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mitchy at 07:00pm on 01/07/2005
mitchy at 07:00pm on 01/07/2005I've been rather busier of late and so have neglected the ol' LJ. A mammoth update is clearly in order!
This was my first day on my "own" at the new temp job. On the Friday, I'd sat with the girl who was going away and got shown the ropes. She wasn't very good at showing me stuff, expected me to remember half a dozen names and faces and which offices they were in after one mega-quick post delivery. Feh. But I coped ok with the post, I was able to sort it all into the right piles and then one of the ladies from the School Funding Unit (SFU), where the vast majority of the post we receive goes, came down and very kindly helped me find a home for the few bits of mail I wasn't sure about. She even took all the post back upstairs too!
Maggie, my boss, Office manager, wasn't in and that sucked, because when it went quiet, I didn't know what to do to keep busy. Consequently the day really dragged. Bleh. On the plus side, the exploration of the side of the canteen that serves main meals (as opposed to sarnies and stuff) was very successful. *weg* In the evening, we were treated to a very spectacular thunderstorm. I was complaining to Rik that the thunder was a bit wimpy, which on reflection, was just asking for trouble. Twenty minutes later the storm had sidled right over the flats and announced its presence with a clap of thunder that scared me out of several years growth. It was the sort of sound normally associated with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lithium_doll announcing "Good evenink, my ickle lambs" just before running an RP scene. *brrr*
Maggie was back on Tuesday and the day was MUCH more fun. I was kept just busy enough to not be bored but never so busy I was swamped. Today I found I had names to faces and even knew where they sat in the offices. I didn't get lost and I was even able to give someone else directions. Yay! And yes, the person got where they were supposed to be :) In the evening, Mary R pinged me on AIM to let me know she was safely in Edinburgh. On Thursday she would be coming down to me and I was to pick her up from Gatwick, so it was good to know she was safely in the country.
Wednesday was...interesting. Those of you in the North London/Herts area would have noticed it was a very wet day. Spectacularly so, as we had the thunder storm to end all thunderstorms that afternoon. The rain chucked it down steadily for a good forty minutes, while the sky chucked lightning and thunder around with gay abandon. Alas, alack, the "new" building I'm based in is at the bottom of a slope (in fact, although I'm technically on the ground floor, it's called the basement level. The floor above is actually level with the ground floor of the Old Building that we're attached to.) Those folks in offices at the side of the building got damp and soggy very, very fast. There was much frantic moving of files, paperwork and anything else of import off the floors and onto desks. Meanwhile, the drain that runs under the offices opposite where I'm working decided it had had enough, thank you very much, and started spewing water up through the floor. The lake spread across two offices and part of the hallway and it wasn't that shallow. Mass panic ensued, Health and Safety took one look, twitched violently, and told us all to shut down and go home. It was too dangerous to have that much water, people and electrical equipment in such close vicinity. So I got to leave early! Hee!
This cost me money (I lost half an hour's pay) but it DID give me more time to do some necessary chores, like tackle the evil, evil lounge windows. I hate my lounge windows. The two main panes are ok, they're just large. But the bottom horizontal panes are a bitch to clean. The outer pane is just one piece of frosted glass, but the inner pane is actually a series of four sliding glass panels which were obviously used to create a cheap double glazing effect. All very well, but because it was cheap, the edges of the panes were never smoothed off and they are razor sharp. Trying to wrestle them out requires heavy duty gloves, which I don't possess, so I have to slide them about and clean around them. *looks at plasters on fingers* I did better this time, just the one really deep cut and four minor ones :P Anyway, I got the dratted windows clean, attempted to clean the nets, recognised it was a waste of effort and binned them. I can make do without in the lounge for now, and I'll invest in some new nets when I'm solvent again.
By Thursday morning, the lake at the office had been drained and there were dryers desperately trying to make an impact on the soggy carpets. Ick. I was glad I wasn't working in one of the damp offices! Today was the day Mary R was flying into Gatwick so I'd already got permission to leave early. Wisely, I left about 3, even though Mary's plane wasn't scheduled to land until six. My early start meant I was well past the roadworks at Heathrow by 4.30 and at Gatwick by 5.30, missing the rush hour. Go team me!
Gatwick is not my favourite airport, it has to be said. Gatwick sucks. Not only is it a bitch to get to, but it's not the most well laid out airport ever. International Arrivals have their own arrival hall, where there are seats to sit in, loads of monitors to look at to get plane info, a coffee shop, an Airport Information Desk and a cash machine. Domestic Arrivals has a teeny tiny area marked out by a sign on a post saying "UK Arrivals Meeting point", eight or so seats, 2 monitors you can't see from the seats because there's a pillar in the way and a tiny sign on another pillar saying "UK Arrival passengers will exit from here". This last sign is important, because "here" is an ordinary looking corridor with a thunking big "Continental Airlines" sign hanging above it. Can't imagine why I didn't realise it was the Domestic Arrivals point sooner......*snarls*
On top of that, it took poor Mary nearly an hour to get her baggage and get to the Arrival Hall. One of the baggage claim conveyor belts broke down and had to be fixed. Did Gatwick make an announcement for the benefit of us poor saps in the gloomy hole that was UK Arrivals? Did they buggery. Actually, I'm not sure any airport would have but they should. You start to worry you've missed the person you're waiting for or they didn't make the flight or a 101 other flights of fancy. Beh. Anyway, Mary finally made it out and we headed to the car, which I remembered where it was parked on the second try :P And thus home via the M25 which was fairly painless, apart from a couple of heavy showers.
We stopped at the flat so Mary could drop off her luggage and I could feed a loudly complaining furball. Then we headed straight out again and I took Mary to Pizza Express. VAST amounts of food was consumed and it was all scrumptious. And I became a business expense for the night *cackles* Mary very kindly paid for the meal on the corporate credit card. Hee!!!
I was shattered this morning but prised myself out of bed and off to work without, as far as I could see, waking Mary up. Today, in a bit to hasten the carpet drying process, a huge fan was installed in the hallway to blast air (from several feet away from the damp carpet, mark you. No, we didn't understand it, either) down the corridor. It was like working in a flippin' wind tunnel. Hopefully by Monday everything will have dried out.
Had a good day, work wise, kept things ticking over nicely and the day sped by. Actually, the whole week has sped by, which has been a very pleasant change indeed. Mary just phoned from London, she's on her way back - she spent the day at Crime Scene. I think we'll go for a chinese take away and have a night in. I'm tiredy and knackered and she probably is too. Tomorrow will be busy and fun, as we're both going to Crime Scene and there will be food in the evening somewhere posh, oh yes. This will be the "business dinner". *cackles lots*
Last Saturday I went to see Batman Begins with Troo and Chris. Superb film, I recommend it highly. I really liked the way they've taken the time to build up the character of Bruce Wayne and the whole back story of Batman. It's going to help re-establish the franchise, that's for sure. Darker and harder than the previous movies (although the first Batman probably stands comparison) and with an excellent script, this was a real treat. I'd see it again and may well do next week, if Sin City is no longer on at Cineworld on Tuesday when I go there withthalinoviel. I'm definitely going to see Mr & Mrs Smith next Thursday with the Troodler, the more I hear about it the more I can't wait to see it!
Finally, Happy Canada Day! I'm not sure if any of my Canadian friends read my LJ but just in case - here's to you guys! Cheers!
This was my first day on my "own" at the new temp job. On the Friday, I'd sat with the girl who was going away and got shown the ropes. She wasn't very good at showing me stuff, expected me to remember half a dozen names and faces and which offices they were in after one mega-quick post delivery. Feh. But I coped ok with the post, I was able to sort it all into the right piles and then one of the ladies from the School Funding Unit (SFU), where the vast majority of the post we receive goes, came down and very kindly helped me find a home for the few bits of mail I wasn't sure about. She even took all the post back upstairs too!
Maggie, my boss, Office manager, wasn't in and that sucked, because when it went quiet, I didn't know what to do to keep busy. Consequently the day really dragged. Bleh. On the plus side, the exploration of the side of the canteen that serves main meals (as opposed to sarnies and stuff) was very successful. *weg* In the evening, we were treated to a very spectacular thunderstorm. I was complaining to Rik that the thunder was a bit wimpy, which on reflection, was just asking for trouble. Twenty minutes later the storm had sidled right over the flats and announced its presence with a clap of thunder that scared me out of several years growth. It was the sort of sound normally associated with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or
lithium_doll announcing "Good evenink, my ickle lambs" just before running an RP scene. *brrr*Maggie was back on Tuesday and the day was MUCH more fun. I was kept just busy enough to not be bored but never so busy I was swamped. Today I found I had names to faces and even knew where they sat in the offices. I didn't get lost and I was even able to give someone else directions. Yay! And yes, the person got where they were supposed to be :) In the evening, Mary R pinged me on AIM to let me know she was safely in Edinburgh. On Thursday she would be coming down to me and I was to pick her up from Gatwick, so it was good to know she was safely in the country.
Wednesday was...interesting. Those of you in the North London/Herts area would have noticed it was a very wet day. Spectacularly so, as we had the thunder storm to end all thunderstorms that afternoon. The rain chucked it down steadily for a good forty minutes, while the sky chucked lightning and thunder around with gay abandon. Alas, alack, the "new" building I'm based in is at the bottom of a slope (in fact, although I'm technically on the ground floor, it's called the basement level. The floor above is actually level with the ground floor of the Old Building that we're attached to.) Those folks in offices at the side of the building got damp and soggy very, very fast. There was much frantic moving of files, paperwork and anything else of import off the floors and onto desks. Meanwhile, the drain that runs under the offices opposite where I'm working decided it had had enough, thank you very much, and started spewing water up through the floor. The lake spread across two offices and part of the hallway and it wasn't that shallow. Mass panic ensued, Health and Safety took one look, twitched violently, and told us all to shut down and go home. It was too dangerous to have that much water, people and electrical equipment in such close vicinity. So I got to leave early! Hee!
This cost me money (I lost half an hour's pay) but it DID give me more time to do some necessary chores, like tackle the evil, evil lounge windows. I hate my lounge windows. The two main panes are ok, they're just large. But the bottom horizontal panes are a bitch to clean. The outer pane is just one piece of frosted glass, but the inner pane is actually a series of four sliding glass panels which were obviously used to create a cheap double glazing effect. All very well, but because it was cheap, the edges of the panes were never smoothed off and they are razor sharp. Trying to wrestle them out requires heavy duty gloves, which I don't possess, so I have to slide them about and clean around them. *looks at plasters on fingers* I did better this time, just the one really deep cut and four minor ones :P Anyway, I got the dratted windows clean, attempted to clean the nets, recognised it was a waste of effort and binned them. I can make do without in the lounge for now, and I'll invest in some new nets when I'm solvent again.
By Thursday morning, the lake at the office had been drained and there were dryers desperately trying to make an impact on the soggy carpets. Ick. I was glad I wasn't working in one of the damp offices! Today was the day Mary R was flying into Gatwick so I'd already got permission to leave early. Wisely, I left about 3, even though Mary's plane wasn't scheduled to land until six. My early start meant I was well past the roadworks at Heathrow by 4.30 and at Gatwick by 5.30, missing the rush hour. Go team me!
Gatwick is not my favourite airport, it has to be said. Gatwick sucks. Not only is it a bitch to get to, but it's not the most well laid out airport ever. International Arrivals have their own arrival hall, where there are seats to sit in, loads of monitors to look at to get plane info, a coffee shop, an Airport Information Desk and a cash machine. Domestic Arrivals has a teeny tiny area marked out by a sign on a post saying "UK Arrivals Meeting point", eight or so seats, 2 monitors you can't see from the seats because there's a pillar in the way and a tiny sign on another pillar saying "UK Arrival passengers will exit from here". This last sign is important, because "here" is an ordinary looking corridor with a thunking big "Continental Airlines" sign hanging above it. Can't imagine why I didn't realise it was the Domestic Arrivals point sooner......*snarls*
On top of that, it took poor Mary nearly an hour to get her baggage and get to the Arrival Hall. One of the baggage claim conveyor belts broke down and had to be fixed. Did Gatwick make an announcement for the benefit of us poor saps in the gloomy hole that was UK Arrivals? Did they buggery. Actually, I'm not sure any airport would have but they should. You start to worry you've missed the person you're waiting for or they didn't make the flight or a 101 other flights of fancy. Beh. Anyway, Mary finally made it out and we headed to the car, which I remembered where it was parked on the second try :P And thus home via the M25 which was fairly painless, apart from a couple of heavy showers.
We stopped at the flat so Mary could drop off her luggage and I could feed a loudly complaining furball. Then we headed straight out again and I took Mary to Pizza Express. VAST amounts of food was consumed and it was all scrumptious. And I became a business expense for the night *cackles* Mary very kindly paid for the meal on the corporate credit card. Hee!!!
I was shattered this morning but prised myself out of bed and off to work without, as far as I could see, waking Mary up. Today, in a bit to hasten the carpet drying process, a huge fan was installed in the hallway to blast air (from several feet away from the damp carpet, mark you. No, we didn't understand it, either) down the corridor. It was like working in a flippin' wind tunnel. Hopefully by Monday everything will have dried out.
Had a good day, work wise, kept things ticking over nicely and the day sped by. Actually, the whole week has sped by, which has been a very pleasant change indeed. Mary just phoned from London, she's on her way back - she spent the day at Crime Scene. I think we'll go for a chinese take away and have a night in. I'm tiredy and knackered and she probably is too. Tomorrow will be busy and fun, as we're both going to Crime Scene and there will be food in the evening somewhere posh, oh yes. This will be the "business dinner". *cackles lots*
Last Saturday I went to see Batman Begins with Troo and Chris. Superb film, I recommend it highly. I really liked the way they've taken the time to build up the character of Bruce Wayne and the whole back story of Batman. It's going to help re-establish the franchise, that's for sure. Darker and harder than the previous movies (although the first Batman probably stands comparison) and with an excellent script, this was a real treat. I'd see it again and may well do next week, if Sin City is no longer on at Cineworld on Tuesday when I go there with
thalinoviel. I'm definitely going to see Mr & Mrs Smith next Thursday with the Troodler, the more I hear about it the more I can't wait to see it!Finally, Happy Canada Day! I'm not sure if any of my Canadian friends read my LJ but just in case - here's to you guys! Cheers!
happy