Mortgage free in Forever Home :-)

SandyShores

Vinted sounds good Kajikita, I'm going to give it a try for selling but didn't thinking about buying from there - not sure why not as presumably its the like the 'bay.  I got some lovely pink blouses while I was CSing the other day and I was looking for some colourful trousers or loose jeans but there was nothing in my size.  I'm happy to try doing alterations to CS clothes - I've turned things up and taken them in, but there was nothing.  I was going to try M&S but I think I'll give Vinted a try first.

KajiKita

Utter chaos today ….

Get in for 7.30am to have a tier 1 meeting with my team as we always do on Tuesdays - not one of them turned up and I sat there, on my own, in our area for 40 minutes like a total billy-no-mates! 😂

Go to Tier 2 meeting for one the two production teams and get an unstructured and muddled update on all the quality issues that happened during my week off - leave with a list. As I leave the meeting room get told that my new starter from the US has arrived 30 minutes early. 

Get back upstairs to my desk and discover that my senior quality / certification engineer has been trying to call me since 8am. He’s off sick (D&V) and sounds just awful, but we have an external assessor coming to site to do an audit on one of our explosive (so critical) certifications. I hare down to reception, collect assessor, take him to meeting room, explain circumstances to him and he says he really needs to do the audit today, can’t rearrange as he’s come over from Brazil and has booked audits all through Europe across two weeks and he’s lost two days of his schedule as he didn’t know we had Easter BHs ….. 😳
Go down to shop floor, find the OPs manager and his team in their usual post meeting huddle (phew!), explain what’s going on, endure the eye rolling and get advised to send him to one of the line ops. 

Line op says please can we wait till 9am as then I can have my break, I go back to reception, collect new starter from US, take him up to the office, show him his desk, suggest to my technician that we try and set up an account in our spare laptop for new starter as due to IT issues I don’t have a laptop for him, eat three mouthfuls of breakfast, go back down to meeting rooms, retrieve assessor, introduce him to line op, check line op is comfortable and then hunt down a swipe card for new starter. 

Get back on phone to senior engineer to see if he’s still functional - he is, just, and he starts searching down required documents. It’s only 9am by now ….

Assessor leaves at c. 10am declaring himself happy with what he’s seen on site and wanting us to follow up with missing documents. Senior engineer goes back to bed. I finish breakfast. 

It kinda went on in this vein for most of the day plus clearing 380+ emails (having cleared c. 200 last week when I was off).

One nice thing: apparently we are all getting an extra £1K bonus (so c.£600 after tax?) as it is recognised that we are all working our tushes off but it’s not yet reflected in profits so that has reduced our bonus for this year. I’m really rather chuffed as I’ve never had a bonus before and now I’m getting two! 😂

Second nice thing: new recruit from US is lovely - it’s very odd recruiting someone purely over Teams! 😳

Third nice thing: did 1:1 with my new technician today - she is happy with how things are going, is very clear about what she likes and how she wants to develop (much easier to work with than someone who is vaguely ‘dunno’) - came away from it feeling very positive.

4th not nice but supportive thing: boss approved my days off I want to go to my uncle’s funeral. We are having a big high profile quality workshop on the site across those days, but my boss understood that I want to prioritise my family. His MiL is dying so he ‘gets it’. Feel relieved. Send apology email to all the bigwigs who will be flying in from all over for the workshop and finish with an upbeat and positive message about how the site is determined to do the workshop and who will be supporting. 

5th constructive thing: Find bizarre, scruffy brown envelope addressed to me on my desk this morning. It’s an old fashioned, hard copy, reference request for the apprentice who got made redundant without notice a while back. See the role he’s applied for is in customer services, smile because I think he’d be great at that and complete the reference. As it was in a pre-paid sae I had to walk out to the post box once I got home to send it. Messaged ex-apprentice to let him know it was done 😊

6th, massive nice thing: £3K hit my account today as my annual transfer from my mum. I will move that out to savings to start earning interest asap! 

That’s the most bedlamic day I have had in a while ……

KK

KajiKita

SandyShores said:

Vinted sounds good Kajikita, I'm going to give it a try for selling but didn't thinking about buying from there - not sure why not as presumably its the like the 'bay.  I got some lovely pink blouses while I was CSing the other day and I was looking for some colourful trousers or loose jeans but there was nothing in my size.  I'm happy to try doing alterations to CS clothes - I've turned things up and taken them in, but there was nothing.  I was going to try M&S but I think I'll give Vinted a try first.

I was pleasantly surprised by V1nted as there appears to be a standard format to what images you take, information given etc. and there are filters so you can focus in on what you are looking for. I had c. 5 possible tops ❤️’d and then revised them before buying two. 

Postage isn’t cheap, but the clothes themselves are so cheap you are saving a lot a anyway. 

KK

KajiKita

£3K swept off to savings! 😊 Officially exceeded my YNAB budget pots requirement and EF level but night save a bit more before starting to hit the OPs hard. I will see what turns up in my pay packet with roses, bonus payments etc. 

Went ‘shopping’ in the office for a birthday card for MiL and Mr KK has made his selection …. 😉

Finished reading HFW’s Leftovers (need to update running total on my signature). Interesting. Think I will read the reverse food planning thread that I stumbled across this evening and start scheming how to make ‘food’ from what’s hanging around on Saturdays before our weekly shop arrives - even that would reduce our wastage and save a little. 

KK

Suffolk_lass

KajiKita said:

£3K swept off to savings! 😊 Officially exceeded my YNAB budget pots requirement and EF level but night save a bit more before starting to hit the OPs hard. I will see what turns up in my pay packet with roses, bonus payments etc. 

Went ‘shopping’ in the office for a birthday card for MiL and Mr KK has made his selection …. 😉

Finished reading HFW’s Leftovers (need to update running total on my signature). Interesting. Think I will read the reverse food planning thread that I stumbled across this evening and start scheming how to make ‘food’ from what’s hanging around on Saturdays before our weekly shop arrives - even that would reduce our wastage and save a little. 

KK

Ooh! I started that, way back when as it is wider than "What are you cooking for dinner tonight". Feeling slightly honoured. Please do join in

KajiKita

Hi @Suffolk_lass - I was trying to be incognito until I had read all of the thread! 

One difficulty I am seeing atm is that that the thread is all very meat based. To be fair we don't waste much of OH's food (maybe a few sandwich fillings) but in general we are far better at 'managing' his food than mine. Probably due to more practice at it - I was an omni eater for 40 odd years before making the switch to vegan!  I need to get better at managing my stuff. Perhaps starting with a week's waste list again might help ..... (Thanks for the nudge!  )

KK

Suffolk_lass

Yes, I don't help there, even my leeks get "buttered" or au gratin with breadcrumbs and cheese. I do make chilli and cottage pie with a direct swap of red lentils for minced beef and everything else is veg based. Easy enough to swap Worcester sauce for the vegan version without anchovies, and most of my curries are vegetable (not guaranteed to be vegan), if too hot for most of our friends! Even flatbreads are just flour and yogurt and non-dairy versions work just as well. 

KajiKita

Suffolk_lass said:

Yes, I don't help there, even my leeks get "buttered" or au gratin with breadcrumbs and cheese. I do make chilli and cottage pie with a direct swap of red lentils for minced beef and everything else is veg based. Easy enough to swap Worcester sauce for the vegan version without anchovies, and most of my curries are vegetable (not guaranteed to be vegan), if too hot for most of our friends! Even flatbreads are just flour and yogurt and non-dairy versions work just as well. 

I've yet to find a vegan 'Worcester sauce' that doesn't have a weird aniseedy after-taste to it. Ugh .... (I don't like to mix savoury with sweet much - chutneys are about my limit.)

I have quite a few batch meals I make and freeze in portions now. I think it's the salady bits and flipping tofu (that i try to eat because it's protein and I need it) that is sooooo hard to use up. I have yet to find a way of preparing tofu that actually makes it edible to me ..... Bake it - it's rubbery. Marinate it - nah, still flavourless.  I am such a failure as a vegan not being able to make tofu edible!   

KK

Baileys_Babe

Henderson's Relish is my go to Worcester sauce alternative as it is suitable for both Coeliacs and vegans.

It's made in Sheffield, in Yorkshire it is easy to buy in most supermarkets. 25 years ago it was harder to source and we were often asked to pick some up for various friends when we saw it.

Tescodealqueen

Baileys_Babe said:

Henderson's Relish is my go to Worcester sauce alternative as it is suitable for both Coeliacs and vegans.

It's made in Sheffield, in Yorkshire it is easy to buy in most supermarkets. 25 years ago it was harder to source and we were often asked to pick some up for various friends when we saw it.

Ashamed to say born and bred in Yorkshire and in my sixties a recent convert to Henderson’s Relish from Worcester sauce when a friend of my sons left some in my kitchen cupboard. Much prefer the flavour it adds to almost anything though I haven’t tried it on Tofu since I can’t stand the texture of Tofu