Hope it went well!

thoughts of what the weekend will bring, that's why I'm happy today

managed to pick up cat, and still possess both eyes and all of my fingers

Stealing Borrowing a cor

That would make me very happy too!!!

For me, having hot water again!

A freshly roasted chicken

Oooo.

It looks like my favourite perfume has been discontinued (and replaced by a slightly different one that's much more expensive ), but I managed to get the last 30ml bottle from Savers for ?9.99. This compares very favourably to spending nearly ?40 for the same amount of the new version...

My new shed


I live in a little traditional cottage and I paint on rather large canvases. This is not a happy combination unless you like squeezing past boxes of canvases and stacks of paintings piled up everywhere, down the back of the sofas, in the hall... etc etc.


SO.... I now have my very own shed for my STUFF

Buy 4 bottles at that price and stock up for the foreseeable future?

I drove my new car back to Uni-home from family-home. First time on a motorway, and more miles done today than in the entire time I've had it. Absolutely shattered now, but pleased that I make it with only a few hairy moments - despite the disgusting weather!

Off to had a bath and de-stiffen a little... I think I understand the benefits of cruise-control now...




[Edit: deary me, I've just re-read this and realised I am so tired, I can no longer conjugate verbs in my own language. Its so amusing, I'm going to have to let them be... :S

Cruise control, maybe for some! Relaxing is more important than anything, Tamsin. If you drive tense, you'll feel very stiff once you get out of the car!

I bought the last bottle. There doesn't seem to be anywhere else that sells it...

Maybe try here: http://www.perfumechoice.com/ ? I tracked down some hard-to-find stuff there.

By 6:15pm I will have finished my two current OU courses (K272 and SDK125)! Just got 7 1/2 hours of exams to get through first...

Which perfume is it?

Sleeping from 11pm until 9.30am!

Felt really, really rough yesterday and had to teach students all day (including LouiseH and benjaminja ) which was so hard (they told me it didn't show!).

I've cancelled one student today because I so need a bit of breathing space - I'm coming up to half-way through a two and a half week stint of No Days Off at all...

Geography exam - questions on a supervolcano and on fold mountains but none on earthquakes just one more exam then no more Geography ever again (the practical finding-your-way part aside)!

Finished my exams for this year! Last one next summer, then no more (undergrad) exams!

Had such a lovely lesson with a new pupil.

Also bought another car ... a Triumph TR7 this time!

How many cars can one person drive? Where on earth do you park them all?

My happy is a wonderful weekend spent in Prague, a city where you can't walk down the street without being handed at least 2 leaflets about forthcoming classical concerts. A highlight of the visit was seeing Aida at the National Theatre on Sunday evening. Bliss!

Sooooooo jealous!!! I would LOVE to go to Prague on holiday - sounds amazing!!!!!!!

My happy is having lunch with my brother who I haven't seen in ages

I can really recommend it - it is a fantastic city. We celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary on Sunday and decided to push the boat out and go somewhere special, as we didn't do anything significant on our silver or pearl anniversaries.

Glad you were able to spend time with your brother.

Happy thing 1: My bathroom has a door on it! Hurrah! It hasn't had one for 4.5 weeks. We have a downstairs cloakroom, so it's not been too bad, but it is nice to now have a shiny new almost-finished bathroom, with a door on it that just about closes (during the rennovation, it has been stored in our garage, where it has warped slightly from the dampness )

Happy thing 2: On Monday one of the rat-girls had to go down to the vets, to get some antibiotics for noisy breathing. As soon as she came out of the carrier, the vet said "Oh, her jaw is swollen", which I hadn't noticed. Most likely it is a tooth abscess - you need to anaethatise to check, and with her respiratory problem they wouldn't do that. So, antibiotics for the lungs, then end of the week go back if the jaw is still swollen. Well, yesterday it was looking enormous, to the point I was going to take her back and say 'take the risk with the lungs, because she's not going to be able to eat soon', but this morning the jaw has really gone down a lot. So :fingers-crossed: the antibiotics are also helping with the tooth abscess - assuming that is what it is. Likely it will need a proper investigation/tooth removal/more antibiotics/great expense, but at least she is looking more normal today (and scarfing down her baby-food-laced-with-Baytril with immense delight). She's 2.5 years old, and it's been a long time since we've had a rat who lived well over two years - I can't imagine the colony without her at the top ruling the roost!

There is finally a deworming pill inside the cat and from the way she's just come and shouted at me she has stopped sulking after her trip to the vet this morning.

I can appreciate that one. I am so pleased that Plato's insulinis injected. One point aimed at cat. Cat stays still. Cat purrs as he is stroked after injection.

Happy Cat and Happy owner.


... buying piano music. That's what made me happy, that and the penny dropping over playing minor scales in 6ths, and still being on track for G8 Piano.

Sorry get almost obsessive before music exam due to the level of focus required at this level.

I had a mystery parcel delivered. It was HUGE. I wasn't expecting a parcel. Boyfriend-one suggests I'd better check it isn't a bomb.

So I opened it up and there is this ENORMOUS hamper of chocolate from my future employer, and a note saying "welcome to the team". So nice to get suprise presents.

What about boyfriend-two?

Chloe

Boyfriend-one is a bit of a joke: He was my first boyfriend, so I always imagined that there might be a two, three, or twenty over the years. So far though boyfriend-number-one has always stuck around, so there's never been a need to find number two or three, let alone twenty!

What a lovely surprise.

I thought that usually happened when somebody left....

SB

I've enrolled on a course, hopefully a new start

Being at home. Watching the cat hit a bunch of feathers on a string. Being thankful for the small things in life.

Birthday-ness!!!
A day of trying to forget about all the other stuff, and just have fun!

I officially became a doctor today

Congratulations! Let's hear it for doctors - where would we be without them!

Well done, doctor!

CONGRATULATIONS!! What a wonderful achievement!!

Congrats, Appassionata!!

Congratulations Appassionata! Side point - I would be precisely nowhere and nothing without doctors, as my father is one...

Congrats to Dr. Appasionata!


What's made me happy today is A Thought. I have been working on the assumption - for a few years now - that sooner or later I will be made redundant from this job. I've watched the department shrink, we who remain all expect it to come, and we're just holding out as long as possible to maximise the payout.

And I've wondered, idly because there is no urgency, just what I would do next, as/when/if it happens. And I'd thought of one course of action I could take, which would have me doing something broadly similar-ish but a bit different (this is assuming that I don't effectively just move in to the same job at another company).
And then yesterday I had A Thought. My brother is currently re-training to something completely different. And I wondered that if I were to do that, what would I retrain to do, what might I be doing ? And there was This Thought. Today it has moved on a bit - it transpires it is a feasible thought.

So, as/when/if redundancy appears, I have (a) stay in the same job and look for a new company; (b) do a bit of retraining and work in something similar-ish; © go off and do something completely different.

I have OPTIONS. I don't have to panic NOW about what might happen THEN. I have IDEAS. This makes me happy

[Note: none of the plans are "professional recorderist" or "professional cyclist" ]

Hear hear!

Redundancy, if and when it happens, is often a golden opportunity to do something totally different, and which you really enjoy. I have been made redundant twice (in 1981 and 1993). Redundancy was unwelcome at the time, especially as I enjoyed the jobs that I was doing; but on both occasions it gave me the pportunity to break free, and to do much more with my life than I would ever would have done had I stayed where I was.

So, I would say to anyone; if and when redundancy comes your way, use the opportunity to improve your life by doing something different which you enjoy more, and which you would probably never have considered had you not been given the opportunity.

SB

I got my First! And... this was a huge suprise, a special prize for best final year design project.



On the downside, every single bar on campus was shut today!!

Many, many, many congratulations

That is an amazing achievement. Well done!

Wow! Well done! You must be thrilled to bits. It makes all the hard work and aggro seem worth it after all!

I was wondering how you'd got on, tamsin! Many congratulations!

Congratulations! After the amount of work you put into it, hardly surprising.

Oh, wonderful! many congratulations Tamsin! Am so pleased for you!