Sweet and Sour.

I was not looking forward to today very much after yesterday. Having to go into work and WORK on the weekend is just wrong on so many levels but since I had no choice in the matter what could I do? The day started off with me not being able to sleep very well, I kept waking up all through the night and finally decided to get up at 8am and get ready for both Basketball and the working day. I copied a whole heap of TV shows onto my memory stick so I would have something to occupy the hours while waiting around for the work I had to do to "run" on the Mass Spectrometer and headed off to Basketball. Last weekend we managed a win and booked a place in the finals...fourth place :) So this week we get to play again and go for a place in the grand final ... but against the team that is first and 14 points clear on top of the table and beaten us on all but one occasion in about 6 meetings. However, rather than type out a blow by blow of each half lets just cut to the chase. Today we WON!!

The kids played the best game of the season and truly were awesome. We were down by 8 points at half time even after a blitzing start where we were winning 7-0 in a matter of minutes. The half ended with us trailing 11-19. The second half was absolutely amazing to watch, my kids just didn't give up and had a really solid defense causing the other team to turn the ball over time and time again. With about 5 minutes to go in the final half the score was 23 -24 with the other team in foul trouble with 8 fouls already. Then we hit the "free" zone, whenever the 9th or greater foul in a half happens the fouled team gets 2 free shots at the basket. The last 3 minutes of the game must've lasted about 10 min ... it was hard to not be excited as we drew further and further in front.... with a minute to go we were 11 points clear due to so many fouls by the other team. The game ended with a score of 35-28 WE ARE IN THE GRAND FINAL BABY!!!!


After that tremendous victory and a super start to the day it all was about to head downhill as I had to high tail it over to work and spend the rest of the day there :(
I was the only person there in Chromatech (The department I work in) and it was quite disheartening as the area is about the size of an Olympic swimming pool + a bit more and very boring by myself. The reason that I was there was because I had taken off Monday-Wednesday this week to spend with Rachel while she was in Melbourne and had delegated the stuff I would have been doing to my underling Yi. He was very excited to be doing something new and eager as a beaver but, true to form, the Mass Spec broke on Monday just when we needed it the most. With me not there to fix it...it stayed broken until Thursday when i arrived back at work. I spent all day Thursday getting it working in a "Semi-repaired" state. We used it Friday morning but just before lunch it broke again and I spent the remainder of the day trying to "triage" it into a working state. I left work at about 7pm after running out of "Fix" options and just hoping that by letting it run overnight (It needs a very high vacuum to operate which takes about 6 hours to pump-down) it would be usable on Saturday morning.

Luckily it seemed alright except for a small air leak that was identified on Thursday but we couldn't find to fix. I ran some tests and it game results that were "usable" but not optimal. Nothing I could do about that though. So I put in a solid 7 hours there today. Luckily for me at one point the company owner dropped in and saw me working...more Brownie points for me :). I had to do my grocery shopping on the way home and rushed to the only supermarket I knew would be open and bought some things for lunches for the coming week. I also seem to have aquired a new taste for all things "honey" (Cheers Rach) and bought another tub of "Honey Buzz" yoghurt. I just thought i'd mention that because I have had a psychological barrier to honey flavored yoghurt for EVER and always assumed it would taste crap...How wrong I was...especially when poured over fresh chopped fruit (cheers again Rach ;) )

Now I am home and after not having eaten all day I think I deserve Indian for dinner. Worlds best Garlic Naan and possibly a nice spicey vindaloo I am thinking. That should end the day on a good note.

Tomorrow I am back at work all day again and I am seriously already looking forward to the 29th of September when I get another day off from this crap. I can't wait until this project is OVER...it's sucking my will to live !!!

Extremes.

I find it hard to believe sometimes just how crap my job can be and how this can affect a person. This week started off as brilliant as brilliant could be, mainly because I took three days off from this place and had Rachel visiting to boot. Now here I am on Friday just 5 days later and I am at the absolute opposite end of the happiness scale. I've returned to work yesterday to find NOTHING I had delegated to get done on my days off had been done due to the Mass Spectrometer breaking. As a consequence of that, the project is now behind by those 3 days. We had a meeting at 3pm yesterday to see where things stood with a delivery we have to fill by the end of next week and I left that meeting knowing (or so I thought) what was going on. This morning I find myself as a passenger on an email train from our R&D director about what HE thinks is happening that bears no resemblance at all to what the Product manager's and I decided was possible. To make matters even more confusing I seem to have got onto this email train 7 stops into the journey and see that this conversation has been going for almost 2 weeks already before I am included in it and then it's only to say how badly F@#ked up everything seems to be because the work we actually ARE doing on this project doesn't conform to the absolutely impossible promises the people in management have made to the customers . In this same email I am now informed that I don't have a weekend to look forward to either and I will be in here all day on Saturday and Sunday working to meet the unmeetable time-lines using a machine that is functioning at about 50% because I can't afford the time to take it off-line to fix it so it works at 100% .... ludicrous. Add on top of that the psychological torture of knowing that Rachel is in the same city and i'm not able to see her again before she leaves to go back home and you might understand what sort of state I am in at the moment. Not happy Jan!

Why can't every Friday be like last Friday?

Booooooooo Hiss Boo!!

Well here we are on Wednesday night after 5 days with Rachel in Melbourne. I've been in Melbourne now for about 4.5 years and have NEVER had such an awesome weekend as I just had with Rach. Let's just leave it at that because there are just far too many highlights and good times to recount here and I'm sure there will be a flood of photos to see when Rachel gets home and uploads them. We went exploring nature, running from storms, shopping, out dinners, in dinners, out breakfast, in breakfasts, Pancake hunting, Basketballing and acting like a couple of teenagers. We laughed a lot, talked a lot and slouched around in unison.We both also will now always have an appreciation for "Lounge Music" thanks to Mr. Richard Cheese (I'm listening to him now while typing this. Google him!!).

Unfortunately (for me) my allocated "Rachel in Melbourne" time expired today after a nice day in the city eating cake on Southbank and wandering the riverfront in the sunshine. I'm back home now at a bit of a loss as to what to do with myself. I got so used to having you around Rach that it just feels wrong now that you're not here anymore. Melbourne sucks just that little bit more for me. The bright side is that i'll be back in Adelaide in 3 weeks so the fun can continue then.

So thanks again Rachel. You absolutely rock ... Two thumbs up, but you knew that already.

The Worlds Best Ever Friday.

I'm so excited :) Not only have I got 3 days off next week as the first "major" holidays for the year since January, but Rachel is here, in Melbourne, staying with me for all of them!! We're going to have so much fun is almost unbelievable. It's also going to be great to not have to do my job for a few days, and not have to even think about it....aaahh Bliss. I just hope the Melbourne weather holds out and doesn't go too crap. I know I have already jinxed it because I washed my car last night and that is almost guaranteed to make it rain the next day. Sitting here at my desk at work and looking out the window it is all blue sky however and getting warmer.

I took ill on Wednesday night with a cold and usually my super-immune system makes short work of any such foible. This time the cold took hold a bit yesterday and after various people commenting on me walking around work in lab coat AND scarf looking like an arctic explorer I started engaging them in conversation about what THEY think is the best way to get rid of a cold? There were very few helpful responses (as honestly, how easy is it really to get a goat AND 3 live chickens in outer eastern Melbourne on a Thursday??). I got so snotty and coughy just after lunch that I had to go and get some "help" from a chemist shop to battle this flu. I was unfortunately using "Work" tissues also to blow my nose. I'm sure it's common practise across any workplace that the "tissues" and "toilet paper" provided to employees must be of the "quality" depicted here:

So, if you happen to need to blow your nose repeatedly through-out the day you end up taking a large portion of your actual nose flesh with each use. That's why if I ever meet the Guy/Gal that invented tissues infused with Aloe-Vera i'll quite possibly KISS THEM :) Tissues with Aloe-Vera should be the STANDARD tissue, I mean seriously why are there any other kind of tissues available?? They are never bought again once you've bought tissues WITH Aloe-Vera on them, so why bother?? I also bought a big jar of Vitamin-C tablets with which to dose myself with and while there I decieded to actually try some of Rachels "I swear by this!!" voodoo remedy that she told me about. Garlic Tablets. Yeah, I know...you're also going "What the F$#k?? Garlic for a cold??"... I did too. However, there are times when Rachel does actually know what she's talking about....and while I can't say for sure that this is one of these times or that the garlic remedy has any merit....today I feel a hundred times better than yesterday. It "Could" be that the 10 or so Garlic tabs I took since yesterday have had an effect (how many are you meant to take anyway? The bottle was very vague on dosage) but I have double-whammied the cold with 1.0 shitloads of Vitamin-C (a proven scientific method of combatting the influenza virus) and 1.25 shitloads of Garlic tablets (a non-scientific, more akin to voodoo method of combating the influenza virus). The net effect is today I feel a lot better.....but it is impossible to ascertain WHICH remedy is responsible for this. Also, no-one has commented that I smell like an italian pasta chef yet so maybe the Garlic is just a placebo??

Anyway, i'm really itching to get out of here today already (and it's only 9:15am). I have been prepping Yi (my chinese underling) to do my lab work for the next 3 days and so today will basically be broken down into 3 section.

1. Time untill I get WBBC (Let's see the cold survive THAT!!:) )

2. Time untill I can go home!!

3. Time until Rachel arrives!!

Quite posibly the BEST friday ever today :)

can you feel it? Can you FEEL it? CAN YOU FEEEeeEEL IT??

ONE MORE SLEEP!!!