Well I was out in the field this morning literally, sorted the jobs I needed to do, watched the sales team lecture, had a 5 minute budget meeting with one of the directors and got my invite to the BBQ tomorrow night. I then legged it to the safety of the local branch before any more bosses turned up.
My retreat from the show ground (or field as I call it) was short lived as I had to take some brochures and paperwork to the show ground. Once at the show ground I saw little point in going back to the branch so I headed for home. Spent the afternoon testing a terminal which was supposed to be dead but was very much alive.
This evening we went down to Poole quay for the quay for my car event, they choose a type of car every week and then invite owners of those type of car down to the quay for the night. Tonight's chosen car was the Mini including the newer BMW Mini's. I will post some pictures later but I have not taken them off the camera yet.
Tomorrow I am looking after my son in the morning, dropping him of to his mother at lunch time when she finish work and then it is the company BBQ in the evening. Winds look pretty crap for flying this weekend so it looks like the kites will be staying in the bag again for another weekend.
Sunday yet to be decided.
Its the other half birthday today and I got her what she wanted which were tickets for the Speedway Grand Prix in Cardiff in July. I was told I only had to get her a card for today and that was it. So that's exactly what I did, so why at 5:30 tonight was I being asked
"where are you taking me tonight?"
"No where" was my reply
"oh I thought you were going to surprise me"
"I did by listening to you and only getting you a card!!"
"oh"
It soon became obvious that a meal out was going to be required, so we duly booked a table at a local Indian. After 26 years together this was to be our first Indian meal in a restaurant. We have had take aways from the same place so we knew the quality of the food should be good. I well I am glad to report that we were not disappointed. I am sat here bloated by my meal tonight, can't remember what I had but it was very nice, and I must admit it was very mild for a medium curry. I was also surprised to see how busy the place was, there was a party of 12, a party of 4, another couple and ourselves which made the restaurant 2/3rd's full.
Work was almost a quiet today, I had a meeting this morning about data links and phones and that over ran by 1.5 hrs. Then I need to get some software and instruction over to a user by 3:00pm (this was at 1:30pm), but once that was done the main bits of the day were out of the way. Tomorrow I will spend my morning in a field upgrading laptops and installing mobile broadband. The reason I will be doing this in a field is the company is having its annual show and it the only time I can guarantee all the staff and laptops being in the same place at the same time, just hope it is sunny.
Not sure what I am doing at the weekend, hopefully I will get the kites out, weather looks OK, but it depends on the wind.
Are motorist the most persecuted people around? Our local council have just introduced a new parking enforcement vehicle, nothing new there you say accept this one is fitted with a camera mounted on the roof that will drive around the local area looking for parking offenses. When it finds a parking offense it will photograph the offense, send you a photograph of the offense and charge you £70 for the privilege. OK so the parking in some area is bad, but I bet it won't be enforcing parking regulation where it is needed like out side a couple of local school where the pavement and junctions themselves are used as parking zones. The police have given up trying to enforce the law (they were there to stop obstruction not the parking as the council look after that) and when they were there they booked one car for parking at a bus stop, problem was the buses stopped going up that road 3 years prevoius.
The council are not being honest, they were reported in the local paper as saying they have a new vehicle, singular, funny how I have seen three of them in the area for the past month or so.
Now we have fuel prices going back up again, fortunately the local petrol station is one of the cheapest in the area, unfortunately it is also a scammer's paradise, they have had the bank machine scammed and the local paper was full of reports last week of local people having their card being scammed in the petrol station.
Once upon a time diesel was cheaper than petrol, then a couple of years ago diesel was about 12p dearer than petrol, now currently at the above station it is 1p different (in favour of petrol). When I was up country in the week I saw diesel for £1.08 per litre (and it was not a motorway services), I filled up at £1.04 per litre, the local above is £1.009 a litre
Then we had Jeremy Clarkson passing comment of the traffic in our area, I would totally agree with him. I can drive 38 miles from work towards home in 30 minutes, it then takes me another 20 minutes to do the final 6 miles. If you want to get to "a" to "b" then you have to take the back roads which ends up adding more miles to the trip. The wife can get a bus to and from work, the bus stop from home is within 100mtr of our house and probably the same at work, So why does it take over an hours to get the bus home. Talking of buses, they are frequently late, often they are cancelled, the bus driver drive aggressively, don't bother to even try to get in the bus stop just stop anywhere within a 100yd radius of the bus stop and the best bit of all, some of them can't speak in English!!
I'm starting to rant , so I better stop...........
Flicking through the TV channels tonight I came a cross an old comedy series, "On the Buses", it that old it was in black and white. The acting was appalling, the story line was appalling but still I laughed. I can remember watching it when I was a kid (started in 1969). It was fun while it lasted.
Work came and went, I woke up early or at least I thought I had and while I laid there trying to decide if to look at the clock to check the time and possibly leave even earlier, the alarm went off, so I had no choice. I managed to get the jobs I needed to get done quite quickly for a change. Still no answers to the questions I raised over two weeks ago which is seriously peeving me off.
Why do I bother, why do I bother to explain things to people, why do I show an interest in other people, why do these people listen and say they understand and then do the complete bloody opposite! Its at times like this that I really wonder why I bother, I put all the time and effort in to sorting out and arranging things then I just get kicked in to touch, why?
My weight is on it way down again (well it was last week but only by a small margin) but this week I was a couple of bags of sugar lighter. I had to fill out a food diary for the past week, you do it as you eat something so that way you don't forget what you have eaten etc. They give you this small poxy A5 bit of paper to write all the details down on, so they were a little surprised when I turned up with 2 A4 sheets of paper. I looked at the diary tonight when I printed it of and thought I would have gained with what I had eaten, thankfully I lost and lost well.
I think writing down everything you eat focuses the mind to the point "I can't eat those chocolate biscuit as I will have to put them on the list" sort of thing. Well I hope that it anyway as I am doing another diary this week and I have set myself a good target for next week (less than I lost this week but I am not very good three weeks running) which if I achieve I will then hopefully be the lightest I have been since I started this weight loss campaign and maybe, just maybe hit the 2st lost marker.
Work was the same boring drudgery today, as usual I don't exist until somebody want something. Had a call regarding a problem first thing this morning, told them I would not be able to resolve the problem over the phone, they have an alternative system to use for now. I might be able to get to look at there problem tomorrow if I get time, failing that it will be Wednesday.
I must admit I am bored to death with this European election and MP's expenses fiasco. The simple fact of the matter is, if it was me or you fiddling our expenses then we would be sacked, regardless of the fact we offered to pay the money back, but if you are an MP you just get told off. Then they wonder why nobody votes for them in the election and everybody is voting for the BNP, so who do you want to run the country, a thieving scum bag or a racist scum bag??
Went to the tip this morning with the remnants from yesterday clean-up, like many tips now a days there a bin for lots of items and a large horse shoe shaped wall to throw the rubbish over marked of in zones (garden waste, wood, metal etc.) where everything else goes. Well we were down to the last box and other-half ask one of the workers where to tip the box of rubbish, "can't tip that over there (the wall), I will take it for you" so he promptly take the box and walks 10ft away from other-half, looks in the box has a quick rummage and them promptly throw the box over the wall, though about shouting to him that you can't do that!
Well apart from the tip the only other thing we did to day was to go shopping only to be confronted by the stupid Sunday trading law. The store opens at 10:00am but you can't pass through the till until 10:30am. We got there at about 10:05am (straight from the tip), by 10:20am we had finished shopping and were queuing up with the other 60 odd shoppers waiting to go through the till. Apparently they have timed locked tills that won't process anything until the designated time (in this case 10:30) so there we stood 60 odd shopper waiting for the time to go by. As 10:30am arrived and the till burst into live there was a murmured cheers from those waiting in the queue.
This evening we went down to Poole quay for the quay for my car event, they choose a type of car every week and then invite owners of those type of car down to the quay for the night. Tonight's chosen car was the Mini including the newer BMW Mini's. I will post some pictures later but I have not taken them off the camera yet.