:squee:

I passed my driving test! :)

All Good

Not to worry anyone, but I managed to set fire to my bedroom on Sunday by lighting an incense stick or two and heading out of the house. Within twenty minutes the room was alight; and within forty minutes the firemen had put the fire out. I got home over an hour later.

All the human beings in the house are safe, and nothing was lost that can't be replaced (except many years of clutter that we hope never to re-amass). The fire did not progress beyond that one room, and the structure seems completely sound (random mutterings about disturbing asbestos aside).

We're all fine, and we'll be tidying the place up over the next couple of days, and re-decorating my room and pretty much the whole upstairs over the next few weeks.

On a more personal selfish note, very little of my stuff caught fire; most of my sister's stuff went up in flames. However, all the remaining things have been permeated by smoke. The clothes have been carted off to the professionals who deal with fire damage, my precious things have been rescued (real jewellery, photographs and perfumes*) and I've chucked seven plus years' worth of papers and notes out. One more box to go through; I was too tired to finish them last night! And then I'll start on my books, which will be slightly heart-breaking I think. Anyone know how to get the burned-charcoal-barbeque smoke smell out of books??



* my precious perfume collection was at the other side of the room, and apart from a couple of samples left out that exploded from the heat, seems untouched. The samples that exploded were mostly A's; I'm really sorry! Although I don't think I *ever* want to smell honey perfume again in my life. Smokey, sickly honey throughout the room as I worked for 12 hours to clear it yesterday.

A typical weekday evening

You join me on a typical weekday evening.

That is, I've talked a lot of crap at work, made some embarrassing mistakes, and basically bluffed myself through another day of pretending to be a technical consultant (TDD says I can't seriously still call myself a developer. I'm trying not to think too much about that statement as it's something I well know but refuse to care about) and now my head is buzzing with information, facts and not-quite-paralysing fluster.

My usual method for dealing with this is to email the TDD a list of issues raised today and how we did/didn't handle them so that he can re-assure and guide - bless him, I just got a partial reply right there.

However, today has been fragmented enough that I'm still agitated, and I've had to go to plan B - big pieces of paper and rebuilding my To Do list writ large from the myriad notes in different directions. It's almost working, and I'm slowly relaxing enough to get some sleep. This probably explains why I spend every weekend falling asleep everytime I'm not expected to say anything..!

And yes, a three day weekend is the perfect time to crystallise this kind of random thought! :)