My more observant readers will have noticed some (subtle) changes to my blog.

Look to the left of the screen.  See what I mean?

I’ve had a twitter account for a few months now and decided it should form a part of my blog.  Now, when I’m away from my computer (a rare occurrence these days), I can simply send a text message from my mobile phone and it will appear in the sidebar of my blog.  It’s not instantaneous though- the sidebar updates every 15 minutes and displays the latest 5 tweets.

If you wish to display your tweets on your WordPress blog, I suggest using the twitter tools plugin, created by Alex King.  I’ve only utilised one of the features in my blog but there’s a lot this small file can do (see the link for the full list of features).

Other changes you may have noticed- the various sections in the sidebar have been rearranged and the text size has been decreased slightly.

Toodlepip!

Mood : chipper   Music : Make This Go On Forever  by  Snow Patrol

And so it begins……..

Yesterday, I popped in to uni for a short meeting before the semester comences on the 22nd September.

The purpose of the meeting was to explain how course had been restructured this year.  Basically, all of the taught modules will take place before Christmas and will be taught over 10 weeks.  There will be a review week and then an exam week.  After the Christmas break, we will focus solely on our honours projects.

Normally, I’m quite excited when a new academic year begins and this year, I still am (to an extent).  The only diference this year is that I’m feeling pretty damm nervous too.  I guess it’s because I know this is the last year and I don’t want to mess up.  Of course when this year is over, I still don’t know where I’ll be going in my life.

I’ll make one resolution right now: I don’t want to be as stressed as I was in April of this year.  That level of stress was totally unacceptable.  It got to the point where my mum almost marched me down to the doctors.  Not cool at all.

Anyway, let the tears and tantrums begin (and that’ll be on a good day)

Mood : blah   Music : Runaway  by  Avril Lavigne

To quote a (brilliant) R.E.M tune, “It’s the end of the world as we know it (and I feel fine)”.

You probably know by now which new article I’m reffering to: the experiement conducted with the Large Hadron Collier inbetween France/Switzerland.

I’m still not sure why people were under the impression that this would cause the world/entire universe to implode? I’m not good with physics at all but, my basic understanding is that the machine was designed to crash protons together. This (somehow) lead to people thinking that “mini black holes” would be created. Have people been watching too much Futurama or something along those lines. Jeez next, we’ll see reports on the news speculating that the world will be attacked by giant brains.

As morbid as this may sound, I was a little disappointed when the world didn’t end. No, I don’t really want the world to end completely but, it would have been interesting if the experiement had actually had an effect on the fabric of time.

Had the world ended on Wednesday morning, I would have been laughing all the way- I was sitting having breakfast, watching Everybody Loves Raymond when the machine was fired up

Mood : uncomfortable   Music : Juke Box Hero  by  Foreigner

Yes, I’ve finally bought myself a Flickr Pro account.  About time really.  I should be able to upload a whole bunch of my pictures now!

Give me a few hours then go check out my Flickr account.

Mood : bouncy   Music : Viva Las Vegas  by  Bruce Springsteen

It’s Tuesday morning, around 11am, and the phone rings.  I’m in the shower and can’t answer the phone so my sister runs into my room and tries to pick up before the caller hangs up.

Big mistake.

In the process of running to get the phone, my sister stubbed her toe on the leg of the poofe she has sitting next to her computer.  Apparently she screamed twice but I guess I didn’t hear that (give me a break- my head was under the water).  I did hear her yelling and cursing so I went to see what was wrong.  As soon as I saw her, I knew she’d hurt herself- she looked like she was about to faint/throw up.

I looked at her little toe and saw that there was a problem- it wasn’t facing the right direction: it was facing to the side, it was bright red and had swollen up to twice its size.

I didn’t really know what to do but, I thought ice would help (it should be noted that I did look up a wikiHow article first….didn’t want to make the toe worse than it was!).  She wouldn’t put the ice on it even though I phoned my grandparents to check that was the right thing.  In the end, we decided she should just sit there and wait ’til our mum finished work (which was about 30 mins later).

As soon as my mum came in, she saw it was facing the wrong direction and when my sister tried to walk on it, the litte toe wasn’t even making contact with the ground.

Normally, you can’t do anything if you break a little toe so we were hesitant about going to the doctors but my mum phoned anyway.  The local surgery was quiet and said my sis could there and they would have a look at it.  Well, they took one look at it and said she should go to A&E- it looked like it was dislocated and would be too painful to set without the use of a local anasthetic.

Off she went to the hospital and she was there a quite a while.  She had a dislocated fractured, meaning that her toes was broken and displaced.  Right now, it’s just strapped together with tape and it covered in brusing.

I know some people don’t like doing housework but please, breaking your toe to get out of doing it is just a *tad* extreme, don’t you think?

For all of those concerned about health and safety, we are considering getting an answering machine so it won’t matter if we miss a call.  On the otherhand, my sister does actually have a phone in her room and had she left it plugged in, she wouldn’t have had to run into my room to answer it and she wouldn’t have broken her toe.  Idiot.

One final thing: no toe jokes please.  I have been informed that they just aren’t funny any more.  As my sister was preparing to go to the doctors, I convinced her the toe would need to be amputated.  Yes, that was nasty.  I accept that.

Silly girl.

Mood : calm   Music : Stay Away  by  Nirvana

Stick a fork in me, I’m done.  If you’re a vegetarian, “eat me, I’m done” (yes, I had to slip that Chandler quote in there).

This evening, I left my job for the 5th time (4 summers plus 1 Christmas).  If this is your first time visiting my blog, you’re probably sitting there thinking “jeez, she must be the worst employee ever- she keeps leaving”.  It’s not that I randomly walked out- I’m a seasonal worker, on a temporary contract so I’m only there a few months at a time.

I joined the company back in July 2005, after leaving school at the end of May.  The company was tiny and it operated out of the upstairs of a building which was occupied by an engineering company.  Mid-August, the company moved to the downstairs portion of the building and began to expand rapidly.  It’s now grown so large that there are 2 sites: the one where I spent my time and another 10 miles or so to the south.

The most memorable shift I ever worked?

That would be the 5pm-9pm shift on the 7th of July 2005.  A Thursday.  My first week there.  My first full shift where I was “on my own”.  Also the day of the July the 7th bombings down in London.  It was total chaos in the call centre, trying to help as any people with travel arrangements as possible, and informing customers travel options available in London (we dealt with travel information back then).  The phones didn’t stop ringing the whole time and I remember when the phones were switched off at 9pm, there was silence.  Everybody just sat there for a few seconds.  What a night.

I must say, Saturday night just past was a little scary for me, in that I thought I was going to have to ride out my last shift in the other office, miles down the road.

Basically, I arrived at work last night to find we had no internet connection whatsoever.  Cue chaos.  We couldn’t help anybody.  The power went out.  The phones went off.  They stayed off for 5-10 mins.  The connection still wasn’t working.  Contingency plan: move operation to other office on Sunday.  At that moment, I felt a little sad that I might not get to spend the last day in my usual office.  Then after a miracle (yes, a miracle), we got online at 7pm and were really to rock and roll.

Tonight was a really quiet final shift- almost wish it had been busier.

Anyway, it’s been fun and I hope the company continues to expand and do as well as it has in the past

Mood : pensive   Music : A Pain That I'm Used To  by  Depeche Mode