Still no work

 Nearly 2.5 months not working at the minute.  It's pretty depressing.  After not getting the 3 roles I applied for last week it's been fairly quiet.  I've applied for a role at the last company I worked for but it's a little more senior.  A consultancy i've been dealing with and have been pretty unimpressed with over the last 2 roles they've suggested have been in touch, but i'm very conscious that I don't want to waist any of my time.  I want to be working but i'm not desperate.

3 strikes and you're out

 I've been off work for over two months now but things have been picking up over the past couple of weeks.  In fact I was at the final stage of 3 roles, this morning I found out that that I didn't get any of them the last of which was my preference.  2 were apparently very close and a third was given to someone for £300/d cheaper!  Now back to the drawing board.

Market's picking up

 The contracting market has started to pick up over that past couple of weeks.  After today I will have had my 6th interview.  A couple of those were on the speculative side where the company is not yet ready to progress.  The next 3 went well and i'm at the second and final stage of one of them today.  Hopefully there should be some good news regarding employment early next week.

As much fun as it sounds, 2 months is far too long to be out of work.  It's so bloody boring.

Still unemployed

 It's been 4 weeks without a contract.  This will be the longest i've been out of work since I started contracting 5 and a half years ago.

I've had a couple of interviews during the 4 weeks but nothing has come out of it.  I've had a couple of leads this week but no sign of an interview yet.

Not many days of work left this year

 The 15th is my last day of work this year and I have the 11th booked off for a West End pub crawl.  I've also got 1 day left to take so that makes it 5 days.  However, i'm off this afternoon to go to the kids nativity and next Friday with have a departmental Christmas social in the afternoon so it's more like 4.  In addition to this I have no work to do.  Urgh.  It gets pretty boring sometimes!

Naughty dog

Got home from our trip to Corby and found this on the living room floor.  Naughty Arwen must have been very bored.

Stir crazy

The dog didn't get to go out for her lunchtime walk yesterday as I had both kids so she was extra cuddly.

Time lapse from my office

 I was hoping to see a squirrel, no luck.

The next one I do will be the correct way up.  I don't want to be responsible for any neck injuries.  Maybe the next one should be of me with the phone flipped the other way.  Although not sure there would be any point, it would just look like a 20 second long photo.

It's official

 My contract is not getting renewed.  I'm not surprised really as there has been barely anything for me to do for at least 6 weeks.  With that said i'll be glad to leave, I have enjoyed parts of it and enjoy getting paid far too much for doing very little but I need a little more challenge.  

On a plus note the market has really picked up recently and I have two interviews this week for new roles.  Watch this space.

Back to work

 And it's as quiet as ever.  I have a team meeting at 11 so at least I can let people know i'm still alive.

I've been off since 18th and it feels like an age.

On holiday today

 I've been thinking about it for a while now and have i've decided to take today off.  There hasn't been much for me to do at work recently and i'm just so bored. Normally this wouldn't bother me but I do like to have a couple of projects on the go at any one time, at the moment I have nothing.  My boss is off for most of the rest of the year so can't see things picking up anytime soon.  

In addition to this i've decided to take next week off too which if you include the week off in between Christmas and New Year i'll have a total of 16 days off in a row.  That will be nice!  Shame nothing's open and the weather's shit!

Actually today doesn't look too bad so i'm going to pop out for a long walk with the hound.

Really bored today

Half an hour into my working day and I am completely bored.  I've been working on a project for over a month and can see that it's nearly done but just can't seem to garner enough energy to push it over the line.  I've got a meeting with my boss to discuss next steps at 12 today so hopefully that will give me some fresh impetus.

I think the main problem is that the piece of work doesn't have to be submitted till March / April next year (i'm only contracted till mid Jan) so seems a little overly cautious.  I prefer to live life to the extreme...

One bit of good news is that another piece of work that i've been working on was signed off yesterday and that's over a week early before it needs to get submitted to Lloyd's.  

Once this piece of work is finished hopefully I can get a few smaller tasks with tighter deadlines.  That's where I work best and hopefully it will get me more interested again.  2 months and 2 days before my contract ends.

I am so bored

In the middle of a weekly team update meeting and I am so bored.  I really am in the wrong industry. 

God I was bored yesterday

Bored at work yesterday so built a spreadsheet of who owed what from the previous nights pub outing.  Normally I would have just split it by 6 maybe adjusting by the fact that Stu had 3 and I had 5 pints.  But the data was there and with it all being waiter served at the moment I knew exactly what we had.  The tricky part was remembering who had what.  The handy timestamps on the e-mailed receipts came in handy.

Luckily we're still in tier 1.  I don't want to go back to remote drinking with friends.

 

Playing with one of the filters on my phone

There's an AR (Augmented Reality) app on my phone and one of the options is trying out makeup.  The phone's camera and software analyse your face and then suggest what makeup you should use.

Here's my analysed face

Is the score of 86 in Puffiness good or bad?

I would...

I had this strange feeling that I was being watched

A neighbour's cat was watching me work this morning.  I think it got bored as it didn't stay long.

Top score

The internet's been a bit iffy recently (keeps cutting out) so decided to play the google game that pops up.  I beat my previous top score of 1661 by a mile!

Beat that chumps!

Day 1: Bored already

Day 1 of working from home.  Urgh.  Bored already. 

I was even looking forward to a webex call later today but that's now been postponed till tomorrow now.

I'm waiting on a file from some underwriters at the minute, not a tremendous amount I can do apart from checking what I have already done and that doesn't really appeal.

Back op

I've got the pain relief injections in my back today. Boree here waiting in gowns since 12:30. Grr... 

Bored last night

Bored last night, with nothing I really fancied watching on TV.  This helped for 20 seconds.