Social Life

I actually had a social life this weekend. I forgot how exhausting it can be!

On Friday we went to Sarah's 21st. The hall turned out really nicely and I think it was a great success! The DJ was awesome. He had smoke machines and lights for special effects. The platters were also really great! It seemed that everyone had a good time. I was able to observe all of this while sober. It's funny to watch people get progressively more and more drunk. Apparently there was some drama after I left, but I can't comment on any of that since I wasn't there.

On Saturday we had a dinner at Amber's house. The setting and everything was really beautiful. Everyone brought their own dish so there was a variety of food. There were mussels and mini cajun pizzas for starters. Chicken curry with rice and potato bake for main course. Malva pudding and cheesecake for dessert. Rudi and I didn't stay for dessert as I was feeling a little under the weather.

On Sunday Boogaloo came over with his new boyfriend. I haven't sized him up completely yet. So far I like him...but I'd like to get to know him better before I make a final decision.

I'm feeling OK. Had a bit of a nose bleed this morning and my gums are sore and swollen. Other than that the morning sickness has died down and I'm generally feeling a lot better. The baby is moving around, still not kicking and still not frequently.

My grandfather is taking some strain since he went for the chemo drip again last Thursday, but he's starting to improve again which is great. It usually only gets better from here.

Not much to report

The exam I wrote yesterday didn't go too badly. I felt I found a lot of the answers. I don't usually stress about tests and exams after I've written them since I can't change the outcome. I've generally been really good about that.

The baby is putting me through my paces again. I stopped taking the tablets that help for the nausea since I was feeling better. It's only once you stop taking them that you realize how much they actually help. I'm feeling like crap again this morning, but hoping they'll kick in and do what they're meant to soon.

We're going to visit Nina with Boogaloo this afternoon. Nina had a baby boy about a month ago. I'm looking forward to meeting him and spending time with a little baby. Get some practice in!

Tomorrow we're having a picnic for (Uncle) Steve since he's going back to Pretoria and he asked that we all get together one last time.

My grandfather is doing really well. I'm actually blogging from his place. Rudi and Crack Head wanted to come and fish in the dam here so I decided to come and spend some time with him.

Other than that not much to report. Hoping to have a nice relaxing weekend.

Jubba Redeemed?

The weekend wasn't too bad. I did work, but we had a cool braai with Boogaloo on Saturday. Boogaloo and Voldemort seem to be breaking up. Boogaloo will be moving out on his own on the 1st of July if things go according to plan. He is heart sore. I will be there for him every step of the way. He has supported me through so much pain and crap that I've had in my life. I couldn't do anything else.

Jubba just took me aside. He heard somewhere that he made me cry (refer to my previous entry about Jubba). I told him that he didn't make me cry, but that I was upset because I know that he is a real sweetheart, but he comes across as such an aggressive person it's hard for other people to see. I discussed some of the concerns of our team with him and I hope I cleared the air. He assured me that he was not dissatisfied with my work and advised me where I could improve - in a nice calm rational tone. It was rather refreshing. He really has a bad reputation and he knows he needs to work on it. I'll just have to learn to work around the aggression and not take it personally.

I'm really relieved that my working weekend is over.

Week-End

This entire week has been such a waste of time! We have so many public holidays in this week that there are only two working days...for normal folks that is.

Monday - Public Holiday (I was off)
Tuesday - Work (half day then spa)
Wednesday - Work
Thursday - Public Holiday (I will be off)
Friday - Public Holiday (Working)
Saturday - Work (I will be working)
Sunday - Work (I will be working)

Because our company stipulated somewhere in their license agreement (15 years ago) that they will service the public 24/7/365 we're stuck working public holidays and weekends. I'm working Friday (alone), Saturday and Sunday (with one colleague's help). Balls.

Our anniversary was really nice. We spent the entire weekend at Boogaloo and Voldemort's house looking after their pets. Their pets are pretty high maintenance, one in particular. Their dog, Macy, has serious abandonment issues and requires attention 150% of the time. She also sleeps in the bed with them. Luckily Amber sleeps in bed with us so it is not something that freaks us out too much.

Rudi took me out to dinner on our anniversary. We ate at the Cattle Baron in Tableview. Rudi ordered champagne for us. He's never done that before. The food was really good and we enjoyed each other's company. We stayed at Boogaloo's house till Monday and headed home.

Yesterday I came in to work, but my team only worked till 12 so that we could venture off to our team reward at the spa.

There wasn't any food for us and we needed to wait quite long as they could only take 3 of us at a time for our full body exfoliation and hot stone massage. While we waited for the first group to come out we spent time in the sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and heated swimming pool. Swimming makes you hungry. There was a bowl of fruit, but fruit doesn't really satisfy my hunger for long periods of time. The massage was really good. I'm actually a little sore today, but that is to be expected.

I'm having a a lot of trouble motivating myself to work today. I'll be off tomorrow again, but it is my last day off for the next 8 days. I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Now I am looking forward to our weekend away in Knysna. No disturbances, nobody wanting to drop by. I want to go and see the Knysna elephants and I'm sure Rudi will want to go and eat oysters by the ton (I can't stand the stuff...*shudder*).

I suppose if I don't finish my work now I'm going to regret it later.

Update:

OMG I feel like I've just seen a ghost! A lady that used to work with us who practically fell off the face of the earth just walked into our office. I haven't seen her in years! YEARS! We used to spend time together outside of work and got to know each other as friends, we weren't super close but we were friends. She then left the company and we never heard from her again. We spoke amongst ourselves (as little as one week ago) wondering aloud where she might be. Weird how that works.

Seriously?!

It is common knowledge in our office that Friday is crunch time. On a Friday all the portfolios try their utmost to complete the work till the latest hour possible to alleviate the work for the limited staff that work on weekends.

Every Friday for the last couple of weeks 'something' has come up and our supervisor has tasked us with extra work to do on a Friday. Granted, this probably comes from somewhere over his head, but we are simply not considered.

I was already feeling stressed out with all the responsibilities and work I had to finish by today. I worked really hard yesterday to finish as much as possible and felt that I could relax a little today as the majority of these tasks had been finished. That's not quite what they had in mind it would seem...

Again we have been given a massive task to finish by the close of business today. This was dropped in every one's lap this morning.

I am so grateful that it's long weekend and that I'm going to be able to relax and hopefully be spoilt by my husband (officially my husband for 1 year tomorrow, officially my partner for 7) on our anniversary.

I'm really looking forward to our anniversary (and some of our wedding cake, it was delicious a year ago - not 100% sure what defrosted wedding cake tastes like). I know that Rudi has something planned and I know that Boogaloo 'assisted' him with the plan, but I'm not at all sure what it is.

I don't want to get TOO excited about it, just to avoid disappointment. Rudi can be really romantic at times, but he rarely knows when he is doing something that I think is romantic....the result is that he has great difficulty planning romance.

Look at that...I'm in a better mood already.

Snowed Under

I must apologize for my absence. I am completely snowed under at work. My supervisor has assigned everybody tasks. I have two projects to complete for the course I'm doing. I was out of the office for one day and I need to finish my normal workload. I'm not even sure if I'll get everything finished by Friday (when everything is due), but I'm sure going to try.

No time for a long entry today, but I'm looking forward to going away for the weekend. We're house sitting for Boogaloo and Voldemort. It's our anniversary on Saturday and my team has re-arranged our public holidays so that I will also be off on Monday (which was not the case before), so I'll get to enjoy a long weekend.

We've defrosted the top layer of our wedding cake which we saved for the occasion and I can't wait to see what Rudi has up his sleeve because as far as I know him and Boogaloo have been concocting something (with a little bit of encouragement from me).

The two weddings we attended on Saturday were great. Melissa and Nadia looked gorgeous. We had a lot of fun. I started feeling ill in the evening and we left quite early. I cried as I said goodbye to Nadia. She is leaving for Holland with her new husband for 3 - 5 years. It's one thing not seeing her, it's a completely different thing not to be able to see her.

I've got a ton of work to do...wish me luck for my deadlines!

Boogaloo

This is a photo of Boogaloo, as he looks now. I thought I'd post some eye candy for all! He's a hottie!

Photo Monday

The weekend was pretty boring, except for the fact that one of our neighbours smashed up his car on Saturday night. It looks pretty bad. At least R5 000 damage. I think more. He's probably going to get quotes today because it's his work car (he has his own business) and he's going to need it pretty soon.

Speaking of cars, the other neighbour now says he's lost the photos of the burning car, but I have a picture of the burnt car:


It is lying on it's roof because they flipped it over to get it out of the road. It's now standing the right way up again, I think someone decided to strip what was left of the engine.

I bought the cutest Levi's shoes this weekend...I've also bought a black pair with the same kind of embroidery with little bits of red in. They were well priced and I've been getting lots of compliments on them. I <3>

Amber taking a bath. It's amazing how she can contort. She almost looks broken in this photo.

Photos as promised

Voldemort and Boogaloo forgot to bring their camera, despite the reminders I gave them. I did, however, manage to snap a few pics with my crappy phone.

Rudi and Trevlyn

A sparkler in his food as promised! The waiters sang for him too!

Amber has found a new spot on the stairs that she likes to occupy.

Peter and I...Don't we look fabulous?

She's just loving this step. I can't explain it.

I hope you like th pictures :)

Rudi's Birthday

I've recently discovered Bloglines and other types of RSS feeds. What a pleasure. I've always struggled to keep up with blog posts and to keep all the blogs I like bookmarked is a mission. Feedburner has made me wise to these things since I've started my new blog. Nothing would be cooler than to have hundreds of subscribers, but that's just not going to happen. That only happens to the likes of Peas. Is it because she's a journalist and writes well? Is it because she's funny? Maybe it's because she always has interesting things to write about.

Anyhoo...I've neatly put all the blogs I like into my Bloglines feed and I immediately know when something new is posted. It's wonderful. You can subscribe to my blog by clicking on the animated button on the right (the one that flashes the 'headlines' on my blog). You can subscribe in almost any reader, then you'll always know when I've posted :)

Other than that the application I need to work on is still messed up (since yesterday) with no estimated time for resolution or even an indication that the developers know what the problem is. What ever happened to pre-production testing? Seriously? These developers get paid tons of money for applications that they stuff up causing a ripple effect to everyone that uses it. Do they get penalised? I wonder. Having to work around their incompetence is really frustrating. I suppose this is the part where I need to step up, be flexible and show how I cope under pressure. Quit my whining? Sure.

It's Rudi's birthday today. At first he didn't want to do anything this evening - he wanted to go out on Friday night, but he changed his mind after Boogaloo called him. Boogaloo asked what we were doing to celebrate and since it was coming from someone other than me he felt it was a good idea. What he didn't know is that he was blowing to hell a secret plan for his mother and father to come and drink tea this evening while delivering his gift. His mother called me last night to conspire. She was going to ignore his birthday all day and surprise him this evening. I called his mother to let her know that he had changed his mind and proceeded to tell her about her son's clothing preferences, without realizing she's his mother, who would know better? They opted not to join us for supper, but she said she would deliver his gift before we leave. Rudi promptly decided to phone his mother and kak her out for not wishing him yet. I assume this was the desired reaction.

I'm looking forward to going out with Boogaloo and Voldemort tonight. We haven't all spent time together for a while and it should lots of fun with stimulating conversion and speculation about whether we are heading for a recession or not. Good times.

We'll also certainly make the waiters sing for Rudi. All the waiters in the restaurant will come and clap and sing their special 'birthday song' attracting the attention of all the other patrons and generally embarassing the target of their jubilance. They also put a sparkler in his food. I can't wait.

I've requested that Voldemort brings his fancy new camera to take pictures for my blog...hope he remembers.