Guilty pleasures

Although a fan of last.fm, I've pretty much converted to Spotify these last few months. Music has always been a big part of my life. This fact was brought home by listening to Dale Winton on Radio 2 on Saturday as we drove back from the North. His Pick of the Pops was 1989, I knew 19 out of the top 20 tracks for that day. I was nine years old so I think that's fairly impressive.

So that gave me a guilty pleasures to follow up on on Spotify - Cher. Today I'm listening to Michael Bolton. Should I feel guilty? Probably not, because ultimately who cares what's 'cool' anymore, everything is 'cool' to someone, otherwise how would the rest of us ever here about it? But who gets to decide? So much is 'cool' at the moment which I think is totally nuts - skinnyness, binge drinking.... and don't even get me started on John and Edward.

Spending a week with pregnant ladies and new babies has made me reflect (again) on whether we'll have kids. As always its still a maybe - we never stay on one side of the fence for long. But I hope if we do we'll be able to raise them to spend as little of their time worrying about what is 'cool' and just focus on what they enjoy. So many people seem to spend their lives worrying about 'coolness' that they never have time to find out what's 'cool' to them...

So come on - what are your guilty pleasures?

Multitasking...

So, I'm still feeling pretty crap. But this week is not allowing me to acknowledge that at all. I've been in the office three straight days so far - something I haven't done since July I think. I have two major things due on Friday - one I've known about for ages and is 95% there. The other, I thought we'd missed one deadline and I therefore had 6 months to fix it, but no, we got an extension so I now have 4 days to fix it. And I had to make it to all my usual meetings and answer email and phonecalls. Email lawyers, berate bad translation companies, give a two hour lecture on quality assurance. Cue manic multitasking.

I do work well under pressure. I work my best under moderate pressure - this week has exceeded this. My brain ran out of steam on the phone at 5.30pm. But luckily its quite clever and woke up to the solution to the problem by 6.15pm when I was on the train home.

I've learnt so much in my job of the last two years. A few weeks ago I thought I was really starting to get it - now I realise I've just moved to level 2 of the game.

Blogging when you're (not) winning

So it's the end of the summer. High winds, driving rain, and feeling chilly enough to consider putting the central heating back on. Frankly, I've had a crap summer, gradually getting sicker and sicker for no reason that I can identify. I'm on annual leave this week and getting dressed and brushing my teeth are considered great achievements. I haven't the foggiest how next week back at work, a conference, then another conference in Madrid the week after are going to work. At least after that I won't feel quite as guilty if I collapse. I worked out that its been about 3 1/2 years since I was this poorly - I had a major crash just after hubland and I got married which took about 6 months to work its way out. This is feeling like a similar scale of crapness, only this time I live 90mins away from work instead of 5.... so slightly more tricky to handle.
Trying not to feel too stressed, or too sorry for myself as I know people close to me who are having crappy times at the moment. Anyway, send me positive thoughts if you've got any to spare.

So where am I again?

I seem to be missing ten days or so, can anybody help me find them. I spent most of last week in bed feeling all kinds of rottenness, not sure if it was the old bastard CFS or a virus or a combination of the two. Made it in to work on Friday mainly due to absoloute boredom and prospect of free lunch. Saturday night, just sat down to watch Iron Man (good Robert Downey Jr chest shots, could have done with a lot more plot) when the now all to familiar eye wobblying began.... a migraine was inbound. It is now Tuesday and I am just about surfacing, although my eyeballs are still hurting when I look at this.

So.... I'm pretty hacked off with my body. I'd like a new one now please as this one just isn't working for me.

Pondering

I've just returned from a lovely weekend in Pembrokeshire with Hubland. A wonderful time to catch up with each other after a month of either missing each other through my far flung location of me being asleep recovering from travelling.

While we were away I got the email (magic phone) telling me that I'd not been shortlisted for a job I'd applied for at another Uni. I was pretty disappointed as I thought I pretty much fit the job description perfectly... but obviously not quite closely enough. It was a perfect job, but not at all perfect geographically so Hubland and I were also rather relieved. For a couple of weeks, however, it had distracted me from the disatisfactions with my job. I still like a lot of the things about my job, unfortunately various institutional circumstances, massively worsened by the economic situation are currently frustrating the hell out of me. I seem to spend my day solving trivial problems while being prevented from getting stuck in to solving the big ones.

Unless something magical comes up I doubt I'll be applying for a job again in the future..... but I definitely need to work on a way of being a bit less 'aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh' about work so I retain my sanity.

A different kind of city

Why is it that a feel at home in continental European cities? Despite my love of Hong Kong and KL somehow Krakow feels like what a real city should be. I haven't had a chance to see much as I've been working since we arrived yesterday lunchtime. Thankfully as of about an hour ago I am now off duty, K arrives late afternoon tomorrow so I've got a day to wander around on my own but with the lovely knowledge that a friendly face will be arriving just in time for dinner.

K and I had been discussing if we were going to head out of town at all - the salt mines look very, ,very cool so I think we will try and make it to them - if I was here longer I would go to Auschwtiz, but in such a short break I know I just can't take it. I want to bring Hubland back here and explore the area as the nearby mountains also look so lovely.I've got an hour to rest and then its off for dinner at Polish restaurant followed by 'Jazz Club' (haven't had the heart to say I hate jazz... might sneak off at that point).

Uptown girl

So I've done the hotel shuffle and moved uptown to a posh hotel that work had booked for the two nights I'm here on 'their dime'. Yes it is swish, but it is also about another £60 a night which if I'm paying is a lot - and still doesn't include breakfast.
I've had a love day exploring Toronto island (did you know it had one?) then failing to locate Kensington Market - was it meant to be a building like the picture on the map showed, or was that street it? Finding nice places for brunch and dinner and having a walking tour of downtown Toronto pointing out where all the ghouls and goblins reside.
My feet are killing me. I've done more walking in the last two days than in the last two months. I have blisters on my soles..... but it's been worth it. Although it has been strange having a full two days and two nights on my own in a strange city, I'm glad I came early because visiting places and never seeing them is just crap, after Vienna I swore I'd never do that again (all I saw was the train station and the Hilton which was opposite the train station). Travelling is much better with someone to share it with, it feels more 'real' somehow, but on your own is definitely better than not at all.
Luckily for my trip next week to Poland I will be joined by my friend K for the weekend so we can explore together. This is turning into a rather expensive few weeks...