So much for the effort to blog more but I was way too tired this week thanks to the selfish bastard I have as a neighbour. He had people in on Friday night and I had to put up with hours of loud guitar music and middle-aged men pretending they were rap stars. F**k! Not pleasant! Okay, it was Friday night, not much I could do about it and at least I could sleep in on Saturday morning.

The shit started the same thing on Sunday night and it was a very grumpy Caledonia who had to get up early to go to work on Monday morning. I tried ear plugs (which I really don’t like) and then stuffed a pillow over my head to no avail. As the blowing into the mic continued, I was plotting all sorts of malicious deeds - most of which are unprintable.

At lunch-time, I went on to my council’s website and planned my next phase in Operation Gag Him. I noted with interest that since he was living in a council rented house - it was up to the Housing Dept to keep him under control since he was essentially violating my rights to have a peaceful night’s sleep. They advise to keep a diary of all disturbances and to approach the individual in question. We have spoken to him several times and he simply does not understand the concept that some of us have to go to work in the mornings. He is one of those lazy gits who survive on dole money at taxpayers expense. Leech!

Anyway, I’m going to do the diary thing for the next month and then email the Housing Dept from work. What’s the point of having a posh government e-mail address if you can’t use it in such circumstances? If it gets their attention, so much the better.

Speaking of work, we had a strike on Tuesday about poor pay but I chose to go into work instead because I really don’t believe industrial action will help and we haven’t even had a pay offer yet. The simple truth is we are heading down the recession route and I can’t strike when hundreds of people are losing their jobs all over the place. I’m lucky to be employed and as long as there are criminals, my job is safe. Ironic, eh? I was soon wishing I had stayed at home because we were so busy and I was a one woman show trying to get through the work of three people. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. My efforts to keep everything up-to-date meant my work colleagues were coming into a clean slate the following morning while I would be coming in to take care of the backlog in my own job. I got so worked up, I was actually feeling dizzy. Not good! Oh, and a visit to the dentist in the midst of all this chaos didn’t help, especially the bill I had to pay. As long as this pay squabble goes on, the longer it will be before I can move up a grade and the more money the taxman will get from me (not to mention the student loan company who took £65 out of my performance bonus this month - the last one I will ever get because they scrapped it). I got some of my aggression out when I did the Staff Survey because I was totally brutal in my honesty. Thank God it is anonymous!

On the brighter side, my power cable arrived on Wednesday and I was back on my lovely Mac after having to use my old laptop for a few days. I also managed to kill my hard drive at work - oops! But, I did get a lovely new replacement. It’s not a Mac but at least it is faster than the other fossil.

So, now I have a load of TV shows to catch up on iTunes, although last night’s episode of Supernatural was being a tad stubborn. LOL! I’ve got my manager at work addicted to this show and I have to transfer the new eps on my Touch so she can watch them at work at lunchtime. I’m thinking I’m losing out on a good blackmail deal here, it’s a good job I have integrity.

Oh, and I’ve disabled registrations on the blog because I’m not comfortable with strangers reading my private posts. Yeah, I know, technically you are all strangers since I don’t really know any of you, but some folks are stranger than others. If I ever do write private posts and you wanna read them, leave a comment or use the contact form and I’ll add you manually. If I’ve friended you on LJ, don’t bother because the posts will appear there anyway, unless you have a burning desire to leave comments on both places.