Mj’s Blog

An email today at work took me back in time and I felt like I was nine years old again. I had that awful feeling of low self esteem (or that no one likes me feeling) as my friends went out for the day without asking me to join them. Perhaps this is my earliest memory of feeling like this and for some reason it still gets me now and again. It’s a bit like when a certain smell can trigger bad or good memories. Missing out on a team meeting to look at designing new pages for our website due to poor planning and budgets made me feel like this - everyone else is going (to San Francisco) except me! It might sound like I just wanted to go for the shopping, which would of been a bonus (not the 11 hour flight) but I think it’s more of not feeling included. I know it’s nothing to do with me but I did feel fed-up earlier today.

I will have to thank Jo for her chats earlier today while I was ‘annoyed’ about this - it helped vastly and a bit of retail shopping at lunchtime improved the afternoon a lot. An email from our website architect saying sorry about it helped as well but I still felt down about it and reflecting on everything I do. I wonder why I feel like this sometimes… it is hormones, lack of sleep, lack of chocolate or being in the office on my own for a day and a half?? Writing this has helped and now I feel silly for feeling the way I did and feel embarrassed for posting this bit of depressed writing. On a lighter note the Cosmo, dark chocolate and listening to Pete Tong on Radio 1 is helping. I think the studying will have to wait until tomorrow. Here is a picture of the bluebells growing in our garden, they cheered me up no-end.

It’s amazing what a bit of warm weather can do to the people of London. Today, according to the BBC website was a barmy 24 degrees (73f), which was apparently warmer than San Francisco. While walking to work I noticed a number of things different about the streets of London, for once everyone seemed a lot happier and politer. The number of flip-flops out there is amazing - men and women! The train and tube was busier, this must be due to the warm weather and everyone is leaving their cars at home. The streets are busier where people are walking instead of getting the bus. More cyclists on the road (which is a nightmare for pedestrians trying to cross the road). The funniest thing I saw today was a women cycling down Farringdon Road, she kept her hand on the front of skirt to stop it blowing up without knowing that it was blowing up from behind and showing the world and all the taxi drivers her big knickers!

Another thing I noticed about today was the lack of phone calls at the office - so many people must be off because of the nice weather. If anyone is a ‘friend’ on my Facebook page then you would know that I was the only one in the office today which meant I had to answer the phone. At 10.30am I had my first phone call which was a sales call for our office manager. By midday I had one other call which was a sales call again. After lunch - around 2pm I had a number of calls from the CEO to clients (most of them US based) then after 4pm it died down again. The only way to keep me from going mad by the lack of company was by ‘chatting’ with many of my colleagues - thank you Skype!

Now I might have mentioned this before but my grammar and spelling are pretty crap - when I write these posts I have to re-read them about three/four times before I can publish them, while making corrections to my grammar as best as I can. Studying for my OU course has now brought this back to my attention as my first piece of ‘published’ webpage was moderated and curses, my grammar issues came up. The layout and the basic linking throughout the page were fine but he spotted one grammatical error in my explanation of why I’m doing the course. Not sure why I’m so rubbish at grammar and spelling, surely these are basic things I should have learnt at school. Was my school (senior and junior) so bad that I didn’t learn where to put a comma or the learn the difference between bought or brought (without really thinking about it). Then again I never did learn the ‘times table’ either. Can I blame my parents for this lack of knowledge or am I just too stupid…

From now on all my coursework on my OU course will go through my ‘editors’ that I use for sending out company-wide emails and I have dug out ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ by Lynne Truss on grammar that I have had on my bookshelf for ages. The 100 Big Read got in the way so I have never read this but it was highly recommended by my colleague. Spelling I’m not sure what to do about this as I use spell check on everything - God bless spell checks. Back to maths - the other day I tried to recite the times table while running. I got as far as 4x before getting out of breath and decided that concentrating on my breathing might be healthier! I think my running is improving (finally) as managed to do my usual run and got halfway round without feeling too knackered. Can’t wait to feel like that all the way round my circuit.

These don’t happen very often but to have a bank holiday weekend in Essex (UK) which is sunny, warm and not raining is really rare. I think this is what is used to be like when I was younger. I spent my weekend on Mersea Island - a small island in Essex which is reached by a causeway which floods at high tide. We are always forgetting this until we get within 2 mins drive of the island but only once or twice have we had wait for the tide to turn. Thankfully there is a pub just by the causeway which is rather handy. It’s great to spend a few days on the coast - Mersea doesn’t have miles and miles of beach but what is there is nice. I even managed to go for a run on the beach yesterday (lucky there is lots of wet sand to run on otherwise it could of been hardwork). My in-laws have a caravan on the island and that is where we stay when we go down there. Here is a picture of West Mersea.

On the Saturday we went to Dedham which is just outside of Essex, in Suffolk for a walk to Flatford Mill (Constable country). Flatford Mill is a beautiful place, you can see why Constable painted so much around that area. We had a nice lunch there followed by ice-cream while watching lots of families trying their hand at rowing on the river. Saturday night was spent at the clubhouse on the caravan site - the average age was 55-60 with the exception of me and Husband, one girl of about 25 and the young polish couple who work on the site. As you can probably tell it was a barrel of laughs but the drinks are cheap! On Sunday we went crabbing on the west side of the island with our nieces along with 50 other kids and adults who had the same idea. Met up with good friends who have a parent who lives on the island, it was really nice to catch up with them. After catching over 30 crabs (I stood and watched, playing around with a dead fish head was not my idea of fun) we all went to a local bar and had beer and ice-cream (the ice-cream was for the kids!). A bar-b-que in the afternoon rounded off the weekend for us as we drove home late afternoon. A picture of Flatford Mill below.

Today is a lovely day here but I’m indoors studying for my OU course. I’m really enjoying it and whizzing through the coursework. Only an hour or so to go on that and then I think a nice cold beer will be fully deserved!

I feel knackered from an afternoon of studying. I took today off as holiday as my Open University course has started and I thought it would give me a head start. Had a nice lazy morning, got up late (well 30 mins later then normal), went for a run/walk/run, got showered and dressed, had breakfast while reading last weeks Sunday Times, went out to the local shops for a browse and brought lunch. Got back, checked emails (couldn’t help myself!) and got down to the course. Read the booklet called ‘READ-ME-FIRST’ which seemed like a good place to start and then downloaded all the software which included Firefox. I’m already using Firefox and this managed upload a lower version then I already had so then I had to upgrade it again! Now I was all set for Lesson 1.

Lesson 1 on Design and the Web went really well and I discovered a new site called ‘Web Pages that Suck’ - had a good laugh while looking at that site! Took a couple of hours to get the first session done so I was quited pleased with myself. My eyes felt really tired from the studying but I was glad that I had started it. Decided after this I would go on the OU email/forum system and bloody hell, loads of students on the same course have done loads of stuff already! Now I feel slightly miserable that I’m already behind. I’m away for a couple days this weekend so I can’t get anymore done until Monday - hope the weather is crap so I don’t feel like I’m missing out on some sunshine (sorry everyone in the UK!).

Not sure if I will post anything tomorrow or Sunday as I said I’m away - are bloggers allowed holidays? Happy Bank Holiday weekend to everyone in the UK!

When I started this blog, I just thought I would write my rambling thoughts about what I did or what I saw in London and Essex. I think many of my posts are like these but I don’t really have any format or theory behind them. Some of the other blogs that I read are very much like mine but some are much more structured. The corporate, political, celebrity blogs are to name a few and I notice that these blogs appear in the list of the WordPress top blogs and also get mentioned in newspapers or on news sites.

I’ve wondered lately if there is a method to writing these to make your blog a ‘Top Blog’. Does depending what time of day you post matter? I’m finding the later I post the more people read my blog. I think this might be a time zone issue. How you write your title? Now this must matter but I’m not sure what the formula is for writing a top title. How many friends and family do you tell about your blog? If you tell them all then what happens if you write about them. I personally haven’t told many friends or family about mine as I feel quite embarrassed by it. Do you tell all your work colleagues about it? I’ve told a few close friends at work but I don’t think my boss or colleagues in the States know about it. Should I tell them all… What happens if you do write about people you know, do you name them or initial them. Or like in my post at the beginning of the week I mentioned everyone at work by their job titles. I wonder if people would be offended if I had actually named them? Any top tips for writing a ‘Top Blog’ would be much appreciated!

I’ve got the day off tomorrow so I might send an email around to friends telling them about this or I might just write the email but most probably won’t send it.

Tomorrow is the 1st May and its local election time! Now I’m not really going to talk about them but I watched Have I Got News For You on Monday and they showed this great clip about the London Mayor elections and children’s TV programme Rainbow. Click here for it. I am going to vote tomorrow in case your were wondering.

Also, my OU course starts tomorrow, scary but I’m taking Friday off work so I can spend the afternoon (I’m having a lazy morning first) working on my first lesson. Wasn’t May 1st also called May Day (in my youth) and required dancing around a Maypole and involved Morris Dancers. I’m remembering all this from my childhood - what a bizarre time that must of been for me! I wonder if the May Day protests are on this year, last year they were and I watched them from Clerkenwell Road. Lots of ‘No troops in Iraq’ and ‘free … someone or something’ - quite entertaining. The amount of police that are the streets when this goes on is amazing - burglary and car crime must really go up in the London area during this time!

This post is a bit rambling as I don’t have much time to write today as off out for a leaving party for a colleague! Cheers everyone.

Running for the bus today in the rain while sticking out my hand to stop it, I had a sudden vision of my mum running (more like a slow jog) for the bus with me and my brother in tow as small children and how embarrassed I was of my mum trying to get the bus to stop. Does this mean that I’m turning in to my mum - oh dear! My mum doesn’t know about my blog but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind me saying this as she is always saying that she is turning in to her mum and every now and again I see my nan in her as she gets older. I love my mum to bits but I just don’t want to turn in to her. I don’t know why this is but one friend of mine says the same.

I wonder if it is to do with being independent, cutting the umbilical cord properly this time or trying to be your own person. Maybe that’s why the idea of having to move back in with your parents, for whatever reason, seems like a nightmare to me. I’ve heard that it’s not until you have your own children do you really appreciate what your parents do or have done for you. I have a pact with myself that to stop myself from turning into my mum I’m going to do the following: go to the hairdressers every 6 weeks and in years to come I will get my grey hair dyed professionally, keeping up to date with the latest fashions, keeping fit and not getting fat, keep working and keep learning new things. Hopefully I won’t turn in to my dad - having a beard is just not me!

I decided today that I would write about my day - like a proper diary, what I did, who I saw and so on. I might do this occasionally just to see how my days might be different every couple of months.

Alarm went off at 6.35am followed by a 8 mins snooze. Managed to get out of bed at 6.45am, showered, washed hair, moisturised, put contact lenses in, cleaned teeth, cleansed, tone and moisturised face, applied make-up, got dressed and dried my hair. Left house at 7.50am (yes, it takes me over an hour to get ready!!). Walked to the train station and got the 8.03am train to Fenchurch Street. Walked to Aldgate from Fenchurch Street and got the tube to Farringdon - arrived at work at 9.05ish. Got my computer going and made my morning cup of Earl Grey (black) with toast and jam. Checked emails and logged on to my company website to check the daily headlines. Message from Director who was working at home today, to check her machine and send over a document for her - did that. Checked daily headlines, edited and tagged them on the website. Answered a few emails and started a PowerPoint presentation for the Chief Research Fellow. Went to lunch at 12.30pm with Office Manager and walked to M&S for a quiche to go with my salad. Flicked through the FT while eating my lunch and then checked the BBC, ThisisLondon, WordPress, Fantasy Football and Facebook websites.

The afternoon was more exciting as I was working on some website icons using Illustrator. Designed some more, sent them over to our Lead Architect, discussed some more ideas for them and then I designed some more. All done and looking great (I say so myself) and I will create proper Icons with them tomorrow using IconFactory. Can’t wait to see them live! Finished off the PowerPoint presentation and sent that off by email. Replied to a couple more emails and then left work at 6.30pm. Got the train back home arriving at around 7.30pm and luckily dinner was already being cooked by Husband. Put some laundry on, ate dinner, washed up after dinner and then MIL came round with a premium bond form for me to fill out for our family syndication. Chatted and ate Green & Black’s dark chocolate (yum) and then after she had left I got the laptop out and wrote this! Whew, what a day and I’m sure I missed most of it, like the chatting to colleagues, texting and skyping, listening to my iPod, reading my book. I’m going to watch Have I Got News For You now and then it’s off to bed. Goodnight (UK/Europe) or have a good day (US)!!

In January I decided to start running to get fit - now running long distance to me is impossible as I’ve always been a 100 metre sprinter type at school. My stamina is something to be desired but I thought running would help with this, for one it’s free (unlike the gym) and I can go whenever I want without having to drive anywhere. Just step out the front door and off I go… well, maybe not that enthusiastically. In the winter months of Jan and Feb I was doing quite well - 3 times a week after work in the dark (so no one could see me huffing and puffing). I started with a walk/run/walk routine which I found out about on a running site. Started off OK and my running sections improved but I found the walking sections didn’t. Instead of fast walking like the website said I was reduced to a slow crawl with tight aching calf muscles and feeling generally knackered.

In the month of March, things started to go to pot and so did the long list of excuses as not to go - working too late, rain, snow and nights out drinking. April is an improving month with running back to at least twice a week and now I run continually albeit it is a lot shorter than the walk/run/walk route that I was doing but at least I can feel and look knackered at home.

Maybe I needed a goal to help with this so I foolishly decided that I would register for the ‘Race for Life’ 5K race in June. Now, I’m doing this for fitness and not for charity (I’m going to give them £25 of my own money so I don’t have to feel embarrassed about collecting money). Hopefully having something to compete in will give me the encouragement needed and might bring out the competitiveness in me to train for this properly. I might even get in to this running malarkey - I wonder if I could ever do a marathon… not very likely!