and now, some good news...

we were due for some good news. waking up this afternoon, hung over from a night out in Shoreditch which ended in a walk home from Waterloo and a fight that ended in tears, Lou checked her email to find out that she won the job she interviewed for last monday, and waited all week for word on. it's something i applied for on her behalf a week and a half ago now. a Tester for an IT project running out of one of the universities. at £90/day, it's better paid than almost any of the admin work she's been looking at for the last month or so, and if she's lucky it might lead to a better career than being a recptionist. it's only a 2 week trial to start with, but i have every confidence that she'll make it through that just fine. it's great news, especially because it will ease the financial situation. Lou was always going to run out of cash before i was, and this means that it'll just be me bleeding cash onto the pavement.

speaking of bleeding cash, i finally bit the bullet yesterday and dropped a stack of cash on Regent St. i'd gone on a wander on friday evening after leaving Leicester Square. it was 4PM, getting dark, and i was in no mood to head home just yet so i wandered up there. it's barely even a 5 minute walk fromee Leicester Square - you cut across the north end, cross a couple of roads and you find yourself in Piccadilly Circus. Regent St heads off there directly to Oxford Circus. i'm still trying to work out the local meaning of the word, but there are a few of them around. anyway, i meandered up and down the street for a while trying stuff on, came up with a couple of candidates and decided to come back again later. when i spoke to Lou she was entirely up for the idea of spending someone else's money so on Saturday afternoon we headed in.

after dismissing the candidates i'd come up with the day before we wound up back in Tom Baker which i've been led to believe is something of a boutique. 20% off everything, you say? the niciest jacket i've seen so far, you say? give me that, and that and i'll pay Richard Branson off shortly. it's warm, comfortable and very very nice, as is the shirt i picked up (since the discount covered the cost of a really nice shirt i figured that i might as well consider it to be a package deal). i didn't want to be spending the money just yet but i'm past caring right now. it was a nice little pick-me-up and now i'll be warmer when we go out in the evening.

tomorrow i'm meeting with another pimp about a job out near Earling Broadway - at the far west-end of the Central Line. it'd mean around a 45 minute commute, but there are far worse commutes to be had in this town and right now, it'd be worth it to be able to get into work. get me though the next 3 months, get some cash into me so that i don't feel guilty every time i order a beer and hopefully get me past the current economic insanity. there are a couple of others i have to chase up about other roles, and another meeting on wednesday.

right now i'm sitting on the floor of our room with my Eee on my lap while i watch Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. i upgraded the OS on this thing from Hardy Heron (8.04) to Intrepid Ibex (8.10) a couple of days ago, partly in the hope that it'd fix some of the problems i was having, but mostly because i was kinda hoping that it'd break a few things that i could put some time and effort into fixing. i think it's all back up and running again now - i spent 3 or 4 hours earlier testing the speakers, microphone, camera, Skype, networking, all the functions i use. now it works i've started reading up on schematics with vague thoughts of pulling it to pieces and messing with the hardware. i'm liking the idea of installing a couple of LED's in the screen frame which are powered off the backlight (or something like that) so that i can see the keys when i use this thing in the dark. it's a silly project, but it'd keep me occupied, and my mind switched on for quite a while. not that i have the tools i need here - drill, files, multimeter, soldering iron, none of these things. perhaps if i'd been a little less preoccupied before i left i'd have done it before i left, but what the hell.

but hey - at least we met some interesting people last night.