Just Say Noam!

I've just got in under the bar for a March blog. Something went horribly wrong along the line from February to March; from winter to spring. And yet - on the face of it things seem to be going so right.
I got my pay rise, and my back pay, and this years pay rise is fast on its heels - a wopping 4.2%. Of course this is dependent on what weird alchemical mix they decide to hang our performance payment on this year - but it should start around the 4.2% mark, unless they decide to do what Metronet did three years ago and peg everyone at 0% regardless.
The bad weather is probably a large part of what went wrong. The snow stopped and the rain and wind started, mixed in with a sizeable portion of grit - most of which went down after the snow had ceased, and none of which went down before the ice started back in December, when we really needed it.
So, my cycling has been seriously hindered by the weather. I have just not been able to get off the ground unless you include my 25 to 50 mile pootles round nearby bits of Kent.
I've spent a couple of hundred to keep my bike on the road. The thing about grit is it gets in everywhere. Once it's inside it wears away at anything it touches, and gets in the oil to help seize up the parts that are supposed to move. I've had niggling problems since November, which got worse after December, and then in mid March on a damp windswept but enjoyable ride from Rochester to the Isle of Sheppey, the bike finally gave out for good. That is, the aluminium frame broke and I was back on the trains for another week.
It was probably a good week to miss weather-wise, but still, I like to have the choice. Anyway - the good news is that a financial commitment ended unexpectedly just as i needed the extra cash and now i have a new bike which was on sale for 25% of its original price. It's a better bike than I could have expected to own at this point, so I'm pleased. I'll be blogging the pictures over weekend...though it's not exactly sexy.
So good and bad, and since getting the bike my health has deteriorated along with the the weather and i'm back on public transport again.
Add to the mix - lack of sleep, toothache, a ridiculous number of training course and meetings at work, and I'm in this position now, unable to take sick leave - it wouldn't go down well - but not quite in a position where i can do my job properly. I spend half my day at work sneezing and blowing my nose....the other half forgetting what it was i was about to do.
Work cut off Hotmail access at the start of the year and despite promises that it would come back, it hasn't. So I have no way of bloggin from work until now. So now we come the second new toy I've acquired. This laptop I'm posting from....more to come