Thanks Sneaks, I can't really afford to buy those. But maybe it'll be okay, it hasn't felt as cold today and I can be at my boyfriend's place or on campus quite a bit to save relying on their expensive electric heaters. I think I just needed to vent my frustrations on them really, and I did at least do that!

Tomorrow, I will make an early start on all the work I really should have been doing today!

My parents are 100 miles away and know less about plumbing than I do, so not sure phoning them would help at all!!!

The lettings agency is sending people to do a complete flush out of the heating system - a 12 hour job with major industrial pumps, apparently - but not til next Thursday. I shouted at them for that, and they started denying that they knew I'd been seven weeks without heating - oh yeah, cos me phoning every two or three days to demand an update on progress wasn't a clue?! Then they got very apologetic, and the office manager's just been round to lend me two electric heaters. Which is all very nice, but I've still been seven weeks without heating and now am being expected to wait another whole week and make do with electric heaters in the meantime (and no, they won't pay towards the electricity either!). Bastards.

I really need to calm down, this fury is not doing me any good at all....

Bastard bastard scum landlord!!!!! I was expecting brand new radiators to be installed today, but instead they sent round a plumber from a completely different company who knew nothing about my heating having been broken for seven weeks, armed only with a hammer. AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!! He did manage to bash one of the radiators into working order - great, I'll huddle round that one for the next seven weeks, shall I? Couldn't yell at him too much, it's not his fault, but I am so so so angry now! I'm giving him an hour to report back to the lettings agency about the major repair work that's needed, and then I'm going to phone them and give them hell. Bastards!!!

And breathe.

Phew, I needed that rant!

Not much chance of settling to any more work today, I fear. And tomorrow may well be spent occupying the offices of the lettings agency. Hey, we students are radical again these days, right?

Agreed, that does sound catty and suspiciously likely to be untrue!

And 7.15 is ridiculously early for workmen to be turning up - and I feel your pain about being spotted through the window!!

My first goal of the day has been done - had meeting with potential hosts of my research study. And they agreed to everything I wanted and are really enthusiastic about being my subjects, and were even happy if I went ahead and asked another organisation as well. Yay! I feel like I actually have some viable research to do now! (Thanks Sneaks for the advice about this a few weeks ago!)

Goal 2 - tidy the living room before the plumbers turn up to fix my heating (yay again!!!)
Goal 3 - I think the plumbers will be noisy so I'll spend the time they're here organising my PDFs, deleting emails and generally tidying up all my files so I know where everything is!
Goal 4 - turn on my repaired heating and bask in glorious warmth!

Oh dear, they're replacing a load of the lights in the office and one of the workmen doing it just blew himself off the stepladder and shorted all the lights! He's fine, luckily, and the lights are back on, but now we have a whole group of workmen earnestly discussing what the problem might be and climbing up and down the stepladder to get a look. Distracting or what?!

They're supposed to be coming round tomorrow afternoon to fix my heating. Hope they do - it's getting ridiculous now, I'm coming down with a cold as well as being stiff and sore, so it's not doing me any good!

Gah, I'm not getting much work done now. I'm half way through goal three, and have 2 hours until my statistics class. Boo to all these distractions!

Sounds like we're all working slowly today. Apart from Sneaks, who will have to run to keep up, it sounds like! Yikes!

A new starter PhD student is sitting next to me today (we hot-desk so it can be different people every day) and he's the noisiest typer I've ever heard (thump those keys, go on!) And he mutters to himself while he works. Grrrr!

I have achieved goals 1 and 2, so am now moving on to goal 3.

Oh dear, structural equation modeling? I think I'm going to have to do some of that for my thesis (possibly) but haven't a clue about it and am dreading having to learn it! Ah well, that's a job for next year!

I achieved very little yesterday, and today I still have terrible backache though I did at least sleep through the night. Goals for today:

Goal 1 - finish writing project brief before meeting with potential hosts of my study tomorrow
Goal 2 - think through the meeting, what I want from it etc
Goal 3 - think through different options for measuring devices to use in study
Goal 4 - go to statistics class
Goal 5 - tidy up the flat so that the plumbers can replace radiators in the bedroom and living room tomorrow!!

My landlords/agency are more than a bit rubbish, really. The seal on the oven door fell off the first time I used it when I'd just moved in and it took them 9 months to fix that. I've lived here just over a year and haven't ever had a signal on the communal TV aerial (they say that'll be fixed by Christmas - yeah, right!) But the seven weeks with barely any heating has just been excruciating! Unfortunately, they're the only rental agency that deals with the block of flats I live in, and the flats themselves are really nice and in a perfect location, so I don't want to move out!

Work is going very very slowly today. But I am warm :-)

Struggling to get going this morning. I was very very cold in the night and woke at 3 am with really bad backache :-( but now that I've travelled all the way to the university (in a different city to where I live) I'm finally starting to defrost and feel better! (Good news on the heating front though - rental agency phoned this morning and promised a plumber would be out on Thursday afternoon to fix my heating. Yay! Only 2 more days of shivering cold!!)

Goal 1 - Think through what I want from meeting on Thursday with potential hosts of my research study
Goal 2 - Draft out a short description of my research project and expected oiutcomes to give to potential hosts

Oh, and students not turning up when you've set aside extra time for them? That sort of thing makes me so mad! I would never have had the discourtesy to do that when I was an undergrad/Masters student, but it's happened to me a couple of times with Masters students I've supervised for dissertations, and it just drives me crazy.

Yes, it's a lettings agency that does everything for the landlords, so I have to report repairs to the agency and they then have to ask the landlords for permission to carry out repairs. The agency's just phoned to say they're giving my landlords another two hours to get back to them with instructions on my heating repairs or they'll just order the repairs to go ahead anyway. Which sounds great and as if they're really proactive, but this is after seven weeks without properly working heating, so I'm not feeling too grateful to them!!

Anyway, reading I'd planned for today is now done. I may take the rest of the day off, to prepare for an event I have for a voluntary group this evening, and to clean up my flat before the landlords send these mythical plumbers round!

The only place I've really used is the Office for National Statistics stuff, but it depends what exactly you're after. If you're lucky they've done an analysis that's exactly what you need. But doesn't always work out - they did an analysis in 1991 that was perrfect for the justification for my research, but they haven't repeated since, and I've been criticised for using such old data in my research, but what can you do if they don't provide what you need?!

Sneaks, it's bloody freezing isn't it?! I'm wearing fingerless gloves while I type and my fingernails are blue with cold. And I'm wearing a long-sleeved t-shirt, a thick woolly jumper and a big hoodie over the top, and I'm shivering. But then my heating's broken :-(

Achieved goals 1 and 3, and with goal 2 managed to be both polite but angry about landlord's inability to fix my heating. They promised to ring me back with news, but they promised that last Thursday too and never did, so I'm not holding my breath.

I need to do some brainstorming/thinking things through type work, but I'm so bloody cold I can't concentrate!

Hello everyone

Goal 1 - read report of interesting research - almost done
Goal 2 - phone landlords and yell at them because I've now been 7 weeks with heating that barely works and I'm freezing!! - will be done as soon as they actually answer the phone (groan, grumble, fume...)
Goal 3 - read 3 other quite short documents
Goal 4 - prepare for tonight's event for voluntary group I chair

Goals 1 and 2 done, now to find the courage to actually send my abstract in! Mayeb I'll leave it an hour and re-read it before I send it.

An extra goal to add in before my final one of the day - read some documents that a very kind student in my department used a magic password to get off the web for me. Unexpected documents but they look really useful so I'm keen to read them!

I'm starting to feel pressured time-wise now. Not on a day-to-day basis, just this overwhelming dread when I think about all the things I need to get done before Christmas, and how little time that actually gives me! Yikes. Maybe I need to draw up an action plan. Or maybe that's just another way to procrastinate?:$