christmas

All posts tagged christmas

Working in an office during the festive season sucks

Published December 27, 2013 by iftheshoefits

I may have mentioned once or twice that I work with nerds.  This week and next week I’m working with pissed off nerds. 

I’ve ripped them away from the delights of Dr Who by day and Skyrim by night, and have asked them to stop their nocturnal programming activities and resume business as normal – anybody would think that I’m the Emperor.  But like the Rebel Leader, I’m protecting the weak against the mighty force of our client base.  Although, to be fair, the client base appears to be sleeping.  We’ve been in the control tower now for 100 minutes and the only call we’ve taken was when one of our own was running 20 minutes late.

It’s time for desperate measures, it may be time to talk to each other.  At the moment, the only noise in the vicinity is fingers tetchily bashing keyboards – the allure of Christmas leftovers and chocolate biscuits is fading.  The satsumas and pomegranates are rotting in the communal kitchen.  If anyone even mentions Christmas there will be a lynching.  Where’s a stargate when you need one?  Beam me up Scotty, it’s going to be a long day.

Finally – The Day Before The Day Before Christmas

Published December 23, 2013 by iftheshoefits

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Hooray – my favourite day of the year!  The frenzy is nearly over, it’s almost time to kick back and relax and it’s almost too late to buy anything else.

I love Christmas – I always have.  My parents take it very seriously – I once arrived home late one night post school  Christmas dance to find my Mum sewing cotton wool onto invisible thread. Our dog was having the time of his life wrapping himself up in it all.  When I asked her what exactly she was doing, she simply replied, “I’m making snow”.  Beautiful.  Twenty years later that snow still makes a comeback in her living room window.  They moved from the islands to the highlands when I was at university and that first Christmas she had people knocking on her door to find out how she had made the snow.  Trade secret, I could tell you, but then she’d have to kill me.

I embrace a non-traditional Christmas look – I’m allergic to real trees so I have a 7ft navy blue prelit tree decorated with turquoise, blue and silver.  I love it – MrShoeThatAlwaysFits is a bit of a Christmas Bah Humbug so he suffers a lot living with me , but them’s the breaks – tee hee hee.  And whilst we’re on a non-traditional Christmas theme – I don’t make Christmas dinner (and not just because I can’t cook).  My all time favourite meal is curry, luckily, it’s the same for Mr ShoeThatAlwaysFits, so we’ll be settling down on Christmas day (if he’s not working) to champagne, curry and red wine, followed up with a cheese board.  We’ve done that for a few years now and it’s our kind of Christmas day.

We really miss our families, but we’ve done our Christmas visit already and feel totally loved up.  And with the inventions of skype and facetime you’re never really that far away.

Now, I’m away to liven up the office with some Christmas music and a warm mince pie or two.  Merry Christmas one and all, good tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy.

When Christmas comes early…

Published December 9, 2013 by iftheshoefits

Mr ShoeThatAlwaysFits and I have peaked too early this festive season.

In the last 2 weeks I’ve attended a black tie dinner, survived the office Christmas party and celebrated Christmas early with our families north of the border.  It’s only the 9th of December and I’ve eaten and drunk more in the last 10 days than I have over the previous 10 months.

We had a fabulous time with our families, where we had too much of everything, including the weather – one week into December and we had to sit on the Inverness runway for 45 minutes waiting for our plane to be de-iced – I’m heading back up on Friday 13th (cue ominous organ music) to see my brother, sister-in-law and nephews and like the proverbial Christmas family, I’ll pretty much be sleeping in the stables (well, under the dining room table anyway).

The office Christmas party was last Friday so today is the post-mortem.  I’ve heard about the £100 cab rides, the hi-jacking of a DJ booth in a Bavarian Christmas Bar, the colleague who slept in his car, a member of our senior management team having an impromptu quick change of clothes because of an unfortunate being vomited-upon incident, and an ‘as disturbing as Miley Cyrus’ twerking session.  All in all a roaring success – hmmm.  Thank goodness I was home, sober(ish) and sensible well ahead of the witching hour.

I’ve come through the first half of the month with my reindeer antlers, my dignity and my ankles intact, if not a little sore-footed.

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And I received an absolutely darling secret santa present from someone who knows me too well.

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Here’s to surviving the rest of the festive season with a bit of a swagger and a helping of good cheer.  Season’s greetings one and all.

 

Remember, remember, sodding November

Published November 21, 2013 by iftheshoefits

November sucks – there, I’ve said it, so it must be true.

I’ve barely blogged, barely shopped and barely slept.  And I’ve not managed to hit the gym quite as often as I should and appear to have hit the wine considerably more – definitely more beaujolais than bufftastic.

November is our silly season; clients want the impossible, employees need to use up annual leave; and the whole office is like a plague-ship, hacking coughs and spectacular sneezefests are compulsory.  Our nerds are praying for a zombie apocalypse or something that will destroy their need to meet a particularly imminent and immobile deadline; whilst the young ones are getting excited about the Christmas party and those that were born after the 1980s want to wear brash Christmas jumpers, those of us who lived through that decade shudder at the very thought.  There are lunchtime gaggles around monitors with ASOS shopping baskets filling up quicker than you can say, “can you really wear a bra under that?”

And then I stop and remember, it’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas…roll on December.

 

 

 

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