R.I.P. My Job

Quote of the moment:
I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it I’m about to
lose control and I think I like it...

Hurrah! Last day at work. Hopefully. I put it down as my last day when I signed up with the agency and I told them I wanted to leave this Friday, but in a moment of weakness I said I'd do a handover day on Monday if necessary. It shouldn't be, I haven't used most of the stuff I learned and the stuff I have would only take about half an hour, maximum.

The jubilation was rather overshadowed though, because on the way home I hit a cat. I was coming down the road from the Green Dragon, only about 500m away, and it ran out, paused in the lights, then ran on. I did the correct thing and braked without trying to swerve out around it, because that would have put it right between the wheels. Unfortunately the side of the car just clipped its bum, which was less resilient than Zulu's.

*** If you're squeamish, don't read on ***

When I turned around and drove back to find it, I discovered it lying in the middle of the road with its stomach split open and its intestines sliding out. It was a full Saving Private Ryan job. I got a Tesco bag from the car and tied it around the midriff to hold the guts in, then took it to the door of the bungalow it was running towards, since it had no collar or tag.

The little old lady (L.O.L.) who slightly opened a window next to the door said it was one of the ones she fed occasionally (as LOL's do) but it wasn't really hers or anyone's that she knew of. I thought it would be a bit harsh to make the LOL go digging, so I agreed to take it home and bury it.

P.S. A shocking appearance in the awesome cast list of Saving Private Bob Ryan: Vin Diesel! How rare!

I Smell Like A Poof

Quote of the moment:
Mmmm cheesy poofs.

There was no normal soap stuff at work today so I had to use the uber-harsh stuff for grease, paint and the like instead. For some reason it smells of incredibly poofy apricots.

Weebl & Bob Geldof Strike Back

Quote of the moment:


I only had to edit Bob's head, because the first picture that came up when I put weebl+bob+pie into Google was so appropriate!

Argh. One of my ears is bleeding, probs from having too many ear plugs rammed into it in the last 3 weeks. I have 13 seperate cuts, ranging from papercut-style to a ripped out chunk from a saw blade, on just one finger. 25 on the hand. Forget America, I'll be glad just to stop working there. Shitheap it is, hmmm? 4 days left...

Piratical Connections

Quote of the moment:
Well, it's all rather complicated... there's one set of cousins called Mallock and another called Maddox..."

My dad was explaining some family connection to Sarah, but I just picked up on us being distantly related to a family called Maddox.


How do I look?

I was outside The Cave at 5pm as instructed. No show from anyone who might be there to pick me up. After about fifteen minutes of wandering up and down outside the door, I went in to check that the job wasn't actually in there before heading home. It wasn't, obviously, but that counts as my first visit to a poledancing club. Admittedly the only girl in there was vacuuming the floor.

Perhaps we should make it the venue for a kr3w reunion?

Changing The Guard

Quote of the moment:
Dear Rita, do you think the world would be a much more peaceful and happy place if everyone had Down's syndrome?

No. We'd just have really clean windows.

I'm sure she's related to Jim.

I was persuaded into working tomorrow night by the offer of £7.50 per hour. Quite reasonable, especially for being a 'Security Guard' 'and supposedly watching over a swimming pool. Yup. Sounds great, doesn't it? I apparently have to sit near it and tell people not to go in. I have no idea whether it's outside or inside, or where the hell it is. I have to be outside The Cave nightclub in Chelmsford at 5pm, but that doesn't sound to me as if it's actually working there. Besides, why would a nightclub in Chelmsford have a pool?! The Cave's right by the train and bus stations, so I suspect there may be a minbus for a load of staff to some event somewhere. Whichever, I'm going armed with a book.

News from Felsted: the prefects have been chosen and there are, bizarrely, 18 of them already plus 2 more that could be promoted after serving time for naughtiness. That makes a total of 20. If that seems a little daft, then consider this:

Melanie Balfour (Deputy Head of School)
Susie Bradley
Loren Sherer
Kat Malyon
Torty Lee (Head of House, prefect when time served)

All of the above are from Follyfield. What a coincidence that the Housemistress is married to the Deputy Headmaster.

Elwyns did quite respectably, securing 3 prefects for the second year running:

Freddie Blackwell (Head of House)
David Rees
Charlie Paterson

A Renault Return

Quote of the moment:
"The Renault F1 Team has stretched its lead in the Constructors’ Championship, and now has 76 points, while Fernando Alonso sits atop the Drivers’ Championship with 59 points."



How badly must Williams regret losing their Renault connection?

Zulu has begun to display sheepdog tendencies. Yesterday he tried to herd two year old Sam, (my mum's cousin's son, which could be my 2nd cousin?) to make him keep up with the rest of the dog walkers after the big family gathering. Unfortunately Zulu knocked him flat, then licked his face when he tried to get up. Bless. Sam does a very entertaining "Amarillo" impression too, but can't get beyond the "la-la-la-la-la-la" bit. Very cute.

I got a telling-off when I got into work today. The automatic machine I normally look after wasn't working on Thursday so I used the manual one instead. Some of my cuts were less than perfect, but that should be expected from a n00b. The real problem was that I wasn't there the next day so the deputy foreman had to sort through and discard the bad ones himself. Diddums.

The wonderful machine played up today as well. Somehow the blade skipped, scraped down the side of the steel guiding block showering out sparks, then stalled and refused to restart. How handy! I ended up sitting on a stool putting cut tube into the tooled connector parts for the final 4 hours. Yawn.

Bum Clouds!

Quote of the moment:
"But I still... haven't found... what I'm looking for..." - U2.

The job's ok, if rather boring. The machine I have to look after cuts various lengths of extruded aluminium (like Playdoh put through the awesome Playdoh Fun Factory) into specific lengths. All I have to do to keep it running is put lengths in, empty the basket of cut bits and take odd samples to check for length. Oh, and remove the first and last bits which are scrap.

Except that about an hour from the end of my shift I forgot to. Having realised after I'd stacked the box on the shelf of completed batches, I had to go back and pick over seven boxes or about 2000 parts, checking both ends for the red X put on the end before inserting it. I finished with 3 minutes to go, having failed to find it. D'oh!

Lo Fagg!

Quote of the moment:
"I Mentioned It Once, But I Think I Got Away With It" - Given the deathly silence, I presume not.

Went for an 'interview' today at AdAl Engineering, the one formerly called WHJ Fagg & Son. Since it was more a case of 'Do you think you can manage? Ok then, can you come in tomorrow?' I obviously 'got the job'. It's a bit more complex a machine than last time I was there, needing setting up and monitoring. There are a couple of other things to watch over too, a machine cleaning the oil off the finished parts and something else, to keep me on my toes, but it should be fine. I'm going back tomorrow at 2.30pm to learn how to set the machine up, so that might be my start time (ending at 11pm) which would keep me in my nightly routine.

Having come out a mere 10 minutes later at 12.10pm, I went to Chelmsford to go swimming. I fitted in 58 lengths before I got kicked out for the cleaners to come in at 2pm, which was quite reasonable. It's a 33m pool, so 60 lengths would be 2km. Perhaps I should go earlier and try to complete my old swimming-lesson towel with a 3000m badge!

Yarr, Lubbers, The Booty Be Mine

Quote of the moment:
"I'll never be able to have sex, it'll tickle too much" -- Koel Mukherjee, 2004. - A classic comment from the Rob-meister.

Today I was sent to Broomfield to clear out a wing of 3 wards, on top of each other, which is to be demolished soon. It has to be utterly clear before the wreckers attack otherwise the land is officially 'contaminated' and cannot be reused. It was alright, mostly trundling a trolley back and forth to the skip with an occasional spot of sweeping. The canteen/restaurant there does a good fried breakfast too, although obviously not up to Prill's standard.

Since, under the wisdom of the NHS bureacracy, anything duplicated in the new wing, already built and occupied, was left to be skipped, I took some more spoils:


Two mirrors and a handy grid-squared whiteboard


And another, rather larger one

I thought I could make use of the smaller one to write To Do lists on... University assignments that I might otherwise overlook, that sort of thing. My dad was so taken with the large one he wants it for himself. How rude!

Our Chief Weapon Is...

Quote of the moment:
"Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?" - Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood) to four Union soldiers.



That would be the film in which, instead of smoking cigars, he chews spit tobacco and every time he spits at someone's feet, they get angry and then get shot. It's kind of inevitable and thus couldn't be stretched to a trilogy, unlike the cigars.

Today I went into Chelmsford to visit my agency. Sadly I don't qualify for the three weeks paid holiday during the refit, so I'm being reassigned. Since I managed to turn up on time to The Waterfront for a month, they sent me for an interview at a firm looking for reliable temps. It was a pretty cool job, assembling cooler covers for British Aerospace equipment, involving mostly nut'n'bolting or screwing pieces together. The distinctive green colour gave away the contractee's identity rather easily, but unlike most of their part I suspect it was for a portable satellite phone battery or something more aggressive of that ilk, because of the strapping that would be attatched last. Whatever, it would be more interesting what with some bits of soldering to be done and the technical drawings to be read.

They didn't show any obvious unhappiness with me, while I managed to mention my future engineering studies and my spankingly good DT A*, so if they can't find anyone to work for longer then I might be taken on for the 6 weeks until I leave, which mean I was sorted. It seemed quite a relaxed place, with most of the assemblers (at benches resembling a quality DT lab with seats) about my age. They also had music playing, which helps pass the time nicely. The downside would be having to be there at 8am, like Jimmy was doing. Alas, poor late nights - I knew them well.

Between going to Bell and getting phoned with the interview time ("as soon as you can drive there") I went shopping. You may have thought I couldn't need anything more, so you'd be spared any more dull pictures of my acquisitions.


Un-pwetty deck-shoes for canoeing & a patriotic non-hacky sack

Nobody expects my Spanish Acquisitions!

Another Lexcie Tea-Party

Quote of the moment:
Sir,
Three days ago, in an office on Marylebone Road, I swore an oath and became a British citizen. Where can I go to complain about all the foreigners who come here taking our jobs?

- The Times letters page.

I have a camp countdown that I couldn't be arsed to work out how to remove the year from. Go me. Go me in 6 weeks and 14 hours, in fact.

I went into work today and was only there for about 2 and a half hours, clearing out the kitchen completely - all the stacks of crockery, then all the ovens, shelves, coolers and worktops into the event hall. The scheduled refit, which there was supposed to be an all-staff meeting about tomorrow night, has been moved forward to be immediate, so the whole place will be closed while the kitchen is completely redone and the rest updated. This means all the staff get time off while being paid out of the insurance money, possibly including me even though I'm an agency worker. That would be awesome: about three weeks of paid holiday!

All the food had to be scrapped because of Food Hygiene standards, but it's mostly fine to eat, having been in cupboards at the time. We stacked it out by the bins and rescued some of it later to take home. During this re-enactment of the looting of Baghdad, I retrieved a tray of eggs, a Harvest Festival style box of assorted fruit'n'veg and a sack of potatoes:


Potato potato potato... with me for scale


Oooh... kinky!

Sarah's still at school doing something dull, but the rest of us went to tea with my grandparents this afternoon. My uncle, aunt and cousin were there too, with their new family car. They must be planning on more kids, judging by their massive Chelsea Tractor:


Hasta La Vista, asshole!

It comes complete with a very fine personalised numberplate:


Lexcie & Sarah O'Gorman

I took loads of pictures again, including this rare one with both sets of eyes open:


Guess what Terrance, I farted!

Tori then took control of the camera:


Pull my finger, Philip!

Finally, a very cute video of Lexcie at her gurgling best.

Fire In The Disco... Fire In The Taco Bell

Quote of the moment:
"EVERYBODY OUT!" - Chef.

There was a fire at work today! Around 6.40pm something inside the central dividing partition in the kitchen apparently exploded (although not with a great bang) and smoke started billowing through the building. Everyone had to go stand in the carpark, customers and staff. We also had to be ticked off on the staff list. At first I thought it was just the pizza oven again, because it smokes if the wood isn't dry enough. Obviously not.

Two fire engines turned up right after the list was finished and another a minute later. Ten minutes later another one came with a huge extending ladder on top, which was totally superfluous, and after another fifteen minutes yet another one arrived! Five fire-engines for one measly burning stove, out of a total of seven in Chelmsford, I think. At least, that's how many doors there are on the fire station!

After we'd sat in the carpark for about an hour and the customers had gone home (eventually including the pair who brought out their glasses, wine and icebucket) we had to go back into the event hall to clear out the decorations from the 'Back to School' disco which was supposed to be on tonight, along with all the cutlery and crockery which would need cleaning. Ditto both restaurant floors, then the waiting staff disappeared home and the kitchen staff had to clear out every bit of exposed food or ingredients from the kitchen and bin it. There was so much that the sauce was slick on the yard floor and Zulu licked my boots clean when I got home.

Since the fire had exposed and melted holes in the water pipes, the sinks were unusable. The restaurants are shut tomorrow and only the wedding buffet in the evening is still on, since it doesn't require cooking, but I'm going to be in for the daytime shift as scheduled, cleaning up all the pots, pans, tubs and tools from today. What fun! The senior chefs are doing the buffet and dividing the juniors between scrubbing the walls and acting as porters for the day. Some of them actually volunteered to help wash up the stuff which the food will have dried on overnight. Suckers. Sunday's hopefully a day off while they replace the entire wood-and-tile partition with a steel panelled one.

In other news, my flight details arrived from Camp America today:

From: London Heathrow
To: Newark International, New Jersey.
19th June
Virgin Atlantic Flight # 1
Check in 13.00
Depart 16.00

SIX WEEKS TO GO! HELL YEAH!

The GameCube Guide To The Galaxy

Quote of the moment:
"So long and thanks for all the fish" - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

Today I went into work, only to discover that due to some sort of cock-up the 4 people scheduled to work today were joined by the 2 new agency workers who both started this week and had been told they would work Sunday by the agency. I pointed out the two man surplus to the Chef and he asked if I wanted the day off. Given that I've worked 9 days out of the last 10, I said yes!

I took advantage of this gifted day off to go to Will T's with Jim, play some Cube and then head to the cinema. There was also some Fifa 2004, after which Jim posed with the vibrating joystick on his lap. I did have my camera but forgot to bring it home with me. Supper was provided, as ever, by the excellent Thorne Restaurant Ltd and was super, thanks for asking. It was followed by some real, non-electronic football in the garden, with Thorne Bros United winning on the penalty shoot-out after the match ended suddenly with Edward getting put to bed when he screamed too much at my retaliation to his grass throwing. Oops. In addition to that overexuberance, when discussing Mission Impossible at supper and how it had spawned xXx etc, I said "I bet there were a lot of porn versions of THAT film". Cue silence and stifled grins, enter tumbleweed stage left.

On the way to the cinema, with me in the back and Will T beside him, Jim was getting a bit overexcited and was wiggling down the road. He then started turning a slight bend and I told him to put both hands on the wheel. As he turned around to reply (the fool) the wheel slipped somewhat and we swerved towards the verge, then away and around in a long skid (starting at 40mph plus) that ended with the car sideways across the road. It was pretty cool, although I didn't feel that way until I'd finished staring at the hedge getting closer through the back window.

The Hitchhiker's Guide was pretty cool, although Jim's chief impression seemed to be how hot Zooey Deschanel is. Strange name. Anyway, as with Lord of the Rings I saw the film(s) before reading the book, so I was spared the disappointment of "Oh, they left that out/changed that/made that up", although it was at least a Douglas Adams script/screenplay.

On the way out we picked up some posters for The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, for which we saw a very promising trailer. There was also one for Kingdom of Heaven, but according to Will T:

"its far to curtailed, with litle back story development and nary a training montage in site" (sic)

I laughed partly at the bad spelling but mostly at the idea of a Ridley Scott medieval training montage, as per A Knight's Tale.

After that we went back, gamed some more and Jim and I had a sit-ups contest. No prizes for guessing who was the tortoise and who was the hare, but I did keep going for two minutes to his one and, probably from the competitive edge, managed 34 situps in the first minute and a new PB of 60 in 2 minutes. Hurrah!

I Killed Kenny

Quotes of the moment:
Marge: This is the worst thing you've ever done.
Homer: You say that so often that it lost its meaning.

Homer: You don't like your job, you don't strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.

Homer (sung to the Flintstones song): Simpson! Homer Simpson! He's the greatest guy in history. From the, Town of Springfield! He's about to hit a chestnut tree!

Bart: I am through with working. Working is for chumps.
Homer: Son, I'm proud of you! I was twice your age when I figured that out.

- Yes, I found a Simpsons quote site. Hurrah!

While reaching under a metal bench to get some dirty pans, I pressed my arm against the lip of the bench-top. Unfortunately the bench-top was touching the flash-pan cooker top next to it and was thus rather hot:



D'oh! The picture's a bit out of focus, but it's blistered up nicely. Silly me.

The honour of being the official 'Crazy Russian' has been seized by a new arrival called Zoltan. He's actually a chef, not a porter, and is built entirely of muscle. Last night, on his first shift here, he challenged everyone he met to an arm wrestling match. It was fortunate that I dodged out, because he was consequently renamed Arnold for slamming down fast enough to cause bruised knuckles.. Tonight he decided that he would make me his 'special friend' by bringing all sorts of lovely presents to me, i.e. every single crap-covered item he could find. To add to his Crazy Russian aura he has killer-blue Mr Blonde eyes. He would be scary if he wasn't wearing a daft chef's uniform.

Lastly, I have had a Money Spider living in my laptop keyboard:



I was going to name him Arnold, but perhaps Kenny would have been more appropriate. Oh my God...

Mmmmm... PIE

Quote of the moment:
"In species where females are harlots, males also have enormous testicles." - Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice To All Creation, coming to Channel 4 on Monday, meaning I miss it. Damnation.

Today's fun and games involved the car having a flat battery. It was duly jump started so that I could drive to work but died away again such that, while able to turn on the lights and play the radio, I couldn't get the engine started. I thus had to call out my parents with the jump leads, at 2am.

At work I decided to use the unclaimed wankwalk-o-meter that I found on Wednesday to measure my exertions. While at work I apparently walked 3400 steps, which in the kitchen probably translates to about 2000m. Hurrah!

There was a surplus of chocolate tart (PIE!) such that we had two whole ones between the 4 porters. I ended up bringing home 4 slices for the family, because otherwise I'd have been forced to eat them all:



That would have been purely to stop them being wasted, obviously.

My Fair Donkey

Quote of the moment:
"It is the on!" - New Weebl and Bob: Joust 2. It's AWESOME! :D

I forgot to mention last night that I saw a couple of foxes on the way home, which was quite cool, and one in the same place tonight. Their road crossing skills were rather better than the terrier which was running about in the middle of the A131 in rush hour, having escaped from a car in a layby. I swerved around it and didn't hear a crunch or see anything in the mirrors but I reckon it must have got flattened.

I also omitted to mention the previous night's post-blog activities, which involved wight training while watching Lady and the Tramp. Having tried it with Beauty and the Beast, I have discovered that Disney films are the ideal length, the songs help with the rhythm of the reps and I still know all the words. Go me!

Obviously, given the opening paragraph, I ended up having to go into work. It was even slower than last night, so I had my earliest finish yet at 11.30pm. Nonetheless, it interrupted my gaming plans again! Arse fez! I work Wednesdays as well, so no gaming night until Thursday. Damn, damn, damn, damn...

Blessed is the Beret

Quote of the moment:
"Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the earth."

I rolled out of bed around 2pm and hit the gaming after lunch, intending to waste my day off as lazily as possible. Unfortunately at 4.25pm I got a phonecall from Bell saying that they needed me at work to fill in for their other agency guy there, starting at 5pm. Bums. At 6pm a new guy turned up who was apparently his proper replacement, so there were 4 porters for a slow night and I got paid for very little exertion. Hurrah! Hopefully I can persuade Bell that I don't need to go in tomorrow, as they asked me to, since I do actually quite fancy being a slob for a day. I'm obviously not slobbish any other time.

I've just re-cropped a photo for a Faceparty profile so that it'd have the right dimensions:



Alas, my cheeks are rather more chubby now. At least the hair difference is covered by the beret!

Eating For The Whole Hive

Quote of the moment:
Will:

How rude! You should have shared your gum with him intraoscularly :p

Rob:

...

[googles]

ok, this time even google doesn't know what you are talking about. The best it could do was: intraocular, meaning, injected into the eyeball. Now maybe that was what you meant, I really, really don't know.

Will:

I made it up, obviously... it seemed right at the time! Having looked it up:

Osculum is the Latin for kiss, thus the straightforward meaning would be 'between kisses'. However, since the root of osculum is 'os, oris' (as in oriface), the more poetic translation would be 'between mouths while kissing'.

Damn, it feels good to be a geekster.

- Comments on Anna's latest effort. Proof that I could be a Latin teacher, any day (with the assistance of Google). I love the idea of injections into the eyeball though.



How to die like a man ME, by Maddox.

Spent over an hour today 'sweeping' the back yard of the restaurant. I did actually sweep for a while, but mainly I was out there because otherwise I would be inside doing nothing and attracting attention to the fact that four people aren't needed to man the sinks just for Sunday lunch. The Russians just stand around doing nothing until they see/hear the Chef approaching, then launch into a hive of activity re-cleaning the stuff they cleaned last time he went through!

RIP John Mills, best known to me as the star of my favourite black-and-white film, Ice-Cold In Alex In other film news, Kingdom of Heaven has been criticised by Islamic fundamentalists, obviously, since it depicts heroic crusaders, but according to the Muslim Council of Britain its inaccuracy is in the overly generous depiction of the Arab leader Saladin!

Cakes & Crustacean Copulation

Quote of the moment:
"That means Lindsay Lohan (in Mean Girls, when she said that 'the limit does not exist') knows more maths than I do. Ouch, that hurt." - Poor, poor Lexcie.

Tonight at le Waterfront there was a big wedding reception in the event hall, which produced a vast amount of surplus food including some excellent lamb, yellow pepper and courgette kebab stick items, which I removed the nasty, dirty, spiteful courgettessess from and wolfed down. A ridiculous 3 whole platters of them came back, about 60 kebabs (along with an estimated 250 returned sandwiches) so naturally I had about 10. I've stopped my mother from leaving supper out for me to heat up, because I'm getting fat enough already. Hurrah for free food!

The couple had done a Prill on the cake front, going for one big flat, white icing and fruitcake traditonal one, and a kids chocolate one which was much smaller but tiered like a classic wedding cake, festooned with Haribo and a pair of red jelly hearts on top, stuck back-to-back with melted chocolate. There was also a ring of those twisted marshmallows around the edge of the plate. It was so awesome I needed my camera like Paula Radcliffe needed to piss during the London Marathon.

Today's prize for being a crazy Russian went to Bokhar, for fishing two king prawns out of a pan he was cleaning and simulating mid-air prawn sex.

Hell's Kitchen

Quote of the moment:
The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	High
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Extreme
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Extreme
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

Looks like a fairly good peak there, if plotted as a graph. Yes, that is the geekish way my mind works. I rule. When I saw Vince's results I thought "How anomalous!". I then promptly forgot what "That A word meaning a mistake on a graph" was. Thanks Prill. [Looks embarrassed]

Having gone to bed at 7am, I got up around 5pm on Monday and have been awake ever since. It's the Will equivalent of the all-nighter: the all-dayer, getting up at the start of Monday evening and planning to go to bed somewhere near the end of Tuesday night/start of Wednesday morning. Hurrah. I was actually planning to go to bed quite early, but then around 5pm I got a call saying I was needed at work at 6pm, because someone else wouldn't be able to turn up. Hurrah again. More money in the bank, and it was a slow night so I didn't really do that much.

In other news, The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming is just about to start on TV, so I'm off to see in detail what caused my mother's family to yell the above slogan all the way down the routes nationales whenever they went on holiday, and us grandchildren to be led in doing so by our (slighty mad) grandpa whenever he took us anywhere. That's what being a pathologist does to you.