Wasps, gigs, stock and stags

I started writing this post 4 days ago, but shit keeps happening.

Where to begin? The bad first; I got stung by a wasp. It hurt, a lot. That was yesterday and now I have a massive red rash on my left arm that I immediately thought was blood poisoning but was assured that it was merely a bad reaction to the wasp venom. Can't say that I'm a big fan of venom. It's something I associate with asps, cobras, rattlesnakes - not really with wasps. I mean, it's just a sting, right? Venom seems melodramatic. In any case, it hurt more when I started writing this, now it just itches.

Stock taking and its aftermath was and is hell. All of our hardwork seems to be slowly undone by one small (and now corrected) accident by myself and by the aggressive stupidity of another who shall remain nameless, though their place in hell for the incompetent is assured. I want to cry, not wake up in the morning and quit my job. I've already done the latter, but feel the need to do it again. It's my last week coming up, the first 3 days of which look to be hellish as we're doing a "system audit". This will be just as fun as it sounds.

I was in London for a couple of days - Thursday and Friday to be exact. Signal failure at Haymarket led to all trains being cancelled and me needing to share a cab with a neurotic traveller. Traffic was hellish and she nearly missed her flight. Which made me giggle a bit. My flight, however, was delayed for an hour and a half. Which sucked. I intended to take advantage of that delay and write this post, but was not in a creative mood. Drinks the night before had not been the best plan with a 615 start in the morning.

Saturday night I went to see Aberfeldy play at the student's union - really cool gig and really cool band. They've got a great live sound and it was fun to groove about. Danced a bit with the ladies and drank a LOT of beer. Harry snogged 'Ronica and then we went to his and drank scrumpy and brandy (though not mixed) until 3 in the morning, which was huge fun. Though stock-taking at 830 the next morning was not. To deal with it, and as I was without a stock-taking buddy, I turned my nano on loud and boogied away while counting booze. I was quite funny to watch apparently.

Sunday night I met up with a stag party that I had originally meant to be more of a part of, though due to my stock hell had to bow out. They were so far gone and the stag was so incapable of speech that it was almost a total washout. It was still good to see my old mates though, and they were in pretty spectacular, though indecipherable, form.

London was brief. I spent Thursday with my folks where they attempted to sooth my work-shattered nerves. I cooked dinner - roast lamb with a pomegranate gravy and veg. I wasn't happy with it as during the cooking I'd a dreadfully depressing conversation with IT Dave, which distracted me from doing as good a job as I felt I could. Mom and dad assured me the food was fine. And it was, but it wasn't as good as it could have been. The gravy was awesome though, and the wines were good.

I bumped into a lot of St Andrews people in London, excluding the ones I was meant to be meeting in the first place. It was strange but cool - nice to catch up, but really, in a city that big, to see so many people I knew was pretty strange. I think I'll take it as a good omen.

I'm back, I'm tired. I'm working until late tonight. I'm still kind of sad about things. But, on the plus side, someone cool is coming over for breakfast tomorrow, and there's a good feeling that comes with cooking breakfast for the cool of the world.