Tuesday
Took advantage of the weather to cook outdoors at my parents. They have a chiminea, and while Stuart’s played with fire there a few times, we’ve never got it together to actually cook. We spent the afternoon cooking; we decided to have a go making our own burgers, partly because we wanted to have a play with the burger press we got last year. Stuart got a good fire going very quickly (he has a worrying affinity with fire) and we spent the evening cooking and eating. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever had what could be classed as a BBQ with my parents, but I hope it becomes a regular thing.

Wednesday
I mention Wednesday only because I haven’t got the foggiest what we were actually doing. It’s not even that we were doing boring things that I (for once) edited out. There’s just nothing. It’s like the day didn’t happen. I’ve decided that we must have been very relaxed.

Thursday
Got an email on my work account from a colleague telling me about some issues at the office. It finished off “Given that it’s the nicest day of the week so far, I’ll be somewhat disappointed if you reply this afternoon. Get a life, woman.” I took this as a hint and logged off.

Stuart fancied actually doing something for once, so we drove down to North Wales – an area neither of us know. We went to Rhyl for the laugh, but were really surprised to find out that a place we’d been told was absolutely dreadful wasn’t at all, really. It had a lovely beach (with donkeys), the people were nice, and while it was obviously poor and past it, it wasn’t as hopeless as some other beach resorts I’ve been to.

Unlike the resort down the road. The locals were fine, but all the tourists were hard. You could see them glaring at you when you walked past, hating you with every scrap of their being. The resort looking unchanged from about 1950, with a weird mix of portacabins and older building that were falling down. Very very seaside – and it looked like exactly what it was; a cheap way to get away. Given the weather, I doubt it was that dissimilar to the Brits Abroad resorts anyway.

Sunday
Decided to celebrate what’s been a fantastic couple of weeks with a trip into Rusholme for a curry (God knows what that’ll do to tomorrows weigh in, but I don’t care. We went at lunchtime, so we were the only people in the place, but we’re rather glad that we went when we did because it’s currently the biggest thunderstorm I’ve heard in a long time. Waddling back to the car getting wet through wouldn’t be the ending I’d hope for.

Don’t laugh, but I’ve had a great time today tidying up the blog. There aren’t too many changes, but the code is much neater and I’ve split out the css prior to playing with different stylesheets for different viewing methods (like over my pda phone). And talking of my phone, I’m just about to upgrade the OS after losing my temper and googling something like “rubbish phone hangs slow crashes” and getting a link to a guy who had exactly the same problems as me until he upgraded the software. A bit nervous though, it involves doing some unlocky stuff with unofficial software and knowing me, I’ll break it.

Work tomorrow. I can’t wait.

Little old me volunteered to help out with booking in people as they arrived in their hotels (I had it easy at a hotel with only 50 people, someone else got the hotel with 140 people booking in!) so got an invite to the party afterwards. This was as a guest rather than continuing to help out so sounded like a really good deal to me. We were also all booked into rooms at nearby hotels so we had somewhere to stash our stuff (we needed this as it was a black tie event so all of us had our posh togs with us).

The party was fabulous (I suppose as you would expect for a large business). The awards ceremony was done in the style of the the Oscars, as people arrived for the awards they were taken down a red carpet with paparazzi style photographers along it. An hour later and they were let out to go and party in the room next door.

The party room was laid out very informally, with couches and small tables dotted about throughout the space and a stage on one side for a live band later on. Champagne as you arrived and a free bar for the remainder of the night. Food was little bowls of interesting stuff brought out on trays for you to help yourself to as a waiter passed you by.

The entertainment was handled by someone called DJ Minty (I think this is has agent’s site here) and the live band was Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet fame. The live music was fantastic and you can see why Spandau Ballet were good as Tony Hadley is still excellent.

It was an excellent night, everyone seemed to have a good time and it all seemed to finish too soon when they turned off the PA system at about 00.40.

Photos here …>

I always think people who are prepared to do something so drastic (whether it’s part of their working life or not) deserve to succeed.

Good luck, dude.

So, for your delectation and delight, here are the photos of Miriam’s work’s party on 3rd December, and Stuart’s work’s party on 10th December. Enjoy.

There has never been a party for everyone in the building as it never been feasible to organise the logistics of getting everyone in the same place at the same time. For the anniversary though it was worth it and because of that everyone made a huge effort and looked absolutely fantastic.

Here are a few pictures I took, didn’t take too many as I was too busy having a good time. Clicky clicky here for pictures >>>>>>>>

The pay is a lot less than I was on previously (a 65% reduction) but it is significantly more than the nothing I have been on for a while now.

We are now collecting together a list of what we have to buy that we have been putting off for a year.

Hurrah for me.

If there is anyone out there in the Manchester area who wants a hard working and dedicated IT Manager to work for them please contact me.