Wednesday 28 February 2007

Rain, mold and safety seminars

In this case, rain and mold are not related. In fact, intended to blog re: mold at work today as it was pretty amusing, but got sidetracked, as sometimes happens.

Yes, it is raining, but it really was a GORgeous day. Other than the 10 minutes to work and the 15 minutes home (during which I feel that we can now verify that Clare's umbrella Crimma gifty really is wind resistant and gave me no embarrassment by turning inside out -- such a Clever Clarence! Thank you! It also got a compliment from my friend, Sally, last evening who thought it was great fun to have caricatures of famous authoresses on a brolly.). The reason it took 15 minutes on the way home was due to the extreme distress experienced by myself upon discovery of no stocks of 2 litre sized milk in the campus shop. No matter how I huffed at the cooler, it remained packed with measly 1 litre and 1 pint sizes and the lower shelf remained empty; this wasted 5 minutes -- well, that and the line of culinarily stunted university students buying frozen pizzas and gummy candies.

Mold, however (in a completely dry environment), was discovered by Mark at work today in a pre-packaged and still-sealed packet of cheese or something. It had been placed (still sealed) into a plastic food carrier by his wife this morning, along with the rest of his lunch. He was highly offended and assumes this means that she is no longer happy preparing his lunch for him and that this was her way of saying he can bloody well do it himself (a reason for this hitherto unexpected behaviour could be the fact that she is about to burst with their first child).

In other exciting news, a new hairdryer is now in my possession, due to my having accompanied Basma to Boots in town at lunch today (does anyone else ever find that a shop can be on every corner when one does not need it, but when one actually searches and pays attention to one's surroundings, no Boots store is to be found? On a Sunday. Except a tiny corner one that happens to be closed on Sundays. Maybe it is just me.). It is the PowerDry Glamour 2000W and comes with:
* a comb
* a roller brush
* 4 puffy dryer curlers
* 4 curler clippies
* a diffuser
* a concentrator nozzle
It also claims 'ionic conditioning for frizz-free shine' and 'heat balancing ceramic technology'. Have every faith that tomorrow morning, my hair will look terribly dramatic and glamourous, lending me air of famous 1930s movie star. Perhaps I should wear sunglasses.

Finally, to round off the splendour of today, I spent an hour this afternoon at a Health and Safety Seminar on (seriously) 'How to set up your workstation'. We watched an intriguing video, hosted and narrated by a woman who talked to the audience like we were particularly dim-witted cabbages. Ideals set forth in this four-part instructional gem included:
* caring for psychological well-being in the workplace
(including making suggestions for improvement and telling others when you are unhappy -- am going on ssumption that this means 'mucking things up if you don't like them' and 'b^*(ing')
* positioning workspace so that everything is right in front of you
* sitting up straight in one's chair (I can't remember; has anyone every told me that before? Oh YES! It was my MAMA!!! Am admittedly still working on this one.)
* protecting one's eyes by:
  1. tilting computer screen to combat glare
  2. closing blinds if above is not possible
  3. cleaning dust from screen regularly
  4. adjusting brightness of screen
  5. taking regular focus breaks for eyes to rest
(I felt the need to close my eyes several times for a rest during the video.) THEN we had to play a game where we looked at a picture of a lady at a workstation and say what was wrong (Oh dear God.) And, THEN, a lady kept asking questions!!!! What?

Yay, for the last day in February! What wonders await in March?!
(oh, yes! LOTS of wonders since an adventure begins in 9 days!)

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