Lannie.net » Work

be careful what you wish for

Lannie — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:33:55 +0000

This week is pretty much deserted where it comes to training. Seriously, I only had 1 person to train this week. Three webinars/consultancy calls on Monday, but that’s been all. Now I know that I was begging for some quiet time early December, but the amount of trainings have really fallen since then. I understand that December is supposed to be quiet, but January has been a snorefest as well.

You won’t believe how caught up my administration is, it’s a work of beauty! All my statistics are up to date, and I’m currently planning in training dates up until the end of May – just so the clients have a schedule to choose from. While this is all very useful and stuff, it’s also boring as hell. Especially with Manager P hardly being in the office (she gets time off to apply for new jobs) it’s very quiet here. On the upside, this DOES mean that I get to use the ‘Artist Radio’ function in Spotify a lot. So I do have a lot of good music.

Entertainment wise, it’s very quiet here, though. I think I’ll go and harass a few colleagues. If I have to stare a lot longer at these excel sheets I’ll go nuts. :’)

Protected: and in a stunning turn of events…

Lannie — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 13:50:15 +0000

darkest days of the year

Lannie — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:59:11 +0000

These are the darkest days of the year, where the sun rises at 8.45am sets at 4.30pm. For people who don’t live in this hemisphere it’s hard to imagine how terribly depressing it is, the darkness. (I weep for you, England – living an hour earlier than we do… and Finland, where your winters would make me jump off a bridge) Especially when it’s coupled with endless days of rain and the beginning of frost. It’s weird to imagine that we were up to our knees in snow this time last year. This year it’s all sludge rain and more rain and did I mention that it really sucks to be a dog owner this time of the year? Ugh.
Thankfully though from tomorrow on, the days will get longer again. We’re right at the hardest part and the light will return.

And I’ve had a good couple of days. As a christmas present from work we got a night of hotel stay in a luxurious hotel in Antwerp and I had a blast partying it up with the colleagues and their partners. Made some friends, too. Lots of laughs and good times were had! As far as company christmas presents go, this is about as good as it gets. Sure beats the stuff I got last year. Although I’m also cool with a bottle of champagne; this was pretty awesome.

Tonight I put up christmas decorations and it’s really criminal how much of a kick I get out of making my livingoom all sparkly and shiney. We don’t have a christmas tree (I don’t dare to take the risk – Bodhi has his playful moments where he bounces around the room sometimes) but by God do we have a lot of christmas lights and tacky decorations! And I’m not done yet. I do want tiny christmas trees that I can set on tables. More sparklies are needed. Aren’t they always?
I need to do SOMETHING to battle the darkest days of the year, you know?

at the edge of my future, and my dreams all fade away

Lannie — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 21:29:46 +0000

So this year as a Christmas present our boss has whipped up something very nice: spending the weekend in Antwerp, sleeping in a four star hotel and expenses taken care of. The city is bustling with people and christmas markets and we’ve gotten some (rather staggering amount) of spending money to cover things like travel expenses, dinner and just stuff for yourself. Most of my colleagues are making plans for shopping, but I’ve noticed that they have a spa and a hair stylist right next to the hotel, so I think I’ll be spending my afternoon right there.
In the evening we’re making plans of going for booze and dinner with the colleagues, and on Sunday we can sleep in and then go home again. Sounds like a lovely bit of retreat. It’s a pity Olli can’t come too (he is busy with work), but on the other hand he is usually not that keen on work-related stuff and this way we don’t have to find any babysitter for Bodhi. I’ll miss him! But it’s only for a night anyway.

Speaking of Olli, his contract at TS for that large oil company that he’s been at for the past five years has been quite suddenly not extended. On one hand this sucks monkeyballs because of the job market at the moment, and the fact that he’s quite comfortable working his own shifts and being able to work from home so much. On the other hand, it’s past time to leave the current project he’s working on, because it’s driving him into the ground and it’s giving nothing in return. So in the past week we’ve been on the lookout for jobs and cancelling expensive subscriptions like charities and fitness that we weren’t using, saving ourselves some money.
But now it seems that within the company they might want him on some other project after all. A place with much more chill working environments and nicer colleagues. I say FUCK YES. Olli was pretty enthused as well. Now we’ll just have to see whether it’ll all fall through the way we want it, but hopefully it will. Fingers crossed, people!

And speaking of fingers crossed: will you keep my fingers crossed for my mother’s boyfriend Ron next Wednesday? He’s going to have brain surgery. They’re going to cut away the tumor in his brain. Scary times. I can very well imagine he’s terrified. But they wouldn’t start cutting in brains if they didn’t think it was either a) urgent or b) relatively doable. So yeah, even more fingers crossed there…

this may sound like a prayer but it’s not

Lannie — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 19:49:21 +0000

I don’t think that there’s any way to convey how utterly knackered I am these days. Work is doing a good job raping me from behind at the moment for some reason. It’s not that it’s so much busier than it was half a year ago around this time – except that, now that I think of it, it probably is. I’ve had a few weeks where I had to visit clients, which meant that my days that are usually spent on administration, were now spent training. So I do 8 trainings a week, sometimes 9. The time that this leaves for administration is pretty much zilch, so my inbox is overflowing with e-mails and I’m extremely behind on all my evaluations. I make 9 hour days (standard) at the moment – of which 8 hours is spent teaching.

And believe me, that shit’s exhausting. Imagine doing job interviews all day long. Even though I can pull the subject material out of my arse, it’s still a lot of energy to be forthcoming, smiling, attentive and smart to my clients.

Also there’s the matter of days growing shorter and just not sleeping enough. Going to see Ghost Brigade on Tuesday was perhaps not the smartest of moves, but it was so worth it. Sometimes you need to unwind in order to recharge, and Ghost Brigade did some good business in that regard.

They played “22:22 Nihil” and “Into The Black Light” right after eachother, which was brilliant – and “Architect of New Beginnings” and “Soul Carvers” were in the encore. All in all they played everything I wanted to hear. Even though I wasn’t too hot on the sound settings in the small hall in the 013, Olli and I still had a blast. I’m glad I finally got to see Ghost Brigade live as a headliner. This time I didn’t even crash my car the day before the concert. (However, we did have some pretty rough winds the day before. Again. Hmmm…)

So now for catching up on sleep. That’d be good.