A bed of roses

 Felt I was coming down with a cold on Thursday, so I fortified myself with a pack of Beecham's 'flu caplets and some soup for lunch and got through the day.  Woke up yesterday with my nose streaming, so emailed work to say I was staying at home.  I spent the day in my PJs, drinking A LOT of liquid, watching A LOT of Voyager and knitting A LOT of my mother's scarf.  So that was a good thing because I was getting worried I wasn't going to finish it in time for next Friday and now I'm fairly confident I'll finish it over the weekend.  I also didn't feel particularly ill, which I put down to drinking so much squash (4 pint glasses!).

Then I woke up this morning and realised that the reason I didn't feel particularly ill yesterday was because I wasn't.  Today I am.  But I'm not planning on doing much today other than putting up the Christmas tree and deccies - I'm certainly not going out in the rain!  So, the plan is, more liquid, more Voyager and more knitting and to decorate the house as I go.

This morning, I also had the strangest dream.  The husband and I were visiting lassarina !  Somehow we had managed to get to Chicago without tickets or passports, and we were driving (neither of us drive) AND we had nowhere to stay.  And then 'Rina's mother arrived.  But there were no cats.  The whole thing was nuts - you'd never get my husband on a plane, much less to America (I recognise that there are good Americans, he's hopelessly prejudiced), for a start.  Plus all the dream elements of no tickets and driving.  But the weirdest thing had to be the lack of cats because what is 'Rina without cats?!

So, now for a day of taking care of myself and making the house look pretty!

 Work has just been manic this week.  However, I do feel I finally have a grip on the monster project portfolio spreadsheet.  I also know that I have to find a better way of managing it.  Logic says 'database' but whenever I go near Access I lose the will to live and think 'but SharePoint is a database and is easier to use'.  But presenting project timelines in SharePoint isn't as visually appealing as Excel.  No idea what it would look like as a report in Access - I've never got that far.  I have found a really nice on-line tool called Teamwork but that costs money.  I have looked at other on-line tools but none of them work as well for what I want.

And so I go around the loop again.  And I keep telling myself, I work in a department full of IT professionals - surely SOMEONE can help?  But I also know they're all super busy and building me a tool for managing the project portfolio isn't going to be anyone's priority except mine.  But it would make my life sooo much easier...

Anyway, my line manager and I met with one of the other managers to talk about resourcing and recognised the fact that you really need to wipe out August and September in terms of getting anything done; August because people are on leave and September because they're catching up with themselves after being on leave - and with other people who've been on leave.

I helped out with the scoring of applications for the new PM post - just 'person spec says we want A - do they have A'.  What a collection!  We had over 50 applications, which is almost unheard of.  No idea how we managed that because we've been struggling to recruit for any post recently.  Anyway, the shortlisters got the list down to 11, which will have to come down a bit further but they're leaving that to the boss.  One candidate looked absolutely terrifying to me, at least on paper - I'm not often intimidated but that person definitely intimidated me; talk about a high flyer!




On a lighter note, the husband's poncho is done and I've made a start on my lacy scarf.  It's too early to tell how it's going to look, though.

And I've arrived in Ariel's world in KH.  The Riku/Maleficent thing is giving me flashbacks to FF8, although I think it's better thought through.  But after all, what part of FF8 WAS thought through?

I only have one disc left of DS9.  Not sure how many episodes are left, but they have got so many story threads to tie off.  I'm not sure I like the whole Prophets v Pah Wraiths thing.  And I really don't like the Federation withholding the cure - feels like the creators of the series are struggling to like the organisation they've helped create.  But Julian has finally found love, so that's something!

Well, I need to get up and get this day started.  Bye for now, DW!