Excellent

Not all Monday mornings are bad. I’ve just come out of a meeting with the manager of the IT department, and they’ve decided to extend my contract ’til the start of April 2004. Yet more money for old rope. *Grin*

Yes, the job has it’s low points – what doesn’t? – but at the same time, I’m still sat here, writing stuff for d4d™, and getting paid for it. Not a bad way to be. An extra 18 weeks, and there’s still the chance of a further extension past then – this one just takes me to the end of the financial year.

Seasonally Affected

Down in the comments on Friday, Pinky asked “How do I know if I’ve got SAD?“

Basically, the following sums up how to tell :

• regularly occurring symptoms of depression (excessive eating and sleeping, weight gain) during the autumn or winter months.
• full remission from depression occur in the spring and summer months.
• symptoms have occurred in the past two years, with no nonseasonal depression episodes.
• seasonal episodes substantially outnumber nonseasonal depression episodes.
• a craving for sugary and/or starchy foods.

© NMHA’s advice on SAD

The SAD Association for the UK also has some helpful advice on symptoms and suggestions on how to help deal with it, although the site is bloody nasty.

And now that the fecking clocks have gone back (about which there may or may not be a mini-rant later) it’s only going to get worse – we’ll be going home in the dark, and soon the mornings will be back to being murky, then dark as well. And all topped off with the rigours of the Festering Season™ – what more could you really hope for?

Winter Time

Scaryduck reveals the other name for UTC, itself the successor name to GMT. Thanks scary, I laughed so hard I coughed.

Additions

God, one of these days I think I’ll need to undergo some therapy for impulse purchases. Going shopping with friends, we ended up in Marks and Spencer at one point. They’ve got their cuddly toys for the Festering Season™ in store – cows (ahem, Lori, they’ve got bigger versions of the one you have), monkeys and – God help me – a trio of meese/moose/mooses. Yes, Moose in three sizes. They had to be purchased. I’ll do photos of them later. I’m tempted to name them Scaramoose, Scaramoose, and Fandango. But that’s not confirmed yet.

Thursday

Sod – I forgot to put this online too, but Thursday night’s sunset was absolutely spectacular. Enjoy.

Customer service

Yes, last night was the infamous Lyle “Kill or Cure”™ method of curing the cold. However, the following conversation pretty much summed things up…

“Hiya, I’d like three treble Stoli Raspberry please”
“I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to serve triples”
“OK, can I have three double Stoli Raspberry on ice, please, and three singles?”
“Yes, that’s fine.”

Oh, and it doesn’t appear to have killed me, nor cured the cold.

Bugger.

SAD

Regular readers/viewers will have noticed that over the last couple of weeks d4d™ hasn’t been at it’s normal levels of dry brilliance, sarcasm and modesty. I’m not sure myself of quite everything that’s been going on, but a lot of it has been due to the joys of SAD, coupled with generally feeling crap. The cold bug that I’ve picked up is one that specialises in being anti-social, particularly with regard to not letting me sleep all that well. This week it’s felt like my lungs are trying to escape through my rib-cage.

But that’s not been the major contributor. That really has been the general “down” period as nights draw in. It’s hit me fairly hard, although not as badly as some other years. But it’s meant that in general I haven’t felt like writing much, and so I haven’t. Simple as that really. I will, however, be writing more on the subject soon.