I have a meeting in the city centre tomorrow. I had one a couple of weeks ago, it was the first time I’d ever had to drive into the middle of the city on my own. Only the second time I’d ever done it full stop. It was… well, not a disaster, but not fun either. I had no idea which lane to be in and just ended up crawling along at one point because I needed to be in the next lane over but couldn’t get across. I also parked in a ridiculously expensive car park (SIX pounds for just THREE hours!) - it was the first one I came to and I just wanted to get off the roads, heh.

I’ve been told there is a much cheaper car park a bit further in town (90p an hour, woo). It’s also a lot closer to where my meeting is. But that’s just it: it’s further into the city centre. I was a bit nervous about it, since I still don’t feel confident with city driving, so Pete and I did a practise run tonight. It went fine and I feel so much better about it all now. Yay for Pete indulging me!

Is there anything more to say? Oh wait, I think there is:

“We will restore science to its rightful place…”

“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.”

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

That sound you hear is a big fat sigh of relief. And hope.

I did the grocery shopping on my own today (hoorah for having my own car!). It was… quite an expensive shop actually. I don’t think I got anything out of the ordinary, or ridiculously expensive (well, except for toilet paper which was FIVE WHOLE POUNDS OMG), so I guess that’s just how food prices have changed lately. It did however make me send a silent thank you up into the ether: we have enough money to be able to still do our regular shop, to stock our cupboards, to live.

The next few months are quite uncertain as to my job, my pay, how much spare money we’ll have. Things may get a bit tighter. But thank God we can still live fairly comfortably for now and we can prepare ourselves for what may come in the future.

Yesterday I finished reading I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb. Then I had a bath and I wanted something easy to read whilst soaking, so I picked up JKR’s The Tales of Beedle The Bard. Lovely - short and light reading, I finished it in the bath! And then today I started reading Dooce’s book - Things I Learned About My Father (In Therapy). Somehow I managed to actually finish reading that today as well! Seems kind of crazy, but then when I think about it, it actually just felt like I was reading a selection of long(er) blog entries, which I probably do in a day anyway. Which got me to wondering how many “books” worth of blogs I’ve actually read in my time… then I thought maybe I don’t want to know after all!

So today, in contrast to yesterday - having the time and the opportunity to do things I enjoy makes life sweet.  (And again, thankful for good books too!)

Today - as ludicrous as this may sound - I am actually grateful for having things to do, for being busy. We had more than one kid in at work today. Double figures in fact! And we actually had to do stuff. It wasn’t raining so we managed to get outside to do stuff with the kids. Most excellent. It makes the days pass so much quicker.

This past couple of weeks at work have sometimes made me think that this winter is going to be loooong, if not never ending. Today aside, this week I can probably count on one hand the number of kids we’ve had in. I can understand, I mean it’s cold, dark, sometimes wet - I would stay at home too given the choice. Alas, no kids means we all cram into the one room in our whole building that has heating - the office - and attempt to do something, anything but stare at the clock.

Today we got out, played some table tennis, some football. It passed the time and it kept us warm. And it broke us of the apathy, the habit of sitting around reading papers and magazines and not doing.

Oh, and also thankful that the little shits who decided to run OVER my car (because we sent them out) did no more damage to it than a couple of footprints on the bonnet and windscreen!

Something I ordered from Amazon at the start of the month has finally arrived. Yay. Yet to test it out, but hopefully it will make my drives to and from work a bit more enjoyable. I don’t mind listening to Radio 1, but I have plenty of better songs to listen to on my beloved iPod. Radio 1 doesn’t exactly have a massive song rotation, and the blame for the fact that I know the words to songs like Low or Disturbia? I place wholly at the feet of Radio 1, having to listen to it all day every day at work. (Although actually, I do think Disturbia is a good song. But SHHHH.)

Pete is also happy as a result of consumerism today: the new phone he ordered has arrived. It’s for our flat, so technically for both of us, but I think we all know it’s Pete’s new toy really. It came with a headset so he can do conference calls and still move around and use his computer and stuff - how novel. It also let’s you do all sorts of 21st century things like program in phone numbers, holy shit!

That sound you hear is us thumbing our noses at this recession. (Whilst socking away as much as we can in savings, ha.)

Making me smile today: the babies of people inside my computer, people I don’t even know. Just fuelling the broodiness!

I realise talking about work isn’t very exciting, and two days in a row? Pfft, change the record.

But what made me smile today? My boss. I have an awesome boss. She’s funny, she’s easygoing, she’s flexible… and she doesn’t make me go into work when there’s nothing to do, when I’ll just be there twiddling my thumbs. Today I didn’t have to be in until this afternoon because there is nothing happening at the moment. Aceface.

My job - the job I’m doing at the moment anyway - is only on a temporary contract. It’s a secondment actually, full time hours (compared to my old job, which was a mere twenty hours a week), higher up the food chain, just a much better position all round. It was supposed to end at the start of December, I was supposed to go back to working my twenty hours. There’s a lot of in-house politics involved, but my contract got extended by a month. Then another couple of weeks. I was starting to get a bit antsy because I don’t really want to take such a big drop in my pay packet. It wouldn’t be a massive issue really, we would just have less disposable income, but still. We’d certainly got used to it.

Today I found out that my contract will be extended till the end of February, and then after that I’ll still be working full time, just a slightly lower rate. There’s a new project going on and they’ve asked me to be part of the consultation process, which is awesome in terms of experience and personal development for me. It’s also the reason they’re keeping me on full time! Good news, good news…

The days where I don’t do much of anything in particular are the days I find hardest to write about here. The days I find hardest to find something special in. I think I’m looking too hard though, hoping for something spectacular, or at least interesting every day, and I’m just not sure that’s going to happen.

Today I did very little of anything exciting. I read some, I watched some telly, I chatted with Pete, I did some housework, I spoke to my mum, I did a bit of scrapbooking. And now that I’ve sat down to write about it, I’m thinking that all those things sound good, made me smile in some way. Even the housework, because God, I can’t tell you the number of times recently that I’ve looked at the telly in our bedroom and thought, “I really should dust in here”.

I didn’t start the scrapbooking till really late, so I haven’t finished it yet, but it was fun to look at all that stuff we amassed on our trip to America. It was fun to remember everywhere we’d gone, and everything we’d seen, and everybody we met. It was nice to think we might get to go on another fun holiday or two this year.

So I guess weekends where you actually just get to chill out and not go anywhere (peeing it down ALL DAY LONG) are actually very welcome sometimes, actually make me glad.