Make History with us

My entry into the biggest blog in History....

October 17 2006

Today I awoke early 04.30am and desperately needed to fall asleep again before my wake up alarm [mobile phone alarm], due to go off at 06.05am.
I had not realised, until I was reminded on the car radio a while later, that today was the online diary day. I had book marked the page in my laptop.
This morning I woke up next to my 19-month-old daughter, who is not sleeping well in her own bed and will only settle with us, her mother, my partner, lay next to her, both sleeping. [My eldest daughter is not settling into University, my middle daughter is doing well at Art College; my stepdaughter loves being at Uni] I skipped breakfast, don’t know why, I usually have cereal [toast or *bacon-butty on weekends].
[*meat from a pig on a bread roll]
One cup of tea, black no sugar, a shave and a shower before work.
The journey is extremely foggy, warrants the use of both sets of fog lights.
Drove to work in my unleaded petrol driven, 1.4 Automatic French made car, the journey was relatively uneventful; followed a gas guzzling, lane hogging Range Rover car for a while that apparently did not appear to possess any directional indicators.
Items on the Radio: American policy in Iraq; two terrorists escape from custody; global warming; Madonna [singer/performer] buys an African baby boy.
07.27am arrived at work; I was the third person into the office today. A cup of tea was on my desk awaiting me as per usual, made by a female colleague [my best friend at work].
Logged onto my PC – a security update to Internet Explorer [IE6] was added that inadvertently prevents me and colleagues from seeing files that I add to our company internet sites – typical.
07.30am I ate the batch I had made myself this morning for work [my partner had obviously forgotten to make them the previous evening]
I have just tried to encourage my friend to keep a diary for the day; however I was somewhat shocked to find, having now read the article, that I am restricted to 1000 words and 4000 characters! That’s not a diary, that’s a comment.
I had better keep it brief – I am reminded of the very inappropriate joke about the war time diarist Anne Frank; Day one – Hid, Day two – Hid etc. [I do apologise for that – in other circumstances it would have been extremely funny]
We have a diarist in our office who spends more time penning his thoughts than he does doing his job– his diary would read ‘Today I did very little work, much the same as every other day’.
08.28 Another cup of tea is made for me.
08.35 I went for a cigarette with my friend, although I no longer smoke I still accompany her to the doorway outside for a ritual smoke every hour. I had to give up due to a reoccurrence of a non-smoking related cancer that embedded itself in my right lung, and has since been removed earlier this year.
Upon our return I actually made a coffee for us both!
I will spend most of the day creating technical drawings as a fill in whilst my own workload is slow. I will also make an Emoticon, which is basically a small animated-gif file that can be used in Windows Messenger [A shared program that enables web chat], for my middle daughter.
A job that is undertaken and has nothing to do with work is classed as a foreigner; we get loads of foreigners through our office.
The office has filled out now; there are normally 17 of us in the office, three are off sick, two are on a first-aid course [including myself that will make 3 first aiders, so why are so many off sick?] and one on holiday in New York, NY USA.
Only four pieces of Spam for Viagra in my mail box today, since we have been receiving regular security updates to our computers at work the Spam has increased 10 fold. [For those of you of a certain age, Spam is not the meat product that once adorned your sandwiches]
A number of people are getting excited about the inaccessible files on the internet as a result of the IE update. It would appear that it has been rolled out to everyone in our large global company without any testing. No wonder we have problems. Unsurprisingly it would appear that no one will take responsibility for it either, now there’s a surprise.
Is it time for another cup of coffee or a smoke yet?
I have a Trade Union meeting today to discuss the annual wage claim. The company offer is for 3 ½ percent. Negotiations mean, that’s the offer take it or leave it, I wish people had more bite in them these days instead of being fearful of the Bosses.
The National Trust says it wants to create a "fascinating social history archive" of everyday life for future generations. [Tuesday] "ordinary day much like any other of no particular national significance".
I think as a social experiment into ordinary boring life this pretty much takes the biscuit, I have almost reached the requisite number of characters permitted and still haven’t got past 09.10.
I will have to continue this on my own blog, so if I end abruptly….