Month: September 2014

Almost time …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

The title of this post refers to the fact that it is ‘almost time’ for me to return to work. The past three months recovery time are now at an end. As I mentioned before, I will be back at work from the 1st October. It is a phased return over four weeks loosely based on 50% of my normal hours over a four week period. The suggestion was that I should build up my time as one day week one, then two days week two etc etc until I was back to a full week on week five. I was not two happy with that so am going for a two, a three, a three then a four day week. I will have to monitor how I am feeling of course, but I suspect that I should be okay.

I’m tempted to make week four a three day week. It depends on both how I’m feeling and the way the work is going. A lot is happening behind the scenes with this new restructure and I may have to rethink how I’m going to change with it. There seems to be some jockeying for position within certain parts of the team, and I feel I may be missing out a bit. I was assured that I would not be ‘disadvantaged’ by the restructure, but the person who gave that assurance is not as influential as they used to be, in my opinion.

—————-

Doing a little bit of ‘touch-up’ decorating today. What do I mean by that? Well a few weeks ago, we had new windows and external doors fitted doors. The fitters (as they called themselves, no fancy names here) were very good and the damage to the decorating was very very minimal. But of course there are some parts of the walls need a little maintenance, and that is what I am finishing today. It’s not a big job, just part of one of the walls in the kitchen needs a bit of paint to cover up the repair work. However, Mrs H has decided that ‘we’ need to put some edging down where the floor meets the units, to finish off the effect. So I looking to do some of that work today also. Another little job! They all mount up.

—————

** In my previous post, I made a suggestion that if anyone had any ideas how to improve this blog, they would be most welcome! To the commentor that suggested that “stopping writing would be a great start”, I have to say “Thanks but that is not the type of suggestion I was looking for!!! ” **

[Enter post title here…]

/ Tony / Leave a comment

As you can see, I’m still struggling to title my blog posts. The problem, I think is that I don’t post about anything specific and I think this also reflects on the number of visits I get. I really must do some research into improving my blog.

Anyway, to business. You may remember a couple of weeks ago, that I had to have an interview with my manager about the length of time I had been off work. Something had flagged on a computer system in HR that meant someone had to ‘check me out’. Well last week, I got a letter from said HR department ‘inviting’ me for an interview about getting back to work. Well that interview was on Thursday. I tried to remain calm about the whole thing, but went ready to let rip if my fears were proved correct.

The meeting could not have been any more different from what I imagined. There was me thinking that they were going to insist on my coming back to work and overriding my GP, but I was wrong. At the end of the meeting, it was explained that felt I could go back to the work I was doing, as soon as my GP said it was okay. They even told me that it would be a phased return and they were going to suggest that I go back on 50% of my normal hours for four weeks. I have worked out a pattern, and my manager is happy with it, so it looks like I will be back at work, in some form from the 1st October.

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

I suppose I could have called this post ‘Blind Panic’ after what just happened about 1 hour ago. I will explain. Mrs H likes to have a glass of water by her bedside. I had filled her a glass and had left it on my desk, by the side of my laptop whilst I went to pick up her mobile phone. Her phone sits at the side of my printer. As I reached up to pick the phone up, my sleeve caught the edge of the glass of water and tipped the glass over. That’s when the aforementioned ‘Blind Panic’ set in. There I was with a desk swimming in ½ pint of iced water. As luck would have it, my laptop is raised off the desk on a plastic frame that allows air to flow under the laptop to help with cooling. This frame, which was bought from the £1 Shop also allowed the spilled water to flow under the laptop and not into it. Phew. Never has a £1 been better spent. The USB hard drive seems to be okay, and the only casualty was my multi-port USB adapter which appears to have taken the brunt of the spillage. This is now sitting in the airing cupboard and will remain there for a few days.

I think that about wraps it up for now. Any suggestions on how to improve this blog will be gratefully received.