Pondering.

I had half expected to hear from KfW2 this weekend, if not to suggest doing something, then to at least call after her comments from last weekend. But nothing so far. I've been super-busy all day long with family stuff that I think might be mostly sorted, at least for now.

And I need to think about taking some time off work. I have a lot still to take between now and the end of the year.  I usually take a week off around now, but I'm due to move to a new team in work (to report to the tall drunk girl) and I don't want to do that the first week on the job, but I don't really have much choice. I'm also getting some work done to the house imminently that might require taking some time off, and it's entirely possible that it could be the first week of September, the same week I start the new job.

Party on!

I heard a rumour a few days ago that we might actually have a company-wide Christmas party this year. it's been a while since we had one, since before Covid, and even longer since I last turned up to one.

In fact, I think the last one I was at, I left early due to a funk. The one before that, I turned down the tall women (who will be my new boss in a few weeks time), mainly because she was too drunk.

And it's 13 years since the "who knows" incident with CH. A night where I also, if I recall correctly, danced briefly with Quiet Girl after dragging her onto the dance floor.

Our Christmas parties used to be fun. The core team that I used to work with, that included KfW2, started to break up around 2016 which coincides with the parties becoming less fun but before that, we were a close-knit group (thanks to me).

I posted this rumour into a group chat, which includes Quiet Girl and Stalky Guy. QG seemed quite interested in attending if this all turned out to be true. I can't remember the last time I saw QG in anything other than jeans. It could have been that Christmas party in 2013.

I might even go this time, too. Now that I can fit into my old suit, and I actually think I look good in that suit, it'd be nice to have a reason to wear it that wasn't a funeral. I know that KfW2 thinks I look good in it (but then again, she was with me when I bought it, so it had her seal of approval from the start). But I also know that CH loves me in it. She's told me so, but she's also eye fucked me when I was wearing it (and she was sober). And USHW has also shared her appreciation, too.

Zzzz (cont'd)

Yup, I caved and rainchecked again on Nerdy Girl. I can barely keep my eyes open. When I sent the message an hour or so ago, I was actually planning on going to my sisters to try and solve some of the family stuff (paperwork), but I don't think I'm capable even of that.

I'm due to finish work early tomorrow, so I'll go to my sis's then and get that sorted. I need to do more family stuff on Saturday morning and maybe, just maybe that might remove some of the blockers to being able to manage this from home, online. 

Hello there.

In my last post, I mentioned being out with work last night. It was a somewhat impromptu affair, kicked off by the sudden appearance of an American colleague. Well, I say "colleague" but she was a colleague's boss, so I don't really have any direct professional entanglement.

Still... free dinner and drinks is free dinner and drinks.

And it was fun. The American girl was quite nice, and despite the fact she was quite senior in the organisation, she was quite open with information and opinions, which was refreshing.

She also, physically, gave off big QC2 vibes. 

QC2 vibes aside, I liked her. I don't say that about all my foreign co-workers, especially those in senior management. I guess it was her somewhat unguarded conversations that felt honest rather than those who just trot out the company line all the time. That was refreshing in itself.

Zzzz.

I was meant to be meeting Nerdy Girl tonight, having rainchecked from Monday, but I'm tired: partly due to having a few drinks last night, being out for a work thing and waking this morning at 5:30 AM and not being able to get back to sleep.

So I'm not really feeling it for tonight, but I don't really want to postpone on her again.

FFS. (cont'd)

The family stuff continues to be problematic, this time for different reasons and it's frustrating me and angering me because I feel like I've been wasting my time running around, completing paperwork for no reason.

I'll make more effort to resolve this because if it stays the way it currently is, I'll have much more running round to do instead of being to manage some stuff online, saving me time, money and effort. 

FFS.

I took a few hours off work earlier to do some family stuff, with my sister. It was a meeting that we'd requested and it had already been cancelled. 

After an hour, my sister and I prepared to leave. before we left the building, I called the person we were meant to meet. She didn't answer. A co-worker picked up.

We swapped formalities. I stated that I was not happy that I've taken time off work, for that to be wasted, and for a meeting that had already been postponed at the last moment.

She apologised and said her boss would be in touch. 

A few hours later, her boss was in touch.

I re-iterated my points from earlier. 

"It says here that a message was left on Friday." 

"Not to my phone. It's on me pretty much all the time. It could have gone to my sister, though she would have checked her phone even if she didn't pick up the call. Do you know what number was used?" 

"I don't, but I can ask my boss to call you when she's next free? That might be a day or so, though."

"Yes, please." 

I gave my sister this information.

"No-one left me a message."

"Well, someone might phone me back and we'll find out what number they used.

A few hours later, my sister calls me.

"That thing we wanted to happen? Well, it's going to happen."

That's good news, but there's also context.

Something changed mid-May, and as a direct result of that, there was a medical issue. And now, three months later, the thing that had changed is now being put back in place. So we're back where we started, except the medical thing has happened and is having a daily impact. And to say that I am furious is an understatement. 

I know this is vague and might not make sense,  but I wanted to get it out there, to vent a little.

Ring, ring.

A surprise phone call from KfW2 earlier. Unsurprisingly, she was in the car on her way back from the shops, cramming some last-minute chores into time she didn't have because she's off on a family weekend away for her mother-in-law's birthday.

The conversation was cut short because her husband was calling her and she promised to call back.

She didn't, of course. And I wasn't expecting her to: she had to go home, pack, sort our her three manic kids and leave for a 60 mile trip to the Air BnB.

But I sent her a message - Facebook reminded me of a visit to my house from KfW2 about ten years ago with her eldest daughter in tow, and I got a couple of really cute pics. I sent them on to KfW2. she replied quickly.

"I totally forgot to call you back! When are you free next?" 

Free next for what? A phone call? Dinner and drinks? I was getting mixed vibes from the question.

"I'm free anytime"

That's true.  After a busy-ish July, my diary is empty.

How long will it take KfW2 to reply? 

Hey, sweet thing.

I've mentioned before that I've lost weight over the course of the last like 20 months or so. And it was tough, but I managed to overall stick to the plan: portion size, less bread, less cheese, less snacking.

I never quite hit my goal - at my best, I get to within a pound or two (1kg) of my initial target weight - but that can't take away from the overall loss. 

But in the past two weeks I've had a serious craving for something sweet - anything really. Chocolate, ice cream, sweets... and it's not just a little niggle at the back of my head, it's a full-blown "can't think of anything else" for hours at a time.

I can't crumble. The "food noise" in the back of my mind still hasn't gone away despite nearly two years of eating better. It's still more prominent when I'm bored, and it's easy to be bored when you live on your own with limited in-person contact with other people.

Let's hope this craving goes away soon.

Wonderful?

Do you know who randomly popped into my head this afternoon for seemingly no reason? Sports Girl. I don't know why. I'm still her friend on Facebook, though I've not seen her post in ages. Last I heard, she was living in Spain with a guy, as a scuba instructor or something like that - a far cry from her days as an engineer.

Do I miss her? It's difficult to say. She "disappeared" long before she left the country when she started dating GM, and was at least self-aware enough to keep her distance when they split up despite being friends with The Crowd.

I daresay that if I re-read the lengthy conversations I had with USHW about her would bring back some frustrations around her flakiness and going non-contact for no reason. And a different kind of frustration from that two month period where I was trying to bed her. She did look amazing in that Wonder Woman costume though.

Dance the night away

I've booked my tickets for the gig at Xmas, with my favourite band at CB Pub. My sister and brother-in-law are going, too. While no-one else has said anything, I'd be very surprised if there weren't others there - AM, QC1 in all likelihood. I suspect M could show his face if I told him about it.

There's an outside chance that Quiet Girl might show up too if I let her know. She seemed to be quite impressed by the band at the end of June .

Even if no-one else shows up, I'm already looking forward to it. 

Grrr...

Adulting fucking sucks. I'm dealing with more family stuff - financial this time. And it always feels like there's more trouble than it worth. Like I can't just pick up a phone or send an email and get it sorted. There's paper work, applications... stuff that just rears its head for seemingly no reason.

And I think that's bleeding into some stuff that I want to do for me, to the house, and up until now I've been quite excited about getting the work done despite the fact it's going to decimate my savings, but now I'm suddenly anxious about it.

Sigh. 

Bah (cont'd)

Brother-in-law just messaged. He's literally waiting for the bus into town. I've just started cooking tea. Even if I were inclined to join them, I'm probably 2 hours from leaving the house. If he'd messaged an hour ago, I'd have cooked earlier or grabbed something in town.

Why is it so hard for people to communicate? 

Bah.

My brother-in-law sent a message at lunchtime. Did I want to go to the festival? I mentioned it in my last post. It's a music festival across the entire city centre. Facebook has been full of people having fun. But it's not really my thing. At least the music genre isn't really my thing.

I replied back and asked when they were thinking of going, I suggested that I'd probably go, but as it wasn't really my thing, I'd probably not hang around for long. I'd show my face, soak up some of the (supposedly excellent) atmosphere and then head back home once I'd had enough. And I reckon I'd probably not last 90 minutes, but it's the kind of thing that probably worth experiencing, right?

But that was hours ago. 

As I said, I'm not massively bothered about going, but still... I asked a direct question. Are they already there? When he said "later" did he mean this evening rather than the afternoon? I definitely got "afternoon" vibes from the message.

This is typical of my sister and brother-in-law. Communication is woeful. 

Chores.

I was going to cut the grass today - I've not touched it in about a month, and the weather forecast suggested it would be dry. but the weather forecast is wrong. It's been raining all morning, so that's scuppered that plan.

I also had a chore that I wanted to do in the city centre, but there's a massive festival going on, and it's going to be really crowded. I might wait until Monday morning, take some time off work and get it done then. It does need done though, so I can't hang about.

Urgh. FFS.

More poor quality sleep and a dream that felt more like a memory than anything else... purely because a lot of the dream did take place. It involved FBS and I having a slot of sex. And that was pretty much the dream.

In real life, we'd been to the pub, she'd asked me back to hers afterwards, we'd kissed on the sofa which escalated, she asked me to stay, I agreed, we went to bed, fucked, fell asleep and spent most of the next day in bed going through another couple of rounds. Late afternoon, I eventually left to go home, shower and change before heading out to the pub again. 

And that was pretty much the dream, except we were a lot more adventurous in the dream than we had been in real life.

Going back to the real life aspect of my memory/dream, we might have repeated the same feat that second evening, too. There was definitely a weekend where we did just have sex and go to the bar, but whether that's the night of this dream, I can't say. And because it was the middle of Winter - mid-January, I think - I don't think I saw daylight for nearly three days.

So not only am I still exhausted after nearly a week of rotten quality sleep, I'm now uncontrollably horny, too.  

Date for your Diary.

The poor quality sleep continues, as does the remembered dreams. This time, there's a festival in my hometown. I'm out with friends, enjoying the vibe and who sits beside us in the bar? Anna Kendrick. Obviously, I have a huge crush on her, so I'm chatting away, making small talk and it looks like she's actually enjoying herself and our company.

Then this faceless, unidentified, guy comes over and tries to butt into out conversation. I'm annoyed, but AK is trying to be nice, but this isn't working in getting the guy to leave.

And that's kinda the tone for the entire dream. I'm chatting with AK, we move from bar to bar, enjoying the festival, trying to get a feel for what she might say if I ask her on a date and the same, faceless guy keeps appearing to ruin the vibe we have, presumably by trying to get AK on a date. 

The dream ends when I wake up without any resolution. I don't have my date with AK, but neither does the random guy.

Wow.

As part of our work things, we often get in a private casino. We "gamble" using fake money, but it's usually good fun. I've posted before about one of the women who shows up to work at these events - our paths have crossed elsewhere. She's attractive and has a great smile.

Well, there's a piece in yesterday's LA Times about Susanna Hoffs of The Bangles fame, and stone me if the cover photo of the piece doesn't give off huge vibes of the casino girl. 

Dreamy

Two different dreams to report from last night. The first involved travel to Canada, but the details are now vague. I don't think it featured anyone I know or any celebrities nor can I remember any specific scene... just that it involved travel to rural Canada.

I woke up in the middle of the night, so that was it for that particular dream.

The second dream is again quite vague, but it featured some kind of underground community - think Zion in the Matrix films.  Like the first dream, I don't think it featured anyone specific, though some people might have been mashups of people I know. I'm pretty sure one unidentified person was a mashup of KfW2 and CB - I came out of it with a sense of familiarity rather than being able to identify specific people.

But two different dreams and more than a little weird. 

Talky.

KfW2 has been chatty today... at least via text message. That's weird for two reasons: firstly, she's been difficult to contact recently and getting a response from one text message is usually considered a bit of a result. Secondly, she's back at work today after over three weeks off. She gets super-focused when she's at work and doesn't usually reply to messages until after she's clocked off, but I must have gotten half a dozen messages today.

Wind down.

I only left the house to go to the cinema, so it's not like I can claim that I've done hours of chores, but that little thing alone has made me feel like I've accomplished something today.

And that's the last thing, socially, that I have on my radar for the foreseeable future. July was decent: work event, out with AM, out with G, a week off work, dog-sitting and a gig with AM and Quiet Girl (technically June, but it kinda fits this time period to count it as July).

KfW2 was in contact late on Friday night, claiming that she's on a detox, having been drunk for the past three weeks while she was on holiday. So that potentially means that her offer to take me out won't be any time soon, which is disappointing.

Urgh.

I'm feeling really lethargic today, which is not surprising seeing as yesterday was our work's summer party and I wasn't exactly sober. It was a good night, as predicted. There were about 9 in our group with a few people coming and going throughout the evening.

As tends to be the tradition these days, we finished the night in CB Pub, at Quiet Girl's insistence. Not that I put up a fight, mind you.

And an interesting finish to the night where Quiet Girl's friend got a bit tactile in the taxi - not crossing any lines - just tactile. She hasn't said anything, and beyond that first night that I only semi-remember, she's never done anything in our subsequent meetings.

But I am really lacking any kind of motivation today.