.. to let you know that I got my car back – they dropped it off at my house the morning we left for Italy. The Repair Centre have been absolutely fantastic, brilliant (fast) service, always extremely helpful – no nagging required! Any I have my own car back (hooray). It’s soooo much nicer/smoother/easier to drive than the courtesy car they gave me. 
)
It was lovely being in Italy and having a warm break! It was good to catch up with old friends and make new ones as well as learning something. The presentations went well. More on the trip to come in a later post (hopefully with pictures).
Back with a bump to the real world – in London yesterday for a meeting (which also went well) and back in the office again this morning. Nothing in my inbox indicates whether there has been any movement on things in my absence. Ah well – I had better go and find out where things stand…
Aargh! I have just found out that I actually have to do something at this conference rather than sign on the dotted line and enjoy myself… I apparently have to give a presentation about my organisation. Not that this is beyond me or anything, but a little more notice would have been nice.
Well, I guess the idea was to move into the new role asap, but then there’s the whole ‘making it happen’ part. Which means that a series of other things need to happen. In the mean time, I am still (less than half-heartedly) going about doing the stuff I was doing before. I hate suspense. And I don’t want to pre-empt anything and shout about it before it materialises, in case it doesn’t.
In other news, according to the ‘vehicle repair tracking’ bit of the repair people’s website, my car should be mended by today! I have to ring them a little later to find out how close it is to me being able to have it back. Hopefully today, because tomorrow I am flying to Italy so otherwise won’t be able to collect it until Tuesday.
Tomorrow Hubby and I are both going to Italy (hurrah!). Unfortunately this is not a holiday but an Engineering Conference. European Young Engineers to be precise. But these conferences are pretty relaxed and generally good fun and quite interesting. Plus it doesn’t start until Friday morning, which gives us Thursday in Naples to do what we want. )
I have printed out a few sentences of italian that apparently say ‘I have a gluten allergy’*. Hopefully that’ll get me through the weekend without not being able to eat anything. How annoying to be going to Italy and not be able to eat pasta???
* I don’t actually have a diagnosed allergy to gluten. It is very likely that I have an intolerance to it, and that eating it affects how my Lupus is. But I am still going through the ‘exclusion phase’ of finding out….
What a gorgeous morning! Driving down the M40 was quite a pleasure, for a change!! Mist was rising off the fields so you could see the trees silhoutted against it, with the big orange sun peeping out from a wall of cloud on the horizon into a clearer sky. Today feels good!!
Yesterday’s thing went really well, looks as though I will be staying around for a bit and moving into something different (more on that later as it happens). Thanks especially to Ian for prayers )
Lots to do on existing work stuff today though – better get on with it!!
Just a quickie – things are happening here quite fast. I expect that by next week I will either be doing something entirely different, or have quit the uni. Fairly big thing happening this afternoon that will probably decide which… Any prayers in this direction would be welcome!
Thanks to ERG and the comment made by rhys, I have discovered that my Bloginality is ENTJ!!!
Apparently this means Extraverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Judging. In fact, what I have read so far from the site sounds pretty accurate! )
Ok, so maybe that’s something that a lot of people never figure out. I don’t really know when I’ll get to the stage of feeling grown up. Perhaps having children is that turning point for some people?
Anyway, I am talking about work-related stuff. I did manage to see my boss today and have had a good chat with him. That’s not to say that anything particular decisions have been made, but I have had the discussion and I feel a *lot* better for it. There may be other possibilities here… (which I’ll leave at that for now) One question is: if any of those possibilities were to fit with my needs/expectations, would I want to continue with the 30-mile commute every day? or should I just give up and try to find something closer to home? (and if so, what???)
In other news the car thing is happening slowly, but the Honda repair people to which my car went originally are being really really unhelpful. I am having the car sent instead to the Insurance Company’s approved Car Repair Centre, because the Honda people were unable to provide me with a Courtesy Car until 30th October!!!!!!!!!!!!! And then they were going to charge me £10+VAT per day!!!!!!!!!!!!! Apparently it could take 4/5 weeks because the parts come from Japan. So I figured that using the Insurance Company’s people would be better, as they’ll sort me a courtesy car out straight away. In the mean time, the Honda people want to charge us for (wait for it) storage of my vehicle and providing an estimate!!! Haha! Well, if their estimate had been timely (they couldn’t do it on Wednesday because their computer was down!) and they’d been helpful in the first place and sorted me with a replacement car, they’d have kept the business! Not impressed. And I am now waiting for the Insurance Company to tell me that I am liable for those extra charges on account of the fact that it was at my request that it went to the Honda people and not the Approved Car Repair Centre in the first place.
The car situation isn’t really sorted out properly yet. They towed it away, but estimates still need to be made on the work that’s required before I can have a courtesy car. Getting home using public transport wasn’t too bad as I have tried it before so at least knew what I was doing!! I am at home today. I decided that the 2 hours each way to get into the office just wasn’t worth it. I can work from home and get on with some things, although obviously can’t do any of the practical stuff that needs doing. Ho hum.
I am not having a good day. I have spent entirely too much time in the last couple of days worrying about things, and specifically about my future (ie whether I carry on doing what I am doing, the answer to which is becoming increasingly obvious that I cannot possibly carry on doing what I am doing (workwise)). Anyway, this morning I drove to work as usual, was pulling into the car park I normally use on campus, and whalloped into the concrete post inside the entrance to the car park. New cars don’t do very well these days when confronted with concrete. If I am feeling a little less embarrased about this later I may post the picture I took with my ‘phone so you can see the damage…
I feel very stupid, to say the least. I mean, how hard is it to just concentrate on driving enough to actually pull the steering wheel around far enough to get around the corner?? I managed it successfully for the last 3 months.
Hubby is amazing. He mostly said ‘Are you alright’ and ‘Don’t worry about it’ and ‘Go and make yourself a cup of tea’. Very wise words. I have so far had 3 cups of tea and a very chocolatey Gluten Free Chocolate Brownie (hooray for honeybuns!). I am feeling somewhat better now but worrying a bit about how to get home tonight being as the extremely nice and wonderful people at my insurance company have arranged for my lovely car to be taken away to get fixed. I can’t find out about a courtesy car until they get an estimate on the work.
So. Now I really am not in the mood to do anything much, let alone work. Not a good sign as I didn’t really do/achieve anything yesterday either.
I can’t seem to find my boss (not sure if he’s in today) to let him know what’s going on and why I’ll be running around doing car-related things today. I also wanted to discuss me and the job (something I had planned on for today even before the ‘incident’). That’s going to be hard if a) I can’t find him and b) I’m running around all day doing car-related things.