August 2015

I forgot to post again! I actually remembered on the weekend but then later forgot. But it's only the 2nd, it's not too late! The great thing about having a decent smartphone now is I can post from the bus! And what a bus ride it has been. I got on outside work only to find it was one of those horrible broken down old buses with serious issues. It was making a loud high pitched noise constantly, the drive tried turning the off and on a few times but it didn't help. Then the bus stopped and wouldn't go again so we were told to get off and wait at the next stop for the next bus. Then our bus started again and drove past us! So I reached the next bus stop with the rest of the stranded passengers and we all got back on. A few blocks later we stopped again, and had to get out again, and wait for another bus to come get us. And now we are finally on our way, and the later bus just drive past us. Should have just stayed at work longer today!

So that is the life of a commuter. I've been very busy this month, with work and life. My usually non-existent social life has reared its head and my weekends are getting quite busy, but at least I'll have plenty to write about for the next couple of posts. For this one though I think I'll just keep you all in the dark and see how a few things pan out before giving a complete life update. I think it's enough that I'm coming down south for a couple of days and bringing N with me. Should be fun despite the awful weather forecast! I have a dogsitter lined up and I got through a really crazy half week at work with my sanity intact, now I deserve a four-day weekend!

July 2015

So, four days late. Did anyone notice? I have my excuses - work has been super busy, life outside of work has been busy, lots happened over the weekend, the weather sucks and I've been feeling ill. Time for bed nice and early soon, see if that helps (though it's unlikely to help with the bad weather). You know what's worse than having to hang all the washing inside to dry? When you then go and spill juice on the nearly dry washing and have to go wash it all over again!

So what as been happening to keep me so busy you ask? Well it seems sort of hard to remember July right now, I'm pretty tired. Let's see, I'll work backwards from last week ... I have started job hunting again, but this time with the knowledge that when my contract ends there'll almost certainly be another one waiting for me. Yet I'll job hunt anyway, because maybe an opportunity to take a step up will come along. Plus Nathan started a new job and I can't have him catching up to me in the wage department - I do have a PhD after all. At work things have been busy because the meetings that I was hired to coordinate all happened in the first three weeks. So last week was nice and quiet but the three before that were hectic, with longer days than I usually work, long hours spent setting up meeting rooms, packing down meeting rooms, guarding the catering (and then helping eat it at least) and running around on all sorts of silly errands. I'm glad it's all over. Now I have to try and get all of our assessment panel members paid, but we're having issues with our financial processes so it's slow going. And when the decisions are made about what research is going to be funded, my job will be to help get the contracts all arranged. So that will be new for me, hopefully it will be interesting.

Outside of work I have been struggling to keep up with my tutoring, with the long days I have been working. We have been doing somewhat lazy lessons, making and colouring in our own periodic table. Now back to physics, but my being a biologist leaves me at a bit of a loss to answer all her questions. We did take a weekend trip to the observatory though, that was pretty cool. Got to look through the big telescope - I have to say, Saturn was not what I expected. I guess I expected to see something that looked a bit more like the pictures you can see on the internet, but then they are probably from fancy orbiting telescopes or something. Through your usual telescope Saturn looks like a tiny stamp or cutout, of a planet with a ring around it glowing white on a black background. So a bit underwhelming.

And despite a heavy workload this month I have actually had a bit of a social life. Nathan's new job means more nights home, even on the weekend, so I made him go ice skating with me at the temporary rink they put up on the waterfront in winter here. It was fun but a small rink and so crowded, even at 9 pm. Full of kids with those frames to push on the ice so they don't fall down - they definitely shouldn't offer those, how can anyone skate while trying to avoid a traffic jam of plastic frames supporting children? This rink also had an ice-slide alongside it, that you went down on inflatable rings. It didn't look very high but for me it was still scary and I screamed a bit on the way down. All five times. It was more fun than skating on a crowded rink.

Then to keep the skating theme going, I went rollerskating for a friend's birthday. She saw 'roller disco' and assumed it would be for adults (in Europe they refer to nightclubs as discos so I can understand her confusion). So there the four of us were, at an event definitely aimed at children. There is a roller rink in one of the suburbs that does lessons and fitness classes and stuff, and sometimes opens up on a Friday night for a 'disco', for just a gold coin donation. It turns out it's not just roller skates either, there were roller blades and kids on scooters, and even one small child on a little bike. Roller blades are clearly the most popular so there were none of those in our sizes, we had to choose roller skates. Which none of us had used before. It is sort of the same, but entirely different way of balancing, and turning and stopping. So in an hour of roller skating, I knocked two children over. Luckily neither cried, but the first had a scooter and I landed on it - the handle jabbed me right in the belly and it hurt! There's even a little bruise. After an hour we were definitely ready to leave, and the few other grown ups on the rink turned out to work there, and be the MCs and DJ, who started to get the kids to try and focus on playing games like freezing when the music stopped. It was difficult both because it is hard to stop, and most of the kids weren't much interested in the game. We definitely had to leave before another started.

So it's my bedtime now, I guess I'll have to regale you with stories about the dog another time. See you all soon I reckon.

June 2015

Well let's see, what did June have to offer? Well to begin with it was really bloody cold and rainy. Which was definitely reflected by our power bill. It seems like ages ago that I went down to Invers but I guess it's really just over a couple of weeks ago. Things have just been busy enough to fill in about twice that much time. Mostly it's work that's keeping me busy. I applied for another job too, also at MBIE. Waiting to hear. My current job has been focussed on coordinating the science panel meetings, where they will assess all the proposals that have been submitted for research funding. Everything is very much under control thanks to my super-spreadsheet, and I'm sure the next few weeks will run smoothly and everything will go fine. I'm looking forward to meeting all of the people that I have been emailing over the last two months, and trying out all the delicious food I've ordered for them.

At work we had a couple of dramas to keep us busy last week. And that's aside from all the bad press we're getting about spending too much money on signs and screens and other building-related things. Plus there were a couple of meetings last week (pre-meeting meetings, where we discuss how we're going to run the meetings (and before that we had pre-pre-meeting meetings, that's government for you)), where I inadvertently became the messenger that got shot - repeatedly. I ran the meeting because I am one of the coordinators, so it is up to us to make sure all the managers understand how everything has been coordinated, so that all their meetings run in the exact same way. Only my colleague wasn't there to back me up because she was on damage-control for one of the dramas I mentioned, and our manager was needed in another meeting, and our overall manager doesn't really keep up with the day-to-day running of things, and dashed off to somewhere else halfway through. Now on the second day that would have been fine, because the managers were nice ones. But on the first day there were about 10 people, one of them that could aptly be described as a bit of a snarling dragon, and they were all questioning and demanding and saying 'but we always do it like...' which is all well and good, but thanks to high staff turnover there is no set processes and none of us coordinators have done this before. So the dragon-like manager is not one to be argued with, so I nodded and smiled and apologised and made notes and said 'I'll see what we can do'. Then I let my colleague know, and our manager, and left them to go back to her and say no, we aren't doing that. She also pretty much called my team admin staff, which we actually are not. We do much more than admin.

So you see how work leaves me pretty much completely worn out. I leave at 4 though, which is nice. It's still daylight when I get home so I can walk the dog down to the dogpark. After work I sometimes have more work to do, because I have to prepare my tutoring lessons. Which is hard without my laptop, using a tablet just isn't the same. But these last few weeks we've been doing chemistry and the periodic table, and making our own poster sized version, so that's been fun. It's school holidays next week too so I should try think of something fun for us to do. If I can arrange it we might go to the observatory, I've never been to one. That would be a very nerdy Saturday night! This weekend might also be a nerdy Saturday night, I don't think I can handle being in town at all with the huge amount of people that will be around because of the rugby, I might just stay home and be boring. But speaking of the rugby, you might have seen some of the people waiting in line all night here in Welly for tickets? Well have a look at this new clip and you'll see a familiar face (and wearing a hat I knitted no less, shame it wasn't blue and yellow though): http://bcove.me/icgh1y7s. I feel he still owes me one after I gave up my lesson prep time to drive him to town, then had to go all the way back again because he forgot his sleeping bag!

So did anything else happen in June? Well, the oven broke and I've been without for two whole weeks! It's been hard, especially with some pretty cold weather about a week or so ago (it's nice now though). What's worse is that I had been planning in doing a big roast dinner the weekend that it broke! Luckily I have a big stockpot so I braised my lamb shoulder instead and it turned out really well! It didn't warm the house up like the oven would have though. The new one arrives tomorrow. So that's probably all my news. Oh, and on the crochet front - my bus time has been taken up with Pride and Prejudice this last while but I will get bootie-making after that. I might not make it back to Invercargill again as soon as I hoped, I am at work when the grabaseat offers pop up so I always miss them. I'll be there eventually though. Here's a picture of Cher to finish with (she turned three in June):

May 2015

So what has happened in May? Well the big thing is I started my new job. My title is Investment Coordinator and I am very busy. It's good though. It's also good to know I will have a good pay cheque coming in until October. And I know when I stop to thin about it that's only 4 months away but this work will put me a good position for finding a permanent role afterwards. Plus I will meet a lot of people in various science areas over the next few months so that should come in handy too.

In the meanwhile I am still an employee of the museum and today I had a shift there. It is so hard to find spare time nowadays so I only work at the museum on a public holiday, and only for 4 hours. But today was pretty dull, compared to my normal day at work, and it's not like a really need the money. For once I am actually being paid for the public holidays that I don't work so I don't need to be able to make that day up with a second job. So I might just let that one go. If I end up between jobs again I would rather temp again for awhile.

Work has been keeping me that busy that I don't really have much other news. A lot of my spare time goes into planning my lessons for my tutoring. We have been doing basic physics and now doing basic chemistry. We watch youtube videos and are making our own periodic table. The commute to and from work every day gives me time to crochet - I have been working and working and working on a baby present and it is finally nearly finished. I can't wait, hopefully it will be finished tomorrow and I can finally work on something else again, and read books too. I try to find time for sewing too but there's not usually any time left after finding time to walk the dog and eat and shower and stuff. I did make a new dress this weekend though.

I'm looking forward to coming down to Invers in two weeks. Hopefully it will be a nice relaxing weekend. And not full of shitty weather. It's been a bit rough here but it's still a lot warmer most the time than down south. And the floods didn't really hit central Wellington so we weren't bothered by all that. I did get to leave work early though.

And that's all for May really. I can't think of any funny Cher stories ... oh wait I do have a story. It's a car story, not a dog story. So the car wouldn't start one night, not at all, and it wouldn't start in the morning either. Problems with it in general at the moment - sometimes it revs up and down when it's stopped at the lights. Sometimes it stalls when it's stopped at the lights. And sometime it accelerates itself when in first gear. But all hope is not lost - the battery was probably the reason for the stalling so that should get better. The battery guy tested it before changing it and said he was amazed it had got us this far, it was way below the point where they normally recommend buying a new one. And all in all it cost less that $100 to get sorted. As for the other issues - CRC on the accelerator cable usually takes care of the accelerating problem and hopefully the revving issue turns out to be simple too. Maybe it will pass its next warrant after all! Because buying a new car is not really an ideal situation right now.

Right, now I really have to go and do my lesson for the week and make some dinner.

April 2015

Today I remembered that it is blog posting time without it even being written down somewhere! Lately I don't generally remember stuff if I don't write it down, it's all this full time work, between that and walking the dog and finding time to eat, there's not much room left. I've started being extra organised in the evenings so that I can get to work by 8, because leaving at half 4 is much more convenient than 5 and getting stuck on a bus in traffic. So I have been working at the MBIE since March 17, so over a month. Next pay day is next week and I will finally be clear of my overdraft. And unlike last time, I will stay out of overdraft because I have been offered a fix-term contract until October. Then when October comes around, hopefully there will be more work to step into. And hopefully a slight pay-rise will come along with this new contract - I will be moving from an hourly rate to a salary, so we'll see how it works out.

I'm still working at the museum as well, I go in for a short shift about once a month. So far I have managed to go in for the stat holidays to make it even more worth my while. It's nice to see friends and catch up with what's going on there, but at the same time it's rough to work a six day week. So on top of that, I'm also tutoring once a week, I'm not sure if I've mentioned that. I arranged it last year and started this year after school started. I'm tutoring a 13 year old girl who lives just up the road, she's not in high school yet but is super into physics, so we are going through the IGCSE curriculum for physics and chemistry. That's sort of like NCEA level 1, it's what they do in high-school in the UK. So it's a bit of prep work, probably an hour or two a week, but the lesson itself is fun, it's nice to hang out with a kid again. She's very smart, a little hyperactive, and we end each lesson with fun science-y youtube videos.

So life has been very busy, I don't have much time for hobbies. Getting the dog walked is mostly OK even though the days are getting shorter, except when it rains torrentially. I bought some waterproof pants but it's new hiking boots that will cost an arm and a leg. She's a pretty happy dog though, even if we get saturated. At the moment she's' completely spoiled because she has me home at night and Nathan home most of the day. But she was very confused last night, because after a bedroom re-arrange her chair wouldn't fit in anywhere, so we have taken it away. She still has a bed, but she kept getting up and going to the corner where her chair used to be, and looking confused and sad! She's spoilt anyway, she shouldn't even be allowed to sleep in the bedroom, she was only doing that because I had crappy crazy random people living here - now it's a nice normal household so I need to try transition her back to sleeping in the lounge.

It's getting late and I really need an early night, so it's time to go make some lunch for tomorrow. Funny Cher story for the day - funniest thing she has done lately was, one morning after I went to work Nathan let her into the bedroom, where she proceeded to jump straight onto the bed and puked on his chest! I wish I had been there to see it.

So that's that, time to go be productive and then get to bed!

March 2015

I can't believe it is the end of March already. So much for having a great permanent job offer within a couple of months! But it's not all bad, I'm back at the Ministry of Education doing the same job as last year, which I enjoy so it's a good place to be for awhile. I would like to stay there if I could. Right now I am showing my worth by being the unofficial acting coordinator of my team and the process, because our actual coordinator has had to go away and be with her sick mother. Which is awful but a good chance for me to show that I'm up to a bit more responsibility. As for other jobs, I am still applying for permanent jobs. And remember that job at Statistics New Zealand that was a big deal a month or so ago? Well, a month after my interview, I finally got word from them. I didn't get the job but they wanted to keep me in the loop for the next round of recruitment, which was happening right then. So I was going to apply for that role anyway, but instead I was asked to just go straight to the psychometric testing stage and that they wanted me to come back for another chat and check my references. So that was really good news and when I finally got feedback it turns out the testing went really well. But I say finally because once again they were really rubbish at staying in touch and keeping me in the loop. Two weeks after I had done the testing I finally got fed up and starting trying to get hold of the person that had called me last time. When I finally got through to him he chased up the issue for me - because it was a different group of people in charge of the second round of recruitment. And no, after all of that they were going to stick with the group they had interviewed and not invite me for a second one. So all that stress for nothing. But the thing is, if I had sent in my application despite already being invited to do testing and stuff, would I have got an interview?

Anyway, that's it for now on the job front. They will be recruiting again soon and I will apply but truth is, I wasn't impressed with their communication so don't really want to. I will because I have to. At least I know I have full time work until July, and going back to the same job is actually a good thing, because it shows they wanted me back.

So this month's post is mostly negative and complainy I'm afraid. The next thing to go on about is my car. It's been playing up for awhile, but this week it has taken it to a new level. It dying a slow painful death would be bad enough, but what's worse is that it's quite intermittent. I never know what to expect. Sometimes it's fine. But when you turn it on it revs quite highly at first. Then other times it revs really low. Then sometimes, every time you slow down the engine just dies, as if you have stalled. What's worse is sometimes when it dies, the steering wheel freezes up, which is really not ideal when you're in the middle of the city, halfway through trying to turn onto the busy one-way system. Then just when you're really frustrated and feel like you're flogging a dead horse, it starts to behave itself again! On the Saturday just been it got really bad, then an hour later we went for another drive and it was mostly fine and it's been OK since then. But that's not all! Sometimes it has the opposite problem, and instead of low revs leading to it dying, the high revs increase to the point where it's practically driving itself! The first time it happened I was pretty freaked but Dad told me how to find the accelerator cable and spray it with CRC to stop it sticking. So second time it happened I did that again, but I don't know how long that fix will last. So I guess my first few pay checks will be going into buying a new car, because at this point there's not much point trying to fix the old one. Time for a fresh start.

To top it all off, I had to put up with a sick dog for a week. I'm not sure what started it, but then her food was exacerbating it, so now I have to get her a new bag of food, and it's not even on sale.

The only good point is that it's a short week this week. A bummer that I get paid less, but I'm looking forward to the weekend.

February 2015

OK so my scheduled post is two days late but I think I can be forgiven that on account of it was the weekend so I didn't check my diary and also it was a short month so the end of it came around sooner than usual ... Anyway how about I just get on to filling you in about my month? I left you last time with high expectations that the big deal job interview I had would come to something. Well, that was a month ago now that I had that interview, I had to jump through so many hoops, with stressing out over a presentation, being prepared for an interview and then doing a written test. And you know what? I have never actually heard from them! How rude. And now the same organisation is advertising for more statistical analysts! In different groups this time I assume but you think they would contact all the previous applicants before re-advertising. So I will apply because it's still what I want to do but I'm not impressed with their HR department. I will call before starting the next application, get the final word on my last interview and ask for feedback.

Of course I have been applying for other jobs in the meantime, and I nearly got an interview for another analyst role - I was longlisted but didn't make the shortlist. My temp work at the Ministry of Education has finally run out and this week I am just taking it easy and working at the museum, to give my eyes a break from all that computer work. Then in two weeks time I'm starting full time work at the Ministry of Business, same job I did this time last year. So it's secure and pays decently, I can probably stay there till July again like last year. Yet it's a casual contract so I can keep looking for permanent work while I'm there. Hopefully something will happen and there will be no gap between jobs. There is actually a permanent role going there too, one I applied for last year, but my friend there got instead. She has moved on to a different position so that role is open again, but after seeing how overworked she was there is no way I'm applying for that!

With work stuff going a little way forward at least, I can pay my bills without worrying anymore, and I am nearly out of overdraft. I would have been out already but I had to buy some flights ... It is so expensive to fly to Invercargill, even if you are booking three months in advance! So $240 later, I have flights booked down for Friday June 12th to early morning the following Monday. I'm sure it will be OK to take a day off work. Just as I was writing that I suddenly panicked and thought I had booked the wrong weekend! But I didn't, so it's all good. Now I have three months to get to work on the project that I have in mind.

So thinking back over the past month I have just remembered one funny story to tell, then I should probably go get my day started. So we were driving to the outlet store that is just out of town, and we got stuck in a traffic jam on the motorway. It was gridlocked and crawling along like a snail on account of an accident ahead, which required three lanes to merge into one lane. We crept along and crept along, and finally came to the big truck that was directing traffic to merge and the police cars on either side of the accident site. As we came closer we could see something on the road between the police cars but it sure didn't look like bits of a smashed up vehicle. It looked liquidy and brown, and as we got closer, we saw that yes this patch of road was indeed liquidy, and brown, and also full of fish ... So my guess is somehow a car accident caused a truck to lose some of it's nasty load of fish, and they cleared away anything else but now three lanes of traffic were forced to merge into one because it was too hard to wash away some fish goop? Seems a bit ridiculous. And my car speakers were all screwed up (they're not now, Daniel got sick of it and replaced them!) so we didn't even have good tunes to listen to while stuck in the traffic jam! We finally got past it and continued on our way, and the first then I had to do when we arrived was find the loo. While I was in the bathroom I could hear a child screaming and throwing a huge patty, and when I came out of the cubicle I found a crowd of ladies around a closed door, trying to encourage the child to try again. What did she have to try? Opening the door of course, the girl and locked it and couldn't open it. So I went into the next cubicle, climbed up on the toilet, clambered over the partition and rescued the poor thing. And the lock wasn't stuck at all, she had just panicked and wasn't turning it right. I hope I didn't break anything during my climb, neither the toilets or the partition seemed very strong. And so after a long journey I then saved the day for a distraught little girl, and proceeded to go shopping and treat myself to discounted outlet things that maybe I don't need but I wanted anyway.

And here is Cher: