Not Enough Hours In The Day

Hola Amigo's! Thing's have been pretty quiet around here of late. January was a complete whirlwind of turmoil for me and the month just flew by. I returned to my voluntary job after the Christmas break and all was well with the world. I loved that job. Loved the people. Loved the work. Loved the organisation. Love the public sector. But alas, my time there was up!

I was at home one day early January and I received an email completely out of the blue. It was from a HR guy in a company asking me if I would be interested in a position with the company. I was a bit dubious about the email as I hadn't applied for a job there and I was far too inexperienced to be head hunted. After a while I replied with an updated copy of my CV and I received a phone call from the HR Business Partner inviting me to interview the following day. I thought nothing of it as I have had several interview over the past few years and nothing has come of them.

Off I trotted to the interview and it all went very well. It felt very relaxed and more of an informal chat really. A week passed and I was called to a second interview. At that second interview I was offered the job. Sure I was delighted to have finally found a paying job. They agreed to pay the salary I had previously had in my old job.

So I left the public sector, rather upset by that fact, and joined the private sector. I now work for a construction company and it's going well so far. The working week is rather long and the hours aren't particularly nice but the experience will be good. And the public sector said they'll take me back when they are allowed to recruit again so woo for that.

Now I just have to live with the fear of going to work one morning and being told I have to go to one of the foreign sites for a few weeks. Eek. Would not be a fan of that now but what can ya do?

Unfortunately this new job means I now have less time on my hands as I am trying to squeeze in having a life after work as well as working a 39 hour week minimum. So the blog has had to suffer. Not that it was all that great to begin with! Ha! But I will try my best to keep it up dated. I promise.

In the mean time, please have a look at this blog post about St. Valentine. It's wonderfully written and you'll learn something you probably didn't know before.

Ring The Alarm and I'm Throwing Elbows

Howdy doodle folks? It's time for me to have a little whine, quelle surprise I hear you say! I promise it'll only be a short one.

I love my mobile phone. I couldn't live without it. But I'm not all that into keeping up with the latest trend and getting the latest snazzy phone every 6 months. My last phone lasted me for about 3/4 years till it finally gave up so I replaced it in August 2008. I don't really go looking for the best features in a phone, I just go on the one that I like the look of the most.

So I got a Nokia E51. Now it does way more than I thought it would. Like Microsoft Word and Excel are on it along with Adobe PDF. AND it has a WLAN. That has been the most deadliest thing ever.

Here comes the problem.

I use my phone as an alarm. As many people do. With all my previous phones, I just set the alarm the night before. It went off the following morning and I turned it off straight away. No problem. But lads. This new super duper phone is just too clever for it's own good. And it's been bugging me now for the past 1.5 years.

Picture this. I'm in my lovely, sexy boxers in my bedroom, (Calm yourselves now), and I have my phone in my hand setting my alarm for the morning. I punch in the time I want it to go off at and then I press ok. And then it happens. I get that sinking feeling. A real pang of sadness. It's not that I have to get up at say 7.30 in the morning. That's not the problem, oh no.

Ladies and gentlemen, the problem is that when I press ok on the phone a message pops up on the screen and it says "Time Left Until Alarm: 6 Hours and 31 Minutes". I instantly think to myself, "Oh no. Only 6 hours and 31 minutes of sleep. And then I have to take out 30 mins while I'm trying to go asleep and the few times I wake up during the night...so that'll leave me with about 5 hours of sleep".

Lads, it's just not fair. Why did they have to do that? Shame on you Nokia. Shame on you.

Of course I am just nit picking now cos I'm trying to justify buying an iPhone. I wonder what happens when you set the alarm on that?.........hmmmmm............

Snow, Snow, Go Away, Don't Come Again Another Day

Years ago when it snowed it seemed fantastic. It snowed out of the blue one day. It was gone the next day. We all got a day off school for it and life went on. Now, however, is a different story. We have had this cold, icey, snowy weather for near on 3/4 weeks. I think its high time that it fecked off to Florida for itself, or the like.

In my family we seem to have an awful fascination with "breaking a hip". It started two years ago when my grandmother broke her hip. Within six months my aunt had broken her hip. The recovery period for a broken hip can be anything up to twelve months. So having seen the slow and needing recovery of someone with a hip replacement, it's a wonder that none of us want to see another hip being broken within the family, or anyone's for that matter!

Now what do you think has been said most often over the past few weeks? "Mind you don't fall and break a hip." It probably started in November when the floods came. The roads and pathways were all slippy and covered under amounts of water. Getting in/out of the car, setting foot on a footpath, walking in/out of the house, basically anything that involved putting your foot on any surface was met with the words "Mind you don't fall and break a hip".

This phenomenon only got even more and more used over the Christmas period. Firstly it was cos of the ice. Then it was black ice. Then it was snow. And now it's slush.

I am only in my 20's and for some reason I am even petrified of breaking my hip. I have already had one or two falls in the past few weeks but nothing serious, thankfully. A friend text last week to ask me to go do something. I replied and said "Oh I'd be terrified I'd fall and break my hip" to which he replied "You can't break a hip, you're too young". This rather upset me.

So I set about explaining why I fear breaking my hip. You can only have two hip replacements in your lifetime. The life span of a replacement is twenty years. So that'd give me forty years of living with a replacement hip before my time is up. Should I break a hip now, I'd be after running out of replacements by the age of 65. Wouldn't that mean I'd be in a wheelchair from the age of retirement? Oh the fear. Of course, my friend just thinks I am a little crazy.

Then I met another friend last week for lunch. It was one of the worst day's of the week, ice wise. We were walking into the hotel bar and outside was a little ramp up the path. I said "There is no way that I am walking up that ramp. It looks skatey girl. One foot on that now and sure I'd end up on me arse with a broken hip, no doubt". This was met with howls of laughter. So I proceeded to walk on the gravel flower bed at the side of the path.

Inside the hotel my friend told me "You're too young to break a hip". I protested and told her the story of the replacement's and how my grandmother and aunt broke their hips to which my friend said, "Your granny is old so her bone's are brittle. Your aunt is menopausal so her bone's are weakened. You are neither of those". While they are all very valid points I am still having none of it. Accidents can happen and you never know what the outcome of a bad fall will be.

So, people, "Mind you don't fall and break a hip!!". I think I might get some t-shirts printed with those words on it....any buyers? Two for a fiver....

Me, Myself and The Birds

The Wednesday before Christmas was my first day of my Christmas holidays from work. I was sitting at home in the kitchen eating my lunch and looking out the window into the garden. It was so beautiful and so cold. It looked like it had been snowing but of course, as you know, the frost had been so severe that most of Ireland looked like it had been buried beneath a blanket of snow. The I noticed the birds where in the frozen grass and they desperately trying to dig down for worms and sure the ground was frozen solid. And then it happened. Bang came the pang of guilt.

I watched them for a while as they desperately tried to get something to eat so I eventually gave in and took some bread from the press, ripped it up and threw it on the path at the rear of the house. I then went off to the shop to get myself a hot chicken roll from the deli counter as I was just totally starved, just like the birds! I was only gone for five minutes and when I got back all the bread had been eaten and the smaller birds were now around looking for crumbs. Sure god love em like. I had done something but it wasn't enough.

I decided I'd go back down to the shop and buy one of them bird feeder things that you hang from the tree. It cost €2.40 or thereabouts. I then had to buy a bag of nuts for the birds which cost around €13! Now don't get me wrong, I wanted to feed the birds till they got over this frozen spell but €13 was a bit steep. Anyway I stumped up the cash and trotted home merrily in the knowledge that the poor lil birdies would now be fed till the ground softens so they can pick out the worms or whatever else they eat!

Well I filled up the bird feeder and hung it on the tree. Now it was dusk as I did this so it'd be the morning before they got a chance to taste the delights that awaited them on my tree. When I got up the following morning the tree was bursting with birds and they were munching uncontrollably through the nuts. I was going to shoo them away cos I didn't want them to get fat but then I thought to myself that maybe they were really hungry after the past few days so I let them to it.

I had to fill it up again the next day. And the next day. And the next. These birds were starting to annoy me. How greedy can they be? And it's not as if I even like them feathered things. I'm actually petrified of em. If one flew near me I would actually die. Like actually die! My heart races when they are on the footpath near me. But I'd hate to see them hungry and suffering. See aren't I just a softy?

Well lads, I got up yesterday morning and the bird feeder was lying flat on the ground and they were literally gobbing food into them. So out I went in my pyjamas and shooed em away and I went to put it back up on the tree. And wouldn't you know they had gone and broken it. Out with the glue and I glued it up and then I stuck it back up on the tree. Got up this morning and they had knocked it off again.

These birds are really testing my patience. See at first I thought that they'd be starving and could do with some lovely food to keep them alive. But oh no, they like need food, and lots of it, everyday. AND it's costing me a small fortune to keep them in food.

What started out as me being the good Samaritan is now going to result in me being a hard and cruel b*stard! Anyone see my shotgun? Joke.