Highly Strung

I’ve been watching series 1 and 2 of Mad Men all weekend and now I’m quite a lot in love with Don Draper, despite the fact that he is a complete cad.

This coming Friday is the first payday I will have had since the end of September last year. How I, usually skint by two weeks after payday, have managed to last this long is anyones guess. Miraculously my credit card is only at £200, I do have an overdraft straining at the seams, but all in all it could be worse.

I intend to celebrate my salary not by paying off the overdraft but by something equally as exciting. A decent vacuum cleaner. The one that came with the flat is next to useless, and my interim solution, a crappy dustbuster isn’t much better. There’s probably a load of other household stuff I need to get, but I think they’ll be on hold while I feel free to actually leave the house again. Used to be Id spend at least a tenner every time I left the house, these days though I’m lucky to get by on twenty.

Plus one of my best mates has been abroad for the last month… gahhhh come home!

My living room, looking out from the sofa into my wacky kitchen – its like cooking on a stage, especially as the lights are spotlights (Ikea’s finest obviously).

This is the closest I have to outdoor space at my flat.  I can see myself eating breakfast in that spot in the summer.

I am dis-inclined to leave the office at lunchtime today, given that overnight the west end has become an elaborate ice rink. It’s less slippery in crouch end, but only because new snowfall has restored the crunch instead of the slide.

Having said that I should have at least a short walk, but I reckon the only thing that will get me out of here is the promise of a Pret choc chip muffin. So just out to the corner Pret and back then.

It’s not so much laziness, more fear. The amount of times I’ve nearly stacked it on ice lately is frightening, odds are I’m actually going down one day soon.

Testing Hootsuite

Wow how refreshing to start work with a company who is ready for me.  My email has been set up, my profile on the intranet is done, even my email signature has been done for me.  In all the jobs I have had since starting work in offices (9 in total), this is the first time everything has been ready to go the minute I sat down.  Good work!

Aside from that I’m pretty much left to get on with reading about the company and their processes.

I did venture out into the snow at lunchtime to get some dinner plates from Habitat – half price you know, after realising yesterday that I only have 3 at home…  It only struck me on the way back to the office that its a really dumb day to carry some heavy plates home, given that I may be required to walk from Finsbury Park depending on how much more snow Crouch End has since this morning.

I was without power at my flat from 8pm last night until some time overnight (which I noticed when I woke up with the lights blazing).  Several important things for me to note when the power fails:

• I have no battery operated timepieces in my home.  This is an issue when your phone is running out of battery – I solved this issue by asking a friend to phone me this morning and by setting an alarm on my ipod nano – who knew that existed?

• When wondering who to call about the lack of power (its not your supplier, its an energy company, in my case EDF), lack of power to your cable modem will hinder your laptop internet search.  Neighbours will prove useless at using google and you will have to resort using your iphone over 3g while the battery is running low.

• Your fancy cordless phone will not work and you will be forced to plug in your trendy but old fashioned dial phone, it will then take ten minutes to dial an 0800 number.

• It’s really hard to find the lighter you put down somewhere after lighting some candles in the living room.  This is a pain when you go to look for it to light candles in the bedroom.

• This amazing bike light makes a fabulous torch which will light even your darkest hour, however you do need to keep it charged….

• Head torches are very useful for reading with.

Today I am mostly getting a haircut and colour which I can’t really afford, bah who needs to eat?? It’s desparately long overdue and I didn’t want to start work looking old and witchlike.

After this I’m off to a local gym which does dance classes. They have a ballet class on wednesday nights which I’m interested in joining. A friend and I have declared this ‘year of the dance’.