Snow day 2

I had another snow day last Wednesday. Too much snow to get the car out, so we walked to the station through the park. When we got there Jon 'phoned his boss who said, "The roads haven't been gritted and are lethal, oh and I haven't seen any buses". Not a problem for himself, who works on the flat within walking distance of the station; bit more of a problem for me who works about 4 miles from the station up hill that has a 10% gradient for several of those miles. So Jon checked the internet and, indeed, the buses had all been cancelled.

So I walked home along the cycle path. There are pictures in the 'snow' photo album on the right, all taken with my 'phone so they're not brilliant, but much better than I expected.

I was in a crafty mood so I made a new peg bag from a couple of old pillows (Next circa 1990), so at least the day at home wasn't wasted! The matching duvet cover is being sewn onto the back of this quilted throw that I got as a free gift with something several years ago. The front is pretty enough, but it's quite thin and is backed with a really nasty cheap lining fabric, so it's getting blue and white striped cotton instead.

Unfortunately, I don't have a sewing machine, so I reckon that following each of the quilting lines by hand will probably take about 3 months! Still, it'll keep me warm on the sofa over the winter.

One week on and it's snowing here again as I type this - I don't know what the weather has against Wednesdays. I've made it into work this week, but will I make it home?

Friday Fun 3

I thought all nuns left the seat up...

New Decade, New Dreams

A forum I belong to started a thread recently on the start of the new decade and reflections on the past ten years. I'd forgotten that ten years ago we were all relieved to find that the Millennium Bug hadn't brought the world to an end. We all started posting on our past 10 years and hopes for the future; here's mine...

10 years ago we were just coming to the end of the house move from hell. We had a bet on with some friends, who were also having problems with the house they wanted to buy, as to who would move in first. We lost as it only took us 7 months to move, whilst it took them almost a year! The final straw for us was our buyer dropping out on the day of exchange just before Christmas ‘99, we looked around our house stacked with boxes ready to move and just couldn’t face staying there, so we went into Bath and spent the night at a hotel. That turned out to be a bit of a disaster too and when I was telling my counsellor the following week of all the awful things that had happened, he said, “Do you think you’re getting a bit paranoid?”. I think he was a bit taken aback when I shouted, “Paranoid? Paranoid? Of course I’m f****** paranoid! I’ve got every reason to be f******-well paranoid!”. I’m a firm believer in the old saying that, ‘just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you’.

Anyway, luckily the vendors were buying a brand new Barratt home and Barratt bought our house to stop their sale falling through (for a tiny bit more than our buyer had offered, plus it was a private sale so no estate agent’s fees). We moved in Feb ’00 and we’re still in the house and have no intentions of moving (well, unless our numbers come up and the house of our dreams comes on the market at the same time).

Jon had just started a new job and was very happy. His old job had been a bit rough towards the end and also had him working late 2 nights a week and alternate Saturdays. The new job was 8.30 to 5 and no weekends, so a significant improvement, although a slight drop in salary. He’s still there, despite being out-sourced and the company changing hands several times.

I was less happy with my job. That’s probably an understatement. But I did manage to negotiate a couple of periods of going part-time, which probably helped me hang on to what little sanity I had left. One period was where I moved sideways into a project role for 18 months working 2.5 days a week – that was an eye-opener: people actually said, ‘Thank you’, ‘That was really good work’, ‘You’ve really helped us a great deal there’, etc – it’s amazing what a morale boost someone just saying ‘thank you’ is. It also made me realise that so much of my normal job entailed banging my head against a brick wall, it was nice to do a job and not have people putting barriers in your way. The other 2.5 days a week were spent teaching Adult Literacy, researching some local history for a small family company, yoga lessons, volunteering at my local museum and starting to do an A Level in Art History which finally led to me getting a First in an OU degree in Dec 2006.

When the project finished and I had to go back to my old full-time job I decided to swap jobs with a colleague on a different campus, in the hope that I would feel better. But the organisation made half of all the library staff redundant, so that made things worse rather than better! I managed to negotiate another period of ‘part-time’ work, where I took Mondays off in return for working an evening, short lunch breaks and getting a bit less pay. When this was coming to an end in Jan ’08 the organisation started another round of redundancies. I applied for redundancy and got it. Started a new job in July ‘08, outside my interests and skills, and am thoroughly enjoying it.

We did a charity motorbike ride in India in Oct ’06. This was my idea, decided on the basis that I spend the majority of my life frightened of, well, just life really, that I might as well do something genuinely scary now an again ‘cos it’s not going to make me feel any worse and, hopefully, the wonderful experiences I come back with should actually make me feel a lot better. We raised £2,000 and had a brilliant time. Unfortunately, it also cost us around £2k each to do it, so it did contribute towards my minor debt problem that finally got cleared in July ’08 (it was worth every penny). Oh and, on the subject of charity treks, have you sponsored my sister-in-law yet? Click on the Just Giving link on the right to read about her trek and donate to Diabetes UK.

Jon's brother got married to Helen (and provided us with a nice photo to go on the top of our blog!) and we got a gorgeous little nephew in Dec ’06.

After 19 years of road-testing, we got married in April 2007 on my 40th birthday. That was something the pair of us, let alone all our friends and relatives, never thought we’d see.

BUT we’ve seen colleagues and people we admired be struck down at such stupidly young ages with debilitating illnesses which have led, in some cases, to an early death and in others to permanent incapacity. Sadly we’ve also lost 3 grand-mothers in the last 12 months and the last remaining one isn’t too well either. So, I suppose that what we'd like to do in the future is to find a balance between working and enjoying ourselves (the latter does need work as, by nature, we’re both miserable gits!).

The decision not to over-extend ourselves when we bought our new house has proved very useful, as we are slowly being able to afford to do more enjoyable things that were previously out of reach. I hope that the emotional problems have settled down and that we can enjoy the next ten years, rather than just existing, as much of the previous 20 seem to have been.

So goals for the next 10 years:

1. pay off mortgage in 2012 (13 years early)
2. travel more – possibly by volunteering on archaeological/environmental projects
3. perhaps do more studying
4. work less
5. enjoy life more
6. do more draft/scary things to prove I’m still alive
7. use the motorbikes more – preferably abroad, preferably Libya, Iceland and Morocco

Goals for 2010:

1. re-mortgage in Feb when our 10 year fixed rate ends
2. over-pay mortgage to allow us to pay it off early
3. do at least one long motorbike holiday this year, even if it does rain all summer, again
4. get more exercise

Happy New Year!

Yay, snow day!

We've wimped out of going into work today.

Actually, Jon is working from home and so is plugged into the main PC whilst I use the Eeepc on the sofa. The uni where my office is based is closed; it's at the top of a hill and when I talked to my colleague earlier, she said someone she'd spoken to at the uni told her that people weren't able to get up the hill in their cars.

It's only put about 2 inches down here so far, but we're quite sheltered and I think it's worse on more exposed local roads. It's been snowing steadily for most of the day so it may get deeper - let's hope, egh?

Still, it's given me a chance to take the Xmas decs down and do some tidying. The ironing is next.

I've also made a seed cake for the birds and put it out along with the remains of the tarte tatin I made for Christmas Day. The tarte seems to have gone down very well with Mr Blackbird, actually I appear to be responsible for creating a feathered monster who's smacked off his tits on sugar and is aggressively defending his slice of pie from all comers. He's already seen off a thrush and a jay and is back for his third piece that's the size of his head. Mrs Blackbird is round the front of the house delicately picking all the berries from our pyracantha.


I promised pictures of my chilli fairy lights and here they are with my favourite tree decoration, the drag queen poodle.

Oh, and whilst I'm trying to put off doing the ironing, here are photos of the new chair and sofa.