Another day at work. Struggling again to put some kind of EFQM process into action. There are 2 parts to my job. I have a small team to manage, and I have some considerative work looking at budgets. Both are going slowly. The team are very self-contained. Their previous HEO was very hands-off, letting them do what they wanted. I want to be much more involved, and 3 weeks in I'm starting to see the beginnings of friction over this. I've been doing 1-2-1's with them and getting some feedback that they find me a bit intrusive. On the budget side I'm getting busier, but it all still feels a bit like nugatory work, shuffling numbers around for my boss. I'm sticking with it. I went out with some friends from my old job last week, and as they pointed out it's often the case that after promotion the job feels less intense than the work you went through to get the promotion. My ex-Grade 7 was very complimentary about the length of time I'd been working out of grade.

On to the really sad news. Yesterday Rambo the hamster finally died. He was about 3 (which I understand is a good age for a hamster) and had not been well for a while. The day before when we cleaned him out, he was very dopey and tottered around a bit unsteadily without really opening his eyes. Put him back into bed and he just kind of flopped down without moving. He died sometime within the following 24 hours. Alex burst into tears. Jessica was initially fine, then asked when we could get a new on, then burst into tears. She's currently fluctuating between 'can I have a gerbil this time' to being very tearful. He's now safely buried in the back garden, and Deb and I are trying to persuade them that they don't really want another one...