Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)

Sun_Addict

Welcome home. Glad you had a great time. How exciting to have the new house to look forward to 😀

EssexHebridean

Phew - well "walk in condition" for our friends new house definitely only extends to the fact that you can physically walk into it...once the boarding over the front door is removed, anyway! It certainly wouldn't be for us, but it has the ability to be a nice little house I think, and they have great plans for it, all costed out, so great stuff for them! I think we're going to head back round on Saturday for a couple of hours to give them a bit more of a hand with clearing the enormous book-mountain left by the previous owner. Suffice to say that we have already acquired a box-full for ourselves, which they will hold on to until we are moved in to our new place!  Oh - and they have a nest of Swifts in their roof which is rather splendid - we were watching them coming and going and hearing the chicks yesterday evening!

MSE Stuff:
Got an email from M@rcu5 yesterday telling us that their rates are going up again slightly - this is their standard modus operandi - increase the day before a BofE review. we've agreed that we will sit tight for a week and see what other providers do before deciding whether to shift some money that is currently sitting elsewhere into there.
Annoyingly realised this morning that my car is a little lower on fuel than I thought it was - and will probably need at least a top-up tomorrow to get me home. I'll be tight for time this evening too so won't have the luxury of fully economical driving! I may well just put a part-tank in though - I'll have to think through when I'm next expecting to use it.
Also annoyingly MrEH has had to do a third day in London today - meaning we've had to bring two cars in and of course his tube travel on top. Can't be helped - I hope he doesn't end up in again tomorrow though! I'm guessing that I may well see a feeding of the Oyster hit the account later...
Banks checked and all good - the C is now showing a nice shiny zero which I'm delighted about! 

Spendiness:
A small Big River spend yesterday evening as part of MrEH's birthday present - delivery should be on Saturday and I have already shifted the money to cover it from my presents account.

House stuff:
Survey is in fact happening today - not sure of the time. Hopefully the report won't take too long though.
Started writing out the timeline yesterday of when things have happened from offers being accepted so we will have a clear picture down the line of how long everything has taken - no specific reason barring personal interest! 

Other stuff:
Nothing on Ipsos yesterday, I'll look again today and also check OP I think.
Food on plan - the combination of salad leaves and veg with the chicken and tomato pasta salad last night was delicious and thoroughly enjoyed by both of us. There is enough chicken left over to do dinner tomorrow and I will probably be able to salvage enough for "something" else too - perhaps a risotto. If I can end up getting 4 meals from that I will be delighted! In spite of feeling slightly guilty about it stock will not be being made this time - I don't have freezer space for either carcass or resulting stock, and frankly I have a lot going on and making stock is not up there on my list so I'm letting that one go...
 Not absolutely sure what MrEH is eating this evening but he has permission to eat the remaining two eggs, and some other bits, so he shouldn't starve...bet I get back to two untouched eggs and puppy dog eyes over "I just had a bowl of cornflakes" though! Ah well - his lookout if so, he can cook, and has food!  
Voluntary role stuff is still hectic but I think after tomorrow evening/Saturday we'll be able to at least see the wood for the trees - we know from experience that it all coats along a bit, then you have a sudden whoosh and everything is overwhelming, but then it all levels back again and starts feeling a bit more under control so hopefully it will follow that path again!

That's about all I can think of at the moment - hopefully everyone else is experiencing the glorious weather we have here at the moment! 

rtandon27

EssexHebridean said:

...he has permission to eat the remaining two eggs, and some other bits, so he shouldn't starve...bet I get back to two untouched eggs and puppy dog eyes over "I just had a bowl of cornflakes" though! Ah well - his lookout if so, he can cook, and has food!  

Love this description EH - and if it makes you feel any better it's not just MrEH who does this - when I stick 'fend for ourselves' on the meal plan, my OH usually has scrambled eggs on toast and then pitifully tells me that's all he's had all day!  Sometimes he varies this up with a bowl of plain instant ramen noodles.  I usually take a 30 second look in the fridge & stores and suggest at least 2 other nutritionally balanced meals he could have had instead! (all without touching a single ingredient for recipes that are on the meal plan)  As OH now does all the cooking, I'm baffled that he can't figure this out from reading the list on the fridge or seeing a tupperware of leftovers in the fridge and saying 'ah - this with a bit of shredded cheese would make a great toastie!'

savingholmes

EH is a master at meal planning though... You seem very organised.

EssexHebridean

rtandon27 said:

EssexHebridean said:

...he has permission to eat the remaining two eggs, and some other bits, so he shouldn't starve...bet I get back to two untouched eggs and puppy dog eyes over "I just had a bowl of cornflakes" though! Ah well - his lookout if so, he can cook, and has food!  

Love this description EH - and if it makes you feel any better it's not just MrEH who does this - when I stick 'fend for ourselves' on the meal plan, my OH usually has scrambled eggs on toast and then pitifully tells me that's all he's had all day!  Sometimes he varies this up with a bowl of plain instant ramen noodles.  I usually take a 30 second look in the fridge & stores and suggest at least 2 other nutritionally balanced meals he could have had instead! (all without touching a single ingredient for recipes that are on the meal plan)  As OH now does all the cooking, I'm baffled that he can't figure this out from reading the list on the fridge or seeing a tupperware of leftovers in the fridge and saying 'ah - this with a bit of shredded cheese would make a great toastie!'

Oh I SO feel your pain on this. I used to feel guilty - but I refuse now as I do make sure I put things in place but ultimately he's perfectly capable, it just suits him to "not" sometimes - so I refuse to play. Apparently he had a chinese on thursday night in the end as "I forgot to get the things you told me about out of the freezer ahead of time..." oh well, as long as he paid for it himself then (he did!), all good! 

Definitely don't know about a master at meal planning SH - I mean I usually HAVE a plan, but frequently end up going off piste for various reasons! This week has already diverted and we're only on Monday! 

Morning all - hope everyone is well and not struggling too much with the intense mugginess that we certainly have down here. The weekend was lovely though - not though we saw much of it as for various reasons (I'll elaborate a little below) we've spent pretty much al of it behind the laptop sorting out voluntary role stuff. In fairness it was pretty much expected, but the workload was added to by someone else's incompetence which is always annoying.

I had a great time with Claire Thursday night/Friday - the Reds flew a flypast at Waddington on Thursday, then a practise on Friday, which was fun, and Claire and I had a good evening of gossip, wine and takeaway from our favourite kebab shop near her so all good there. I've not had time to do many of the pics yet - but I knew that would be the case, I'll get to them eventually! Takeaway cost came from personal spends, as did the cost of both our breakfasts on Friday morning, and the only other spend was £30 of fuel in  my car - that will leave me with enough in there for a while though. 

MSE Stuff:
Shopping was done in a hasty dash to T's on Saturday afternoon - £37 spent there.
We just put £20 of fuel in MrEH's car in order to keep within my hoped for budget - that *should* get us through the week...
£30 of fuel in my car as above
Interest rate increased on a savings provider so I shuffled my personal pot over to there on Friday. The interest has now landed on the other one so I'll be moving that at some point too! 
Electric readings given to the Octopods on Friday - they inform me that the bill will be £38 which I'm delighted with - credit continues to grow! 
The "business" of the weekend meant that aside from the shopping and the diesel nothing got spent - can't complain about that!
By some miracle MrEH has still not needed to top up his Oyster - I'm pretty sure that will have to happen tonight though as it must be getting hungry by now!

House-Move stuff:
The selling agent is chasing the buyer's solicitors - as far as he knows they had instructed searches though so that sounds OK. 
Mr Boss will be getting the contract pack to them as soon as they make contact.
We are re-doing our fittings and contents form to allow for the possibility that the buyer may be willing to buy the fridge - we're not asking for much for it - just £80 - but it all helps, and we'd far sooner not have to remove it!

General stuff:
Food is under control, albeit the meal plan is evolving as usual! This evening will be chicken and butternut squash risotto, and the rest of the week will feature some salad, probably couscous one day, a bolognese (I may well make that tomorrow as soon as I get in and then eat it a day or so later as that always improves the flavour!) and a thai fish stew/curry. 


I've been enjoying other people's gratitudes on their diaries for a while, and while I don't want to steal the idea I  have been waiting to see if something in the same vein occurs to me for here - so here we go...let's see how this works:
A Good Thing, A Bad Thing, and a Food For Thought Thing.

My Good Thing is having a really frank discussion with MrEH this morning about the way we intend to approach things on the move. I am very much a planner, he is far more inclined to say "Oh well, no point in worrying about that yet as it might all change before things need to happen" - an attitude which I find stressful as I like to know what I'm expecting to happen - if things DO change, then I'm obviously happy to re-plan as needed, but I really need that stability. Also, with so much going on right now, I'm wary that we end up pushing a lot of decision making into a really small space of time when we may not have the headspace to deal with it effectively. We've agreed that where there are things that are unlikely to change, or would only change because we want to change them, we'll discuss, and plan, and the more changeable things we'll leave for now, which seems like a decent compromise.
My Bad Thing: As referred to earlier - the issue we encountered with the voluntary role stuff. We found out purely by chance at around 11pm on Friday that we had not been given a very important piece of information that we should have been working with since January. It impacts on pretty much all the work we have done so far, so it's significant, and would have been caught sooner if the person who should have given us the information had taken out request for her to review a list we sent her several months ago seriously. This lead to a huge amount of extra work on Saturday for us (around 4.5 hours) and a chunk of work for someone else over the weekend too - a staff member who shouldn't even be working weekends! Also lots of chasing around with various people on Saturday morning trying to actually get the list of details we needed so we could work on it. We have sorted it, or at least we hope we have, but we're incredibly unhappy to have been put in that position - and that it impacted others too. Our event organiser is fully aware and will be speaking with the person concerned. 
My Food For Thought Thing: I was listening to a podcast this morning where someone as talking about having lost their sense of who they were due to not being able to do the things that they rely on for mental health, and also that in their own mind defines who they are. It occurred to me that it's a really good point - and how the small things can make a really big difference. Last week I ate well, I did plenty of movement - albeit not as much as I might like and certainly not as varied as I would have preferred, and I socialised a bit too - something I'm awful for shying away from but when I do it, it has a positive effect. As a result though I went into the weekend feeling quite energised and although the high workload was hard - we've both gone to bed feeling utterly exhausted each night - I'm well aware that the "good" building blocks of the week before meant that the negatives were far reduced. 

rtandon27

EH - loving your food for thought item - found myself nodding in agreement whilst reading through it. 

foxgloves

Morning @EH - I do agree with your need to sit down with Mr EH & properly plan. Mr F & I have also had to do this over the weekend to make a decision about something. Luckily, he is as much of a planner as I am & was wanting to sort it out as much as I was. Both of us really dislike being without the necessary information to enable us to produce a coherent plan, especially in stressful or particularly busy times. 
Sounds like you had a good weekend in Lincs. We have sometimes seen the RAs practising their formations over our village & have also seen various vintage planes in the past, as they make their way back to base from this or the other show. Seeing the RAs was part of my childhood really, with Dad having been in the RAF - they were often scheduled to appear at shows where Dad was involved in the musical ceremonials (& so we got in free).
F

Makingabobor2

Your Food for Thought is very true, I can relate to that. Also think it was a good idea having a good frank discussion with Mr EH. I tried to do that the other day with DH, regarding some new money transfers I want to set up now I'm getting my pension and us both having a "personal spends" pot.  I asked him to turn the TV off as we weren't watching it and told him I wanted to speak "finances". He turned TV off, picked up his phone and started scrolling. Then told me he could listen to me at the same time!  Needless to say, I refused to start talking until he'd put his phone down, then he got all huffy. He thinks I should just do these things and not worry about telling him, but as they affect him, I very much think he needs to know what I am suggesting. 

My son worked with the RAs, not as a pilot, but as an engineer....they call them "Blues".  When he first joined the RAF he always said his dream posting would be to work with the Arrows, and he eventually got it. We went to loads of the air show when he was with them.  Trouble is he then got promotion and it all seems to be desk based jobs now, which he isn't so keen on. 

EssexHebridean

Ooh when was your son a Blue MaB? I did a little photo project with them a few years back - as at the time nobody was really photographing the engineers, photogs etc, the pilots just got the entire focus. Now there are always lots of shots shared of the on-the-ground stuff at shows and I know it's generally felt that my little "@CircusAtWork" project helped to drive that interest forwards - I'm quite proud of that!  but yes - promotion equaling desk jobs is always a hazard in the RAF I think - I know a few folk who've felt the effects of that. 

RT - good to see you as always! And Foxgloves - did you guys have the truly horrific downpour on Thursday evening? I'm not sure where it ended up after I went through it but it was just south of Waddington at about 6.30pm - and was awful - I was driving through floods, there were trees down and all sorts! 

starnac

This is interesting EH. You and Mr EH are very like me and Mr S. I like plans and back up plans, while he's a "what will happen will happen" kind of guy. How I haven't bashed him over the head or divorced him by now I'll never know maybe he's my calming influence?

Your food for thought bit struck a chord too. 

I'm sorry to hear about incompetent colleagues. It's frustrating on a normal day but on a big project like this and so last minute!!! I hope they realise the consequences of their inactions!!