Archive for April, 2007

Last night we had four closers rather than the usual week day. A benefit perhaps until you see who the closers actually were. Hence why we clocked out at 3. Fun.

It’s starting to kick a bit now. I drank a litre of Red Bull last night. That can’t be healthy. Only two more days to go though. Then the real work starts :p.

I thought tonight was going to be an early night. Guess I was wrong about that, it’s 5:30, I’m only half an hour away from going to bed the same time as last night.

Back at work again, it was well dead tonight but then we had no staff so it all worked out. By 7:30 we had only one person on who wasn’t part of the fairly small closing team after James Peat decided not to come in (or you know, let us know he wouldn’t be). Afterwards we ended up at Tesco having another rather deep conversation, or at least as deep as they get at The D. Found out some interesting stuff too.

“Push harder,” Sarann begs. George moans.

I am of course describing the actions of George pushing Sarann’s trolley round Tesco.

A day off seems a novelty at the moment though while I’m only working for a slightly extended two weeks it feels like a long time. I spent a good bit of time sleeping even after getting woken up at 9am by HSS and headed over to the A-Soc meeting. Afterwards we went to Pepperann’s for dinner which was cool as I’ve eaten nothing but D meals for like a week.

Once most people had cleared out and we were clearing up we ended up on the subject of food and decided to take a trip to Tesco given I had been planning to make use of the 24 hour opening anyway. So at 3am we hit Tesco Seacroft. They do major restocking on a night at that Tesco (more so than Tesco Garforth which I went to tonight) so it’s a bit of an obsticle course. I walked out with another 4 litres of Red Bull which should keep me going a while given I walked out with two litres a few days before that.

It was one of those evenings where you have really good talks with people. I don’t know whether it was because we haven’t seen each other that much over Easter or whether it was just generally one of those nights but I had some quality discussion with Sarann and George which was ace.

I found a place so safe, not a single tear
The first time in my life and now it’s so clear
Feel calm I belong, I’m so happy here
It’s so strong and now I let myself be sincere
I wouldn’t change a thing about it
This is the best feeling

Why am I still alone? Is it because my 80’s rock legend hair is unappealing to everyone other than myself? Is it because I work at The D? Is it because I’m a New Atheist? Is it because my holier than thou attitude leads me to turn down those that are interested in me? These are all great reasons.

Somehow, it doesn’t seem to make it fair though. Relating back to my earlier post I think it’s rubbing it in that I’m spending my time driving around in a big family car and parking it at my big family house.

Emo rant over. 4th close in a row tonight. I ended up doing dive for the first time in quite a while and while we were fairly dead we didn’t get out until 2:24 due to people not being particularly focused and we only got out then because we decided we were done and clocked out, much to the annoyance of Gary it seemed but there is more to it than that, details which I’m not going ro discuss here but ask me if for some reason you are interested (other than if you work there I can’t see why).

Need to be up at a decent time tomorrow for the final Rationalist Week planning meeting before the week itself. The PA system is still not on its way and it’s suddenly dawned on me I have less than a week to sort out 9 speeches. On top of that Debate Soc may be pulling out of the debate and HSS haven’t called me to sort out the generator. Add to all this my impending coursework deadlines and another marathon line-up of shirts starting after my day off, oh I also need to race over to uni to pick the posters up from Media Services on Friday which is a complete mission with the slip roads closed and I haven’t really spoken to Claire about all the plans because she’s in Japan. You’ve gotta love it.

Why is finding a blank CD so hard?

I wanted to burn a CD so I could play it in my car – all my CD-Rs at home have disappeared though. So I got up and raced down to Sainsbury’s before my shift to grab one. It was closed (it was supposed to be open 11-5, I got there at 4:30). Ben suggested it was because of Easter Sunday though all the Tesco’s were doing regular Sunday hours so I presumed Sainbury’s would be, the info isn’t on their website. Ben said Tesco was closed as well though (Tesco specifically said they would be open so I don’t know what was going on there).

So on my break I raced over to the petrol station at Sainbury’s but they didn’t sell any. So I headed over to Texaco who didn’t sell any either. Then this evening I decided to head over to uni to get one. I found the 24 hour BP on the way and checked there, they didn’t sell any either. So I eventually ended up back at uni where I found one. One! Where have all my CD-R’s gone?

Wow, how can it only be day two?

I started the day by eventually getting up and deciding to head down to Crossgates to buy some stuff I needed. However as I was about to walk out of the door I realised I had totally blanked on my alarm code. It took me 30 minutes to eventually work it out. That is so not normal. I’m worried about what’s happening to my mind.

Turned up to work to find we were a closer down and given I had no kitchen staff it was like 10pm when we filtered and we didn’t get out until going on 2:30. Still not a bad time given our staffing levels. It was really dead for the last hour or two though. After that we headed back to Camelot for the usual general chat and slut jokes at Kayleigh’s expense.

Only 7 more days to go. This time next week I will be free, mu ha ha ha ha ha.

Well, day one of my nine day work marathon is over. This is before my hell week of running Rationalist Week and then just when I should get a chance to sleep I have Wendy (which is of course unmissable) and will no doubt be at work the day after. Then I have another hell week with all the coursework deadlines. Finish that with another weekend at work and I can finally sleep as it will be the revision period so no lectures, no commitments for a week. I’m counting down the days. I plan to sleep right through April 30th. Only 24 days to go!

Working on more short term goals however, only 7 more closes to go. Tonight’s close went quite well, we had kitchen done for 12:50 due to some serious (and literal I should add) running around and the whole thing was sorted about 15 minutes later. We were clocked out before 1:30. Still disappointing though, I was hoping to have everything complete for 1. Still, it was a bank holiday so time and a half until midnight suited me quite well. It’s actually a decent page rate when you do that with the numbers. Bit of a con though in that they calculate our time and a half before adding on our post-midnight bonus rather than adding the bonus on and making it all time and a half. That’s corporations for you though. Anyway, sleep time.

After feeling ill on Wednesday night I went to bed at 10 and got a decent night’s sleep in though I did have to get up at 6:30 for work. Work itself was alright, I saw the “day shift” for the first time since Chrismukka which will likely be the only time between now and summer that I will see them unless their is a company social or whatever.

Then in the evening I headed back to town to meet Michelle and Rosie before we headed down to Bourbon to meet Phil and eventually Sarann (who turned up about an hour and a half late). It was cool to actually talk to Rosie given she has been up for a week and the only time I’ve seen her is for like an hour in Walkabout on Saturday. You can tell she is Michelle’s sister (or at least from Jersey) in the fact that she thought my job was really cool because I get to wear a hat.

Now I’m back home once again and due at work. I’m quite liking home at the moment though, my parents went on holiday yesterday and my sister doesn’t get back until today so for the night I had the house to myself which I enjoy, it seems somewhat removed from the pressures of uni. While coursework and Rationalist Week are still playing on my mind hear, I do at least have cable TV to attempt to drown it out with.

Am I stressed?

I’ve been taking a battering from insomnia recently. When I’m at uni I normally get to sleep fast enough but it’s taking me hours. When I’m at home on the close at work I’m usually so tired by the time I get home that I just fall straight to sleep as soon as a lie down. But even then I’m struggling to drift off.

I’m even struggling to fall back to sleep when my alarm goes off on a morning and I reset it for an hour later which I can normally do for an entire day.

It’s not normal for me. Sure I have those nights when I just can’t sleep but most of the time I don’t have a problem, I certainly don’t go through prolonged periods of insomnia yet I seem to have been unable to sleep for about two weeks now. It’s going to kill me if it keeps up, I have coursework to do, not to mention work and A-Soc and all the things I never got time to do during term time.

We topped ourselves last night with the 3rd Rationalist Week planning meeting lasting 3 hours 20 minutes which is 20 minutes longer than normal. That involved some quality debate and discussion as well as planning though. Things are finally coming together, we now have the plan pretty much set out, though to be on schedule we should have by now. I guess that means we are pretty much on schedule though that would seem weird as everything students ever do is done at the last minute.

I’ve already had a busy today – after grabbing breakfast with Norm I went down to Maplins to buy some electronic gear, went to the bank, came back to place some orders, went to speak to Kay in the union, went to the cash office and I’ve been down to media services to get the posters printed. Oh I also went down to the office to get my deliveries as well, the megaphone has arrived.

I maintain that some kind of deity is watching over the events and trying to smite us though. As I shall explain.

Ordering the PA system
Last Thursday night / Friday morning I started an electronic fund transfer to move the money I needed to buy the PA system onto my credit card. I takes 4 working days given it was after 4pm on Thursday which resulted in it going into my account today.

So after 5 days of waiting I logged on at midnight last night to see if it had been sorted. It took an hour or so but eventually went through and the money was on my account! This was after the payment had appeared in my account but my balance had not updated at which point I phoned Egg to find out what was going on and was assured my balance would update soon (which it did).

I went through the shopping cart and came across a notice saying they could only deliver to the card holder’s address. My Egg card is my one thing I have registered to my uni address! And I can’t get it delivered to uni as the office closes tomorrow which is when it would be delivered so there would be nobody to sign for it (even if I could get them to contact me, I would be at work) which is why I spoke to my parents and asked them to sign for it when I got it sent home.

This had screwed me over, I needed to get it sent home so I would get it in any decent amount of time. Plan B was to use my other credit card registered at home – but the credit limit on that one isn’t high enough for me to make the purchase.

Plan C, use my debit card, but I couldn’t do that as I didn’t have enough money in my overdraft. Why you may ask? Because I transfered the money over to my Egg card to pay for it. Plan D was to split the items, max out my HSBC credit card and put the rest on my debit card as I had enough in each account to do it so that if I balanced it right I would still get free shipping on both orders.

Except they don’t accept Maestro debit cards.

So Plan E I ordered the first half on my credit card last night, then this morning I went down to the bank, drew money out of my overdraft and paid it onto my Lloyds TSB debit card which is a Visa and I did it in person so that it would go on my account straight away (at 10am because unlike every over weekday, they open at 10am instead of 9am) and then went home and ordered the second half of my order using the money I had just put onto my Visa debit card.

Then finally today I came to move the money back from my credit card to my bank account that I no longer needed on my credit card and found no option to do it. Neither Egg nor HSBC’s online banking allow me to make transfers that way. Maybe they are not configured right or haven’t been setup to do that but I can do it the other way.

So now I’m left with a credit card with loads of money on and an overdraft that is almost maxed out with a massive credit card bill from my other credit card heading it’s way. Perfect.