Another planned Lockdown;
Another Booster;
Sleep issues; I moved into my new home seven weeks ago.
Money burning a hole in my pocket; Damn Fiat Currency.
Bees threw away a promising position; last-gasp equaliser by Bamford at Elland Road.
Moortown won the Tyrone Intermediate Championship, and won their Quarter-Final in Ulster comfortably.
Tru-D’oh plans the Mark of the Beast in Canada.
Arsenal blowing promising positions.
Ah, well! At least my side of the street’s clean this Christmas.
Tunes:
By the end of the working day, I’ll find out if I got the Shopmobility job in Belfast, or not. In the meantime, I put my name down for possible work at Fibrus in Belfast – who won a multi-million-pound contract to provide Fibre-Optic Broadband across Northern Ireland. It was because a woman from Dunloy, on my Quiz group, is a cousin of one of them employees. 🙂 Strike while the iron’s hot. 🙂
The Saturday-Night Quiz, which I was Quizmaster for, turned out well. They’re impressed by my added dimensions to each round. I was inspired by the Ardboe Quizzes.
Keep trudging along. 🙂
Tunes:
This evening, I weighed myself at Slimming World in Ballinderry. After getting down to below 20 Stone – 280 Pounds – eleven days ago, I put on eight pounds since then. There were a few boxes of biscuits and Chicken Chow Mein deliveries along the way. However, I manned up about the weigh-in, and got a recipe book and ordered stuff for delivery from Sainsbury’s – to make Veggie Chilli Con Carne. I’ll NEVER go Vegan but remain open-minded to Veggie options.
Christmas itself was great. I spent FOUR consecutive days with my neighbour for meals. Then, I bought her Jimmy Choo perfume and a bottle of Australian Sauvignon Blanc to show my appreciation. One of her brothers from Philadelphia flew back to Ireland on Boxing Day and he gave me a Philadelphia Eagles Toque as a gift. I also got, from my Skype buddy from Toronto, a Leafs t-shirt, a George sweatshirt, two pyjama bottoms and a Greatest Hits compilation by the Headstones – Canadian Punk Band from the Nineties. I was landed. 🙂
Twenty years ago, we faced the Millenium Bug. Now, it’s the Millenials who are bugging us. 😀 My Toque proved to be a good-luck charm, as the Eagles secured a playoff berth last night. 🙂
Tunes:
Tomorrow will be Friday the Thirteenth! It will also be the tenth birthday of my cousin’s daughter in Dubai. This Christmas has been pretty busy. However, it keeps my mind occupied. My job, at this moment, is to tie up all the remaining loose ends at home.
A friend of mine from Pomeroy starts a new job today. Good luck to her. Nothing beats experience.
I must remind myself, however, that there are so many dependent on Food Banks this Christmas. Britain has more Food Banks now than branches of McDonald’s. Chilling!
Tunes:
Being an Aspie – taking a ‘Career Break’ (lol) – I feel isolated. Friday was thirty years – to the night – since my father died in the Troubles. I ended up with a case of ‘poor-me-syndrome’ that night. However, I am grateful that I can focus on myself and helping others.
Yesterday evening, the Christmas Lights were switched on in Ardboe. It was full of parents and kids – with ‘Free Food’ (though, not in the Slimming World context, lol), and I felt isolated. In the end, a man I know – who was buying cigarettes from himself at the shop brought me home. I didn’t even get to see Santa, or the lights switched on. Such is life.
Yesterday morning, I was up since 3:45 am and was making chicken for my slow cooker at 5:10 am. The 1978 vintage gave up the ghost; there was smoke coming out of it. In the end, I ordered a new slow cooker online from Argos; at 6:20 am. The delivery arrived this afternoon; at 4:30 pm, and now the bird is stewed. 🙂
This coming Wednesday, there’s a Christmas Shopping Trip in Belfast I’ll attend. I plan to buy a gift for an online friend, and buy lights for my tree; I’ll put up the tree next Sunday. Most of the decorations were purchased on Friday at Home Bargains in Cookstown. I was with my neighbour and her five-year-old granddaughter. She’s a bright little girl, but she turned my brain into spaghetti.
Also, on Friday night, I attended a prayer vigil for the young man from Ballinderry, who’s critically ill in intensive care at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. Not the news one wants to hear at Christmas time.
This morning, the electricity was off. I failed to realise about the furnace switch until I was wondering why the bled radiators weren’t omitting heat. I’m learning as I go along. 🙂
Tunes:
It’s unseasonably mild here, but that means rain. However, it will get cold; leading up to the weekend.
I got a record player, which I ordered last week online at Curry’s PC World. It arrived last Friday. The day before, I bought an LP in Belfast. ‘SAHB Stories’ by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band; from 1976. Played it twice – first time, there were a few scratches. But, last night, scratch-free. 🙂
Christmas is building up well for me. However, Santa needs a repeat prescription.
Tunes:
Thank God ‘Home Alone’ was made in 1990
or else Kevin would be eating the Tide he bought
while his parents’ items were sought
by two incompetent thieves!
Generation Y kept the change
while on the way to Deansgrange
I anticipated the childhood experiences I never had then!
Buses to Belfast, Dublin and Dun Laoghaire
while the rest of the country got lairy
I watched a Christmas Classic!
Now it’s almost 2019
it’s Uber’s time
to get me on my way back
negotiating freezing fog to be home alone!
Source of GIF Dee Kay Kwon
Christmas was quiet but enjoyable. I did get to see Home Alone at Dun Laoghaire Theatre’s Cinema Screen; reminiscing about the ‘Good Old Days’ prior to the Internet and 9/11. I even thought of a sonnet based on a joke I had created saying that if Kevin was a kid today he would eat the Tide that he bought. 🙂
New Year, same old me. 🙂 But I lost weight over the Christmas period. Now that I’m ‘Back to Porridge’, I am tempted to rationalise eating junk again to ‘celebrate’ my weight loss over the Christmas Period. My mind and I belong together. 🙂
This morning – Tuesday, January 08 – I had registered with another recruitment agency. Keep on plodding along. Plus, I applied for what seems like a role too good to be true in Cookstown. If it isn’t what it says on the tin, so be it.
My friend who painted my walls and ceilings did my guttering this morning while I was away in Portadown. That’s another load off my mind. I know that things will work out in 2019 if I ignore all the hullabaloo over ‘Armageddon’ following Brexit, lol.
Tunes: (and more)
I’ll be on my own this Christmas. However, I’m content with that. Though, I may visit my friend from the art class and have a good chat. But isolation is a major issue for me. Solitude is more than a Soccer Ground in North Belfast. 🙂
My job ended on Thursday – 20 December – and, in a surreal manner, I’m mourning the loss of that job more than I mourned the loss of my gran. Though it doesn’t compare to whenever I lost my mum. I did such a stellar effort in the job I feel that whenever I’m onto a winner, some spanner is placed in the works. Such is life.
Tomorrow, I head to Dublin as the Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire is screening the original Home Alone Movie. I have NEVER seen it prior, not even on TV. This is inner child work for me. 🙂
I have come to accept modern Christmases. The family separation, the crass consumerism, the sudden dip in form for Arsenal. 😉 It’s as if life on life terms makes us more philosophical.
Tunes:
I have two job applications that could lead to interviews.
The first one is for a Graphic Designer role with The County Antrim Post at their Portglenone Office. They were looking experience in both Photoshop and InDesign. Over the past couple of weeks I have been using InDesign for the first time to get a feel of it. Hopefully it will work out; I attached a portfolio of work I done on InDesign alongside the Resumé (CV as we call it) in order to prove I’m not BSing them.
The second is for a Dental Practice at Ballymoney as a receptionist. I added a bit more to my cover letter by saying that I could say, “Hello!” in Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian; the three main Eastern European groups living in Northern Ireland. Their selection process is still under review due to the huge numbers applying.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
One track for tonight;
gizzajobblog 