Kindle guilt

I think today I crossed over to the dark side. I was getting the train to work and I picked up the book I’m currently reading. It’s a massive, hardback beast of a book and it wouldn’t even fit in the bag I took today. And then the bad thought popped into my head. Maybe I should just get it on Kindle instead…

I have a Kindle, I really like it. However, I tend to only use for reading the classics that you can get free (and occasionally some legally-dubious ones that my father-in-law got off a colleague, but let’s not mention them!). For all my other reading needs I go to the library. I’ve spoken about my reasons for this before – no space for books, I don’t reread them, saves money, blah blah - I like my library.

I’ve never swapped an actual book for the electronic version of the same book before. It feels like the first step on a slippery slope which ends with my wrists becoming too weak to hold up normal books and me forgetting how to turn actual pages.

P.S. The book is IQ84 vols 1 & 2 by Haruki Murakami. Zoe recommended another of his books to me and I enjoyed it so much I went straight onto this one without realising the epic proportions!

Home alone

I was off work for 2 weeks. The first week was spent sorting out all those annoying little things that I've been putting off doing around the flat and having a door glossing marathon, well half-marathon I still have another coat to do on them all. Then we went to Spain for 8 nights with the in-laws.

We stayed in a villa in the Andalucian hills and spent our days lounging around the pool and our nights drinking cava and playing cards, yahtzee, Trivial Pursuit... you get the gist. It was great but both myself and the hubby agreed that a week was long enough this time. We did the same thing a few years ago when I was working full time and at the same time writing my PhD thesis. Back then doing nothing but lazing around, eating and drinking felt like a huge luxury. This time being in an isolated villa and having to rely on my father-in-law to drive us down a ridiculously steep and bumpy dirt track down a mountain if we wanted to go anywhere felt a bit restrictive and we would've liked to explore a bit more. Don't get me wrong though, it was great to actually get a bit of sunshine and relaxation.

We arrived back on Saturday night and planned to have a lazy Sunday, wee bit of unpacking, some washing and maybe rent a DVD. Most of Sunday went to plan. I even made an excellent (if I do say so myself!) bean enchilada-lasagne hybrid using tortillas in place of the pasta. It was very tasty and good cold too.

Then it all went downhill. Our oven door shattered of its own accord. Hubby went away for the whole week. I went back to work and the people who were meant to have done things for me while I was off hadn't, and my quite important scheduled emails hadn't sent because my work computer is weird and crap.

So tonight I am home alone and determined to cheer myself up from these major back to work/Monday/oven-smashing blues. I stopped at Sainsburys for milk and came out with a pleated skirt and a chocolate brownie. I sang at the top of my voice all the way home in the car. I've just eaten the previously mentioned Mexican food cold for my dinner. I'm now in bed away to watch an episode of the Killing and then start my new library book, IQ84. I am hoping that Tuesday will be better.

Time to waste

I’ve just had a bit of good news about my job. I’m currently covering for someone who’s on maternity cover and yesterday she told me she wasn’t planning to come back until January. Good news because I’ve got to pay for holidays somehow! But also it means an extra 4 months of commuting while still not being in a permanent job.

I don’t actually mind the travelling part of commuting; it’s the waste of time that gets me. In my old job I left the house after 9 and walked to work. This meant I could do dishes, hoovering, tidying up, washing… or just have a lie in, watch tv or read for a bit before I went to work (some of these happened more than others!). Now I leave before 7 every day and rarely get home before 18.30 if not later. The bonus is extra reading time, or circling things from the Fringe programme time this week!

It would be quicker if I commuted by myself but the hubby also travels to work. Unfortunately we work on completely different sides of Edinburgh so one of us has to drop the other off and then drive across the city. I always campaign to get dropped off first since my work is a million times easier to get to, but I don’t always win.

Commuting has transformed me into an early riser and with that comes early to bed. I used to regularly stay up until 1am but nowadays I quite like getting more than 5 ½ hours sleep so bedtime is more like 10.30, 11 if I’m feeling crazy! So my evenings are shorter. Housework, gym, friends, food shopping, eating dinner… I struggle to fit it all in my 3 hour window and sometimes long for the days when work was a 15 minute walk away.

However all that aside, I don’t dread Sunday nights anymore. I really enjoy my current job and I’m good at it which makes the commute worthwhile. I don’t know what I’ll do in the future. We’re hoping to move from our flat to a house next year but that involves lots of saving and deciding where to buy. I need a job to be able to do that and I’m craving a bit of stability in my work life. So who knows?

Do you commute to work? Are there any tricks to finding the time for everything else?