Mortgage Free - so good they'll do it twice! Wynnvegas aiming for the big house

RosieTiger

Billy - if you add mediator to your list of family achievements I am definitely calling the Pope !!!

The two of you are going far more than the extra mile and that's pretty special.

[Deleted User]

Heya Billy
Sounds like the wedding has had repercussions hope the mediation goes well bless ya!
Bathroom all finished by tomorrow its looking fab so worth the wait!
Bribing Moyra with shopping sounds a plan- would certainly work for me!! :rotfl:
you havent persuaded me to watch the apprentice but I'll take a gander if youre on it!

sarahevie

I love the apprentice:o

OH works with one of the current contenders, which makes it all the more interesting.

My parents self build took four years to get planning permission, it was part of my grandparents farm/garden so officially agricultural land ie. fairly worthless in monetary terms. However, as it had cost them nowt (inherited) it was well worth the battle with the planners.

wynnvegas

Hi RT,

You're ok - I won't be having the impact on your phone bill yet. My mediation efforts fell quite flat in the end. I'll keep at it mind but obstinance seems to be a very strong trait in the pair of them. Whilst I can more clearly understand where my slightly older brother is coming from, the eldest brother probably has a point somewhere as well. They both need to sort themselves out as they're taking entrenched positions for other people which is alienating them from each other. It'll all sort itself out in time but a white chocolate cheesecake - http://i826.photobucket.com/albums/zz190/wynnvegas/9540483a.jpg - wasn't enough to provide a peaceful settlement so I'm all out of ideas!!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Hi TYO,

Grand - off to see if I can spot a picture or two to marvel at! I'll let you know if I ever decide to wander down the road to sort them all out. Common sense tells me there's much better things to be doing with my time but for twelve weeks of the year, it's extremely tempting!

Bribery seems to be the appropriate failsafe. It was a key component of the mortgage free strategy. Moyra got quite into working to an SOA when the prospect of Vegas every year was put on the table. Trouble is, now I have to stick to my part of the bargain - the hardship...

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Hiya Sarah,

I'm all for these positive stories. The glut of successes, even with a sustained battle being required, may be enough to trun Moyra to my way of thinking.

Come on then. Which one does your OH work with? The daft occupational psychologist is particularly repugnant whilst the Irish boy seems to be the least irritating (although I do think the accent gets you away with a lot).

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Morning All,

Interesting times as always but more so in the last couple of days. After my failed mediation between the two elder brothers (and I'm one to talk as I can barely manage being civil to my little brother), I thought work would be a bit of a de-stressor. You'll never in a million years guess what I came into on Monday morning!!

Now that I've set that up, I'll leave it for a wee bit until I get to the story until I've recapped the weekend. First, the good points. Having gotten mildly peeved at Moyra continually hogging the iPad, I had to, as predicted after the iPhone debacle of 2010, pop out to get another one. It's properly ridiculous that, between the two of us, we now have a PC, a laptop, an iPhone each and an iPad each but that's what it takes to create peace in our time!! It's in the process of being jailbroken as it's quite simply the greatest process going. Having recently downloaded another four films that aren't yet out at the UK cinema, I'm a fully fledged convert to the Apple underworld.

We tried out collective hand at decorating the spare room on Saturday. Having masked anything that wasn't moving, the painting of the walls went fairly straightforwardly and we've now re-masked the appropriate bits to do the skirting boards and door frames. We'll re-hang the curtains and get the painting done this week ahead of the new bed arriving a week on Tuesday. I should pick up a set of drawers, an appropriate radio/alarm thingy and a fancy dan photo frame in the next wee while to finish that room off as we're planning to keep it pretty minimalist in nature. We can then start thinking about the next project. I really don't see anything being as much hassle as the project that has just gone.

My brother, sister-in-law (as she is now), niece and nephew came over for dinner on Sunday. The kiddies have so much energy it's scary. I was shattered running about after them (Kayleigh is 4 and Russell is 1.5) but I may have myself to blame as they were amped on three different kinds of sugars within minutes of coming into the house. We should, in retrospect, have taken them to a park to run some of their mania off but I had to cook dinner for everyone (the girls were away at Zumba). I got a decent enough chat with my brother but he's not for moving and is resolute that he's never going back to where we grew up which effectively means cutting off 90% of his family. After some of the comments about the wedding and the bride, I can understand where he's coming from but I hope he doesn't regret his decision. The situation with him and my eldest brother is silly as he made him best man in the hope of him getting a sense of purpose about his life - a hope that failed to materialise - and is now a bit miffed that he didn't really put any effort into what was an important day. I still contend I would have been better at organising nearly every part of the day but his best mate should have been his best man (as it ended up). Maybe it's time to reinvent the duties of the best man and knock off some of the other bits to people who are best suited to whatever is required. For the record, organising stag weekends / weeks etc (particularly if in Vegas) and unofficial wedding videographing are my strong suits!

Anyway, to Monday. We've been having a spate of sickness absences in the last wee while in one of our departments. Naturally, it falls to me to administer that side of things and to try to mitigate the impact on service through replacements, formal processes with the repeat offenders etc. What I came into on Monday was a guy having walked off-site because he needed to get his head together. He had been sleeping in his car for a couple of nights because he is effectively homeless. I thought that he had maybe had a bust-up with a girlfriend or possibly had serious money issues so I gave him a phone to say that I wanted to discuss the situation and help as best I or we (the company) could. It transpires that he ended up effectively sleeping rough because he fell out with a former friend of his, a medium, who has instructed vengeful spirits to haunt his flat. Because of the exorcisty type stuff that has been going on, he's kept moving over the last month but the spirits keep following him to wherever he lives. Having picked my jaw up from the floor, I took his suggestion that he needed to get the church involved and offered to set up a meeting or two to get that going. That was a strange conversation with the local priest, I can tell you. The upshot of it is that I've booked him into a hotel, given him a week off work to get things sorted and he's meeting the priest tonight. If nothing else, it gives me a cracking story to tell at dinner parties but I do hope it gets sorted one way or another as the boy is genuinely concerned with the situation and, whatever else is real (and far be it for me to judge), his fear certainly is. Other than that, I've been busy recruiting again (just out of interviews where I've found a really good guy (and no agency fee which gets me brownie points all round as me finding the person saves us around £3,500)) and planning my trip down to that England next week. I'm down all week but trying to fit in a logical route with the availability of everyone I need to see is trickier than I had planned. I'll get that bottomed out tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Moyra's wee sister is ill again. She has the worst luck with her health and she's undergoing yet more tests to see if they can diagnose a problem. I hope she gets better soon as we've committed to getting her travel insurance for Vegas and it will likely cost a fortune if there's ongoing medical issues that have yet to be diagnosed. No cheapy insurance for her. I don't think it's bad enough to raise any prospect of her not making the trip - although my little sister would probably just be able to shift things about to jet off if it ever came to it!

Hope everyone is having a less "interesting" time than I am at present!

Cheers,

Billy

Froggy-G

Billy, can you hire a crane, I still can't get my jaw to come back up from the floor :eek:
So you are an HR Director/Wedding planner/ Jeremy Kyle impersenator/Exorcist/Chef... Anything else you have not told us??

Your life is not boring, thats for sure!! Good on you for keeping your head straight and helping so many people!

Froggy

wynnvegas

G'day Froggy,

...Painter & Decorator... If I could only find a business card to put it all on, that would be great!

May the power of Christ compel you...,

Billy

ally18

Hi Billy,

Just read your new thread and had to then read your old one as well!

Loved reading every minute, you have a great way with words and seeing your picture now puts a face to your words so to speak.

I will be reading on as I can't wait to find out what happens in the next installment. I hope you do get to vegas with no problems, your new dream house sounds fantastic with your jigsaw in the hall floor and your work colleague problems, wow!

Well done you on achieving your first mf target and getting everything else sorted as well. An inspiration!