Upon reflection, 2004 was a much better year for me than 2003 or 2002 for that matter. I’ve steadily improved healthwise and only have the occasional backward slide which I can handle. I’m still terrified of catching a cold so have been taking echinacea, garlic capsules and vitamins regularly. It all may sound like overkill to some ppl but one of these days, I’m going to do a page on the hell that is labrythinitis so you can understand where I’m coming from exactly. Even more important to me is that I’ve now been off the anxiety meds for over 3 months and I’ve been able to handle the stress of being back to work. Now if I can just get a handle on the boredom… LOL!

Today, I should be enjoying my first pay cheque but alas, the TPTB screwed up the paperwork somewhere down the line and I got no pay. Why am I not chewing the furniture? The lovely tax ppl gave me a rebate that will tide me over nicely in the meantime. I’m so glad I didn’t go mad in the sales but to be frank, they are rubbish anyway. I did buy CSI S3 though which means I’m almost up-to-date. LOL! Had a nice chat with the sales assistant in Virgin who let slip that he never buys DVD boxsets full price either.

Okay, I’m not one for making New Year resolutions but my next target is to stop comfort eating - something I have a very bad habit of doing when I’m either depressed or bored. I have put on weight and I’m getting fed up with myself so am going to be dragging that Yogalates DVD of the shelf again. Last time I tried it, my balance was still haywire and I was falling all over the place. I’m hoping that I’ll manage better this time.

Of course, I will be resuming the good old job search again.. God, how embarrassing is it going to be if I have to sign on at the job centre now that I’ve worked there for a few months? I have at least two months to try and find a miracle!

Happy New Year!!

Merry Christmas, everyone! We’ve got a 60% chance of snow so we may get a white Christmas after all, although it is pouring with rain at the moment! One more day of work to get through and we finish at 3:30 pm. I’m off until Wednesday when the madness starts all over again. Can’t wait until it is over!

Ohhh, pay day next week!

It’s almost the end of the first week in my new job and I’m shattered. I haven’t been exactly doing much because they haven’t set me up on the computer system yet and I’m not going to be holding my breath waiting. I know how this lot operate from previous experience. LOL!

In a nutshell, from now on benefits are being paid by direct debit either via a post office account or bank account. The section I’m working on has the very tedious task of going through endless lists checking to see who has been converted and who has not. We then have to target those customers who have failed to convert to direct debit and basically give them a kick up the pants to get their act together. Some regions have actually stopped paying benefits to customer’s who aren’t making an effort but our area is refusing to do that. Some ppl are so complacent and just bury their heads in the sand without actually getting out and doing something - it’s amazing how fast they finally open an account when they are asked to attend an interview.

It’s boring as hell sitting around doing nothing but the others aren’t exactly rushed off their feet either. I’ve actually wondered on more than one occasion why they need extra staff although I did get lumbered with sorting out the mail for the whole building. It’s not rocket science but it is boring as hell.

LOL! The day I first started I was amazed at how quiet the office seemed! I’m so used to phones ringing constantly! God, I was so bored that first day I would have happily grabbed a phone and started doing job searches, however until I have access to the system I can’t even look for myself.

Doing the mail would have been the perfect opportunity to say hello to my cousin who works downstairs but she broke her ankle at the weekend and has only just got out of hospital. By the time, she is ready to come back - I’ll probably be back in the dole queue!

Yay! I’m back on the payroll at the jobcentre from Monday. I went for my interview on Tues which was really bizarre because it was with my old boss who was also giving me a reference. LOL! So, I’m going to be working on the Direct Payments team for a couple of months and there are a lot of ppl there from JSD so it’s not as if I’m going to be working with a bunch of strangers. It’s only going to be for a couple of months but it is better than nothing and the money is not too bad.

So, all those items I’ve been putting off buying will be coming my way soon! I already ordered a live CD of the Wets concert in Glasgow on Wednesday night. It is sorta their homecoming concert and I wish I could have been there!

LOL! Totally fangirl moment: my auntie bought me an Orlando Bloom calendar for my birthday because she knew I liked him. She doesn’t normally buy me presents anymore but I thought it was a lovely gesture. And the pictures are fantastic.

I’ve been watching the ROTK SE most of the week, which was a present from my mum along with a beautiful Greek style cross, and I totally love Viggo Mortensen. He is such a warm hearted guy and he really restores your faith in humanity. I still have to listen to the commentaries though! It’s so sad it is all over.

My copy of the extended version arrived this morning and it’s not due for release until Friday! Not that I’m complaining or anything! Way to go DVD.co.uk!!! I’ll pop it in the player while I’m finish making my cards.

So, got the Christmas cards written today and most of the presents are wrapped, just got a couple more to buy and then I’m done. We brought the decorations down from the loft and left them in the hallway where I managed to walk into them in the dark. Ouch! I’ve just plastered it with Arnica gel.

Sold a couple of things on Ebay at the weekend and got them posted off too. I really need to get rid of a lot of my TY beanie babies but the trouble is they don’t seem to be shifting at all on Ebay. They really should’ve stopped making them because there are just too many now and the market is saturated. If they had been stopped as announced, they would’ve started to increase in value by now. Jeez, I remember the good old days when ppl happily forked out £100 to get their hands on Britannia - now I’d be lucky to get a £5 for it.

I also finished the Roy Dupuis fanlisting and created a subdomain just for fanlistings. I’m going to move all my fanlistings into eventually and stop creating subdomains for each one. My root directory is just getting to crowded with all these fanlistings so am tidying it up a little.

I’ve been a busy bee on the site this week. I installed a nifty new security code thing for my comments page which will hopefully stop all the spam since the WP-Blacklist stopped working after awhile. The idea is to enter the numbers before submitting the comment and bots of course won’t be able to do that. Fingers crossed!

I also installed an Amazon plugin for no other reason than it looked cool. Took me awhile to work out how to install it since it was written for an older version of WP but I read through the comments and found the info I needed. So now I feel all clever even if I wouldn’t have a had a clue how to do it myself.

I started adding a few more things about me, like 100 Things and a DVD list which isn’t complete. My boxset collection looks pretty impressive but I should probably point out that I wait until they go on sale before purchasing and am not rich by any sense of the word. Quite the opposite in fact!

And just to round off the geekiness, I downloaded Opera 7.60 Beta yesterday and it is way cool. It has voice activation on it! I haven’t tried it out yet, mainly because I can’t be bothered to hunt for my mic, but I can’t see me using it anyway. LOL! It also has this really nifty new feature called Fit To Width that will resize my screen when I visit sites with layouts too big for my 800×600 resolution. Yes, folks, I’m stuck in the dark ages but there isn’t a whole lot to be done about it just now.