On Top of the World

It was my second-to-last tafe class for the year tonight. Since we’ve done all the assessments, there wasn’t really much to do. Our teacher showed some video of us, taken at the beginning of the year doing an assessment, and then another one of us, taken a few weeks ago, to show us how much we’ve improved. I hate watching myself on video. I don’t know whether I’ve improved very much, but it was interesting seeing other people.

After class, a friend and I went to our usual coffee shop, where we were met by Pissed Off Guy. I call him that because he never seems very happy to see us. The reason for this is probably because we spend an hour or two there gasbagging, and only end up spending $2.80 on a flat white and a bottle of tap water. Heh. I do feel a bit bad about that though. But, hey, it’s not like business is booming there on a Tuesday night, and we’re stopping the hordes of people from putting their bums on seats and making the owners rich. Live with it, POG - be thankful for my $2.80!

I encountered a stupid taxi driver on the way home. He just decided to edge his way over into the lane I was in, not bothering to see if there was a car there first. Tosser. I, of course, performed the musical masterpiece that is my horn, but all he did was slow down a bit and keep coming. Did I mention that he’s a tosser? So I had to stop and let him in, otherwise there would have been an accident. Once we got over the lights, the single lane we were in divides into two, and he couldn’t decide which lane he wanted. He was almost straddling the lanes, and I just roared past him. It’s really great having a car with power. Yeah baby.

I am suffering from indifference and lack of motivation. There have been occasions this week where stuff has happened that I thought I could blog about, but the words just haven’t come, and I don’t feel like trying to find them. Maybe it’s the weather - it’s stinking hot here at the moment and the study is the hottest room in my house. I don’t know. There’s meant to be a cool change in the middle of next week, so maybe there’ll be a sharp increase in posting frequency around Wednesday.

I just thought I should post something. I don’t know why.

I’m still here, I was just taking a bit of a blog break. And rather than just write crap when I don’t really have anything to say, as is my usual wont, I thought I’d just wait until something came up to blog about. Not that anything has, but I saw that a couple of people have been asking if I’m ok, so I thought I’d check in and say that everything’s fine! Thankyou for asking

I got stuck behind the slowest driver in the world yesterday when I was coming home from work. Geez - use some gas! And he was driving with one hand on the top of the wheel, and his free arm hanging outside the window, resting downwards on the outside of the door. People who drive in this configuration are tossers. You don’t look cool. If you’re reading this and are thinking ‘hey, I do that!’, then I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but you’re a tosser. Despite it being illegal (here at least) to have any part of you outside the vehicle, and quite dangerous (for you - see? Don’t tell me I don’t look out for you) in the event of an accident, it just makes you look like a tool. Especially when you’re driving a piece of junk that doesn’t have a hope in hell of looking cool. Besides, if you’re driving a cool car, why ruin the sexy lines by draping a hairy arm over it? Ugh. All body parts inside the car at all times, please.

Since I haven’t done it yet (how remiss of me), hello to all the people who have arrived here from BlogExplosion!

Speaking of BE, I logged in today, and checked my credits to find that I have the grand total of -1 credits. How do you get negative credits? Sure I haven’t surfed for a couple of days, but to deduct credits? I haven’t seen that before. I guess I must be REALLY naughty. Shame on me! *spank*

This afternoon was spent shovelling 5 tonnes of gravel into the areas next to M’s driveway. It took us over 4 hours to do it, and at the end we were both sunburnt. Fortunately we had hats on, so our faces were ok, but I’m burnt on my arms, and on my back just above my butt where my top wasn’t long enough to cover me while I was shovelling. I put moisturiser on when we got home, but it’s still stinging a little. My back and arms are totally stuffed - raking and shovelling gravel is not trivial work!

I’m hoping that tomorrow marks the first day, in over a month, of us spending a weekend day doing absolutely nothing renovation-related. The current plan is to go into the city and try to start a bit of Christmas shopping, and then go clothes shopping. I hate clothes shopping, but my clothes are all so worn and awful that I’m embarrassed to wear them. I obviously look pretty bad at work, because whenever I wear a particular dress that I haven’t worn for a while, I always get a few compliments. Which is nice, of course! It just highlights the fact that I look crap every other day. But then, if I buy a whole lot of nice clothes and actually start trying to look half decent, people will expect me to look like that all the time, which is just too high an expectation for me to live up to. I’m doomed to failure. I like wearing nice clothes, though - don’t you feel so much better about yourself when you’re wearing something nice? But there is a plus side to looking like a frump most of the time, and then basking in the compliments when you make an effort. Everyone likes a bit of ego-stroking every now and then, right?

M and I had our celebratory meal today! We wanted to go to Alphütte on Saturday night, but unfortunately it’s not open for dinner on Saturday nights (which I think is quite odd), so the only option was to go during next week, which was just too far away! So we took the afternoon off, and went for lunch today instead.

It was pretty cool to sit in the restaurant and watch the world go by. I could get used to not going to work, and just spending my days eating lunch in fancy restaurants. Whenever I’m not at work during the day and I’m out, I always wonder why there are so many people around who aren’t at work - don’t they have to earn a living, dammit?! I wonder if they wonder the same thing about me.

Going out for lunch is great. We always go out for a meal on M’s and my birthday, and usually it’s dinner, but for M’s last birthday, we went out for lunch. It was really good, because after you’ve stuffed yourself (which inevitably happens when you go somewhere nice - you want to enjoy yourself!), you’ve got the rest of the day to digest it, rather than getting home at around 10:30 with a belly full of food that’s just going to sit there all night.

True to form, I stuffed myself. I had Mushroom Buttons for entrée, then Hirsch Medallions for main, with a side of Röschti of course. Yum! I’d been planning to have dessert, but by the end of the main I was so full that I couldn’t fit it in, so we just had a coffee instead. I’m glad I didn’t have dessert. It seems I can only ever fit two courses in, so next time we go out for dinner I’m going to make the two courses main and dessert - being the sweet tooth that I am, I need dessert every now and then so that I can function properly. And I really would have liked the chocolate mousse served in a chocolate box, with a raspberry pudding on the side. Mmm chocolate. Patience, my pet - there’s always next time.

I’m finding WordPress to be so much better than Movable Type for comment moderation - pretty much all the comments I’m trying to filter out have been filtered and don’t make it to my blog, so that’s better than all the obscene ones I was getting with MT which actually did show up. The only bummer was that when I was getting rid of the auto-generated crappy comments, I inadvertently deleted a legitimate comment. Grrr. Thank goodness I get email notification of all comments, because I just used the info in the notification email to create a new record in the database, and hey presto - the comment was back! I have to be more careful when deleting comments though. I’ve deleted over 150 today - not impressed!

At least the process with WordPress is relatively painless - with MT I had to delete one comment at a time, and then rebuild the whole site afterwards - what a waste of time.

There was no more making out with dummies today, unfortunately. We started off with a scenario - half the group were casualties, and the other half were the first aiders arriving on the scene. I was a first aider, and the scene was a parachute jump that had gone wrong, and people had fallen on their faces, and had bits of tree sticking out of them etc. Even though it wasn’t real (duh), it was still a bit nerve-wracking. So I spent way too long trying to work out what to do with the casualty I had. I think I did the right thing in the end though. Hopefully she wouldn’t have died by then. You hear people say that when you’re in a traumatic situation, you just do what has to be done - I hope that’s true, and I wouldn’t be standing around like an idiot wondering what to do. Fat lot of use I’d be.

We did more theory during the day, and the written test, which we all got 100% for (the teacher made sure of it!). At the end of the day we had two more scenarios, where we were again split up into half-casualty, half-first aider, and then the roles reversed. I think I did better this time when I was a first aider, but the victim I chose was fairly ‘easy’ to deal with, in that she didn’t have gaping wounds or limbs falling off or anything. After the second scenario, it was all over and we got to go home.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t go home because I had to go to tafe. I was all coursed-out by the end of the day, and the last thing I wanted to do was sit through 3 more hours of another course. In the beginning I just didn’t have the energy to participate or even feign much interest. It seemed to be too much effort to remember the correct signs, let alone how to put them together. But I perked up as it went on, so it was ok. And I had a coffee with a friend from class afterwards, which was nice.

Back to work as usual tomorrow - hopefully noone gets sick!

I got to make out with Robin Williams today. Actually, I didn’t - I got some child dummy called Nathan - but other people got to make out with Robin Williams. The adult dummies we had for the First Aid course looked uncannily like him, but with a whole lot less body hair. And fewer limbs. It was quite bizarre. I took a couple of photos of it to share the freakiness with all of you - I’ll put them in here when I’ve redownloaded the software to get them off my phone (since I lost it when my hard drive died).

So anyway, the day went quite well. I did the course with a colleague, and he asked me whether I got any more information about the course, because someone he knew doing the course said you had to bring pen and paper, and your own lunch. Pardon? Your own lunch? What kind of show are they running here? I thought at least some of the exorbitant course fees these days covered lunch and morning/afternoon tea pastries. Alas, no. So I went to a sort-of-nearby shopping centre at lunch time and ordered a toasted ham and cheese thingy, only to remember that I had no money. I asked the woman behind the counter whether there was an ATM nearby, and she said there was one outside. So I tried to withdraw some cash, only to be told by the machine that my savings account wasn’t linked to my card. Shit. Bloody bank, they have been totally incompetent lately, resulting in M filing a lengthy complaint, so to have this extra stuff-up was a real pain, particularly because the patronizing woman at the branch assured me that my account was linked to the card. Umm, don’t think so, cow! So I had to borrow some money from one of the other girls in the course. I was so embarrassed, but fortunately she was really nice about it. So I have to remember to take some money for her tomorrow.

As for what we actually did, we did CPR of course, and bandaged each other up, and put slings on each other - it was pretty cool. We get to do it all again tomorrow, plus a written test. Eeek. But the first half has been good, so I can go back to work on Wednesday, completely prepared to take care of the poor sick nerds. Unfortunately there’s only one good-looking guy there to take care of

So… how about that lovely weather we’ve been having the past couple of days? Pffft. It’s meant to be warming up at this time of year, not going back to nipples-screaming arctic weather, complete with heavy rain and gale-force winds. Geez - get with the month already - this is the southern hemisphere!

M’s making a stew for tea tonight. I am absolutely starving, and I don’t know whether I can wait two more hours until it’s ready. We both contemplated ordering pizza tonight, and having the stew tomorrow, but it does smell really good, and I’m looking forward to eating it. If I haven’t gnawed my arm off in starvation in the meantime. We have no snacks in the house at all - how can that be? We went shopping after work, and had the healthiest basket I’ve ever had - vegetables, meat, bread and milk. Of course, anyone looking at it would think that that’s the sort of stuff we always buy. Hahahahaha!

I’m doing a 2-day Senior First Aid course starting on Monday. I’m one of the first aid officers at work, and seeing as I know virtually nothing about first aid, it was fairly prudent that I get some training. So by the end of Tuesday, I should be your one-stop First Aid shop. I’m just worried that by the time I need to use it, I’ll have forgotten what to do. Never mind - to use an Aussie expression, “She’ll be right, mate!” I hope.

This weekend was meant to be the celebratory dinner for having finished everything with M’s house, but we haven’t finished everything yet. There isn’t much to go though - just move the rest of the stuff out, and clean the house; we should be finished tomorrow. We thought we could go tomorrow night, but after cleaning all day we probably won’t feel like going home, getting ready, and going out again. Then we thought we could go during the week, but after work we just want to go home and veg anyway. So it looks like it will be next weekend. At least that gives us the week to finish off any last-minute stuff that we mightn’t get done this weekend. But I’m really hoping there isn’t anything - we’ve spent so much time there already, and it looks so much better.