Pause.

The shoulder injury I've previously talked about is still bothering me. It's getting better, but very slowly. That's already impacted my goal of returning to yoga. What I will try and do until the shoulder clears up is stick with core exercises and couple that with some outdoors walking.

Once the shoulder clears up, then get into light weights and my yoga, plus keep up the core and possibly walking as well.

I'm finding it hard to get motivated though. There are still some other issues on my mind, mainly work stuff, so by the time I get home after work, I'm mentally exhausted.

Happy talk.

I visited KfW2 last night. Rather, when she heard that I was blowing off another social engagement, she asked me to visit. So, I arrived, with alcohol in hand as she was bathing and putting the kids to bed. I got roped into helping and ended up soaking wet and tired after nearly an hour of playing with three infants.

With the kids out of the way and KfW2's husband off at a work event, we spent a very enjoyable evening chatting, drinking and eating.

When we have time and privacy, as we did last night, or when we're in the pub, I feel our conversations have much more value - we tend to get into the more personal stuff quicker and avoid small talk and last night was no exception. These conversations are completely different to those we have on a day to day basis in work, for example.

We made some tentative plans for Christmas and shortly into the New Year, covered some family stuff and it was just a really pleasant night. It was something I needed and, importantly, I think it was something that KfW2 needed as well.

If KfW2 hadn't had an early social event today, it felt like we (or I) could have talked until sunrise, so I kinda feel that the night ended too early.

That has led to a bit of a funk, but it's hardly unexpected. When I have these nights with KfW2 (or GM or CH in the past) where we end up getting into a heart to heart conversation, it always reminds me how lonely I am and how infrequent these conversations are. With the Christmas period looming, when I always tend to feel lonely, I've no doubt that's had an influence as well.

So near and yet so far.

I've often mentioned, or possibly complained, about how small the place is where I live. Co-incidences that seem to astound my friends who live elsewhere are part and parcel of my day. When it comes to six degrees of separation, where I live, that's drastically reduced down to possibly two, three tops.

CB and RB are two prime examples of this, as is S's recent but now ex-girlfriend (see this post). So, it's really not surprising when, for example, someone who's interested me on any of the online dating sites or apps pops up on my Facebook feed.

In a roundabout way, it was one of the girls I messaged about four weeks ago. She never messaged back, sadly.

It can be frustrating to have someone share mutual friends - CB is a prime example - and yet not really be able to leverage that.

Something-a-like.

Over the years, when chatting to people, especially those online, it's always difficult to describe people. I tend to try and use famous people - celebrities, sports personalities etc. to generally describe those I've interacted with.

Over the past two weeks I've seen people in pictures who, vaguely, resemble people mentioned on this blog.

TV presenter, Helen Skelton, reminds me of RB.

And I recently saw a picture of American film and TV actress, Alison Brie, where she really reminded me of CH. It was a screengrab, actually, from something called "How to be Single". I can't find the screengrab in question, so have a different picture of the lovely Ms. Brie when she doesn't look like CH.

While Helen Skelton does generally resemble RB (if you squint a little), I think, or vice versa, there's no way that CH is an Alison Brie lookalike beyond them both having cracking figures and maybe a similar smile.

Speaking of CH, there's been no word from her in months. The ball was left in her court to get in contact to arrange a coffee date, but apart from playing word games, we've not been in touch.

Looking forward.

Now that the heating's fixed and on, I can finally move forward with other plans. The first is that the house needs cleaned. I've barely touched it in the past six weeks or so because of the decorating. That's pencilled in for this weekend. Over the weekend and into next week, I'll begin to formulate a fitness plan that will include some dietary tweaks, my yoga programme and maybe some light weights on top of that. All stuff I can do at home, hopefully. I've been carrying a shoulder injury for the past few weeks that's slowly getting better. I've no idea what caused it, just that my shoulder was really painful if I was putting on my coat or putting weight on my left arm. With any luck that should have cleared up enough to start on light exercise.

This is the stuff I thought I was going to be able to do around the start of October with a view of starting to see results around now, but the decorating took much longer than expected (mainly due to my mum's health issues that meant my dad could only help out for like an hour at a time before having to return home).

I still have some minor work to do with regards decorating - furnishing the two bedrooms and getting curtains for all three decorated rooms, for example, but these shouldn't take too long to sort. It's just money, though this month has been expensive as all my decorating costs have caught up with me with Christmas just around the corner.

Some good, some bad.

Finally, I have heat in the house!

The bad is that the new part the original heating guy installed is noisy. Really noisy. I'm probably going to have to call him back to reinstall the old part he took off OR the new heating guy says he'll give me one for free, so I'd just have to pay him to install it.

If it's annoying me in a few weeks, I think I'll take that latter option.

Close...

USHW and KfW2 both, seperately, keep asking me about DSC and whether or not I'm going to reply to her. I've no strong feelings either way and the reason I haven't done so already is simply because I have other things to worry about. Even if I do message her again, there's no real desire to actually meet up and socialise.

Last night, after watching Jessica Alba and getting a stirring in the loins, I actually pondered writing a message. I didn't know what to say and five minutes later, was side-tracked by something else.

Ho hum.

Maybe another time.

Keeping the cold at bay.

OK, so it might be a Wednesday night, but I'm sitting here with a beer and a blanket wrapped round me (I've got a different heating guy coming tomorrow for a second opinion) watching Mechanic: Resurrection. Jason Statham movies are always good fun and this one has the lovely Jessica Alba in it as well. In a bikini.

In. A. Bikini.

No news is bad news.

The heating saga continues as the heating engineer seems to think everything is working and the problems are easily solvable by me. This is not the case and I've gone through a couple of potential solutions from the internet to solve the supposed problem - an airlock in the system.

I'm also a bit angry and stressed because of the work thing. I'm getting more and more information to suggest that rewards at work are being given out subjectively rather than objectively. The company promises that the system is objective, but if you step back and look at the system, it can't possibly be.

For example, if one of my goals for the year is "Be kind", how can you possibly measure that? How can I say that I have been kinder than anyone else on my team? How do you challenge that, when the supposed results are secret?

Boss: "Derek was kinder than you, Fred."
Ruuude: "Not from where I'm sitting. Derek did very little in the kindness stakes and kept himself to himself. Here's a list of examples where I can prove I did it."
Boss: "Well, that's the results."
Ruuude: "Show your working out."
Boss: "I can't. It's confidential."

I mean, how are you meant to query that? No matter what logic or evidence you supply, you run up against a brick wall. That's what gotten me angry. I know that other people have received good feedback from managers etc. but nothing better than mine. Yet the impression that I'm getting from my manager is that I will score poorer in comparison yet again this year.

Some good, some bad.

There's good and bad news tonight. Firstly, this is being entered on my desktop. That means that all the work, barring one or two very minor bits, is done. The bad news is that I still don't have any heat in the house. Though the small silver lining there is that it doesn't look like there's anything wrong with the system, it's just a matter of making sure it's not air-locked.

At least, that's what I am led to believe. My heating engineer is calling me back this evening and I'm hoping it's a simple and quick fix.

I really need the heat on, though. I don't particularly feel the cold, but it's starting to have an effect on the house - doors aren't closing properly, for example. It's taking my clothes ages to dry indoors as well.

And, of course, we've had a mild autumn so far. The heat needs to be on before it gets REALLY cold.

The end is still in sight

I was hoping that tonight I'd be able to come home, turn on the heating and unpack a lot of stuff. Part of that would be setting up my desktop PC again and generally setting up my office the way I wanted it. It's the only recently-decorated room that I have all the furniture for, so it's the only room I can complete.

Of course, the heating still isn't working either. The previous issue appears to be fixed, but I'm still not generating hot water or heat through the radiators.

And the room that is to be my office is still unfinished. Again, I feel guilty for feeling angry about it as it's my dad who's doing the work, but it's been in the same unfinished state since Thursday. If I were handy enough to be able to do the work, it would have been done weeks ago, but I'm useless at DIY.

I'm sure I'm slightly over-reacting as I've been awake since 3AM, but it feels like I've been just waiting for the finishing touches for weeks and to arrive back into the house and be unable to do the things I've wanted to do for the past week or so is frustrating.

The end is in sight.

Hopefully the end is in sight with regards to the housing thing. The last room will be finished tomorrow and, with any luck, the heating will be sorted on Monday. That means I can do three things - the first is give the house a good clean. It's not been touched in the past three or four weeks due to the ongoing works. The second is to unpack a lot of things that were put away to do the decorating plus some stuff that's not yet made it out of storage since I moved in and finally, I get back into a routine that includes the fitness stuff that I've had planned for a while.

More than anything else, I'm looking forward to getting heat into the house.

Not quite the end of the road.

The decorating is practically done. There are some bits that are still rough around the edges, literally, but I'll finish them off over the next few days. I only have one room to do - lay a floor, and that should be everything done by the weekend.

Except for one thing... the heating is not working and as we speak, the plumber I've called is bamboozled. He's just left and will return tomorrow, but I have sneaking suspicion that this is going to be an expensive fix which will really eat into my new cooker and new TV budget.

It might not - there's been no mention of cost as yet, but I'm finding it difficult to be positive at the moment after being tired and stressed over the past few weeks with the decorating.

There's also a work thing that's raising its head again - I've been trying to get this resolved for most of this year with no luck so far. I feel like I'm beating my head against the wall... like all the things I'm trying to argue for and against are completely different to what other people are doing.  But they can't or won't tell me what I should be doing.

Sigh.

Sigh. Part 2.

Another sleepless night in a bare, cold bedroom and I was awake at six thirty. Again. That's three days in a row.

My parents arrived on time and we set to work. There was a lot to do, but I had a plan that seemed to fill the time economically with little wasted effort. That's the kind of day that I needed - lots had to be crossed off and couldn't be put off.

My Dad asks what he's to do and I tell him. He disappears. Forty five minutes later, he arrives back in the room with lots of cut wood and proceeds to attach the skirting board to the walls. What I actually asked him to do was paint it so we  could attach it to the walls after all the painting and wallpapering had been done. It completely threw off the rest of the day.

It's this kind of thing that's meant that we won't be finished by the time the carpets are fitted tomorrow, nor will it be done to a particularly good standard, seeing as the past two days have been a rush job.

My sister called at lunchtime with advice about colour schemes. The paint was bought yesterday and half of it was already on the walls. My brother-in-law was due to call in to help me move my bed this evening. He's nowhere to be seen and it's unlikely he's going to call in at this time.

Again, I don't want to sound ungrateful that I've been getting help from my parents, especially the DIY stuff that I can't do or my Dad can do better, but the frustration at the difficulty in getting anyone to do me a favour hasn't gone away since yesterday.

Roll on tomorrow though, when all this is done. Well, apart from the bit where I need to move all my furniture back into its respective rooms.

Sigh.

Part of the reason that I'm still decorating rather than being finished weeks ago a I'd hoped is the fact that I've been relying on help from my Dad and my sister. My Dad for actually helping out with decorating and my sister for advice on colour schemes and all the design-y things.

But it feels likes I have to drag everything out of both of them. I know this might sound a little ungrateful, but when people ask me for a favour, if it's something I can help out with, then I'll do it.

So, rather than help out where I need it, my Dad goes off and does his own thing. I ask him to paint some woodwork and he'll strip wallpaper instead. My plans are then in need of readjustment because I come home from work expecting to be able to do one thing, only to have to do something else.

The same goes with my sister. I ask her for advice and she simply never replies to text messages. I'm capable of making my own decisions, so in reality, I'm only really looking for a sanity check, but it's annoying that her expectations of me are never mirrored in the same circumstances.

Today, I was meant to have a real go at getting a lot of painting done with my Dad. Except my Mum and Dad are away to my sis's for Sunday dinner. I was invited as well, but I've been painting all afternoon.

I feel guilty typing this out, but at the same time I'm on a deadline. Tuesday, in fact.

Secrets.

"So..." whispered KfW2 conspiratorially as she sat beside me earlier.
"So?" I whispered back. "Why are we whispering?"
"I have a personal question. Do you like Ideas Girl?"
"Not in the way that you're thinking. She's a nice girl."
"How come you reacted the way you did on Monday?"
"I genuinely don't know."

For the record, when KfW2 and Stalky Guy were quizzing me on Monday about Ideas Girl, for some reason, I went beetroot red. There was no reason for me to get embarrassed. It's not like I got found out doing something wrong or something I wanted to keep secret.

I sensed that she wanted to talk further about Ideas Girl, but in the middle of work was not the place. We didn't get a chance to talk about it further today, but I'll ask KfW2 if she wants to chat further about it.

Cheeky.

"Did you ever check out any gyms?" asked CC.

The fucking cheek! Going to a gym was her idea. Me accompanying her was her idea, though I did come round somewhat.

I explained that I hadn't and that I wasn't going to consider it until after Christmas as I had other things on my plate... plus once the decorating is done after the weekend, I'm getting back into the yoga and doing some walking.

If that fails to deliver results (and why should it, I lost 10lb in 10 weeks previously doing it) then I'll consider the gym.