I'll be honest, I'm in a mood right now. I'm not happy at all. I need to unwind. I'll be better when I've unwound. I'm currently listening to a song I helped a friend record only 9 days ago. It seems forever ago. The last week has been so very long. Today has been so very very long.

I could complain about the trivial things like the fact that I asked for my tiles and skirting board to be sealed by my builder, which would solve two problems in one - the water-tightness of floor, and also the fact that I wasn't entirely careful while painting the skirting board, reasoning that the slight white line on the tile would be covered by the sealant. He used clear sealant. The mind would boggle if I could be bothered letting it boggle. It's boggling of its own accord, actually. Such is the day I've had.

Some more thoughts:

Thursday
Spent the day on a training course which was poorly advertised to us as suitable and on which the trainer managed to be remarkably oddly behaved, slightly sexist, and generally woolly without substance enough to justify the time spent on the course. I suggested we gather feedback from the attendees. I suggested delegating that duty to someone... who delegated it right back at me the following day. I'd like to say that I'm happy with having completed the collation of the survey results, but the conclusion I've drawn after about half an hour of such collation is that the survey was poorly compiled and the responses were, for the most part, over enthusiastic, considering how little we actually gained.

Friday
The cycling didn't kill me. I got hom and then went out for food and a film. The food and the film didn't kill me. Perhaps too much ice cream was consumed... but you know, I'd been on my bike. Surely that wouldn't have an effect on my weight (see the fast-forward to Monday for the results).

Saturday
A generally lazy morning, followed by a vaguely coherent running around trying to do things of an afternoon, followed by a late afternoon/early evening up a ladder. The exterior scraping complete, some interior scraping was tried and then abandoned. That's still to do.

Evening was spent sorting through paperwork and discovering how much money I've thrown into this money-pit of a house. I won't reveal the numbers except to say that it pretty much equates, after 9 months, to my entire gross annual salary from when I was in Newcastle. There's about 50% again to spend. Nice!

Sunday
Woke up early enough to potter around the house not doing much of use. Then drove to Southampton and had a nice afternoon, follwed by a bloody awful gig in Brighton. I was fairly awful, the room was fairly awful, the combination, bloody awful. That's now the last 3 gigs which have, to put it simply, stunk. This could be the normal post-Edinburgh lull, the change of season, or just the effects of a day job turning me into a manager and, therefore, a total dicksplash/dick weed.

Today
Woke up early enough to let in the heating engineer, then the kitchen guy, then the builder. Had chats with all. Asked the builder to do things. Some he did. Some he will do.

Then I went to work and spent the day running around between meetings where things were talked about. I didn't do much. I don't get the chance to do much.

Had it not been for a chat with a friend at around 5.30, for an hour or so, I would have had no downtime today. Even lunch, which was a free lunch with my team on the company, which ain't bad, felt more like work - especially with the threat of the next meeting coming up. I finished work at 8.30pm. That's too late. There's a thing called work/life balance, and I haven't struck it.

I also need to be in earlier than usual tomorrow.

That's not good.

In other news, the interview technique we tried today was a winner, the candidate didn't do so well. Such is the benefit of the technique... still cost me nearly an hour of my time in making the interview possible (at least from my side). Other people also lost their time. Bye bye time.

Full of frustration, I foolishly felt I could win on the weight front. Lots of cycling. Lots of fruit. Lots of abstinence. Today more than ever, I've felt miserable and stressed enough to feel like having a splurge on the calories. Stop eating salad and just have something meaty or fried or whatever. I've been good. My weight remains the same as it was last week. At least it hasn't gone up.

I took my Blackberry out of my pocket before the weigh in. It probably doesn't weigh enough to count, but it weighs heavy on me everytime it buzzes away in my pocket. During the writing of this post, it's been buzzing away on the edge of my bed, suggesting that maybe I should find out what's been happening in the office.

I wasn't the only person in the office at 8.30pm, and I was emailing and getting replies from other colleagues. This is probably not healthy for all concerned. It's good that people want to work hard and are prepared to sacrifice their home time for it. It's also not possible to get much good thinking time done if you only ever run yourself ragged.

I need some down time.

Now.

The idea of finishing the exterior house-scraping was abandoned. No daylight available after the time I left the office. Maybe tomorrow, eh?

The idea of doing any work inside the house was abandoned too. Abandon hope, all ye who enter. At least there wasn't a summons from the S. Yorkshire courts dealing with my driving offence. Not yet. It'll come.

I could do some ironing, but I've no energy. I need to just stop my brain for a bit. Some reading, perhaps, and then some sleep.

And I've been losing at my Scrabble games.

I feel like throwing a tantrum. This is not how I want my life to feel. I want things which I'm not getting/going to get right now. I don't want to have things stacking up on top of me in an insurmountable way. Whether you're looking at the house project, or whether you're looking about my interminably full work diary, there's something not giving me room to get things done right now. Perhaps this is Monday syndrome (is there such a thing?) because I felt like life was more manageable over the weekend. I don't know. What I do know is that I'm feeling like a failed dieter/comedian/worker/house-projecter right now and I don't like feeling like a failure. Let's not even start to think about my abortion of a love life.

Rant over?

Nearly.

Can I just say a big hello to everyone who knows me, and could we hear "Could it be magic?" by Take That.

Over and out.