Had a lovely day in London today, meeting up with halcyon_shift, doccy and tyrell. There was tea and ice cream and cider and oodles of happy yakking. Given that we hadn't all been in the same room at the same time for upwards of four years and counting, there was a LOT to catch up on :)

Sadly, the visit was all too brief, as halcyon_shift and doccy had to scamper back to deepest, darkest Cornwall, but it was lovely to see them again. Plans are afoot for futher gatherings :) And they loved being back in civilisation, however briefly :D

Back at work tomorrow, but I think I can handle two more days. TooTall always has odd days off, taking off a Thursday rather than a Friday and I never quite got why. He said it broke up the week nicely and now I see what he means. Having a 4 day week in two lots of two days is actually pretty cool. I don't think I'll ever prefer it to three day weekends though :)

So Operation "Get Mitchy a Passport" appears to have been successful. I won't actually believe it until the passport is in my hot, sweaty palms next week, but this part of it went swimmingly well. I have to take my hat off to the passport office, they have one hell of a good system. My appointment was for 10.45 and I ambled into the building at 10.35, mildly boggling at the number of people there. I could see others holding interview notification letters and their time slot was 10.45 too, so clearly they do everything in batches. Got through the airport-type security ok and presented myself at a counter. I was given a ticket with the number 6864 on it and told to go up two floors and wait for the number to be called. "Oh joy," I thought," this will take hours!"

I was out of there 15 minutes later! *boggles* I only had to wait 5 minutes for my number to be called. Sheesh, the sheer volume of people they process and the speed with which they do it is mind-blowing. Basically, they have 30 counters per floor; on our floor, 6 of these were cashier counters, the rest were processing counters. When your number was called, you were told what counter to scamper to - mine was 19 :) No seats at the counters, so no lingering there, the lady just took the application form and photo, tappity tap typed a bit at her machine, asked how I was paying, stamped a form, gave it back to me to present to the cashiers and that was it. She didn't even want to look at my documentation. *blinks* I can only assume the fact that it's a replacement passport and that I've not moved since the last time I got a passport means they didn't feel the need to jump hoops. At least, I hope it's that and not corner cutting. From what I could see, the all important bit on the application form was the counter-signatory section - if that's fine, they're happy. Weird. Memo to self: must buy TooBrightTies something nice from NYC as a thank you; he went to the trouble of ringing me at home last night with his passport number so that I could finish off his section of the counter-signatory form.

It took me longer to queue up to pay than it did to submit the application. By 11am I was outta there. Amazing.

So I had a nice mooch round London, bought a fantastic bag from Primark that is perfect for the upcoming carry-on baggage only NYC jaunt, accidentally bought some books (it's all jenni411's fault!) and scoffed food. By 2pm, I was tiredy and footsore so scampered back home.

And since then, there has been snoozing and reading of new book :) Now just gotta wait a week and see if the passport people keep their promise!
Oddly enough, I don't feel stressed and anxious now. Clearly, this was preying on my mind. Now it's all in the lap of the gods and I've ceased to fret :)

Only downer about today was I got the "thanks but no thanks" letter I've been expecting in response to the job interview I had the other week. Ah well, disappointing but not really a surprise. I shall ask for feedback from HR though, just to see if it matches what I thought at the time.

Today was a funny ol' day.

It started well - I woke up before the alarm, feeling well rested and like I'd had 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, which I had :) It went to hell in a handbasket once I got to work :p

Bad thing - First of all, I checked my bank account - cue that sucking in noise Doctor's make when they see something bad. Shit, I thought, how can I go to London tonight to meet annuala? Well, I had just been sent my PIN reminder for my credit card but as it was the exact same frickin' number I'd put in two weeks ago to be told "Sorry, your PIN is incorrect", I wasn't holding out much hope.

Bad thing - on clearing out some emails I found one from BigBouncy from the 23rd August, reminding me that on the 24th, I was supposed to have gone up to the Cashier's Office, collected a Very Important Cheque and delivered it to one of the legal beagles. Umm. Crap, sez I. "Umm, TooTall? Have you had any feedback about that Very Important Cheque?" "Err, no, I haven't, not since BigBouncy's email." "Ah." "Why?" "Umm, might not have reached the legal beagle, let me get back to you..." Ring legal beagle, nope no cheque. Now, why the hell no-one had chased the thing, I have no idea, but it was still primarily my screw up so I scampered up to the Cashier's Office to pick up the cheque...

Bad Thing - ...except I'm not on the authorised list to pick up cheques, no-one in School Funding is. *sobs*

This, however, will be the thing that mitigates my original screw up because had I done this on the Friday I was supposed to, I still couldn't have done anything about it because both BigBouncy and TooBrightTies were on holiday and were away for all of last week too. Fate looks after drunks, children and dozy dormice, it seems.

So I now have a form for TooBrightTies to sign which will let me pick up the check. Neither he or BigBouncy were in today, so I'll find out if there are ramifications for the cheque not being delivered a week ago tomorrow. Wish me luck.

Come lunchtime, I needed to resolve my cash situation, so I hopped in my car and drove to Morrison's where there was a cash till. I could have gone into Hertford but if the card didn't work, I needed to contact annuala and like an idiot, I didn't have her friend's mobile number with me. So I went to Morrison's which is halfway between work and home and has free parking. I tried a different tactic with the card this time, I didn't try taking cash out right away, I changed the PIN number first instead...and it let me! And then it let me draw out cash! Hurrah! A good thing!

Bad thing - I was so happy at this development that when I drove out of Morrison's, I absent-mindedly headed home instead of back to work. What they call a Freudian slip, I believe. And I didn't even notice until I turned into my road! *shakes head* So I had to turn around and drive all the way back. D'oH!

Got back to work in juuust over my half an hour lunch break time so won't bother noting it on my time sheet *whistle* Had to scamper quickly to the bathroom once I got into the building though, all the morning tea caught up with me. This isn't TMI, btw, this will be relevant later....

The afternoon was slooooow and I was bored. At 4pm, I got a call from elfsausage, annuala's friend, saying they were having a nightmare time of it in London and wouldn't be able to make it up to King's Cross after all. I swear, I am jinxed when it comes to meeting annuala! Bah! On the plus side, given my finances, not going into London probably wasn't a bad thing. She'll just have to keep coming back to the UK until we do meet. Oh the humanity! :)

Bad thing - home time. I couldn't find my car keys. Anywhere. There was muttering. "I had them at lunchtime!" I wailed and decided all I could do was see if I'd dropped them in the car park. Walking out, I mentally tried to recreate the last time I'd seen them. "I had them in my hand when I came in, I'm sure! I usually drop them on my desk..oh wait! I didn't go straight to the office, I went to the bathroom first!" I scampered to the Ladies in question and there was a big notice on the door "Car key found, please contact Facilities Management!" Yayyy! Cue much Mitchy scampering and restoration of my car keys. I'd left them on the sink :) Alas, Facilities didn't record who handed them in, because I'd have liked to buy them chocolate. Yay for honest people :)

Today improved a lot when I got home. I've spent all evening reading inked_caduceus's LJ. She's a medical student in Detroit, currently in her third year, and this is the journal in which she blogs about her studies and learning to become a doctor. It's so fascinating, I've gone back to when she started it, in 2005, and started reading from the beginning. I'm up to Feb 2006 now and prising myself off so I can go to bed at a reasonable time :) Check it out but be warned, if she puts something under a cut and you're the squeamish sort - don't read it!!!

Just a brief note on what I'm up to. This may sound nuts, but I like to leave some word of where I planned to be in case "anything happens". Like, for instance, I don't show up online for two or three days with no explanation :P

Meeting Yshala WINOLJ in London after work. Meeting at The Knights's Templar pub in Chancery Lane around 8pm for food, booze and another belated birthday present. In addition, I'll be getting in earlier so I can do some guilt free spending of birthday tokens! Glee!!! Hoping to go into work late on Friday - they owe me a bit of time from last week.

And now I must go to bed and get my beauty sleep :)

So yesterday was my friend Rik's birthday and he had plotted to go out for a meal in London as he and Carol were visiting for a couple of days. Although this is the man who can plan a holiday months in advance, he's not so good at doing things like booking restaurants or even deciding which restaurant to go to. After applying gentle pressure, he decided on Belgo's, a place we've been to before and thoroughly enjoyed.

( Pre-restaurant )

( Belgo's )

It was lucky I did see Rik yesterday because he reminded me that Left Coast Crime in Bristol takes place in March. This year. Ack! I'd got it into my head that not only was it next year it was later in the year too! *eyes holiday allowance* Hrm. Well I'll have to see if I can get a hotel booked. Might just go for the Saturday/Sunday.

*stretches* Will have to amble off to work soon. Beh. Got an hour before I have to move though. I was hoping to download the new episode of House but it's not posted up anywhere yet. Bah! I belong to a torrent site that is great but they do insist you upload as much as you download, which means you really have to start downloading as soon as possible after the torrent is posted or there isn't the demand for the upload, and you can't always upload 100%. *scowls* It had better not get posted while I'm at work!

Right, lunch and more tea! Laters all :)