Archives for February 2005

Just in case you missed me over the weekend

February 14, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

It was mum’s birthday last Friday so I went over home for the weekend. As I don’t work Fridays I normally go over early afternoon and avoid traffic but this time I picked up my sister in the city after she finished school for the day so we got the after 5pm traffic and it was awful compared to my normal travelling time.

There’s a dual lane to Port Wakefield but after that we were at the mercy of a single lane and incompetent drivers being too scared to overtake the slow vehicle in front. I ended up overtaking three vehicles at once and if someone had been coming the other way suddenly there was no room to move back inbetween the three cars.

If you’re not going to overtake people, leave some bloody room.

I had a lovely weekend after I got over my headache I had all Friday night and put up with because I didn’t know where any painkillers were and I didn’t want to wake anyone up. Saturday lunch time we had a birthday barbeque for mum and then I headed up to my sisters place for the night. A good friend lives next door and another good friend of both of us was visiting so we all sat around and chatted for a long time. Just as well they were there because my sister was hung over from the previous night and my brother in law went to the pub. I guess I would have gone with him had nobody else been around.

Yesterday was an uneventful and non-stressful drive home and an early night with a solid sleep.

Powder blue safari jacket

February 11, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

Any self respecting safari suit wearer will know that a powder blue safari suit is a must have. Imagine my glee when I walked into Goodwill then a couple of days ago and found a powder blue safari jacket with dark blue trim. Unfortunately there were no pants to go with it. It’s a size 12 boys jacket so it’s a little bit big for Jaycee Junior but hopefully he won’t be too embarrassed to wear it when the time comes.

Goodwill – Hindley Street, Adelaide

Price – $2.00

Where I talk about going to the toilet

February 10, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

My son is now completely nappy free – yep that’s right – no more nappies for me. Yay. It is a bit annoying, however, that I’ve got two full packs of nappies I will never ever use.

It was relatively easy to wean him off the night nappies. It was a bit like weaning him off the day nappies, cold turkey was the answer. The day nappy weaning meant two weeks of lots of washing his clothes and lots of wiping up accidents off the floor. Fortunately he was in childcare during this time and they were really good about it. And also it was warm weather (about the end of March last year) so changing clothes wasn’t too much of a problem. Night nappy weaning happened in much the same way but with no major mishaps. He wet the floor near his bed a couple of times but I never had to change his sheets. The key for the nappy weaning was agreeance on his part not to wear them.

There is a downside to him not wearning nappies at all though, and that is the early morning wee.

He was good for a while, he would get up, go to the toilet and go back to bed – well usually. Now though, he comes to me at around 5.30-6am and says it’s too scary to go to the toilet. I don’t really blame him for this I must say. My house is long and skinny with all the bedrooms up one end of the house and the one toilet down the other end of the house with a locked door inbetween. He has no problems with the locked door but the darkness is a problem.

He’s also unfortunately got my early morning wee bladder. As soon as we wake up we must go and we wake up at the crack of dawn or before. I’m going to buy a sensor light that plugs into an electrical outlet and leave a small light on in the kitchen so he’s got enough light to not be scared. That’s the plan anyway.

Wanna know one of the things that makes me cross?

February 10, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

At work I setup a kind of template and some instructions for someone to do something and sent the instructions to them with the ‘please ring me if you have any problems’ at the bottom of the email.

I was contacted from this person about problems and started problem solving. It must have got so annoying for this person that they eventually sidestepped me completely and emailed my boss and my bosses, bosses boss (not sure of the plural boss spelling).

Why didn’t this person email or phone me and say I’ve still got problems doing what I need to do, what can we do to solve this? I didn’t get in trouble or anything but it really pisses me off that I was left out of this final loop.

Now it has been fixed with some help from another colleague and it should all be fine. This could have happened sooner if I was consulted sooner. Aaaarrrgggh!!!

My (non) Big Day Out tale

February 8, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

I’ve mentioned previously that I wanted to go to the Big Day Out but I didn’t want to pay lots of money to do it. My ideal situation was that I would get a free ticket to the event. I entered competitions, I told just about everyone I knew that this was my wish in the vain hope that someone would just happen to have a spare ticket and think, oh, Jaycee wanted to go, I’ll give it to her. I am an optimist.

My tale starts with my friend Des and Sharon (I’m changing names to protect the innocent and guilty) having dinner one night and they started talking about the Big Day Out. Des was doing some work for the event with another friend Mike and Mike was going to try and score some tickets for Sharon and myself as the two boys both had their tickets from doing this work. Sharon told Des that if Mike did come up with the ticket she just might give it to me as I really wanted to go and she would do this selfless act for me. Note the word ‘might’ in bold. It wasn’t a categorical statement that she would give me the ticket.

So, Des tells Mike that if Sharon gets the ticket she’s going to give it to Jaycee. The day before when the boys are doing their work Mike scores this elusive free ticket. He tries to contact Sharon on the Friday morning (the Big Day Out was on Friday) and she’s out dropping her daughter off at school so misses his call. He then thinks to himself, well Sharon was just going to give the ticket to Jaycee and I’d rather Sharon have it and if she doesn’t want it I’ll offer it to someone else which he did, and the someone else accepted.

He then does finally speak to Sharon and tells her what’s happened and of course she was upset and pissed off, not at Mike for giving it away so much, but at Des for spouting his mouth off at what Sharon might do with the ticket should she receive one.

So, neither Sharon or myself got to go to the Big Day Out. I had a Big Day In at my place instead where we felt Sharon’s bad mood at this sad state of affairs all night.

Next year I’d like to continue my mission to get a free ticket to the Big Day Out and I don’t expect to get something for nothing. If anyone knows how to get on the BDO staff in Adelaide to get payment of a ticket, please let me know.

I can’t believe I said I don’t want to be a mum anymore

February 7, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

Yesterday evening I uttered the words, as I stormed out the bathroom, ‘I don’t want to be a mum anymore.’ I half expected lightning to come out the sky and strike me down dead.

This was the culmination of a weekend where things didn’t work out my way. I didn’t get a free ticket to the Big Day Out (tale to come), I had to decide whether to go to Sydney, or the Slippery Nipple revisited (I couldn’t do both), I’d been at the pub and felt like the third wheel while trying to keep my son a little bit quiet during the recording of the live band. I will be interested to hear that one as I wonder if him yelling out, I’ve just been to the toilet, will be heard over the music.

The third wheel thing – a good friend of mine has met a bloke. There’s nothing sexual happening, even though she would like it to, but they get on extremely well, to the detriment of everyone around them. It might as well be new love. Even though another friend was there I still felt ignored and unloved. And Jaycee Junior was roaring around the place ignoring me also.

We left the pub after the band finished to tantrums galore because being the party animal he is, he didn’t want to leave. We got home and it took him half an hour to eat dinner. I fought to get him into the bath and now I can’t even remember what triggered the I don’t want to be a mum comment anymore, but I said it as I stormed to the fridge to pour myself a glass of wine from the cask within.

Of course I didn’t mean it then and I don’t mean it now. I love my son to bits but he does give me the shits (that could be a song title). I got over my comment and ended up reading him a story about the seven dwarfs and a diamond mine that I had as a kid. So the night ended on a positive note with love in the air.

Going to an awards ceremony

February 7, 2005 by Jen at Semantically driven

I logged onto my email at home yesterday to see if there were any exciting tidbits for me. There was. I had an email from my boss saying we had approval to go to the Hitwise awards ceremony as our work website is the most popular within its section and these awards will be doled out to the overall industry award winners. In the interests of being anonymous about where I work I won’t say which category but if you’re at the same awards ceremony on 25 February then you will see me in my formal wear.

But herein lies my shortlived dilemma. Some time ago my friend organised the Slippery Nipple tour revisited on the weekend of 25/26 February. I’d gone as far as organising babysitting for the whole weekend because it’s definitely not a kids affair.

So after reading about this free trip to Sydney I sat in front of my computer going, oh shit! what will I do? Will I stick to the original plan and go for a weekend away with a bunch of friends or will I fly to Sydney – to a place I hardly ever go. Mmmm, Sydney it is. That’s why it was a shortlived dilemma.

I’m still trying to wangle ways of doing both. I could go to Sydney the Thursday night, do our work visits on Friday, the awards dinner Friday night, fly back Saturday and go Slippery Nipple. Or I could do all the above, bar the Slippery Nipple and stay in Sydney for as long as possible on Saturday and shop. Mmmm, shopping! Shopping it is me thinks.

I’m pretty excited. Since I got this job I’ve been able to go to a conference in Queensland and now an awards dinner (not a dinner but a networking evening with nibbles as I was informed by the Marketing Manager for the Asia Pacific who found my blog) in Sydney. My old job never offered these sorts of opportunities – well a conference in Cairns wasn’t too bad but that was definitely a once off.

See you Sydney at the end of February.

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