[pen] It should, the gardens in question being in New York.

[Bismarck] I've never warranted more than a cube in my life, and I haven't been in charge of anyone else since 1995, when my pig-headedness when it came to repeatedly requesting training for my staff and in giving them glowing reviews when the richly deserved it ensured I'd never be put into management again.

[Stevie] Quite. I've never wanted to be a manager - it's just trouble. However, I do want to become more expert at what I do (editing and copywriting). Trouble is, the career progression of most places, including this one, is set up assuming that everyone wants to be a manager. Therefore, I am unable to move up to the next pay grade unless I change my job and move to another department, no matter that I am nine years and umpteen training courses into becoming better at this one. Folly.

I have to take this semester off for financial aid reasons and I should concentrate on my class proposal, but then I get distracted . . . I need to treat this like it is a class and have some self-discipline.

May we know your subject?

31 down, 6 to go. I think I'm actually going to miss this routine.

I'm getting my Master's Degree in Theatre.

Anyone looking for a job? I'm recruiting for an IT assistant to join me. Need to have good knowledge of databases (Oracle and/or SQL) and programming skills in e.g. VB/C/C++/C# and ideally .NET environment. Salary negotiable, but think along the £50k lines

Ah, should mention location - Potters Bar, Herts, UK

I’m just procrastinating - I should be hoovering.

Sad to be driving New Yorkwards from Florida, where I’ve been lounging around and playing in Diagon Alley in my Slytherin drag.

There is a small group of Confederate flag waving reptiles heading your way. Please, please, prepare - if only for the sake of Stevie, who likes to arrive at work on time and then arrive home in time for his evening meal.
Yours etc.,
Duj

59 “we suck” advisory emails from the LIRR since Jan 29th. That’s just the Ronkonkoma branch suckage. 59. Only the LIRR could send “normal service restored” emails and think they were achieving greatness by doing so.

[Stevie] by those statistics, the advisory notes constitute normal service. I have submitted a petition to the MTA that the East Side Access should be opened by you and renamed the "Carpal Tunnel" in your honour, as of the pain and anguish caused by years of commuting.

Another example of wonderful planning. A tunnel between Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. This will solve ... what exactly? I mean, the choke point in the whole sorry mess is the fact that of the four tunnels under the East River, only two are signaled in both directions allowing for bi-directional travel without the need for time-consuming emergency train orders. One of the two is permanently assigned to Amtrak traffic. The other two tunnels are signaled in one direction only. One is signaled into Manhattan, the other out of it. Thus traffic will be disrupted in 3/4 of the possible tunnel signal outages (since if Amtrak's tunnel is lost, they immediately take possession of the other bi-directional tunnel (which means effectively that the bi-directional tunnel is twice as likely to fail as any of the others from the LIRR point of view.

Hidden text

The utterly stupid part of all this is that the tunnels flooded during superstorm Sandy and the signals had to be replaced using "Obama Dollars". Instead of wiring them properly (as had been known to be needed for at least the 33 years I've been travelling on the LIRR) They put them back the same retarded way they were before the flood happened.

So the extra Grand Central traffic will not only add to the system congestion, it will be f*cked-up by the same tunnel idiocy from which the existing network suffers.

I'm interviewing a domestic cleaner tomorrow. I'll get my weekends back (but will of course pay for the privilege).

[pen] Do they need special qualifications to tackle a windmill?

[pen] I thought y' had ter pay miller fer privilege.

[Bismarck] Just a long squeegee for the sails, I think.

That's a song. Or part of a limerick. Or a concept. Not sure.

[pen] It should be a band name.

[pen] Will the staff have to call you "mill-mistress" or is the proper term of servile respect "madame miller"?

I was 49 when I got my first-ever dishwasher. I am now 52, and have just engaged a cleaner. Why the hell didn't I do this years ago when I could barely afford it? It's unbloomingbelievable what a difference it makes. Now I have time at weekends to go and hoover the windmill.

I used to be a dishwasher, but now I'm single.

Weekends are filling up. I can blame the windy miller for most of this. Next weekend is a late Valentine's Day stay at our favourite aubergey kind of place in the Ardennes to eat beautifully prepared wild things and drink a lot of wine before sleeping it off; then the weekend after it's a hotel dinner, bed and breakfast en masse to celebrate my husband's business partner's 10 years in business (with a few other of his colleagues and their wives, who are all a great deal more fastidious about saying grace before and after a meal than we are because most of them come from the Dutch bible belt - this one will be interesting rather than fun), followed by, the next weekend, a few days in Blighty to celebrate Mothers' Day with Mater.
But this next one is empty. And the forecast says it won't rain,. Suggestions?

For the dinner appear in ceremonial garb appropriate for summoning Dagon on the dank shores of Innsmouth. As the others say grace murmer your own favourite lip-sync ("lobster thermidor") until they are done and then "ritualistically" sacrifice a king prawn, scattering the bits onto a side plate before pouring a ring of salt around the rim of the plate. If anyone asks, look startled and murmur "best not talk about it openly under this moon".

Hey pen, give me the name of that Ardennes place will you, since it's in my area and I'm looking for a place to take Mrs Bismarck.
For the weekend, take the train first class from Rotterdam to Marseilles.

[BIsmarck] It’s here www.lamaisondemaitre.com/english. On me ipad thus no fancy html stuff, sorry. Food excellent, one sitting for dinner, no telly in rooms, excellent walking/hiking country. Will report back after next weekend.

[Bismarck] Blooming excellent, it was. Lovely B & B (we got a room with a four poster bed & bathtub), plus aperitifs, amuse bouches, delish three-course dinner (proper cooking innit - posh sauces and all) including wine for each course (they’ll top up your glass if you’re swigging it), came to just over 170 euros. Lovely scenery, lots of snow on the hills up there (it was -5C and bright, bright sunshine when we left there about 10 this morning) and less than half an hour’s drive to the shopping centre just over the border in Luxembourg where there’s dead cheap fags and booze. A litre of Ricard for 14 euros... (we pay 20-ish here in the Netherlands, and no doubt even more in Blighty.)
That was our fourth stay there. Highly recommended.

Hello all, on the off chance there's anyone posting here who doesn't visit MCiOS - there's a tentative plan for a Pilgrimage on Sunday 8th April to celebrate the 20th anniversary of that server... This may take the form of a drink in a pub somewhere in the vicinity of the Great Station itself, and general chat and playing of silly games in person... Head to MCiOS for details...

(blamelewis) I really hope to make this one.

[Rosie] It'd be a pleasure to meet you after all this time!

(blamelewis) Reciprocated. You are very kind man. I'll have to get the Choob from Morden. I am transpontine-located, just in snooty Surrey.

I will have to send a cardboard cut-out. So many of you I haven't met... (I think I first actually pilged in 1999...)

Anyone got Skype? Pen, Gil and I could maybe make that place in the Ardennes...

I’ve only just seen Bismarck’s post. Hmmm... Where is Gil? I met him at a Euston pilg once and thought he was Blighty-based, but that was nearly 20 years ago, obvs.
in other news, I’m currently making a scarecrow prototype for a village festival in July. It’s my own fault. I came up with the idea and wrote the plan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGzp-s-xyw4

You were missed Rosie... and then commemorated in absentia in the MCiOS limerick game.* Fun was had, we had five ultimately, the perfect Limerick team... Links to photos at MCiOS chat. Two games of MC were played, the first won by Projoy, the second by Simons Mith, with a bit of help from Peter Pan. The second game truly was Mornington Crescent in Outer Space, with moves like "Sea of Tranquility" resulting in an sharp increase of the importance of spin to the plays thereafter... Nice to have seen the folks there, and let's do another one sooner!
*By commemorated, I may mean ribbed...

(blamelewis) See latest in MCiOS Limerick game.

[Rosie] Can you dial up some better weather please?

(pen) I tried but was put on hold. After some Vivaldi a voice advised me to ring in about eight weeks.