About 5 minutes before leaving work tonight I was handed a letter telling me that I had got the job! I’m so incredibly happy! I’ve never gotten a job after an interview before. I’ve always gone through employment agencies, but anything that I applied for myself and had to have an interview for, I never got. I always got on well with the interviewers and they seemed to really like me, but then they wouldn’t hire me. So when this interview went well I didn’t really dare to believe that I would actually be successful!

What a great way to start the weekend!

Tonight it’s no different. It’s made worse by the fact that I’ve got an assessment at work tomorrow and I need to get myself into the right frame of mind. It’s not as if the assessment is going to be first thing in the morning….it’s at 6pm, but I’m still keeping myself awake At least having a nap shouldn’t be a problem!

Going off on a slight tangent now, but have any of you tried Dropbox yet? It’s a fantastic way of storing your files with easy access online. You install the software on your computer, and anything that you want to be able to access elsewhere, you save to the Dropbox folder, and it syncs the files to your account online. It’s great if you want to access something at work that you did at home, or to share files for a group project. I’ve got 9 invites left, so leave a comment if you’d like to try it.

So what’s been going on? I had to have another Lumbar Puncture, which was an absolute joy to endure. Thankfully, unlike last time, I had it performed under x-ray guidance straight away, but it was still tricky apparently. It took them a lot longer than last time and it was much more uncomfortable. The Doctor was digging around there for ages! I had to have it done to relieve the headaches I was getting due to pressure in my head (Intercranial Hyper-Tension), and they’ve all but gone. I’ve had some bad backache since then, so I’ll have to pester my GP about that.

Lydia’s doing great at Nursery and she’ll be starting at Infant School in September. She looks so grown up wearing a school uniform Dave’s parents are in the process of decorating the shed at the bottom of the garden so it can be a playhouse for her. It looks great and I can’t wait to see her face next week when it’s unveiled for her birthday! I want my own playhouse now though

I’m hoping to make more regular updates now that I’m over my grumpiness/fed up of being ill. Let’s hope I can make it interesting!

In the meantime, if you simply have to keep up with the inane stuff I do, here’s my Twitter and Facebook

She was absolutely hideous yesterday just because she wanted a bag of crisps. I don’t know if she’s picking up things from the other children at Nursery, but she’s been getting so rude and arrogant. We have to keep reminding her to use her manners which we don’t usually have to do, sometimes with her flat-out refusing to say “please” or “thank you”. In which case, I just put back whatever it is that she wanted until she’s polite about it.

Anyway, yesterday she wanted a bag of crisps on the way home from Nursery, but when she couldn’t get them straight away she threw a huge tantrum in the shop. Dave said that she was screaming at the top of her lungs and kept running away. He just wanted to get her home, so he put her on his shoulders and walked home. She screamed, kicked and scratched at him all the way home. By the time they get home, she’d got herself into such a state that she was hiccupping, but still screaming. I find out what’s wrong and she thinks that she can get me to give her crisps instead of Dave. I tell her no as well and she went absolutely nuts!

We put her upstairs in her bedroom until she calms down. For about 15 minutes all we can hear is screaming and things being thrown around the room. When the noise stops, I go in the room to her and the whole floor is literally covered in her toys and books. There is absolutely nothing left on tables or shelves. So I sit down on her bed, ask her if she’s finished now and she nods at me. She then has the cheek to say that she wants to go downstairs to play and grabs a random handful of toys. I say “No. We’re going downstairs so you can say sorry to your Dad, then you’re helping me tidy up this mess”. She refuses so I tell her that she can stay up in her room a little longer then, which she starts whinging at. I repeat what I said to her and after the third time (and last time, I tell her), she calms down and agrees.

As soon as she gets downstairs though, she goes nuts again and demands crisps Back up the stairs we go! I sit on her bed again and ignore her until she calms down the say that she can help me to tidy up. She’s reluctant at first, but she gets into it after a while because I make it into a ‘teamwork’ type thing. I’m still doing most of the work, but as long as she’s trying, I’m happy. I had to ask Dave to take over after a while as I had to get ready for work, but it was good to get her calmed down before I had to go. Apparently she was all lovey-dovey while I was at work, telling Dave she loved him, saying “No shouting now. No more shouting is there?” and saying sorry.

Hopefully we won’t have to go through all this again today!

Edit: Hooray! It’s done! Please let me know if you find anything that’s broken

The journey there was eventful. Well, it was just the one event but it was enough to be counted as more than one Lydia was sick in the car. Now, normally when she tells us she’s ill, it turns out to be when she fell over and scraped her knee a couple of weeks previously. She turned to Dave and said “Daddy. Poorly tummy”, and as he leant over to talk to her, she threw up in his hands! Luckily we could pull over pretty much straight away to clean her (and Dave!) up. She was alright after that, I just think she was congested as she’s all bunged up with a cold.

She had a wonderful time for the rest of the day. She was picking up pebbles from the beach and proclaimed that she had found ‘treasure’. Then she and Dave were digging holes by the sea. He would dig a hole, then the waves would rush in and wash it away. Lydia then shouted ‘Shoo, sea! Daddy’s playing! Shoo!’

Here are two photos of her from Tuesday:

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines Day! Dave bought me a single red rose in a gorgeous box and he cooked me a delicious dinner. I’m so full from that dinner that I’m practically falling asleep as I’m typing this. I got him a House M.D. soundtrack cd because he casually mentioned one time about liking the music. He’s so difficult to buy for because anything he wants he just buys it. This is extra annoying because it’s his birthday tomorrow too

Happy Valentines Day!

We had a great Xmas, but especially Lydia. She was still opening presents 3 days after Xmas Day! She got a little overwhelmed with everything though and after a while of squealing at presents, she wanted to sit in the bath and play for a bit. She got oodles of presents including a Thomas the Tank Engine playhouse, a new train track (on a better table than our dining one!) and some trains and cars. As you can probably tell, she loves trains at the moment, but she especially loves putting the toy cars on the tracks, pushing the train towards it shouting ‘Oh nooooo!’ in a high-pitched voice

I got some great presents too, which I’m not going to list I’m all gadgeted up now though! I got Leopard for my Macbook and iWork 08, which are lovely to use. I also treated myself with the money I got from the overtime I did over Xmas and got an iPod Touch! I love it so much It was even better after I managed to Jailbreak it and added some iPhone apps. There’s an official update that does that now, but I’m not paying $20 for it!

Well, it’s 3am now and just as I was about to go to bed…Lydia wakes up crying. Ah well, I doubt I’d be able to sleep anyway. I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping recently for some reason. Poor, poor me. I’ll have to make do with snuggling with Lydia on the couch

I hope I have visitors left

I am terrible at speaking in public or in front of other people, so when we were told that we had to give a 5 minute presentation using a flipchart, I panicked Thankfully, this site came to my rescue, as I did a presentation on Icklebug.net I drew a huge picture of one of the bunnies on one page. On the second page I drew the bunnies in various states of being thrown around (speech bubbles and everything! Yay effort!), the sun gradually moving across the screen according to the time, and having to chase the title text when you try to click on it. Well, I added little squiggles to the side to show movement. That’s art that is.

We also had to give a presentation in front of the Big Boss (*dramatic music*). It didn’t go too bad and she said that I seemed very confident. I tripped up in my words a couple of times, but thankfully I could squeeze the remote control (to flick through the slides) to help me to concentrate.

Next week I’ve got to do presentations in front of a total of 90 people over the course of 8hrs a day for 5 days Thankfully, I’m only the Assistant Trainer, so hopefully the Lead Trainers will let me get away with 2 presentations a day. We’ll see how I feel at the time, but at least I’ve got the Powerpoint files so I can practice a bit over the weekend.

I’ll post about about the Mindless Self Indulgence gig me and Sandra went to on the 13th next time. I loved the gig, but the people attending…I wanted to murder them. I’m just trying to think of a way to phrase my post about it in a way that doesn’t make me seem like an angry, old fart