Got up this morning and brain just would not kick into gear. Thankfully when I got to work – at the ungodly hour of 7am – I could just sit there and be a vegetable. Then joy of joys – a new recap! Gave me a whole twenty minutes of brain dead time to read the happy adventures of those wacky and wild children in Dawson’s Creek. And no I do not think it is a contradiction for an otherwise sane and rational individual to like such a crap show. It’s not like I actually watch it or anything – though I fear to admit I actually did watch about a season sometime in the dim dark last year past. Thankfully now I only read the recaps (Yay to Sars and now Jessica!) and don’t have to risk tearing my own eyes out by actually watching the drivel myself.

Otherwise bloody miserable day. An accumulation of crap work things, general tired grumpiness, and a touch of depression is not making my days any shorter. I don’t know how much I am enjoying my job. I’m constantly tired, chronically underpaid, and generally feel a bit unappreciated. In addition to this joyous threnody (which I think is slightly oxymoronic) my company just made a massive acquisition of an IT services company with about 1000 staff. So when they integrate these guys into the group I wonder where I’ll end up on the food chain. Which could mean life will be very interesting. It’ll be greatly dependent on whether my boss gets control of the new pool of NSW resources – which adds even more fun to the situation because not only can’t I guarantee the outcome but I’m not at all in control of the situation either. Joy.

P.S. Been playing around with Zeal.com. It’s a group of people mapping out and updating search engine categories from LookSmart, Altavista, and the like. Given my considerable use of seach engines some contribution from me seems merited. Maybe a site or two a day updated would make me a better person.

Listening to: Madness – Divine Madness

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Long weekend and I’m just meandering around and catching up on sleep. Lu and Kristan went to the Big Day Out in Homebush on Saturday together with 52,000 other people – reason enough for me not to attend even if I wanted to see any of the bands. I would have probably have enjoyed New Order – they played ‘Love will tear us apart’ – which is pretty cool. Lu is also going to see Tomahawk next week – she is such the Mike Patton groupie. BTW If you are as well then check this site out. It’ll satisfy some cravings *grin*.

Anyways I’m mucking around with the website some. I’ve added a Guestbook for those in the mood to sign it. I’m also thinking about re-jigging the design and colour scheme some. What’s there now was fine for a first cut but I’ve learnt heaps since I started working on this and want to try to apply some of that. So more changes shortly. Until tomorrow at work… *sigh*

P.S. Arghh scary! My almost favourite website in the whole world, Mighty Big TV, has changed it’s name to Television without Pity. Thankfully they’re still in business and thus I am handling the crisis well and not freaky out totally. Without my Dawson’s Creek recaps I might actually be forced to watch the show. In that event I can feel a self-inflicted blinding coming on. The team at TWOP (formally MBTV) have been very soothing and said calming things in their posts. They haven’t really explained the whys of it but I’m sure they’ll get to it. *sigh*

Listening to: The Lemonheads – It’s a shame about Ray and Nick Cave – The Boatman’s Call.

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Rain pissing down this morning and I managed to forget my security pass which meant I had to find someone to let me into the building at 7am. Not fun. In addition still can’t get my brain to work properly. Last night after Lu went to sleep I went and listened every fifteen minutes or so to make sure she was alright. It’s not so crash hot – I’m not sleeping well and that makes me seriously tired and grumpy. I got to bed at about twenty past three this morning and was up at 6.30am. My eyes are fucked and my brain is about 20% functional. I have to go and see a client this morning and the drive alone is going to put me to sleep – let alone discussing enterprise management in a Unix environment. I think today will be a short one – at least unless I can acquire some speed before about lunchtime.

It’s also a bad day to be an Australian. I am greatly ashamed by the refugee situation in Australia. This week refugees in the Woomera Detention Centre (which is a godforsaken hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere) sewed their lips together and went on a hunger strike. We are constantly bombarded with rubbish about following the ‘proper procedure’ for immigration and the ‘danger’ from refugees. What a load of crap. Firstly as a neighbour I’d prefer someone who spent their life savings and risked their and their families lives to come here than some deadbeat Pommy backpacker who decided bartending and living in Bondi is better than doing the same in Bristol. Secondly are the government stupid? Do terrorists comes to a country in a leaky refugee boat? Fuck no! They fly in first class with immaculate passports and are not noticed at all. Sometimes I despair of Australians and our values. We pride ourselves on being such a fair country and yet are we really? I think we’ve conned ourselves into believing it when in reality we are as petty, shallow, and uncaring as many of the nations we deride. God help me living in such a country.

Listening to: The Gladiator soundtrack, The Pogues, The Waterboys

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Another day since ‘the incident’ as I have been mentally calling it. Everytime I close my eyes I see Lu fitting which isn’t so crash hot and I spend about half my day worrying that she’s alright. She decided to go to work yesterday and I only called like 5 times in the day to make sure she was okay. Her dad called last night from Hong Kong because I’d left a message for him the other night. I know she likes to hear from him – It’d be nice if he lived closer but can’t have everything I guess. I think he’s still coming to visit around Easter so that’ll be nice. It’d be good to take him out in a city where it doesn’t cost ten million dollars to have dinner – unlike HK.

So I started taking some steps to make sure if another hypo that bad happened again I’d be better prepared. I think I’ve persuaded Lu to wear her MediAlert bracelet (which she sees as untrendy and distinctly unhip). Plus her ex-boyfriend Kristan is coming up to Sydney and staying with us for a few days and I might get him and me to gang up on her about a few things. He can be terribly righteous when required! I’ve also enrolled in a St John’s Ambulance course that teaches CPR and all that. I’ve already done a couple of over the years but it’s probably worth a refresh. We’re also going to acquire some glucagon syringes so I can inject her in the event of another hypo. We’ll have to see how we go…

At least one piece of good news! Just acquired a scanner so previously forlorn pages without pictures should soon have pictures! Just got to take some pictures of my tats and Lu’s tats to add to the page. Just comtemplating a new tattoo as well. I found a great website with some very nice celtic stuff that I may adapt. Just got find someone who I feel comfortable with sticking a needle into my skin. I wouldn’t use the last two places I went to – one was full of scary and doped up rednecks and the other was home to a tattooist with the shakes. I’ve also moved to a new city since the previous ones. I’ve heard about a few good places – Inner Vision in Surry Hills and a rocker-billy place in Penrith. Inner Vision is close to work and would make the visit(s) easier but I’ve heard good things about the place in Penrith. For position I am thinking of my lower neck between my shoulder blades or on my hands but a lot of tattooists don’t do hands. I’ve got a mate, Corey, who has rings tattooed on his fingers but a Maori guy did those in New Zealand and they are a lot more relaxed around where they tattoo.

Also Yahoo listed me. That’s pretty cool! I’ve been listed in their new personal homepages section. Yea me. *lol*

Listening to: The Whitlams – Love this City (which I am not 100% in the mood for but I couldn’t find anything else I liked)

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Well it’s been a hell of a few days. Last night being the worst night I’ve had in years. Was on the couch reading and heard a thumping noise from the bedroom – like the bedhead was being banged repeatedly. Went to investigate and found Lu having a hypo and fitting really badly. A hypo or hypoglycemia is when your blood sugar drops so low that your body goes into a sort of shock and the middle sign of this is seizures which can lead to a fatal diabetic coma. So into panic mode and called an ambulance and then administered honey (because it’s high in sugar) as best I could. After a few very scary minutes that worked and she started to come out of it. When the ambos showed up Lu was a bit out of it still and they cajoled her into going to hospital at RPA for a few tests. I really haven’t been that scared in a lot of years – when the ambos took her blood pressure I was fairly sure if they took mine it’d be the same or higher.

So for the next six hours I camped by the bed in the Acute Care ward whilst they took blood and urine samples and ran tests. The doctor on duty was fairly comfortable that it was a hypo and not epilepsy or anything organic to the brain so they skipped a CAT scan and let her out at about 6am. As a result I’m fucking tired and missed work today – and spending every waking minute reminding myself how incredibly lucky I am to have Lu and how incredibly dangerously fragile life can be.

Listening to: Some serious thunder and rain.

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Had the weirdest dreams last night. Was very odd. Only remember snatches of it now. Slightly confrontational and I woke up feeling a little paranoid – one of my work collegues was in it but I don’t think it was work related Probably not going to mention to her that I dreamt about her though. She might take that the wrong way. Hell of a way to start a conversation, “Hi I had the strangest dream about you last night…”

My friend Zac is online on ICQ from Berlin which is pretty cool. Of course it’s like 7am here and 9pm there so it is one of the few times we coincide. He’s still a little depressed over the whole dot.com thing I think which left him a highly skilled Cold Fusion programmer with very few companies doing development in CF. He’s also a very cool guy who I miss alot. I fear he’s never going to come home – he’s been very happy in Berlin for the last few years and has developed a quite understandable appreciation for these slightly ravey / hippy blond German girls. I do miss him though – as much as he occasionally exasperates me. We just worked out that our respective younger siblings are 24 and 25 this year. It’s making us feel old. But it is good to speak to him.

Playing some good CDs. Got the volume turned right up and bopping away in the office. Love no one being around when I get in. Can play music as loudly as I like and no one comes and disturbs me by asking stupid dumb arse questions. But unfortunately back to reality after a few hours of peace and the ongoing struggle with the idiosyncrasies of my job.

Back tomorrow perhaps…

Listening to: New Model Army – Thunder and Consolidation and the Levellers – One Way of Life

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Found an interesting blog whilst roaming around called Rane. I quite enjoying reading people’s blogs and this girl has just moved to the UK to study for a while. Her observations about her stay make interesting reading and she’s done a bit of writing that I am reading. Everytime I go to Blogger I click on one of the recently updated blogs and have a read. It’s sort of fun reading a random selection of someone’s life. Which I suppose is the attraction of the service.

Went to see my GP the other day to get some moles looked at. Fucking smug little prick asked me to take off my shirt, looked for about a minute at my back and chest and then said “You look fine.” I was like “Oh yeah? In a minute you can tell if I don’t have any skin cancers?” So time to find a new GP and consider if I do have any skin cancers whether I sue the other one for every penny he’s got. Not likely I admit – litigation is such an American concept. Australian courts just don’t grant the same level of damages as American ones. Overall still have the skin thing hanging over me until I can find a more receptive GP.

Lu and my sister are going roller skating tonight at what must be one of the last rolling skating rinks left in Sydney. Unlike bowling alleys, that seemingly lurk in the deep dark Western suburbs forever, rolling skating rinks are more like ‘drive in’ cinemas and are getting fewer and fewer in number. I think there’s one ‘drive in’ left in Sydney. I wonder if anyone in 1970 considered that they’d all be gone in thirty years. I wonder if some kind of video-on-demand service via cable or the like will kill video stores and potentially cinemas. I are fairly sure video stores are dead if video-on-demand comes out. If it’s a comparable price then no one will want to go out and hope the video they want is in when they can just order the same from a menu in the comfort of their own home. I am not so sure about cinemas but I’m prejudiced against them. I like the larger screen and a good sound system but overall I don’t like the cinema. It’s expensive (especially the bloody crap food) and I hate crowds with a passion most people reserve for spinach and Ricky Martin. So I’m not fussed if I can order a ‘new’ film via a decent home theatre system rather than go to the cinema. I suppose it is a bit of a expedition for some families to go to the cinema but you just end up seeing some terrible kids movie, though they seem to getting better at making movies on multiple levels so kids and adults can enjoy them, Shrek and Monsters Inc for example.

Enough for the day… Adios.

Listening to: Dido – No Angel because damn you I like her voice.

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Lu and my sister are back from Canberra and shopping already so I fear the wrath of the credit card gods. Speaking of which I need a new visa card after my magnetic stripe got cracked. So I call and order a new card. It all seems to be going well until they ask me where I’d like to send the card. I tell them I want to send it to my home address. The operator puts that in and then tries to generate a new card – as she is doing this she puts me on hold for about ten minutes – when she comes back she says that they can’t send my card to my home address because I live in a ‘high theft area’. Okay I wouldn’t have thought so but I’ll take the bank’s word for it – indeed they’re certainly taking me for every cent with my mortgage. So I give them my work address – which is a high security building. Nope – ‘high theft area’ as well. I try to explain that the mail will be safe because not only do we take security fairly seriously we share offices with the NSW Police and the Department of Correctional Services – also fairly security conscious organisations. But no go. They refuse to send it to my office. Next step is to find a branch that is not so far away. That done they eventually generate a new card – what should have been a five minute process ends up taking nearly 45 minutes. But no the saga is still not over. I wanted to contact the branch I had chosen but do you think they list the phone numbers of the branches in the phone book? No way. That’d make contacting them easy! I had to call their customer service (*lol*) line and then get transfered around until I finally spoke to someone at the branch who informed me that it wasn’t her department and I would need to speak to someone else. I asked her who else and she informed me they were on a break and technically so was she. After some discussion she eventually went and checked and yippee yay my new card was there! Only stumbling block was that I need a drivers license for ID to pick it up. Now since I don’t drive that’ll be interesting. More drama and potential excitement. Fucking banks – always happy to take your money but then make it as difficult as possible to get it back.

Anyways until next time…

Listening to: The whirr of aircon and the mutter of Mark C as he recovers from his hangover.

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A seemingly oddly good day. I am strangely cheerful and very unsure as to why. Was up late last night reading and lost track of time – when I actually went to look it was 1am and I realised I was bloody tired. When the alarm went off this morning and I got up I looked like shit. Big red eyes and in dire need of a shave – very annoying on the first because I didn’t drink that much and although I seem to have considerably smaller number of cigarettes this morning than I did last night I am fairly sure they are not ‘red eye’ inducing. At least not the ones I was smoking.

Thankfully the only thing required of me this morning was an attempt at vague interest in the proceedings of a sales meeting. Which since I am a) not in Sales and b) capable of faking interest in a number of disperate topics was relatively easy. Followed this by meandering around all morning and then spending two hours having lunch with my boss and one of our salespeople. After which we wandered aimlessly around a shopping centres looking at books and TVs. Was most relaxing.

Got a scary visit planned this afternoon to get a referral to a skin specialist. I’ve got some moles that don’t look good and have melanoma written all over them. So out they come and off to get biopsied and I hope to fuck they are benign. Got fingers crossed nothing bad or scary is found. Otherwise this might turn into the blog of my chemo.

Listening to: My officemates bitching at Melbourne IT for fucking up a domain delegation.

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The excitement, the drama, the adventure – back at work on a shining Monday morning!

Lu and Sis still away until tomorrow. The cats are very confused by Lu’s absence. Romeo normally sleeps on the end of the bed at Lu’s feet. He is so possessive (almost dog like in his devotion) that he follows Lu around the house if she gets up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet, waits outside the toilet door, and then follows her back to bed when she returns. So last night he sat at the end of the bed waiting for her to go to bed. By about 10pm he was pretty annoyed and yowled at me for Lu. I kept just putting him on the end of the bed and patting him but he was just not a happy camper. He stomped around the house and finally at about 1am decided he was going to go to sleep but he kept twisting and turning and was grumpy all night. I woke up to discover I had ended up asleep on Lu’s side of the bed and Romeo was just sitting on the end of my side of the bed looking most put out – he won’t sleep on the end of the bed I am on. Mitsu has no such qualms, being the little bimbo she is, and had appropriated with an expression that might potentially have been smugness Romeo’s normal position. She then proceeded to spend most of the night cleaning herself, clawing the donna, and making loud purring noises. All of which is designed to signal: a) contentment, and b) to keep me awake so that I can admire her beauty, cleanliness, and overall cuteness. Cats are aware of the fact that there is little or no point in being cute if they haven’t got an audience.

Anyways back to my exciting job just in time to have lunch!

Listening to: Air Conditioning and the tap, tap, tap of keyboarding.