Things i learnt yesterday...

This blog post concept stolen/inspired by Being Brazen. Full credit given... thoughts my own though.

• It may be a good idea to iron my trousers more
• It is more painful for my joints/back sitting in my office chair all day then it is traveling down to kent and back (which was a mission)
• I may have more pride then is good for me sometimes
• Blue food dye used for M&M's may be the future cure for spinal injuries. And it may turn your skin blue just like the cute little rats they are testing it on. Click here for more info on that.

So cute!! Poor ratty...but he does look kinda happy - but that could be a whole PR thing.

iMac

It seems that I may just be getting myself a beautiful machine like the one above!! Yes I've been unable to resist the geek inside me.

To be honest it did kinda just fall in my lap - not like I went looking for it or anything.

C's ex boss who is a fellow mac lover has been trying to sell this beauty to C for a few months now. I've been hearing little comments about it along the way. But it hasnt really been discussed until....

The ex boss sent C a video he had shot and edited trying to convince him to get it. It then got sent to me (as most things do since we email ALOT during the day) And it was just hysterical. But it also just planted the seed in my head going "ohhhh I'd love that"

Then there was the price.... DEF not a deal you should pass up.

So after a few passing comment C got how much I want it ...and so it is a done deal now.

Before I didnt think there was a huge need for it. As I do have my gorgeous Macbook Pro. But now I just keep thinking of more and more reasons that I need it. It is just so exciting.

I can have a machine that will handle both OS X and windows and I'll be able to run CAD on it. Plus it has a nice big 20" screen so that help with CAD. So this means I could maybe start some negotiations at work to have the option to work from home some days. And it is powerful enough to handle Photoshop so I can actually sit down and learn it. So it will be a work and media PC and my gorgeous laptop can be dedicated personal stuff. And it can try keep the hard drive from filling up.

TOO EXCITING!!... and I may be getting it tomorrow after saying yes yesterday. YAY

Poo sandwich

So we have a 2 hour meeting coming up at work for which we have been set homework. The homework is to come up with a feedback sandwich for each person in the design team.



What is a feedback sandwich you ask?

A ‘feedback sandwich’ is an honest and open way of delivering feedback to individuals; on areas / things that you believe they may do well, things that they may find tricky in your opinion and things they could do differently and/or better.

There are no rights or wrongs, however your feedback sandwich should contain;

Context for the feedback – a situation, an instance or a scenario
1. It should highlight a minimum of three specific context-related things the person does well.
2. It should highlight one specific, factually and contextual appropriate thing that the individual could improve on.
3. This should be depersonalized and you should be ready to give other examples in the same context.
4 .It should finish with an overall observation, in context, confirming what the person does well.

I am seriously struggling with this. I've been trying to come up with these for 5 days now. i know that i've not written anything down so i'm not tried extremely hard. But everything that is floating around my head about people is very subjective and emotional and I dont seem to be able to think of exact situations. I've always been like this though. And this is all stressing me out cause I really dont want to hear what people have to say about me either. Most of them do not understand what I'm going through at the moment and honestly I dont think that they care. But i suppose this is what the meeting is all about.

ARG

Portland

Here are some photos of the weekend away in portland. I loved getting away and spending time by the sea! Was loving running around with my camera and discovering new functions. These are just a few of the 243 photos I took :)

*Kisses at sunset*

*sunset at Blacknor*

*Loving the sea*

*C decending the most picturesque climb i've see so far*

*Fallen Slabs*

*jurrasic fossil!!*

*playing with the colour settings*

*crag in black and white* *C and Me*

*me on the only climb I did...got stuck and came down. Only 1 other chick got to the finish so I dont feel too pathetic. I'm the higher one on the crag...about to do a very pathetic mantle which landed me in a position that looked like I was praying to the rock - lol*

Coke freeeeeeeeeeee

So yesterday was the official end to the 1 month I set myself to go without carbonated caffeine filled drinks...mostly coca cola! I was starting to feel like I was getting addicted to the stuff and really didnt want to go a day with out it. Plus C shared a weblink with me about a link between coca cola and joint/muscle pain. It turns out that that is def not the problem in my case but he got me paranoid. Also I have a thing where I like to test my will power out every now and then.

So one month along and what is the result?

Not much difference actually. The only thing is that i'm not being ruled by cravings for it. Otherwise I feel pretty much the same. Well not for the first week though. But that was a bad health week and when I have those coca cola def give me a bit of pep and more energy to deal with it. So the first week was hell. Involved me being exhausted and hitting real energy lows in the day.

I also have to point out that I didnt drink much coke. Only about a can a day during the week and not every weekend. So i cant see how it would have much of a difference either way. I'm still having gut issues but that has always been ongoing and isnt made worse by the coke.

My end verdict....

I dont really want to cut it out of my life completely. I do know that I should be sticking to drink more water and less sugar etc. So that is my goal now. Drink more water and save the coca cola for that "special" occasions like at the end of a gruelling climbing day. or with a meal at a resturant or at the bar when i dont want to drink alcohol. Am going to stay away from drinking it in the week during lunch and at the office. (that may only be hard when my boss trys to bribe me with chocolate and coke)

Am off to the isle of Portland for the weekend tmr to try do some climbing!! cant wait. But you never know what the British weather is going to throw at me or what my boby is going to say about this. But i'm still so excited!

The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass.

I felt like having a random title today.

So this is week 6 of joint pains... luckily the pain has gone down from an 8/10 to a 2/10 which is a huge improvement to my life. I've been on steriods for the last 14 days and am off to see the doctor to discuss things tomorrow. Am really hoping that this is now just going to get better and better. I think that it really helped that on thursday morning last week I put my foot down at work and said that I really cant use my hands too much which means NO cad work. Now i'm just trying to take the whole mouse work easy. I think the hands have been the most frustrating. Just how everything hurts ones hands - every position that you put them in hurts. And the fact that all the things you like to do involve your hands.

We are heading off to portland this weekend for a meetup climbing group trip. 18 climbers are going all in all. And I still have no idea if i'm going to be able to climb at all - let alone do some of the more hectic walk ins. I've been a bit stressed by this but sorted that out by joining Streetcar car club and therefore we will have a car of our own. So I can head off to chill somewhere in the sun if I cant walk in etc. Otherwise I'll mostly just be chilling at the bottom of the cliffs watching everyone enviously and running round taking pics... oh yeah and maybe i'll get to do some reading as that has been impossible due to not being able to hold books. But most importantly i'm really looking forward to being in the sun by the sea!

Lastly for this post today I just have to share the fact that I've converted C's ex into my fan... While getting her home very drunk on Sat night she had this to say:

ex: " i have no idea what you must have thought of me when you met me. I know, that i'm a bitch. I was a bitch. I just really really wanted to hate you .... but you are just too nice! I cant hate you."

LOL - all I can do is laugh. At least things are all cool now. And her wedding wont be uncomfortable now.

Still in pain

So it is 12 days later and here i'm sitting still in pain - a bit less but pain none the less. This is honestly getting to be too much. I dont really have any good answers even tho i'm seeing specialists that cost fortune (thanks to private health insurance i'm not paying for) and I getting medication to try to SEE if it could be joint pain related to infection in my intestines. My brain is getting very befuddled by this all and my moods are pretty befuddled as well. I dont think i'm going to be able to right much as this is really hurting my hands. It seems that they have become the worse part. But i think that is alot to do with going back to work and useing them again. All the mouse work etc. My boss was really sweet and went and bought me heated hand guards for arthritis pain and my other collegue gave me his track ball mouse. but it is still really hard and a day at work now sees me struggling home and curling up to sleep because the pain in my hands is just unbearable. Then there are the people at work that see me working and dont think that i must be in pain cause well i'm there and working so what could be wrong *note the annoyance to that line of thinking. I'm so sorry that i'm good at putting a brave face on things. I reckon that I do not wish to appear weak.

I dont know how i'm going to get through this week if things dont change.

And now that i'm pretty "disabled" by pain all i can think about is the things i want to be doing, like climbing and using my bike as transport, stuff that i want to do with friends, holidays etc. Even my usual net surfing and home computing had come to a halt.

I have a climbing weekend coming up in 2 weeks and really REALLY dont want to be like this come then.

Also it is amazing what you take for granted. and what it is like when doing even the simpilist things are difficult.

And finally i just have to say it is horrid not even being able to hold your partners hand properly cause it hurts.

well i have to stop now and this may not have been the best idea to type as more pain is setting in. but i honestly need to get some of this stuff out my head.

Pain...

Ok enough already with this pain...i'm up to here with having to deal with it all day long. This is exhausting and I want my life back!

But will have to wait until next wednesday for the verdict after having an ultrasound of my hands (how weird is that !??!)

well this is all my hands can handle for now...

p.s. i really do have the most amazing partner in my bf!

A few pics from the hundreds that I took in Paris!

back from my little jaunt in Paris

I still cant get over that I could just pop over to paris for a 4 day weekend... this is just what I did. I tagged along with Mish and her man - well I welcomed them to London before ushering us all onto the Eurostar over to Paris.

It was a mad 4 days and I'm absolutely wreaked at the moment. My joints where sore last week but only slightly and I wasnt worrying about them. But now after a strenous on the body time in Paris they are even worse. I've now had a full week of sore joints. I'm just tired of being in pain. It isnt the nice I've been excersizing and now ache somewhat (for excersize read climbing) It is this dull ache in my joints that has sharp stabbing pain every now and then. I'm walking around so carefully as to not hurt them too much and making sure that i dont twist them out of place too much.

I've def hit a low energy point and also keep passing out - which is so not good ! i need a holiday to get over my holiday! it also didnt help that I was working late every day to prepare for the time off.

I'll have to write a paris specific blog post and capture some of the memories here and try post some of my pictures... I have hundreds, was starting to get mor creative with my GORGEOUS camera. I really cant thank C enough for picking such an awesome camera (and the Ginger Ninja for confirming his choice!)

I've also had a weird inner head space at the moment. I've been making a few realisations at the moment which is always interesting to me. Maybe they are things that everyone already knows about me and maybe not. But i've realised that I am actually pretty much a loner in my head. I think this may be from being an only child. To everyone I am a very friendly and open etc person but sometime I really do just like to retreat into my mind. I've never really needed anyone to be there with me. I'm very happy to be all alone by myself with my thoughts. I've come to realise that I dont need to be alone to be able to do this. I can be surrounded by people but still feel very much by myself which is wierd. Maybe this is how C and I survived living in 1 room for so long.

I did realise that since i've been away without him twice in the last little while that I really dont like it. And its not for the usuual reasons I dont think. I mean i'm perfectly capable and fine to travel without him and alone etc. I have no fear of going places by myself etc. But I realised that he is in my head space and that I need him there for that. And this is a first that I realise that someone else is in my headspace so much. He really can read me like no other! and that is scary in so many ways.

I've also had no ties to a place being a home. Like a certain house or city or country. It is always the people around that make the home for me. If I have the reight people around then I feel content and that is safe and home like. Home right now is very much the space that C and I share where ever that is. It is great to now have a physical space to represent that though.

Ohhhh speaking of which, our couch is arriving on saturday. I just cant wait. I really hate sitting on this hard futon (i think i have mentioned this before.) The things that I really wanted to splash out on were a matress and a couch. The 2 places i need to have a happy house. I'm not really good at personal decisions (ok i'm terrible) so this was quite the decision to make. But i think that i've def made the right choice. We went for a made to order couch to our sizes wanted with a chaise lounge that can swop from one side to the other (always good to have fexibility) It also has a solid sofa bed mechanisim that has a sprung matress. And I got to pick the fabric ....Aubergine microsuede. So will post a pic as soon as we have it :) Cant wait !

That is enough for tonight... am off to crawl into bed with my gorgeous bf !

Oh yeah and here is hoping that the joints are somewhat better tmr!