Exciting opportunity?

Yesterday at work I received an email inviting me to the Huddersfield Examiner (our local newspaper) Community Awards. Our company sponsors the event and each year a handful of lucky employees who have done valuable work in the community are selected to attend the evening which (I think) sees local heroes rewarded for there bravery and services to the community. We get to go as representatives of the sponsor.....which seems pretty cool.

But I'm not sure if I want to go or not. It means spending the evening with a bunch of big wigs from work and some other people who I don't really care to spend my night off with. So what do you think? Exciting opportunity? Completely boring? Should I be dusting off my ball gown? :)

Nothing much to report

I haven't blogged (on this blog) for a few days as I've been busy doing a bunch of blog makeovers and haven't really had anything else to report.

Andy is still looking for work and the lack of help from the government is very frustrating. It seems that you can get LOTS of help to get back into work if you left school with no qualifications. That's great news for them but what about the many, many people who have gone through university and got a degree and professional job.....don't they deserve help too? I mean seriously? The government needs to do more to help those people that have paid so much into the system already. *Steps off soap box*

As for work well that's been very busy especially since our manager left and one of the lab techs got made redundant. That means we're doing more work, with less people and were getting ever tighter deadlines as well. So yeah that's kind of been a nightmare....but hey at least I have a job! I am grateful for that at least.

I had a talk to my hubby about his faith last night. Its kind of difficult to talk to him about as going to church was a new experience for him and he has so many questions that I can't answer. He doesn't seem to feel comfortable talking about it and I don't want to push it....but equally nothing would make me happier than if he said he was ready to committ to being a Christian. So anywayay we rumble on with that one.

I have my parents here this weekend and won't be attending church on Sunday but we plan to go next week. I hope that the next time we go something clicks for hubby and he starts to hear the message. It wasn't exactly screaming at either of us last week but I think we both felt so awkward with all the new people that it was kind of hard to relax.

Well I'd better go as I'm on my lunch break and its coming to an end. I have some wonderful (not!) titanium samples to inspect under the SEM this afternoon. Well at least I get to sit in a cold, dark room for the afternoon.....zzzzzzZZZZZZZZ ;o)

So much for a photography outing

On Friday me and hubby went for a drive around the local area. We've been living here 2 years now and are surprisingly not very well travelled around here. I must admit it did get a bit samey after a while....well after 2 hours driving about who wouldn't be desperate to get home? The weather was terrible so it wasn't possible to get outside the car with the camera so I came home with about 2 rushed photographs. So much for my photography outing!

This is the only one that came out as the windscreen was to dirty to get any decent photos after this one was take *sigh*.

New church - but I'm more confused than ever

We've been looking for a suitable church for a while and today we tried out the one that we thought was for us. I was so excited as its along time really since I was a regular attender at church. So anyway now I've been I'm really not sure if this one is for us or not - but today was the opening ceremony so maybe its not quite like that normally. The thing is I can't help but feel deflated as I was sooooo excited and yet now feel more confused than ever. I felt sure we would love this church. Maybe somebody who reads this might have some words of wisdom?

Anyway I'll start at the beginning. Normally I hate meeting new people and cringe in horror when you walk into a new church and get "barnacled". To be "barnacled" is what happens when somebody latches onto you and you can't shake them off. I am scared of new people so I'm not being awful when I talk about being barnacled.....I realise I am completely not normal in this respect. So anyway I decided that today I was just going to have to get over that and open up to these people and I did and I can honestly say we met some really lovely people. And it is these people who are probably the reason why I will go back and try this church again.

So onto the things I didn't feel so sure about......first of all it all seemed a bit commercial to me at first. Although thinking about it now I wonder if that's the reason how they could afford to build the wonderful building that is the new congregation hall. Maybe I will feel differently about it later. Secondly, the opening hymn....song....whatever you want to call it.....it was a MAMMOTH 30 minutes long. I'm serious! I was getting hoarse and was gasping for a drink so goodness knows how the choir survived. And then we went onto a presentation which was actually rather nice. After that we sang a hymn and the oldies were encouraged to go meet the new people. Now bear in mind I have this fear if new people.....I actually really enjoyed this bit though. And just as we were about to leave............we realised t was only the interval! The real service was just beginning! So altogether the service lasted nearly 3 hours. This is another reason why I am not to sure if I want to go back.....3 hours just seems....well.....loooooong.

Having said that, the people were fabulous and the atmosphere was electric so I will try it again.

Anyone reading....what's your church like? How long is the service? And am I really terrible for being so unsure about this one?

New contract

I was supposed to get a new employment contract in February (as well as a promotion) but due to the redundancies all promotions and contract changes were put on hold. Obviously its been a very worrying time lately with Andy losing his job and me being rather (ok....extremely) worried about basically working for an employer without a contract. Well today I got my new contract and promotion and its been backdated to 2nd March! So that's some good news for a change. With Andy not earning anything right now, the pay rises that I get now and in July and next January will certainly help. My role won't change either as I've basically been doing the job but not getting the pay for it :)