Icey spill

Jason phoned in this morning after telling me that he had been involved in a collision.He had brought, or exchanged his old car for, an old rear wheel drive MG sports car. He had already admitted he had trouble controlling it in the icey weather. Apparently this morning he had just put it into 2nd gear, lost control of it, and hit one car; knocking it over the central reservation and into one coming in the opposite direction.
It's the bus for him for the rest of the week.

On a planet far far away

Andy took his helmet home with him, but today turned up with the arm pieces to his stormtrooper kit. He explained that he had brought the kit for £150, but thought he could sell the completed kit for £900. The only problem I could see was that he was cutting it down, for example taking an inch off the arms, so that it would fit a short dumpy Star Wars fan.

I also bumped into Tom in the lift, who sheepishly confessed that he had taken last week off; same as Junior, to play the World Of Warcraft expansion pack.

stormtrooper in a tea cup

A week of surprises continued today when one of the guys from the other end of the office brought in the stormtrooper helmet he was putting together from a kit. I don't know why, but it broke the day up.

Alan came and took a look, and he showed me the photos of his Halo helmet that he had started making, but didn't have the time to finish.

Eric had told me last week that Junior and some of his mates had taken the week off to play with the latest expansion pack to World of Warcraft. Today I bumped into Cat, who is now Junior's girlfriend, and asked her what she thought about it. She said that she had created a character to play it, but she was only a level two, and she had much more important things to do with her time.

Bi the way

It's good to catch up with people after they have had a week off on holiday. Although I wasn't expecting this e-mail after I'd asked John what he'd done with his week off. Especially as he is one of the quietest members of the team:

"I said my week off was eventful – Basically I came out as bisexual – short
story is my ex girlfriend found out (something I wasn’t expecting) had to tell
dad and sister before anyone else told them. Bit emotional, but went well. Bet
you didn’t expect that."

He went on to ask if I could sort out some support for him. I looked at the employee Assistance Programme, but couldn't really find a subject to fit, so I gave him the web link to look at for himself. He's now told a couple of the team, but not everyone. I'm not going to tell anyone who he hasn't told already.

I'm not too sure what he expected, & we aren't sure what to expect. Is he going to behave in a camp fashion around the office now. He's not exactly effeminate, nor a particularly smart dresser. Now when I look at him though, I wonder what it was that his ex-girlfriend had found out.

Cold

The Friday before it snowed was cold. It had been cold all week anyway, but Friday was the day that everyone was complaining. Some the staff come in, knowing it had been cold all week, dressed for a holiday in the tropics, no jumpers, yet one of them had come prepared with a thermometer.They started off complaining about the cold and put their thermometer on the desk, watching it go from 21 to 20 degrees. Then the others started asking what the temperature was now, every 20 minutes.

I knew that the 6th floor had had trouble with the heating earlier on in the year, so went upstairs to ask if anyone had still got the little electric heaters which they all had under their desks when the heating did pack-up on their floor. Luckily one of the guys had kept one back and agreed to let me borrow it. They were all a bit surprised when I came down with the heater. Then plugged it in by the main complainer. Then they watched as the thermometer went back up again.

I'd like to know if they sit about in shorts and tee-shirt at home with the heating on full at the weekends.

Sick days

Thanks to the people in the office who get the vomiting and diarrhoea bug, then only take the one day off sick, I had a dreadful night on Wednesday, and have had to have a couple of days off. Having eaten nothing for a day, I wonder how many days I might be able to go without food. On the good side, I was looking to lose a little weight.
At the hospital they have a policy where you are not allowed back until 48 hours after your last episode. Explaining this to Ned, he asked what I meant by an episode. I wonder if he thought I was talking about TV programmes?

Expecting

I was discussing with Clive what he thought we should do with the £50 that Mark had won on our Premium Bond syndicate. Of course most people think we should throw it all away on the lottery, which is why we started the Premium Bond syndicate in the first place.

Then he told me that he was now an expectant father. Unfortunately he is no longer with the lady in question, but seems a bit more involved than Jason was. I suppose it helps if you are told before the baby is born. There are a few ladies up our end of the office who have just gone off on maternity leave, all of which we have tried to get involved in the baby naming process. I thought Clive might be a bit more amenable to giving his son the middle name "Danger"; but he didn't seem keen.

Clive's birthday again

I went down in the lift with the guys in the lift for breakfast and they asked if I was going out on Friday for Clive's birthday. This was the first I'd heard of this:

Me: "Where you going then?"
Hiten: "Somewhere over Bristol."
Me: "What? why so far? He always goes to weird, out of the way places. Is
it because he has to go places where nobody knows him?"
Chris: "Yes, he's banned from anywhere close by."

Takeover

I got a bit of a shock in the middle of the morning when one of the big bosses arrived side-by-side with our boss, asking if we could gather everybody up the one end of the office. Apparently, some of the papers over the weekend were speculating that the company was going to be taken over. Basically the boss came in to talk to everyone about the speculation, even though he knew nothing about it at all. All this was supposed to set our minds at rest. He asked if anyone had any questions and confirmed that nobdy knows what is happening, and there will be a bit more news on Wednesday. They would have done better to wait until there was some solid news before they got everybody talking.