new horizons

Its a grey day today, lightly spitting with rain. This is a typical english autumn/winter day . Reading previous posts of mine you can see that I am rather obsessed with the great British weather - it brightens my mood, or dampens it . Well, that is all in the past, I'm really trying to get on with it, not let the weather effect my moods and keep at it. After all, I live here, the reality is the weather is changeable so move on and up.
After all that philosophical stuff, back to the here and now. Just got a text message from Karen, the sister who is in South America, she is on the Patagonian coast in a beautiful seaside resort. Just receiving her message made me smile, I miss her and just to get a little text from her cheers me up, forget the rain at least my sister is happy.
So, my post today . I wanted to comment on a programme I watched last night on channel 4 - wife swap Its all about a successful business women and her family v a stay at home mum and her family. The successful woman is portrayed as a selfish bxxxx who is only interested in money. OK, her life was very dominated on her business but I really think too much was made of it, and its not necessarily only stay at home mums who give their children better care. It was obvious to me that if this woman would have stayed at home all the time her kids would have suffered as she would have been miserable. We need fair representation of successful business women and their families, I refuse to believe that we can't do both, have a business and still have a family life. I know myself and many mums I meet are really striving for this and I really believe it shouldn't be this difficult and one sided. Comments are welcome.

Cold Calling - I'd rather have the Flu

Accounts are now done! After my terrible day of procrastination I just put my head down and did them! So, now I just have to contact the accountant , pay a ridiculous amount of money and its finished.
Onto the next task, cold calling.... Now I really don't enjoy this, this cold calling thing - I feel stupid talking to someone who doesn't know me or care about me. Lots of people I know don't have a problem with calling up a business and asking for Mr or Mrs Blue or Red but I do! I wish I didn't but I do. Its strange because they don't even know me, they can't see me but I get all tensed up and really don't want to call the number ....
Right, off to make one of those horrible calls... Please let me know if you know of anywhere where I can get help with this, and I'm talking for free am not interested in paying for this knowledge as I know I can do it, I can, really I can.

To do accounts or not ?!

I've got to do the yearly accounts this week. So, end of day one this is what I have achieved;

• Taken sister to airport.
• Bought a cake and tea as I was upset at the reality that my sister is going away for 6 months.
• Read parenting books for an hour as I sipped my tea.
• Went to the gym and came straight home as the swimming pool was too crowded and I didn't have my gym shoes with me.
• Put two loads of washing on and cleared up the fridge.
• Changed the template on my blog to add a link to my friend’s blog.

Good procrastination don't you think? Tomorrow is another day...

customer service

Is customer service going too far? A friend just called me with a little story. She was having problems with her printer and asked for help from the help center. As a reply she received a rambling email which basically said "buy a new cartridge" . She, in her lovely English polite way, replied saying "thank you." She then received an email going on and on about how much they value her service and attitude etc etc. - shame I don't have the email to include but it was really long. She then got asked to take a customer service survey! So, her politeness has meant she has been asked to take a survey which when filling in she must add a comment such as "How much time do you waste writing long-winded emails to me when you could be taking other calls?!"