To holiday or not too holiday?

Well my plan today was to holiday but f******g work got in the way big style.

Today was an inset day for Ciarán, so I was taking the day of to look after him. The plan was simple. We were going to spend the entire day building Lego.

Unfortunately my company has been taken over by another (smaller) company; and is now in the process of assimilating us all to work the way they want us to. Why oh why do I think this is not going to work out the way they want it to.
Part of what they want us to do is to adopt new timesheet and expenses policies next month that mean we have to log on to their part of the corporate network (so first gripe, bearing in mind they took over a company that employed 10,000 more people than they did would it not have made more sense to have switched them to our network?) and use their systems.

Not only that, but as they are Canadian, and seem to have their head up the arse of the USA to adopt USA tax rules, we now have to submit said timesheet weekly.

Now previously I turned on my work laptop once a month to submit my timesheet and expenses, as I work on a clients network and use my blackberry for company comms; whereas now it needs to be close of play (or COP) every Friday.

So simple fact, I AM NOT spending every Friday after I get home from work doing work. So I will now (like every one else I work with) have to leave client site early on a Friday in order to get home, log on a tell them that... yes, I have worked 5 days (yet again) for the same client, and the same project as I did last week and the week before that......

Roughly adding up to 2 days lost productivity every month in order to tell them this.

So instead of building Lego, my son was plonked in front of the TV most of the day (we did get a brief building spell in), and I spent most of the day sat in front of my sodding computer trying to work understand the relevance of whether my expenses would be in Canada or US dollars....

At the end I gave up. They have not given us access to the actual systems yet - nor in fact told us where to access the from; so I will just have to give it a go come the 5th April. I suspect many people will fail to submit their timesheets that day.


Anyway, enough of the rant - sorry but I needed to get at least part of it of my chest.

We did have 10 minutes where we ventured outside and plants some seeds into the purposely bought propagator.

Annoyingly we only have one windowsill in the entire house that was wide enough to take it, and that is in Ciarán's bedroom.

But, they are his seeds that he planted (well helped to ).

So, started from the left we have 12 apple trees (once they grow), from seeds harvested from apples he has eaten.

In the middle we have 3 orange trees ( he doesn't eat as many as he does apples - which reminds me, he did not attempt to extract the pips from the pair of pears he ate today!)

And finally some basil - 18 pots ( at least if this grows, they can be transplanted to pots and harvested frequently for our Thai cooking).

I think I now have something to return to when short of a blip, instead of our giant snowflake in the back room.

It's been a long day - but I guess the plus is, as I worked and I didn't take a holiday - I now have another day's leave to take later in the year.