Back to work ...

Hmm - that time again.

I wish.

Back to work tomorrow after a week off that I sorely needed.

That was me before I disappeared for my week off. I'm still feeling tired now but that's mostly down to the latest attempt to watch the whole of the Le Mans 24 hour race. I didn't, I gave up at 3am and started watching again at about 9.30am.

I've improved over this last week. I haven't done much, which was mostly the point. It was a rest and recover week to hopefully get some of my older strength back. The problem with my outsides has taken its toll in more ways than you'd think, plus work has been more stressful than ever lately due to :

Too much being expected of too few people (isn't this a universal constant ?);
Destructive IT changes (isn't IT supposed to work for you instead of get in the way ?);

Actually, that's just two reasons for work being stressful, although that too much work thing is a fact. I'm currently covering 2 gapped posts as well as the work I'm supposed to be doing. And it looks like the fella who was in one of those posts before retiring did almost nothing. I'm discovering all the gaps. We'll get help for those gaps soon but ... the straw's already broke and I need to find somewhere else in the organisation to work. Too many people are feeling that, which just compounds the problem.

Enough about work ! There's still a few hours of holiday left ...

Still, work has its benefits. There's a few awesome people I work with, although they're not all on the same site, we still keep in touch and help each other out. There's a nucleus of people with a can-do attitude. They're good to be around or be in contact with. I know one of them has led to a rise in the rate that I post stuff here. A few work people know about this blog but not many work people regularly look. One special lady does keep an eye on me though and I think that's awesome.

Yep. I mean it.

That goes for another very special little lady who keeps me amused with oft-crazy-always-funny text messages. Miss ya, not seen you for too long !

Ok, what have I been up to outside of sleeping and popcorn munching ?

I started off a trip (in game) to the centre of the galaxy in that there internet spaceship game. I'm back in the populated zones now though. The game hasn't been as stable as we'd like since the Powerplay metagame expansion came out and one thing that's broke is the Star-Nav (like a satnav except it navigates by stars, not satellites). You used to be able to plan routes up to 1000ly distance, which made it easier to plot a course to the centre of the galaxy (27,000 light years). I was lucky to plot distances beyond 130ly today though when completing the return trip.

Yep. Back in the populated areas now, I think I'll dabble in that metagame thingy for a bit if I do the internet spaceship gaming thing. I did 3000ly out, 2600ly coming back (return trip was more of a straight line) and the ship was only 12% broken. Hmm - that doesn't actually bode too well there, as if you multiply up the distance and wear by 10, then ship gonna break or get paper thin and very likely to break.

Been watching lots of cricket ! Both on the telly and for reals. Thursday saw the annual pilgrimage over to Lords for the Interservices T20 tournament in aid of our service people. That's a worthy cause always worth supporting, they've had a hard time lately what with Gulf War 2 and Afghanistan.

Wednesday saw me head off to Cheltenham because the car wanted to say hello to the dealer again (a "maintenance required soon" alert hadn't been reset). That gave me the excuse to wander around and hunt for shinies.

Coulda got more shinies to be honest.

One thing I did notice on Wednesday evening (after watching San Andreas - ok amusing but not great) was that the bounce seemed to be coming back. That's awesome. I was also bouncing round Lords on Thursday too.

That's encouraging. I have various parts of me that are pretty broken now (back, hips) but I've seen progress with my outsides, they seem to be genuinely trying to heal now although it's still a case of steps forward, steps back. Energy levels seemed to be recovering :-)

We'll see how that goes over the next week back at work. I suspect it won't be long until I start itching to throw the desktop out the window. On that ... I have something coming soon, which will be the second major upgrade this desktop PC will have had (the other was a graphics card). It's done well to only need 2 upgrades in 3.5 years.

Oops. I almost talked work again. Must stop that.

Enjoy the rest of your evenings !