Oh My God, It's An Even Bigger One! And Other Stories

I started my day by finding an even bigger chair near the hotel restaurant. Obviously I had to make my boss take another photo!


With a start like this, I knew it was going to be a good day!

Our contact in the Chester office had informed us that the hotel we were staying at was 'just at the bottom of our car park'. Which was true, but what he didn't tell us was that there was an impenetrable fence between the hotel and the office car park that required us to wander the streets and canals of Chester for half an hour before we pretty much accidentally found an unlocked gate allowing us ingress.

Now, when my mum discovered that I was going to Chester for the day, she was a great pains to instruct me - at great painful length - to make sure I visit the Cathedral, the Tudor buildings and the City Wall. Despite my protestations that I would be tied up in a meeting and then getting home as quickly as possible and therefore would not have time to visit the Cathedral, the Tudor buildings and the City Wall, she insisted that visiting the Cathedral, the Tudor buildings and the City Wall were essential to my wellbeing and that should I not visit the Cathedral, the Tudor buildings and the City Wall, some unspecific unfortunateness might befall me. Maybe.

So these are for you, mum:


One cathedral.
One town hall (anyone wanting to do a bit of Boss Spotting is welcome to do so).


Some Tudor buildings.


Some more Tudor buildings.



Me looking unusually cool on the City Wall. (I think my boss has one leg shorter than the other, hence the 'arty' angle of this one! Actually, I kinda like it - it makes me look... jaunty...)

We had the top down most of the way home. I got even more sunburnt. I've never got sunburnt on a joll... er, business trip before.

One final thing, when I got home, I discovered that Dexter The Killing Machine had been cruelly efficient in my absence and left a small pile of corpses on the drive.

Oh My God, The Roof's Come Off! And Other Stories

I went to Leeds with my boss today. She drove which was nice, in a life-threatening sort of way.

You see, she hadn't fastened down the roof of her convertible*. And then we went on the motorway. And then hilarity ensued.

So further on in the journey, we had to stop for petrol. She put £20 worth in, refusing to fill it all the way because of the (expenses-claimable) cost of petrol at the Services. And then later, on the motorway, when her petrol gauge was hovering around zero, she refused to put more petrol in at the Services we were passing because it was too expensive.

We didn't actually run out of petrol, so she won on a technicality, but it was a very stressful twenty minutes driving around Leeds, which is, apparently, bereft of petrol stations!

And then we had our meeting with some Northerners. And then we headed back to the car, discovering half-way that she'd lost her car keys!

I'm being mean, really. I like my boss. I wouldn't trade her in for any of the other bosses. But she does live life like a Chinese proverb!

Now I'm in a hotel in Chester as we have a meeting with another Northerner in the morning.

As we (intentionally, this time) had the roof down for the final part of the journey to Leeds, I've caught the sun a bit. I didn't realise how much 'til I looked in the mirror just now. The top of my head is a bit red.

Here's the view out of my window.



There's a fountain. This place must be well posh.

Also, it's full of random tat. Like this giant chair that I forced my boss to photograph me in!



And this creepy wall feature is hanging over the bed:



To conclude, I give you the obligatory shower cap shot:





( * Don't get excited - it was a Ford Ka )

Even More Things that People Say

"I'm so sleepy and you look so comfy." A friend referring to the cushion-like properties of my midsection.

"You should eat the evidence, Kaz. Whatever you've done, you should always eat the evidence." I give Dr K excellent advice all the time!

"I had such a bad day at work that I wanted to eat as many animals as I can."  Bezz once ate eight animals in one night.  Or was it nine...?

"Damn you and your silky lining!" A friend complaining that the shiny lining of my coat made it difficult to carry.  But it sounds ruder than that.

"I have tried to clean up my act, but a bird's got to fly, a fish has got to swim and I have to be filthy, inappropriate and childish." Jo, defending her behaviour.

"I don't think anyone will want me to access their dog, Kaz." I state facts, sometimes.  This is one of them.

"Tea was your downfall." A winning Scrabble opponent commenting on my habit for placing the word 'Tea' whenever it was possible.  This little OCD may have been my downfall.

"Holy Christmas Cakes!" An exclamation of surprise from Bezz.

"Karma. Not Korma. Never Korma." My response to a friend who suggested that a bad canteen curry experience might be karmic.

I Think They Must Like Me...

My workmates, I mean.

Today was a Freaky Friday, which means that they didn't have to put up with my stupid face, inane wittering or slightly creepy innuendoes.

I thought they'd be glad to be rid of me for a bit.

And then one of them turned up on my doorstep with a tin of delicious homemade cakes. Look, here they are:



I hadn't even got dressed. I was lounging around in my Batman PJs and dressing gown.

Now, you know me. My body is a temple, so I wouldn't normally eat cakes, but it was such a nice gesture that I guess I'll have to make an exception. Only to be polite, you understand.

I think I'll start with the rock cake... Om nom nom...

Thanks, guys!

Another One?

Same person. Same game.



That's two gynaecologically correct rude words in one game.

Awesome.

A Moral Dilemma

I have a problem. I'm in a pickle, if you will.

I'm playing scrabble online with a female co-worker. That's not the dilemma.

She's winning at the moment, but I can claw back a substantial amount of the points difference by playing a particular word.

Problem is, I'm reluctant to play the word because it's a bit rude and I'm not that good friends with her.

Let me illustrate my problem for you:






If I place the contentious word at the bottom there, I can get a good 30-odd points. But would it be ungentlemanly for me to play such a word in a game with a lady (who presumably has the ladypart in question).

Ah, what the hell! I don't really know why I'm worrying about it. I don't normally let propriety get in the way of rude words. Rude words are funny! At least it wasn't 'pissflaps' or 'poonani' or 'wookie hole' or 'pink velvet sausage wallet' or 'beef curtains' or 'tampon tunnel' or 'dugout' or 'fish mitten' or 'cum crater' or 'cooze' or 'magician's sleeve'...

See how I turned a post about scrabble into an excise to write lots of filthy words? Heh heh heh!

What's your favourite rude word?

The Relative Horribleness Of Foreign Sweets #2: Turkey

I have been a little disappointed by the decided lack of foreign sweets over the past few weeks. I have had workmates visiting Egypt, the Nederlands and even Jordan (the country, not the irritating celebrity) and no sweets were forthcoming.

Fortunately, the latest international traveller was good enough to provide Turkish Delight, from Turkey. Yum.

I've never been entirely sure what Turkish Delight is made from. I kinda assumed it was gelatin and sugar. Apparently not. It's still pretty much sugar, but also starch and flour and water and weird, jellyish goodness. Pretty much. I choose to believe that this makes it good for me.

Another new one on me is that it's only really us English speakers that call it Turkish Delight. It's actually called Lokum and variations of Locum pretty much everywhere else!

Anyway, on to the sweeties.

Look, it came in a lovely box:



The inside was a little disappointing - lots of padding meant that there was not nearly as much weird, jellyish goodness as was inferred from the outer packaging. Also the cubes of Turkish Delight themselves, were quite small.



As you can see from the photo, there were three flavours: lemon, orange, rose and mint:



They were all equally delicious, although I did learn a valuable lesson about eating minty Turkish Delight before the other flavours. Don't.

Also, I suffered a massive sugar crash about half an hour after scoffing about eight of them. Yay, me!

Delicious, though they were, overall I think I'll only give them a 4.5 out of 5. I'm confident that there's some chocolatey stuff out there that dan beat these. It'll be close though!

I Am Currently Out Of The Office

I had to work a little late today, and at about quarter to six I had to send an email out to a whole bunch of people. Being quarter to six I pretty much assumed that they would all have gone home and, to my surprise, this was confirmed by a whole bunch of out of office messages informing me politely that the people I had emailed were now out of the office until the following day.

This seems to be a slightly strange new fad as I've seen it a few times recently from people that have been in right up until 5pm, and then set an out of office for no apparent reason.

In addition to this I have a workmate (lets call him/her Colleague X) who does slightly... er... exotic hours. There's a weird pattern of 6am to 10am then then three hours off and then 1pm to 3pm and then 4pm to 7pm and so-on. Colleague X does plenty of hours - too many if you ask me - but they're pretty random. This odd pattern probably wouldn't even be noticed by the causal observer, if X didn't detail the entire week's timetable in a curiously precise out of office message.

In honour of these weird and wonderful out of office messages, I present my own:

To whom it may concern.

Thank you for your email.

I'm afraid I am not at my desk at this precise moment in time.

My official working hours are 7.30h to 16.15h from Monday to Thursday, although I usually start work at 7.00, unless the traffic is really bad, and often leave around 17.00h unless it's really busy, in which case it may even be as late as 18.00h. That said, sometimes I slope off at 16.00h to buy comics or generally lark about, so you never can tell.

Also, I take every other Friday off as a non working day (although I call these Freaky Fridays).

If you have received this message outside of these hours then it's tough luck really.

On the other hand if it is within the normal range of my working hours, then I may have popped out for a sandwich, gone for a walk or nipped to the loo to relieve myself. I often have a poo mid afternoon, so if you get this at about 14.45h, you're out of luck for about 20 minutes. I never rush poos as my mum said that if I strain I might get haemorrhoids.

I enjoy receiving messages from you and look forward to reading this one as soon as I am able.

Thanks,

Dazza.

Steel Chewing Mice!

This poster has recently been put up around my workplace:


There's plenty of sensible enough advice there, but it's all offset by the wild claim that mice can CHEW THROUGH STEEL!

Presumably the mice that they're referring to are some sort of evil mutant mice who go to the same dentist as Jaws from the Bond films.




If mice could chew through steel*, which they can't, they'd probably chew their way into our fridges and eat all the tasty cheese, which they don't.

If mice could chew through steel, which they can't, they'd probably eat our cutlery and colanders and things - then we wouldn't be able to eat our dinners and we'd starve to death. And then they'd probably eat our corpses.

If mice could chew through steel, which, as I may have mentioned before, they can't, then they'd probably rule the world by now, which they don't.

Unless they're fucking with us. In which case... I guess we're fucked!



*I'm sure there are pedants out there who would point out that mice could probably chew through, say steel foil or a very thin steel wire. To them, I say 'Feh,' and would then let them stew in the fetid mire of their own idiocy.

More Things That People Say

People don't just stop saying brilliant things because I write a blog post about it. Here's nine more things that people have said since the last post!

"You gave me quite a bit of stuffing."
Dr K compliments me on my portion size... at dinner.

"Would you rather be a hag or a crone?"
I ask some really thought provoking questions!

"My chuff doesn't play music you know."
Dr K explains female anatomy to me.

"Get out of my bum!"
Dr K found my hand underneath her on the sofa once too often.

"Give it to your Daddy."
My mum was actually asking me to let my dad have the restaurant bill rather than encouraging some sort of weird incestuous homosexual encounter.

"The last thing you want is a leaking cat."
Dr K talking about... well... leaking cats.

"I've never ROFLed quite that much!"
Me, after literally rolling in the floor in laughter. In my defense, my little brother put me up to it.

"You should know this stuff by now, Archimedes!"
Dr K's comment when my bath almost overflowed.

"As long as she doesn't get her mash out as well as her bangers."
I love Dr K's food based euphemisms.

Curry Pie

I like pie and I love curry, so imagine my delight when I got home from an arduous trip to London to find Dr K cooking me Curry Pie.

That's right. Curry Pie.



In other news, my absence from the office was celebrated with doughnuts. Here is the picture that one of my workmates gleefully sent to show me what I was missing!



Note the 'missing man' formation they've adopted for me.

Hmph.

Oh yes, and the lady who sat next to me on the train had a Tupperware container of something that smelled delicious.

The Things People Say

Sometimes people say brilliant things. And sometimes they say quite dull things that are brilliant when quoted out of context.

Here are nine brilliant quotes from me and people that I know:

"I don't want to be an old minger."
My boss couldn't decide whether she was going to go with 'whinger' or 'moaner', so went with an unfortunate combination of both.

"I could put up with a few kids if it meant I could have some sausage."
I was debating the relative merits of attending barbecues at which there would be screaming children when I made this faux pas.

"It's all right, mate. I'm just just enjoying your smell."
Speaking of barbecues, this was my neighbour complimenting another resident's barbecue.

"It's poo o'clock."
I have a bottom shaped clock that's right once a day.

"I've just had a shower. I don't want to be sprayed with your cheesy crumbs."
Dr K came up with this gem when she came out of the bathroom to find me eating cheese straws.

"It's good to have stability and consistency in your life, even if that stability is the consistency of vomit."
This was me commenting on the dependability of a friend's dog's travel sickness.

"I celebrate my idiocy."
Me again. 'Nuff said.

"I've got VD Daz, and I don't know where to put it."
Dr K during a particularly tough game of scrabble.

"I'll just play with this while the girls play with their boxes."
Scotty was more interested in playing video games than helping Dr K and Gayle construct flat pack furniture.

Women Are Bitches!

Yeah, what this blog needs is a horrible misogynistic post about how I hate women and stuff.

Actually, I don't hate women. I think they're brilliant and that most of their bits are brilliant too.

What I have noticed though is that many of the ladies in the office consistently make sexist remarks about men. Not usually particularly offensive remarks, but sexist nonetheless. And of course, these are the very same ladies who would be the first to complain were the situation reversed.

Because I am somewhat passive aggressive, I decided to do a number of things to combat this insidious creep of missogyny (see what I did there?):

1. Over the course of one week (last week) I would count the number of these horrible sexist remarks.

2. Every time I hear one, I will mutter the phrase 'women are lady dogs' under my breath (I wasn't brave enough to actually say 'bitches' in that context in the office! Yes, I know. I'm a coward.)

3. I will be unapologetic but transparent in my explanation of the reasoning for my apparent bigotry.

4. I will post about it here at the end of the week.

Now, if you're reading this, it's the end of said week and I've finished stage 4. How exciting. Here are the results of my week:

1. There were 36 instances of missogyny over the past 7 days. Examples include:

'Men are useless.' (several instances)
'Men can't cope with pain.' (in relation to a workmate who had an operation on his knee a week ago, yet struggled into the office, clearly demonstrating that he could in fact cope with it just fine)
'Men.' (about 12 instances, normally coupled with rolled eyes.)
'Oh, he's just got man-flu.'
'What's the best type of man? A dead one.' (this one was actually a comedian on the telly. It may not count)

2. I did not get fired.

3. Most of the people that overheard me were briefly offended but when I explained my reasoning, were, in the main part, either mildly amused or just rolled their eyes. I get that a lot, so no change there.

4. There was one person who, rather predictably was singularly unimpressed by my activities:


They can't help it, I suppose. It's their hormones.

My Boss Reads This Blog

That can't be good, can it?

Not my immediate boss, who is a lady, but her boss. He recently found out that I was blogging every day and now has a regular read of it. I'd better not say anything compromising here, just in case.

To be honest, I don't really have much time to write this blog because of all the awesome hard work I'm doing in the office. I love my job, it's brilliant.

What's that? The best bit of my job? Oh, well, let me think about it for a few moments. Hmm... Oh that's right. It has to be my brilliant boss. He's just so excellent and clever and handsome and witty and generous and... er... strong. And... Did I mention clever?

Ahem...

At least my ladyboss doesn't read it... I hope...

They Call Me 'Two Beds Morrissey'

That's right.

I've arrived at my hotel in Edinbugh to find two beds in my room. Not two single beds, two DOUBLE beds. Awesome, huh? I might just swap between them during the night.

Thinking about it, there's probably enough bed surface area for a proper orgy or something. Yay!

I'll work on that in a minute when I meet my travelling companions in the bar. I'm sure it will go very well and that everyone will think that it's a most excellent idea and no one will kick me in the nuts at all.

Now I'd just like to clarify a bit of hotel etiquette here: I have facial soap and I have bath soap in my room. I want to wash my hands.

I've elected to use the facial soap, rather than the bath soap, as I suspect something designed to clean a bath might be a bit harsh on my hands. Soap designed for my delicate, beautiful face however, should be fine.

I just want to be sure that I haven't made some sort of terrible hotel soap related faux-pas.

EDIT: it is now almost midnight. My nuts are intact, however I am, unsurprisingly, alone in my hotel room as the only person who was interested in my suggestion was a hairy man called Paul.

As an unrelated aside, I've now been in Bonnie Scotland for around six hours and, as far as I can tell, have yet to meet an actual Scottish person. The guys at the taxi rank were of Middle Eastern persuasion and the hotel staff appear to be comprised of Eastern Europeans. I'm informed that one of the girls who served is dinner may have had a Scottish accent, but as I did not hear her speak, I can't really accept that as empirical evidence of Scottishness.

Hell, based on the evidence so far, there are more Scottish people in Bristol than there are in Edinburgh.

There Are No Vaginas Here

I'm off to Edinburgh tomorrow for a couple of days on a 'team building' thing with my workmates.

On Monday, one of my colleagues asked me what I would be wearing on Wednesday evening for the supper and networking session. She went on to enquire whether or not I would be wearing jeans for the Friday morning session.

I'd like to be clear about something right now:

I don't have a vagina. Look, here's a diagram that clearly shows my lack of any sort of vaginal accoutrements.


I dont have a vagina because I'm not one of the womenfolk and as such I have no idea what I'll be wearing tomorrow, let alone three days from now. It very much depends on what doesn't smell.

Here is a photograph of my bag:



Oh look, it's empty... I haven't packed it yet because I don't got a vagina!

Verbing

So today I have decided to grumble about the recent encroachment of verbing. What brought this on, you ask? Well, two things, really.

Firstly, I've noticed a lot of people referring to 'inboxing' on Facebook. It usually takes the form of 'I'll inbox you the details' or 'inbox me the directions' or something like that.

But the final straw came when someone said it to me in a teleconference yesterday. Obviously, I maliciously refused to understand what he was asking me to do until he spoke properly. It went something like this:

Me: I'm half way through the analysis of that.
Dick: Can you inbox me when you're done?
Me: What, now?
Dick: Yeah, if you could inbox the results to me, that would be great.
Me: I'm sorry. This must be a bad line. That sounded a lot like gibberish.
Dick: INBOX. ME. THE. RESULTS.
Me: It's not the line is it?
Dick: Um...
Me: I'm going to tea.

He wasn't really called Dick. It was more of a job title.

Dazza vs The Conference

Today I had the great pleasure of attending a works conference. One of those things they put on once a year in a posh five star hotel in London and get in all the bosses and the odd celebrity guest in the hope that we'll feel all special.

I suppose the most important thing I took away from the event was not that the company values me (although not enough to put me up in the posh five star hotel in London - how about this slightly dingy three star one instead?) or any sort of inspiration from the somewhat irrelevant (although admittedly very entertaining) Olympic medallist, or even any sense that the men in charge of my ultimate destiny know what they're doing; but that posh five star hotels in London serve their tea in very small cups.

On the plus side, they did serve up mini cream teas mid-afternoon, so I can pretty much forgive them anything. Look, here they are:

It didn't start well...

This morning did not start well.

I arrived at work to find that both of the drinks machines on my floor were knackered. No tea for me until the canteen opened an hour later. You know how I like my tea. Perpetual and uninterrupted. (57, by the way, if anyone cares.)

Next up, I broke my system access. In order to get it restored, I needed one of my workmates to purge me. Problem with that was that no-one else was in. It was 7am, after all.

Fortunately one of them was logged in and working from home. So I sent her a text message.

Unfortunately, I'm a massive idiot and, rather than texting the colleague that was up and working, I texted the one that was not only on holiday and having a lie in but feeling a bit poorly, too (yeah, I pretty much gave everyone I know that flu bug!). So she was pleased about being woken up at 7 o'clock.

On the plus side, we did conclude that wrapping a toad in mustard soaked dock leaves and balancing it on your head whilst soaking your feet in cauliflower juice and rubbing strawberry yoghurt into your chest is as effective a cold remedy as anything else.

So that's good.