Sick, Tired And Uninspired

Food poisoning. Wonderful. Right when I am horrendously busy at work (and will be even busier when I go back next week after a few days lying around at home, groaning and being capable of sweet FA) and have a list of things I need to do personally that's so long the top and bottom of it are in different time zones!

*grump*

I must be off-colour: I keep seeing & reading stuff that makes my blood boil but I can't be arsed to string a few words together for a rant. But I did mange to update my website :) New fractals are in these two sections:
Recent Apo
and
UF1

Anyway, here's a jolly little number enititled "Xmas Lights". Hope y'all are in a better state than me :)

Strange Days

My Mum was always a bit of a fanatic about spending Xmas in her own home or, if not there, at least with one of her family nearby. She certainly wanted to both wake up and go to sleep in her own bed on Xmas Day. That makes her sound as if she was much more of a stick-in-the mud than she actually was. But the result of that wish was she never spent Xmas in my home, ever since I moved away: I either went to her, or we spent Xmas apart.

In less than two weeks. J's Mother is coming to spend Xmas and New Year with us. She's a sweetheart and we get along very well, but it is going to be so odd having her here. This will also be the first Xmas since 2001 that I've spent in my own home and I'm torn between wanting to make everything as nice as possible, and feeling very unsettled about the whole thing and reluctant to make a start on the preparations. In a completely odd way, it feels like I'm being disloyal to my mother. Especially odd given that Mum died over 6 years ago.

Once a daughter, always a daughter ..........

Teflon

No, not pots and pans, but the covering on the shoulders of people in senior positions who artfully manage to avoid actually taking the decisions which are their responsibility and for which they are very well paid.

I hate them with a passion. It'd probably be more truthful to say I despise them: they are a complete waste of oxygen.

Combine them with even more senior people who change their minds with startling frequency and you have a recipe for confusion, frustration & inefficiency. It's times like this I feel like grabbing a lump hammer and telling 'em precisely what I think of 'em.

Bleh.

Tis the season ....

... to be festive. Apparently.

It's too damn early!! I don't want to be wished "Merry Xmas" on December 1st, and I don't want to be going to Xmas parties on the 1st, either. But I got both, yesterday. Bleurgh.

Although, in all fairness, the Xmas party - for an office "do" - wasn't bad: I've certainly been to a lot worse. It would have been nicer today if we hadn't had to go back to the hotel (having managed to drag our sorry arses out of there only just before the magic check-out hour) because someone - naming no names but there's a clue in the rest of the sentence - had left his wedding ring in the bathroom!

As I seem to be the only person saying "Bah! Humbug" right now ... here's a fractal called "Festive" despite the fact that I feel about as festive as a turkey on Xmas eve ;-)

Smiles and sadness

I've had some wonderful feedback on my simple website: thanks to everyone who's commented here, by email and over at FracFan !

I have a feeling that - rather like an itch you can't stop scratching - I'm going to be playing silly buggers with it. (As I type I'm reuploading the lot, using a different skin on the album and having corrected my mistake on the "contact me" link - thanks to Fractoid for pointing that out :))

******************************

I was sad to hear of the death of Alan "Fluff" Freeman yesterday. He was 79, not a bad age at all, and not someone I ever met, but as a DJ on BBC radio from about 1960, his voice will forever be one of the voices I associate with my adolescence. He was older than most of the other Radio One DJ's and had a particularly corny style: frequently mocked but always with affection. Even thinking of his voice and his catchphrases, I'm instantly transported back to a 13 year old, sneakily listening to the Pick Of The Pops Sunday-afternoon programme when I was supposed to be doing my homework ;-)

Fancy a "Blast From The Past" (also the title of today's fractal)? Go read the list of UK number ones from 1965. One or three there better forgotten but my god, they were good days for pop music!

A Website at last!

Finally *phew* Very simple, just a front page and a gallery - for now ;-) Somewhere in between playing with Apo, getting to grips with UF, working, housework, and funtime, I'm now going to cram in building on the very basic HTML skills I've learnt in order to make it a much better site. Links next ... then some photographs.

WelshWench's Fractals

My thanks to the mates on FracFan who helped, and especially to the lovely Pat from dA and Storm-Artists whose encouragement was just wonderful!


The fractal here is one from some time ago ... but how could I not put up the one I called "Celebration"?

Autumn Winds

Happens to be the name of today's fractal ... and what the weather's been like today! I only wish the wind had been behind me as I staggered up one of the very rare local hills today ;-)

Fractoid, Dzeni: sound advice from the two of you, thank you! But I have been in the new role for rather more than three days and I have the advantage (?) of it being an area I'm not totally unfamiliar with in that it's closely-related to the one I just left. I also know just how frequently my employer will shaft their employees, so there are advantages to remaining with my head below the parapet!

I guess I was sounding off as much as anything but I am serious when I say I'm not interested in working significantly longer hours (even if they paid me a hell of a lot more money than they do) - been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the scars ;-)

This is my perverse thought process at work ... the ramblings of a moderately deranged middle-aged woman who is in a third career she fell into by accident and finding it raises quite a few questions.

Then I come home, hug the hubbie, play with fractals and it all seems much better :)

Sixty percent

Wednesday at work over and done with. That means 60% of the working week is behind me. Sounds so much nicer put that way :)

Cold, wet, damp & miserable here today, and my mind has been as indecisive as ever. Why is it that sometimes I make a decision, form an opinion, whatever, and nothing can shake me. Whereas other times I couldn't make my mind up if I was being paid to do so. I feel like that about the new job. I'm not interested in promotion: I've done the whole greasy-pole-climbing in the past and now I just want a reasonable working life with reasonable hours. I never thought that the idea of having to work a few more hours a week in order to get the job done would seem like such hard work.

So I have to decide: am I just out of practise or do I really want to say to TPTB "I don't want this secondment, put me back in my old role" and then suffer the consequence of feeling frustrated that I'm not working anywhere near my capabilities? Argh!

It's all Greek to me

Pretty much how I felt after a couple of meetings today. Ever had one of those "new in the job" days when by lunchtime, your face aches from trying to keep it looking interested and as if you have a freakin' clue what everyone else is talking about? I swear, the company I work for must be in the Guinness Book of World Records for acronyms.

So, a few Tylenol later (yes, I may be a Brit but I holiday in the USA and I *heart* Walgreens!) I was feeling a bit perkier .... until the next meeting. And the next. I can see an early night coming on tonight. Ugh.

In other news, our skip has gained an old mattress LOL

Fractoid hon .... I just bet you'd send dead bugs, you wicked woman!!

Dzeni: thanks for the lovely comment on yesterday's fractal! I called it "Not the only fruit" after the book title "Oranges are not the only fruit" :)

Today's offering is called "Writhe" .... I thought it apt after all the writhing my poor remaining brain cells did today!

Morose Mondays

I hate Mondays. Always have, always will. I recently started a secondment at work which means I have a whole new batch of knowledge to acquire in not enough time before I have to fully take over from someone else. Nicer job though, but next time I wish for more responsibility I'll have to remember the saying " Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it" !

We (husband and I) had an exhausting time on Saturday, chucking a load of unwanted furniture and dead electrical equipment into a skip. This morning, someone had removed the old - and very, very dead TV we'd put in there along with its base unit .... and added a dead TV of their own! Tonight, even that has gone. Saw someone helping themselves to some old bits of wood as we got home this evening, too. We don't care - we were junking the stuff anyway, but the skip hire company is going to wonder why they're only collecting a half-full skip at this rate......

Thanks, nzdzeni, for the suggestions and offer of assistance - I hope you don't end up regretting it :)

Kat: been thinking about you starting back at work today. All my love and best wishes: hope it's going OK *hugs*

So today's fractal is for you hon with, once again, thanks for your advice on the colours.

Sunny Sunday

It's a lovely autumn day out there - and here I am, slaving over a hot PC which is my way of putting off doing some domestic stuff. Still scratching my head about how this whole blog setup works. Still wondering if there's a way to reply to comments!

Still wandering around the 'net, trying out new sites. Thinking about Flickr but reluctant to try out too many new sites at once as, in addition to here, I've finally started using my account on Renderosity. Although one post a day is a bit of a bugger, especially when I have such a huge collection of fractals. My Apo work is going to have to go somewhere else ... which brings me back full circle. Argh! I am going to have to pull my finger out and use the website space I have from my ISP. More learnin' to do .......

Just a bit of clarification on my departure from dA and then I won't mention it again. I did not leave over the hoo-ha in the Help Forum thread. I left because that little bit of hypocrisy was the last straw which galvanised me into making a decision I'd been thinking about for well over a month.

If you haven't already done so, you can read what I said about leaving here, and that's going to be my final word on the subject.

The fractal I'm posting here was one of the first UF ones I finished it and it was first posted on a Sunday, hence the name "Sunday Delight".

A bit of an experiment.

Hello world, and welcome to the madness that is my thought process.

Not entirely sure why I'm here yet and even less sure if I'll stay, but nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

I guess that after nearly a year being immersed in the small and self-referential world that is the fractal community on deviantART.com, and having finally reached the limits of my patience with the incompetence of the (oh, I'm going to squirm as I write this) management (see? told ya I'd squirm) of that site, I'm looking for somewhere to spill my witterings and post the occasional fractal or photograph.

I'm also a pretty opinionated old fart so while I muddle my way around blogger I may just share some of those with y'all ;)