How to whip up a frothy frog nest

Another week.  I apologise unreservedly for the lack of updates here recently and the lack of comments on sll my favourite must-reads -- I don't often get the chance to read or post from work, and by the end of the day I rarely want to spend more time at the computer.  Rest assured, I am still around and grabbing my reading while i can.

So, what's new?  Work continues to suck and blow in equal measure.  I am hitting somewhere around 50% of my sales targets currently, and while I have days of lucidity where it will occur to me that if I work really, really hard then there is almost no limit to my earning potential, I quickly get disillusioned and would rather do something I enjoy for a decent wage.  But hey, at least I have a job -- that's a step in the right direction.  I recently interviewed elsewhere for a marketing role, and though I got on famously with the interviewer who was very senior in the company, their client didn't want to meet me and that was the end of it.  I am choosing to think this was maybe a blessing in disguise, since the location was horrible.

Speaking of locations, the girl and I have been looking online for places to live in London.  Reluctantly, we are having to admit that Greenwich in all its bohemian and center-of-the-earth wonder isn't going to happen, and that we can get more bang for our buck elsewhere.  Somewhere with easy access to rock climbing as well as central London and road links to where my parents live are all top of the list -- and with reasonable property prices, it is Canary Wharf that is looking the most attractive.

I feel bad, though.  I'm not particularly great at my job, and so my earnings are still quite low, and in turn this is causing us problems in finding somewhere in London -- the girl doesn't make bad money, but my half isn't quite measuring up; so sometimes I feel like I'm holding us both back.  All isn't lost though.  It's a quiet period in business almost everywhere so I can reasonably expect things to pick up there, and to get better at my job -- I can only get better at my job, right?  Not least because we are being sent on a sales training course.

Sometimes in ym work I feel like I have a toolbox, filled with various useful things, and yet all I am using out of it most of the time is one screwdriver.

In other news, my beginner's climbing course is complete, so once I have taken an official safety test I will be free to climb without an instructor.  I joined a rock climbing group on Meetup.com, but it seems their preferred venues at the moment are London's biggest and most popular indoor climbing centres.  I might just try and find people to climb with at the wall where I've been going -- it's quieter, though obviously much smaller, but also open to the air.  In time, once I've got the practice and gradually bought some equipment, I'll start finding outdoor excursions -- but one step at a time.

Maybe that idea isn't so unlike work?

And on an entirely unrelated option, I was thinking to myself early Facebook needs a "hell no" option as a response.  "Do you want to be friends with this person?" Let's see, you never liked them when you were at school together and that was something like 15 years ago -- this isn't just a "yes" or "no" decision, it's a "hell no".  Do you want to join the group for a Big Brother Reunion in Australia?  Hell, no.  So let me ask you -- what options would you like to see?  Or maybe you would like to make the real world more like social networking, making it easier to hide or ignore people who annoy you, or just maybe you would like to live in the Ukraine with an adopted penguin, as I have been wondering this week?  I encourage everyone to read Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov, one of the most darkly brilliant books I have read in a while.