Not such good things

• The weekend has flown by and my son is now on his way BACK to uni
• The cake has nearly all gone
• I think I have trapped a nerve in my left shoulder and cannot move my arm. The drive to work tomorrow is going to be fun - 1st gear all the way?!
• It is STILL raining
• Despite trying to influence the judge on Sian's giveaway, the Sheriff chose someone else as the winner. The money we spent on those VIP tickets to watch Ice Road Truckers being filmed was clearly wasted.
• It's 9pm Sunday which means in less than 12 hours I will be back at my desk in the office

Cake!

Thought I would snap a photo of the cake before my son arrived home! There's something about a freshly baked cake, sandwiched together with some lovely seedless raspberry jam with a swirl of vanilla butter cream on top .... let me just assure you, it looks nothing like this now!

It's so good to have him home, it was lovely to wake up this morning and have the whole family under the same roof. So this is just a quick post, because I've finished work now and we are heading into town - I knew this visit would cost me money! But you know how us mums like to know they have plenty of food and warm clothes, no matter how old they are. This is a well timed visit as well as it is his 20th birthday on Friday and I hate knowing we won't see him on his birthday :-( Got to go and grab as much mum and son time as I can!

Good things

• My son is on his way home from uni for a long weekend! Haven't seen him for SIX long weeks, I miss him so much!
• New class over at Shimelle's. Have you signed up? Well, what are you waiting for? Go on, you know you want to .....
• It's nearly Friday
• It's nearly my birthday
• I have a freshly baked cake cooling in the kitchen waiting for me to fill it with jam and butter cream
• Steak and chips with a creamy mushroom sauce for tea

One of those days

It's been a very funny day today at work. Have you ever had one of those moments when something really silly and small just tickles your funny bone and you get the giggles? You laugh and laugh and laugh, tears running down your face, mascara running. Deep breaths to get yourself under control. Calmness resumes and then something crosses your mind and you are off again. Well I had one of those moments this morning. My colleague was nervously preparing for her appraisal and we were suggesting things she could use for her objectives for the next year. And then it happened. It really wasn't that funny, but I could not stop laughing. Then she started laughing, and then another colleague caught it. I had tears streaming down my face, she was trying to make me stop so she could compose herself ready for her meeting. And the more I tried to stop, the worse it got.
I had just got myself under control, having reduced it to a gentle snigger every now and again when I had a call from our IT guy. I'm working with him on something that requires us to produce usernames for parents. You literally take a forename and then a surname. I give IT guy the list of names and he enters them into the system. The IT guy just says down the phone 'You've made this up.'
'No I haven't, what are you talking about?'
'This guy's name, it must be a wind up.'
'What guy?'
Now at this point you have to understand that at the time when a lot of our students' parents were born,we didn't have the famous burgers from the Golden Arches. So when IT guy says the name, he can't believe that this guy didn't just have parents with a cruel sense of humour.
'Ronald McDonald'.
And so began another bout of hysteria. Some days I love my job!

Meetings and new classes

Well the good news is that my manager is happy with me! She is more than happy actually; it isn't often that you get the chance to sit down and discuss the way things are going, (although I guess she'd be calling me into her office more often if things weren't going well!) so it's very reassuring to know when your work is appreciated. I came out with a nice warm, happy glow and then came straight down to earth as I saw the work that accumulated in my in-tray over the course of half term and saw how many emails were waiting for my attention!
Talking of emails and inboxes ... did you hear that Shimelle is going to be telling us about a new class later this week? Yup, apparently a new on line class is coming soon :-)
And I - for one - can hardly wait!

Scrapping Sunday with Sue

Today was the monthly crop at Welwyn Garden City which is run by Sue at Crafty Stash. It's a very relaxing, creative and fun way to spend a Sunday! Our pages were designed by Tracie Hudson and all three were really nice and fun to do. Although by the end of the 3rd one, I had indentations on my fingers from all the cutting out we had to do! Here's the end results:

Yes, every little leafy flower had to be cut out of patterned paper. A great end result but an impatient little scrapper such as myself was itching to get on so please don't look too carefully at the neatness ;-)

This picture shows my husband with our friend Richard. He's the husband of the lady in the photo above and I made them pose for these photos when we went round for dinner a week ago! Both men are interested in cloud formations which is a bit of a standing joke and in this photo they are posing with a book on clouds.

And finally one of me taken from our seats at the O2 Arena in London when we went to see Strictly Come Dancing on tour. I love the colours in this page, but then again, now I am home, I do notice a similarity in colours to those we used when we decorated the lounge!
So that is me all scrapped out, inky of finger and gluey of hand.
Back to school tomorrow :-( And I have a Performance Management meeting - wish me luck!

Giggles

Having a bad day? Weather getting you down? Winter taking too long to go away? Something bothering you? Then this little video clip is for you. Hope it makes you smile.....