Month: February 2005

Reasons Moving Sucks

1. I’m horribly stressed.
2. I’m in a strange new place with strange new people (unlike back at the Gables where I knew and was comfortable with all the strange people).
3. All my stuff is in boxes and crates where I can’t find it.
4. I have no phone line.
5. My computer is still at the Gables waiting to be moved.
6. My rubbish bins are still at the Gables waiting to be moved so I have to put my garbage in a plastic bag on the side of the sink.
7. My stereo is still at the Gables waiting to be moved so I can’t listen to music or the radio.
8. My clock is still at the Gables waiting to be moved so the only way to tell the time in the mornings is to turn the TV onto Sunrise with David Cosh.
9. My toaster is still at the Gables waiting to be moved, so I have to have cold bread instead.
10. My condiments are still at the Gables waiting to be moved, so I have nothing to put on said cold bread except margarine.
11. I’m out of margarine.
12. My bed and mattress have been moved and shaken around and possibly put back together the wrong way – so they don’t feel like my nice comfortable bed and mattress anymore.
13. There’s no benchtop or surface of any kind to put things on in the bathroom.
14. My TV was dropped during the move and has a big ugly scratch across the screen.

By themselves they’re all fairly minor things (apart from maybe point 5) but put them together and I’m not happy at all 🙁

You know it’s times like this I can really see the advantages of having a relationship. It’d be nice to have a girlfriend in this kind of situation – I could whinge about it all to her (instead of to this blog) and then she could roll her eyes, give me a big hug and tell me to stop being such a wimp and pull myself together. Oh well, I’ll just have to buy some margarine, re-arrange my bed and hope things improve.

Moving sucks.

I started moving on Friday afternoon, it’s now Monday morning and I’m still going. Obviously I own way too much stuff -it took most of Saturday to get my books over alone. But while the end is not yet in sight, the point from where the end will be in sight is within sight. If I haven’t gone blind from prolonged heavy lifting in the meantime.

Ummmm, don’t know that there’s a lot else to say. Well not in my life anyway. There’s been a bit going on in the world. Like the Kyoto Protocol. Finally it’s come into effect. Of course the world’s largest polluter (the USA) and the world’s largest per-capital polluter (yes, that’s us, the Australians) won’t have anything to do with it. Hopefully carbon trading will turn out to be such a major economic force that the Government will see sense. Hopefully.

Talking politics there’s been a major diplomatic row with New Zealand. Helen Clarke (the NZ Prime Minister) has had the temerity to declare that she’s never heard of John Farnham! It’s unbelievable! The leader of a foreign nation has never heard of an outdated and mediocre Australian musician who’s never had any kind of musical career or success outside of Australia?!? It’s an outrage!! We should invade immediately!! Or at least that’s the attitude some segments of the media have been taking, I’m sorely tempted to suggest they all get a life.

Hmmm, JJJ is playing a song at the moment (the name and artist escape me) whose chorus features the line Are you hoping for a miracle?. The thing is though that is sounds like Are you happy for a moo-cow? which frankly is a much better lyric. There should be more songs that pose nonsensical questions about moo cows if you ask me.

Oh yeah, Tang. On impulse I bought some Tang the other day as a backup for when I run out of orange juice, and on Friday I actually ran out of said orange juice and mixed some up. What can I say except wow! It’s really good! It tastes like real, fresh orange juice, but without that bitter quality that I can’t stand. I can see why Homer was harrasing President Clinton for some, I’d be doing the same. It’s going down as a permanent item on the shopping list from now on.

OK, I’m going off to shift heavy furniture. sigh.

Once again it’s the dreaded 14th, but I’m too tired, stressed out and sleep deprived to be bothered being all bitter and cynical. Valentines can go hang as far as I’m concerned, I’ve got too much to do.

On a completely different note I forgot to mention yesterday that the characters in Battlestar Galactica seem to follow a religion based around “The Lords of COBOL”. Having studied (and been forced to program in) COBOL at university I can safely state that it is NOT a good foundation for any kind of religious faith whatsoever 😉

Just finished watching part two of the Battlestar Galactica mini-series which I taped last night. Not bad really, although you’d think that if you’d figured out FTL space flight, articial intelligence and spacecraft able to take direct hits with nuclear missiles then a little thing like cancer wouldn’t be a problem. But it’s nice to see a spaceship that doesn’t have the Captain sitting in a fancy chair in the middle of a gleaming bridge Star Trek style. The whole look, feel and terminology is that of a battleship or aircraft carrier – even a World War II battleship or aircraft carrier. All dark with flickering screens and a big chart table, great stuff. I’m looking forward to watching the actual series – for as long as Channel 10 deigns to show it in a regular, resonable timeslot that is.

The reason I had to tape it is that it was Katie’s birthday party last night. I was actually under the impression that the party was next Sunday for some reason – so it was just as well I phoned Katie yesterday afternoon to say I’d be going. As parties go it was OK – you know, keeping in mind that I don’t really like parties very much at the best of times, and the best of times party-wise generally involve me actually knowing people who are there, which I didn’t. But that was OK, I just found a dark corner and lurked – which is what I’m good at. A few people talked to me which was nice, a girl named Charlotte particularly who seemed slightly concerned that I didn’t seem to be having a good time. But she was nice about it, so that’s OK.

Also in attendance was Katie’s friend Claire – actually it was her party too, Katie and her having birthdays very close. Happily the mad crush I developed on her the last time we met didn’t re-manifest, even though she was still insanely cute, or at least short and hyperactive.

Hmmmm, there’s not really much more to say. I went, I lurked, I left. Oh, and I missed an opportunity to be cool and funny when a bunch of cool and funny people (including the aforementioned Claire) started doing rather poor impersonations of the insane Scotsman from Little Britain. I mean my impression of the insane Scotsman has received much praise and critical acclaim (well, Ryan and Justin said it was very good :), so I probably could have blown them all away. But their impressions were so far off the mark that I didn’t realise what they were doing until it was too late to join in. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Anyway I’ve got to go pack. Moving next weekend. Ugh.

PS: JJJ just played I Am by Airlock, and it is quite clearly the best song ever in the entire world. BEST SONG EVER IN THE ENTIRE WORLD! (Songs always sound so much cooler in French 🙂

Oh great, North Korea has nukes.

Anyone feel like throwing together a Korean version of Let’s drop the Big One?

Sigh

Well it seems my Mortgage Broker – for reasons best know to his tiny little mortgage broker mind – decided not to send me the forms to fill out to apply for the Government’s First Home Buyer’s Grant. Which means I won’t be getting it until I track down said forms, fill them out myself, and wait for the slow rumbling bueracratic machine to process them, which usually takes a couple of weeks. Which would be fine except I was sort of counting on getting the grant and using it to pay the Settlement on my new flat – which is due next week.

So, anyone care to loan me $7,000 before Wednesday? >:-|

Cool! Helen and Rob did end up giving their hamster the name I suggested! This discovery leaves me with a sense of power and importance completely out of proportion with something as un-notable as supplying nonclamenture for a Syrian rodent 🙂

(At least I think hamsters come from Syria, I should probably look it up).

By the way – this is brilliant 🙂

“Shall we duel with Death Machines?”

“No.”

“With Whistlers?”

“I’ll drink to that.”

Although I haven’t had time to work on it lately I still get occasional emails concerning Abandoned in Perth. Today I got one from someone calling themselves ‘Will’ who was presumably informing me of what he’d like to see on the site when he wrote “i wont a girl being raped’.

This clearly is not what he wants. What he wants is

1. Psychotherapy
2. A spelling lesson
3. A good powerful kick in the f’ing head

I deleted his email, which is a shame because it had a return address which I could have signed up to a number of well known spam sites. Oh well.