buckets, I did as I was told.
The wine was excellent. Something red and Argentinian. I should remember the names so I can drop them like I always drink posh stuff. The served food as well. I think all the dishes were cheese of some sort so I went for mozzarella, avocado, tomato and basil. Very good.
The music wasn't bad. Didn't knock me sideways but it was pleasant and unobtrusive so I got to chat with my mates, Mole and JJ.
I might have heard more of the music if JJ hadn't been singing that much loved classic 'We love big bananas' and the tune to Rhubarb and Custard with such gusto. Thank goodness Mole was there to reign her in with sensible comments like 'You tell [Mr K] him to stop playing up the brain tumour and show a bit of committment to his mates next time.' hahahahaha. (even mr k, feeling like his head was in a clamp, laughed at that when i told him.)

Must repeat soon when Mr K isn't being a big girl's blouse ;)

all cool

mini me and his girl parted company this evening. all very amicable. no real reason given (i am an old aged parent after all), they just wanted to be friends now. very civilised.

as i was daydreaming on my way home from work on the evening of our anniversary i thought about what gift i would get when i got home.(one had been promised).I decided that the best thing he actually could do would be to install that bloody shower that's been sat in its box for over 2 years gathering dust. that would really show he'd thought about how he could make me happy rather than buying me some little token gift. ha! what are the chances of that eh? i mean, he's a darling but there's only so much you can expect.

got home and the shower was installed.

got home tonight and a shower screen was installed.

what a star :o)