So all last week I was on a course. I like being on a course. It makes for an easy week but at the same time the learning aspect is enough to keep it from being boring. It involves short days, long lunches and absolutely no pressure from anywhere. It was an enjoyable week.

On Thursday night was the planned Night of Heavy Drinking to say goodbye to three managers. The turnout wasn't all that great, but I ended up having quite a good time. I drank a lot and didn't go to bed until 2:45. However I was only slightly ill on Friday morning. Friday was an even shorter day than the others, so I was home quite early.

Since then I've been feeling a bit down. I think part of it is similar to post-holiday blues. It's back to work next week. Back to normality. Back to treading water. Being on 8-4 next week doesn't help. That makes it one hour closer! Plus, Friday was an anniversary. Not something that directly involved me, but it still breaks my heart to think of it. It's been on my mind. I hope it's not been on hers. A foolish hope, I feel.

Anyway, my folks have been on holiday and they are coming home today. With any luck they will have brought me back some chocolate! It will be nice to hear about their adventures. At work, our contractor is finishing in two weeks, so that may be our next excuse for a Night of Heavy Drinking. Then there is the departmental Night of Heavy Drinking in London on the 2nd. They're paying for us to stay overnight in a hotel. The downside is that it's on a Tuesday and we still have to work the rest of the week. But at least there are these things on the horizon for me to look forward to.

There's a new girl in my life. Nothing to get too excited about. It's only an email-based relationship. But she's cute and funny and she makes me smile. It's very jovial. It's a bit too superficial for my taste though. She's not actually showing any sign that she wants to know anything about me. She just wants to talk about nothing. So it's a nice distraction but that's all. There's no sign that it will ever be anything more. And if that's the case, it's only a matter of time before it runs out of momentum.

This week I will not be going in to the office. Myself and three colleagues are instead going to spend the week learning new skills. Specifically, we will be learning about BizTalk. We may end up not actually using BizTalk in the business, but we will be using something similar, so the principles will apply. But that's not the only reason they've sent us on a course. After everything that's happened they are trying to demonstrate that they are still willing to invest in our team. It's a message that they are not planning on getting rid of us. Not for the time being, at least. And if they change their minds about that, it certainly won't hurt to have BizTalk on our CVs!

I'm looking forward to it. For one thing, I quite enjoy sitting in a classroom learning something. Being paid to do it is a sweet deal. It's nice to get a week away from work. Plus, the hours are short and there's lunch thrown in.

The only problem is that there is a Night of Heavy Drinking planned for Thursday. It's a big work-sponsored one, including quite a lot of money behind the bar at the start of the night. It's a leaving do for three managers who have left in the light of recent events (including the one who was at the top of the local food chain). So the goal is clear. We have to learn as much BizTalk as we can in four days, so that it won't matter how rough we feel on the fifth!

I look out of my window. The rain pours down. The people walk by looking dejected. They hide under their umbrellas. But I really need milk, because I want Corn Flakes. And I need Tropicana because I'm feeling slightly under the weather and I have a superstition that it's a magic cure-all substance.

So I grab my umbrella and prepare for the short walk to Tesco. I go down the stairs and step outside. No rain. Bright sunshine. Lucky me.

Fifteen minutes later I arrive back home. Up the stairs I go. Through the front door and in to the living room. I look through the window. Pouring rain.

I think my windows are telling me lies.

I was walking to work and I became aware of a strange and not especially pleasant sensation on my arm. Kinda scratchy, like there was something walking on my arm. But I couldn't see anything and it went away. A few minutes later it was back. Further up my arm. And later on it was there again. Either I was having some kind of strange hallucination, or I was sharing my shirt with something else.

I tried to shake it out of my sleeve but it wouldn't move. It was raining a little and I was holding my umbrella, so I couldn't really start stripping off in the middle of the street to investigate.

Eventually I got to work and went to the bathroom where I proceeded to remove my shirt. At this point I wasn't sure whether I wanted to find anything. Would it be better if I'd just lost my mind? A huge moth walked up my back and up onto my head before I was able to shake it off. I didn't see where it went after that but since then I've been paranoid there is something on me. I can still feel it now.

Is this how people develop phobias?

When the weather is nice I want to leave my coat behind. Unless I'm very clever (which I'm not) this means leaving my wallet behind. Which means leaving my pass behind. Which means I can't get in and out of the office. It also means I can't buy any lunch. It was a long day.

I'm sitting on my balcony in the glorious sunshine (yes, even in Manchester it is glorious). I have just returned from a short trip to Tesco. There I spent just over £10. And I really didn't buy any actual, proper food. Milk and cheese, of course. The rest was naughty snack food. And now I'm wondering if I should have bought more of the yummy fudge.

While I was in Tesco I thought to myself "ooh, you need shower gel". So I went to find shower gel. It was buy one get one free. Back home I put my two shower gel bottles in the bathroom cabinet. Along with the two bottles that were already there. I don't seem to have any shampoo though.

So today in the course of my work I discovered that an external company that provides one of our systems has a very sophisticated technical mechanism for loading data into an Oracle database. They copy and paste the data into an Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has a VB Script macro that connects to Oracle and loads the data at the click of a button. Which would be clever if it was something you were doing at home for personal use. But for a business of their size, it's really a big pile of shit held together with string and sticky tape.

Anyway, we were looking at this code and laughing. The author of the script had abbreviated "count" as "cnt". We find this funny because we are immature. Then one of my colleagues quipped that "loop until cnt = 0" is a perfect analogy for life.

I'm still chuckling to myself now.

Perhaps you had to be there.

So I guess it didn't go so well. What with her not really wanting to talk to me any more. But that's no surprise. I know where I went wrong. I let her meet me. When of course the correct course of action is to make sure she falls for me before we meet. That way it can be years before she realises her mistake!

Ho Hum.

The food was nice.

For a couple of weeks now I've been chatting with a girl. Another online thing, of course, but this time she actually lives near me. For the past week I've been arranging a meeting. It's been quite gradual because neither of us can make a decision about anything. Not sure that bodes well, but there you go. Eventually the date was arranged for Saturday night and I shuffled my usual parental visit to Sunday. I may be imagining it, but as Saturday night got closer she seemed to be getting less interested in the idea. I decided I would just see what happens.

At two o'clock she sent me a text message saying she had to cancel. She had a decent excuse and seemed genuine enough. She was very apologetic and for the first time she actually said she'd been looking forward to meeting me. She also said she wanted to rearrange for tonight instead. So I moved my parental visit back to Saturday night and so far the plan is still to meet up tonight.

I had thought I might hear from her this morning. That perhaps she might want to apologise again and check our plans for tonight were okay. But I got bored with waiting so I made the first move. And apparently she does still want to see me. However I only got a single line reply. Twice. "Yeah. Don't see why not X". Not exactly bursting with enthusiasm! So this leaves me wondering whether she wants to see me at all. Maybe it's just the way she is. I really don't know her. Maybe she holds back because she likes to take things slow. Maybe she's just not interested. Maybe there's someone else and she's keeping me around as a backup in case that goes tits up.

I'll just have to go along and see what happens. I expect by the end of the night I'll be no closer to having answers to those questions. But whatever happens, all of this has been a welcome distraction. It's about time there was something in my life to keep me from dwelling on the past. It's done me good. Even if it's only short-lived.

I'm not saying it will be short-lived. Just trying to keep things in perspective. It's only one date, after all. So watch this space.

A couple of weeks ago I found, on the street, a blue disabled parking permit. These permits allow disabled people (or those who drive disabled people around) to ignore certain parking restrictions. So to lose one's permit, I decided, is quite a bad thing. The permit didn't provide an address or anything but it did helpfully state that it was issued by Manchester City Council (not actually my local council). So I found an address for them that seemed to have something to do with parking and I sent off the permit, along with a short letter of explanation. I had forgotten all about it until today, when the thank you card arrived from the owner of the returned permit. Isn't that nice? :)