I’m not sure when I first noticed that my health wasn’t doing so well.  It was sometime around the time of our second child’s birth, and with night feeds and then teething, it wasn’t all that strange to be feeling constantly tired.  It’s just part of life for a newborn’s parents.  You live with it.  After the newborn stuff, came the teething and again, the tiredness is dismissed, but slowly the months passed, the baby became an all-night sleeper but my tiredness didn’t disappear. 

Other problems such as headaches, memory loss and confusion had been attributed to the lack of sleep,  but once the sleep was resolved, and these other issues weren’t more medical advice was sought.  The baby is now 4 years old, and my health issues are worse and I’m now under the “care” of a neurologist who has undertaken many tests but still can’t diagnose what the real problem is.  He’s currently got his money on the “epilepsy” button, but it’s so non-typical that I expect that to change soon. 

The lack of diagnosis is frustrating but what is more worrying is that my situation isn’t rare.  There are many people who are living with chronic fatigue, memory loss, co-ordination issues, headaches, vision distortion, audibility issues, etc who are expected to just pull themselves together and get on with their lives as if nothing was wrong because they have no real visible symptoms and no diagnosis that they can offer for their inability to move faster, or remember what happened at yesterday’s meeting.

Neurological issues that can be on this kind of scale could eventually be diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis, Epilepsy, Lupus or a list of other less familiar conditions that fit within the same “pick and mix” symptom range.  The main problem is that there is often no test that can be taken that will state with 100% accuracy which, if any, of these conditions you have – or even give a definite 100% accurate “you have not” result.  They have tests that can say that you might have, or might have not, but none of the tests are conclusive for many of these symptoms collectively. 

This makes coping with neuro-related health issues difficult because you aren’t just fighting your body on a daily basis so that it does the things it’s supposed to do, but also you are fighting a medical system that is happy to leave you dangling for months between visits.  If you know someone who has these kind of symptoms, don’t assume there’s nothing wrong with them or they’re hypochondriacs, they’ve got enough to do trying to get answers from their neuro team without dealing with your judgement – it’s not easy to pull yourself together when parts of your body seem to be invisible to the brain at various times of the day!

The holiday season is almost upon us and despite the fact that we will be working right up to the last minute; it would be appreciated if the following could be noted:

1.       The franking machine is for business use only.  It’s not a free postage perk.  If you want to skip the queue for stamps at the Post Office make sure you speak to the person who franks the company mail and pay the right amount of postage to petty cash.  You should also note that office staff are not here to frank your personal mail but are willing to show you how to use the machine.  Don’t try using the machine after the office staff go home in an attempt to get your cards mailed out free – we keep a daily log of the numbers on the machine so we KNOW when it’s been used after the business mail has been taken for the day!

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2.       Tis the season to be merry!  We reserve the right to hang decorations – tasteful or otherwise – in order to bring some Christmas festivity into the office.  We will keep it as understated as it’s possible to make aging tinsel and baubles appear.  NOTE: the mistletoe is for display purposes only, it’s not to be used as an excuse to sexually harass the staff, or an incentive to get a project completed ahead of schedule!

3.       The office party will take place at the stated time.  Management should note that reception will not be manned at that time, nor will office personnel be answering the telephones.   Any attempt to bring last minute work to office staff to be completed by the end of the day of the Christmas party will result in mutinous stares, muttered oaths and a curse that your Christmas be filled with cards from people you forgot to send them too!

4.       Although it’s not in the conditions of employment, flexible lunch hours on the days immediately before and after Christmas are appreciated, and will be remembered throughout the coming year – as will the failure of management to supply an appropriate holiday token of their appreciation for the work the office staff have undertaken. 

The office staff take this opportunity to thank you for your understanding of our small Christmas quirks and wish a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year especially to those who appreciate it’s the little things (like an early finish the day before Christmas) that make the difference between a mediocre boss, and a great one!

Things have been spiralling out of control recently and so it’s time to remind all staff about some issues of office protocol.

1.        The right place for your dirty coffee cups is not on the front desk.  Reception is the first contact visitors have to the office and looking at the science project that’s been brewing in your cup over the weekend doesn’t create the impression that our company wants to present to the outside world.  The receptionist would also like it pointed out that whilst she has no objection to the occasional fresh cup of coffee appearing on her desk as a token of appreciation, she resents the fact that despite her efforts to keep the desk polished and her plants alive, some of you still mistake the area as the kitchen sink. 

Correct Protocol:  All dirty cups and other assorted plates, cutlery etc should be taken to the staff kitchen, washed and put away by the person who used them.

2.       When reporting a piece of equipment as being defective please be prepared to answer certain questions about it.  You may find it useful to keep a note of things such as serial numbers etc in your desk drawer so that when the maintenance people ask you what make/model your computer is for example, you can tell them more than it’s got a keyboard, mouse and runs on a Windows platform!   You should also ensure that before placing a call to maintenance to report a fault, you check that if the faulty equipment runs on batteries, you’ve tried replacing them and it still doesn’t work, or if it’s electrical that you have made sure that the plugs to both the equipment and the power supply are connected – Finance Department are not happy about the amount of call outs for “faulty” equipment where the only “fault” is that someone took out the plug and forgot to plug it in again!

Correct Protocol:  Check equipment for identification numbers and possible reasons for it not working before reporting a piece of equipment as faulty and requiring maintenance – “Unplugged” is not a fault.

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3.       Deadlines are for the final document to be in the hands of the person or committee that needs it, not the date that they arrive on your secretary’s desk!  There are too many overtime requests being made by secretaries working for bosses who play solitaire.  This is resulting in stressed overload in the office and a general hostile atmosphere against management that is not conducive to the team spirit the company wishes to promote.

Correct Protocol:  Schedule your deadlines and workload so that you give adequate time to your secretary to get the work back to you without having to work through her lunch and weekends in order that you don’t get into trouble for it being late.

Protocols may be boring, but they make much better team mates than resentment and hostility, so keep your dishes clean, your equipment working and your deadlines organized and you’ll find office staff don’t stop talking immediately you walk into the room!

There is something to be said about freshly fallen snow. It's white. It glistens. But it's more than that. The snowfall seems to recreate the world and give new perspective on life.

I know it has for me - I was recently hit by a car while riding my bike…so not particularly the best week I have ever had. I was riding my bike along a marked and well-known bike path in the city, when an older gentleman decided to open his door without looking to see if anyone was approaching his parked SUV. (As a side note, who on earth could possibly need an SUV besides park rangers and people who live in mountains terrain? Certainly not any city dweller I know–) I don’t exactly remember what happened, as I hit my head (thank goodness for helmets!) and blacked out for a few seconds. A the end of the day, I need to purchase a new frame for my bicycle, new helmet–and new trousers, as I now have a large hole in region of my bum. I have been walking around all week with a headache and a bad BAD mood–

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…and then it snowed. Up until the point of snowfall, I thought "this city is awful. My head hurts. My leg hurts. People are mean, no one knows how to drive or walk in this place and it's dirty."

Then it snowed.

Now my city is beautiful - it is clean, it is fresh. Little kids are out running around, throwing snowballs. I can see my breath frozen in the air. While snow on the roads and a dented bicycle frame will keep me from riding for awhile, the snow has restored  my feeling of “goodwill towards men” to its proper place. Really, a fresh snowfall (especially the first one of the year) wipes the slate clean.

I have the sudden urge to lie down and make snow angels. Life is good.

Yesterday my youngest son wanted to play on the computer.  He’s played on his grandfather’s computer so even though he’s just 4 he’s quite an expert at pointing, clicking and moving objects around with both a mouse and arrow keys.  So I was quite happy to find the PC games that his older brother had played when he was about the same age, and try to load them onto my laptop so he could play.  Unfortunately things didn’t go quite according to plan thanks to the “advances” in new technology.

See my laptop was new last year.  It runs on Windows Vista and for the most part I love it – Vista and the new Office package sometimes takes more time than I’d like but eventually I’ll familiarize myself with the new features and locate the old ones!   Yesterday however it failed to shine, and completely let me down, you see the PC games were to run on Windows 95, and my laptop shunned them.   Upon recognizing that a CD was in the computer, it opened up an image that made me feel secure that it was going to load, but unfortunately when I clicked to instruct the game to install, there was no response.  This happened with 3 different games that were to run on Windows platforms lower than XP never mind Vista.

Now I’m all for modern technology.  I love gadgets and gizmos as much, if not more than, the next person.  But it seems to me that if a company is going to upgrade its technology, it shouldn’t do so in a way that means its original products are obsolete.  Most upgrades mean that you can still use earlier formats, you just can’t use the upgraded formats on the lower grades.  It makes little sense to me that these obviously lower tech games are unable to install on an up-to-date platform.

I’ve always loved Microsoft.  I don’t care if they’ve got a monopoly or otherwise.  I don’t care how much profit they make.   As long as they keep providing me with laptop software that makes my life easier, that’s fine with me.  What’s not fine however is having to disappoint a 4 year old because someone at Microsoft wants to make more money by ensuring parents have to buy updated games by preventing the earlier released games to install on the newer platforms. 

A uk cosmetic surgery clinic has made a deal with the umbrella corporation that own my company so

that we can use their services at a discounted rate. Lewis is really keen for Amelia to get involved. I wonder why…