On Top of the World

Was it really Tuesday the last time I wrote anything? Damn. Sorry to the 5 of you who read my site, but really nothing’s been happening. I’ll try really hard to think of something to write today, I promise. And until then - Happy Birthday, Cat!

I could get used to not having to go to work. I had to go to Matthew’s house today because we were having the burglar alarm fitted, and I got there half an hour early. Rather than make the tenants put up with me for half an hour (which I’d be pissed off with if I were the tenant), I thought I’d go and get some brekky. So I went to the shops across the road, and got a custard tart and a latte to go, and sat in the park across the road from the house, so I’d be able to see if the alarm guy turned up. It was lovely sitting in the park - just a perfect morning, and I thought how wonderful it would be if I could spend every morning doing this, not having to be anywhere, and just being able to have a lazy coffee and cake in the park. Bliss.

I also discovered today that I think it would be cool to be a mechanic. I had to pick up some gravel while I was with the alarm guy, so I put the 2 buckets of it into the boot. When I left, I forgot that they were there, and took rather a sharp turn. I then heard the sound of spilling gravel.

Bugger.

I thought it might not be too bad (’maybe a bit just spilled over the top?’ I thought hopefully), and made a mental note to check the boot when I got to work. Unfortunately, both buckets had tipped over, spilling half the contents of each all over the boot. I ineffectually scooped a couple of handsful of gravel back into the buckets, then, realising it would take a bloody long time to clean it up that way, resigned myself to having to do it when I got home.

I got out the dustpan when I got home, cleaned out the other crap that was in the boot, and started scooping. It didn’t take long to sweep up most of the gravel, but then I saw that a whole lot fell under the carpety stuff in the boot, and around the spare tyre. So I had to delve where I’ve never had to delve before, and take out the spare tyre. So that was all cool, and I must say that I did a pretty good job of getting all the gravel (I wouldn’t ordinarily have tried quite so hard, but it wasn’t mine, and I’m told it was damn expensive). While I was putting the tyre back, and screwing in the little thingy (Technical Term) that holds it in place, I thought, “This is really cool. I like pulling my car apart!” And so I thought that I’d probably enjoy being a mechanic.

How sad that doing such a pissy thing (which everyone knows how to do anyway) would make me think of being a mechanic. Like all they do is take spare tyres out of people’s boots, sweep up some gravel, and put them back again.

I want some clownfish. They’re just so cute - the perfect little fishy proportions. And the cute little mouths! OK, I’ve used the words ‘cute’ and ‘little’ enough now.

Matthew and I have been going to fish shops because he wants to get some more cichlids for his tank, and I’ve been thinking that it would be kind of cool to get a Siamese fighting fish or something to have on my desk at work - they’re less maintenance than other fish, since you don’t need the pumps/filters etc that you do with others, and they have beautiful colouring. But then I saw the clownfish, and thought that I’d rather have those. But the problem with them is that you do need the filters/pumps etc for them, and I’d be worried that if there were a power failure or something at work over the weekend, the pump wouldn’t be running, and they might die But the bummer of clownfish is that people would think that the only reason I got those is because of Finding Nemo, which isn’t true. I haven’t seen the movie, and I don’t think Nemo is particularly cute. But seeing real ones swim around - awwwww. I like the orange ones, but I also like the black/brown ones. I wonder if I could get a couple of each? Hmmm… better start saving, since they’re not cheap!

I just got back from Cold Rock :d I was going to have Milky Way and raspberries again, but they didn’t have any Milky Ways, so I had Mars Bar and raspberries in cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream. Yuuuuummmmmm.

Yesterday, like lots of other people, I went to the last stage of the Tour Down Under. I finally managed to drag Matthew along to the cycling. I think he preferred it to having his eyes poked with sharp sticks, particularly when the scantily clad women bearing free stuff came walking past. I enjoyed it, but since Stuart O’Grady wasn’t riding this year (and he’s changed teams ), I didn’t really care who won, so it wasn’t quite the same as previous years. But it was still good! Apart from the stupid girls who tried to push to the front (one succeeded >:| ) right on the last lap to see what was happening. The one girl who did manage to push in did so in front of a little boy who was trying to watch the race. Bitch. We’d all been standing there for the whole two-hour race, and then these stupid cows think they can come along in the last lap and expect to get to the front. Piss off. It really annoys me when people do that. So we tried to make things as uncomfortable as possible for the one who pushed in. Grrrrrr. There are so many un-ladylike expressions I want to use right now, but I’ll refrain. If you want to be right at the front, get there early like everyone else does and hold on to your spot.

We didn’t go to SkyShow last night, but instead we walked around the corner from our house, and had a good view from there. It probably would have been better to have been there, since everything would have been so much bigger, but it was kind of cool to be standing looking over the city, and then see the fireworks start. And it was definitely better than trying to battle the ton of people who were there. I think we saw pretty much everything - I don’t know how much really low stuff there was, but we could still see fireworks that were quite low. It was damn windy and cold though. And then when we were walking home, we saw some fireworks somewhere else! I have no idea where it was, but we stood and watched those for a couple of minutes before walking the rest of the way home.

We bought some toilet paper the other day. I was about to replace an empty roll with a roll of the newly-bought paper, but then I saw a roll in the cupboard of the last batch we bought, so I thought I’d use that up first. And I’m really annoyed with it. It doesn’t tear nicely on the serrations like good toilet paper should. Now, I don’t want to be anal about things (no pun intended), but I like my paper to tear neatly off where I want it to, and leave a perfectly straight line.

But this toilet paper just doesn’t want to cooperate. Whenever I tear off a square, invariably one of the layers tears off more than the others, and I’m left with an ugly triangle of toilet paper that I have to neaten up before I leave.

I like to leave the toilet paper nicely torn off for the next person (especially in public toilets). It just looks neat, and as if you care. I feel a frisson of annoyance when I go to a public toilet and the end of the paper is all jagged and untidy, and I can’t help but think to myself “how hard would it be to just tear off that bit of the square, and leave a nice straight line for the next person”. I am aware that I am probably the only person who has this feeling. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting to leave things looking neat, even if it is just a toilet!

I’m #1 on Google for “crumbled up cookie things”

Matthew wasn’t feeling well today, so I brought him home at lunch time. Of course I was going to drop him home and then go back to work… oh who am I kidding. As if I’m going to go back to work on a Friday afternoon as glorious as this one. So now I’m enjoying an extended long weekend

I think we’re going to buy some more fishies this weekend, so the tank will look a little more inhabited. And we’re going to a bbq on Monday. Other than that, I’m looking forward to lazing around, or going out, or whatever the hell I want to do. Yay long weekend!

I went into TAFE today and put in my enrolment for the Auslan course. All was going well, and I went to the library to get my student card. The woman there asked if I had a student diary, and when I said no, she asked if I wanted one. When she gave it to me, I just had an overwhelming sense of deja vu, and all of a sudden it was like I was 18 again and enrolling for uni. It was really weird. But the enrolment procedure at TAFE was definitely a whole lot more painless than it used to be at uni - I remember queuing up for hours to enrol. At TAFE, I was back at work within the hour, including waiting for and catching buses in and out of town.

After work today was the first stage of the Tour Down Under. I decided to try to get a spot near the start/finish, since it’s quite an exciting spot to be, especially on the sprint laps. I arrived about an hour before the start of the race, and it was fairly good timing because the riders came out a couple of minutes after. As I saw them riding down Rundle Road in one huge bunch to start their warmup, the familiar feeling of excitement came over me, and I remembered why I get so enthusiastic about the race.

The stage was excellent - the sensation of the riders effortlessly powering past in echelon formation down the main straight, only 10 cm in front of you, is just awesome. And fortunately I was in a good crowd of people who actually made some noise when the riders came past, instead of just standing there and occasionally clapping politely. And the breakaway lapped the peloton on the last lap, so that was exciting too. All in all, a damn good race! And of course, there’s the factor of seeing men with gorgeously muscled, smooth, tanned legs… *sigh*

Guess what I had for tea tonight? Yumbly. I think it’s the first one I’ve ever had! I always thought that laksas were seafoody, and not being a seafood person, I never tried one. But Matthew made a chicken one tonight and it was really good! Very tasty.

It’s been a very stressful week or so at work… I think it’s winding down a bit for now, since a whole lot of things had to be ready for a client who had to give a presentation to their boss tomorrow. I fixed up everything they wanted done, so hopefully all will go well. Now the main stressful work thing I have to think about is giving a presentation One or two extroverts decided it would be a good idea for everyone to give a talk about whatever they wanted, provided it’s relevant to our field (so I can’t talk about chocolate ), so we can get used to talking in public situations, and so people can “expand their knowledge base”. Blah. I’m not one of the extroverts who thought it would be a good idea. It’s scheduled for a bit over 3 weeks’ time, but I’m trying to have it rescheduled because of all my deadlines at the moment. Presentations suck.

Got my comments back… problem is, since I registered with another user name, I lost the comment that Morgan posted to one of my entries Sorry Morgan. I wonder if there’s any way I can get it back… maybe I’ll email HS and see if they can do something.

But I’ve got my other comments back, too, so that’s good!

Addendum: Having written that, I went and had another look, and it seems that they’ll be able to transfer my old comments to my new account. So Morgan’s comment isn’t lost after all!

One bummer about HaloScan is that you have to upgrade your account in order to get an email notification when someone posts a comment, whereas it was included in BlogSpeak. And I’m too much of a tight-ass to pay for the privelege. C’est la vie.