Frying Tonight!

Well, howdy-doody and a Happy New Year to one and all!

I am looking forward to a year of better fortune and a calmer time.   Do you think that that's too much to ask, mes bloggy chooms?!   Other than that, I have made no New Year's resolutions.   No.

However, I pledge not to start the first post of the year with doom and gloom.   Cross my heart and hope to die!

Why ever did we use to say that as children?   It sounds very odd now.  

I hope your Christmases were full of nice memories and New Year celebrations brought a peaceful time spent with less dysfunctional families and/or friends...

This Christmas in the Crawfy household we have been mainly administering to the sick.   Cups of sweet black tea, crispy crumpets, that kind of thing.   'Nuff said, soonest mended, methinks...

Meanwhile in other news:   In an alcohol induced haze at New Year I tipped part of a glass of gin and lemon onto my laptop ensuring its hard drive could no longer co-exist on the same planet as Fhina.

Snap, crackle, pop went the sound, dear readers.   My New Year's fizz was nothing in comparison to the sound my dearly departed laptop made when I attempted to switch it on next day.   Oops!

Harken to my recommendations, my dahlinks.   Here's a good tip - Do not use your laptop for or as any of the following:

A tea-tray from whence to eat your boiled egg and toast soldiers of a morning;

A rat-warming device;

A coaster for a brimming seasonal glass of gin;

An erstwhile pillow for a power-nap;

Ballast;

Storing really important and sensitive information that you need for your Counselling course, such as a Clinical Log!

Tip #2:   Back up all your data to a reliable source.

So, what I really mean to say is that if you don't hear from me for a while, it's because Grizz has scarpered back to Uni taking his laptop, which I am currently using and which has a default setting for a font-size that only faerie folk could read!

I don't presently have the funds for a new lap-top.   *Sniffs*

Think of me while I am missing you terribly, awfully, frightfully.

...Bloody loads, in fact!

Meanwhile, for me, some eye-candy!

And breathe...   And listen to my fantasy paramour, Mr John Smith with This Killer Wave - Just like the one that swallowed my laptop!

Now breathe...

I think this image will be far too big for the blog - Ever so sorry! I am getting used once more to my own laptop, since it has had its 'heat sink' removed and re-soldered and it stopped 'eating and destroying disks'...

Of course, tippy-tappying away on this little shiny thing compared to using my son's new Vaio, it's rather like using a toy typewriter. But, as they say, mustn't grumble!

I hope you like the technical nature of my foray here... This is as far as it goes!

As for the picture, this is Rhein Maidens by Arthur Rackham - I've always liked his faery and fairtale drawings. Click into it, please, to see its full beauty, if you can only see part of it today.

Well, I heard back from the job interview I went for last week. As I thought, I didn't get the job. Too bad. Or 'tant pis' as les Francais say...

I felt I'd really handled it badly. I was nervous, probably unprepared. This is the first 'outside' interview I'd had in years of working in the Civil Service. The panel of 3 women were all younger than me. I don't think that's a good thing, really. I worked with women older than me when I first started out and they didn't make the going easy, if that makes sense. I was viewed as a threat and they down-played my ability and wondered how I could possibly be doing the job, when I didn't have their years of experience, etc...

Now the boot's on the other foot, and I can see things from another perspective, if you were young would you feel confident about having a 'subordinate' who had more experience than you?

Like I say, the worst of it was that I was distinctly unprepared for what came up, and waffled some questions and examples... I went on about never having missed a deadline. (I never have). And then they gave me a suite of tests - Half an hour, ten minutes per test, 3 tests, and I only fully completed the first one, which was to compose and save a letter in Word. The second test concerned creating two spreadsheets - I managed one and three quarters... The third test was another letter, compiled from a policy document... FAIL.

So, I'll live and learn another day, folks. At least I got an interview in these challenging economic times...

I was also up for another job that I really fancied. My friend who works there found out I got into the top 7 to be interviewed, but only 6 were selected... Of those 6, 3 went on to decline the interview... Hey ho.

Sometimes I do wonder whether I am merely trying to exchange one institution for another. Maybe I need to take time out to fathom that one, mes bloggy buds?
Earlier this week, I stopped in the street on a busy road to feel the silky velveteen softness of an unfurled spring leaf.

I commend it to the house as an exercise in just being...

Love and Life...

I am in love...

With my son's new laptop, that is.

A Sony Vaio something-or-another - Yeah, I'm not THAT technical!

But I love its shapely form, its silver-screen, matinee idol, good looks, its ability to draw me back into the demi-monde of tippy-tappy like a loon lost in the desert for weeks without water...

But I have to give it to him on Tuesday. It's his, not mine.

He only allowed me to use it because I had an assignment to hand in for my Psychotherapy course.

Yah boo, hiss!

Mine, meanwhile, has already shagged two disks and is apparently behaving "like a real bad Mo'Fo", whatever that means - I think it's a technical term?

Does anyone out there have a laptop I could review, perhaps?

Pretty-Please. With sugar on top?

Jerst saying!