Dashing through the snow? Not in these shoes!

I would like to dash through the snow, I really would. Instead the best I can manage is a kind of half stagger, half slide thype thing that looks utterly ridiculous but at least hasn’t landed my on my backside… yet. You see, the boots I wear for work, beautiful as they are, are not suitable for snow. They’re not particulalry suitable for the incredibly slippery, mushed by tyres, may once have been snow substance that lies in wait for them right outside work either. But never mind, I shall get through this. Only two days til the weekend.

So, first day back at work. It wasn’t too bad I guess. People were nice to me. I didn’t get in any trouble. These are good things. I still spent the whole day worrying that I was doing something wrong though (I know, I really must stop that!). Mostly I felt like I was working incredibly s-l-o-w-l-y. Not really surprising when you consider what I was doing. Did you know you can get dizzy from reading? I didn’t. But after proofreading 15 page of contract I was feeling decidedly light-headed. I started at 10 past 9 and didn’t finish until 3pm. Okay, so there was half an hour for lunch in there somewhere, but still. Definitely too slow. Oh well, at least tomorrow I get to read technical texts. They aren’t so bad – at least I don’t have to read every sentence six times purely to figure out what they’re even on about. And that’s just the German original. I won’t get into the English part or I’ll never shut up. It’s a good job I managed to get lots done yesterday cos somehow I can’t see this being an evening of achievement. I’m too tired to think never mind work on assignments!

Oh well, I suppose I’d better go and find something to eat that isn’t chocolate covered, jam filled gingerbread hearts.

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5 signs that you haven’t had enough sleep…

1. The text in the document you’re supposed to be proofreading starts swimming in front of your eyes

2. You’re afraid to blink in case you can’t manage to open your eyes again

3. Your head feels like it’s stuffed with rocks which are dragging it down towards the desk while at the same time feeling so light it may just float away

4. You’re freezing to death despite the fact that it’s not even cold because all the energy you should be using for warmth is being expended on staying awake

5. Your eyes feel sore and you’re convinced the bags under them stretch all the way down to your nose

By the way, can you get repetitive strain injury from rolling the mouse wheel? Just wondering…

666. Demon spawn.

I’ve made it. I’m officially the spawn of Satan!
I went to Karstadt on the way home from work to buy some food, a) for tonioght’s tea and b) for lunch tomorrow. Arriving at the counter to pay, I discovered that my purchases came to a total of 6 euros and 66 cents. 6.66. Demon spawn. How cool am I?

So this morning the boss called me into his office. Cue total and utter panic and “oh my God, what have I done?” type thoughts. Turns out he just wanted to ask me how things are going since I’ve now been there a month. And he wanted to explain why Kristi, the new girl, has got a real job while I only got an internship. He didn’t want me sitting there wondering or resenting her for it. Not that I was wondering, I’d already figured out that it was probably because she’s already finished her studies. An assumption that the boss then confirmed. He then said that, although I probably have more actual translation experience than her, she has more general work experience. Fair enough.
He then started talking about my work. They are, for the most part, satisified he told me. Just one little issue. To do with something that I proofread yesterday. I finished it…. too fast. Now there’s a complaint I never thought I’d hear from a boss! So basically I need to take more care over things I’m editing. Read them twice if necessary. Make sure I find all the mistakes. It’s a fair point. Proofreading is something I find quite difficult, especially when I’m tired. The words all start blurring together and my eyes read words that are spelled wrong as what they’re really meant to be. The longer and boringer (is that word?) the texts are, the worse it is. Sooo pay more attention when proofreading. Otherwise it’s all good. Such a relief.

I got soaked on the way home and I’m now freezing. Time for a nice warm cup of tea methinks.

Humans need naps too!

I’m very tired today. So tired, in fact, that I found myself feeling jealous of my employer’s dog this afternoon. Because she got to sleep in her little dog bed while I was proofreading an incredibly boring financial report. It would have been enough to put me asleep even if I hadn’t already been tired. Sometimes it’s soooo difficult being human!

A rather odd search appeared in my blog statistics today. Hundreds of people have found me in the past by searching google for some variation on the theme of “I am bored”, “things to do when bored” and “how to stop being bored”. However, today is the first time I’ve had someone find me by searching for “what to do when you aren’t bored”. What a strange question. Surely if you’re not bored you already have something interesting to do? Or could it be that this person wants to be bored? Perhaps they’ve had enough of being happy and interested and now want to try out boredom for a while. Just plain odd, that’s what it is. Almost as odd as the person yesterday who was searching for “Cambois Environmental Agency”. All I can say to that is Cambois has an environmental agency? And, perhaps even more importantly, why??

Are only boring people easily bored?

I’ve noticed recently that I seem to be getting bored at work a lot more easily than I used to. Nothing to do with the job. Finally I’ve found something that I not only enjoy, but am actually good at. OK, when I’m proofreading a text that’s so badly translated it barely even makes sense or translating my third instruction manual that day it gets a bit frustrating, but most of the time I love translating. I think part of the problem is that this week has been pretty slow. Yesterday I was translating things that didn’t have to be sent back until this afternoon. There’s never usually enough time to get things done earlier. Also, I think the fact that I’m leaving soon is having an effect. My internship finishes at the end of July, I’ve been told there is no permanent job for me and I think because of that part of me tends to think “why am I working so hard, doing this long, complicated translation for a company that only wants me for the cheap labour?”. I really, really want to stay. My colleagues here in Karlsruhe want me to stay, but the boss doesn’t want me. Because interns are cheaper.

So all this being bored reminded me of something that adults would always say to my friends and I when we were younger. “Only boring people get bored.” Now, I will admit, to many people I’m probably a boring person. I spend my days at work, my evenings reading or messing around on the computer and my weekends with my boyfriend. But I really don’t think being boring is the reason I get bored. Surely boring people don’t get bored, because they’re perfectly happy doing the same old thing day in, day out. To me, someone who spends all day sitting in front of the TV with a play station controller glued to their hand, only stopping to eat and pee, is boring. I very much doubt they are bored though. So who does get bored then, if not boring people? And what is it that makes us feel “bored”? Anyone out there have a theory?

Germany-Austria

So the Germany-Austria game was interesting. I went to watch it at Stadtmitte, more because I wanted to see my boyfriend than out of any major desire to see this particular match. Germany won, 1-0, but as far as I’m concerned it was more down to good luck than anything else. The chance they missed at the beginning was quite frankly silly! And Austria should have equalised at one point – they’d still have been out though, even if they had. At least Germany played better tonight than they did against Croatia, but still there was more excitement off the pitch than on. What on earth were Joachim Loew and Austria’s coach (whose name I don’t know) doing to get themselves sent into the stands? Who knew a referee could even do that? I certainly didn’t!

After the match I had a half an hour walk home, on my own. Jan is staying at his own place tonight. The good thing about living in Germany is that a girl can actually walk home alone at 11 o’clock at night without having to worry about chavs… or something worse. I think I might be slightly deaf now though from all the car horns and people chanting “so sehen Sieger aus” (that’s what winners look like). Oh, something that amused me. Walking past the Town Hall I saw two middle aged men in suits who seemed to be taking a stroll. I didn’t pay too much attention to them at first, but then I heard one say to the other, in English, “they’re all singing their songs in German.” Hello! They’re German, we’re in Germany, what would you like them to sing their songs in? Spanish maybe?!? Strange people!

It’s time for me to go to bed now. I couldn’t sleep last night and spent most of today proofreading an operating manual for a sewage works. For some reason my brain really wants to shut down now….

Unpicking when I should be stitching

I wrote two job applications yesterday – one for the job in Gernsbach that I already blogged about and one for a proofreading job in Ettlingen. I’m not really a big fan of proofreading, especially when the translation is a bad one, but I’ll pretty much apply for anything at the moment. And it’s highly unlikely that I’ll get the Etllingen job anyway – they want 2 years of experience and a translation qualification. I have 1 year of experience and am 1 third of the way to a translation qualification. Hmm, not underqualified much. I’m just hoping that there are so few English people in the local area that someone will have to employ me, if only becasue they couldn’t find anyone else. Fingers crossed please!

Apart from writing job applications, I spent a lot of yesterday cross stitching… or at least trying to. I picked up my latest project (a cat) yesterday and started to stitch… 10 stitches in I realised I’d messed up, so out they came. Second time round I actually managed to get that bit right. Then I tried to start another section, only to realise that I’d messed up something I’d done ages ago. And this time I couldn’t just pull the stitches back through with the needle – these were fully formed crosses. So out came the nail scissors. I hate unpicking those little crosses… it’s so fiddly and I have huge fingers. Seriously. I was called “man hands” at school because of them. So by the time I’d manage to unpick the affected section I was pretty frustrated. Then I went to get some thread to redo them and realised there was hardly any of that colour left. Luckily I just managed to restitch the whole area before the thread ran out, but it was incredibly close. I just hope I don’t discover any more mistakes in that colour at any point! After about an hour of stitching I was exactly 10 crosses further than I had been before I started and incredibly annoyed with the whole thing, so I gave up and read a book instead. By the time Jan came in at 1:30am I’d finished the book I’ve been reeading for the past 2 weeks (Die Templerin by Wolfgang Hohlbeing – if you’re into historical fiction, mystery and betrayal and can read German give it a go. I enjoyed). I also managed to read all of one of the books my dad sent me – Not That Kind of Girl by Catherine Alliott. Yes, it’s chick lit, and yes, I do read that kind of thing. It was a good one, so I’ve decided to keep it. One more book for my future library…