Have a Break

5th and 10th booked as holiday :D

I spent two days holiday... I get two three day weeks, and six days off in a row. It'll be nice to have a break :)

What's Up With... Part 1

Well, someone asked me last night why I appeared to have been avoiding writing about some stuff on my blog. I think that'll do as a sign that I need to get some stuff updated ;)

See, I haven't specifically been avoiding writing... It's just that when I started this, I had a *need* to write here, I think. Now, most of the time, I don't have that need, so I'm not so desperate to get here and write about everything :)

But, as I had been recently meaning to get some updates 'out here', I shall put reading reviews of big TVs on hold to get some writing done instead ;)

So, let's get back to those other two Ws. I'll start with work, as that's far easier for me to summarise ;)

So, the work stuff then... I became aware of my work all going a bit shitty a long time ago. So much lost focus. Particularly when I started another big job in around November, I was asking for trouble. I just couldn't focus on it, couldn't sit down and do it. I'd stare out the window, get distracted online, find a different job to do... Anything.

Originally, I think this was a symptom of everything else going on. I think it was around last June/July that I really started to feel seriously emotional about everything else going on. I could barely eat anything on most days, and it was all just so... there.
I wasn't like crying all the time or something, but I could just feel a serious wodge of all sorts of emotions just "there" all of the time.

A symptom of the problem was that I began to feel distracted at work.

That symptom grew and grew until it became a problem in its own right, even after the original problem had faded away some more.

There were days, I don't know how many, where I must only have spent an hour really working. There were ups and downs... But it seemed to be getting worse, rather than better.

All the recent stuff... I agreed that everything I'd working on was finally finished (including all the extra bits that always come along - one reason it had been able to drag on a bit) and able to be delivered on the Monday. It was not.

I felt that I couldn't admit it (it was already over-budget and I'd already told my boss I'd had a problem with it once and it wasn't where it should be), and I just couldn't say AGAIN that it STILL wasn't finished. I just had to sit down and do it. Get the damn thing out of the way. But I couldn't.

I was feeling very stressed that Monday, but able to make an excuse that it hadn't been delivered. I think I was up until around 5am that day.

I didn't go in on Tuesday. I felt genuinely ill, and seriously stressed out. I knew I had to do something, but simply thinking about it... My chest would feel tight and I could feel my heart beating. (No shooting pains or anything though ;) )

I slept a little in the morning on that Tuesday. Every time I woke back up, I'd immediately, without even having thought about it, just feel so stressed I couldn't do anything. I knew that the only answer was to get it finished. I didn't know exactly how much work was left, but I knew it was the only answer. But I couldn't manage to do any work on it!

Eventually, simply knowing that a fantastically wonderful mega-friend was there on the phone for me for moral support whenever I needed it, I made it in to work Tuesday evening, after everyone else had left. I had the best many hours work I've had in ages.

I was eventually able to deliver the project Wednesday evening. I was actually pretty pleased and confident about it by then.

And since then, I'm finally, finally back on track at work. Or at least, I seem to be ;)

I'm working for at least 7 out of 7.5 hours, at any rate ;)

Bye for now... Gotta get back to work ;)

Byaaa-hooohawhahahwbrrrr

Ok, now that reminded me of the swimming pool at primary school.

I've been thinking for a week or two "I might go for a nice warm bath when I've got the time..."

Half-way filled, I check the water.

"Wow! Cold. Hmm, best turn the cold tap off."

I left it filling the rest of the way from only the hot tap.

I check it once it was about ready. It's warmer... But it's coming out cold from the hot tap. Total water temperature... "Not cold" is about the best description I can give.

BRRRRRR!

Couldn't let all that water go to waste though. Think I'll get a hot drink now...

Intermission

We interrupt this blog for a brief intermission. Usual service (i.e. news on the two sets of things I brought up and then left hanging - my wife and my work) will resume shortly.

Meanwhile, speaking of things that start with the letter "W"...



...I went to the first match at the new Wembley stadium on Saturday :) Tickets had only been a tenner each! Now, I've never been to a football match before, but for the sake of a tenner... I mean... Can't really say no, can you ;)



The famous arch :)

Certainly, one thing you just can't get from the photos... The size of the whole thing. It's BIG. Attendance on Saturday was 55,700, of 60,000 tickets sold. Total capacity is 90,000. :-O



Again, it doesn't really look it from the photos, but you really felt pretty close to the action; almost on top of it.

Oh, and by the way... I'm doing pretty decently at the moment in general, thank you :) If I wasn't, I'd probably be blogging a whole lot more ;)

Now, I'm feeling pretty tired today, and I think I may actually head off to bed already. Gosh, and it's only just gone 11! (Or is that 12?) Anyway... night night :)

I am...

A complete and total fucking moron.

I am STILL not doing the things I should be doing, and on top of that, I keep doing things I shouldn't be doing!

I have dug myself a hole so deep that I can barely see the sky.

I need to get this damn project finished.

This may have started as a symptom of other problems, but I allowed it to grow stagnant and fester. It is now a serious problem in itself.

I have barely talked to anyone about it. When I talk about it, I rarely talk to the people I should talk to about it. When I talked to them, I could not admit the scope of the problem. The amount of work still to be done.

*shakes head*

I have to finish this. Tonight. I just had a cup of coffee. I hate coffee.

Tried and Tested

Mrs M and I had a bit of a conversation about a week and a half ago after I had hopped over there one evening to pick something up.

I ended up asking the question, "How are you trying to get me back?" (seeings how she wanted me back more than anything, I thought it seemed reasonable)

"Well," she said, "I'm working on food and I'm feeling happier in general."

As I said to her, "working on food" doesn't really count, in my opinion. She's been working on food for the last eight years, and she's currently at her heaviest weight she's ever been. A little over a year ago, she was at her lightest ever, of almost 12 stone.
This time a year ago, towards the end of our honeymoon, I'd guess she was around 13 stone.

The last time I asked her recently, she's now 17 stone. Previous maximum was 16. Every time I see her, she's "making progress on food... except for this last week..."
Ok, maybe she is and I'm being unfair, but obviously I am sceptical after so many years.

As for happier in general, well, of course I'm pleased, and maybe that would have helped, but at the same time, I'm slightly disappointed that she dropped some of the activities she had started. She had started archaeology evening courses (just as "something to do"), which she missed a couple of weeks of for some reason, then didn't bother going back to. She was also going to start learning Italian, but then dropped that before she started it.
I would like to see her making friends with more people, or something.

But I said, "But both those things are to do with you, and ok, they'll help, what are you *trying* to do to get *me* back?"

"I'm... just... waiting, really. Hoping you'll want to come back."

"So why aren't you trying to do anything in particular?"

"I'm afraid of scaring you off."

"Well, that's not something you should be afraid of, and if you can scare me off that easily anyway, then there's a fair chance it's not going to work, regardless."

"I guess. What should I try?"

"I can't tell you that. I don't know. If I did know, I'd tell you."

"I don't really know what to do..."

"Because basically, at the moment, it seems kind of like you're not really trying anything, because you don't really know what to try. Which is pretty much the same as all the last years. You just need to try anything you can think of. Like on our anniversary, you could have got me a present, or something."

"I spent several hours looking around town for something to get you, but I couldn't really think of anything. About the best thing I thought of was cufflinks, and I thought, you don't really wear cufflinks."

"But... I didn't know that, did I!"

"And... I bought some pretty underwear that I was going to wear for our anniversary... but... It didn't fit."

This one was not far off a "throwing my arms up in the air in confusion and frustration" moment. She had said on that day at some point, that "she didn't really want to do anything as it didn't really seem appropriate under the circumstances." - What-everrrr! ;)
Nah, we had had a hug and quick kiss, but to be honest, I had partly just fancied a 'serious' kiss then. Just as all that sort of thing had been an issue for so long, wondered if it might have felt like it was the only problem...
Daft of me though, as of course that was really more of a symptom than the cause.

I pointed out that, as I've said before, at the moment, I don't really miss her when she's not around. When she is, it's kind of nice in some ways, but... I said she might as well just try anything she could think of, and if she thought she wanted to give me a ring or talk to me on Messenger (she said she had been avoiding things like this for fear of bugging me), then just try it.

That's probably why she rang on the following Sunday to ask if I wanted to go to the cinema to see Hot Fuzz last Tuesday. But I started writing this post yesterday, and I thought I'd finish it today, so you'll have to wait for that ;)

Context

...Shall follow. At some point ;)

In the meantime, I think you'll have to make do with simply acknowledging that it's been a funny old evening ;)

Do you ever...

At some point late in the evening, I had noticed the stars as I gazed out of the window.

They were ever so bright, and there were ever so many.

I wondered about going for a walk, but was not quite in the mood.

By the time I contemplated going for a walk, it was gone 12. After mentally yo-yoing back-and-forth for a bit, I eventually decided that I wasn't ready for bed yet, and that yes, I would go for a walk.

The stars really were out in force! Dim ones, bright ones, twinkly ones. They were all there. I didn't notice any recognisable constellations though - I think someone had randomly rearranged them :)

I wasn't sure where I'd go... didn't fancy a long walk at this time... So set out the back way from my house, probably just to go around the block and back. That way, I could start by walking down the unlit footpath too, and really be able to see them :)
As I walked along the main road (which, not too strangely, wasn't all that busy at gone 12am of a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning), I decided I'd try to remember where the back entrance to the park was. Somewhere through the cricket ground. It was too dark to really see where I was walking, but I made it to where I wanted - the pond-that-looks-like-a-river that runs along the back of the cricket ground and park.

I knew it would be pretty there - the trees lining both side of the pond-with-the-identity-crisis strip out what little man-made light was reaching the back of the park/cricket ground.

lol, it is probably a wonder I did not fall into the pond-that-thinks-it's-a-river, as most of the time I was walking around with my head tipped back looking up at the sky.

It was nice there, ambling along side the river (well, it looks like one, and I got tired of specifying).

A few swans were floating on it - white headless lumps in the murky blackness. The treeline was reflected in the river. Occasionally, I caught a glimpse of a star or two being reflected back too, but for the most part they weren't quite bright enough. (Or I might have tried to grab a piccy on my phone :) )

A swan that was still awake made a funny noise (I thought it sounded slightly like a horse impression :-P). An owl begain terwit-terwoo'ing. A duck quacked.

I turned away from the riverpond and walked across the middle of the park. Four or five ducks flew straight over me, a couple sounded to be twittering, one quacked once or twice.

I probably looked like I was drunk as I walked across the park staring up at the sky - no sense of direction what-so-ever without looking where I was going ;) (On the plus side, there was nobody to see me - that's the advantage of going for a walk at such a silly time ;) )

The stars were so beautiful.

Do you ever find yourself just thinking about how amazing everything is? I love computers and technology... But when I am outside sometimes looking at it all, it can just take my breath away.

As I was stopping and staring and thinking, I remembered something I had been thinking about recently.

Someone once told me that everyone has a relationship with God. It's just about whether people choose to acknowledge that relationship.

I wonder, however, if it is possible to actively have a relationship with God without realising what it is. I wonder if that is why I struggle to see/want/acquire a Christian one; if on some level I already had one, so I was not "missing" it.

I Want

I want to drive back over.

I want to hug her.

I want to tell the only woman that I've ever really loved that everything's going to be ok.

But I can't.

And it's not.

Help! I think I've lost my penis!

Something terrible happened today.

I'm not sure I can admit it...

I spent £110...

This is so embarassing...

You don't really want to know, do you?

On...

Cushions and things.

What's wrong with me!? Am I turning into a woman?

Fortunately, fortunately, one important part is that "and things" includes 36 items of crockery... It's "just" (See! SEE WHAT I MEAN!? "JUST" I am saying...)... just the seven cushions.

Seven. "Just" seven.

I think I need professional help. That, or beer and porn ;)

PS. I forgot to add, just to confirm how mind-numbingly terribly horrific this is... I also looked at some curtains.

Help me! Help me please! I think it must be hanging on by a thread!

One

One year ago as I write this (well, not yet, but probably by the time I push the "Publish" button), I was taking these pictures:



It's strange when I think about it like that... When I think about the "at this exact moment last year..." style things.
Oh, incidentally, we weren't actually heading for SF. Just a plane-swap there :)

Mrs M was over yesterday for some (..counts..) nine hours in total. That time passed mostly without any thoughts of "Just think, at this time last year..."
In fact, it passed with virtually no reference to the events of a year ago. I'm not sure why that was exactly, just the way it went, I think.

I had been intending to burn a DVD with our honeymoon pictures and videos all nicely sorted and organised and watchable. But I didn't.

My excuse for that is that first of all last week I lost one whole night being up until 3:30am - I was up until about 2am changing a wheel on the car - not starting until 9:30pm, being a complete twit over how to use a jack, then struggling to get the wheel off after I had removed the nuts, followed by popping out to a garage to get the pressure on the spare checked - didn't help with that. Oh, little tip... I spent like an hour trying to get the damn wheel off; pushing, pulling, kicking, swearing, praying, WD40, all to no avail ;) In the end, I decided I needed a new approach... I let the car back down on the jack until the pressure was back on the wheel, and the jack was only just hovering under the car... Gave the wheel a tug... And felt it move, just like that! So, if you have trouble getting it off, try getting down first ;) Anyway, I'm rambling - by the time I'd got in, then chilled from the long evening, it was very late.
By the next day I was developing a cold, as well as being "a bit" knackered from the day before.

Cold continued such that I hardly did anything Friday night and spend the majority (but not all) of Saturday in bed.
So, I didn't manage to make a DVD, but I did get something :)



Look nice? Not bad for plastic! :)

What? No, I wasn't deliberately being cheap and tacky! :-P

To quote Mrs M after she walked in the room, "I thought oh God those are going to STINK!"

See, she suffers migraines and one of the things that can bring them on is strong smelly flowers. Hence you see the advantage of plastic ones! She was quite happy with them :)

It was interesting spending a day together. It felt kind of nice and kind of close at times... But... There is still a but.

I was interested to learn that she has dropped the Italian class she was going to do. She had said she was going to do that as it would be good to get her out of the house more, and something like Italian was actually forcing her to talk to people too.
But she said she's not so desperately lonely at home anymore that she feels a need to get out so much, so didn't bother going. Hmm. I can see where she is coming from, but I am not too sure of her logic there.

---

Meanwhile, I am thinking I might set up a second blog, just for my "special" readers ;) lol :) By whom I mean the regular ones foolish/stubborn/nosey enough to keep coming back :)
I had assumed however that you'd be able to add people to read it based on their Blogger profiles, but it seems that it requires the Google account e-mail address, so that may make it a little more awkward than I had anticipated.

What sort of thing am I talking about? Probably just some slightly more 'personally identifiable' stuff really that I'd worry about posting here. (E.g. pics of me/us, other random dumb things like that :) )

Oh my, look at the time! Time for bed, and I've got to put some sheets back on it yet!

For No Obvious Reason

I have an urge to post another picture.



Actually, I'm only sticking it 'ere as I don't have a proper photo-hosting thingmy, and I wanted to link it from elsewhere ;)

I'm not COMPLETELY random. Erm. All of the time. ;)