Like a lot of people, December is the busiest time for me, and that appears to be true even without university or any kind of education in the way! I’ve officially finished work for Christmas; I’ve taken until the 28th December off. A definite difference to having weeks or even months off at a time, I only have 25 days a year. They also have further restrictions – I have to give at least two weeks’ notice before asking for holiday, it must be signed off by a manager, and it can’t be longer than two consecutive weeks. So I’m trying to spend it very very wisely!

At the moment I’m staying at Joe’s in Nottingham, then I will be going home to Manchester on Monday. In total, including back to the south east, I’ll be travelling 350 miles. And that’s not even travelling within places when I get there!

So, what have I been up to? Well I have a new manager-manager as my team is merging with another one. She’s nice, and also it has been universally agreed that she’s louder than me, which is probably a good thing! I have also been doing various things to make work more fun, such as ‘Moustache Monday’ (the pound shop sells stick-on moustaches) and baking.

Wednesday was the work Christmas party – everyone left early as usual when we go for a night out – except the most hardcore people and those staying the night at the hotel. It was quite fun, but tiring on a mid-week night. One think I do like about work though is the amount of people who insist on buying me drinks and refuse to accept one back :) Very cheap night out!

My birthday was also good – thanks to everyone who wished my happy birthday. It was a bit weird because it was my first one without my family – Joe came down which was lovely, but had to leave. I got a DS Lite, Wall-E on DVD, candles, a game, a phone duck (don’t ask), Amazon vouchers, books and a few other bits and pieces. Definitely shows how the credit crunch has affected my family thinking back to last year…! I am grateful though. And I do feel old!

Christmas shopping is all done – just hoping that my review points will be transferred into a £55 Amazon voucher for the last of the presents in time!! If not it will be a late Christmas present :)

In terms of the site, I’ve written several new pages, but I’ not exactly sure what to do. I’m tempted to revamp everything a section at a time, but then I’m thinking of altering the sections so I’d like to get some more new content under my belt first. The content itself is going to be quite different; I’m going to have a kids’ section for the dollmakers and such, but all the reads are going to be in the style of the new pages I’ve written so far. This basically means longer, more informative, and based at a slightly higher level. I have learned a lot about the business side of the Internet since I started my job, and this is going to be used. Unfortunately I have no idea what kind of age this writing is suitable for, so that might need thinking about in some detail. It is bizarre how much search engine optimisation and such I’ve been doing since I was 14 without officially calling it that or even thinking about it…

So today I plan to spend catching up on Internet things and hopefully working on content. My main aim is to completely update the site to be more current and actually feel like me again, work on some skins/themes from scratch whilst working on other projects at the same time. It’s going to be mad, but I hope to dedicate at least one full day to webdesign this holiday (sounds crazy when I used to work about 20 hours a day on it at weekends – great going to bed exhausted and waking up the next day and seeing it all prettified).

Joe’s working all day, but I’m seeing Bethany this evening and probably going out for a meal so it’ll be lovely catching up. But for now, back to the working on the site thing. It’s going to be slower than usual since I’m not used to this keyboard, but here goes….