Bored in Diary

I am so bored of work. Every day I do exactly the same thing. Raise purchase orders, book hotels, book flights, consolidate credit card statements, transfer phone calls. Is this really what life is all about, is this how I should be spending 70% of my waking time? This isn't living, I'm only doing this because I have bills to pay. Every day I'm dreaming more and more of the time I've saved enough money so I can quit and go self employed, doing something I love. I'm almost halfway there but it's going to be at least another year or two before I have enough. I need to find more ways of making money; I'm already doing the pet sitting in my spare time as well as millions of online surveys, reviews, mystery shopping, selling stuff. I will get there!

I've signed up for a course about small business accounting as I thought it would be useful. It was £19 on Groupon reduced from £229. But it's completely useless; there isn't anything on there that I haven't already found out for myself from the HMRC website. It doesn't actually tell you how to do your accounting, give you any tips or anything, it just tells you the legal stuff. "If you're a sole trader, you need to pay this tax. If you run your business from home, you can get tax relief on this." Yeah thanks, HMRC tells me that for free. And every single page has an advert for some accounting software "I would recommend using this software, look at this great example" There is no way this course is ever worth £229, I'm so glad I only spend £19.

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We now have new radiators in the living room. Jay decided the one we had wasn't good enough so we've swapped one big radiator for two smaller ones. They're supposed to be more efficient but we haven't noticed any difference. Plus they look rubbish (they're a lot thicker) and there's a big mess on the wall in between them, where the old radiator was and no wallpaper. We weren't going to decorate the living room right away until we'd done some other urgent stuff, but it looks like we're going to have to now.

Our new carpet is being fitted on Friday. It's really deep and thick, it will be lovely and warm and springy, I can't wait. We'll have to get a new vacuum cleaner to go with it though. Our current one has lost most of its suction and that's no good with a deep carpet.

We've also removed the rotten gates at the front of the driveway. They got all warped months ago and no longer open so I can't park my car on the drive. It's been parked on the street for months and it isn't insured there. I can't lift the gates on my own and I've been asking Jay for months to help me to take them off and we finally got around to it at the weekend so I can park on the drive again! Unfortunately, because we haven't used it for so long, it's absolutely covered with a thick carpet of moss which is constantly soaked through and is going to be a nightmare to get off.

Next on the list of house improvements is loft insulation, of which there is currently none. This is going to be fun; for some unknown reason the loft hatch is above the bath and is about the size of a small child. There's no way Jay can fit up there so I'm going to have to do the loft insulation on my own, if I can get up there!

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Me and Jay went to the cinema twice in the space of the last week, which was nice. The first was on Wednesday to August: Osage Country which I only wanted to see because of Ewan (of course) but Jay also really enjoyed it. A definite character film, Meryl Streep was fantastic and it was a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

The second was on Saturday. We went to the Electric Cinema in Birmingham, which is the oldest cinema in the world still running. You can book a seat on a comfy sofa, which costs £13 each but Jay likes it. You can also get waiter service including alcohol and an array of snacks. The cocktail menu has drinks which such names as Tequila Mockingbird and Ginception. Witty. We saw Inside Llewyn Davis which follows a week in the life of a struggling folk musician. It's quiet and slow and, combined with the warm comfortable atmosphere, I fell asleep about 15 minutes before the end. Annoying.

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Well, that's enough waffling for now I reckon. Only one more hour of this working day and I can bugger off home.