(no subject)

[godricgal]

So the rt_challenge ficathon is over. It felt a little strange last night not to spend the evening writing desperately, trying to mould together a half decent piece. I have to say though that the month has succeeded in stirring the creative portion of my brain (which has been a latent force since I gave up English Lang in school)far more effectively than my half hearted writing efforts over on FFN. Perhaps I will finish the epic Regency period romance (that I started at the tender age of 15) yet! The best thing about the ficathon though, has been meeting lots of like-minded people and getting to know them through the exchange of comments or by taking a peek at their journals. It's much more satisfying than the ffn format and it makes a change to recieve fully rounded comments, rather than just 'Thats great write more!' which are nice, but don't do much for you when you want to try to improve your writing.

I am once again having a headache with my email client. Caused by a known bug in Outlook, I have an email that addressed to 15 shareholders currently lost somewhere between my drafts folder and my outbox. It's causing an error with each send and recieve and I know how to fix the problem. The killer of it is that if I fix the problem the email will likely be sent and I have already resent it to all these people, I cannot have it going out again. So I'm thinking that this maybe the perfect time to fire my desktop as my email client machine and move it onto my laptop, which would mean that I no-longer have to use the dreaded Outlook Web Mail when I go into the office. It's a big step though because my working system is finely tuned on my desktop and I would have to alter the way I work considerably. Oh, I don't know what to do! I also means buying another backup software licence and rigging up an ex HDD to collate and store backups from both machines. I want to employ and IT guy *stomps feet*.

I have shifted my viewpoint of the (hopefully impending) resignation of Charles Clarke. Over two hundred of these criminals have been released since the problem first came to his attention last year. He's making a big song and dance about how over 200 police officers are working around the clock to find all 1000 odd offenders; how much is that costing the tax payer? Yep, Charles Clark should go. Followed by Patricia Hewitt (how can you claim to be improving an already stretched system by firing a whole bunch of front line workers?), John Precsott, because I don't trust him and Tessa Jowell because she should never have got away with her finance debacle. And then, because he has supported all these idiotic liars and cheats, Tony Blair should go too. After of course, he has introduced compulsory turn out to the polls and called a general election. Wishful thinking, huh? A girl can dream.

My mother's best friend always used to joke that when my parents moved from the house they'd lived in partically since marriage, all the rooms would be a couple of inches smaller, owing to frequency with which my mother redecorates.  All she ever did was slap another coat of the same colour emulsion over the walls and ceilings but she did it with alarming regularity. As a child it would not be unusual to come home to be greeted by the unmistakable aroma of fresh paint and to find the living room in dissaray, furniture covered in dust sheets and pulled out from the walls and a white speckled mother sheepishly brandishing her paint brush. She used to decorate the bathroom monthly, or so it seems to me. 

Since then she has inevitably aged some what and is now on the wrong side of 55 and has broken her collar bone twice, making the painting motion rather uncomfortable for her. Apparently though, she has experienced a resurgence of the redecorating bug. It started about 6 weeks ago when she finally decided to re-decorate her bedroom. This was fine because it used to be my room and was still decorated to my taste. That room is downstairs and we swapped when, a couple of years ago, she managed to fall down the stairs sleep-walking and break her collar bone for the second time as well as her little finger, which has never repaired properly. So she started the redecoration process by picking new furniture, and a new carpet.  Then of course she had to paint the walls and ceiling, then she decided to strip the paint on the doors of the fitted cupboards and repaint them. Then she decided that it was finally time to have all the solid oak doors that hang in all the doorways leading from the main entrance hall, stripped and rehung. Then she decided that she couldn't have 'new' doors in the hallway and not redecorate that. I managed to convince her just to repaint the wood work but she put masking tape all around the edges of the dado rail and it stripped the wall paint when she removed it - cue full recoration. 

When the new carpet came for her bedroom, she decided that she liked it so much that she just had to have it in the dining room and conservatory. Fine. 

So for the last six weeks I have spoken to her twice a day as usual, had the 'redecoration update' swiftly followed by moans of how exhausted she is. Yesterday I recieved the report that she had finally finished the hallway and her bedroom and I breathed a sigh of relief. Imagine my shock today when I rang up to recieve the news that she is redecorating the dining room because 'you can have new carpet with grubby walls'. Sigh. Thankfully there are only two walls that need painting in that room, the rest is original brick work and no wood work but I wish she'd give herself a break, or at least wait until I can get down there to help her. 

The only room then that won't have been redecorated within two years will be my bedroom upstairs. She says she's going to leave it until the autumn, but I just know her. I'm thinking about sending her away for the week and going home to do it myself, so that she can't get tempted. Then she can go and pick a carpet and be done with it!