Friday, October 10, 2003

Well it’s finally decided and official. We, the public transport group, are confirmed as being one of the teams that will move to our new home in Endeavour House sometime next year. Still can’t decide if this is good or bad news, but they do say a change is as good as a rest…

Stitches came out fine this morning. It sure is nice to be free of them. I was able to use both sides of my mouth again when I had my lunch. Whoopeeee. Hopefully the sensitive stuff that happened with the other top jaw but not the lower won’t repeat itself, but we shall have to wait and see. I have to go back in November for a review and polish up thing, then that’s it. Back to normal dentistry again.

Tomorrow is the day of the Park & Ride price increase. And naturally it has all gone tits-up at the last minute. The leaflets won’t arrive and the livery changes on the buses won’t be happening until Monday now, and the software changes for the ticket machines until the 18th. Oh well, we will just have to muddle through as best we can.

Finished the first Gap book last night and have gone straight on to number two – The Gap in to Vision – Forbidden Knowledge which is proving just as good so far. Books 2 – 5 are all a lot thinker than 1 though. The style is still taking a bit of getting used to – nearly all thoughts and action with a tiny bit of conversation and even less description. So my images of how the locations and people look etc is coming more from memories of a zillion other sci-fi books and films etc.

Now we have Norfolk coming for a chat.

Thursday, October 09, 2003

Oh me and my big mouth! Did I mention not much going on in our lives? Thought I might have done. Anyway, we had a nice dinner whilst re-watching the first Mission Impossible film and had just started mellowing out for the rest of the night when the phone rang. It was, of course, an alarm call for Argos. First one since Joan’s been back at work (there were a few calls while she was off but we passed them on to other people) and it seems the procedures have been changed in that time. Now we have a security company on board as well to come and go in with us as the Police were getting fed up with the time it was taking other keyholders to arrive from Braintree (Marion) or wherever Matt lives and weren’t prepared to wait.

So, we went gaily trotting along there and met up with the guard chap, went in and could find absolutely no reason for an activation. Other than perhaps the heating over the door having been left on, which has been known to cause problems in the past by blowing hanging cards around. Of course they have no cards these days so all we could assume was that perhaps the heat had been picked up by the infra-red sensor doobry that was showing on the panel as being the cause of the alarm. One remote re-set later and we were on our way home again. Only to be called out again after about 20 minutes had passed. Back we trotted then, to meet the guard again. Except this time the Police were there to have a nose around (they said they’d been along for the first one as well but we saw no sign of them).

Second time of activation in a short period with no obvious break-in means they can’t or won’t reset over the phone and we had to wait for an engineer. So, we pulled over a sofa from display, put the telly on and settled down to wait. He eventually turned up at about 1230 by which point we were all a bit tired and frustrated. Diagnosis was a fault in the sensor (which he didn’t have a spare for with him) and he ended up simply disconnecting that one so we could go home. Finally got to bed about 1.15 this morning. So I had an extra hour over when the alarm normally goes before I got up and came to work feeling a little bit sleepy.

Kind of wish I hadn’t – we had the second part of the big group meeting where we talked about ways and means for us to meet our ridiculously huge targets. Some of the ideas put forward are just crazy so there was much argue-ifying and shouting back and forth. A great way to spend a totally unproductive morning.

Oh well, Joan is out with Jacqui from Ipswich so she’s having a good time at least.

Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Another busy day for me. Finally saw the last few pages of the timetable books and got them approved for printing, wrote a 3,000 odd word guide to using Park & Ride and checked through the web site and changed half of that. So for the second day in a row I didn't get out at lunchtime, but never mind. I did manage an early finish instead.

Joan still doing OK and going to increase her hours again next week.

Nothing else to say!

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Slightly annoyed with myself today - I wrote a bit for here last night then managed not to save it. Probably wasn't particularly earth-shattering but irritating to have lost it nonetheless.

Anyway, after two hours of fretting over what had happened to her, messages left on our answerphone, texts sent and even a call to work to find out if she really had left I finally got hold of Joan around 3.30 yesterday. Lots of worrying over nothing on my part as the morning had seemingly gone quite well and things are looking back on track for her. But I hate not knowing what's going on, not being able to talk to her etc. Don't know what I'd do if we were forced into a no-contact situation for an extended period of time.

Last night saw the end of the current run of Waking The Dead, which is a shame as once again the series has been pretty gripping. I know they don't come cheap, but I do wish they could manage more than four two-part stories at a time. Still we do at least get Silent Witness back this weekend in compensation. Not sure what it is about slightly gruesome police-oriented tales that draws us in. Of course I'd also love to see the BBC put the same care, attention and budget in to a decent Sci-Fi series...

Am finding the daily use of Park & Ride to get to work not too bad so far. And it is much better than sitting in the car stuck in traffic down some of the roads around here thinking about whether there would still be a space left in the car park when I arrived. OK, so door to door takes a bit longer, but I'm prepared to put up with that for a bit less hassle and stress of a morning.

Monday, October 06, 2003

Here's a few words I wrote yesterday then completely forgot to post after getting distracted, plus commentary from today in brackets!


Spent some time working in the garden today while the sun was out - which was nice actually. I know I normally avoid digging if I can the last rays of summer were more than welcome. (Today my side aches like I've shifted half a ton of earth. Funnily enough, I seem to have shifted some earth yesterday).

Anyway, the call Joan was expecting finally happened and she is a lot happier now. She will be working part-time this week to properly get back in to routine and then hopefully everything else will be sorted. (She should be home any minute and hopefully not had any hassle off Marion today. I'm waiting for the call).

Not much else to write really - Richard came along yesterday so that aspect of Saturdays is also back to normal! Tonight H, B & A are coming along for a meal and this morning we finally go our wills and stuff signed so I can take those in tomorrow. Gripping stuff this life we live! (Meal was top stuff with lots of laughter all round doing Joan the world of good. Wills all handed in to the will people at last so that's another job done).