T O T K a t

I'm still going strong with the "one photo a day" project, though I haven't uploaded today's, er, OK, yesterday's one yet. Weekday photos are never as easy as weekend ones anyway. Representative photos of many days are either not possible (for business confidentiality reasons) or I'd just get weird looks for taking photos in the office. I have done it a couple of times, but I'd rather establish myself before letting my eccentricity passion for photography and obsessive qualities dedication (I've started this project so I'm going to damned well finish it!) to finishing something I've started out in the open.

The builder next door accidentally cut off the mains water today for me and the house next door to me on the other side as well. It looks like the first 4 houses on the street share the same water supply. Except two of us don't right now. Still... the builder will be fixing it tomorrow, though given that the mains piping is lead it may be a bit tricky, in the morning and I have bottled water for tea and two loos to cover flushing for tonight and in the morning. Hopefully there is a shower at the office, if not, it's not exactly the height of summer so it's no biggie. Good thing that the heating is a closed system and doesn't rely on the mains.

Poor old next door wasn't in earlier, but I've explained it to them now so at least they're aware.

Time for tea and choccie biccies!

...saving the company money and stress. There were a number of laptops and docking stations locked to desks with devices of which the method to unlock had been lost. I released the laptops and docking stations with no damage to them or the securing devices. Took a while, but well worthwhile as the devices are re-usable now and the laptops/docking stations are unharmed and can be secured once again.

And in other news, the leased line issue is still unresolved, but there has been a little progress. Softly softly catchee monkey, methinks.

• 1 more plastic carrier bags accepted (because the one of the ones I was re-using split)
• 1 small potato thrown away - I was full and couldn't finish my dinner
• switched to Ecover washing up liquid (missed that one off by mistake last time)
• switch off most transformers when they're not in use (missed that one off last time too)
• donated a pair of jeans and a nice vest to charity (jeans were just not my style and the vest was too big for me)
• still not drinking carbonated drinks (I've worked out how this is green - not using cans or bottles) - just tea, water and squash (with the occasional coffee and occasional bottle of wine)
• not used the car
• still generating only about a carrier bag full of non-recyclable waste per week.

Anyhoo... lots done today; 13 things on the To Do list done, including all of the ironing in the known universe. Time for a nice, hot bath...

the first minute of the first episode of the new series of Skins... fabulous. brave. i want to go and see some contemporary dance now. rambert company maybe.

I hadn't watched Skins before. I almost did a while back. It's good. TiVo will watch it for me.

's got Bill Bailey and a bunch of other Old School in it too.

I'm not ungrateful, because they really are beautiful. All of the girls in the office were cooing over them, but... they're not from who I really unrealistically hoped they would be from.

Oh I was awake too early today (05:30), in the office at 07:45 after a lot of faffing in the house. So I'm quite tired now. And the bottle of M&S Prosecco with asparagus lasagne was lovely. Tired and emotional. I should sleep now. But I can't.

Work wasn't so great today. Due to influences I hadn't considered. I've cross-referenced with people who know in other companies and I'm reassured I haven't just been silly about it. My assumptions were reasonable. Hey ho. I'm hoping other people will be reasonable too.

Got the munchies quite badly too...

I am confused. I have flowers and a card. And I have no idea who they could be from. They are lovely flowers, but I have seriously no clue who they are from.

Off home now; been in since 0745 this morning and I'm tired and a bit crushed by building management company being difficult.

It was a pretty good evening, though I felt rather rough today, mostly tired and sluggish. Self-inflicted of course. Though I think the toasted cheese sandwich and large mug of tea before bed last night helped quite a bit. As did the bacon buttie for elevenses this morning.

I only just noticed the fabulous moon when there wasn't enough time to get a decent photo of it. It was fat and reddish-orange and crescenty.

Maybe if I'm lucky it'll happen again tomorrow. But there's a leaving do to go to, so...

If anyone likes Cadbury's mini eggs, go here, print and take to Woolies.

The parade wasn't very noisy at all, but lots of pretty costumes and the lions and dragons were fabulously fluffy and furry. Giant, blow-up cartoon characters were a bit random, but as they rounded the back of Leicester Square they were 'kissing' kids at the front of the crowd which just looked so surreal...

You'd reckon that fireworks in daylight would be pretty much just noise and smoke. And there was a lot of noise and a lot of smoke, but they were so bright! I even managed to get a few photos which showed that they were very much visible in the daylight.

I think the wine in the bar may have been a mistake, because towards the end of Eddie's set (oh, we were in the 4th row back from the stage :o)) I, er, kinda dropped off a bit. It seems I didn't miss much, but still *blush*. I was glad I'd decided to take a hotel room for the night rather than schlep home and get to bed really late as I had to be in Wimbledon town for 12:30 today and given that I wake up at 06:45 every morning, I'd rather get to bed earlier where possible and a hotel room wasn't much more expensive than a taxi - missing the last tube was a definite risk and I'm still not keen on night buses by myself.

Anyhoo... good night. Very. And tomorrow is the Chinese New Year parade in town so it's all go this weekend.

No pancakes for me today, but gyoza and noodles at Wagamamas with another ex-colleague were pretty OK. It's sausage and mash night tomorrow when my father comes to visit - more builders stuff on Thursday and the Virgin broadband goes in. The Sky/BT broadband has a couple of days still to go after that, but I have backup in the form of this here little pink baby from 3 on PAYG.

Since the beginning of October last year (apart from one decadent trip to Japan which probably more than cancels everything else out below), I have...

• taken zero baths
• driven to the shops zero times
• bought fruit and vegetables from the UK as much as possible, sticking to stuff that's in season where needed
• bought free range and/or organic meat and eggs as far as possible. also, organic other stuff where available - tomatoes, butter, raisins, flour etc.
• used the car for two 'round trips - one trip to my parents' house over Christmas when I had a lot of stuff to transport, and one trip up to Cambridgeshire for New Year's Eve when I needed to bring sleeping bag, pillows and drinks etc.
• accepted new plastic carrier bags from shops only twice
• generated approximately one carrier bag, almost full of domestic waste per week and recycled everything else that my local council deals with (including clothes)
• stopped drinking carbonated drinks (OK, not a green thing per se, more a health thing and it happened without even thinking about trying. I've just gone off them.)
• thrown away only 3 items of food - 2 yogurts of which I'd missed the 'use by' date, and one portion from a batch of prawn curry I couldn't re-heat because the prawns had already been frozen after cooking once.

A lot of this is without even consciously trying to make an effort. I'm wondering how much better I could do if I actually tried. Or what would be a good thing to try, which would have maximum impact for the effort required.