Five months?
Jul 17, 2007
Okay, who took them? Where'd they go?
Over five months since my last journal entry, bleeding heck guvner.
So what's changed then?What's been happening in the land of That Pastey Looking Chap?
Well, since you ask, even though I know you didn't, but you would have if you were here to...
First and foremost the girly is totally moved in. Has been for a while now. We're almost totally unpacked too. For the first time in my life since I left home many, many years ago, I'm almost to the point where I'm not living out of boxes. I've just got one more book case to buy at the end of the month (I wouldn't have been able to afford to buy them all at the same time, I've a *lot* of books) and we've got a cabinet and a filing cabinet coming this week, and then we'll have all our storage sorted out. Yay.
Second and just behind, the girly has a new job! Big Yay. She started just over two weeks ago, working as a Historical Landscape Characterisation Officer for Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit. Which basically means she looks at old maps all day and say "Yup, that's a mill." There's a lot of mills around the North of England as you might expect. I'm sure her job is a lot more complicated than that, but a summary is easier to understand.
My own job's still the same, designing websites. And just to labour a point... Designing websites is not saying "Won't it look pretty if we put this picture here, or make this a slightly different shade of pink." That's what a graphic designer does. A website designer is someone who figures out what the site has to do, what functionality it'll need to do that, and then how it'll all fit together to *work* as a site. How each page will link together, how a user will get from the front page to where you want them to go, how they'll interact with the site. I don't do pretty. Most of the time.
Which leads me to a rant... What sort of graphic designer does webpage layouts in InDesign!?!?!? InDesign is a great programme, for desktop publishing. It's not so great for laying out webpages. "Oh, but I can do vector based graphics in InDesign" Yes, and you gan do them in Illustrator too, and Illustrator has an export to jpg feature, and you can copy an element in Illustrator and paste it straight into Photoshop to optimise it for the web. In case you hadn't guessed, one of the chaps I'm having to deal with at the moment is a total Muppet. Actually, everyone outside of the company I work for who's involved in this project is a complete Muppet. All the techies at the hosting company have been sacked for being useless, and their replacements seem even worse. The original developer who we've hads to step in because he got out of his league was still going through the old site adding new features and claiming they were there all along, making more work for us. And the client themselves is a total prat. Thank deities I'm not in work today when he's in the office. There's actually a book going on who's going to thump him one first. He's a lying little sod who keeps changing the project spec and claiming he hasn't, yet won't put anything to paper to prove either way.
Which leads me to why I'm not in work today...
I'm off to the hospital to see a consultant. I'm not sure I've said anything about it here, in fact I'm pretty sure I haven't but... last year I came home from work with a severe stabbing pain in my head. I went to bed with a lot of pain killers but by the morning it hadn't gone. So I went to the doc. She did a few simple tests, and found that my blood pressure was around 240 over 200. This worried her somewhat, which made me more than slightly nervous. She stuck me on some stupidly strong pain killers to help the head, and some blood pressure tablets to try and drop it for the time being. Since then I've seen a consultant at the hospital who's had several test done on me. My dose of the blood pressure tablets is up to the highest they can give me, so now my blood pressure is just "worryingly high" rather than "I'm just going to get another monitor, this one seems broke" high. The doctor went through three machines before she conceded that my blood pressure was up to that that's apparantly only seen on people about to have heart attacks. The consultant has had me have a chest x-ray, and echo-cardiogram and eltro-cardiogram, an abdominal utrasound scan and a massive amount of blood test. Each time I was in for the scans the nurses doing them didn't seem to think there was anything obvious, but I'm not sure they'd tell me if there was. The electro-cardiogram showed signs of an abnormally enlarged heart, but the echo-cardiogram didn't. Well, today I'm back seeing the consultant who should by now have had all the test results back, and will hopefully be able to tell me what's wrong with me. I do really hope he can tell me what's wrong and get it sorted out because my body's starting to become immune to the blood pressure tablets and I've had a couple of weak stabbing pains in my head. Which isn't good.
Ah well.
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- Latest reply: Aug 15, 2007
A Big Thank You...
Feb 7, 2007
To all those inconsiderate "people" this morning that made my walk to work a health hazard.
The weather has finally got cold here in the UK, it actually dropped below freezing and there's even, shock, horror, talk of snow!
So to all those commuters that woke up this morning, saw their car covered in ice and decided to clear it off using warm water. Warm water that then dripped onto their driveways and out onto the pavements. Warm water that then got very cold and froze on the pavement, leaving nice, slippery ice patches over all the driveways of the ignorant people. Slippery patches that your innocent pedestrian, who's able to walk the forty minutes to work rather than absolutely having to drive, because deities forbid you might get fit, but slippery patches that make your walk hazardous to your health.
So to all those idiots, I hope you slip over on someone else's ice and break a hip.
That may sound cruel, and I probably shouldn't be wishing harm on anyone, but my walk into work this morning took an extra fifteen minutes due to having to either walk very carefully over their ignorant ice, or make mad dashes along the roads (avoiding parked cars) to get around them. Thanks a bunch, break a leg.
I feel better getting that off my chest. It's been there all day building up.
So, back to my life and the new girly. Things would be great, and in fact most things are. The only places where they aren't is where other people intervere, even though it's got nothing to do with them. I shan't name anyone, or even call them a bitter and twisted spinster who's piffed that they've made such a huge mess of their own life that they can't stand to see anyone who's split up not at each others' throats, but they annoy me.
The girly is now set to move in with me two weeks earlier than we thought, so it's now the middle of April rather than the end. We just have to find her some work around here. It's not overly urgent to start with as my wages cover all the bills and the food too I think. I've not actually bought any food yet, other people seem to buy it for me. Not quite sure how that's worked out, but I'm not complaining. So all she's got to provide is beer money. Hang on, did I say it wasn't urgent? Eeek!
So if anyone wants a proof-reader or archaeological researcher in the north of england, she's ya' gal. Although she's not. She's mine 
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- Latest reply: Feb 7, 2007
Here's a ponderer...
Jan 15, 2007
Should I get married again?
Ooh, controversial seeing as I'm not technically divorced yet.
The ex, whom some of you have had the pleasure of meeting, has filed the petition and I've got the forms to sign and send back, so it's underway.
But I was talking with the girlfriend this weekend and made a bit of an error. I'd always got the impression that she didn't want to get married, but it seems that it was a case of her not wanting to get married to her ex. She does however want to get married to me.
Now, I've just come out of a marriage, am still coming out of it. I was with the ex for just over tens years all told, so it's quite a long time. But I am so happy at the moment that I don't think I'd bat an eyelid before agreeing to get married straight away if she asked me to, which she hasn't done yet but I think she may.
I think I do want to get married again, but I'm not sure about the right away side of it.
The other thing that comes into the decision is that the girlfriend isn't enamoured to the idea of having kids. Which suited me fine as I never really wanted them either. Until recently. I'm that content and happy that I'd like to start a family with here.
So, if she asks, do I or don't I?
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- Latest reply: Feb 7, 2007
Moving
Nov 28, 2006
I've got the go ahead on the house and will be moving to Manchester on Saturday. Well, it's Prestwich really but anything that's within the urban sprawl is Manchester to me. So Salford doesn't exist as it's own seperate city anymore as far as I'm concerned. This may take me some time to get used to, oh well.
So, we should pick up the van on Saturday morning (8:30am), take it to the house and load it up (11:30am), drive to Manchester (2:00pm) to get the keys and sign the paperwork, go to the house (3:00pm) and unload the van (4:30pm). Hopefully we'll be able to get everything in one go, else we'll be going back to Lancaster to do another run, so we'd be back to lancaster around 7pm, load up 8:30pm and back to Manchester 11:00pm and unload for midnight. Sheesh. If we can get it all done it one run, we'll then be heading off to Peterborough to my parents to pick up stuff of mine that's been in storage there for the last few years, and then driving back on Sunday to drop the stuff off in Manchester before driving back to Lancaster with the van. This would be better as I quite fancy a night out in Peterborough on Saturday.
It seems strangely selfish in a way, but I want to show my new girlfriend off to the world! Maybe I'm just in love again  Ah well.
Either way, there's a lot of driving and shifting of boxes to be done on Saturday, and a few drinks on Saturday night may well be needed.
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- Latest reply: Dec 12, 2006
Mid-Life Crisis
Nov 21, 2006
I've just been accused of having a text book mid-life crisis.
I'm not so sure though that there is such a thing though.
When we reach mid-life, which for this rambling I'm going to say is around early to mid-thirties, we tend to take stock of our lives. We look at things in completely different ways than we did when we were younger. We start to realise our own mortality, and think about what we want out of life.
When I personally was in my late teens I didn't really think about the future much. I lived life as it came. When I got to my early twenties I started thinking about not dying anytime soon so settled down with a lass with the intention of spending the rest of my life with her. We spent our time living together, socialising together and planning our future together. This mostly involved sorting our careers as neither of us wanted kids then. Then towards my late twenties I started thinking about kids, but still wasn't too fussed. I also thought more about work and money. Now I'm in my early thirties and am thinking more. I'm thinking that I've spent the last ten years with a lass I loved, sorting out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life.
And I decided that I wanted to have fun. I wanted to spend my time with someone I could talk to, I wanted to be able to sit and chat about total rubbish without them judging me. I wanted to be with someone who shared the same interests as me. I didn't want to be spending every Friday night for the next thirty years doing exactly the same thing.
So I've left the wife and am moving to a new city with the girlfriend.
Is this a midlife crisis or is this taking control of your life?
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- Latest reply: Nov 28, 2006
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