Pets 2

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about a colleague who keeps a few pets. Today she came into work a bit distraught. Apparently one of her dogs ate one of the chinchillas over the weekend.
At the moment, its circling the Axolotl with fur round its grinning, contented mouth, dreaming of desert.

Pets

I work with some strange people. A colleague of mine was telling me how her chinchillas had eaten through the cable which supplied power to machine which provided oxygen to her fish. Who promptly died. She was upset by this because she was beginning to "bond" with her fish. I don't know what happened to the chinchillas, I presume they survived electrocution.


Rather than buying new fish she bought an Axolotl. Which looks like this.

I think you must admit its a strange looking thing. She insists that this creature gets excited when she comes into the room. I keep searching her face for some sort of irony but cannot see any at all.

I get appalled looks when I explain my first impressions of small animals is that I wander how far they would travel if I kicked them.

A first time

I am on a e-learner course in Liverpool. As part of the course we have been "introduced" to web 2.0. So this is the first time I have been encouraged as part of my work to post in a blog. I haven't mentioned that this blog has been going now for almost two years.

Advent #16 - 21st December: Christmas party

This is a made up story. Any similarity with persons living or dead is entirely co-incidental.


You can learn a lot about good management just by observing the people you work with . You can learn how to be a good manager and you can learn how not to be a good manager.

Today I observed our team leaders breaking the first rule of good management.


Last night was the team "Christmas do". I couldn't make it but by all accounts they "had a good time".

As today was our last day at work before Christmas and the college was closing at 13:00, we were looking forward to an easy day and an early finish. Just a departmental meeting at 11:00 to go to.



But at 9:45 I received a rather sheepish call from J who'd stayed over at S's house. They'd just woken up and realised they should be at work. Having only gone to bed at 5:30 they were both a bit worse for wear and certainly not up to driving.

Of course I went to pick them up.

Now they weren't just a bit tipsy - they were both still drunk and I had trouble keeping the pair of them in the car.

I did worry for their careers.

Back at work we thought the meeting would be a quick do, wishing us a happy Christmas and off we go. So we weren't expecting the guest speaker or the full-on PowerPoint presentation.

We knew we were in for a good time when she started by telling us she was going to talk about a subject that we didn't need to know about and possibly would never need to do anything about. Things really got going when she told us that she hadn't designed the PowerPoint presentation herself and and it was a bit dull - but she did promise to be as quick as possible.

As the meeting wore on I looked round at the people who didn't look too well after a long night, who were badly hung-over or still quite drunk, and wondered why we where there.

Thankfully after an hour they let us go. But not before at least two people had serious giggling fits and were asked if they needed to leave the room.

Inspired be the team meeting (or was it the team party) one of my colleagues decided the best way to impress a young lady he rather admired, was to lower Santa from our first floor window past her window on the floor below.

Sadly, in his excitement he made a serious error and lowered it instead past the window of the Health and Safety manager. She was not too chuffed.

If you look carefully you can see her arm as she opens the window to shout "take him away".

Meanwhile, back to the first rule of management.

Never plan a boring meeting the morning after a staff party.

Advent #3 - 6th December: Christmas Dinner

The canteen at work prepared Christmas dinner for us today. We where going to pay £6.50 for three course dinner, but they forgot to give us the parsnip soup. So we paid £5.00 for main course and pudding.




Actually, it was not too bad. I took a picture, it's my first Christmas lunch so it counts as a Advent entry number 3.

Advent #2 - 5th December: The corner of wrong

At work they have been decorating the canteen with Christmas decorations. For some reason they have decorated the coffee machine with the following unusual "thing".



I'm not sure if it's scary yet, but I do have to look at it every time I get a coffee.

Advent #1 4th Dec: Santa and Scrooge

Heather is trying to do a picture everyday up to Christmas, thought I would have a go. Here is number 1 (late starting).

At work, Barry, the outdoors man, has brought in a Father Christmas for use on the high ropes. All the students have to give him a hug or a kiss before he lets them down.

Barry must feel an affinity for Santa Claus, both having outdoor jobs and climbing etc. Unlike Jason (friend at work in picture) who is having a bit of a "Bah, Humbug" moment because Barry has hung Father Christmas in the staff room.

Youth sub groups

I have been looking into the groups young people put themselves into. I have a few categories below.

Emos
Emotionals. They like to be a bit sad. They are defined by their music and their clothes, I think. I know a Emo who has a really long fringe and likes to hide inside his black hoody top.

Goths
Like to wear a particular type of clothes and chains. Again defined by the music they listen to and the black clothes they wear. I think they may lobby their parents for body piercing.

Trendies or Scene People
Bright happy clothes usually expensive. Obviously mortal enemies of the Goths and Emos.

Scallys
All scallys refuse to belong to this group. Every knows who they are apart from the people who are scallys. They usually wear sports equipment, track suits etc.

I will add to the list as more occur.

Quizzes

We do a few quizzes at work. It helps with team building and we have a laugh.

Question: What is carried by a Aquaduct

Long silence

Prompt: The clue is in the word AQUAduct

Long silence

Answer: Ducks?