United State of our rooms

And so Autumn is upon us and this is turning out to be the first year i haven't needed to prompt Bear to clean his study.  He is currently in full force pulling all sorts of forgotton items into the fore.  The constant calls from the next room find me scuttling through to see what has been found.  So far a butterfly (a live one, strangely) has materialised out of nowhere.  I think Bear sneezed it out of his hooter during one of the numerous dust filled sneeze-outs he's been having.  It was given a second chance, carefully caught and released out the back door.  The other thing that has been found is a tape case containing some of my old tapes.  We have YAZZ's Wanted album (minus its own case), Now Dance '86 and la piece de la resistance: NOW 6!  I have to share what (well, the good bits only) is on the latter two:

NOW DANCE '86

Communards - Don't Leave Me This Way
Gwen Guthrie - Ain't Nothing Going On But The Rent
Grace Jones - Pull Up To My Bumper

The majority of that album turned out to be a bit shit.

NOW 6

Queen - One Vision
Eurythmics - There Must Be An Angel Playing With My Heart
Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill
Fine Young Cannibals - Blue
Midge Ure - If I Was
Siouxie And The Banshees - Cities In The Dust
Jan Hammer - Miami Vice Theme

The study is now looking smart and the sneezing seems to be giving it a rest.

I'm thinking of having a clear out.  I really have accumulated such a lot of crap and most of that is craft related.  I'm going to start by putting the contents of my two shops (http:catlovesbear.etsy.com and http://catlovesbear.folksy.com) into some sort of sale whilst trying not to undercut myself.  Then the CD's need a going through.  There are too many empty cases i've kept in the hope of CDs showing up, but i think after 6/7 and in one case 10 years, they aren't coming back.

I'm now thoroughly addicted to Muse's Resistance album.  I wanted to listen to it everyday on my MP3 player but that would interfere with the setup of songs i have on it for the gym, so I make do with playing the album on my laptop and I let it run from start to finish.  I actually love each song now and can't believe I complained that two of the songs were bland.  I still have a hell of a lot of their other stuff on the MP3 player.  On shuffle, nearly every other song is one of theirs.  In other music news, i've heard the new Flaming Lips single Slippery Silver Hands and it seems they are getting in on the Space themed music as well.  It is very good, but quite odd.  I ate my porridge to Prodigy's Breathe this morning.  Good old 6 Music.

Good and bad news at work.  Bad news was that last Wednesday I was nearly told that my job was being cut from 39 hours to 20 hours a week.  Our manager had gone to a meeting in Swindon with a packet of other managers from around the region to be told that all their stores were going to 'Realigned' ('Made Redendant' to you and me).  My manager spent all night ringing people out of their beds to plead our case that 5 students had left for uni in the last week so our hours/staff ration was better than everyone elses.  We got off the hook, while four other stores are now going through a full realignment.  I feel guilty that i get to keep my job when so many of my friends from other stores are now going through hell.  If that had been me, i'd have just left.  The good news is that my manager has finally conceeded that he was wrong about taking my Stock Controlling job from me and handing it to the Night Crew.  Night Crew can't cope with it as the company are not giving them enough hours to do their own work, let alone the logging in of excess products from the store and couldn't even start to think about pulling items out of the warehouse to see if they'll fit on the shopfloor yet.  So Hurray!  I get my old job back during weekday mornings, before an afternoon of paperwork and reports.  I feel mighty smug.

I would like to say that the gym is going well, and as a whole it is but i still loathe having to go and haven't lost the amount of weight that puts you into a state of Euphoria to motivate you to enjoy the sessions.  I have gone everyday for 2 weeks now and i get my 4th appointment with a gym instructor on Tues.  I have now been given two programmes to do on the treadmill, one on the bike, i get to use a strange contraption to strengthen my legs, i do lunges, floor excersises and i can play with one of those big blue balls.

I'm looking forward to getting paid tomorrow.  Its been a long month.

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