Unscheduled events

I like to plan ahead and know what I'll be up to for at least a week in advance, I'm just one of those people who likes to be prepared I guess. Don't get me wrong, sometimes I like to be surprised and do spur of the moment things, but when it comes to work situations I prefer to know what's going on.

There's a training session next Monday and Tuesday in the Adelaide office so for me this would be like a long weekend, not having to drive back until Wednesday morning. I had my name down to go, my boss thinks I'm going, but it's Friday and the Adelaide office who are supposed to be organising it haven't yet given me any details. In fact, last I'd heard, they weren't even sure of a venue. If I don't hear anything by the time I leave for Adelaide this afternoon then I'll be back here in Berri like normal, but I would have liked to have known by now. Ah well, it's no big drama, just me being fussy with things like this.

I'm so glad it's Friday! I love weekends! We're not up to too much, I have a little running around to do Saturday morning and then I'm catching up with Misch for dinner in Norwood. I'm looking forward to seeing her, the last time I saw her was just before I'd moved to Berri and that's already been over 7 months, so it will be great to catch up. The rest of the weekend will be quiet but that'll be nice too!

Hope you all have a good one!

Something funny

This morning something very small happened but it made me stand in my study and laugh out loud, and it's making me giggle just thinking about it, so may as well blog it.

When I moved to Berri I got some new furniture and one of those was an office chair which had to be put together. I remember on the night I moved, when all the big things were put away, Ivan and my Dad sat down to put things together and Ivan was the one who put my chair together.

A couple of weeks ago I walked into the room and noticed one of the screws and its washer had fallen onto the carpet off the office chair. I have a toolbox and have just been too lazy to put it back together but I think I had better do it soon. This morning there was a second screw and its washer on the carpet. I flipped the chair over and saw the last two were barely there, they had to be tightened too. So I'd better fix it before there is an incident.

But it made me laugh. Ahh, my boyfriend, the handyman...

Reflections of a childish mind

Yesterday I was feeling a little sorry for myself and spent a lot of time thinking, and for some reason thoughts of my childhood popped into my head. I don't know why, maybe it was my subconscious trying to cheer me up, but whatever the reason, it worked a bit, so I thought I'd share my thoughts.

Apparently, when I hit the Toddler bracket, I became a real little shit. Mum could not take me shopping without putting me on one of those leash things, otherwise she would spend all day chasing me around the shopping centre. Whenever she would try to tell me off, apparently I used to answer back and she had to turn away so that I wouldn't see her laughing. Knowing that I was a terror when younger surprises a lot of people because I grew up so dorky.

I went to what would be considered a rough school but my parents brought me up well enough to not get mixed in with anything too bad. I kept my grades excellent until Year 12 where they suffered a bit but still weren't too bad, and I certainly was never around the popular group so there was probably no real chance for me to get involved in anything too rebellious.

Probably the naughtiest thing I can think of (well, until later in life anyway) was when me and Michelle were kids, I can't remember how old we would have been but if I saw kids doing this today I'd be tempted to go over and give them a stern talking to.

A bit of background first. My parent's live on a main road that leads into the heart of Adelaide, but they live on the little service road that runs alongside it. But the actual main road is right there, just a nature strip and a bit of wire fence separating the service road and the main road. It has 2 lanes of traffic going in both directions and gets really congested.

Anyway, Michelle and I used to play badminton out the front, on the little service road, but sometimes just playing badminton with a shuttlecock wasn't enough. The nature strip separating the main and service roads also had lots of little pebbles on it so when the boredom sunk in we would use the racquets to hit these pebbles over the main road. From memory, we did it when the cars weren't going past so we could see how far we could hit them, but I remember at least on one occasion hitting a pebble into a passing vehicle. I remember we got scared and stopped on that particular day.

But yeah, that's about as rebellious as I got (until later years) and for some reason that memory popped into my head yesterday. Oh, to be young again!

Brick walls

I hate being so short of cash. I hate it even more when you work out your budget for the fortnight, miscalculate, and end up spending money that you didn't have to begin with. When you realise you should have stuck to manual maths instead of a calculator where your fat fingers will most likely get it wrong. It's a week and a half until my next pay and I have no money left except for a little bit of cash I still had but it's all good, because I've started my computer upgrade, woooo! It's my own fault, I should have triple-checked my calculations, or waited another week instead of spending it straight away. Ah well, at least the bills are all paid.

I've also hit a brick wall with my writing. I'd written about a page, realised it was hitting too close to home and that I'd never want anyone to read it, and so erased everything. I haven't yet restarted, and I have no idea what to even do. I guess I should just make a list to start with, I don't know. To try and get some inspiration I've been reading a lot more over the weekend (Wil Wheaton's new book is gold).

In fact, that's pretty much where a lot of my time went over the weekend, to reading his new book. I only have a couple of chapters left after reading a bit more last night, I love when books draw you in like that. The weekend was a quiet one but I loved it. Most of my time on Saturday was made free by a change of plans, so I was only out of the house for about an hour. The rest of the weekend was either spent playing online with Ivan, reading, or watching a couple of movies he'd "obtained".

We watched Alien Versus Predator which I actually thought was awesome. It's hard to tell, with Alien movies since the last couple, which I thought were still good but were lacking in something, but this movie was really enjoyable (surprisingly so). Watching a Predator fighting an Alien made me sit forward in my chair, like whenever Terminators fight each other. Plus the story was pretty decent. The other film we watched was quite different to the first - Garfield. I actually am a fan of movies designed for kids and this wasn't too bad. Nowhere near as funny as something like Shrek but still not too shabby.

Yesterday was a typical Sunday - do nothing all morning, go to visit the folks, drive home, and try and muffle out the sound of my neighbours arguing. Honestly they're home together one night a week, is it so hard to be civil?

Hey, guess what? Another week and our new database is still not up at work. So this is another day where I again have minimal work to do, which sounds great but it's actually just really boring. If only I could think of something to write about...

Upgrade my life

I've finally committed myself to upgrading my computer because I'm sick of games slowing down, having to put the settings so low that they look crap, and not even being able to play more recent games on my computer. So it's time to bulk her up a bit. Because I'd rather spend more now on better parts so that the computer can last me a few years it might take me some time to finish off this upgrade, but I'm hoping it'll all done before Christmas. I'm excited because this weekend I get my new CD burner and motherboard. Now I just need to wait until I get my new CPU and RAM before I can actually use the motherboard, but still, I'm excited :)

Wednesday night drinks and dinner was good, but in true Berri fashion most people piked so again there were only four of us but it was still good. Was nice to have a meal cooked for you anyway, and we only had a couple of drinks, played the pokies for a little while and finished it quite early, at about 9:30pm. Better than sitting at home listening to my neighbours arguing anyway!

This weekend looks like it will be a quiet one with just some running around to do for a few hours on Saturday. Perhaps I'll get to catch up on some movies I've had sitting around waiting to be watched! Anyway, this has been another lovely break from work/doing nothing, but I had better go as it's almost lunchtime. Have a great weekend, all.

Wednesday = Berri party day!

Well, not really, but it seems to be the night we here at work seem to pick when we want to unwind and go for dinner somewhere or have a night out drinking. Not that there are many places to go here - there's the local Hotel or the Golf Club, and we haven't yet decided which one we're going to tonight. I wasn't too keen on going earlier today, the nights have been really cold here and I just wanted to go home and stay warm, but seeing as no one really feels like getting drunk tonight but instead just have a nice dinner, I figured I'd go along anyway. I sit at home too much as it is, I'm really starting to show my age if I keep doing that!

So, incase you've been in solitary confinement you'd all know by now the Olympics have started. I love the Olympics, if I turn on the tv I can quite happily sit down and watch whatever's on, but I've barely caught anything so far this year. Getting Broadband at home means most nights are spent online and I haven't been keen enough to get up at 2am to watch any events. Plus there are enough highlights during the day to get the gist of what's happening. I remember when they were in Sydney in 2000 I sat there and thought "I'm definitely going to the next Olympics". But here I am, in Berri, nowhere near Athens. I have no inclination to go to Beijing for the next ones, but maybe the ones after that! Well, I can always dream...

The Weekender

Another Monday at work with not much to do except blog, so I've started writing my novel on the side. I can tell you now if I don't change my mind part-way through about what I want it to be about, it's going to need a hell of a lot of rewrites because it's really crapola right now. My creative mind isn't developed yet so it's hard to write something where I can distance myself from my characters but I'm going to have to try. If I make this too personal I won't want anyone to read it, which kinda defeats the purpose.

Hope you all had a good weekend, mine was up and down. As usual saw the folks on the way to Ivan's on Friday night then just spent a bit of time online and got a pretty early night. On Saturday morning Ivan's parents came around for a little while, I had a little running around to do and then I went and had lunch with Nicole and Virginia. I was figuring it out afterwards and realised I've known Nicole for 10 years and Virginia for 9, I have no idea where that time has gone. Now they're both married and Nicole has a child, and I'm living 250Kms away from my partner and don't even own my own home, well done to me...

Nah we had a great lunch, I think in the end we were at the Cafe for about 4 hours just chatting and catching up, it was really nice. Saturday night was a quiet one which was what I wanted. We sat down to watch Troy and 20 minutes before the ending the DVD player died. So I have the thing sitting on my computer at the moment, I must watch it, I was really getting into it and it's the ending it's been building up to, dammit!

Sunday was the usual quiet, pack-up day, stopping in to see Mum and Dad again before heading back to Berri. Then listening to my neighbours screaming at each other as their baby yells his lungs out. Yep, relaxing dinner that was...

My theory

I theorise that when one person loses weight, another person inevitably puts it on. Is this to keep the Universe balanced? I'm not entirely sure but I think it's worthy of an investigation, it might even get someone a PhD!!!

I swear, I see both sides to this "fat transfer theory". When I'm losing it I might spot someone who looks like they're putting on a few, and now that it looks like Bron is losing weight, I've put some on. Curse this fat transfer!!! Since I stopped taking the medication in mid-June, I just weighed myself this morning and have put on 4 kilos!!! Dammit why is it so easy for me to put on weight? I tell you why, it's my fat transfer theory. Well, I plan to turn the tables on this one dammit, those scales were all the motivation I needed!!!

Preparing for fat transfer *targets Asuka, my arch nemesis*...

PS I had yesterday off work too and am here delirious today, is it obvious??

Craptacular

That's how I'm feeling at the moment! On Friday I had the biggest headache and a sore throat and felt crappy most of the weekend and then yesterday I didn't come to work because that craptacular feeling was going strong, and today I'm here but not really accomplishing very much at all. My head is pounding, my throat is scratchy and I am so sick of peppermint tea! Tomorrow night we're having a pub night and I really don't want to be feeling like this then so I wish I would get over it already.

Ok, that's the bitching out of the way! Apologies for not updating this blog in over a week again but aside from feeling sick I've also just had other things going on. I got ADSL at home now so my nights are spent making up for lost time, playing online games and downloading lots of things. It's also encouraged me to get a computer upgrade so I can play games without having to worry about things slowing down and not being able to see the pretty graphics for all they're worth and so on. So once my credit card is paid off that's what I'll save my money for (as much as I was hoping to get a trip to Melbourne in in the next few months). I need to make it a priority after all these years.

Also despite the lack of comments to my last entry I did have a few people speak to me personally and to those people I say thankyou. I've decided to go for one of the positions and see what happens. The boss here sounds pretty convinced I will get one (I haven't been able to judge whether he's trying to be helpful or just wants to get rid of me). Now I just wait for them to be posted, they only just advertised the Manager's position on the weekend so I imagine the rest of the positions won't be posted for a few more weeks.

Sorry for the dull entry, not feeling very creative today so this will have to do!

Just don't know what to do with myself

Ok, ok, I know I worry too much about things that may not even happen but I really don't know what to do. Because I'm a new public servant I'm on a year probation and so I thought that I would be in Berri working for at least a year. Before I moved up here Ivan and I also had to move in Adelaide so we moved him specifically into a smaller place so the rent would be less. We had it planned that by the time I move back to Adelaide we'd be much closer to getting our own place, that the next time we move it would be our last.

But now the boss has told me that I can apply for jobs in Adelaide at any time I like, and that in fact in a week, brand new positions will be advertised for a new office in Stirling, so I really don't know what to do. If I don't apply now, I might miss out, seeing as they are brand new positions I have a higher chance of getting one of them. But the timing is terrible. I have just re-signed my lease here so would be penalised for that, and there is nowhere for me to move all my things. I would have to rent another place, so I'm not sure I'd be saving any money at all, unless I get a housemate. Ofcourse I want to go back but the timing is awful and so I really have no idea what to do! So I'm probably worrying over nothing, but I have a feeling the jobs get advertised this week and I can't decide whether to apply for one or not.

Moving on from that, just a quick update on the weekend. Tomorrow is Dad's birthday so we had the family lunch thing on Saturday to celebrate it which was quite good. Maria brought her new man along, Steve, who seems quite nice and waaaay better than Nick ever was! Aside from that not much else was done apart from lots of gaming and watching Scrapped Princess. Oh, and I also saw I, Robot which was fantastic.

Anyway I had better get back to work. HELP!