Grrrr

Ok, so tomorrow is Melbourne Cup day (its a horse race) and normally I don't give a shite about it. But tomorrow for reasons unknown to me, my two colleages are going on a harbour cruise at the invite of our of our vendors. Why am I not going you ask? Well aparantly I don't exist. Else this company doesn't know that I exist. I wasn't invited and thus am not going.

I know I shouldn't care about such things given that I don't care about Melbourne Cup day and all that but it irks me that my junior is going to a vendor sponsored shindig and I'm not. I hate feeling left out and I can't understand why this vendor omitted myself. I deal with them just as much as anyone else here so I don't understand it.

Needless to say I'm not happy but I will expect that tomorrow whilst my boss and the junior are out on this cruise that I will be sitting here not being happy. Perhaps I'll blog about it...but I should get over it. I've had the odd vendor sponsored thing before. I just don't like being forgotten or ignored or unknown.

Then again I guess most people don't.

Grrr.

You'd think they'd know what they were doing...

Ok, This is a blantent gripe so...
I can't get why a kitchen company isn't very good at doing kitchens

Well ok, lets look at this a little more objectively...so far we have had 4 things missing from out delivery. This is potentially going to push back the completion of the kitchen costing them more money in extra tradie hours to finish the job on another day. So why are they not careful in checking these things out? Who knows. Probably the same reason the delivery men started unloading the kitchen before checking for payment.

People are fallible. It's a fact of life. People fuck up and other wear the shit. Oh well, I do at least have confidence that my kitchen will get finished eventually as I have a binding contract that says so. As for getting the kitchen done by the weekend which is what has been stipulated...I'm not holding my breath.

There, I feel much better. Better for having pushed these thoughts out into the aether were noone will read them but I will at least be rid of them.

Hmm, now back to my coffee...

Official Google Blog: Bird flu basics

I'm so over it

Ever get yourself into a situation where you're thinking, "How on earth did I get here?". I was thinking that last night whilst I was tiling my kitchen floor. Wondering how long I'm going to remember all the little bumps that I _know_ are there. How long it will be before I forget how hard it was to tile that damn floor and how tired I feel now as a result. My guess is at least 10 years. So my hope is it will be another 10 years before I attempt tiling again. Lets hope thats the case. It seems like a good idea at the time, do your own tiling save lots of money. But for reasons beyond my comprehension I was unable to foresee things that last night were very obvious!

Thus I have compliled this handly list for would be tilers who think its a good idea to do their own tiling:

• You can never have enough spacers. Running out of spaces is a _bad_ thing. Forget having a floor you can be proud of, try having a floor you can bear to look at!
• Motar gets everywhere! Yes everywhere. During post tiling showering (next moring) I found unknown bits of concrete stuck to my skin like some medival disease!
• Emergency cutting is something to be prepared for. Tiles never fit the same as when you laid them. Be prepared to trim tiles to fit...even if it means eliminating spacers to do so!
• Tiles set real quick so make sure you get them in the right place at the right time. Finding that the row you did 10 minutes ago is slightly out of place is too bad as you cant change it now. If it means your carefully cut tiles no longer fit, tough, you never expected it to look professional did you?
• Those careful lines you drew on the floor during layout to keep your tiles nice and straight are no longer useful. Funny how you don't expect that to be a problem beforehand. Let me tell you, when you stick a tile down, it doesn't just sit there, it floats around meaning it goes wherever it wants (until it butts up against something else that is). So even though you think just by pushing tiles up against each other is enough to ensure a straight floor...it isnt!!
• When you cover 3 rows in 1 hr, don't expect another 3 rows to take another hour. I think tiling sufferes from an exponential decay in tiling rate. You start at some enthusiastic rate and slowly decay to a much much slower one which results in your early "we'll be done in two hours" claim to fall by the wayside. I'm attributing this to two factors:

1. You can't possibly estimate how tired you'll get tiling. I mean I love crawling around on the floor on my hands and knees...but not normally for 6 hrs!!!
2. You slowly realize what a shoddy job you did at the begining and start trying to be more careful...the result? Each tile now takes 5 minutes to line up...and then it doesn't stay put.

Ok. Nuff said on that topic...Next week...how to tile your walls without getting shite all over your nice new kitchen benches!!!

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Long live the duff.