Still Here

[Dazzled]

Hi Guys

I'm afraid that I've been a bit absent lately, in fact it's probably been a couple of months since I last posted anything. I don't know if I've been missed but I thought I'd check in to let you know that I'm still alive and not wandering away from the forum.

It's just been the usual story of life getting in the way again. We started a DIY project in the autumn where we intended to put a new lowered ceiling in the living room. This rapidly turned into a nightmare as we discovered that several of the ceiling beams had rotted where they joined the wall so had to be reinforced with new beams and coach-bolts. What started off as a relatively simple overlay of an existing ceiling with a false one turned into a whole different animal which involved the complete removal of half the ceiling.

The job also served up some surprises when we discovered some live sockets with their cables coiled up and stuffed in the ceiling space; we've been living here for 30 years and these could have caught fire at any time! I did, however, turn this to our advantage and re-wired the feeds properly, diverting them to 2 new outlets in the front corners of the room. Currently (no pun intended) we have the front wall finished and all the beams suitably strengthened but we still have no ceiling (it was supposed to be finished by now) on one side of the room; it's covered with a plastic sheet although I have put some LED strip lights behind it to brighten things up a bit. After Christmas it will, no doubt, be consuming all my spare time.

And spare time is also under pressure from work. I'm working from home now and putting in far more hours than I get paid for. Some bright spark decided that our computer system needed changing by January and it hasn't gone well. I won't go into details but, in short, they decided that we could squeeze an 18 month transition into 5 months; nobody listened to me at the start so things have gone badly wrong with the result that I'm spending some of my Christmas break at my desk trying to put other people's blast-ups right. To say I'm not happy would be an under-statement and TBH, if it wasn't for the current employment situation, I'd be looking for another job right now. .

Hopefully, some time soon, things will calm down and I'll be able to post regularly again but until then I will keep checking in from time to time.

Take care all.

[jssel]

Sounds like a full plate. Good to know everything is OK during these crazy times. At least somewhat.

[iggie]

Good to hear from you Daryl, I hope you will be able to get back to some modelling soon once your DIY and work situation are resolved

[JamesPerrin]

Sounds a bit of nightmare, hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel.

[Crashpilot]

Nice to hear from you. "Been there, done that" - once I planned to renovate my living room in a week - in the end it took me 5 weeks! Surprise, surprise! :-(
All the best for 2021

[PaulBradley]

Ugh! Hopefully, there's light at the end of the tunnel, and we look forward to seeing you building models again soon!

[JohnRatzenberger]

Thanks for the update, it is good hearing from you!
Take care.

[MarkyM607]

Good to hear from you, hope your problem load reduces asap!!. Always some bright spark higher up deciding something is a good idea. Such as at work, we use red crates that are about a foot deep for online and home deliveries. Now these are purpose made sort of things and so cost more. To save money we are supposed to change to using green crates which are 'industry standard' but are two thirds the height. Half the stuff won't fit in them (some things didn't fit in the red ones!!), and they of course take less stuff!!.
Sorry, hijacked the post/thread, just showing it's a common problem!!.

[Ratch]

Hey Daz, I suspect that despite your protestations you are coping manfully
Keep up the good work

[wokka]

Good to hear that everything health wise is OK. My wife has the same issues at work as you do so I fully understand the stress you're going through.

[Crashpilot]

...only now I read the second part about your situation: having to sacrifice some of your xmas hols for your employer is really frustrating! That´s a time of the year, where I dont want to get bothered with work issues, that would get so much on my t*ts

[Eric Mc]

Don't ever become an accountant in practice in the UK.

Since 1997, people here have a 31 January filing deadline for submitting their personal tax returns. This means that people like me have to work flat out from about mid November right up to 31 January.

This means that I haven't had any sort of significant Christmas break since the Christmas of 1995.
My model building also takes a hit in this period.