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October 29th, 2009
10:47 am - More Dental Woes
Well, the dentist took one look at the tooth even after antibiotic treatment and said she might as well take it out. Which was fairly nasty - I had no idea how much force it took to extract even a pretty wobbly tooth - though surprisingly about £50 cheaper than the root treatment.
My mouth is draining nastily and feels like raw hamburger, but tbh it's still an improvement over most of the last week.
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October 16th, 2009
08:39 pm - The Skint Also Have Teeth!
Curent dental bill: £141.
And this is on the NHS, for root canal treatment and one other filling. At a private dentist, I believe it would be around ten times as much.
The next time anyone at all tells me the NHS is the worst thing that ever happened to this country, or makes the death panel joke, I'm going to break their fucking hose.
Shit, I'm skint :(
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September 23rd, 2009
01:12 pm - The Dreaded Lurgy
Ugh. Sick again, and now breaching the work absence policy, so I'll be up for an HR interview when I go back. It's clearly flu - feeling slightly better today but still have a temperature, muscle aches, sore throat, cough, sore throat... the usual roll of misery I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing of by now ;)
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May 15th, 2009
12:42 am - ...and breathe...
Well, the ksf meeting went okay. Laura, my manager, doesn't seem too worried, for now at least, and she's put some of the training I've been asking for in as an official request, which is heartening. She's setting up a meeting with Garry (my boss), her and me next Wednesday. It's supposed to be all informal and constructive. We'll see.
Stress sucks. Done a good few hours of overtime this week to fit in all the extra work this week. Have had near on two months of horrifically upset stomaches, now got headaches to add to that, and I appear to be back on the three-week period cycle again. My mother wants me to go to my GP and ask for antidepressants. They were the only thing that worked for her, to be fair. I don't really want to. I may suffer some spectacular lows, but I get some amazing highs too. Then, of course, I have days of spiralling guilt and badness for no particular reason, and I think it wouldn't be so bad.
The big thing to take my mind off all of this is that Mark and I have both booked Aliens and Alienation! Poor squintywitch has been getting the end of an immense amount of frockfroth, but she does deserve it, churning the lovely creations out as she does!
I'm also booked to take part in a sleep study. I only hope they let me out again after two nights of recording my brain...
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May 6th, 2009
09:56 pm - Possible Light at the End of Tunnel...
Guh. Work is driving me insane at the moment. We have an IRMER inspection tomorrow, so of course the day to do all this essential paperwork was clearly today. I have had 18 people trying to make their problems my problems all day.
I must have looked like I was about to set something on fire, as one of my many bosses asked if I was doing okay 6 seperate times over the course of the day. Two of them were after I started swearing at the photocopier in German, to be fair.
The best news, given all of this, is that I have an interview for a post as a Trainee Pharmacy Techinician on May 22nd! It's a two-year training post that would get me an actual qualification, the equivilent of an HND, it starts at Band 4 (about £17,500 a year) and it would be actual proper healthcare work, actually helping people and being of actual use, as opposed to utter spoddom!
Please cross all of your fingers (and any other appendages you have to hand) for me. I really, really, really want this one.
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February 20th, 2009
11:14 am - On Also Serving...
Yesterday went better. Got a great deal of work done, no fuckups. The organisation fairy smiled on me.
Will probably make a doctor's appointment and see if I can't sort out the bloody periods thing when I get back. Not having culmulative doses of PMS may make Claire a saner girl.
I still mean to have a look at a couple of other jobs from the ol' NHS job bulletin, though. I've been thinking hard since reading over ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) squintywitch 's piece on nightshift. Much as I know that we also serve who do admin and clerical, who deal with plans and patient records and admin support for people who make policy decisions, and the NHS as the beleagured yet overall admirable organisation it is couldn't survive without us, I really miss being in a frontline role. I miss caring for and dealing with people directly. I'm not Jude and I never will be, but I know I was a good care worker - we had six-monthly reviews in the place I worked and the only criticism I ever had was for lack of assertiveness.
I've already applied for a job working in health education and provision for refugees, and I'm considering applying for another as an Occupational Therapy Assistant out of Stobhill. Fingers crossed for me, please.
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September 18th, 2008
01:56 pm - W00t and Worrying
W00h00! I've found a way to get on at lunchtime at work! Big thanks to glasgowphill for sending me fic all this time, though - it has kept me sane! Well... perhaps not. I was walking up the hall in my new job this morning and could have sworn that one of the radiographers greeted me as "Lieutenant"...
So far, by and large, the job itself seems to be going well. I'm still not sure Admin is what I want to do long-term, and still wondering about the possibility of going back to uni to do a Masters or a PhD. But, in the meantime, I'm quite enjoying myself. I have my own office and everything, currently decorated with Argus, Opheliac and Dune ;) I also rather fancy a Venus Fly-Trap...
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August 30th, 2008
12:26 pm - W00t!
Well, it's been confirmed. I start my new job the Tuesday after Maelstrom! Three more days of this crappy job EVAR!!!
I have the contract in and everything!
WOOHOOOOO!!!
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July 15th, 2008
02:12 pm - Vacillations, Fears and Doubts
Cross your fingers for me please - I had the interview at the Beatson this morning. It was really short, only 20 minutes long, but they warned me it wouldn't be any longer than that. I only actually missed half an hour of work.
I'm vacillating in between thinking I did quite well and thinking I talked utter shite. It would certainly be a more interesting job than the one I'm doing atm, and offer me a chance to stretch and show what I can do a bit. It'd be nice not to be constantly taking a shouting for mistakes I haven't made.
On the other hand, this role may well need a more organised person than I am. Not had a good few days, and feel I did well if I managed to pass for a functional human being at the interview, let alone more, really.
Please wish me luck anyway ;)
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March 19th, 2008
02:11 pm - Mugshots (continued)
I am apparently appearing on the front cover of some NHS magazine looking like a twat in a headset.
Violent thoughts are rising....
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February 28th, 2008
04:47 pm - A Thought
Courtesy is quite clearly one of this world's woefully underrated virtues.
To that end, the next person who calls me any variation on the words "stupid girl" when I am trying to help them is going to get their own paperwork shoved up their arse.
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February 12th, 2008
04:45 pm - I know the students amongst you will hit me for this...
...but I actually found myself wishing I was back writing essays today instead of sitting here feeling my brain turn slowly to mush and trickle out of my ears. I tell myself that I would feel this trapped if I were doing that too, but trapped in my own little womb able to get more than three bloody cups of tea at carefully-spaced intervals and using my damn brain for more than keeping my ears apart looks bloody appealing from here.
It is a beautiful, beautiful day. There is clear sunlight touching the tops of the trees on the tiny corner of window I can see that looks into the graveyard. Even the Ghormenghast-esque roofs look different in that kind of sunlight. I found myself in the photocopying room today and seriously considered doing a Steerpike, just climbing out the window and escaping across the rooftops. Who knows, perhaps it would all have ended better for me that it did for him. I actually did it once when I was a child at school, but I wimped out and climbed back in again before they caught me. Days like this make me wish I had gone on. Perhaps it would all have ended better than this.
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December 6th, 2007
12:32 am - The Chances of Anything Coming From Mars...
Dear Colonel Rhinefelden
Can I have a Martian War Machine for Winter Festival? Pretty please? I'll take good care of it and only destroy things you want me to? Well, mostly...
So, my Dad and I went to see the Jeff Wayne musical of The War of the Worlds at the SECC tonight. It was bloody fucking fantastic. A combination of live action and CGI film on a huge screen, live singers projected in amongst the action, live orchestra, oh, and a fucking anamatronic Martian War Machine hanging from the ceiling, blasting green light and heat rays at the audience. One particularly amazing sequence has a crew attacking it with a machine gun, with pyrotechnics exploding all around the machine. It was a genuinely gobsmacking experience. There was a great mix in the audience too, from old grannies to little kids of five or six. I happily made a total fool of myself by singing along with every word of every song, quoting along with big chunks of dialogue under my breath and starting a standing ovation at the end. Best Christmas present ever :)
On a rather more annoying note, my stupid phone has finally given up the ghost. One moment, texting away fine. Next moment, the mno button starts acting like the def button. Then half the buttons stop working. I'm going to go to the Vodafone shop tomorrow and see if I'm due an upgrade to my handset, but this means facing a day at work without a phone. Joy. Thus continuing the grand tradition of electrical things not working around me. I should chuck the stupid job and go into freelance industrial sabotage.
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December 4th, 2007
09:37 pm - Mugshot
Well, finally got my pass at work, which will save me from having to claim to be called Esther and be in my forties should the revolution start while I'm at work. As is traditional, it features a photo of me that does not look the slightest bit like me. In addition to bleaching any trace of blood from my face, it makes me look about fifteen and about to be run down by a truck.
Actually, it looks like a school photo, which is possibly why it gives me a minor case of the willies. I've picked up a pervasive hatred of school photos from my Dad, who was a journalist for 20 years. He said that there's nothing like going down to the grieving parents of a young girl/boy who has just been killed in a particularly horrible fashion that's about to be splashed all over the press to ask for a photo of them, always to be silently handed a school photo. I used to wonder why my school photos were never displayed in our house - aside from the obvious reason, of course, which is that my brother would have smashed them.
It was a very rollicking weekend of RP with the Nest, where we all went to Treasure Island and fought the Pirates of the Carribean. Oh, and Fishmen. Given that we're largely elvish, it was somewhat Tolkien meets Lovecraft while Stevenson gets high somewhere nearby ;) It was an interesting counterpoint, however, that this was also the adventure that I found out that Tinu, my Nest character, is...well, I, and she, are not sure if she's ascending to a higher plane of being or succumbing slowly to a dehabilitating disease. It made an interesting contrast, given that most of her friends are currently unaware. I don't think they'll be able to remain so for long. This looks to be an interesting RP challenge, but I suspect it will also be a bit of a headfuck.
I've also lost my entire makeup kit. I have the distinct feeling that I left it at 24_hour_techie and hentai_ninja's house. If you guys find it, please give it back! My bruise kit is in there!
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November 26th, 2007
01:43 pm - Bruised, Scarred and Fitz
Well, I get to work this morning only to have one of my colleagues lean in, take a close look and ask me what has happened to my head. Turns out that Sas's practically invisible scar has survived not only a subsequent shower and hairwash, but is much more visible after having done so. Whoops...
In slightly less embarassing news, I've just been rereading Robin Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy and I've been utterly amazed at how addicting it is even on a second reading. I have to say that, much as I've enjoyed the Soldier Son trilogy, it's just not the same without Fitz.
Oh, and I've acquired a sewing machine. I'm giving everyone fair warning of this now...
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November 20th, 2007
08:52 pm - Knackered
Until I got this job, I'd forgotten just how knackering it is to spend much of your day bored out of your skull.
I was so bored I spent today pretending I was filling out requisition forms for Olrich just to stop me fallng asleep. My actual Boss probably won't set my soul on fire if I do.
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