keeping in touch

It was jojo's birthday today, so I rang him to say 'hi & happy birthday'. We actually ended up talking books more than birthday, but it was good to talk instead of type. Which brings me to the subject of this post. I LOVE calling cards!!

It used to be last year that I had to factor international calls into my scant budget, as well as endlessly trying to work out time differences. Calling Akujou regularly was a (worthwhile) logistical nightmare at times and keeping in touch with Roofshadow (who was still in Japan) even irregularly was an expensive venture. Ai I could almost never call because I was working or sleeping during her few free moments each day. If jojo had lived in Shanghai then it would have been crazy expensive to call, though we don't call that often anyway. Since I got administrator rights on my work computer (and with that the ability to download and use MSN Messenger at work) I've been able to keep in better touch with him that anyone else, because we are both online for hours a day across workdays in countries with only a 3 hour time difference. Still, every once in a while you want to hear someone's voice.

The point is that calling cards (or rather VoIP) have changed everything. For those unfamiliar, I buy a $10 calling card. I call the local number on the card and enter a PIN, then dial the international number I want to call. The prices are crazy cheap (eg 0.5 cents/min to the US - that's 30cents an hour!!), but I also don't have to be sitting at my computer; I can be anywhere my cordless phone can go. And more importantly, I can be at work. Ths makes time difference really easy to deal with, because I can call the US in my lunchtime from my phone at work. With the calling card all I'm doing is making a local call, which we are allowed to do from work anyway.

VoIP is going to change the world. Here is Australia it's the thing that's going to finally solve our eternal dilemma of providing reasonably priced phone services to regional areas (huge country, small population). But right now I'm just cool that it's providing reasonably priced international phone services to ME! ^_^

hi phi

Phi dropped by tonight to pick up a few things he left behind when he moved out. It was interesting in the sense that it's the first time he's been here as a guest, but of course there's still that familiarity from his having lived there. I had to kind of remind myself of the niceties, like offering him a drink, because it's no longer his house and he isn't going to just automatically do whatever he feels like doing.

Me: So, are you sticking around for a while?
Phi: *shrug* I don't have anywhere I need to be...
Me: You wanna eat with us?
Phi: Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah, I missed you a little bit, too. ^_~

the heating dilemma

It's 10.24am and I'm just rolling into work. Rolling might be the wrong word...how do things move when they're almost frozen? The sun's been up for nearly 4 hours and yet when I left home fifteen minutes ago the grass in my front yard was still white (the sun rises on the other side of the house).

I slept in my lounge room last night Last night my heavy bedroom mirror fell down behind the chest of drawers. I was so relieved that it didn’t break that it wasn’t until I realised that my room was getting colder that I thought to check the power outlet behind the chest of drawers. The mirror had crashed into the heater plug, wrenching it out of the wall, bending the prongs and cracking the outlet casing.

So off to the lounge room (which has a heater) dragging my quilt behind me and settling in to comfort myself with the first season of Will & Grace. I might have used icecream [my spell check is claiming ‘icecream’ this is two words? In what universe???], but it’s winter. Plus they eat so much icecream in that show, I felt like I was comfort eating by proxy just by watching.

All in all this morning it was a bit hard to drag myself into work. Luckily my boss is doing a coffee run. I need something warm and comforting, and in the absence of an unexpected but fabulous office romance, hot chocolate it is.

love and relationships

I saw the movie The Break-up last night. It wasn't really the laugh a minute darkish comedy that the trailer implied, but the script was very real. Then this morning I was reading the post that Jazzy wrote on love after seeing the movie. Here is some of what she wrote:

That idea of love that I believed in all my life has just been slowly deteriorating for the past five years. There's very little of that original idea left. The older I get, the more I realize how alone I am in my experience. Instead of falling in love with someone and sharing this blissful experience of love together, I feel alone in my experience of love.

Do two people ever feel exactly the same way about one another at exactly the same time? I'm not trying to measure love to see whether or not we are equal. What I'm getting at is that we are all individual beings and we all live in our own worlds that we create in our own minds. You can't live in my mind and I can't live in yours. We can find one another and both glean pleasure from the experience, but that doesn't mean that we really share the same exact experience...

I'm not complaining. Really. I guess it's just that I sometimes feel completely removed from the one I love. I don't think he would tell the story the same way I do. But, that doesn't make me love him any less. I'm just realizing that I've been wasting all these years trying to grasp at love, thinking I could hold it as if it were an object that could be captured. God, I've wasted time on that! I was only setting myself up for failure.

My love for him seems larger now, as it has every year from the start, but I'm farther now from controlling this relationship than ever before. And somehow, I'm becoming okay with that. Maybe love is best when you give up the struggle to push it into the form you want it to be, and just allow it, on it's own, to be.

After I commented on the post, I realised that the ideas were something I'd thought for a long time, but never articulated just that way, so I decided to post it here as well:

Sniffle? I saw that movie last night and it made me weep. But also I think it showed something really relevent to what you've written. Loving someone isn't the same as being happy with the relationship you share with that person.

Sometimes loving someone is what makes a relationship so painful, because you have a sense of what the relationship could be. Love doesn't bestow communication skills. It doesn't teach time management. It should imply priorities, but sometimes life is more complicated than that. It doesn't resolve all the issues we haven't worked out and bring into the relationship with us. It doesn't make someone good in bed. And it doesn't align our ideas about relationship roles or raising kids or anything else.

People will say that love conquers all, but it's not really true. What love does is give us the motivation to conquer all, but it doesn't remove the work necessary to conquer problems and differences. And even when the love we feel (or receive) does motivate us, if both people aren't working at it, it still may not be enough.

I think there are three reasons why so many relationships fail over time:
1. Because the people in the relationship thought loving each other would be enough to make the relationship work and never communicated properly about the real issues or developed the skills to resolve them.
2. Because they never realised that these unresolved issues or relationship problems have the power to erode their love over time. Love will fade, and you can get to the point where the relationship is so dysfunctional that loving that person is the harder option. People often seem surprised when they realise they don't love their partner any more, as if their love was a static thing that required no continuing effort to sustain.
3. Because people fail to prioritise the relationship over other things, so that even if they start out being truly loving and determined to develop a solid relationship, everything that can get in the way (work, kids, money, family, friends) does. I'm not saying those other things aren't important or that they should be ignored, but more than if your relationship always takes a back seat to everything else, eventually your whole life will be based in those concerns and there will be no relationship. Because life will inevitably creep in and take your time and energy, if you don't see your relationship as the most important thing, you will never make any time for it.

Of course this is when both people are initially in love. Some relationships fail because one person in the relationship is so selfish that whatever love (if any) they feel beyond simple attraction fails to change or motivate them in any way. They might enjoy feeling loved, but they never have any real commitment to making the relationship work, and they resent any expectation placed on them to contribute to the relationship, or sacrifice time or anything else to make it work. Those relationships are doomed from the beginning. I think it's much sadder when both people started out in love and wanting to make it work, because those are the relationships that didn't have to break down.

enough already

Section planning day today. The section manager talked for about half of the time, said nothing we hadn't heard before and made no decisions. He's a nice enough guy and does the job as far as I can tell, but man can he ramble on. I felt like he kept trying to convince us of things we already agreed with - he'd explain what he wanted to do, and we'd all be clearly fine with it, and then he explain why he wanted to do it, and how he'd seen it work in the past, and how we might go about making it happen and why it would be effective. By mid-afternoon I had to physically restrain myself from saying, "Dude we get it, and we're fine with it...move on!" I'm thinking perhaps not the thing to say right before applying for an ongoing promotion.

The good thing was that we spent some quality time with the Melbourne-based trio in our section. It's great to have the chance to know them better because we'll likely be working with them across states and being familiar with more than their names is pretty important.

from this morning's onion

Another creamy meow from the top cat of alternative news:

Report: U.S. May Have Been Abused During Formative Years [click for full story]

"In its adulthood, the U.S. displays all the classic tendencies of a nation that was repeatedly mistreated in its infancy—difficulty forming lasting foreign relationships, viewing everyone as a potential enemy, and employing a pattern of assault and intimidation to assert its power," said Dr. Howard Drexel, the report's lead author. "Because of trust issues stemming from the abuse, America has become withdrawn, has not made an ally in years, and often resents the few nations that are willing to lend support—most countries outgrow this kind of behavior after 230 years."

[The War of 1812, an example of early abuse by the motherland.]

According to Drexel, nations that act out in selfish, self-destructive ways in statehood were usually granted too much independence at an early age, especially if the motherland had other newly annexed lands to care for.

According to Yale University psychology professor John Bauffman, while some rebellious behavior in a nation's adolescence is common, and sometimes healthy, America's historically stormy relationship with mother country Great Britain points to a deep need for acceptance.

"The U.S. is characteristic of an abused nation in that, even decades after noisily pushing away from Britain, it still maintained close contact with the motherland, took care of it, even giving it financial aid—all the while fearing disapproval even though the parent country is now old, decrepit, and powerless," said Bauffman, a prominent contributor to the fourth edition of the Democratic Symptoms Of Maltreatment handbook, or DSM-IV. "On the other hand, Canada, which was raised in the very same continent by the same mother country, only exercised small-scale resistance, remaining loyal well into its maturity. Though some see Canada as cold and remote, it has, unlike the U.S., managed to lead a peaceful, reasonably healthy existence."

fast forward me past the pain

Movie preview tonight of Click, the new Adam Sandler movie. It was a special event organised by a local radio station and I won two tickets on the radio. Before the movie they played a 'true or false' game that went like this - if you think the statement is true you put your hands on your head and if you think it's false you put them on your hips. If you choose wrong you sit down. The game went on until there were three people left standing - one of them was me. It was pretty exciting at that point. I think it was at that point that I dared to believe that I might actually go home with a 32 inch flat screen TV. And then I lost.

*sigh* And then they gave me a remote control holder as a consolation prize. *sigh*

I was unconsoled. In fact I saw it more as a cruel reminder of how close I got. So I left it on my seat. We also got free Krispy Kreme donuts. They didn't help either, but they tasted good.

a right crazy bunch

What do you call nine feisty 11-12 year olds all in one room? My new Sunday School class! I finally got a new calling at church (it's been almost six months!) and I've landed in Primary teaching the oldest age group. I taught them on Sunday just as a favour, before anyone asked about me being in Primary on an ongoing basis - they're a good group, though very noisy. The level of noisy that stops you getting through the lesson. I will have to harness all that teacher energy that's been lying dormant for a while now. Either that or blast the worst of them with my 60 ft robot.

I guess I'm going to have to get more diligent about attending my own ward now. Primary requires that commitment to being there regularly, because it's hard for them to find replacement teachers if you don't show up. Teaching in Primary was actually the first calling I ever had. I taught 8 year olds, then 9 year olds, then 18mths - 3 years, and finally was the music leader, all over the space of about 6 years. And it was a fun ride.

the perfect penis

I just watched a documentary called The Perfect Penis. It was not only about the apparent male obsession with length and girth, but also the lengths some men will go to in order to realise their image of the perfect penis. Of course that implies there is such a thing. In my head is a quote from Uma Thurman's character in Prime, who says to her therapist (not knowing that the therapist is her boyfriend's mother):

His penis is so beautiful I want to knit it a little hat.

...um, yeah...okay.

It was car accident level interesting (you know? horrible, but you just can't look away). One guy was featured throughout the show as he researched and made decisions about penis enlargement, in spite of being a little above average in length to start off with. He went through an elargement operation and then will have to hang a weight on his penis for at least 8 hours a day for a few months. After the procedure, the doctor talked about how it was definitely longer by...how much, you ask?...3/8 of an inch (around a centimetre for us metric folk). I couldn't believe it! Maybe the weights increase the...increase, so to speak, but for goodness sakes. And this guy looked impressed, like 1cm was a great improvement for the US$4000 he spent getting it. Insane.

One guy has made his penis and testicles increasingly bigger through silicone modification until now his penis is like a huge blob. They didn't give a measurement for it, but his testicles are around 24 inches in circumference (both together). He has to kind of squat over the toilet bowl to urinate and can't have either oral or penetrative sex. After revealing his horrible, horrible genitalia, he said:

I think just the fact that people look at me and either wonder "what's going on? what is that?...why did you do that? and the basic questions people ask - can you still have an orgasm? [he didn't answer that question] things like that - I'm getting people to think, and I'm challenging their ideas of what a penis should look like, how a penis should function...so yeah, in those respects, I think I am challenging what people think a penis should be.

I sat looking at the screen in disbelief. How can a person be so completely delusional? The guy has deliberately turned himself into a freak show and he is sitting there blathering about challenging people pre-conceived notions of what a penis should be? Well um, yeah, I think it should not, for example, look like someone sewed a baseball inside of it. His penis didn't look interesting, attractive or remotely sexy - it looked ridiculous. It looked like a really elaborate and bizarre April Fools Day joke. He's a complete nutter. Challenging people's ideas? Yeah, well, how about challenging people's ideas on political participation and voting, or challenging their ideas on education in a just society. If you're going to challenge people, let it be something relevent!

The best comment I heard during the whole show came from one of the women they randomly interviewed on the street. When asked the question, 'what is the perfect penis?' she replied, 'Well, I would have thought one that functioned." Exactly.

okay that didn't last...

I've decided not to continue with the Thursday Thirteen. I liked the idea of a recurring post theme, but TT is kind of annoying. To officially be a part of it all, you have to display the TT blogroll AND the links to the site at the end of the post AND there's a huge push to visit other TT participants...which is fine, if that's all you're into, but I already have a list of blogs I like to visit and I get little enough time for that as it is. I also found that if you get in early, lots of people take the time to come say 'hi' and if you post later on Thursday almost nobody does. What this has eventuated into is a situation where a bunch of bloggers post their TT on Wednesday, just trying to get to the top of the comment list. I like joining in (one reason I like memes) but I don't want to compete for attention.

If you are totally into Thursday Thirteen, please don't assume that I am lumping you into this description. I actually really like reading some of the lists, which is why I got into it in the first place. I just found it wasn't for me. So basically if you're already on my bloglines list, I'll be enjoying your TT (or other Thursday post) and hopefully posting something fun to read, even if it isn't numbered 1 through 13.

it's all about the bride

The trip to Sydney was a bit of a comedy of errors at first: interstate bus breakdown, trouble finding the right local bus, small knee injury. But Saturday morning I woke with a quite optimistic feeling that the day would go well, and in spite of all my pathetic limping, it did.

The day dawned overcast, but clear. This was good. Not only is overcast the best weather for wedding photos (bright, sunny days create glare and more noticeable shadows) but also the forecast had been for rain, rain, rain - so the lack of it was a nice surprise. I got to the chapel early and ended up acting as an usher of sorts as everyone who had a role at the wedding (except me and the pianist) were late. But that's true to form - brides in particular are almost always late. I did get to see some people I haven't seen for a decade or more. I tend to dread that kind of thing, but it was good fun. Depends on the people I guess.

Now I could go on to tell you about the whole wedding, but I won't. In format it was basically your regular wedding: the entrance, the vows, everyone looking glamourous and radiant, the endless photo-taking (it's all about the bride, baby!), some certificate signing, some cake cutting...so let me just give you a few details that made it seem special to me.

- The casual atmosphere. The bride and groom did a lot of joking together. They seemed to be having a good time at their own wedding and some people are too nervous for that.

- The room where the reception was held, which they decorated themselves the night before. The thick, white tablecloths were strewn with an apricot-scented pot pourri that filled the air with subtle fragrance. Tealight candles lined the tables down the centre. The cake was a small chocolate crockenbush circled three times with pale green ribbon (bridesmaid dress colour) and with a spray of white orchid in a little cascade down the front - beautiful.

- Baps' nephews. Really nice kids, who not only gave her away, but also were super helpful when we were getting the food heated, etc. They were the only kids there, and as a result were being watched like a hawk by their dad, but I thought they were great. The older one even did the traditional 'father of the bride' speech and welcome Scorse to the family. Very cute.

- The bowling. After the reception and photos, the whole crew ended up at this crazy bowling alley for a couple of games. Something different, if a little odd. I didn't bowl because of the knee thing, and I left them to it. I spent that night at my sister's place eating Thai food and watching Titanic. From a sappy wedding in real life to the sappiest of movie romance (/sings/ you're here in my heart and my heart will go onnnnn...) it was certainly a Hallmark kind of day.

PS...speaking of Hallmark, one of the groom's oldest friends read a poem he wrote himself. I'd forgotten about E's poetry - it's been a LONG time - but as the words slipped in Hallmark phrases and rythym from his mouth, it all came flooding back. Very, um, sentimental.

And there you have it - a good day, and I hope they'll be truly happy.

yatta!

Yah for me!!!

Remember that promotion I went for last week? Well, today I found out that I got it! It's non-ongoing (APS-speak for temporary) until the end of July, with a possible extention, but that's not a big deal. Working at that level for a couple of months will give me the best chance of getting the ongoing position when it's advertised. It's just the way the works. For those unfamiliar with the Public Service, if I don't get the permanent job I go back to my substantive position - you never lose your ongoing job by taking a non-ongoing one.

And I'm not really too disappointed about the extra money either! ^_^

where do these people come from??? part 2

Exhibit B: Alicia

First enquiry...

I am ALICIA COLE,27 Female looking for a room.I am friendly person who like to associate with people from different races and origin. my hobbies include music, movies, computers, poetry and the art. My interest is not limited in anyway and i love trying out new things.

i will like to know the location of the room/apartment,with more details about the room/apartment

waiting to hear from you soonest.

My response...

Hi Alicia

Thanks for the enquiry on the room.
(More detail on the room, living arrangements, payment, location, bus to the university, and a little on me & Silent Bob.)
Do you have any other questions?
Bye for now.

chosha

Her second email...aka the one where the space cadet suddenly reveals itself

Thanks for the mail and i appreciate your efforts towards this.I'll be so glad if you can reserve the room for me and remove the advert from Ad site as i'll love to rent the place. And please tell me if i can ever consider the room as mine. plz i will like to know more details cos i will be coming over to the states by 7TH of july,and i really need a condusive,comfortable and nice place to stay. am very friendly,open minded,honest and God fearing person..like to swim,dance,sing and watch movies..

Well i need more info from you regards to the room and also i need to know the depoist,and the mode of payments that i will be paying before i arrive,i am from ENGLAND,i want to move over to the US, Kindly get back to me ASAP with the deposit i need to pay because i will like to pay for the deposit before my arrival and i will like to know the total amount i will be paying for 2 to 3 months, but i will like to pay the deposit first of all,I am single,I do modelling and i have job offers already in the US.My job will be based on contracts so i do not have to go to work all the time,I will only need to go to work 3 times in a week.I will have to look for a school i will be going on a part time basis,to enable my get my degree.

Well, i think we will get along well because am a easy going person who respects ones privacy,like i said i dont do drugs or smoke but i drink only occasionally.please send me emails as often as you can because i would like to get to know you better Please kindly get back to me ASAP.Hope to hear from you soon.Regards

My (very restrained) response (given my thoughts)...

Alicia

Um...that was interesting. It's great you're heading for the States and all, but my house is located in Canberra...the capital of Australia. UC = University of Canberra. Were you maybe looking for something near the University of California?

Good luck with that.
chosha

Edit: next round - her state of denial

THANKS FOR YOUR MAIL.

I KNOW ITS AUSTRALIA AND NOT USA,PLEASE LET ME KNOW MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE ROOM,NEAREST AIRPORT,AND HOW MUCH I AM TO PAY FOR THE ROOM

THANKS AND GOD BLESS

My (rather serious) response:

Alicia

With all due respect, I think perhaps you should look elsewhere. You're asking about the room, which I've already described. You've asked how much money I'm asking for, when I've already given all that information. You say you know it's Australia, but you talked a lot in your email about the US, even saying you'd lined up work there. You want to go to school part-time - here students have already enrolled for next semester.

I'm sure you're a nice woman and all, but I can't risk my income by taking a chance on someone who doesn't seem to know what's going on or have anything organised. There are plenty of other advertisements for housing. Feel free to try one of those.

chosha

And the search for human life continues...

where do these people come from??? part 1

Okay I guess when you advertise for a new boarder you're always going to hear from a few...interesting people. And hey, if I have to deal with these crazies, why shouldn't you?

Exhibit A: Lisa (original formatting, spelling, etc left intact)

I saw your listing concerning the room you have at Australia National University (ANU).I just got addmitted into the univresity [how?] and my sponsor wants to make payment for my accomodation before coming over , and i will really appreciate it if i can get the room from you.Let me know the bills per month [given in the advertisment] and also to know the method of payment you would prefer ....am 23 years old female presently in the uk ..Try to get me the pictures of the room so i can know what it looks like, and kindly tell me little about your self... i will await for your response later today .how is family and friends hope all is well [okay...] try to get back to me asap.hope to hear from you soon.

[That wasn't too bad...a little manic maybe...but here's where it really gets interesting...]

Ok well these is little about me ,I am flirtatious and a thrill-seeker. I am as funny and alluring as ever. I also have a confidence that is very attractive [Did she copy and paste this straight from a Dolly magazine quiz result?] I am the type of person who enjoys having alot of fun and that is so easy going you will love it! My personality is I would say kind of generous and kind. I am 5'7" I am happy, athlectic, adventurous, spontaneous, elegant, and smart. [MySpace profile?] I love to play basketball and i rank it as the neatest game on earth. [Sweet Valley High novel?] I have a great career because of the assets in my inherintance,anyway that is confidential. [Lucky they're confidential, because I'm scared to ask. I just hope it doesn't involve ping pong balls.] I love the movies, concerts, and live music and just reading the paper is so nice.

Please i will love to no u preffered mode of payment.A wire transfer into a saint george bank account will be okay because my sponsor has an account with them.Please tell me what you feel about this and get back to me as soon as possible.I cant wait to be there with because it has always been my dream to futher my education in Australia. Take care and have a nice day.

Um, yeah. You can probably imagine my eagerness to get this girl into my home asap. She's so easy going I will love it!

Or not.

Edit: back and more demanding...hmmm

Hello ,

how are u doing?well am still interested.Wow the rent sounds great and i will love to make payment before coming over.My sponsor will not want me to have any difficulties with accomodation guess u know what i mean.A wire transfer into a st george bank account will be okay cuz my sponsor has an account with them,But if u dont have one u can go set up one.It will be easier for both of us ok so that my sponsor cam make payment into that account at any time.so please help me out on this.

Please could u come pick me up from the airport when i arrive?

tell me what u feel and get back to me ASAP.

LISA

Can you spell 'h.i.g.h. .m.a.i.n.t.e.n.a.n.c.e'? I did indeed get back to her ASAP, to tell her that I just decided to house another student. I refrained from adding, "because keeping you and 'your sponsor' happy is not on the top of my priority list this week".

I think I'm pretty fair and generous to the people who board here, but when you tell someone how easy it is to transfer money here (I can transfer to an account at any bank in Australia for free through electronic banking) and their reply is, "no I think it would be easier for 'my sponsor' if you open an account at their bank. Oh and can you pick me up from the airport?" Uh, right...got any dry cleaning you want me to pick while I'm at it? Hell, no.

These girls! I keep wanting to ask when Ashton Kutcher is going to appear.

the big (well, kind of middle-sized) farewell dinner

Phi finally moved his stuff today and then came back for dinner. He actually brought his new flatmate along, which was a tad cheeky I thought, even if he did ask first. I had to laugh though - when I teasingly told the guy that he'd stolen my flatmate, he said that he hadn't asked, but that Phi had commented on how much money he could save there. Apparently some old lady owns the place and they pay $50 rent a week, which for Canberra is ludicrously cheap. The reason it made me laugh, though, is because when he said he was leaving I got some kind of bullshit spiel about him looking after himself more and being more independent, wah wah wah. Of course it all comes down to money in the end. Whatever.

Oh by the way...mystery solved. He needed a place to store his enormous spare car bumpers - hence the sudden return to chatty, helpful, non-moody Phi. Okay maybe that's not really the reason, but the difference in him has been pretty profound. Again, whatever. It was nice to have the old Phi back for a month, no matter what prompted it. I'll remember him more fondly now and hopefully that last month also reminded him of better times.

I made a totally yummy lasagne and an okay Devil's Food Cake. I thought long and hard about some silly thing to give him to remember me by. I wanted something that represented last year when we joked around a lot and made good memories. In the end I gave him his very own Magic 8-ball. The one I found when we went garage saling has been a running joke ever since I got it. It's also been astoundingly accurate in the answers it's given. Let's hope his new one will serve him so well. He seemed to like it a lot.

conversation snippet #61

The players here are Phi, the girl he is hoping to date sometime soon, and his new flatmate.

Phi: I thought tanning was out?
Girl: No, real tanning is out; fake tanning is in.
Phi: Is it easy to put on your face?
Girl: Yeah sure, you just mix it with a little moisturiser.
NFM: (randomly popping into the conversation to say something smart-assed) Don't you use moisturiser, Phi?
Phi: /pointed look/ We were talking about tanning.

I'm filing that under "conversations that you would never have heard two guys participate in ten years ago." They'd rather have gotten the skin cancer.

thirteen things that are on my mind this week

1. The public discussion paper I'm writing for work. There are some technical aspects that are a bit beyond my knowledge and I keep having to double check everything.
2. The potential new boarder who's coming to see the room on Saturday. I really need a new boarder, so I'm seriously hoping he's suitable.
3. The general disorganisation of my desk. I keep trying to organise it so I have space to get on with some writing projects, but once dinner is cooked I feel so unmotivated to do anything else with my evening. It's mostly laziness and partly lack of sleep, but whatever its cause, all this procrastination is pissing me off.
4. How early the days are getting dark already. Winter only starts today and it's already dark by 5.30pm.
5. My lack of drawing skills. I'm trying to finish a design using a new toy I haven't yet blogged about (soon!) Huge fun, but I constantly wish I knew more about drawing.
6. My finances. I've just reorganised all my automatic payments. It's quite satisfying actually, to work it all out.
7. Phi's latest stories of romance, which were all amusing.
8. Stories ideas. I've had more story ideas in the last few days than I've had in the last six months. Very cool and exciting.
9. The chick lit romance I'm reading. It's actually a bit boring in the romance department, but I keep reading it because it's set in Ireland and everyone has cool accents and says things like, "I'm just grand, thanks!".
10. The new storytelling group I'll be going to soon for the first time. I hope it's as interesting as it sounds.
11. My car. It really needs tuning & servicing, but I have to get a new boarder first for sure before I spend the money to do it. It does run okay, but the mornings are icy now and it'll tackle the winter better if it's properly maintained.
12. My new business cards. They were super cheap so I ordered some. The job description under my name is 'freelance writer' (though at this point that is more accurately described as my hobby (or my future dream...^_^ to the few people who get why that's funny)). I plan to attach one to the top of each story as I mail it off.
13. Whether or not I've got all the details/links right for this Thursday Thirteen.

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