Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Mine will be sufficient for activating the compost heap! Just not sure it would scare off any predators 😂

Gosh, it's a good job we're not having many visitors right now, isn't it?? 😮😂😂

Karmacat

It really is, Cheery, that's quite a lot of wee to be around    it's renewable, so go for it 

Cheery_Daff

Gosh, we are having ALL the weather here today!! 😮 Snow this morning, then bright sunshine, and now wild winds and more snow again! 

We've nipped to the cafe for a flapjack lunch, and then to the polling station, a tiny little village hall with a completely unnecessary one way system which I was praised for following 😂

Back to work now though.

themadvix

Cheery_Daff said:

We've nipped to the cafe for a flapjack lunch, and then to the polling station, a tiny little village hall with a completely unnecessary one way system which I was praised for following 😂

And ours needed a one way system and it was entirely lacking!

dawnybabes

My neighbour hates hates hates cats and regularly ‘sprinkles’ round his garden.  Can’t say it’s stopped my cat from wondering over ! 

Cheery_Daff

If I can just divert the conversation from wee for a minute... 😂😂

In SUCH a stress about work this week! I have a deadline for a funding application on Wednesday, trying my best to meet all the requirements, worked out most of it but still got pages and pages left to write 😮

This is stage 2 - after stage 1 the funder wanted the project to (a) last longer, (b) have more impact, and (c) cost less 🙄 We've made it 7 months longer, taken out bits they don't like, reduced my time, changed a load of activities so they cost less but will hopefully do more, and it's STILL coming out as more expensive than before 😮 Struggling to sort it out as 40% of the cost is university overheads, over which I have no control... Might have to make it shorter again, as that's the only way to cut them...

And now I've just found out we need a form from someone else - the sole purpose of which seems to be to confirm that we don't in fact need the form 🤯

Anyway, moan moan moan. Don't need advice, just stressing. Right now I can't see how it'll all get done, at least not without me working all weekend 😥😥🙄

Anyway, have arranged to meet a friend for an experimental run in half an hour so maybe that'll sort me out a bit!

Karmacat

Oh drat!  Sorry to hear about that level of stress, that's horrible to experience.  Experimental run (in a new place?) sounds just the thing.  Keep to the fore a mental image of cat wee pouring over the paperwork when you get frustrated, that could be a goer 

Chiglepig

Huge sympathy, CD, the term 'impact' haunts my dreams - how about we just see where this goes? 'Failure' is still a legitimate result - at least we know what doesn't work. And as for stripping out costs . . . I've just had to remind colleagues that promising cost neutral improvements/extentions to provision because they think that's what management want to hear, is a strategy that will bite us on the bum (genuine academic term ) down the line. And as for centralised top-slicing - ARRRGGHH.

I'm facing having a role I've been nurturing and investing my time in for two years being removed and regraded down to a band 5 role.

Cheery_Daff

Thank you lovely people. Chigle, that sounds rotten 🙄

I've got a meeting about next year's workload this morning 🙄 Theoretically fine, my boss is lovely, but it seems there have been some changes higher up meaning time allocated for particular activities has been more than halved this year... 😮 Of course this means my four day week workload looks remarkably similar to my full time one... 🙄 This doesn't just affect me, of course, and I imagine some compromise will need to be made else there will be a lot of foot stomping down the line... 🙄

Still, I had some good news in that I will be allocated hours for some non-teaching stuff too (I've got it this year, but you have to keep reapplying) so that's good. 

Doesn't change my mind about dropping to four days - I will NOT be working on a Friday whatever happens - but it does mean there will be very little updating of lectures, less time available for meeting students who've missed several lectures in a row and want a personal catch up, less time for getting involved in departmental committees, no volunteering to work open days or clearing hotlines etc... 🙄

Right now I'm feeling so grumpy about it and am planning to keep track of hours worked on those particular activities, and once I've hit their allocated limit, I'll stop. 

Anyway, all this is cementing my desire to (a) climb the ladder a bit as quickly as possible to get away from some of this time consuming stuff that always take longer than they tell you it should take, and (b) retire completely as soon as possible 😂😂

Cheery_Daff

Anyway, speaking of retiring (or at least saving!)...

Refund of tax for old car arrived, so that's £12.50 to the kitchen fund, giving a total of £1195.22.

And I was up £12 on the Happy Wheel this morning, so we're standing at £57 for the month so far. Fingers crossed.

Ooh, and my covid vouchers arrived - I'll activate them now and transfer that over too...