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.