I can’t believe it’s my day off and I don’t know what to do with myself. I am supposed to be off tomorrow as well but I’m going in in the morning to do a quick stock take and then jump along to my old shop to pick up my wage slip, so it’s not really a day off. Can’t believe that I’ve been there less than a week and I’m already going in on my days off. I’m working the weekend and not looking forward to it one bit as weekends are supposed to be my time with the boyfriend.

The worst part of being off is the fact that there’s no milk in the house, and I’ve run out of cigarettes, and the weather’s horrendous so I can’t bring myself to walk up to the shops to buy them. It’s times like now that I wish that I could drive legally and had a car! I’m going to look into sitting my Theory test again next month when I get paid (I get paid tomorrow but have too much going out this month to even consider it) and then going for having my full license by New Year, just in time for finishing my MTP so that if I do get offered a mangeress’ job in a shop I can’t knock it back because I can’t get to it. Personally I can’t wait to get my own shop, because at the moment I’m hating doing everything somebody else’s way. There’s so much I want to change in my new shop but don’t feel I can do it - in my old shop I just would have done it because me and the manager got on so well and he knew I wouldn’t do anything stupid.

I’m still feeling really annoyed at moving, but I’m putting on this brave face and getting on with it. I can see myself putting in for a transfer just after New Year if I haven’t already been offered a manager’s job because it’s doing my head in a bit. Yes, it’s great experience and most of the staff are nice but it’s just not… well, my old shop with my mates and me knowing everything inside out! Can you tell I hate change?

I checked out my credit report online last week and it showed that I have an outstanding debt of £22. I couldn’t for the life of me work out where that was (as I’ve paid off all of my debts aside from around £1500 I owe my mum) but this morning I got a letter from Nationwide telling me that I hadn’t used my account in a while and there was an unathorised overdraft of £22 on it. I must have forgotten to cancel a direct debit when I switched accounts and it’s went into an overdraft. Oops. I’ll pay it off tomorrow and close my joint account, using the current account to pay my PayPal money into I think, just to keep them happy that there’s money going into it.

*sigh* I suppose I should get up and get ready to go to the shops, because I’m dying for a cigarette and coffee.

The only relavance between the title of this post and the actual post is that the song the lyrics’ from is called ‘Starfuckers, Inc’ and this post is about Starbucks Coffee. Yeah, go figure.

You see, I’m rather excited. I’ve just come across a website selling Starbucks coffee a lot cheaper than it is to buy in their stores. I could drink Starbucks each and every day of my life (and end up loosing the plot like Britney probably since my favourite drink is also her poison - and a quick look on the Starbucks website informs me that a Venti Java Chip Frappe with Whip Cream has 520 calories in it!) and never, ever get sick of it.

I make my own versions of Starbucks Frappes at home, but it never quite tastes the same when it’s made with good ol’ Nescafe so I can’t wait to order some Starbucks coffee to make the real deal, hopefully with less calories than the real-deal.

Everybody's at it...

So here I am, jumping on the bandwagon and manga-ing my face at faceyourmanga.com. Anything to take my mind off of last week’s drama is good.

Some of you may remember that a while back I was having issues with my employer trying to move me to a different shop, which I fought against and stayed in the shop I want to work in. Well last Wednesday I got offered a move again. To yet another shop I wasn’t comforable working in. Or hours I’d be able to work (but that’s a different blog post altogether). Anyway, they accepted my decision to stay put but not without stressing me out, again. A thousand and one niggly questions at the back of my head - do I actually want to further my career? I keep putting barriers up for myself. Do I actually have what it takes? What am I so afraid of?

Thankfully I’m on holiday for a week or else I’d really be stressed. One whole week to concentrate on me, the boyfriend and my hobbies that have fallen way-side to work over the past month or two. Day one and I’m bored!

I’m fed up reading about other blogger’s going on holiday or planning holidays, I’m so jealous! In the past few weeks I’ve read about Rhys’s American dream, Han going first class to Florida, Jenn & family hitting the beach, Starlet being attacked by evil seagulls in Wales, to name but a few. Lucky, lucky people - you really are. The last time I was on holiday was in 2003 and that was a weekend in Dublin with the boyfriend. Before that I think the last time I was abroad for a proper 2 weeks in the sun holiday was America when my little brother was 4 - he’s now 15!

There’s only one real place that I want to go in the whole entire world - Las Vegas, baby! I’m been fascinated by the glitz, glamour, lights and gambling of Las Vegas for a very long time which was made a hella lot more intense with by my obsession of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

It’s my dream to stay in either Circus Circus or the Luxor before I’m 30. The boyfriend agrees, he’d love to go to Vegas too. And I kind of have it on a promise that if we ever went to Vegas it’d be acceptable to get married - and that’s never, ever going to happen in Scotland!

As always, the problem with going to Vegas is the money. We’re both terrible at saving money even for nice things like holidays and things. Plus we’d need gambling money so we’d have to stay in one of the many other hotels in las vegas that aren’t as famous or expensive as the Stratosphere or the Four Queens hotel just to fund our fun!

Anybody else been to Vegas? Is it really as magical as it’s made out to be?

I have the theme tune from Bad Boys stuck in my head thanks to the ringtone on my boss’ phone. No matter what I do, it keeps popping on back in there.

For the life of me I couldn’t remember who sang it and when I was searching for it (yeah, couldn’t remember what it was called either. I’m having one of those days) I came across the LA Police Gear website, where you can buy all sorts of Police gear.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my life recently; where I am, what I want from life etc. Up until now everything has just been this big game to me - I still feel like I’m 16 years old when the truth is that I’m 22. There are so many things that I should be able to do by now but because I don’t take life seriously I’ve never completed things that other people my age have. The only responsibility that I have is work - counting £1000s of pounds daily and opening or closing the shop. Not really impressive, is it?

Other people my age have been able to drive for 5 years, have their own cars and houses - heck some people I went to school with are now parents, married and in some cases, dead (ok, that’s not what I want from life but that’s where we all end up so I suppose it’s inevitable).

I can’t even manage 4 weeks worth of wages, you can guarantee that by week two I’m all out of money, granted half my wages go straight to my mum to pay back my debt to her but that still leaves me with £100 a week to myself, and it goes all too quickly. I might want to grow up and buy a car and have children (oh, and pay for everything else that goes with them..food, clothes,a crib, crib bedding, toys, pram, high chair) but if I can’t even manage to survive a month when all I have to pay is my bus ticket then what chance do I have?

So I’ve set myself a goal, after having a really long hard thing about this. I’ve managed to cut my smoking down to around 15 a day, but I want to get this down to 10 and then 5 and the none. The money that I save on cigarettes is going into my ISA. Well, most of it anyway. That means that when I pass my driving test, which should be within the next 6 months), I’ll have a bulk of money to either pay a deposit on a new car or buy an older one outright. Failing that, it’ll be used for a deposit on a flat. I’ve given up the thought of living with the boyfriend and I’ve worked out that in one years time I’ll have paid off all my debts so any money I have left I can spend on moving out or a car, or both.

I’m hoping to be living on my own again within 18 months - with or without the boyfriend living with me. I actually managed really well when I moved out of my mum’s house before until I lost my job but I have about 95% job security where I am at the moment and the only place I can go is up - and with that comes better wages.

My plan is that if I write about it here then I can’t give up saving and moving towards my goals - that is the idea anyway. I’m sure I’ll stick to it.

Amy Winehouse, why do I have such an obsession with her car crash life? I’m not even that much of a fan of her music, but her life is riviting to me but it also makes me so sad that one person’s life could be so fucked up and what she needs is away from the cameras and to finally get clean - I pity her, feel for her and love her all at the same time. It’s a horrendous state of affairs really, the poor girl obviously needs to get checked into drug rehab again for her own safety.

Only yesterday she was given into trouble from court officials for passing on love messages to husband Blake Fielder-Civil during his hearing for his upcoming court case for perverting the course of justice, according to The Mirror. She also managed to be 4 hours late for the hearing!

Asked “How’s Blake looking?”, she replied: “He’s as gorgeous as f***. Haven’t you seen him before?” Minders then bundled her into a car.

Love, if you think he’s fit as fuck you really do need to clean up your act!

With everything that’s has been happening regarding work I’ve not had a chance to jump online in a wee while. But, for once in my life I actually have things to blog about.

Last Friday the boy and I went out to play some pool in his local pub, usually where we can be found on a Friday night. There were two guys playing pool on the table next to us and we started talking to them, I knew one of them as he’s a local driving instructor and knows the boy’s mum. Anyway, they were laughing at the fact I’m useless at playing pool and decided to teach me properly. Well, I’ve never had such a laugh. They ended up moving every ball over the pockets so that no matter what the shot, I potted a ball - it was excellent!

I absent mindedly asked ‘are you this good at getting people through their driving tests?’ and ended up getting myself a driving instructer. Who, has it happens is pretty damn good!

I had my first, double, lesson with him the other day and it’s amazing, I can actually drive. We did the usual cockpit drill, starting off etc and then I got let free on dual carriageways where I was told to ‘put your foot down til you hit 70 to see what it’s like’, which was scary as hell but so good as I was really scared of going fast, and I’ve mastered hill starts and crawling up/down hills at 5mph, as well as feeling a lot better at going around roundabouts.

I’ve got an other lesson on Thursday evening and I’m really looking forward to it, should be good. Now that I’ve got a good teacher I should be through my test in no time, my confidence is soaring when I get behind the wheel these days!

I’m having the nightmare of all nightmares. It all began yesterday…

My area manager came into the shop and wanted to talk to me. I thought he was going to pull me up for being 10 minutes later the other day, but he was in fact telling me that in 5 weeks time I’m moving to an other store as a supervisor (ie my current job within the company). The way it goes is that I’m leaving the shop that I’m in (and love), and I don’t have a choice in the matter. Apparantly the manager, other supervisor and I have ‘too close a working relationship’ and are too clique-y. Uh, what? Surely getting on with your work mates is a good thing, and we are a bloody good team! Also there’s the small fact that an other supervisor HAS to be moved from the store that he’s in and the only one he can come to is mine, and that means one of us goes - ME!

The shop that they’re proposing that I move to is hard for me to get to because I don’t drive - it’s 8 miles away and the bus stop is one mile away from the store, and I’d need to walk through an industrial estate at 10pm to get to said bus stop. I’m not putting my life in danger to get to work in a shop I don’t want to go to, even though that’s exactly what seems to be happening. I admit that this new shop is a lovely, lovely shop if it was tidy and that I need experience in as many different shops as possible before I get offered a manager’s position but the fact that I’m being pushed into it isn’t sitting well with me at all.

I can say no, as I have a joker up my sleeve - my contract which states that I do not have to move to another shop unless it is within a certain distance of the current shop that I’m working in. I’m still waiting to hear back from the second time that I said no to the area manager earlier this morning. But, he’s also said that ‘to think about what I’m saying no to’ which confuses me a bit.

Needless to say, I’m not a happy bunny at the moment - I’m stressed and worried and downright pissed off that I’m leaving the shop that I love and my friends. But, saying that…everything happens for a reason, doesn’t it?

I’ll keep you updated!!