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Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in
Cazzle's Blurty:
| Sunday, September 13th, 2009 | |
| 10:10 am | I am a good granddaughter. I just called my grandma for the first time in ages, because she sent me a get well card this week. We had a nice long chat, and she sounded quite pleased. She had a (few) moan(s), of course, but she sounded happy all the same. My Grandad's had a hearing aid put in - which I knew - but he also has tinnitus, which I did not know. He sold his car because the tinnitus is so bad he gets dizzy. Which is quite worrying. We also compared walking-with-sticks woes. Cripples R Us, honestly. It's at times like this I feel that I should live nearer to home, so I could take them shopping. On the other hand, they do have three grown-up children in the area (or they will when my mum gets back from France). Also, I discovered that my female cousin is apparently in Southampton doing a PGCE, which I had no idea about. I walked (sans crutches) to Little Sainsbury's yesterday, which is about half a mile and normaly a 7-minute walk. It took me 15-20. And I wasn't walking so much as limping/shuffling, but I did it! I treated myself to a Wispa Gold, mostly for the nostalgia. And then I called Matt so he would pick me up and drive me back to the house. I was ok, but this morning my leg was extremely stiff and the foot rather painful. I really don't think I'll be back at work on Wednesday. This means I really need to get a GP appointment tomorrow. I don't think I've seen the doctor so much in my life as I have in the last month! Sorry, NHS. Finally, in wedding news, we went to a wedding fair thing and were aghast at the things they will try to charge you for at certain venues. Tealights on the tables? That'll be £1 each. Knife to cut your cake? That'll be £25. You want to breathe our oxygen? That'll be your right arm, please. On the other hand, there was a marquee and we're pretty sure that's what we want. It was beautiful, the atmosphere was perfect, and the way the light filters through the material makes it so lovely and airy and gorgeous. We might get married by 2015, at this rate, if we're lucky! ;) Current Mood:  amused |
| Monday, September 7th, 2009 | |
| 3:52 pm | Barley amuses me. I clipped Barley's claws earlier, an event of which she thoroughly disapproves. (Always.) When I'd finished, I put her back the right way, and she started to try climbing off me. I held a raisin in front of her head, which she snatched off me in a grumpy manner, and then carried on looking for an escape route from my lap. Then her brain caught up and she sort of stopped, and turned her head towards me, in a "Got any more of those?" fashion. I offered her another, which she nommed. Then she abandonded any ideas of getting down and turned around and almost climbed up my chest in a "MORE NOMS PLEASE" manner. I gave her another two and then, when she'd established no more were forthcoming, she sort of slid down my legs reluctantly and hopped away. She didn't even kick her feet at me as she ran off! Usually she runs off kicking her feet and thumping on the floor, to express her displeasure. Clearly raisins are the way forward. Current Mood: amused |
| Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 | |
| 4:05 pm | Three good things. 1) I can definitely walk a little bit without the crutches! I went to the bathroom and back twice today. (Our house is very small, but still, that's further than I've been able to do before!) Now I am going to attempt to wash my hair, although standing for more than a few minutes does make it ache. 2) I've been knitting Fair Isle! I've always been too scared to try it, but I used Stitch 'n' Bitch and it's really not all that intimidating, just fiddly and annoying. I'm making a bag for a little girl with a My Little Pony knitted into it. (I bought the pattern before I could even knit, just as an addition to my collection.) 3) Matt went to the computer games shop for me today, and bought me a new PS2 controller. Then he made me steak and chips for tea, because I had a craving. Hurrah! Current Mood:  pleased |
| Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009 | |
| 3:51 pm | That rabbit is going IN A PIE. Oh I am so cross with Flora right now! I was playing Kingdom Hearts up until a few minutes ago. I was in the middle of a boss battle in the desert of Agrabah, fighting this insane multi-armed, pincer-handed, snake-headed Boss of DOOM. I say "was" because I had almost finished the battle when I got this screen:  So then, I looked down, and Flora was sitting innocently on the floor by the wire of my controller. AND IT LOOKED LIKE THIS:  I AM NOT PLEASED. I only have one PS2 controller! The only option now is to play Guitar Hero and I completely suck at it. I want to finish my bloody game! I am SO NEAR the end!!! Barley would probably disapprove of her daughter's actions. Current Mood:  aggravated |
| Thursday, August 27th, 2009 | |
| 2:18 pm | I am rapidly becoming a one-track record. And I'm sorry for that, but at the same time, I'm going to keep whinging about my ankle anyway. So! The ankle is still rubbish. I can bear weight on it at last, if I keep it flat. I can manage a few small steps without the crutches, but I'm scared of making it worse, so mostly I've been limiting it to a couple of steps a day, using the crutches for the rest, and sitting on my lard arse with my foot elevated. Still bored. I'm mostly ploughing through Kingdom Hearts but I've read and finished a few books (just started One More River by Lynne Reid Banks - it's sort of children's/teenage crossover, and very good so far!) I have no energy for knitting at the moment but I'm not sure why. In better news, I got The Letter from my uni this week, offering me a place on the MA course I want to do! (Subject to my references, of course). Term will start on September 14th, with a two-day study school. I don't know whether I'll be back at work by then, or whether I'll still be off sick. It will depend on how well (or not) I can walk, I expect. The course is Library and Information Management, and since it's endorsed by CILIP, I can legitimately call myself a librarian by the time I've finished. Yaaaay!! I've been ordering some of the set texts through work, so when they come in, I can make a good start. Other than that... I'm basically just fed up of being stuck on my arse. It takes me so long just to go up the stairs! I am trying to be a good patient but feel like I'm failing. On the plus side...... Doctor Who Greatest Moments is on! Today it's the Companions eps. Yay for companion squee, especially Rose squee! Current Mood:  hungry |
| Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | |
| 8:46 am | Update. The ankle, it is still crap. It is now several shades of green/yellow, with the odd purple bit. Delightful! I'm going to the doctor this evening so hopefully she'll tell me it's getting better and I'll be able to walk again soon. I'm on annual leave this week anyway, so I'm not due back until August 27th - hopefully I'll be fine by then. I'm still going to EuroDisney tomorrow, because I am nothing if not stubborn. I will be getting wheelchair assistance on and off the plane, because it is the kind of plane with steps, and I am not very adept at steps on these wretched crutches. I have learned how to say "les ligaments dans ma cheville sont déchirés", just in case. I may go and pack now, I suppose. I suspect this will take some time. (I also suspect I may give up and carry on playing Kingdom Hearts instead. I am so naffed off with this ankle!) Current Mood: aggravated |
| Saturday, August 15th, 2009 | |
| 4:41 am | Cheese and whine. Thanks, everyone, for the sympathy and nice comments on my last post. They made me feel a little bit less stupid, hehe. The ankle is not really any better, but the lump has settled down into general swelling. It's got more colours than Joseph's amazing technicolour dreamcoat, which is a bit gross. (I can't see most of them from here, thankfully, unless I turn my foot to the side.) Oh, sod it, here you go - have a good look at this. I can just about hobble on it with the crutches, if I put my foot flat on the floor and bear virtually no weight on it. Stairs are... interesting... in that I can go down them ok, but coming back up is rather another matter entirely. I am supposed to be going to EuroDisney on Wednesday, which may or may not be happening. I am going to try and go to the GP on Monday or Tuesday in the hope that they can tell me a) whether it's got any better and b) roughly how long it might still take. If I have to be off work the week after I am definitely going to need a sick note. God, being injured makes you really boring, doesn't it? In non-ankle news, I've spent the last 2 days playing Kingdom Hearts, which I suck at slightly less now, and filling in my MA application. (Yes, I'm aware I have left it rather late, but I emailed the admissions office and they said I still had a little bit of time.) The course I want to do is awesome, as well as things like Information Management and Stock Collection they teach you HTML and CSS! How good is that?! (I will probably not be saying that when I can't manage it, but HTML was fun when I was playing around with Geocities, back in the day, etc). In conclusion, the window is open and I am cold, so I'm going to hobble off and attempt to close it. Bye for now, enjoy the weekend! Current Mood:  cold |
| Wednesday, August 12th, 2009 | |
| 6:12 pm | Oh very dear. I was today on my way back from a lovely 'weekend' at the good Mr Ball's, and I had to catch a connecting train at Derby station. In my haste to find a working display board, (to find out which platform I was supposed to be on), I went down the steps to platform 4 a little bit quickly. I was so busy trying to read a partially-obscured sign that I totally missed the last three or four steps, and landed right on my backside, with my left ankle tucked nicely under my whole body. I quickly discovered that I couldn't bear any weight on it, and a couple of fellow passengers who'd come across to help went and found the station manager, who brought me a wheelchair. At that point i had been hoping to get straight on the next train, but after getting into the chair, my vision went, I got really hot, and then I threw up on the platform. The shame! (I apologised to the station manager, who did not mind one jot.) It was then decided that maybe asking for the paramedics was a good idea after all. I got to go in the back of an ambulance! They gave me gas and air! It was all terribly exciting. By the time we got to hospital, the paramedics had put a box splint on my foot, and I got examined and prodded by a few different people. They sent me for an X-ray and concluded it wasn't broken (phew) but as it was still the size of a goose egg, I'd snapped some ligaments. Hooray! Or, you know, not. They gave me crutches and drugs, and the nurse called a taxi for me. What a nice lady. Then the taxi driver carried all my bags into the taxi and i hobbled in. HE loaded me up like a pack horse at the station, and I hobbled to the platform to wait for the train. I finally got home about 40 minutes ago, and my poor foot is on pillows with ice. I somehow don't think I will be at work tomorrow! Current Mood:  sore |
| Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | |
| 1:17 pm | *zonk* Made it to the end of my 10 days. I am sooooo tired. Think I'm going to have a lonnnng bath then wash my hair. And contemplate packing. I'm off to Maidenhead this weekend, as it's our friend's birthday, and then I'm back up here to work on Monday, and then I'm off to sunny Stoke. (Hi Simon!) Barley does not approve of me leaving her because she likes being fed twice a day. Sorry bun, it's my turn for a holiday. ;) |
| Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 | |
| 6:22 pm | So, Heroes. I just watched the first 5 episodes of season 1 of Heroes. It's kinda fun! Thoughts, anyone? |
| Monday, July 27th, 2009 | |
| 1:01 pm | Just for fun... In honour of me finding an ollllllld diary from being 13/14, please indulge me: What were you like when you were 14? |
| Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 | |
| 4:15 pm | Day... oh god, I've lost count. That'd be day seven, then. I got boatloads done today! Email access was intermittent, but I found a message this morning from one of the divisional managers, who wants my branch to have 200+ kids to complete QuestSeekers. For some perspective, last year we had 130 who joined, and around 100 finishes. So... this could be interesting. Add to the mix the part where they only sent me 100 packs of all the stuff and... yeah. Then today some kids came in who'd joined the challenge at another branch, and wanted to get the stickers from my branch. The crashing realisation of OMG NOT ENOUGH STUFF made me email one of the managers at Stock & Systems, so hopefully they will send me extra stuff. Or we are sorta, well, screwed. I also updated my expenditure lists (now down to 53% of my budget, about £6000) and went through a few of the new stock lists - I managed to cross off a few new books from the list in my diary, including this one by Caroline Lawrence and the new Sophie McKenzie. Aaand now I'm worn out, really. I'm off to put the bunnies a-bed, then it's sleeps time for me! Current Mood:  tired |
| Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 | |
| 5:02 pm | Day Six ECDL sucked ass. I went to the wrong place for the test - I arrived nice and early, and waited around in reception for the lady to come and take me to the test room. She arrived five minutes later, sauntered down the steps and informed me that I was meant to be in another building. !!!!!!!! I ran out, leapt into the car and drove like a crazy woman. The place I was meant to be was about half a mile away. I parked up and ran in, and was there for exactly 10:30. The nice reception lady took me up to the actual test centre and I was only about five minutes late, thankfully. At this point, the woman running the test asked if I'd got the email she'd sent me that morning. Given that I was wearing jeans and a very casual t-shirt, I thought it was pretty obvious I hadn't, but I said "No, I haven't been at work today" and she proceeded to inform me that I needed to take the diagnostic test first. I had been planning on not putting myself through that paticular brand of torment, since there are 70-odd questions on the diagnostic as opposed to 32 on the actual test, but wevs. An hour later I finally left, having got a comfortable pass with 88%. I was mildly annoyed to not have got over 90%, but the questions that tripped me up were things specific to Lotus Notes which I can't use anyway (because the PC I did have it on got replaced, and my Lotus Notes was never re-installed on the new machine.) I just use webmail, dude. Amongst the annoyances of the test were a good deal of questions where I would use keyboard functions (like, you know, THE DELETE KEY) that isn't a valid answer in ECDL. FFS! I got 100% on the browser/internet parts, obv. I've been stupidly busy for the rest of the day and have made chocolate crunchie, which has been delicious. I also made a little bag of sweets "from Honeydukes" for my line manager's little boy, who kindly lent me his toy owl for the event I did on Saturday. I printed off a Honeydukes logo from Teh Interwebs and filled the bag with Edible Wands (Flyers), Fizzing Whizzbees (those sherbert flying saucer things) and Every Flavour Jelly Beans (thank you, Sainsburys.) I hope he likes them! Current Mood: tired |
| Monday, July 20th, 2009 | |
| 2:35 pm | Day Five ...of eight. Today I was doing a 1-7 shift, so I had a lie-in! Hurrah. We bought a new bed at the weekend which was going to be delivered this afternoon, so I cleared our bedroom and stripped the bed, took off the mattress, dismantled the base, and hoovered the floor. Then we had some lunch, and I pretended to read a page of my ECDL book, and then it was time for work. Work was horrible, I was covering at The Other Branch and the system was down for the majority of the day. It kept popping back on in short five-minute bursts, just to taunt us. Nightmare. I did their Tiny Tots sessions which was all about fish, and kinda fun. but the van driver arrived, (late,) about halfway through. Rather than going around and coming in through the front door, he decided to wheel the delivery through the middle of my session. He almost ran one child over, the lazy get. I have just got home and our new bed has been delivered - Matt put it together and made it, and it looks gorgeous. It's sooooo comfy. I cannot go and have a nap, though, because I have to study for my ECDL test tomorrow. There are over a hundred pages in the book for this module: fuck this shit, frankly. Current Mood:  blah |
| Sunday, July 19th, 2009 | |
| 1:10 pm | DAY FOUR (of eight) Holy crow, today's been hectic. I got into work early and was downstairs switching everything on by 10am. By the time the other staff started arriving at 10:15 I was holed up in the workroom, halfway through the floats for my floor. There was only one other senior on with me today so we had a lot to do - by the time we'd sorted the money and the lunch rota and the sickness absence form for a staff member it was lunchtime. I covered another floor over the lunch period, which was hilarious because I have no clue how to work down on the Digital Media floor. I got some new books from the workroom and processed them to make myself feel better. An old guy came in needing to print something on A3 paper. You'd think that would be easy, but the A3 printer isn't connected to the public PCs, so I had to use a staff PC, go into the Australian archives, find the document all over again, fiddle with the settings and then print it off myself. (This was harder than it sounds.) I also had a guy who was making some kind of tribute to his cat, which he was doing via stuff he had on both a floppy disc (DO PEOPLE EVEN USE THOSE ANYMORE?) and a rewritable CD. Then he wanted to print it in colour, which, again, we couldn't do from a public access PC. We put it on a USB stick and then I got another member of staff to take over, because I couldn't handle any more at that point. Then I made my escape and went back to my floor, where it was almost time to start the craft. Today we made loo roll phoenixes, which are much nicer than they sound. We got more or less all the kids who came in today to sign up for the reading challenge, so hurrah! I think we must have about 50 kids already, and we only launched officially yesterday. The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur - we were really really busy and I had to stay late to tidy everything up and get all the kids' avatars pinned onto our progress map on the wall. (Painted by my own fair hand etc) Now I'm totes worn out. Pizzas and red wine tonight, I think. I've got an ECDL test on Tuesday that I've really had no time to even think about, so that'll be interesting. (And by "interesting" I mean "I might fail." It'd be a bit shit if I did, though, since it's the Internet and Email module.) |
| Saturday, July 18th, 2009 | |
| 10:31 am | Ahhhh. Thanks for the good luck wishes from the last post, folks. It all went fine, even the costume! One kids asked if I was Harry Potter, and another asked if I was Hermione. Clearly the ginger was not enough of a giveaway. As expected, the Summer Reading Challenge started without any major problems and is ticking along nicely.We've got a fair number of kids signed up, a good proportion from this morning's event, and now I am exhausted and will be taking a short nap. Or some lunch. I can't decide. DAY THREE OF EIGHT. SIGH. |
| Thursday, July 16th, 2009 | |
| 4:25 pm | SO STRESSED. We're launching our Summer Reading Challenge on Saturday, and I will not be in the building, because I will be at the theatre across the way, accosting kids to sign up. This is good, but means that I am currently SUPER DUPER MEGA STRESSED OUT because I have too much left to do and frankly not enough time to do it in. We were short staffed today so I got barely any time off the desk to finish things, which means I will start early tomorrow (maybe 8:15 if I'm really unlucky, 8:30 if possible) and just blast through as much stuff as I can. The annoying part is that it's very hard to delegate any of the remaining stuff, because a) nearly everything is almost finished but just needs the last few bits and b) by the time I've explained what needs to be done, I could have done it. AND I HAVE ONLY GOT ONE MORE DAY IN WHICH TO HAVE IT ALL COMPLETED. Which explains why I'm sitting here, at 9:30pm, cutting out pictures to stick onto my giant map/progress chart. I'm still feeling really energised for the challenge itself, and I just can't wait to get the displays finished and the books out and launch the damn thing and get the kids going; but right now? ARRRRRRRRRGH. Current Mood:  crazy |
| Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 | |
| 5:21 pm | I HAS AN ANNOUNCEMENT. Tomorrow morning I am going to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I KNEW there was some upside to working weekends! ;) BARLEY APPROVES OF HARRY POTTER. AND BEING DRUNK. Current Mood:  bouncy |
| Friday, July 10th, 2009 | |
| 5:41 pm | |
| 5:59 am | Torchwood, I am putting you on probation. If you can't undo the MAJORLY TRAUMATIC EVENT from last night's episode, we are over. Done. Okay? AND BARLEY DISAPPROVES TOO. Current Mood:  distressed |