Entries from November 2006 ↓

Last day of my contract at BNZ today. New job Monday with start-up software development company … back to my old stomping ground. Yipeee!

In this world of medical advancement I always find it strange that there are far more diseases and allergies around than there were way before our modern times. Or is it that we just didn’t know about them back then? I guess now that people can fly between countries rather than walk means that the world wide spread of things like aids and bird flu, that probably did exist all that time ago, can now spread on a global scale. And we know about all this stuff because of so much global media.

This morning the office conversation was about someone’s friend with a toddler and their difficulty in finding a suitable birthday cake to take to creche for the toddler’s first birthday party. Apparently the creche (and this is common) has all these rules about what kids are allowed to take to eat – whether for parties or in their lunch boxes every day: cakes and baking must be free of eggs and nuts, and a wheat-free alternative must be offered; no peanut butter sandwiches are allowed for lunch – even if your kid is not allergic to nuts, peanut butter is not allowed to be in the creche breathing space. This seems oxymoronic in today’s world where a lot of parents seem to work whilst raising children and don’t actually stay home baking like my Mum did.

In then end the toddler’s parents sent them off to their first birthday party at creche with an eggless, nutless, un-iced fruit cake from Common Sense Organics. Yum. Poor kiddies.

As a kid I remember eating and drinking everything! Including the sand in the kindy sandpit (whether it had dogshit in it I don’t know … and dogshit was entirely possible because back then the kindy was not fenced with a 6-foot high concrete wall topped with barbed wire with a security guard out front). And so far I’m not allergic to anything and am pretty healthy (mental health aside!!)

Why has everything changed so much?

What’s happening to Plum? What are we going to do this Saturday?

I’m addicted! The live tree cam on NBC’s local New York site brings back so many memories. And they’re lighting the tree today!

http://www.wnbc.com/sponsors/10310218/detail.html

The Mister works late, night after night, and I stay home cooking up nice things for his dinner.

These filled with fragrantly herbed kumara, cabbage, onion and garlic. They were a hit!

Make it STOP!!

I can’t wait for all the guys around town who obviously don’t have moustaches normally to shave them off! I don’t know what it is but I reckon it’s really obvious which guys are normally clean shaven - they just seem to look uber-dodgy this month!

There are certain things you just expect in a grown up work environment when you resign. On the same project team within about 3 weeks of each other, 2 people have resigned and I’m flabbergasted at the response.

Firstly, the announcement:

Mine wasn’t a resignation per se but rather a decision to not see out my contract. As I always do, I discussed the pros and cons of doing this with my manager in an effort to make a decision. Whilst I was fairly certain that I was going to go, it was not decided at the point that my manager gave early warning to he who manages the IT program of work, as my possible departure needed to be added to a raft of other resource issues on the project. He, who is a self-centred show-off took it upon himself to go around the Melbourne arm of our project and announce that I had resigned. I was appalled! As far as I am concerned a possible resignation eluded to in good faith is a basic human confidence that he broke in order to buy allegiance with the aforementioned troubled project team by blaming my departure as the straw that broke the camel’s back. I went over his head and resigned on the spot in person stating that I refused to work for someone like that.

Secondly, the reaction.

When my departure was announced there was no reaction. Nothing. No-one either in our team meeting or afterwards said anything. No congratulations, no questions, no comments. So I felt pretty awful about the whole thing and still do. Completely ostracised. When the second person in our team to depart announced their resignation (today) the same stony silence fell. And this was probably even more of a surprise to everyone as the ‘leak’ mentioned above did not occur. I mean what kind of project team is this? Whether or not you like the person or are glad to see the back of them, you at least acknowledge their resignation.

The Mister and I (well mostly the Mister) whipped up an online Christmas Gift Management website yesterday for use by our now technically literate family! This year we’re attempting for the first time the Secret Santa method of gift-giving so we got together yesterday for the inaugural Lindauer-Special-Reserve-draw-name-out-of-hat ceremony followed by a show and tell of the Christmas Wish List website. It’s an easy-enough-for-Mother’s-to-use site that you must log in to, and create your own list of gift ideas for yourself so that your gift-giver can seek inspiration or instruction. The list comes with full inline editing and print capabilities in order to take the list around the shops in your handbag. The family are all very excited! And I’ve already got delusions of grandeur for the version 2 release … the Mister is groaning.

Bugger, didn’t realise it’s been over a year since I started on my Scarpetta Marathon – I thought it was around Christmas last year!

Have finally finished the last in my collection – #13 Trace. Since I started re-reading them in August last year, another has been published, Predator, which I must get. I’ve enjoyed reading the series back to back – I certainly have not become bored with them and up until the last two books I couldn’t actually remember what happened in the story line!

This year I’ve done Christmas fruit mince for the first time in order to make little pies during the festive season. In previous years have made cake or pan dolce. The fruit mince is very alcoholic and smells and tastes great! It now has to sit in the fridge fermenting for a month.

Now the Mister understands why I’ve wanted to keep various jars over the last couple of years – I always said to him that they might come in handy ‘one day’ – and this morning at 6.30 was that day!