So for those who didn’t see the Twitter = I have finally got me a job.  Office admin and a little reception work with work I cannot get obsessed about and end up giving up my life to make a macro work… 9-5 heaven (oh yeah baby) and contracted for 4 months so there just isn’t enough time to get bored and screw it all up.

The wonderful fabulous consultants at Reed, Preston pulled this one out of the hat and it was proclaimed good

For those who haven’t seen me/heard from me in a while - I apologise - I’ve had decisions to make.  And they have been made and committed o.

Would right moe but am falling asleep so… job JOB job JOB job JIB!

Across the road from the office is a small piece of land  covered in trees and picnic tables.  I wish I was working in the area during summeR… SIgh… S

Am in a ridiculously confident mood.  Interviews this week have gone well - am feeling hopeful about the future.  Have another interview tomorrow morning for a short contract admin job that will start on Monday.  Am feeling good about it.  I know I will be right for them and am hoping that I make this abundantly clear during the interview.

My biggest problem at the moment (other than the fact I can’t find a really important document - I hate living with my stuff in the garage) is the fact that I am feeling confident about it and I am beginning to worry that I may come off as smug and superior, instead of bright and friendly.  In a phone interview I had yesterday I was praised for my warm demenour and the ease of conversation.  Does this mean that I talk too much?  Is this a bad thing?  Maybe I shoulk just take a deep breath and, y’know, shut up.

It was the one consistent thing on my school reports - ‘talks too much’,  and then ‘a little wordy’ in my writing - you know how I drivel on here and say something in 50 words when it could be done in 10?  I was always the one to ask for extra paper in exams - not because I had a lot to say but just that it was taking a lot to say the… er… little I had to say. Heh.

Because of self confidence issues in the past and still) I think that 90% of what comes out of my mouth is un-thought-through garbage, so I tend to stay quiet if there is a technical/intellligent conversation going on around me (unless I know what I am talking about) or if the other people seem to be supremely confident… This falls down because I play the game of most  comfortable in their own skin along with the best of them.  So, it stands to reason that the supremely confident people could just be faking it too.

Oh God, it’s too much to think about and I absolutely have to sleep now.  I’ll revisit this soon… when my eyes aren’t closing.

Cat owners, if I may have your attention…

Can you honesty see your dearest using this? In a nutshell it’s a three litter trays that have holes in them, and have progressively less and less litter in them… that fit on top of your toilet seat. Designed to train your cat to use the toilet. Train? Cat? Since bleedin’ when?

Izzy, ma petite pain the ass, is one of those cats that allow you to live in their house. Your lap is hers, your time is hers, if she’s watching something on the TV or listening to the radio and you switch it off/over there is merry hell to pay! But if there’s something thet you need to do to her or requires even the vaguest bit of effort on her part then you become the fool for expecting anything in the first place.

So, although it would be great not to have to clean out the litter tray ever again I think I can safely say this will not be appearing in the cat’s Christmas stocking!

In the same vein (well, same part of the body anyway… If cat’s had bicycles, these would be the tyres they would have.
Could you imagine being on a crime scene and finding these tracks to follow? That would show dedication to the ‘Kitty’.

And I’m catching up and starting to get in the Christmas mood so - addresses please for Christmas Card a-sendin’! Click here for email address…

This post almost came to you by the power of candlelight, pen and paper - followed by being delivered in a whirlwind round trip of me showing up at your doors (if only I knew where they were) and flashing… the paper at you.

Why? Powercut. Right in the middle of Emmerdale.

The bulb in the lamp next to my head flickered in an “They’re coming” way and then everything went off. And I swear to God, the first thing that ran through my head was ‘They’ve dropped the bomb.’ Mum and I went on a mad rampage trying to find a torch or something and then ran outside to see if we could see any lights. The orange glow from the main roads, and the train going by, wiped all thoughts of Nuclear Holocaust out of my head… and the ’something different is happening excitement started in my head.

I yelled and said I’d hop online and find out what was going on. Mmmm, powercut. Yes, have charged up battery but broadband modem and wireless router both work off what? Hamsterpower! Yes, am dumbass. We still have a corded phone (no power required) so got on the landline and thought I’d yell at someone. The idiot at directory enquiries gave me the wrong number so I stopped trying them and tried looking through paper directories instead. The emergency number wasn’t where it used to be (at the front) so after searching through three different phone directories I found it and the automated service told me that due to an interruption in the High Voltage System, there was a power cut in Preston and the surrounding area.

We checked on our elderly neighbours making sure they were okay (they were) and then our next door neighbours came round to offer candles. Instead, we wandered over to their house and shared a bottle of wine while we waited for the light to return. I swopped stories about my time in school with their daughter who goes there now. (Trampolining? As a P.E. Class?! ) and then applauded their youngest son’s efforts in sign language. He had been at cub’s - a 10 minute walk from our road and they had been unaffected by the cut.

We left so they could get the kids to bed and set about unplugging everything (yes, I know we should have done this before but the only thing I had unplugged from the main’s (straight away) was my MacBook) and lighting candles. I had only to unplug two lamps and then run down my battery with a little music to entertain us until bed. It was then that I turned and saw a lamp on. I looked at it like I couldn’t understand what it was doing and, in fact, asked my Mum why the lamp was on? She came in and stared at it too… and then we noticed the cable rebooting. I turned to the Mac and saw the Airport bars filling up and we plugged everything else in.

Lovely. It was only two hours but my God, I missed it - beautiful electricity. I did take a picture when it all went dark but, well, the picture is black… so kinda pointless. But, at least, the power came back in time for me to see Spooks (and for those of you who didn’t switch over to BBC3 - don’t miss it next week!)

In other news… the late, great Norman Mailer won the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. I’m sure he’ll find that funny as he looks down on us.

So that magical time of the year has come again - it’s time to at least buy, if not actually write out, the Christmas cards. Every year I make a list, then ignore it, forgetting important people until it is too late to do anything about it. Not that you can actually be sure that they will get where they are supposed to go anyway… and now with another money making stunt from Royal Mail not that you are likely to get them either… not without paying between 2 and 3 times what the sender paid if they put the wrong stamp on it. It used to be you just paid the difference in postage and that would be that - now it’s an extra pound on top.

In the spirit of Christmas (well, not really, but who can resist a good segue?), British teacher Gillian Gibbons has been arrested for allowing the children she was teaching to name a teddy bear, Muhammad. Oh, she was teaching in Sudan. The incident happened in September and the school it happened at has been closed down until January to avoid reprisals.
I’m all for sticking by the rules of whatever country you are in but, come on! She says that she called the bear Muhammad because it’s a popular name in Sudan. She was arrested for blasphemy - insulting the name of the Prophet.

But the most important news of the day - the shortlist for one of my favourite awards was announced today. The Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Award is given to the author with the worst/cheesiest/( as the BBC website puts it) most awkward description of nooky in a novel. As I was reading a sampling of this year’s entries I felt a great amount of sympathy for the authors, but also thanks that it isn’t me. For example, from Will by Christopher Rush (which I am now putting on my wishlist):

O glorious pubes! The ultimate triangle, whose angles delve to hell but point to paradise. Let me sing the black banner, the blackbird’s wing, the chink, the cleft, the keyhole in the door. The fig, the fanny, the cranny, the quim… I’d come close to it now, this sudden blush, this ancient avenue, the end of all odysseys and epic aim of life, pulling at my prick now, pulling like a lodestone.

Bloody genius…

And now, stolen from Dave - The iTunes Meme!

How many total songs?
3952 songs - 10.9 days worth

Sort by song title - first and last…
First - ABC by Jackson Five
Last - 7000 Romaine - Howard Shore (The Aviator OST)

Sort by time - shortest and longest…
Shortest - End Title - W.G. Snuffy Walden (The West Wing OST) (0:30)
Longest - An American In Paris - George Gershwin (16:47)

Sort by Album - first and last…
First - Acusticos by Tori Amos
Last - 100th Window by Massive Attack

Sort by Artist - first and last…
First - a-Ha
Last - The 88

Top five played songs…
9 Crimes by Damien Rice
She Talks To Angels by The Black Crowes
The Lake by Aqualung
A Bitter Song by Butterfly Boucher
Cigarettes and Coffee by Otis Redding

Find the following words. How many songs show up?
Sex: 28,
Death: 18,
Love: 213,
You: 456,
Home: 18,
Boy: 102,
Girl: 76.

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle…
The Blackbird - The Wurzels
I’ve Been Loving You Too Long - Otis Redding
Trouble Sleeping - Corinne Bailey Rae
El Matador - Los Fabulosos Cadi
California Love - 2Pac and Dr Dre

I don’t care if we have workmen in the house tomorrow.  I am going outside, even if it’s just for a walk round the block, even if it’s just to the corner shop (which isn’t on the corner - I mean , it is on a corner, but not my corner… er…) to buy a loaf of bread… or milk, actually, it will be milk as  I had a rather large bowl of multi-grain cornflakes with a lot of milk in there and workmen in the house who will need at lease 965 cups of tea-two-sugars to keep going.

Today was just boring.  I let out next door’s cats and then pootled around.  It was a day when it was too much effort to go and get my laptop from upstairs, so DVD day!  Shaun of the Dead, followed by Hot Fuzz, followed by TV!  Ugly Betty, Top Gear and then my weekly Ewan Mcgregor on a motorbike fix - Long Way Down!

My massive plan for tomorrow is to do/finish the scout website and then maybe do some (gasp) writing.  Although I don’t actually have a single funking (keeping it clean - no idea why) idea in my head at the moment I am feeling good about having one tomorrow.  Just one.

But, it may be a big one.  Nope, sorry, can’t keep it going.  I’ll end up watching TV and then falling asleep on the couch (no doubt with the cat wrapping herself round my neck) and/ or running up and down the stairs with tea.

Right that’s enough of that - 7 minutes to go until midnight - am posting ‘early’ tonight!

Sweet dreams and all that!  Have a good day!

Today my Mum and Brother left for the annual family holiday. Dad leaves on Tuesday. I am not going to the peace-filled heaven as I am on job hunting duty. It’s only fair. I have spent all day watching what I want to watch on TV, stretched out with my laptop while I redesign the Scout website for the 967th time, and basically being, y’know, me. I am now parked in front of Californication catchups with the cat using me as a leaning post while she washes her feet…

I have not as yet washed up the dinner things as I fell asleep on the coach. But this post isn’t really about what I did today. It’s about something very similar. Britney Spears. I look at her life and I think about how similar we are. Both just trying to make it in this big scary world. I mean, okay, I’m not a pop megastar, or have two marriages behind me, or kids, or enough magazine covers to wallpaper a large family home. I am not blond, or have ever had the perfect body, I could never wear leather and lace and pull it off the way she does (cough) but we are both good at one thing and nothing else. I am good at this -the writing thing. I mean I am good at this (this is some of that affirmation nonsense - did I mention the Californication catchup’s?) and she is good at entertaining. Even if you hate her music, you’ll probably enjoy the way she shakes her ass (Brits - it has to be ass - arse just doesn’t work when it’s Britney! And booty is just far too piratey to be used seriously), the clothes she doesn’t wear or the ongoing saga in the papers. She is, let’s face it, about a good a mother as I am a gymnast; but she is, what, 12?

But today I got to watch programs with peace and quiet!!!! So I’m going to put Baby, One More Time on my iPod and dance (quietly as Dad has gone to bed). Come on, join me. You know you want to!

Everybody else in the whole country has already blogged about England not being in the European Championships next year, and I am just too disappointed to be bothered. Steve Mclaren. Fired you were. Tosser.

Right, on to something else. Me. A bit selfish I know, but, well, my blog, my rules… During my continued boredom I have been scanning old photos partly because, through a series of incidents, I no longer have my own, and partly because I want them around to remind me of who I was…

This also gives me the opportunity to embarrass myself in public. Ladies and gentlemen… Me.

This first one was taken while I was walking on a Club Day Parade. I think it was about 1988… Butter wouldn’t melt… pffff!

A year later and I decide that a perm would be a good idea. A bubble perm. Oh, the 80s were not kind!

This was 1985, right around the time my brother was born - it looks about a thousand years ago… I was 7 and I remember loving that tracksuit thing…

And finally, baby me… sweet, innocent… totally and completely unaware…

I have some others but they have other people in the photo’s too - like my brother and I’m not sure he would ever forgive me if I put them out there!

Tomorrow is the coolest holiday that the UK doesn’t celebrate.  Thanksgiving.  How cool is it that an entire nation gives it’s time over to giving thanks?  Sub-zero on the cool wall baby!

Today, as a precursor to the main event (or is tomorrow the overflow from today?) is the Third Annual “Thank Your First Commenter Day” as created by the quite frankly mindbogglingly brilliant Neil at Citizen of the Month.

So, after a quick check in my comments I see that 10 days ago I got my first comment from Luke at I’m Right, Listen to Me which is updated even less than my old blog!

I have known Luke in the ‘real world’ for about 3 years.  We met via a role play game that was held weekly at a mutual friends. Luke has an intensity about him that simultaneously made you want to mother and smother him.  He has grown up over the last few years and is currently trying to get his band (for he is a singer), currently called Heathen Dream, out there once they have sorted their demo.  So thank you Luke for being my first commenter.  Return oh return once again!