Not enough hours in the day....

Bugger me.

Does anyone else feel like there are not enough hours in the day???

I am trying to cram in so much, and I am missing out on things that I want to do! I only have time for things I have to do. Dangnabitt

Since being back at work (sigh) it’s been catch up, run here, do this, do that, cram in weekend’s worth of renno work, study, sleep, and then do it all again on Monday.

Work is sucking to the max right now and there will be ‘interesting times’ ahead. It’s looking very likely that in Sept/Oct I may be the ‘acting’ manager for the OHS Unit. A task which will be daunting yet exhilarating. I expect to meet a fair bit of opposition from one person in particular seeing he was ‘stiffed’ for the job in the first place. Long story short: we had 3 applicants. 1 from inside - Mr P, and 2 “outsiders”. I held grave reservations about Mr P becoming my ‘boss’. The 2 outsiders “pulled out” 2 days before the interviews and so Grand Poo Bah (who was here to interview) said sorry we don’t think you are good enough and we are looking for a ‘stronger field’. Ouch.
Anyho, I expressed an interest, a while back, in having a ‘mock’ interview to see what questions would be asked and to see if I could answer them.
The Grand Poo Bah seemed to be impressed with this aspiration, and hence has now asked if I’d like to act in the position “to get some experience”.
Mr P is having a crack at it first. He is doing July/August.
He seems a bit miffed by me getting a shot at it. There were some sarcastic comments made at yesterdays meeting.

I have been having an internal struggle with this. There are so many options, but as Rob says… this is the time you need to be selfish in your career and look out for yourself, an opportunity like this might not come up again for a while. My shoulders are fairly broad, but I am still pretty fragile.
Today I have decided to give it a crack …what have I got to loose??

Uni has been going swimmingly. For the first time in my life I am getting an HD average! I suppose it’s because I am really enjoying it. It’s relevant to what I am doing at work (in a way).
I am currently meant to be writing my final Major Assignment but I am lacking the concentration right now. Bert has been barking at a plastic bottle for about 30 mins now, so it’s time to rest.

The course has been pretty intense, an assignment every week. I think I have done 10 so far.

Other news – My sister no longer looks like she has been a Macca’s binge, she has developed a ‘bump’. She finished work last week and has 9 weeks to go apparently.
We went to my cousins 21st last weekend and I did a great rendition of Dory from Finding Nemo, I spoke ‘whale’ to my sister… she didn’t think it was that funny. I nearly wet myself. I am such a comedian!

We had Bert ‘De-nutted’. He was a fairly sore boy for about a week. We tried a “trumpet” on his head to stop him licking his stitches, but he figured out if he ran into a wall, his trumpet went backwards on his collar, therefore exposing his nose far enough out to get a good lick in. Smart arse. We took it off in the end. I even tried a sumo style bandage job. That lasted a while but he looked like a dork!

We are looking into another obedience school, he is starting to get a bit bored and he is a bit too smart for his own good. He has taken to banging on the glass door about 3.30am every morning now to come in, mainly so he can have a cuddle on the bed, we have started putting him outside now when he does it. We have to wiz anyway when he wakes us up, so he may aswell go out! Hopefully when it gets really cold he’ll figure out not to do it.

Reno rescue update – still ongoing.
As Rob says “It never farken ends, farken plaster, farken paint, farken Bert running off with the paint roller and hiding it!”.
Finally there has been progress at one of our places. Rob has finally made some groundbreaking decisions about carpet and skirting boards. ( I thought it would never happen)
There is Carpet, There are skirting boards (which took an hour to pick out) There is a pelmet over the window (which was also a hilarious saga) There are curtains to.
The final touch was the installation of a new oyster light. (it said to be installed by an electrician, but Rob says an “engineer” was good enough (He laughs in the face of electrocution!)
But he did ask my dad for some advice re which wire going where. (Sigh of relief for me)
He has also re-installed the walk in robe jobbie, then I had the dubious honor of sitting on the floor with my glass of wine, laughing my arse off and saying which ones went to good will and which ones could stay. I even inherited a long sleeve T.

My place has slowed somewhat, but seeing Kath has allowed me to throw her a baby shower, I’d better patch up some of the bathroom and put back the door frame in the kitchen.

ROB'S BIT – I am allowing him to write a bit on here, he is reading over my shoulder anyway!
Over to you Robo man…

Well…where to begin is the big question of the day. The real story of the renno rescue…I’ve had to prioritise tasks, you know with only half an hour of light when I get home and all, it doesn’t leave much daylight time for sanding, or working the odd power tool to death. Needless to say, there has been lots of thinking, planning, deliberating, and drinking Pepsi. One thing that I could do was the kitchen doorway at Louise’s place. Lou suggested that I use this stuff called quick-strip, its easy she says,… just paint it on, wait for a bit, and then scrape it off. I am not known for my patience, when someone says “…leave it a bit”, I take that to mean a minute or two, not a lifetime. Good Jeebers! I quickly worked out that using that stuff was not an art, it was a mind game. It’s a mind game because you paint it on and then spend the next 10 to 20 minutes wondering if its time to scrape it off, and at the same time, try not to become quickstripified (the fumes are worse than Louise’s farts) and burned by the falling droplets!. When I finally got to scraping it off, the stuff had dried and wouldn’t come off anyway…frustrating shit it is. Much easier to pull the board off the wall, get the chisel and scrape the 80 layers of paint off. 80 layers for 80 years! Then when all the paint disappeared, I was left with French polish…and that’s where I left it. It’s a job for an extremely rainy day.

I would just like to add a bit more about my house renno. People…don’t be too shocked if you see me in the same set of clothes from now on in, coz when “we” were unpacking my clothes, more were getting thrown on the “going to god” pile, than were going in the wardrobe. I think I am down to one set of casual clothes now. Seriously, I don’t know what is wrong with my clothes…admittedly some where the same clothes I used to wear in my engineering degree, but hey, isn’t that what growing old is all about. My dads favourite pants he bought in 1961 and still says they are his most comfortable set of strides!

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU HAVE FOUND THE LAST STRAW?

Lou recently went on a 2 day interstate conference…I affectionately call them work junkets, and from all reports, she had an interesting time. That’s not the point of this little blurb, this is about how to identify that last straw. I looked after Bert. Whether it be walking past a possible drop near the drug phone (a very suspicious car was idling in front of the phone occasionally flashing his lights and lighting his stop lights at regular intervals) or the poo’n’spew deposits on my carpet that greeted me with a “Top of the morn to ya, Rob. We’d like a bowl of cereal for breaky too”, to an impossibly fidgety dog that just gets into everything. Have you ever tried to put eardrops in a dog that (a) doesn’t like the eardrops on a calm day, (b) is super hyperactive, and (c) is very toothily expressive? Try it some time, it’s an interesting experience! That’s not the end of it, I would be reading my mail, and he would jump up and try to steal the paper from my hands. When he did manage to get it, he proceeded to rip it up in bits and deposit it all throughout the house. “No” is an invitation, “ah AH” means do it more, “leave it” is just not in his vocabulary. At this point, unbeknownst to me, we were about to suffer the first casualty. Zebby, god rest its soul. I was watching TV, dodging Bert’s Jaws and fat arse (that was obstructing my view), the next minute I look up and see this white cotton wool everywhere. I am happily storing some carpet underlay for Lou in my TV room at the moment and thought that Bert had got into that again. I was in mid “ah AH” when I realised that Bert had found a new love, a virgin sacrifice. Poor old Zebby, the $4 wonder toy from Coles had just become VICTIM NUMBER 1. He definitely wasn’t worth $4 after Bert had finished with him. Bert had bitten through Zebby’s arsehole, and every time Bert shook him, a bit more of Zebby went flying through my lounge room.

This is the best bit…talking to Lou on the phone, she couldn’t believe I was having that much fun with Bert trying to get him settled. She got home, walked in, greeted Bert, and it was almost like a slow motion movie death, Bert just fell at her feet all flaccid and floppy, she grabbed the ear ointment, and injected a great quantity in both ears. Easy as that! I walked away shaking my head in disbelief.

Thanks rob for your entertaining and insightful contribution …

I’m off to bed… this has taken me about 4 hours to write so far… see what I mean about not enough hours in the day!?