I really took advantage of my day off today. Here is just a taste of what I got up to.

I flew to Switzerland for a quick skiing session, I've never skied before so on the beginner downhill run, I missed 5 gates! Commentators were not impressed.

I picked up a garage door key and a spanner, but couldn't figure out what I should do with them so eventually discarded them.

I stopped by a Morgue and stole a watch and dusted some stuff for fingerprints while some American woman annoyed the hell out of me.

I went back in time, to the Middle Ages in fact, and read, and read, and read some more. Got bored of reading so had a sulk before returning to the present day.

I played a game of pinball and got the most abysmal score ever recorded. Ever.

I shot a few bottles and fruit off a table with my rifle.

I put my hamster in it’s ball and watched avidly while it manoeuvred his way off the table. I repeated this at least 10 times.

I walked up the hill to the Museum and had a quick look around but someone had turned off the lights so there wasn’t a lot to see.

I discovered I have a very unusual but desirable medical condition.

I purchased a new pair of Pyjamas for Freddie.

EDIT: Shevchenko is an idiot.

I got the final right in 2002 but went with Germany instead of Brazil. so here are my predictions for WC2006.

My worst nightmare would be a Sweden-Croatia final, or even a Sweden-Croatia knockout match! but thankfully it so won't happen!

I was on the 9:15 bus to Southampton this morning as I am most days. I got off by the courts, as I do most days. I dawdled into the building where I go for training, as I do most days. I climbed the stairs (for exercise sake, I don’t take the lift!) as I do most days. I opened the door to my floor.

It’s empty. Oh goody.

Maddy was just coming out of her office, She said training had been cancelled today due to some fault with the fire alarms or something. Apparently, everyone had been sent home yesterday and the fire stuff was being repaired today (hopefully). I am so happy that no one bothered to tell me. Serves me right for making friends with people who decided to all leave in the last 2 weeks.

Luckily, as I was leaving, my homeward bound bus came up the road so I didn’t have to hang around for an hour. It was the same driver as the bus I’d been on just 10 minutes earlier, He must’ve thought I was very, very strange. (He was too, he had a mustache!)

So I was back home by 10:30. and now have the rest of the day to kill!

While browsing the newsletters waiting for my interview, I came across these "jokes"

Questions are from Lawyers, and answers are by witnesses. All true (apparently)

Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July fifteenth.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.

Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?

Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m..
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.

Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?

Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.

The strange dreams were out again in force last night. This time however, they weren’t something I was too pleased about. My sleep was broken up into small chunks due to my anxiousness of what today was to hold for me.

My mum took me to the interview in our Jeepycar, but in my dreams, I took the bus. Tried to take the bus I should say.

It didn’t show up.

In the next scene of dozing, I was on the bus in a skirt (I don’t even OWN a skirt!) And as I glanced down at myself, realized that I hadn’t shaved my legs and hadn’t done so for a long time by the looks of it!

The finale was not being able to get off the bus. Stupid driver kept saying “I can’t let you off the bus until we reach the next stop!” The next stop was London apparently.

Surprisingly I was quite happy to get up this morning. I didn’t look like an ugly teddy-bear and am 100% sure there isn’t a bus to London from my house that I could mistakenly climb aboard of.

I showered dressed, called Training to tell them I wouldn’t be in today, (They sounded pleased about that, or maybe cos I had an interview? Hard to tell! ). My sister called to give me some last minute good answers to questions. (I’d already spent hours last night doing the “Good answers to questions” task) And suddenly, it was time to go. Bollocks!

What a lovely building! Huge glass reception area, revolving door. How… Intimidating. I signed in, took a seat on some cool-looking red chairs and waited for my doom. There were 3 of us, an older woman called Josephine and a girl about my age called Gemma. The tests weren’t too bad. The only problem was finishing them in the time allowed. The verbal/reading test was just 12 minutes to answer 36 questions while the maths test was 20 minutes to answer 35 questions. As my interview was scheduled at shortish notice, I hadn’t received the pack they’d sent me through the post which included some sample questions. Not Fair! I only managed half of the numeral questions, but I’m pretty sure the others didn’t finish either.

Of course, the interview didn’t go as a standard interview should as I was involved. One of the interviewers had decided to be ill today so I volunteered to wait around until one of the others had finished. I gratefully accepted a glass of water (which went straight into my bladder) and some company newsletters to while away the time with. I was half-way through an article about a member of staff who’d worked there for 27 years, had just taken a huge gulp of water and had my phone out, texting my friend when a man came into the room with the test lady (I never found out her name. How unprofessional of me!) “This is Paul,” she told me. “He is available to Interview you! So you can leave a bit earlier.” Great. I was hoping to be a little more.. poised when I met the interviewer.

I should’ve stood up to shake his hand, but, of course my brain was in blanked out mode so I just sat there and smiled (I remembered to smile!) and said “Hello, nice to meet you.”

Test Lady left, Paul the interviewer sat down opposite me and said. “Actually, my name is Julie.”
“I’m sorry?” Mr Interviewer was definitely a Mr. I’m not that referee-fied. I hope.
“My name is Julian, not Paul” Ah!
“Oh! I thought you said Julie! Hahaha” I should really not talk to people. This wasn’t the best start to my first ever interview!

Luckily Julian managed a small laugh.

OK, so the main interview wasn’t too taxing. As I mentioned earlier, I spent a few hours yesterday thinking of things to say and answers to the bog standard questions that seem to get asked all the time. One of my greatest fears was spilling the beans on EVERYTHING I had to offer them (not a lot) in the first question and not having any material left to answer any of the other questions. I managed to remember the history I had learnt about them, and some of the awards they’d won, so hopefully I sounded like I knew what I was talking about.

Some of the not so good things that happened included my interview personality using the word “stuff” on way too many occasions. Must learn to not know that word while in nice clothes. One of the last questions was: Where do you see yourself going in your career? Was this where I was meant to say how loyal I would be to the company? Or does that make me sound like I lack ambition? Too late now anyway.

He was very impressed with all my certificates, especially the ones from the recent seminars I attended at Training (We had to literally beg for those!) He told me that people don’t usually bring certificates. Was that a mistake on my part or a job-clinching act?

I sound so paranoid!

While I was waiting for my mum to pick me up, I thought about all the things I should’ve said or asked that I forgot to. I didn’t mention eBay or my trip to Sweden. I probably spent too much time explaining about teamwork examples, and my photocopying skills.

People have called me to ask how it went. “When will you know if you’ve got it?” they want to know. I didn’t ask that!

So now I’m home. It’s over. I can relax. And you know what? It wasn't so bad at all! But, I had pizza and double choccy cookies for lunch. I think I deserved that, don’t you?

Wasn’t it a glorious day today?

So glorious in fact, that I got sunburn for the 1st time this year. (I don’t tan. Ever)

The day was also glorious because I met Margaret at the car boot sale this morning. She’d bought a toolbox or something. I bought two books. Whoop. Anyway, Margaret wished me luck with my job interview on Tuesday. She is 128% sure that I’ll get it. She likes living in the glorious fantasy land that few inhabit.

I discovered the glorious new talent of cooking the nicest boiled egg ever tasted. Usually, they’re cooked for me by Mum as my cooking skills aren’t wonderful. Egg gets broken, boiled water ends up on hand, egg contents remain gloriously entombed inside eggshell forever due to inability to cut top off egg successfully.

I had the glorious opportunity to crack transvestite jokes to Blokey all morning as he’d tried on one of my waistcoats and then moaned it was too girly. (He didn’t look glorious at all!)

I am now the proud owner of my first piece of furniture. A glorious cream couch with flowers of blue, purple, yellow and pink which will apparently “go with anything”. I will be painting the walls of my glorious future home orange to prove a point.

Now for the unglorious events of the day…

The day started ungloriously when my mother decided to wake me 5 minutes earlier than planned and then fart-arse around for an hour so could’ve had an extra 45 minutes of glorious sleep.

I spent most of the afternoon shredding (not laminating) mail from 2004 that wasn’t important anymore which I guess is only an unglorious thing for Jenni.

Me and my mum decided to have an unglorious shouting match over nothing at about 19:55 which had been brewing since about 18:03 thanks to my unglorious time-keeping skills. (I made her rush the glorious dinner.)

The most unglorious tragedy came later in the evening when we only came 2nd in the pub quiz (Although thanks to a question about Fred Funk, a few minutes were wasted thinking of alternative words to Funk.)

Some useful information:
The Andreas Johnson song is called Glorious. Not SHE.
An unglorious mistake not made by me.

I found this during my drawer to drawer travels.

When you start snapping coat hangers in two just by pulling out a clean pair of trousers, you know you need to sort it out!

So, yesterday I spent a good two hours with 2 bin-liners, 1 for the charity shop and one for eBay (carefully) pulling out each garment and deciding whether I would wear it again. My wardrobe is in the most awkward place you can imagine so it’s very rare for me to open BOTH doors. Once I’d gone through the first few things, i.e. the things I wear ALL THE TIME! I came across the better stuff. Unfortunately, most of it doesn’t fit anymore (thankyou M&Ms) so into sack 1 or sack 2 it wented. There was also the stuff that still had the tags on that I didn’t even recognise! So into eBay sack that went. Then we came to football shirts. 3 Arsenal shirts, A French shirt (the story of acquiring that is for another day), A Milan shirt, 3 Croatia shirts and some other shirt that looked cool but no idea what it was. I am very glad I never invested in a Barcelona shirt!

Still need to do the drawers of clothes. That’s also for another day.

I am one of those people who a couple of times a year get into the sort-out mood. So today I am currently tidying and sorting everything I own. So far the oddities I have found include:

Half a bag of Liquorice Allsorts (I NEVER forget about hidden sweets!!)
The broken BopIt game that now seems to work fine.
3 CD-Rs which I need to check the contents of.
3 identical train timetables from 2002.
A DIY Popup London book.
The Thongs!
A whole bag of Lollies (YAY!!).
A “Fish are friends, Not food” postcard.
Junk mail from Capital One that allows me to choose my Credit Card design (Because the prettier it is the better?) Hmm.

I also have a forest's worth of paper to be shredded.

I also feel like reading the first page of every book on my shelf to see if I will actually want to read it.

Oh, and don’t even get my started on the games in my cupboard that I have never played… Am I really going to enjoy devoting time to Neverwinter Nights or Mafia?

Last weekend I did what I do every year about this time. Watch (and enjoy) Eurovision.

For some reason my subconscious seems to think there is a country near Iceland called Chloe. They performed a very strange song on Eurovision, have no idea what it was called but I can tell you what it entailed.

Two women were holding and twirling a giant blue piece of material while doing this complicated dance that involved tying the quilt in bows and knots. They were singing about hearts and brains. As the chorus approached, a bright white light shone on another huge piece of material, this time it was red and underneath there must’ve been about 12 people each straining their faces into it. Looked similar to Mount Rushmore! Anyway, one of the faces was different from the others and it was straining harder and broke through the material. He was singing. “I want to assassinate your blanket!”

Needless to say… the water crater dream was scarier

Having pictures of Freddie is like being a drug addict. So much so that I now have a dealer to feed my “habit”. The pics my dealer sends me are not so common. Well, I hadn’t seen them before and I’ve seen a LOT of Freddie pics! As the world cup is drawing near I am hoping I will collect a large supply and post the best ones here for other obsessives to drool over.

Here’s 3 to start off with:

In my next life, I'd like to be either a football or a microwave. Oops. MICROPHONE!

I’m pretty famous for having odd dreams so here I have an opportunity to write them down.

Last night was particularly weird as I woke up about 8ish and thought “Ooh that was a weird dream! I’ll file it away in my head so I can write about it!” I promptly fell back asleep and had a very worrying dream and can’t for the life of me remember the first weird one.

But here is the worrying one. Worrying because it might be a sign of unconscious withdrawal symptoms or something? (I haven’t loaded The Sims for 3 days now!) and also worrying cos it scared me, slightly.

Abby McLee, my first University Sim who has, as far as I know, just 1 playful point decided it would be fun to jump into a deep pool/lake/thing. As she fell, this weird tune played and eventually she landed. Atop Karen Gast, one of the Nannies! Now, most people, and I hope, most Sims would apologise and climb off and move away. Not Abby. She started kissing the Nanny’s back! This is most strange behaviour as Abby has absolutely NO lesbian tendencies. She has had 3 male partners, one of whom ran off with another man the day before their wedding so you’d think she’d be anti-gay or something. Appears not. Nanny Karen was wearing a blue swimming costume so I have to go see now whether she really really does! The scary part was that suddenly the scene changed and Abby was wondering around this beautiful water garden, with fountains and rock pools. She came across this crater shaped pool and decided to jump in. Again. As one does. As she fell, the weird music played again and I woke up with my heart pounding.

Obviously this isn’t as odd as Batigol Disease or the Fiorentina Shower but they’re hard to top!

I ask as I've just been to sign up there so I can leave comments for Sarah and I can't.

But they have a lovely pic of a patchwork quilt. I would love one of those...

I know they have to be distorted.. but that's just... stupid!

How come i didn't know about THIS!

Seems they also have the Goran I McDonalds ad but have to pay to watch! Pants!

No sign of the Red Car and the Blue Car though cos that might just be worth the money.

OK, maybe not but EVERYONE else has one so now I do too!

Of course, this will probably be my only post.

Remember my last "Blog"? It lasted for about six days.. I'm so optimistic! OK. If I don't update you are welcome to come pummel hard on my front door and hold a gun to my head while I type frantically in this box. (Actually it’s a Word document as I don’t trust those boxes for extended typing but that’s beside the point.)

I think this is a good time to start doing this as my life is changing a bit. I am playing the “looking for a job” game and on Wednesday I had my very first (surprise telephone) interview! Talk about scary! It wasn’t the most pleasant way of being introduced to those things and I know for fact that I managed to do quite a few things on the “DO NOT DO THIS AT AN INTERVIEW” list I have. Anyway, for some odd reason, they called back today and I HAVE A REAL INTERVIEW!!! AAARGH!! AAAARGH!! It’s on Tuesday morning so I have the entire bank holiday weekend to worry about it.. YAY!

Everyone I love at training has left now… I’m very lonely! Kat, Carina, Linda, Margaret and now Karen. Karen got a work placement. Margaret got a work placement. Linda got a job. I want one of those! Dave is still there but he is very quiet and just works all day. Mohammad has disappeared off the face of the earth. AGAIN. It’s not as fun as it used to be, especially as they are running out of things for me to do. For example, yesterday I was asked to design a poster so people would know some free book tokens were available. I wasn’t thrilled about that as Jeanne picks holes in my work if it is anything other than superdupergreatstufffab etc… But she liked it so I was pretty lucky there. She wasn’t impressed with my WashClean flyer the other week and has told me I don’t take criticism well. I DO SO! DON’T CRITICIZE MY WORK!!

Anyway. I will try to update this “thingy” every couple of days or as time permits. I’m off to play with the settings/break this now.