Wait a minute, what happened to January?!

Seriously, it was January just about a week ago...

Holy smokes, we're one month into 2011 already! That went awful fast.

Quick TL;DR summary of the past couple of months:

• Did the Christmas thing - went to work for a few hours; went to visit friends for Christmas dinner, and then; drove for two hours on an unfamiliar road in the dark so we could collect my nephew, and THEN had to drive two hours back. (I got someone else to do the second trip on my behalf - I was WAY too tired to manage it.)
• Did the New Years' thing - went to our friends' place nearby for a pool party, even though we only spent about 30 minutes in said pool because it wasn't warm enough to stay in it for long. (PS. we seem to have misplaced our summer - do you have it perhaps?)
• Had mysterious car troubles - something weird was happening with the electrics connected to the engine; most of the time the car was fine, but occasionally it would fail to start proplerly, blow a fuse, and on more than one occasion the dashboard smouldered. Eeep. My stepdad had a look, found a loose wire that was the probable cause, and now my car is behaving itself again. For now.
• Friends of mine got married, after having been together and raising a family for the past five years (and have been friends for even longer). It was really great to see all of the friends and family come together and help out the bride and groom; my mother even made the bridal gown!
• Oh, and parts of Australia got threatened by the elements, but not bushfire this time - rather, the opposite: Queensland got rained out and washed away in January, and then had visits from Cyclones Larry and Yasi in February... while New South Wales and Victoria copped the leftovers of these two in the form of huge storms and more flooding.

...A friend of mine had actually put this blog under the January spotlight of her Write Club, but silly me I totally forgot to update anything for the past month, despite actually having stuff to write about. Erm... oops?

What can I say? I apologise to the visitors who may or may not have come through, hoping to find something more recent than my Dad's car accident, and hope that if anyone else out there is still reading this, I'll be going up to Queensland to visit family next week - so this space will actually have something up-to-the-minute on it, if we're lucky!

Sigh. I know, I know. It's not that I didn't want to write to you all, it's just that sometimes the little ole motivation gland doesn't want to act. Sometimes, you just gotta pick up that little cattle prod and give it a jolt, you know?

Long story short, I'm not dead yet. Stay tuned!

The Real Meaning Of The Season

...continuing on from Part One (which is actually the post BELOW this, thanks to the chronological stacking of the blog structure):

Around the same time that my friends came to visit, we also had a visit from my Dad and his partner, who had come down all the way from Queensland in their trusty 4WD. They live further away from us than my friends do, so you can imagine how frequently we don't get to see them!

Dad's visit was very much appreciated. We caught up, shared Christmas gifts, went out for lunch, took photos, and sampled Licorice Sherbet Bombs (which apparently aren't available in Queensland; my Dad actually made a point of calling into the factory while in the state, and bought a 2kg bag full of them!

They only got to apend about a week in the area before they had to drive back up, so they spent most of that time running around visiting everybody. My sister and I really only got to see them for about half a day all up, and then it was time for them to move on to the next destination.

It didn't matter too much though, because we all knew that they made the most of the time they had, and we appreciated it very much.

...A few days later, my phone rings at work. It's my sister: "Has Dad called you yet?"

It turned out, she'd just spoken to him on the phone; the day before, Dad and his partner were on their way back home, and while on the highway somewhere in New South Wales, they had collided with another vehicle at high speed.
The impact rolled their 4WD and made it a write-off; luckily for them, they both avoided serious injury, and were able to walk away, and their insurance meant that they still got a ride home (by plane this time).

It was an incredibly lucky thing that they both survived - I can't even imagine how I would feel if they had been seriously injured, or worse.
It makes me - us, my sisters and the rest of the family too - appreciate the time we had and have together.

Take care this season, folks.

Oh boy, here we go

My computer is playing up at the moment, so I'm trying to use my DSi to manage the task of posting here. Holy heck, it's much harder to do this when you're navigating semi-functional webpages on a teeny tiny screen! Let's just see how this works, hey?

...Well, that seemed to work without too much trouble - though, I doubt I'll be trading in my keyboard any time soon.

So! It's nearly That Time Of Year Again™, and everyone is frantically rushing around the shopping centres trying to prove how much they love each other via expensive and impractical gifts! Gotta love it.

I've been clever this year, and did most of the gift-shopping back as far as June (when I still had my last job). Yet, I still went through the whole "maybe I should get so-and-so a little more"...

I'll be working again on eXcemas Day this year, but only for about three hours... which means that I'll then have to do the big run-around afterwards in order to catch up with everybody. (I'll be driving for at least 3 hours afterwards!)

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I got to socialise a few times this month, and all from the comfort of my home. I had a couple of friends come down for a visit - I 've known them both for at least ten years, from when we all used to study at TAFE. Unfortunately our jobs and locations keep us from seeing each other as much as we would want to nowadays, so whenever we get to meet up is a pretty big deal.

Anyways, once they'd arrived, and we did the basic catxh-up, we fell back into old habits... which were basically sitting around, talking trash and generally doing a lot of not much at all.
Oh, we did get in a few games of Beatles Rock Band too.

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I have more to say but the browser won't let me enter any more characters into this text-box - damn you, Opera! - so I'll continue in the next post.

End of Part One!

So Long, November

And so, another month runs away from us all. Only 25 days to Christmas, and 31 before the year leaves us for good. It really does feel like time moves so much faster now!

So, here's a quick-ish recap of what I got up to in the last month:

---

I slowly got the hang of my new job. The manager said that I was the fastest person they'd ever seen at adapting to the registers, which made them happy (they are essentially the same register system that they had at the last place). However, I only wish I could have translated that same success to the rest of the tasklist; it's been so damn difficult trying to work out which knowledge I need to keep, and which skills I'm better off forgetting. The good news is that I have been improving and getting more stuff done over the month, which makes me happy.

---

I went and visited my friend in Warragul twice - the first time I had to leave early so I could cover someone's "sickie" at short notice. (That in itself was kinda weird, since I was still in the middle of training at that stage and felt totally out of my depth, but it was only a short shift and I managed fine.)
...The second visit to my friends was much better. We spent most of the day fooling around like friends do; we had a go at making soft drinks with a Soda Stream system, which I'd never seen in action and was very curious (long story short - it's just fizzed up water with sugary syrup added to it).
Then we tried to figure out what kind of animal was making these small holes in the backyard:

We assumed that they were yabbies (small freshwater crayfish-type animals) except that these holes were too far away from a watersource for that to make sense; didn't stop my friend from trying to coax one out by ramming a big stick into the hole.

Needless to say, it didn't really work. Maybe they were yabbies on holiday, or something. Or maybe there are bits of crustacean mashed two-foot deep into the ground... who can tell?

---

I was supposed to go up and visit my Dad in Queensland near the end of the month, but had to defer it until January thanks to the new job - which I was happy with. I figured I'd have to put it off even before I'd had the job interview! (I hated putting my Dad out like that, but he didn't seem to mind so much; so long as I still go up and visit him... eventually.)

---

I'm still having some issues adjusting to the new hours I'm keeping. I'm meant to be working from 11pm to 7am, four days a week. That basically means I sleep through the better part of the day - unless something wakes me up, like the bloody phone ringing >:{ - so when my "weekend" comes up, I have the option of either keeping my nighttime schedule, or trying to break the cycle and get at least something out of the natural daytime. So far, I've been keeping the latter, mostly to fulfill the obligations I've been making to others, but also because it's damn annoying only doing stuff at night!
Also, I've been noticing a residual tiredness, which has been affecting my sense of judgement slightly.

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I also caught up with my friends from the days of the mural project. It had been several months since we'd last gathered, and I wasn't sure how much longer I would be available now that I had a job again - as it turned out, no major problem on my part, but have you ever tried to synchronise the schedules of more than three people?
Anyway, I'd been meaning to ask the art director of the project if I could buy one of her works of art - specifically one of her ink-brush pictures, of which she'd done an entire series a few years ago - and so, after perusing her collection, she surprised me by giving me this:

I naturally went straight to the picture framing place and had it professionally mounted. It's now on the wall above my computer desk, and I'm looking at it right now!

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I went to the Gem, Bottle and Collectibles Expo last week. It's basically a big room full of people showing off their wares, which happen to be items of a sought-after nature (gemstones, collectible books, vintage bottles, stamps, swapcards, etc.) and for some reason I felt it necessary to spend quite a bit of money in there. I came out with some old Coca-Cola glass bottles, of the kind I barely even remember (this is going back about thirty years, before soft drinks started being sold in plastic bottles); my uncle collects Coca-Cola stuff, so he will be very pleased when he gets those.
The rest of the stuff I got was basically ROCKS, but at least they were attractive rocks. If I'd been interested at the time, I could have asked what some of them were, but that takes away from the challenge of discovery, of course! What's the value of saying "Here's a nice piece of chalcopyrite" without having the research to back it up, anyway?

---

And... now it's December, and I turned 32 this year. When did this happen?!? insert sound of premature mid-life crisis
But seriously, though... this year my birthday was good.
I went out for lunch with my family, and then I helped my Ma out with her Christmas shopping, which basically involved following her around and acting as a sounding board for gift ideas - "Do you think your sister would like these pearl earrings? How about we get her a hot tub?" and so on and no, those were not actual ideas.
It was rather weird, though. While we were out and about, we kept running into people who remembered me from my previous job, and they were so friendly and asked me how I was doing [fine, thanks] and if I'd scored a new job yet [yes, actually] and about how those dreadful [people from country I won't name] weren't running the old shops very well, and so on...
And my Ma thought it was so funny that it kept happening wherever we went, it became a kind of running joke, to the point where people were just saying "Oh, hello Ben!" to me on the street!
Who knows, maybe it was some Birthday Mojo thing... Anyway, once we'd got back off the street and away from my audience, we cleaned up and went out for dinner at a bistro-type place, which was also nice. And then, we went home and had cake! And then tried our hands at Beatles RockBand! (once we figured out how to make it work in two-player, that is)
And then... well, I came online and posted about it all here! And so... goodnight!

Merry eXcemas 2009!

Well, it's finally Christmas! How is it for you? I'm trying to be nice about it this year, even though I have to work again (which is fine, because I hadn't planned anything else for the day anyways).

We had a very ramshackle, scattered Christmas this year.
The main problem was that so many of us had plans for the end of the year, and it made it difficult to co-ordinate anything in the way of Christmas activities. The main issue was whether we would get to see our older sister before Christmas, as she lives about three hours' drive from the rest of us. As far as I knew (up to two days before the event) we weren't going to do the family gathering until after Boxing Day... so I took my time getting the presents wrapped up and sorted.

On the way home Wednesday evening, I called in to the shops to get some last-minute gift-getting done, when my phone rang. It was my sister, wondering when I was coming home so that everyone could do "the Christmas thing"! O_O;; So much for a minute's notice!

It all worked out well. I managed to give out the lion's share of the gifts that I had for everyone, and everyone was happy with what they scored. Not only was it the Christmas gathering, but it was also a celebration for my sister's birthday too... so we got to have some birthday cake as well! Which is always good.

My nephew got very excited during the evening, but isn't that expected of kids? It didn't hurt that he received a huge bag of gifts from his grandma on top of all the rest of the gifts we gave him. He really got into the unwrapping - in fact, he got so carried away that one of his presents wound up flung behind the TV cabinet! Getting a little too carries away, perhaps?
He also enjoyed the presentation of the birthday cake, especially the candle-blowing ceremony. After my sister blew out her candles, he insisted on having a go himself... and so, once he'd blown out the candles, naturally everyone else had to have a turn! My sister thought this was totally hilarious, so I think we have the makings of a new tradition right here. Oh, and needless to say, there wasn't much candle left on the cake by the end of the game.

I think I went a little overboard on the gift-giving this year. Okay, I go a little overboard every year.
The most extravagant thing I got was the Wii console for my Ma, but only because I'd been silly enough to suggest it as a gift idea back in September. Now she can get WiiFit in the comfort of her home, instead of slogging it out in the gym! (At least, she will, once she gets the balance board and other accessories to go with it.)
Everyone else I gave gift bags full of assorted stuff which I thought they would like. There were a couple of pricey things in there, but most of it was cheap (good-quality) stuff I'd found earlier in the year, a lot of which were off "Clearance" tables and things. The nicest thing I found (and almost kept) was a Mr Bean Teddy, still in its original packaging, which I found in an Op Shop of all places!
It's easy to get carried away with the spending at this time of year, which is why I generally try to get some preparation in before December rolls around. Of course, I was pottering around the shops on Christmas Eve, looking for last-minute catch up gifts like everyone else too, so I'm not gloating too much! ;P

I received some nice stuff too. Right now I'm listening to the Beatles Anthology, parts 1 and 3. I bought Part 2 way back in Melbourne, when my friend came over from Japan. I'm also trying to work out if this new MP3 player is going to start behaving itself -
oh wait, I just finished charging the battery, and now the computer is recognising that it's connected! Silly manual should have said that you had to wait for the battery to charge before it would work... X(
But yes. It wasn't so much the receiving that was the big deal, since I have heaps of crap lying around anyway... It was the giving, and the getting to hang around with the family, that was the most important part. After all the stuff that's happened, what with the bushfires, sick family members, work-related chaos, and general madness, it was nice to end this year on a more pleasant note.

Then again, there are still six more days to go until 2009 is done... so maybe I'm talking too soon? :/
At any rate, I hope all my friends and readers* have a Great Christmas (if you do "the Christmas thing") and a Happy 2010!

*Yeah, both of you!

Oh yeah, I have a blog to look after!

Hey folks.

Sorry I forgot about the blog for the past few weeks, but my job has been occupying a lot of my time - plus there have been some other developments that needed attention:

• My uncle passed away in November. He had been unwell for some time, and was living in a care home, but he was admitted into critical care in late October after his lymphoma started affecting him badly. He spent about six weeks in hospital. For a while, he started to get better, responding to treatment and gaining weight, but it unfortunately didn't last. He was a quiet, kind and generous person, and we will all miss him.
• One of our pets has been diagnosed with FIV (which is like HIV but for cats). He had been looking unwell for the past few weeks, with a skin condition that made his fur look shabby and start to fall out. He has been treated with antibiotics and anti-inflammatories which seem to be helping with his skin problems, but we are unsure what will happen after he finishes the course of tablets.
  
• We lost a key member of staff at one of the places I work, and so I have been stepping into the breach until we get a suitable replacement trained up and ready. It's kind of screwed up my plans for the rest of the month, but we cannot foresee this sort of thing, and we can only go with the flow. sigh...
  
• I turned 31 this week. There was no special fanfare this year (unlike last year's three-party extravaganza) because let's face it, 31 is NOT a milestone year. It is however a prime number, in case you wondered.
  
• Aaaand, of course... the horror of eXcemas is close to hand! And, once again, it looks like I'll have to work over the Christmas period, and once again my family is unhappy that I will be spending yet another holiday season away from them. :P

All up, it's been a rather chaotic couple of months, and I'll be glad when everything settles down again. In the meantime, I have a housebound cat and too much work to deal with.

See you in January, most likely!

Weird...

All systems appear to be go for the trip up to Melb. this weekend, but things got a little... weird.

I was meant to stay at home and attend to my nephew while my sister and her partner went up to see the Salvador Dali thing, but instead I wound up stuck in bed for two days (my ONLY TWO DAYS OFF FOR THE WEEK) because of a strange episode that happened to me on the Monday.

I had just seen off my friends, who had come around for a surprise visit at about 4 in the afternoon, when I suddenly noticed that something was affecting my vision.
It was a strange effect: it was similar to the kind of after-images you get when you look at a bunch of bright lights, like a cluster of street lights, except that I hadn't seen any sources of light to trigger the effect. I'll put up a mockup of what it was like when I get the chance.
It was a startling effect, and when I realised that they were kind of sticking around a lot longer than a regular glare effect, I thought, "uh oh, migraine".
So I took a paracetamol and went to bed. The visual effect faded after about 15 minutes, and I laid there waiting for the headache to start...

If this was in fact a migraine, it was a very peculiar one. The initial symptoms presented themselves very differently. Normally when I get a migraine, it starts with a sparkly blind spot thing that spreads out from the centre of vision, but this thing was just a bunch of inanimate spots, which looked almost exactly like the glare afterimage (they even did that colour-inversion effect when I closed my eyes). Also, they didn't last as long as the regular visual disturbance.

But the other weird part is that, even though I still felt all the other general crappy effects of a migraine, I didn't get a headache. At all. Well, I had a crampy feeling in my neck the next day, but I attribute that to needing a new pillow - well, I did just spend several hours in bed.
I'm not 100% sure that the painkiller I took helped with this, because it's unlikely that a single over-the -counter paracetamol tablet would work that well.

This is kinda disturbing. The research I've done suggests that this could be a migraine, as there's several different types of effect and symptom you can experience. But the general consensus is that it's unusual for migraines to suddenly change like that, so... I think I need to pay another visit to my doctor. X|

Anyways, I feel well enough now, so it looks promising for the weekend. And now my sister and her man are coming to the city with me! Onward Bound!

I need to get out more...

Hey constant readers! yeah, both of you

I finally went and collected the painting I bought last month, after about a week of missing contacts and plain forgetfulness. I'll post an image of the artwork once I get permission from the artist - copyright and IP protection, and all that. ;)

While I was there paying for art, we got to talking about how things have been for ourselves. My artist friend has been very busy trying to scratch together enough works of art for her art course and for another showing she's been signed up for... It's so damn hard to come up with good ideas for art, and doubly so when your under the pressure of a deadline. I wish her all the best.

But it also made me realise why I've been so unhappy with my output lately. I have been working quite a bit for the past few months, as my family and friends are sure to point out if you ask them. The problem is, work is ALL that I've been doing.

If you were to ask me how I've been, or what I've been doing, I'd probably say, "Oh, I've been busy working". But if you asked me what else I'd been up to, I'd probably draw a blank. And that is not good.

I think the problem lies in that I can only really focus on one particular project at a time. Multitasking seems totally beyond my powers. I can do it, but only if the tasks are related and I'm not literally doing them at the same time.
When I first started my job in retail, I was also doing a course of WFTD painting murals (a slightly different arrangement from the one I've been talking about earlier in the blog). And what I discovered was that it was a freaking nightmare.

Imagine doing something like painting, which is like meditation in a way - you are focused solely on the task before you, in a quiet and distraction-free environment (or at least it ought to be). Now, imagine that you have to step out of this environment, and suddenly find yourself in a chaotic, multi-directional place like, say, behind the register of a service station. At any given moment, you could find yourself worrying about four or five different tasks, and each of them could be interrupted by something else.

It's a bit like participating in a triathlon, or that sport where you have to do some cross-country skiing and then try to shoot at a target with a rifle. Oh, that's a biathlon, apparently. I was close.

After a few months of trying to keep all the threads together (and learn a new job in the process), I eventually decided to stick with just the retail thing since it was the part that was actually paying me. I hated giving up on the art stuff, but at that point my job was too important to screw up, since I hated being unemployed.
Since then, I've done some painting stuff in the meantime, but only the parts for the mural that I've already described in this blog and that was only incidental; I originally only went to the studio for a social visit and got roped in to helping out - damn, she's persuasive. Aside from that, not much else has happened with my art.

And that's the problem.
By investing my time mostly with work, I've been neglecting all the other stuff that makes live endurable. I've become slack in my free time, and instead of visiting friends, doing fun things and generally having a life, I spend my days off mucking around at home, and sleeping.

I think I need to alter my priorities a little. Just a bit.

Of course, the other thing is that my employers have recently altered my working situation. I am now working a guaranteed five days a week, ensuring I have 30~ hours spread over two sites, with casual rates. Everyone who's heard about this seems to be happy for me. But. I'm not entirely sure I think this is good news.

I don't know why I'm reluctant about this, since it's mostly work that I'm familiar with, and there are a lot of people who would really enjoy being in a position like mine. I know for sure that the job environment is not going to be any better anywhere else.

I think my problem is that I'm treating this job as an end in itself, when it really ought to be the means. After all, who of us can say that their job is their entire life and say that they are happy with it?
I need to make sure that I'm doing all of this for a reason, and not just a self-contained one (ie. I'm doing it because they need me to). I need to remember that all this money I'm earning doesn't just have to go to the bills and food and stuff. I need to remember that I do have other skills than knowing how to give correct change, and which brand of beans is canned or frozen.

Put simply, I need to get out more.

At any rate, this is something I need to work on (no pun intended). I need to organise something with my friends before the end of the month, so that ought to be a good starting point.

Stay tuned.

The Fantastic Voyage (inside Neb)

Well, I've just had a BUSY two weeks. I have worked at least once a day every day since last Monday week, which was when I went to Warragul for my gastroscopy session. I was actually pencilled in for a shift that day, but it was a late change and I had to bail on work sorry to my coworkers; I hate leaving you guys in the lurch, just so you know, but I gotta look after my health.

I was going to tell you all about what it is like to have a camera shoved down your throat on the day it actually happened, but: a) I was too tired from the anaesthetic to post anything on that day; and b) I slept through the whole procedure (thanks to said anaesthetic).
I'd heard that you have to swallow this rather bulky mini-cam on a cable, which was apparently gag-a-riffic as if I didn't have enough problems with swallowing but as it turned out, it went like a dream...

Seriously, they just shoved some good stuff into my bloodstream, moved me onto my side, and ten seconds later, I was being shaken awake! I have never fallen asleep that quickly before in my life. It was AWESOME.

Anyway, I wasn't able to drive back from the clinic on my own, so I got my Ma to chauffeur me. She used the downtime to check out the Op Shops in town; luckily, she had her guide (me) to point them all out to her before I went in for examination, so while I was being invaded, she went and scoped out some bargains. I don't remember if she bought anything, but she usually buys herself some nice clothes, so I'm going with that.

After I woke up and had some supplies some free sandwiches, tea and HEAPS OF WATER because I had to fast for five hours prior and DAMN I was thirsty!!! we went to have some lunch and do some more shopping.
Important Note: Shopping under the influence of sleep-inducing drugs is a very risky business. Fortunately, I made it out with my wallet relatively unscathed. I found some good CDs for $10 each, some T-shirts for my nephew, and a few books. I may have also bought some makeup and a bra or two, or maybe that was what Ma bought - I can't seem to find those anywhere, so I probably just got confused.

In case you wondered: They said they found that I had something called a Sliding Hiatus Hernia, which is very common and often doesn't present any problems at all. It's probably the cause of food sometimes getting stuck in my guts from time to time - maybe. At any rate, I'll see my doctor this week, so I'll find out what to do next.

Other stuff:

• Starting witht the damn obvious, Michael Jackson passed away last month. I have since been reading up about his life, and feel that he had been mistreated and abused to the point where he wasn't even a real person any more. He was really talented though; As a child of the 80s and 90s I was witness to the better part of his career. I went and bought a compilation album to remember him by. Vale, Michael.
  
• My uncle was admitted to hospital last week, after a routine checkup revealed something serious. He's since been diagnosed with lymphoma (cancer of the lymph nodes); at this point I do not know how bad it is, but this type of cancer is one of the easier types to treat, depending on which type he has. I also found out that one of my cousins has been diagnosed with the same condition, within the space of a week! My thoughts go out to both of them.
• My friend Katie has returned to Ozland! It's been a long journey for her and her husband, but they have finally touched down. The only thing I need to do now is actually get in touch with her... Hello, Facebook? (And now all we need to do is con Miro back into Australia and we'll all be back on the same continent again!)
  

So much to do - tax time, cleaning up the house, catching up with friends, and generally sorting out my life... I wish there were more of me, sometimes. See you soon!

Neb's Sole Post For June

I have no real idea why I haven't posted anything for this month. It's not as if I didn't do anything exciting! Just being lazy I suppose.

The family went to our cousin's engagement party last week. The theme for the event was "Op Shop" clothing, the idea being that you had to come in the least appropriate outfit conceivable.

You can only imagine what some of the other guests wore.

As for me, I went dressed in a fetching white jacket and pants, which looked like they had been in storage since 1976 - lovely white mottled Crimplene or some synthetic material - good lord, that means they're probably going to look like that forever.
It was teamed up with a summer-type shirt and a lurid tie. We actually found uglier ties in a department store, and those were brand new. They also cost $10, which was a bit much for a tie I'd likely never wear again.

I also went to Lakes Entrance with my Ma, which is a two-hour drive from our place. Ma was driving, but was reluctant to make the trip on her own ever since she buggered up her arms - that was why I was going with her, to drive the car in case she got too tired.
Fortunately, we stopped the car a few times on the way up and back, so she was able to make it on her own after all. Well done, Ma!

We had to go to Lakes to collect Nanna for the previously mentioned engagement. The weather up there was surprisingly good, after driving through fog and clouds on the way up. It made me wish we were staying for a lot longer than two or three hours, especially since I hadn't been up to her place for at least five years. Meh, we didn't even get time to hit the Esplanade, but oh well, I'll get to go up there some other time.

Work is still work. I am still getting on average five days a week, so at least I get two days free to do other stuff. Illness is running through the staff - again! - and some of the staff who were assigned to relieve other people had to go home sick as well...

There's been lots of talk about the dreaded Swine Influenza, and a lot of people are worried about getting it and spreading it around. Our state has been marked as one of the worst hit areas outside of the Americas - in fact they think it might have been well-established here before they even raised the alarm in Mexico!

The only thing is, so far it's turned out to be no worse than the regular 'flu that runs around the country every year. There have only been two deaths attributed to the virus so far in Victoria; most other people who have contracted the virus have only suffered from mild symptoms and recovered. In other words, it hasn't been the End Of The World scenario that the doomsayers would have expected.

Also... Liquid Desire has opened up at the National Gallery of Victoria, and I will do what I can to go and see some Surrealist art before it finishes up in October sometime. I want to go up with my friends, whom I haven't been with for a long time I haven't seen them at all this year! My bad and a trip to the city would be an excellent way of catching up.

That's all. See you in July!

Mmm... Candy...

Only popping in to say two things:

1. My job will improve once we get the new register system up and running properly. OHMYGOD we had some really big problems this week -
   
   but, this blog is not the place for those sorts of things. I have to draw the line somewhere, after all...
   
   
2. I am really liking this: CandyBlog , though I can't for the life of me imagine why... drooool
   I really shouldn't be looking at confectionery I'll probably never be able to try, but it's just soooo gooood... And you can tell that the owner of the blog really enjoys their work.
   

That's all. Oh, and hello to my Ma if she's still tuning in. I haven't forgotten when your Birthday is, either. Grin.

Who Goes Bare?

I forgot to tell you - I went to see my sister and her man semi-naked in a play yesterday.
Well, not her so much as him. o_o;;

Oh, relax.
It was all well and good.
They both got parts bad choice of words, I know in another British farce called "Who Goes Bare". It was quite funny, actually, and last night's performance went really well.
Apparently, it was the best one so far, because the previous two performances were kinda oopsy. The second show saw a glass shattering across the stage and into the audience, because someone threw a hat at it! My sister was playing the role of a chambermaid, and had to quickly run out and clean it up before someone injured themselves and make it look like a natural part of the play!

Yeesh. It's not an easy job...
Anyway, even though i got to seem more of the cast than I ever really needed to and btw, glad I didn't get front row seats for this particular show I had a really good night.
Thankyou folks!

Cluck!!!

Okay, fine, I'll join Twitter. My handle is Blue_Chicken. Look for the new feed thingy appearing on the right.

Making Comments

I should also point that I've adjusted the settings of the blog so that anyone can post anonymously, because I know that not everyone who knows me has a Gmail account or similar.

If you want to make a comment on a particular posting, click on the text that reads "[n] PEOPLE SAID SOMETHING ABOUT THIS BIT". You can type in your comment, and then follow the directions as shown on the form.

The only thing I ask is that, if you do post a comment, please include your name, as in "Hi! Bob here! I just wanted to say..." or something like that. That way I know who's been following this stuff, and I can answer appropriately.

And if I get inundated with spam or flame, I'm switching it back to the way it was. So behave yourselves.

...and Hello!

An explanation for the previous post is overdue...
and here it is! Along with some extra news:

1. For those of you who did not get the hidden message in the last post, Please Read It Again. Admittedly, I posted it a few days late. But no, I have not decided to suddenly get a life and quit blogging. Yep, there will be more mundane postings to come!
   
2. Things are crazy at work at the moment. We are in the process of changing our cash registers to a new touch-screen interface. So far, only one site has made the upgrade, and they have been having LOADS of issues with it. Like f'rinstance, when they installed the central control unit - the first time they tried it out, it worked perfectly. But when they tried to install it permanently, it threw sparks, and caused about 80% of the petrol pumps to blow their circuits! YIKES.
3. The other thing that worries me about the new system is that, although I am experienced enough to know how this one will work (because it's very similar to the old system we had when I started working here) I am worried that all of the new staff who have arrived in the meantime will look at this thing and PANIC because they have no idea what to do! I can see myself becoming very busy over the next few months...
4. Well, I guess I know that I'm wanted. I'm a wanted man! Look out!
5. Other stuff. We had another earth tremor about a week after the last one I mentioned, but I was outside sitting on the ground at the time and didn't feel a thing. Apparently it affected the same area it struck last time, and of course everyone in the City was freaked out by it, as if they were the only ones who felt it, but never mind.
6. Last week, I was serving a customer when I heard this strange creaking sound coming from one of the aisles. I look up, and sure enough, tiles were starting to bulge up and crack out of the floor! O_O Very strange stuff. It took about an hour for the damage to stop, and at the end, we had about a 2 metre long run of cracked and shattered tiles. Why did they do this? I'm not 100% sure, but I think it may have been all of the rain we've suddenly been getting. (Most of the town is built on clay, and it's been a long dry summer. A day's worth of rain ought to make all the clay swell up, and then, things start moving about...)
7. Easter is coming, and I've done all the shopping I need to do. Now I just have to visit everyone and give out all the gifts and things I've been holding on to for too long... I still have Chrsitmas gifts to give out, for crying out loud! slack slack slack
8. Aaaand... Krys and Andrew are in a play together, involving nudity. Well, imitation nudity - I've been told that the "nude" cast will actually be wearing modesty garments and those flesh-coloured lycra things that give the appearance of nudeness, so it won't be a total shock when I invite my polite 50-ish friend to come along with us to see it. :D
   

That's about it. And no, I haven't got a Twitter account yet. ;P

Did the Earth move for you too?

Okay, stuff has happened since the last post.
Well, that's a bit bloody obvious, isn't it? It's not as if stuff stops happening when no-one bothers to update their blog!

• Krissy has spent the past fortnight attending classes at Tafe, and freaking out about the work she has to do. It seems that there is a tutor there whose method involves throwing the students into the deep end, ie. giving them instructions on what they need to do, and then basically telling them to do it without explicitly telling them how. Which I think is reasonable, but it can be disorienting for new students, especially those who have come into art with all the pre-conceived ideas on "What Art Is Supposed To Be". His aim is to get the students to learn these methods through exploration, rather than through rote learning, but it can be very stressful and confusing for the novice. Oh, and to those of you who have already been through GippsTafe's Art Department, you all should know exactly who I am {p.b.} talking about. :D
  
• We had an earth tremor here last Friday. At about 9pm, we experienced about ten seconds of the earth wobbling about us. It was a reasonably big tremor, too. The epicentre was in the Korumburra/Warragul area, but it was felt across most of the state, including Melbourne. It was all perfectly normal, and nothing got seriously damaged, but a lot of people were worried. It freaked the hell out of my sister; she was saying, "God, my chair moved across the room!!!" Yes, because that's never happened during an earthquake before.
• Also, Krys found two big spiders in her son's bedroom last week, though not at the same time. One of them was a huntsman (which is big and icky but not dangerous), the other a largish white-tail (which may or may not be dangerous, as I mentioned here). Both of these spiders are frequently found inside houses, especially when the weather changes from warm to cool, so we're trying to keep our windows closed as much as possible now!
  
• There's also a tropical cyclone threatening the Queensland coastline, not far from where my Dad and other family members live. Cyclone Hamish is presently heading south-east, away from where they are, and it seems to be weakening now, but there are still a lot of communities worring about this, and preparing to bunker down. I haven't called up my Dad yet, but I'll do that tonight, if I'm able to.
• Krys' man Andrew scored the part of Gaston in the local production of Beauty and the Beast - awesomeness! He's been practicing his singing in preparation like a good actor should. Also, they've been rehearsing for the other play that they're both in - more details as they come. I'll actually be able to post pictures of them this time, since I only had Dinkycam with me for the last one, may it rest in peace.
  
• It's been the Labour Day long weekend, which means two things: one, work at the service station/s has been really frickin' busy (doesn't help that we're short-staffed again) and two, we had a problem with the EFTPOS facility. Okay, get this, when I went in to work on Saturday, I discovered that we had a *new* temporary EFT console/pinpad thingy, which wasn't integrated with the register like the regular one was (and which, hopefully, will be fixed soon). Luckily, it didn't require a major in electronics to figure out how it worked - it just required a few extra steps, and I was able to cope with the day's trade.
  But, when I opened the shop the next day, I discovered that the *new* EFT console wasn't working, because something had tripped off the fuse on that particular circuit. Long story short, the AC adaptor some black box thingy that the power supply goes through had burnt out during the night, and I mean that literally - it had scorch marks on it. So... we spent the next two days of the long weekend filling out dozens of manual paper vouchers. At least the shop didn't burn down.
  
• Oh, and Krys wants me to mention this - A few nights ago, I spent two hours gagging on a piece of tuna. All that happened was that I ate some canned tuna, and it didn't go down well. I don't know, I guess it got stuck on the way down, though I wasn't choking or suffocating. This seems to happen sometimes when I eat something starchy, like bread or rice, and usually if I have a drink of water it goes away - but this time it seems the water didn't help.
  Anyway, I must have sounded really bad from the bathroom, because my sister could hear me from her room, and she asked me if I was okay. I said yeah, I just had something to bring up. She spent the next hour or so freaking out about me, thinking I'd got food poisoning or something, wondering if I needed to go to hospital, and then she promptly fell asleep! Sympathy fail?
  So, I spent an hour in the bathroom, sipping water and gagging into the sink - and then I spent the next hour in my room with a bucket, because standing in the bathroom was boring and I wanted to finish playing Twilight Princess.

My god, that sounds really sad. "I threw up tuna while playing Zelda." I have to get a hobby or something, I don't think the blogosphere was designed for such lame-ass postings.

Well, so much for my update. How was your week?

I really should be asleep by now...

but instead I am up at 4am updating my blog for some reason.

Just shuffling a few things around...

and letting everyone who knows us that my sister has enrolled in the Visual Arts course at TAFE! Along with one of my friends from the mural project! Yay for both of them!

And yet, for some reason I feel a bit sad about that.
Partly because they are both younger than me and still have some leverage with their lives, which makes me wish I still had the same freedom...
okay, I'm only THIRTY for crying out loud, but still, it feels like I forgot to do something along the way

but also because of something that came up while my sister was talking with one of the Art Department faculty (who instructed me while I was doing the graphic-arty Diploma thing about ten years ago).
Basically, he spent a good portion of the induction telling the new students about the amazing career opportunities that would come up upon completion of their course, and how most of the graduates went on to get jobs in the industry almost immediately.
What he didn't realise at the time was that he already knew my sister - in fact, she and I had both attended the Photography courses he conducted a few years back, and she knew him quite well! Of course, this was about six years ago, and she looked rather different then. People who have known my younger sister for anything longer than six months will understand how he could have missed her. She's a frickin chameleon.

When he worked out who she was, he immediately remembered her, and who she was related to, and asked about what I was doing with myself (probably expecting me to be involved with something remotely arty).
My sister politely refrained from telling him that I'm currently a casual worker in a service station... but I think he got the point anyway. sigh
Then again, I never did manage to complete all of my subjects, thus falling a little short of getting the Diploma. So therefore the Art Dept's track record remains... relatively untarnished.

Boy, this post has depressed me all of a sudden. I really should have gone to bed straight away.

Oh, never mind.
Krissy, Andrew, I hope you both have an excellent couple of years getting your Diplomas of Art. I look forward to seeing your finished works at the end-of-year exhibition, and if I have cash at the time I'll be sure to buy some of your stuff! Promise!

PS. I just thought I'd let all the ex-residents of the Yallourn TAFE Art Department know that Peter Biram has shaved off his moustache. :P

eXcemas

AAAA! The curse of eXcemas... is over for another year.

And, actually, it wasn't that bad.

I managed to get gifts for all the people who mattered, and what's more, the majority of them were bargains. Like the funky colour-changing lamp that looks like a plain white rectangle when it's off, but turns into a miniature disco-floor when you turn it on! That one was a gift for my sister and her man, and it was about 30% of the original price!

I also had to fetch some glassware from Target that my Ma and stepdad had suggested to me.
I had to go in three days before eXcemas, while Target were open until midnight. An unfortunate clash of schedules meant that I spent most of the week before eXcemas doing close shifts - and I was too sleepy and lazy to go during the day.
I made it to the store with about 10 minutes to spare, and went straight to the homewares section, frantically looking for the glasses they wanted. I found... something... that sorta looked like the one they named, and I took it to the counter. Luckily, it was really dead in the store that close to closing time, so I was pretty much in and out within minutes.
I got the box home, and opened it up to show it to my housemates - and OH NO! One of the glasses was busted!!!
So... the next day, I had to quickly pop back in to get them exchanged. This was reasonably early in the day, and I didn't have to wait too long that time either. We just grabbed another box and swapped over a glass, and I was ready to go!

The worst part of that procedure was, turned out I'd grabbed the wrong set of glasses. The one they wanted had a similar name, but was totally different! Oh well, they liked them anyway!

So... eXcemas itself rolled around.
At the stroke of midnight, my sister decided to give out her gifts to us immediately, because she couldn't be bothered with carting them all over to Ma's house the next day. I'd left all her gifts over at Ma's, so she unfortunately had to wait. Ha ha!

The next day, I woke up at about 9.30, and everyone else was awake. I went over to Ma's place, and everyone else was waiting for us to show up so we could get to the gift-unwrapping already!. Everyone was there, but... where was my sister?
She had just hopped into the shower! ARGH! We had to wait about 30 minutes before she was ready! It brought to mind the time Ma made us wait until we'd had breakfast before we could eat our eXcemas lollies - never mind the fact that we'd seldom had breakfast the rest of the damn year...!

Eventually, my sister came over, and PRESENTS!!! were shared out. I got to be Santa's helper again this year, probably because I'm one of the last with functional eyesight. Ha ha!
I forgot my elf's hat this year, so I had to make do with Ma's angel halo instead... and I really do NOT want to show off the photos.
Oh, all right then. There's one to the right. Click to make it bigger and more humiliating.

Everyone liked their presents.
We even managed to include some gifts sent to us from Dad this year, and they were well appreciated. I liked the box of wooden puzzles they sent to me, though one of them had me struggling for about ten minutes - and that was trying to pull the damn thing apart!

Oh, and I got revenge on my Ma for wrapping my Abbey Road keyring in eleven layers of paper! I bought her another keyring, and wrapped that up in as much wrapping paper I could find lying around. Every layer was properly wrapped - no newspaper filler! - and I even put labels and ribbon on some of the layers! It took about an hour to do it all up.
I gave the gag gift to her first (before the proper present, which was jewellery) and... well, let's just say by the end of it, everyone was anxious to see what the end result was!
I lost count of how many layers I'd used, and it turned out there were about 40.
She preferred the jewellery, though she spotted straight away that one of the earrings was missing a stone - this from a woman who has to wear glasses to read! She really knows her bling!

As for my haul, I mostly got what I'd asked for:

• a memory card for the GameCube, because the 251 card I have is almost full to capacity, thanks to my sister's "Sims" space-hogging save file.
• some sleeves for my DS games, which is strange since I keep my games in the original hard cases.
• the usual puzzle books and games - real original, guys! Honestly, why is it that all of my friends and family think to get me these things every year?
• a little music box thing that plays Hey Jude. :)
• some CDs - a couple of Beatles discs, and the second part of the U2 Best Of that I needed.
• two video game discs - Intellivision: Greatest Hits, and Atari: Anniversary Edition. Haven't tried them yet. Kinda don't want to tell Ma I already have a bazillion vintage games on MAME...
  
• a big canvas print of the Beatles, which Ma found in a discount shop :P
  
• some T-shirts that had prints of MarioKart, Sonic the Hedgehog, the Beatles and Alfred E. Neuman on them. The surprising part was that they were handmade, that is, Ma found the pictures on the Internet, and used some DIY T-Shirt transferring kit to make them! They are AWESOME and I will wear them until they fall to bits!
• socks. No underwear, though.
  

Everyone had a wonderful time...
We had a barbecue for lunch, and people had a good time checking out their gifts and playing games. The weather held up very well, as it was warm, but not really hot this year.

Unfortunately, the fun was short-lived, because... I had to go to work.
Dammit, even though I'd tried to wangle my way out of working on eXcemas this year, I still got snookered in to doing an eight hour shift.
I managed to eat a bit of lunch, and then I had to run in and relieve the people who had opened the shop. Sigh - well, I guess I wasn't the only one put out this year.
And it was pretty bad when I got there - we'd run out of BBQ gas bottles, we'd run out of ice bags, and it had been really busy for most of the morning, so hardly any of the jobs had been done. GROAN

...Yet, the rest of the day was pretty quiet. We had a reasonably constant supply of customers, but nowhere near as many as we'd had over bEaster shudder. I guess people were a lot better organised that I gave them credit!
Ma told me she was going to bring me some dinner, but I asked her if she could bring an extra meal, as the other person I was closing with couldn't get to their family for eXcemas this year. She brought two plates, but it turned out that they had made plans for after work, and didn't need the dinner after all!
So, I thought, "What the hell am I gonna do with this food?"
But then, one of our regular customers, a taxi driver, came in complaining that they had been so busy ferrying drunk people about that they had missed their eXcemas dinner, and I said, "Well, it just so happens..."
So that was my good deed for the day. :) Aside from actually showing up to work, that was.

Anyway, I finished work at 10pm, and returned to Ma's place - only to discover that it was all over bar the shouting. Everyone was ready to tuck up into bed! BUGGER!!!
So, I just came home, and played on the Wii until 4am.

And then... I had to go to work again...
(but not before I got to see my Nanna. She came over to Ma's place for the day, and we all got to have another catch-up on things... well, I did as much catching up as you can do in about 50 minutes, because... um, I'd been on the Wii until 4am the night before.)

So... that was Christmas! I mean, eXcemas.
And though it wasn't perfect, it wasn't at all bad. I'd give it four stars ˜˜˜˜.
I hope yours was good as well! Merry Christmas!

PS. Sorry for the long post - considered breaking it up, but can't be bothered. Will post again after NYE!

The Family Gathers

...at my mother's house, in preparation for eXcemas... and also for my older sister's birthday. She's thirty... something. I forget the exact age at this point.

I would have included some lovely photos of the proceedings, including a funny video of the balloon fight we had in the living room - there's something about that room that is oddly conducive to such games! - but... the SD card in my camera chose that particular moment to die.
That is, the same SD card I got with my camera for my birthday, less than a month ago.
VERY unhappy, though it is the photos and footage I miss more than the card.

Never mind, we still had a lovely chocolate mud marble cake. It was yummy!

PS. This entry is post-dated, because I was having trouble getting Internet access at the time, due to many mechanical and logistic problems. Oops.

New News...

Hey folks!
Stuff has been happening since the last post. (But then it usually does.)

I got a haircut the other day. It cost me $10. o_O;
I feel happier knowing my head is not weighed down with useless hair. I like to keep it nice and short, so I don't have to worry about it being a mess all the time.
When my hair is short, it looks nice and straight, but, as soon as it starts to get a bit of length, it suddenly (overnight!) gets all curly and unruly... and that is about when I decide to get it trimmed back again.
Seriously, I hate my hair. At least, when it gets too long...

My Ma is laying down a new floor covering at her house.
It's a fake wood-panel effect, made of actual wood panels (but the manufactured, printed-on type). It's a huge difference from the worn out grey carpet they used to have!
The only problem is... we aren't allowed to wear shoes on it any more. groan
I respect their decision, but can see some problems with this logic:

1. Floors are made for WALKING on. Not for LOOKING at.
2. Not everyone has nice smelling feet.
3. Hard, polished floors + slippery cotton socks = "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!"

Still, I guess it would be nice to keep the floor looking good for as long as possible... and it does make the house look much better!

The third bit of news? Krissy has a new blog!
http://stayawhilehavesomecake.blogspot.com/
It's been added to the list at right. Check it out and say hello if you like!