Scribblings from the Mitchy Side

Wasn't feeling myself at all yesterday. Had a lousy night's sleep, the sort where you wake up every hour and, occasionally, every 10 minutes. And I was too cold and then too hot and just generally Not Happy. Also, I was off my feed which is never a good sign.

So I hibernated in between watching the rugby and that helped. So did watching England eventually beat Italy - I even managed a rusty croak or two of "Oh tackle him you effing prawns!" And I happily curled up and watched The Professionals DVDs I got for my birthday - perfect :D I'd forgotten how quotable that show was, I've been baffling my US friends by posting quotes on Facebook :D

Feel much better today but then I had 7 uninterrupted hours sleep. It's amazing how that helps a mousey :D

I shall watch sport on TV and more DVDs today, methinkest, just to make sure I'm fit and well for work (bah!) tomorrow.

The bad news is it's not fixed yet. The good news is garage chappie has painstakingly tracked the fault down to an obscure combination of wiring/fuses and is ordering the parts I need (via breakers yard!) to replace the faulty bits. So hopefully by this time next week, I'll have a fully working car! And for about half the cost originally thought. Bonus!

Today got off to a great start when I got a call from my garage around 10am going "Umm, you were supposed to be bringing your car in today..?" Cue headdesking and hasty scampering. Hurrah for an understanding line manager and my garage being over the road from where I work :P

And then work was busy all day. Not completely overwhelmingly so, just often enough and persistent enough that I was never able to take my eye off the ball. And nothing seemed straightforward today, everything seemed to need something checked or created or sorted before being processed. Gagh.

And then tonight it took me two attempts to boil water - someone got sidetracked and forgot she had put a pan of water on to boil until someone started sniffing the air and going "What's that burning smell?!"

On the plus side, I made a great dinner of stuffed peppers with smoked sausage and I have an excellent episode of Mythbusters to watch. Hopefully the day's ending better than it started :D

So my birthday was yesterday and I completely forgot to post but I had a pretty good day considering I went to work :) Lots of birthday wishes, both at work and on Facebook made for a cheerful day. And I gots parcels!! I got a Dalek mug an' Series 1 of The Professionals an' Big Book of Locked Room Mysteries an' "Bridge of Birds" by Barry Hughes an' "My Drunk Kitchen" by Hannah Hart. I'm a lucky girl :) So thank you halcyon_shift and doccy and jenni411 and mrorangemonkey!

In the evening I went to Stevenage's home game with Bury which I thought was pretty appalling but reading the manager's comments you'd think we'd played a blinder. 0-0 in freezing cold weather is not my idea of fun but there ya go, can't get a good game to order. I think I've just about thawed out now. Just :P

So all in all, a decent day and with the meal on Monday and the meal tonight, I've managed to spread the fun out nicely :D

Fabulous birthday meal (shaddup, I can make my birthday last at least a week if I try!) tonight with a colleague at work. Much happy yakking and scoffing of amazing food ensued.

I started with the smoked salmon with honey-roasted beetroot and vodka & lime creme fraiche. My colleague had the salt and pepper squid, which she let me try as I'd not had it before. Mmm! Tasty, 's going on my list of things to have again. Then she had a gigantic burger, with added stilton and bacon, with fries and I had the slow roasted pork belly in sticky ginger glaze, with black pudding, mashed potato and green beans. Soooo good!! Finally we "forced" ourselves to have dessert: I went for the cheeseboard while she had the mini-treacle tart with coffee. And I had a Irish coffee as a treat.

We may have waddled out of the restaurant. Slowly :D

All round, a lovely evening *happy is*

Went out to an all you can eat Chinese buffet place tonight with two colleagues from work. There may have been obscene amounts of pigging out, I couldn't possibly comment. And let's not discuss my sugar levels. Below is dessert...it was basically cream with blue, red and green...stuff :)



But it was a fun night, there was much happy yakking and it was good to get out for a little while and catch up on the gossip. :)

And tomorrow there will be parcels! Eee!! *bounce*

I've got to stay in today, as theoretically Amazon Logistics are re-delivering the parcel they couldn't deliver Friday. (They were supposed to try again yesterday, but failed. *taps foot*)

I long for the days when Amazon just used Royal Mail like everyone else. I'd have got my parcel by now, as I could have collected it from the sorting office. *grumbles* On the plus side, I now have the order number (it's a birthday gift so I didn't make the order originally) so I can ask the sender to amend it to get sent to my work address if all else fails.

And Amazon wonders why I'm going to cancel my Prime membership when it expires in April.

Also, eeee! Parcel!! *bounce*

So I have heat - for now. Engineer guesses a week at most (assuming I use it every day, I guess. I might stretch it out if I'm careful). Problem is there's too much air in the system and that's not an easy or quick or cheap fix. Yes, a sealed system might work but it would require running pipes through the kitchen. Be a lot of work and wouldn't look pretty but it should do it.

The engineer chap who came today very kindly didn't mention the air problem on his report - he simply put in a new thermostat receiver, which I did need, and that's all he put on his report. Otherwise I'd have had to pay for the call out as the air issues will no longer be covered by my Home 100 agreement with British Gas. So I'm going to have to bite the bullet and get something sorted if I don't want to freeze for the rest of winter.

Chap promised to raise a request with his manager for a senior engineer type who specialises in problems like this to come out and have a look and make some suggestions. And then i can start getting quotes and what not. In the meantime, if I bleed the radiators when the system is off, I might be able to prevent the air building up but it's going to fail again eventually, it's just a matter of time.

I am very fortunate that I can afford to do this because I have savings. I shudder to think what it would do to the average person faced with this sort of repair because it's easily going to be 4 figures. So I'm counting my blessings that I have a house and hot water and some heat at all, and accepting that when you're a home owner, you just have to deal with the bad things that happen.

Last night I went with a bunch of work colleagues up to Prezzo's in Stevenage for a combined leaving do for 2 colleagues who have managed to escape our clutches. We were at the "finally figured out what we're eating, at the bar getting drinks" stage when the power went out. "That's novel!" we said and waited, and waited, and waited. We had no information from the staff or manager, beyond the fact it wasn't the restaurant's fault, as there were a small cluster of restaurants on the leisure park with the same problem.

When we got the word that the power company website estimated it would take two hours to repair the problem, we left. I felt so sorry for the staff, we were a party of 35 and that's a lot of tips to lose, but what else could we do? They couldn't serve us because they couldn't take payment and didn't know IF they'd be able to take payment. Also, not safe, even with the emergency lighting. I will go back tomorrow and pay for the drinks I had (I'd just been served when the power cut), although I heard they'd comped the drinks served at the table. Still, I'll pay for mine, fair do'.s

Anyway, most of us headed over to town and went into a Whetherspoons, where food was finally scoffed and booze could be quaffed in suitable quantities. A good time was had by all. I had a mahoosive mixed grill that was pretty darn good, and there may have been cider, although I only had 2 all night. And then I got a lift home and settled in to watch Wales v England, the first game in this year's Six Nations Championship. The game had been on the TVs in Whetherspoons - you're not going to believe this, but I managed to get out of there without seeing the final score! I suspected we'd won but I wasn't sure, so I was able to watch the game in ful more or less unspoiled :D Hee! And we won! WOO HOO!! *boogies on down*

On the not so good front, when I got home last night I turned on the heating...and nothing happened. Again. For the second time in 8 days. *siiiiighs* So now 'm stuck in this afternoon waiting for the engineer to show up. But at least I got an appointment for today, I was thinking I'd have to wait until Monday. Brr!! *burrows into sofa with hot water bottle and mug of tea*

Oh show, just when I think you can't ratchet up the tension any more, you get me biting my nails up to my elbows. There are show writers I'd like to get by the ear, make 'em watch and go "See? SEE?! THAT'S how it's done!" :)

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Note to self: get some Agent Carter icons!

I haven't seen any hints about next week's episode yet so I'm completely in the dark. I presume there's a trailer somewhere, in which case I'll probably see it on Tumblr at some point :)