been meaning to update for a while....

I'm feeling a lot better these days. I think the month between the phone call and that last blog I was in denial about it ending, trying to convince myself that we were going to give it another go and work things out when it obviously wasn't going to happen.
After writing the last blog, and having a short conversation with Andrea over MSN which cleared up a couple of things for me, I accepted its over, and I'm moving on.
I still think about her from time to time, but not so much these days. She still hasn't come round to give me back my stuff. I'll text her at some point and ask her if I'm ever going to see my copy of the Picture of Dorian Gray again.

And that, unless anything particularly interesting happens when she eventually brings my stuff back, is the last I'm going to say on the matter. Its in the past, I'm moving on, and I'm getting on with my life.

McDonalds has been claiming ownership of my soul once again, and I've been working there most days. When I went back to tell them I was able to work over the summer I gave them severely reduced availability so that they couldn't do a repeat of Easter with 10 closes in a row.
One til eleven on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays, One til close Tuesdays and Saturdays and nothing at all on Wednesdays and Sundays. That way I can ensure I get days off, and don't have to work too late or too many days in a row.
However, my first week they completely ignored this and gave me long shifts on six consecutive days, but I complained, gave them my availability a second time and I haven't had a problem since.

The influx of trainees has been pretty much unbearable, with most of them having barely two braincells to rub together. Easiest thing in the kitchen: putting buns in the toaster. You put the crowns upside down on a bun tray and put them in the bottom of the toaster, and put the heels, also upside down, straight into the top of the toaster. Easy, no? I seem to remember I grasped it first time. But not these trainees, no. Some of them had been there a week before they got the hang of it.
And there's so many of them too. At one point last week there was only me and five trainees in the kitchen. When you're working like that you can't work properly because you have to concentrate on what YOU'RE doing as well as watching each of the five trainees at the same time to make sure they don't make stupid mistakes.
At one point I had to go and find something in the chiller, leaving the five trainees alone in the kitchen unsupervised. Fortunately no one died in the minute or two I was gone.

I read on my break as its one of the few times I get the chance to these days. (When I first started it lead a lot of the more chav-like employees to ask if i was gay...not quite sure of their logic...) Last week I was reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. One of my favorite stories. It bugs me that there hasn't yet been a film version that actually follows the plot of the book, but maybe it'll be me who does it first.
Anyway, to the point. I was reading Jekyll and Hyde, written one hundred and twenty years ago, with the famous storyline about the doctor who uses a potion to separate his evil side, and has been used many other times, most recently in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film, and the current BBC drama Jekyll.
And some of the trainee's have never heard of it.....

Its not all bad though. Yesterday I was teaching someone how to do the chicken side of the kitchen on his first ever shift. After an hour or two he was better than the other trainee who was helping me and he'd been there at least two weeks. More trainees like that please.

I also now have money again! Instead of being at the bottom of both my overdrafts (£150 at Abbey and the slightly worse £1400 at Nat West) I am now in credit at Abbey! Half of my first lot of pay filled in the hole and and the other half beefed it up nicely. Some of the extra went to paying off what I owed my parents and some to preordering Harry Potter 7. I do enjoy the books but I still don't think they're good enough to deserve all the hype they get.
Anyhoo, I think in future at least half of my pay each fortnight will go into my Nat West, and the other half can stay in my Abbey to use as spending money, so hopefully I wont get into my overdraft again. I got £310 for two weeks, so if that keeps up for the next ten I should easily fill my overdraft and have plenty left to fund my DVD addiction next year.

Momentous decision of great moments! I am no longer going to buy Lego! It was fine having it all over my room in Stafford, but back in Portsmouth there's just no room for it. I've got my AT-AT stood on my bedside table but the rest is still packed in boxes. There's two new sets, a Jedi Starfighter that comes with a Kit Fisto minifig and a Tie Crawler, which I do want, and will probably get in September, but after that, unless they bring out a really cool new model, then I'm done.
I'm probably done with action figures too. I've got some of my Invader Zim ones on display, but I haven't bought any for a while. I nearly got some Doctor Who figures but decided against it as I didn't think they looked enough like who they were meant to be.
I'm still a geek, I just think it's probably time I grew up a bit. I'm going to be 21 in two and a half months....
I AM going to be buying the replica of Mal's gun from Firefly though....

Tomorrow night I'm going to meet up with me old mates Muscat, Mark and his missus Mary-Anne. Should be a good laugh and I'm looking forward to it.

Better finish up now, as there was some tidying I planned to do before work today but I ended up blogging instead. I've only got a nice short shift today. Three until nine. Only 6 hours. It should breeze past.
I've probably said this before, but I'm going to try to get back into the habit of blogging more often. We'll have to see how that pans out in practice...