Trains, Boxes and Wickets
Thursday
Budget meeting with Emma our new finance person, tutored by Eilleen our old finance person. Apparently we're quite simple to deal with. This is good it means over a companionable cup of char I flog the library to Emma. Usual story, didn't realise we are here and what we can do for the young studying finance person. Of course it ain't the first time we've told them and probably won't be the last. Marketing, eh! It's like banging your head against a brick wall but without the sense that you can get relief by stopping it! Lunch is taken at the Marina in celebration of Christmas, Solstice take yer pick. OK devastating confession time, I'm missing the ability to be grumpy about Christmas, there hasn't been a Christmas outbreak at work yet. Is this lack of Sally and Christina providing Christmas critical mass for me to be grumpy about. Anyway the meal was pleasant, good comapny apart from me helps. Gonna nick the idea of the beetroot and feta tartlet at some point because it was good. Home and Monst is suffering in tems of not feeling well, the result is two meals to cook. I then promptly fall asleep in the living room and when I wake get told I've been snoring like a pig and head upstairs at about 8.30 'ish, there are fringe benefits to this. Friday The benefits prove to be a rediculously early rise which lets me get the news done, sort out the blog that feeds Talkr to generate the podcast which I haven't talked about here yet. Finally found a service that automates the creation of podcasts that will work at work as well as home. The notion is that busy NHS managers might like to have our news current awareness service read at them. So a robotic American voice now does this. Don't know if anyone'll use it but what the hell it's a couple of rigid digits waved as usual! The automation is critical, my read it yourself experiment was too time consuming for repetition, this is at least simple to cope with. Anyway the feed address for it is http://www.talkr.com/app/cast_pods.app?feed_id=24421 so bung that in yer aggregator if you dare! A more dubious benefit is the ability to listen to the cricket. Yesterday England had a good day, a reason for jubilation all round, today it is a bad day, the whole thing is fairly typical and only to be expected. Right now miss Dave being about the place to grumble about this state of affiars with. Cricket over Christmas won't be the same in the library without him about too. A return to the Blackhole of Gateway House, which I discover from one of the boxes I'm listing is also alarmingly referred to as the Dead Room. Not found any stiffs yet... but still looking. Fondly hoping it'll turn into an episode of Inspector Moose! Getting used to the commute to the Land of Manc, train, coffee, scrabbling around on gruby floors recording records that nobody cares about (or so I think but I witness some being used today!) The Good news is I'll be almost sorted by the end of today apart form the odd box and the loose files. Ask Tracy to book me tickets for next week where I have the luxury of an empty diary (a reason to be thankful for Soltice season?) Recharge time comes and I hit the web cafe at the Merchants Hotel for the purposes of this posting. Machines are empty, requires a buzz to get in and I'm not certain I'd want to spend the night here but for web access at £150 an hour it'll do.
