Bored

I am so bored at work. It all seems so pointless. Thought I couldnt get on work email today ( no internet) but after having closed PC down several times its working. No idea what I shall do if it goes down. Since end of June had to access my emails from external site cos program went wrong on PC. They fixed it last thursday but since then have had no database access. Cannot do my job without it. Very very bored. Will need to cover reception tomorrow anyway cos 2 pepes are off and to be honest cant wait! At least I will have something to do. Boss still doing my head in over horse racing. Rest of staff as bad too. Mind you I couldnt resist telling my boss my union have asked me to strike. His face was a picture when he realised I am in a union. Ha! Totally pointless tho since no unions where I work. I just stayed in it since I feel safer. They cant stop me after all and if they are going to get rid of me I doubt it will make any difference either way. Just means they know they have to have a good reason. I dont actually want to wind em up and I suppose if they had got rid of me unfairly I would have had an ace to take action with legal support. I still have that tho and really i would prefer they just dont get rid of me cos sadly I need the money. I started a new blog the other day to stick my poetry on. Normally I just write on the walls but once the house is done up I have to use a note book. Well I think M would object to graffitti on teh walls once its all nice inside. Right now it doesnt matter. Have decided whats the point of writing into a note book. I will never get round to real publishing but can do so anyway by blogging it and at least then the odd random person will actually find it and read it. Rarely write anyway so there will not be loads. Usually only when something happens like the race course/work corporate do incident. Frustrated with having to work in a boring under paid job when could be sorting out my own company. I have so little time it seems to do anything for me. There has to be a better way to live than this me thinks. Had a meeting with the guy who will probably be printing soap labels on saturday morning. Normally would avoid doing anything work related at the weekend but its so different when its for your own company. Didnt mind at all. Was also quite an eye opener when M said he would like to run a shop. Maybe that will be the away forward for us. In theory as well we would then both be self employed. I am abit worried about just how much soap people will buy tho. I mean at £1:50 to £3:50 ish a bar (thats another thing - must actually get round to working out realistic prices!) thats alot of soap I need to make to be giving up full time work!

help with our boiler disaster

This really nice guy came to visit from Advance Heating. Decided to plug the name since have never had a salesman before who didnt try to sell us anything but actually helped us to move forward. And we havent spent anything yet! All he did was advise us. He says first we need to insulate all outside walls with Trisol 13 and need 2 layers. Lower our ceilings in the bedrooms slightly so we no longer have "caravan" curves since these cause more heat loss. Also insulate under floorboards in lounge. Then invest in stainless steel hot water tank - can add solar panels at later date if we ever afford to. He reckons if we do this soon we will cut our heat loss by around 50% and probably find it much easier to heat the house using current woodburner. That sorts us out for hot water and warmer home for very little and we only need help installing hot water tank. He said we can do most of what is needed ourselves. He is also making us calculate the BTU for every room. He said he could do it for us but charges £240 and we should use that as our incentive to get round to doing it. There are programs you can use online. I have done it for the upstairs so far and just need to do the downstairs now. He reckons we need to replace all radiators but can do this ourselves. I agree they are very old and probably inefficient. Also all are the same so not right sizes for rooms. Nice guy tho. Most people would have tried to blag us for them to do it for us. He gave us lots of leaflets on wood burning stoves and stuff with costs even tho he knows we wont have the cash for this till next january at earliest so he is not really getting anything out of this. He spent 2 hours with us and I feel dead guilty since forgot to offer him a cup of tea even. Very rude of me and he was a really nice guy. Well thats who we will be going with when we do save the money for a new boiler!

labels for soaps

Finally found a company who will probably be the ones I am going to get to do my labels. The guy who owns it seems very nice. Minimum order is only £50. Much better than the 1000 labels minimum order with the larger companies I have been talking to. They all cost loads. This sounds more affordable, the company is up the road so I will be able to actually pick up my labels or get them to deliver reasonably cheaply, and they are also a small company so more like me. They seems nicer to deal with and really shouldnt I be supporting local companies rather than giving my business to large corporate entities? There are too many large companies and not enough smaller entreprenours out there. Napoleon called us a nation of shop keepers. In recent years the likes of Tesco, Adsa etc have put most of the local corner shops out of business. Likewise the local soap makers ( Unilever, P&G, Boots) and the local printers are probably exactly the same. I think it is time to actively aim to buy locally. Then we support each other, our communities and we all work together to improve our different lives. Much better idea.

Grandma

I went to visit my Grandma. She has refused to see me for months since she says she doesnt want me to see her like this. Mad tho cos if I dont go she is going to die and I will not have seen her since Easter. Anyway just turned up on her doorstep. She is in a very bad way. Has mercury bandages on her legs which are very swollen and also has what could be the start of plurisy. I am sad to think it may really be the end. I know the stuff people say..................shes lived to a good age etc ............she is 93. But it wont help at all. She is still my grandma. I sent my brother (in france) an email and a text .............its Bastile Day today tho so he will probably be on holiday and wont read them. I may have been a bit too honest and brutal too so am wishing had been more thoughtful in how I worded it. Still he has also not been allowed to visit Grandma so he needs to know what is happening. One thing tho she is still not at all senile so that bodes quite well for me and my brothers really. If she didnt have carers tho she would have to go into a home or starve to death. Its that simple. She cant go out without someone to take her and considering she used to go all the way from Coventry to Walsall ( at least 25-30 miles) on her bus pass just because the lamb chops were better value there she has been a very active person till quite recently. She used to be out someowhere every day infact. Then again that is probably why she has lasted so long. I am finding this all very sad. Anyway most of my life is really quite unimportant and most of what I get up to is pretty mundane but Grandma is very important to me so I am blogging about her here for the world to know.

website

Finally got one of the website programs to work and have a "live" website at last. Still needs to have lots done to it yet but its on the way now. Having lots of problems with E-business insurance. Business advisor has said DO NOT SELL SOAP WITHOUT PRODUCT LIABILITY INSUANCE! Actually not easy to get for anything you sell over the internet. Asked advice from one of the soap suppliers and they said try the BERR website/ service so will have to do that this week. Problem with weekends is all government departments are closed and when trying to get business up and running as well as full time working its really hard to do stuff in the week.I suppose (hopefully anyway) I will look back on this as just a minor problem at some point in the future. Right now its a real hurdle. The nature of the company I work for is that because they give us lunch ( obviously a good bonus) but you have to have a sociable lunch and cannot go off and do your own thing. I actually have decided I would prefer a "normal" company where you bring your own sarnies etc and can get away from the people you work with. If you dont get on with everyone where I work you are in a slight mess! It also means I do not have 30-60 minutes a day at lunchtime where I can do stuff for my own company. They seem to have forgiven me for not wanting to go horse racing anyway and thats a relief. I cant wait to get up and running and hopefully to be able to work from home. It would be great to spend my life at home with my dogs. And to see them more. Dogs do not live long. Mine are already 4 years old and I only really get to spend 2 days a week with them and part of that usually inviolves them being alone whilst I go food shopping. Also I could give up my car since we would only need one and that is a lot less money going out on fuel, tax, insurance etc. Have to start trading to get the soap company to grow and the home based business to get off the ground. If we could make enough we might even manage to afford for us both to get homebased businesses. M`s homebrew is improving loads and he is now investigating buying small scale industrial equipment to make his own wort. Wort is the gooey stuff you buy in a beer kit and has already been processed. If he did it himself he could possibly start selling to shops or pubs and go into business doing it. Well its probably as likely to work as making soap so why not! Weirder things have happened anyway.

the holiday end

the end of our holiday is in sight. Tomorrow back to work. Makes me more sure than ever that there must be an alternative. A better way thru life. We have done so much but not gone away. Why go on holiday to spain, greece etc when you live somewhere beautiful. I dont think we missed out here. Next year could be a different thing. Right now staying in Kilsby for a whole week is a wonderful adventure. WE have met loads of new people, tried out a new pub, had BBQs and fixed lots of stuff around the house. We even have a lovely new front door that very "GOTH"!. Brilliant. Havent made any soap but have started the certification process so will soon be able to trade. Havent done the hard bit tho and sorted out the website tho am intending to try out several 30 day free trials with free domains so will not move my domains just yet!.Will have to learn with JoBloggs.com etc. and then remake it later in my own. I am still trying to learn HTML. Found a great site with directions of how to build a website which I will post here for everyone to read. It sounds easy but is not as easy as it seems probably due to me being totally not a computor geek. In one year I intend to become a computor geek cos evefryone can do it and you are what ever you want to be. Also time for a moto on the blog. Just have to work out how to add it!


"The ultimate aim is to go thru life causing the least suffering possible." Or maybe it should be "make it happen" as several of my friends would say.....................

birthday

Its been a whole week since last blogging and I feel really lazy having realised that. I have started to try to learn HTML. I want to build a website and will probably have to use a website ecommerce package which will cost. Anyway intending to learn properly too since it will eventually save me money. Also the website builder I am trying to use is really so difficult to use I may aswell just learn how to do it myself. Anyway went totally off on a tangent here. I have been too busy to blog. Ms latest hobby - home brew beer might also have had quite alot to do with it. Being on holiday with a large stock of varying maturities of home brew beer and it also being my birthday means great excuse for alcoholism to strike. Tidied the garden yesterday and had long chat with neighbour who is considering storage heaters. I have had them before and they worked and they are cheaper than biomass. Hopefully we will still get a environmentally ok option for heating. Also electric expensive and getting more so all the time. M talked to T who installed wood burner in lounge for us. It was meant as just decorative fire originally. Apparently can be easily upgraded to give central heating but we will have to install different type of radiators and replace all pipes. No option is cheap. But we could do with a boiler to heat radiators for winter and winter not realy very far away!