Nothing much really

That's what I've been up to lately. A big ball o' nuthin...

Christmas and new years has been and gone and they were relatively quiet, but nice. Next year's Christmas should prove more lively, as most (if not all) of my family should be here for it.

Lately I've not been doing much more than work and try to get Chickie back into his normal routine. He's had so many late nights over the past few weeks that he's looking really tired.

Had some sad news at the new year's party - a former team mate and his wife are splitting up. I'm close to both of them and they seemed so good together, so I'm sad to see this happen. Came out of the blue too, there was no hint that things weren't going well.

Work's been crazy busy, since our team has basically taken on a new role to do with adsl tech support. We're still feeling our way with it, but it has its moments. For those not aware, adsl is broadband delivered by the phone line. Now I was trying to help someone whose adsl wasn't working. I asked him to unplug all phones and other equipment and just plug the modem in by itself. I asked him to ensure that the phone line was going directly from the back of the modem to the wall socket - several times in fact, because it just wasn't working! I was thinking I'd have to start doing a few of the more drastic troubleshooting steps when he asked me, out of the blue, if the phone line should be plugged into the modem... (insert image of me slapping my forehead here!).

I have to admit, I'm feeling so much happier at work. Even though it's busy, I feel like I'm actually using my brain. I'm learning all sorts of bits and pieces, like how to figure out the distance from the telephone exchange the customer is, and how to recognise a line fault from the lines tests we do.

The only other remotely interesting thing we've been up to, is we're looking at pulling up the carpet in the lounge/hallway and replacing it with floating floors. It will be a big job though. Not only will we have to pack everything up and shift it out of the way, but the carpet is glued to the floor. Pulling that up will be a real joy.

I've actually been wanting to get rid of it for some time. It's mint green and shows everything! Particularly stains from where it's been thrown up on (kid and cats). I've mostly got rid of the stains from ages ago when Chickie was sick but the cat was recently sick on it and I'm having no luck getting rid of the stain. Anyone got any hints for me? I have a feeling the problem is food colouring from the dry cat food.

Anyway, once the mint green carpet is gone, that'll just leave the lovely red carpet in Chickie's room to deal with. We'll do that later. I tell you though, the person who did the decorating in this house previously had some interesting taste... mint green carpet in lounge room (with dark green velvet curtains to match - now replaced with cream coloured ones), brown swirly stuff in the main bedroom (long gone because it was shredding - thankfully), red carpet (glued up on the skirting boards) with apricot coloured walls in Chickie's room... blech.

Ah, now I'm just rambling - I'm off to bed. Night night!