Number crunching

I was absolutely delighted to be back at my desk, working my way through a surprisingly long list of emails that had accumulated in the couple of days I had been away from work.

In fact, I was so delighted that I had to use a reward system to encourage myself to "get my arse into gear".

I had spent the past couple of days refining some crappy wax comb in to a 3lb disk of beeswax.  My reward was to allow myself to continue with the refining of the wax provided that I did some bloody work first.

Consequently my morning was spent reviewing raw data and collating information in to a solution cost model that became more complex by the minute.

As midday approached I deemed that I had earned a break, so decided to refine some of the beeswax.

The large disk of wax had been broken apart and divided in to four roughly equal portions. One of these was melted in a double boiler on the hob.  It was then filtered through some fine cotton fabric to remove any remaining crud.  After cooling I was left with an aromatic block of beeswax.

Over the course of the day I returned to this activity, whenever I felt that I had earned a break, and ended up with four blocks of wax that will be perfect for candles, hand cream, shoe or furniture polish.

Oh, and I also produced a rather fabulous set of pricing options and associated financial analysis.