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Just saw an advert for The Concert For Holly and saw that the Doug Anthony All Stars are on it… together, performing, in one place and oh man it’s made my fucking day :D I still love DAAS and always will.

Today was another of those odd ones that went by fast enough despite not actually having that much to do. However, sketchy plans to roster BITS people (of which I am one) on for Saturday mornings have served to make me kinda tense around the jaw area. Grrr.

Read over the Original 24 Blog today, and just finished it then. It’s a great read (start at the bottom). I’m tempted.

Wow, nearly a whole week since I last posted. Probably a good thing I’m not doing the Blogathon (although if it’s on a weekend next year I will).

Reason for not posting so much: The Sims Online (three points to anyone who didn’t guess). Man I’m addicted, it’s sad really.

Today Diane had a whinger complaining that storytime is too crowded these days (which is, in fact, a good thing. So they tell me. As far as I can see it’s just more kids throwing tantrums when they can’t have a freddo frog). To remedy this, we came up with a plan to get a Door Bitch. This idea amused us no end (”No nappies sunshine - out! You! You eat the paste again, you’re out”).

Jude swanned in today to book tickets for a trip to London. Considering she’s leaving in about 2 weeks she was cutting it pretty fine and it ended up taking 3 hours to get the tickets booked, and even then she suddenly realised she’d only booked for one so she had to do it all again to get her husband on the same flights. OK, so she was stressing, but it broke up the day for us anyway! She also brought in the photos from Kate’s 21st which showed Jackie and Di in a deeply drunken state. This also amused us :D

How utterly horrifying to discover that your workmates feared you. I am deeply, deeply ashamed. I knew I was feeling miserable, I didn’t realise (much of the time) that I was also impossible to get along with. The reason (contraceptive pill prescribed to treat PCOS) is very much out of my life now since i traced it to my low moods. I think it kind of turned me into a huge ball of permanent extreme PMT. I knew I’d been a total bitch to Alicia on more than a few occasions. Now I just wish I’d made the connection much earlier and saved everyone a lot of shit. I feel like such a horrible person right about now.

Finally made it to Wednesday, yay for us. Feels like it took about 4 years to get here, but anyway. We’ve all been kind of tired and draggy this week, I think. The level in the coffee jar has fallen far faster than usual LOL.

Must go and track down a Bowie song Mum heard on the radio yesterday and liked (after gods know how long she’s been telling me he’s rubbish!). Apparently it’s “an early, ballady kind of song where a woman has left him”. Define early - late 60s? Late 70s? LMAO, oh this could be a goose chase of the wild kind.
PS: It was “Sorrow”

All day I kept thinking today was Wednesday, I have no real reason for that unless it was wishful thinking as I have Thursday off this week meaning a late night TSO session :D

Annoying person of the day: S. R who usually renews a stack of stuff everytime she’s in. Today she said “I am borrowing these and please renew what’s on these cards” so I renewed everything. Ooops, looks like I left my ESP at home again as she only wanted stuff due today renewed, not everything, and now she won’t be able to get the full 9 weeks on most of it. Well, suffer. Bring it back in three weeks like everyone else. She did glare at me for a quite a while, but glaring doesn’t really hold much power over me these days since I don’t care enough to worry about it.

It was a day of much cake since we had half of mine left over from yesterday which pretty much disappeared at morning tea, then a fabulous cake for Kirsty’s bithday for arvo tea, which reminds me:

Happy 22nd Kirsty!

Work this week has literally dragged by, so I hope that’s over with by tomorrow because today felt like about 4 days. Tracey isn’t in tomorrow as her son is ill, so we’ll be understaffed again (not that I’m saying she shouldn’t stay home with her boy, of course). Jackie copped so much flack for having yesterday off, though!

Wow, today did suck indeed. LOL. I was at work super early (especially by my standards) as Dad borrowed my car to get to his work, so he dropped me off and picked me up. Jackie phoned in sick (still feeling the after effects of cheap vodka on Saturday night) and Kirsty was on evening shift (still is, as I write this, poor love) so that left us with four staffers in the morning, two of which vanished into a union meeting leaving me and Di frantic with a massive branch run and a sudden influx of people. Also, no tea break until midday which left us caffine deprived (and me nicotine deprived). We were kinda tense. LOL.
Then my off desk shift turned into an on-desk shift and my other off desk shift was for a class, so I didn’t really get to get away from the public all day which is unfun.
On the up-side though, Diane brought in cake for my birthday. Yay for cake! I’ve just realised I left the card at work. Oh well, it’s not like I’m not going to be there tomorrow.

Apparently after i left kate’s party on Saturday things got utterly interesting as Di and Jackie got utterly pissed. At one point, so I hear tell, Di leaned over the railing around the pool with the idea of spinning around it. Thankfully she fell off it instead and Jackie then fell over trying to assit Di to stand up. It was at this point Di began to dance flat on her back since she wanted to dance but couldn’t get up. It all went on until the wee small hours LOL. I was probably better off here as there’s only so much drunk watching a person can do without wondering at the point of it all.

Caught up with Debs today for lunch at the Silly Yak, Elvira also rocked up which rocked on because I’ve missed her such a lot. This photo is to celebrate the pants of goodness (UK readers, please swap trousers for pants. Erm. You know what I mean). You can’t see the heart on her bum, but trust me, it’s there. I’ve known Debs 20 years now, which amazes me in some ways, but not in others as she’s so fun and also so good to talk to. Elvira is as gorgeous as ever and enjoying her work I think. So it was a nice gossipy catch up which I needed, and a good way to celebrate the birthday.

Went to Kate’s surprise party last night and can honestly say she was not only surprised but utterly stunned. It was a decent night, although I’m dying to know how Alicia got on with the bloke Jude picked out for her (Jude is a serial matchmaker). Dashed out earlyish (10:30) to log on to TSO - does this make me anti-social? Possibly. But the people I knew at the party were the people I work with anyway, so I’ll see them on Monday as it is (and Tuesday, Wednesday…). Ended up not being able to log on to TSO until midnight as it was since Mum is utterly addicted to a game on here (I have no sympathy for people with computer game addictions as I’ve never had one…)

Went over to Balwyn today to see the cars from the Redex Rally 50th Anniversary Re-Run. The car above is not in the rally, I just adore it though. Considering I don’t like to drive and am not interested in cars in general, I really adore that one! It’s a Peugeot 404 and lovely. Manual, though, so I’d have to get someone to drive me about in it. I did mention to Dad that it’s my birthday tomorrow, but somehow don’t think I’m getting this!

And these ones are competing. The one on the left is a 203 panel van and is done up to look like the car that did the filming of the rallies back in the ’50s. The one on the right seems to have come directly from storage in someone’s chook shed. The cars ranged from utterly immaculate (one in particular could have easily passed as brand new) to slightly “Well loved”. The park was packed with people and cars and it was quite a good time with none of the petrol headedness I expected, just Peugeot enthusists drooling over cars :) I’ll tell you this, Peugeot do damn good body design. The cars took off for the trip to Albury at around 10am, so we watched them file out (including one entrant which was a tractor for God’s sake). Apparently they’ve done about 7,000 km so far (the original rally was around 6,500km) and they still have to get to Sydney.

Other than that, haven’t done anything today. Got up too early (or possibly stayed up too late) so have just been flopping about in the couch reading books. Am about to vary this by flopping about on my bed reading books, variety being the spice of life and all that.

My PC desk is currently covered with those banes of modern life, cords. And cables. And power supplies and all that crapola that makes Mum tense. It’s making me tense, to be honest. I’ll have to faff about a bit, I think, and sort it all out. That kind of thing.

Nevermind the CEO resigning, it’s Alicia’s announcement that she can’t work Wednesdays anymore that’s made us all a bit frowny. Her time table has changed and now she has classes on Wednesdays. Personally, i think she’s got her priorities all arse-about. I mean, Wednesdays are great because I can have geek chats which I can’t do any other day of the week because the other staff don’t really understand the goodness of DSL, the addiction to TSO and the difference between a Gb and a Mb. It’s not their fault they’re not into computers, I suppose. *sigh* (Mind you, if we were both finalists in the Geek Awards [which in my little fantasy world would be shaped like an abstract keyboard and be called The Geekies] then Alicia would win hands down as she can do all the programming stuff. She’s so a geek)

Have only got tomorrow to do before my long weekend as I’m having Friday off - yay for Fridays off! Tony is in tomorrow also to make things good (or at least less bad) with certain computer related things that i won’t go into here as it would make all this even more dull. I plan to be a smartarse again as I’m certain there’s a jovial guy somewhere under that slightly stressed exterior. I have made it my mission to track the jovial guy down and refuse to be proved wrong.

Today was an utter good mood day and I had very much fun indeed. OK, so I didn’t get much work done, but the mood was infectious and we were all a bit giggly and easily set off. I love those days such a lot, they almost make all the fucked up days worth it.

Congratulations to Yvette on the arrival of three puppies (um, her dog had the pups by the way, Yvette is not some kind of biological freak).

There was a full moon last night and when I got home from work the clouds were racing so fast it looked like the moon was moving much faster than it was. It’s an optical illusion that I know about, and understand but at the same time I still needed to make sure by pointing at the moon and waiting a few minutes, to prove that the moon wasn’t moving faster than normal. I wonder what that is, I knew even without proving it that the moon wasn’t rushing, but something in my head wouldn’t let me go inside until I’d actual proof. Hmm. Brains are weird.

This big news of the day is that the CEO has resigned. Not in a huffy “Well up yours mate” *slamming of doors and general angst* way, but in a “I have another job, goodbye” way. We’re all wondering how this will effect the EB negotiations (well, he’s going to be OK, isn’t he? I can’t imagine he’s off to some low paid deal!). Find out tomorrow arvo. Perhaps one of the masses of people we’ve had asking about library jobs in the last week will go for it (one woman today said “How can my daughter apply for your job?” which made me wonder if she knew something I don’t!). Mostly teenagers wanting shelving work, which is in serious damand as it is (I wonder if any of them realise it’s not full time? It’s more like 5 hours a week).

Argh! Came in for the evening shift to find that only one PC in the entire building was printing (actually, it was two. The one that was printing was sending to the workroom one, the other was defaulting to the public one). This happened before, but we were told it was utterly fixed. Rant rant. Anyway, Info staff have been running about like headless chooks trying to get people with important printing fixed up (sadly, their idea of important does not match ours). Basically, this time the failure of the printing is a lot messier and yucky and i hate hate hate it. I also hate how some staffers need to be told something literally 97,000 times before it sinks in. LOL. Also, the Librarian who was supposed to work tonight phoned in sick so we have an unknown, but Alicia has worked with her before and says she’s pretty good.

Did the old car switcharoo this morning with Dad taking Mum’s car and Mum taking mine for the morning as Dad’s transmission is utterly fucked. there’s no nice way to say it, sorry. Big tension all round so we’ll see how that pans out.

Not a lot else to say and I need to dash up to the shops anyway before my break is over. Was up until 3am this morning being a temp roomie in The Sims Online, so I hope Rudy is bloody grateful or there’ll be smacks. Big smacks.

This is a sample of the photos from the little pencam I bought. I’ve reduced it to 40% of the original size, which is about the ratio that gets a bit clearer and more defined while still being a decent size for a log thing which i still have no concrete plans for. The original size photos are utterly grainy and blobby, but resized they are of good enough quality, i think, although light is a sensitive issue. I don’t think i mind this. One of these days I’ll buy a killer digital and a killer scanner for film shots because yes, I love film. Taking photos with film is a distinctly different experience, for me anyway. I like the feel of the shutter button, the click of the shutter. I like the smell of the film and the sensation of winding it on. I like focusing, I like all of it. I even like that boring bit in processing black and white where you have to turn the tub thing every thirty seconds for ten minutes. It’s dull, I love it. Must get some chemicals and do it all again. There’s always a thrill when you see your image swim up from a blank sheet of paper. Digitals are great, but I’ll always love film.

Went to the shops on an unplanned mission to buy more slippers for Mum as Stitch finally got around to eating hers. Got another pair for myself which has served to remind me that slippers are supposed to be warm. My last pair was not. Also decided on whim that I was utterly bored with the pissy amount of memory my PC had (96Mb, if you can believe it) and splashed out on a new stick of 256, and all I can say is YAY. Hard drive space is not yet an issue (Alicia knows someone with 120Gb - I can barely fill 10Gb at the minute!).

Hmm. Yes. Two reasons for a lack of update - and yes, I have fully intended to update. First reason is that not terribly much has been happening. I figure it’s best to squish all those “not a lot” days up a little. Second reason is Sims Online which is very much taking over my life since the DSL was connected. It’s too darn easy to just log on and have a little play even when not intending too. On one hand though it’s possibly better than TV for the brain, but who can tell? Not me, although I’m happy to look into it if anyone would like to give me a big stack of money. Oh well, it hurts no one and is hellish fun :)

Bought a teeny little pencam off the internet on Sunday which should be here soon. I’m planning a kind of photo log thing for sothereyago.com with the other bits of the page hanging off it. I like the idea of photos without context. Just like one snap image from my day with a time attached, but no details. I like that. I’m not saying it’s earth shattering, but there’s something in it that makes me go “Hmmm, yes. Yes indeed”.

Should dash as I’m using the only available workroom PC (the other one has gone to replace one of the info desk PCs which in turn has gone to god) in my meal break (the meal so far consisting of one cup of coffee and two cigarettes - this is an evening shift so I’ll have something when I get home).

I have to teach an internet class tonight which is worrying as I’ve been forgetting words all day (ie: “He put the book down on the… thing” because “desk” is such a tricky word to keep track of).

Went to the opening of the shire art awards thingy last night because Mum got one of her lino cuts accepted - whoo and also hoo. She’s quietly stoked because the number of entries accepted was way lower than she expected, so it’s a proper honour thing rather than a fill the wall space thing. The place was packed with the arty and wanna be arty community. Lots of elderly women without chins peering down their noses at paintings while pressing thier lips together and masses of very skinny women who’d plucked their eyebrows out and drawn new ones on in purple texta. The latter tends to also be underneath a beret of some description, clutching a glass of red and throwing their head back to cackle loudly at random moments. I’d like to point out that there were also normal people there.

The major prize went to a photographer but to be honest I wasn’t that thrilled with the photos in her entry. They were very very dark with little detail, which I suppose was the effect she was after. The subject didn’t do much for me either, just beds and stuff although I think it may have been at a halfway house or something. Yeah yeah, give a girl a darkroom in a suitcase and she thinks she knows it all :) Worst painting was one that looked exactly like those Ken Done type beach bags that were very big in the ’80s. I was alarmed.

This is amusing: go to Google, type weapons of mass destruction then click “I’m feeling lucky”.

Made my hair red today with dye. What else would I use? “With dye” she says, in case you think I coloured it in with crayons. Anyway, the best thing about using red dye is that when you rinse it out you can pretend you’re an extra in “Bloodbath and the House of death” because it seriously looks like bad bad crime. It’s not really really red because my normal colour is dark, but it’s redder, and that’s what counts.

Today a memory popped into my head that made me groan and laugh at the same time. You see, in 2000 i spent 9 months working in a supermarket. My shift was 12pm-9pm most days, so i never got the real hardcore insane people the midnight to 9am people copped, but there were a couple and one in particular could send me and any other checkout girl scurrying for safety.

The memory arrived while I was wondering if the public ever notices how filthy library books are. Some of them are gritty for gods’ sake. Anyway, there was a man who used to shop where I worked (I won’t name the company ‘coz they aren’t paying me for advertising) who would insist that the person scanning their stuff put a plastic bag over each hand before touching anything. So you’d be trying to pick up stuff with your hands covered in slippery plastic which was unfun in itself, but worst of all was trying to open a new bag on the rack. Zero grip. I spent what felt like eons fumbling with a new bag while trying not to tear the bags on my hands because if he saw a tear in those bags he’d chuck a massive wobbly. Apparently he did this for cleanliness, because we checkout types were handling stuff all day that was, I admit, less than clean. What really got me about this guy though was that he wouldn’t put his fruit and vegies in plastic bags in the trolley. First point: fruit and vegies are bound to have been handled by others anyway while they seek the perfect tomato and even digging right to the bottom of the heap is no help because the guys stocking that area have grotty hands as it is. Second point: Shopping trolleys are a health hazard. They are honestly festering. They don’t get cleaned, they don’t get wiped down. If somone spills food in them only the big bits get scraped out. In fact, nothing the man ever bought was untouched. Shelves don’t get stacked by magic, they get stacked by people who have been stacking all day and therefore have grimy hands. I wanted to tell the bloke all this, but he also discouraged small talk and being the kind of person who can’t do small talk with perfect strangers, I was not about to make a point on that one.

Another odd one was the bloke who would say “I will place my items in the order i wish them to be packed. I will place them one bag worth at a time. You will not pack extra items in bag and you will not take items from further up the belt. You will scan them and pack them in the order in which I place them, do you understand?”. Yeah, whatever. “I don’t much care about this job or your happiness, do you understand?”

Man, I hated working there!

Travel to my place of work was ugly today on account of a log truck tipping over on the giant roundabout at the turn off. I found myself detoured in the exact opposite direction from the place I needed to be (ie, work) and eventually snuck off the line of traffic and up a back road i have never been along before but have heard other staffers mention. I pretty much closed my eyes and hoped I’d not get lost (but without the closed eyes bit as I was in control of a car). I didn’t get lost, the buzz of which is with me still. Annoyingly I was on track to be at work on time for once. This never happens, and of course didn’t happen today. At least today everyone else was late too.

The local council has put a display up in our foyer about the new rubbish bin system. Realising that people have trouble with two bins, they’ve decided to go for a three bin system (OK, so that’s not the reason. i think there’s some new law about collecting green waste). So, there are three bins - G for green waste and food scraps, R for recycling and O for other. G is collected weekly, R and O are collected alternate weeks (ie - week one G and O, week two G and R). All food scraps and garden waste can go in G, R is for paper and anything else that can be recycled and O is for anything that doesn’t fit the other bins BUT! While glass containers can go in R, light bulbs and windscreen glass needs to go in O. Plastics can go in R, but not plastic bags and so on and so on. I mean, yay for less landfill and more composting and all that but I seriously doubt many people are going to bother at all with all this faffing about. There must be an easier way.