Personal: Not going clubbing

Yesterday, because it was one of my co-workers quarter-of-a-century birthday (yep, she’s 25) we finished work early and went down the pub for a few pints. We had a good laugh and talks – everything from what our boss has got planned for the future (he’s a damn fine businessman with a lotta good ideas!), to what my co-worker (who I’m now going to refer to as MSSC – my sweet shy co-worker as she is!) had planned for last night (a meal out with family) and what my new co-worker (BRCW: bike riding co-worker as that’s how she gets to work) thinks of her new job, to my idea of a new source of power (I didn’t go into too much detail, because if it is feasible, which I doubt actually, it will practically make me a millionaire overnight) etc etc: good laughs all round really.

We went for 1 pint each because MSSC had to catch a lift home at our “normal” finishing time, but we didn’t leave the pub until around 2.5hours later! I already think that I’ve talked with BRCW more than MSSC despite her only working with us for a week now: they are both very sweet and nice, but BRCW’s got a boyfriend (and, co-incidentally, last year worked for around 4 months at my local Jacksons corner-shop along with having worked for Samworth Brothers who I used to work for as well at one point) and MSSC just seems happy to study and I don’t think it helps with us both being sortof shy and quiet.

No, don’t get me wrong, I’m not deliberately saying that I want to go out with either of them (although we all do seem to get on extremely well together and it could just be a case of getting to know each other a ‘little better’), but I’m just not ruling it out. Things between my GESF (green-eyed southern friend) are still going alright, but I think we’ll just be friends over the long term – we get on extremely well, but we’re just too far apart and involved in work and other stuff for things to spark. Story of my life really: Lots of female friends, but I’m single. Oh well, such is life! Saying that, I’ve always got on with women better than blokes (whilst I would class ciaran, Neil and a few other male ODP editors as friends, I’m not able to say that they are ‘proper proper friends’) so perhaps it’s to be expected…

I was actually thinking of going out “on the town” tonight, but (yet again), I’ve failed to do so. Although I woke up at 9am (yep – me, awake, 9am, weekend: unbelievable!) because of nightmares again (I’ve been having really violent nightmares the past few nights which have woken me up by doing things like kicking the bed!) and I got out of bed, I had a few things to do. I had my normal “out of hours” work stuff to do (check the helpdesk, check server status, reply to boss’s email and debug a site), I also had to give the house a quick tidy – ok, ok, I threw out 6 bags of rubbish and cleaned my dirty clothes out of my bedroom, the bathroom and the landing into the laundry basket in the kitchen: taking it from any empty state to an overflowing state in one fell swoop. Oh – I also had to clear down my spam: I had over 1,000 spam messages waiting for me in less than 12 hours: but Mailwasher kept on dying on me every-time I tried to delete more than 150 spams in a batch: hence a very slow deletion processes…

After that, it was make dinner. Only thing in my freezer I fancied and that I thought would be sensible to have if I was going out was a yorkshire pudding with sausages and stuff – it takes an hour to cook from frozen. Warmed the oven up whilst running my bath, stuck the meal in and then had bath and stuff (make note: eating Skips in the bath is a bad idea: if you drop one and it falls in the water, then you throw it towards the toilet and miss – it becomes very stuck to the carpet!), eat dinner and then it just “seemed” too late to go out – 8.30pm. By the time I would have had a shave, hair wash, found some decent clothes – it just wouldn’t be worth going out.

Ho hum, I will go out at least once this year! I just can’t believe that in the tail end of last year I was going out 2 or 3 times a week on a very limited budget, but now I’ve actually got money coming it I haven’t been out a single time!

Whilst on the subject of money, I did a quick “accounts review” today. Along with my mortgage, I’ve got a very small loan from my mortgage company (dating back to when I “brought” the house from my ex-fiancee: the money was to help her settle down in a new place and to help re-compensate her for the money she had put into the house), a slightly larger one from the Bank of Scotland and a whopping large one from my main back – Lloyds TSB. I called them all up (apart from my mortgage company as I had a statement from them last month) to get details of what I owe and what the interest rate or APR of each loan was. According to my scrawled details, the B.O.S. is currently ripping me off at 14.9% APR (but I’ve only got another 5 months of their loan to run), then Lloyds at 13.9% with my mortgage company (whose loan runs out in August) at just 6.9% APR. Needless to say, I’m going to be transferring all the loans to my mortgage company (if I can) and save quite a hefty amount (if I continue to pay out the same amount every month, I can clear ALL the loans within the next 2.5years and have some ‘spare money’). Saying that, I’ve just worked out that if I wait 5 months (for my mortgage company + the BOS loan to come to an end) and then pay that money towards my Lloyds TSB loan, then I’ll get that paid off in 18months… Blarg, I’ll move it all to my mortgage company and juggle it there.