Of Cankers

It's a funny old thing... Seems the crossover to the new Production system has been going so well for my employers, they may actually be fast-tracking the remainder of the offices. We learned this week that we will not be required to return to work after Christmas - the February magazines will be handled from head office.

Good luck to them, I say. I can still see the entire business collapsing inside of two years.

I have mixed feelings about the early push-off. One the one hand, I'm glad I won't have to motivate myself into one final month after a Christmas break. It means I can start 2011 afresh, leaving my heartbreak and baggage in 2010.

On the other hand, they're taking my magazines away from me a month earlier than they'd said originally. I could have sworn I had the January date in writing, but I've not been able to find anything to that effect so far.

Then again, it hurt that they're taking them away at all... changing the dates ain't going to make that much difference.

I finally got back to my GP recently, since my throat problems are still present. I reeled off the same list of symptoms, with the addition of the fact that Pantoloc Control (I know, it sounds like something you'd wear for incontinence, but it's an acid suppressant) has had a hugely beneficial side-effect, and she seemed to think that I'd diagnosed myself very well - it appears more likely that the stomach problems have aggravated my throat than my throat problem simply coincides with the excess acid. Thus, I was prescribed a month's supply of another acid suppressant... and, having taken my first dose this morning, I'm quite pleased to find that the results have been just as quick and just as beneficial as Pantoloc.

Of course, the prescribed drug is used predominantly in the treatment of ulcers...

...But ulcers were not mentioned by the GP in my consultation...

...But plenty of people have suggested I might have an ulcer for one reason or another...

So, who knows? Maybe I have an ulcer?

Only In The Suburbs

Normally my Sunday morning starts around 6am - unintended - due to the arrival of the cleaning crew that services the office next door to my bedroom. No so, today, but I don't consider myself lucky.

Oh, no. Today, my day started pretty much on the dot of 10am - a nice enough lie in, to be sure - and to the sound of a demonstration. Much shouting and chanting from up the road and, when I'd bustled myself out of bed and drawn back the curtain, I saw the tail end of a long procession of people, some of whom wearing sandwich boards, heading on down the road.

Only it wasn't a demonstration...

Weirdly, it was a bunch of people dressed in Domino's Pizza livery, advertising their September Specials.

Unless, of course, Domino's decided to stage this procession on exactly the same turf and at exactly the same time as an actual demonstration.

But, then, what could the protest have been about, and where did it end up?

The "worse" that it could be...

It's a funny thing. I've had three jobs (technically two, I guess) and each one has ended in some kind of disaster. My first employer went bankrupt shortly after I'd transferred to another part of the same group. The entire group then faded from the world shortly after my unceremonious departure, though its founder is still going strong.

Now, having been voicing portents of doom about the office for the last few months following the announcement of Production redundancies, it looks as though my little part of the company could well be done for before January.

The current sales figures - halfway through the month - place us somewhere in the region of £120k south of where we should be.

That is a not inconsiderable amount, as a deficit.

It suggests that our new Publishing Director is really missing something... not least the 'passive resistance' of the Salespeople to some of her grand schemes. But, more than anything, it proves how seriously our paymasters have misjudged the London market, and the publishing of glossy lifestyle magazines in general.

This can't be good for the company... but, naturally, the Production Department is doing everything it can to get us closer to this month's target... if only we didn't have just one week - till Friday, really, as this month will be invoiced next Monday - to do it.

I popped over to my parents' house this evening, to retrieve a package that was delivered there. I now have a new selection of seriously cool t-shirts, including Groverfield, Science Is A Verb Now, Cogito Ergo Nom, and Clearly I Have Made Some Bad Decisions. That's my wardrobe sorted for the week...

Apparently my sister was quite complimentary about my cooking at the weekend... maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought... But my mother agreed that, yes, Salmon skin is a very good insulator.

Visitation

My sister came over for lunch yesterday, something that had been on the cards one way or another for a couple of weeks, because we'd agreed to get together next time she was in town getting her daughter checked out at Great Ormond Street. We'd originally discussed going out to dinner one evening, after work, but with all the craziness at work, we didn't get around to finalising anything.

So, perhaps foolishly, I sent her a text, along the lines of "Hey, I've got a great idea... Come round on Saturday and let me cook for you!"

I basically need to practice as much as possible, so it was an opportunity to do more than a simple 'take the cardboard box out of the freezer' type meal, and more than just one serving thereof.

Saturday began with a trip down the shops... and, for a change, not to Sainsbury's or Tesco. I actually went to one of my local greengrocers for the makings. A bunch of spring onions, a sprig of fresh ginger and a bulb of garlic cost me a few pence more than a pound. Next up was a trip to the fishmonger down the road. It's the first time I've ever bought fish fresh, so it was a bit bewildering... at least I new which fish I was after - salmon - and it turns out my local fishmonger specialises in that very fish. How's that for getting lucky?

And the guy in the shop couldn't have been more helpful - on the bone or filleted steak? Size? And if the sort of thing I was after wasn't visible on the tables, there was plenty more in the back.

I grabbed two large steaks and one small - though I already knew that even a small steak would probably be too large for a 1-year-old.

Next was a brisk walk back home, and then on with the preparations so that, in theory, I'd be prepared to get started with lunch whenever my sister arrived.

I know the Five P's. Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.

To cut a long story short, things didn't exactly go according to plan. The idea was for my sister and I to have a proper catch-up, but you try having a sensible conversation with a precocious toddler exploring your flat. I ran afoul of so many new rules and, while I'd done a reasonable job of tidying up, I hadn't accounted for such things as making sure superglue and scissors were safely out of reach. Unsurprisingly, Kate took up most of our time, and most of our combined attention... though, to be honest, it was more my own panic than any external distraction that led to the meal being less than perfect. It was only the second time that I've tried to make this particular salmon teriyaki stir-fry... the first time it was slightly burnt, this time it was slightly underdone and needed extra time in the frying pan. Thankfully, I did far better baking the smaller steak for my niece - that was pretty much done to perfection.

No-one got food poisoning, though, and most of the fish was nice... the stir-fry extras turned out like an afterthought, because I almost completely forgot about it but, as second attempts go, it wasn't bad.

The rest of the afternoon was simply a matter of keeping the little one occupied until my sister's parking ran out and she had to head back to our parents' house. Conversation happened, but none of the stuff we'd been meaning to talk about.

I put off heading over to my folks myself today because I had washing up to do (my sister had offered to help, and I almost regret declining the assistance, because it's still not done), laundry, and all kinds of other things I wanted to do...

...but, in typical fashion, I didn't get round to anything. Sure, the laundry got done (strangely less from last week than in a normal week... who knew dressing in civvies would lighten the load?), but I climbed back into bed a couple of times during the course of the day, simply to pass the time.

Not the best of weekends... but at least I should be rested for the week ahead...

On Compliments

Had a bit of a funny experience today.

Yesterday, I got an invitation to join a colleague's LinkedIn network. I've tended to refuse most of them because they're all so tedious, but this one was immediately accepted.

The colleague in question is a bit of a princess, and certainly a royal pain in the arse sometimes... but, in many ways, that's one of her strengths. She's bloody good at her job, and the occasional dressing-down she dishes out serves to prevent me from becoming a complete tit in the office.

Having accepted the invitation, I proceeded to compose an unsolicited recommendation. I sincerely doubt that she would ever have even considered asking me for a recommendation, but it basically wrote itself in a very short time. She's easily one of the best salespeople at work, though being promoted to management of a team has left her in more of a caretaker role for the most part... Nevertheless, she's very focused, keeps track of everything her clients are after, and is clearly devoted to her team in her own peculiar way.

Since I ran the text past my boss, I half expected her to have seen it before I posted it to LinkedIn but, thankfully, she had not... and she sent me an email thanking me for a recommendation that was - she said - one of the nicest things anyone has ever written about her, and that it almost brought a tear to her eye.

Not sure how serious she was being, to be honest... I'd not really pegged her for the low-self-esteem type, but I guess I haven't paid her that much attention in general. She is quite underappreciated - both by her staff and her managers - considering what she does for the company... And I basically just felt the need to express my appreciation.

...Which has been a long time coming, considering it's only been recently that I've even decided that I quite like working with her, despite the tantrums, specifically because of what she's capable of without them.

Work generally went better than expected, and I was observed to be grinning much of the time... We might have been finished far earlier had the Sales team been a bit more organised about their check-off. Technically, we were finished by about 4pm, but it was only signed off with the Printers shortly before 5pm. Nevertheless, I think I'm on top of my next couple of magazines... it's really only the last one in the cycle that could be troublesome.

Lacking Bite

Over the last weekend, the TV series based on Marvel Comics/New Line Cinema's Blade franchise started. Visually and stylistically, it's based very closely on the movies, seemingly occurring sometime after the first, but before the second (or, alternatively, denouncing the second).

It's pretty much the average American TV Series Based On A Successful Movie formula... all the usual stereotypes are there, and it introduces the bizarre - yet utterly derivative - concept of a drug for humans, made using vampires - in this case, vampire ash. In common with this theme in just about every other TV series that uses it, this drug grants the user a small portion of the vampire's characteristics - strength, speed... and, wouldn't you know it, the thirst. So much so, in fact, that some users are driven to gnawing off their own fingers for blood.

The action is fairly weak - well, the pilot felt that way... as if they knew they were filming a pilot that probably wouldn't get picked up - and the storyline was terribly unoriginal.

But, I guess, there's not a great deal one can do with a subject like this... Or is there?

It dealt with Blade's history by having his sidekick/weapons guy deliver a lengthy exposition featuring clips from the first movie, and a significant dropping of names - Whistler, specifically. While 'Blade: The Early Years', a teen drama featuring a teenage misfit and his attempts to lead a normal life while dealing with the vampire underbelly would probably have been both less interesting and less original, there was surely a better way to introduce the character to the small percentage of television viewers who were otherwise unaware of the character's existence.

Not least, a plot for the pilot.

Bringing in a soldier recently returned from combat was also decidely unoriginal... but these often seem to be the character we're supposed to root for, and who provides the viewer's way into the story. Add in a dead brother as a family connection to the vampire underbelly (restoring old buildings by day, spreading the vampire ash drug and researching 'cures' for the vampires' weaknesses by night) and the story is barely distinguisable from any other 'maverick/outlaw hero' TV series these days.

Still, I'll give it another go this weekend, and see how it continues its story...

The Undying

I suspect the reason I so enjoy zombie movies is that, in some ways, my life is a zombie movie. Not just the frequent zombie dreams, you understand. My whole, waking life could easily be interpreted as a zombie movie. It's like that line from The Sixth Sense:

"I see dead people... ...Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other.
They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead."

And sometimes, particularly at work, that's exactly what it's like. All these people who hate their jobs and what they're being asked to do, and yet they plod on. Surely they must have lives to get on with, hobbies to enjoy, real friends to spend time with... and yet, without fail, every Friday night (more often in some cases) they're down at the bar in our office complex.

So, naturally, I went off to see Resident Evil: Afterlife on its opening night. The original plan was to see Salt, but that's doing late night showings only now, so I guess I've missed out... The latest entry into the cinematic Resident Evil franchise seemed like a reasonable substitute and, despite none of them bearing much relation to the continuity set up within the games, and despite none of them being very good (1 was OK but completely unrelated to the games, 2 was blah, 3 was WTF?), I'm actually kind of a fan of the series. They're Zombie Movie Lite - all the undead, none of the subtext on the dangers of consumerism. They also tend to be seriously action packed.

And Milla Jovovitch isn't exactly hard on the eyes.

So the third movie ended with the revelation that there was an army of Alice clones... this one begins with Matrix homages aplenty, and more Milla Jovovitch than even I'd know what to do with. Armed to the teeth.

Bizarrely, the plot is fairly coherent - straightforward, even - progressing nicely from set-piece to set-piece, reliably killing off the chaff and granting miraculous escapes to the wheat (several lines of dialogue from the meat puppets may as well have been "I'm going to tell you something about myself that will hint at the manner of my death"). And, while it seems Alice is still completely badass even when stripped of her T-Virus superpowers, by the end of the film, there's a very obvious implication that she'll have them back in time for the next film.

Yes, that's right - there's going to be another.

This series has become a zombie itself.

Arrivals and such

Got home yesterday to find a 'We Called To Deliver' card which just happened to be a package from Hong Kong containing my Crossfire Explorer & Munitioner set. Naturally, with the tube strike today, there was no opportunity to go and collect it because, rather than leave it at the Post Office not five minutes down the road from my home, they decided to take it to a Post Office on Pinner Road, near North Harrow station. A long walk, a bus ride, or a very silly train journey away. Sensible.

That said, with the tube strike, I wouldn't even have had the opportunity to collect it from my local Post Office, because I had to leave for work far earlier than the Post Office opens.

And, on the subject of the strike, next time there's a problem with the Piccadilly Line, I must remember to disembark at Baker Street and get the Number 27 bus to work, from the stop just over the road from the station - takes a while, but it's far more efficient than changing onto the Circle/District Line bound for High Street Kensington. On a non-strike day, it should be a sensible enough backup route.

Work was reasonable... though the new boss wanted to push back the deadlines again. Only by two days, but even so, the top Accounts guy declined the request. Worse still, just making the request is going to make her performance this month seem that much more pathetic.

Hardly surprising: after taking an extra week last month, and just about hitting target because of our bi-annual schools special, the first few magazines out of the trap this month are looking awful. My first goes to press on Friday, and currently has 23 pages unsold.

Strangely, the later ones aren't looking quite so bad... or maybe not so strange considering the manager for Friday's mag is (a) completely chaotic and (b) on holiday till Friday.

Yes, you read that right. The magazine's manager is on holiday until the day the magazine goes to press. You can see how that's going to go, can't you?

Business as usual...

In other news, I was introduced to something called Pantoloc Control yesterday. Sounds like something one might wear to combat a weak bladder, but it's actually for acid reflux. Since I've had that quite bad lately, seemingly aggravated by my cough, I figured I'd give it a shot.

And, damn, if it hasn't helped with the cough as much as it has the acid. Perhaps I got it the wrong way round - it wasn't the cough aggravating my stomach problems as much as it was the stomach problems aggravating my throat. All that acid hanging around can't be good, after all...

Recipe Time

Or not, really...

I just had a daft idea for a quick feed this evening. Having stopped off at a McDonalds on Friday, and had a Filet of Fish (oh, good grief, Maccy-D, just give it the extra L and call it a bloody fillet... no-one is fooled by your poncy Franglais), I popped out today to replenish my stocks of fish fingers, and bought some processed cheese and a pack of buns. Three fish fingers got slammed into the oven, tartare sauce (picked up another time) was liberally spread on the top half of a bun, with a slice of processed cheese on the bottom half. Thirteen minutes later, three fish fingers were slapped into the middle.

Upon reflection, a second slice of cheese may have been a worthwhile addition (it's not exactly the strongest flavour) but, overall: Tasty. Quick. Reasonably filling. Great to eat when there's something reasonably funny on TV.

On a related note, I watched Hot Fuzz for the umpteenth time earlier this evening... It definitely stands up to repeat viewings thanks to an all-round excellent cast, and makes me wonder when Simon Pegg is going to do another proper action role, rather than just being token British guy in an action movie. Star Trek (reboot) 2, perhaps? Scotty Kicking Some Alien Arse?

Not a particularly constructive day for me... or was it? After all, I finally did all the bloody dishes that have been begging to be washed for about two weeks now (why did I not go for a dishwasher?), and finally put up a pair of prints my boss bought me ages ago. I'd been debating for far too long where to put them, but the best ideas were always either putting them each side of the painting in the lounge, or putting them at each end of my hall.

I went with the latter in the end, and I have to say it was the right decision... The two prints are related - a cat is sleeping, and a mouse is passing in front of it in one, and behind it in the other. One print now shows the mouse wandering casually in front of the cat, toward the lounge. The other now has the mouse tippy-toeing behind the cat to get into the bathroom.

The Eyes Have It

During the week, I received a letter from my optician pointing out that I was due for a visit. Having failed throughout the week to phone and make an appointment, I decided to pop in directly today, on the off-chance and on the thin pretense that I wanted to go into Harrow anyway, and the optician was along that route, broadly speaking.

I think I must have splurged all my good luck for the day on that one visit, however. I got seen almost immediately (the optician had one customer already, and no bookings in the immediate future, so I went straight in when she'd finished), and it transpires that, yet again, there has been no discernible change in the quality of my eyesight in the last two years. I mentioned that, before my current pair of glasses, I'd been on much the same prescription for about 10 years, so it wasn't really a surprise to me. As the optician said, though, it's not often that happens. She did caution me that there might be a drop in my left eye by my next visit, and now I wish I'd clarified whether she meant a drop in eyesight or a drop in the strength of my prescription - her tone suggested the latter.

After that, I quickly grabbed myself some lunch (the Kentucky Jack, from a nearby KFC - actually a bit of a disappointment, but mainly because the chicken was bland and a little tough, so that'll be the Original Recipe a little overdone) before heading on into Harrow, and several rounds in disappointment in the three shops I wanted to visit in search of new games for my Wii.

Yes, they all had Metroid: Other M... but I was looking for the likes of Soul Calibur Legends to bolster my collection of terribly average beat-'em-ups, and anything else that might leap out at me... but not much did, either in Game, Computer Exchange or HMV. Not even anything to tickle my fancy in the DVD section in the last.

I should probably get back to writing lists of what I want, just to make shopping easier, but I tend to forget to take the lists when I go out anyway.

Not very well...

Had one of those strange instances today where I felt fine right up until I didn't.

Over lunch, I lost my appetite, felt lethargic and, according to my boss, went a funny colour. I eventually agreed to come home and get some rest - today being the day that web ads should have been online, it doesn't feel right to have left halfway through the day.

I dozed briefly on the train (less easily when a guy boarded with two very large, very ugly and very slobbery dogs what were tied to each other, but had no lead), and headed straight to bed when I got home, later taking some ibuprofen.

Doesn't seem to have done much, and my eyes feel strange now... Paracetamol before bed, maybe...