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!

So Much For The Weekend

NB. I changed the blog colour scheme again, in case people found the bright letters on dark a bit too hard to read. Is this current setup any better? Please let me know!

Well, what a weird week it's been. Actually, I refer to the past seven days, not the Sunday-to-Saturday.
I started off having three days off in a row, and by the end of it, I only had ONE. =(

I worked Saturday morning, and after only getting about two hours of sleep and working for about nine hours, I was pretty much ready for bed - unfortunately, Saturday night was also the night we had set aside for our second Games Night for the year.
Setting up the LAN was a little more complicated than last time, since we now had four PCs to hook up. One of the guests forgot to bring his network cable, which would have left him a spectator to the proceedings; luckily, we had one to spare, so he wasn't left on the sidelines.

Note to self: look for other games suitable for multi-player than Quake III. Shooting up my friends with heavy artillery is not something that makes me comfortable, even if they are disguised as pop-culture icons and running around a giant house!

I managed to stay up until 5am Sunday morning, when I suddenly remembered that I was incredibly effing tired. I shuffled off to bed and slept for about twelve hours. It is remarkably poor form to sleep through the productive hours of a day, even if it is the weekend. "Never mind," I thought, "I still have Monday and Tuesday free."

Now hang on, it gets better.

I got a phonecall at about 12pm Monday, asking me if so-and-so had got in touch with me about working that afternoon... did they happen to call? No? Would I be able to do it? Especially since absolutely no-one else can do it without somehow violating the law of physics (you know, the one that prevents an object from being in two places at once)? You will? Cool! Be here by 3.30!

"Never mind," I thought, "I still have Tuesday free."

I spent most of Monday night playing Ico, but I started getting sleepy around 4am. It was a reasonably warm night, so I tried to sleep with the fan going on beside me. Sadly, the only air conditioner in this house is in the living room, so I have to make do.
At around 4.30, the fan suddenly turned off. I tried to switch on the light to see what had happened - and when that didn't come on either, I realised that we'd had a blackout! (cue scrabbling around my room with my mobile phone, trying to find a reliable torch)

As it turned out, the power failure only lasted an hour, but it blacked out half the town; a couple of other nearby cities also lost partial power. I spoke to someone about it the next day, who said that it was strange driving through brightly-lit streets, only to enter darkness one street over.

Unfortunately, one of the places affected by the power loss was the shop where I work, and clearly the register did not handle the power failure very well.
The next day, when my co-worker came in to set everything up for the morning, he discovered that the register was completely non-cooperative. Apparently, the register's circuits must have either received a shock or not liked the forced shutdown, since nothing he did could coax life back into the thing. After several calls to the tech support, and in between attempts to actually serve people fuel and whatnot, he and the head office staff managed to scrabble together a workable system; basically, everything had to be done manually, just like in the old days before computers were thrown into the mix.

The problem with doing things manually is that they take a lot longer, and it is far easier to make a mistake. Unfortunately, customers have become used to receiving prompt and efficient service, and as such are no longer content to stand around and wait for paperwork to get filled out. So, in order to not inconvenience the customers too much, it would be necessary to have all the staff on site as possible, to make sure evrything went smoothly.

You know where I'm going with this. Phonecall at 9am: "Ben, you're not going to believe this... can you please come in?"

Of course, I couldn't leave people in the lurch; it would have been far worse NOT to go in. It's just annoying that, of the supposed "three-day weekend" that I had lined up, the only actual day I had free I practically slept through (though I did get to play a bunch of cool games with friends, so it wasn't a total washout).

Here's hoping next week works out a little better!

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!

New Years' Eve, 2008

Another post-event post...

A New Year has begun... and unfortunately, I had to work for NYE (again!), but it was only for about five hours, and it was pretty dead at work after everyone had got what they needed.

We had a good time for NYE this/last year.
We had some friends over for a few Wii-ing contests in the living room, and played a few rounds of SingStar on a friend's PS2. I think my sister really wants one of those, now that she realises how much fun the game is!

But, after the clock ticked over to midnight, we went outside to see if there were any fireworks happening. I think someone might have let off a flare... but that was it.

It was at this point, when everyone was standing around on the front lawn in the dark waiting for stuff to explode, that I remembered I had some glow stick party favours reserved for this occasion...
They were a bunch of glow-bracelets, which eventually got turned into mini-frisbees, and we flung them at each other on the front lawn! I took some photos, but they were all dark and minimalist... so I turned them all into a composite image. This is it:

I think this picture best sums up the bedlam that took place out the front of out house!
We played for about half an hour on the front lawn, then came back inside all sweaty and grotty from running around the garden. Hey, it was better than watching that stupid Village People movie on Channel Nine. O_o;
We then continued the video-gaming, along with consumption of a ludicrous amount of food and confectionery (I'd brought some old Xmas stock that was RTC at work). And then, eventually, to bed, though I was one of the last standing (mostly because I didn't have to work the next day)!

As for the glow sticks, they all wound up on the shrubbery just outside our front door (those that didn't end up on the roof or in the garden). Most of them were still there for about a week afterwards, and some of them still had a bit of "glow" left in them!

I hope everyone has a good New Year!