:D

:D

that is a marvelous sight, can he do mine next?

Just don't stop and figure out what it's cost you to get the lawn mowed :haha:

Your great great great grandpappy did not fight against a flag.

However, out of respect for Great-great-great-Grandpappy Shepps, I will not display mine whenever he is around.

:p::o

BTW, Toad just did what a lot of people are doing, tossing out everything else and concentrating on a piece of cloth.

:2cents:

Freelz.

I just did my first proper shift at my new part-time job (went in for induction and stuff last week).

So far I like it well enough. Doesn't rescue my finances in any way - in fact I'll probably be marginally worse off with busfares taken into account. But - it does mean I should be able to sign off from JSA (unemployment benefit) - once I've got the desperately needed dental work sorted out so I don't have to pay for it (otherwise would have to wait months, poss even a year and I need it sorting now) - and in the meantime it's got the work programme coach off my back.

It's three 5 hour shifts a week - but it's a 2 hour commute each way - so feels like three full days lol.

I like that it forces me to get up and ready and out of the house a few times a week - I'm so out of the habit of that kind of schedule that if I were to get a full time teaching post anytime soon it would probably floor me. So this gets me back into some good habits - and frankly, it's nice to go to a workplace and interact with work colleagues. I've missed that since I stopped teaching early last year. My most recent job was a homebased teleworking job - so I was working on my PhD at home, alone, then doing telesales shifts at home, alone. Much as I enjoy not having to interact with the world in any real way - it isn't good for me. I so easily slip into hermitage, that I kind of need forcing out of it sometimes.

The shift is intense - five hours on the phone with no breaks. But no selling - no getting anybody's bank details. We call on behalf of our clients to do customer satisfaction surveys with people who've used their services. Different jobs from day to day - sometimes it's calling mortgage brokers to ask about their experience of using that particular lender for that particular application, other times calling housing association tenants to get feedback on the repairs service, or insurance customers who've made a claim to see how that claim was handled etc.

It's intense, because you need to prompt for details if they score something low, and then after the call you have to write a report in the first person as if you were the customer, in full, grammatically correct sentences, covering all their main points and as far as possible using their phrasing and terminology - and it needs to be done fast.

But so far I like it. Getting out of the house at 7:15 am is a bit of a shock to the system. It's 3 buses but that gives lots of time for listening to podcast interviews. I finish @2:30, so I get back around 4:30 - leaving mid aft makes it feel like half a day even though I still have 2 hours of travel ahead.

I may like that aspect less when the weather turns nasty and 7am looks like the middle of the night :P but right now it's nice.

Congratulations on the new gig!

I totally agree with your points about getting the fuck out of the house. That part of me was rescued too when I started at the oil change shop. And it's led to this new job which I start on Monday. But my experience with long commutes is very different than yours, and I have a completely different reaction. Traveling four hours each day *without pay* makes for a very un-lucrative position (as you said...). But when I had to do it, 80 miles each way, it was murder. My life had been reduced to driving, working, driving again, eat,shower,sleep, then repeat the process. Never again. At least you have the "luxury" of being able to do something else instead of driving, but it's still close to a dead loss.

I hope you continue to reap benefits from this gig, and I sincerely hope you can find something closer to home. I'm happy you're happy.

Thanks V:)

It's not that it's so terribly far away - if I were a driver I could get there in 40 mins. It's that I have to go three buses - one down into the town from my village, then one to a couple of towns over and then one from that town to the little village where the place is.

It helps that i don't start work until 9:30. If this were an 8:30 start like most call centre/ office-based jobs it'd be too much for me. It also helps that I only have to throw Carrotchops out for a quickie in the morning, because Mum picks him up around 10am.

The solution.

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes your way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

xoB, exactly right.

But this is the one I want:

Attachment 52903

It makes me think of someone wearing a swastika and performing small acts of kindness for Jewish children...

Sounds like a Tom Green sketch.

New bra & knickers. But especially the new bra.
And I am a completely different size than I thought (smaller back size, larger cup size)
I got more wiggle than jiggle now.

I won't be able to eat for the next fortnight, because it's wiped me out financially.
And okay I didn't actually need the matching knickers, and I didn't need to order the same set in black...

But hey, I was going to diet anyway.
And they are beautiful.

Lingerie: a hidden way of making me happy since forever.

I didn't notice but I ended up double-double-shifting (quad-shifting?) my way into not having any work until the weekend, and I found out my near by gorcery store does free deliveries.
For the next few days I have absolutely no reason to leave my apartment. If I had a robe to accept deliveries or take out the trash, I would also have no reason to put on clothes.

Conclusion: I need a robe.

Hehehe. That really made me laugh.

It's a vicious cycle, no food for a fortnight and you'll need a new, smaller bra.
New bra and you'll not be able to eat for a fortnight... ad infinitum.
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