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I went shopping yesterday and bought a couple of pairs of shoes. Not the frippery kind with strappy bits and big heels because I fall off those and break my ankles. Sturdy solid shoes with no heel instead because I am not built for fashionable attire. Hanging off one of the pairs was the tag you see here which seems to indicate that the shoes will last until they break and my god scientists have proved it! It may relate the to the stuff in the insole, though. I don’t know what it is, but it feels just about like any other shoe so isn’t that special? I’m comforted by the fact that people have been tucked away in labs making sure the insoles won’t do whatever it is they might do in the event of insole failure before the shoes themselves fall apart. I notice there’s no promises made about how long it will be before the shoes do fall apart. I can’t remember which pair this was on, but I hope it was the cheaper one!

Best way to test new shoes is to stand up in them for huge amounts of time. The IT centre was launched today so I did a bit of the old standing around. It’s looking like a worthwhile and useful sort of project which is fantastic because the commitee has been literally slogging their guts out and working against government faffery for so long. Lots of interest from community groups too, quite a big turn out for a launch on such a crappy wintery day.

The camera for the centre is so impressive I very nearly cried. I think the time has come to say “Yeah, it’s a luxury but anyway” and splash out on a proper camera that doesn’t make people look like they’ve been pixelated on the evening news. As alert readers (or repeat readers - both of you) will know I am still hooked on the tactile nature of old fashioned film cameras but the tedious process of setting up the darkroom is really too too much at the moment (I should buy a shed and set one up in there). It’s amazing how much the creative urge is squished by the prospect of set up time and pack up time. Also, it renders the kitchen table un-usuable for great chunks of time. See how good I am at justifying the purchase of expensive computer stuff?

I got my car insurance renewal the other day. Maybe the other week, it arrived anyway and I need to draw your attention to the woman at right. She is the watermark image on the bill. Lovely and smiley. Looks like the kind of person you’d want to talk to should your car be stolen and/or set alight (possibly by armies of crazed old ladies, possibly not). The thing about this particular smile though is the longer you leave the bill under a fridge magnet, the more evil the woman starts to look. Couple of days pass and you might think “Hmm, smile looks a little forced there, now I look at it”. Leave it a week and she’s looking at you like you’re a complaining type, even if you’ve never complained in your life and certainly wouldn’t complain about your insurance ever. Leave it a month and the true nature of this image becomes apparent. The Insurance Lady Is Evil!. Every morning you drink you tea and smoke your smoke and she stares at you, grinning malevolently, watching you and knowing that the due date draws close and the day your insurance expires is the day those little old ladies are going to torch your not quite paid for pride and joy.

Then the battle begins. You’re not going to let this devil woman force you into paying your bill before payday! No way! But it’s not that simple because then you realise that the insurance lady is out to get you. Her mocking face appears to you in crazed dreams of burning cars and backing into someone’s BMW. Her spiteful laughter fills your mind as you drive and wonder “Will I hit that? How much would that cost me?”. You fight and fight and just try to hold out until pay day, just a few days longer until you snap CRACK and pay the damn bill, weeping and bruised and cursing the nature of the insurance lady. Then you wait for the next bill, the next smile. That sweet lady there, just waiting to take your call and make all your insurance problems fly away… unless you leave the bill for a month because she knows no mercy and cares not for your torment, she just wants her money.

Marnie’s farewell is tonight. Marnie worked with us for a while last year in her proper qualification level (Library Tech) as opposed to Officer as she was working in another branch. She was not thrilled to go back to her lower level. Understandable. Anyway, she finally landed a job at her proper level out of our service so there’s a farewell which I’m not at because - and this is true - I forgot about it until today. i hope Marnie isn’t offended because she was huge fun to work with and I’m thrilled about the new job.

Comment from Jackie: “Maybe real people want your time too, not just the big fat sweaty perverts you talk to online”. The first thing that made me laugh about this was I ran through all my fave online people who i won’t list here ‘coz I’m bound to forget someone and not a single one of them matches that description. Guys, if any of you read this, I hope you get as big a laugh as I did ‘coz seriously, i love my on-line friends :)

The other thing that made me laugh was the real people wanting my time, not because I’m not fantastic to know and be around *removes tongue from cheek* but because I’m spending time with real people, just not in the 3d sense. OK, I suppose technically not. But anyway. i spend all day with real people and they’re just so damned cranky and hard to get along with I can’t see what all the fuss is about (on the off chance of any of my workmates reading this: I’m talking about the patrons, honestly!)

Today was, in short, bloody odd. On balance, there was extreme boredom (I am presently gathering number of members from each branch by postcode - in a perfect world this would be a simple report to run which would count for me. This is not a perfect world, so the only way to do it is to search users by branch and postcode one at a time. So i can count all the users from postcode1 that belong to my branch. Then I can count all users from postcode2…. and so on. The main trouble with this is that things like someone who is the only member from a given postcode because they live on the other side of Melbourne but work at the shops down the road isn’t going to make it to the final stats because I can’t be bothered counting from every postcode. Whatever the outcome, the figures are going to be flawed. The CEO really wants a report but on the other hand, the CEO is leaving in a couple of weeks. I’m glad I’m not doing the report which is designed to find out why usage has gone up at another branch but not at ours.)

On the less dull side - spent 10 minutes talking to a little jolly woman about Goths because she’s going to a Goths and Vamps party. It was quite amusing to me the way she was talking about Goths. I am no expert, I gotta say, but what cracked me up was after giving a general description of suitable make-up and jewellery she then said “OK, and what about the men?” to which I had to reply “I was talking about the men…”

Other moment of oddness was the girl with the shoebox who was asking Kirsty if we could put it somewhere for her while she went down to the creek. I’d heard about this box from Diane and asked the girl “Is that the lizard?” which made Kirsty step back pretty quickly. I asked if I could have a look at the lizard in question and the lizard didn’t seem to mind (a very beautiful blue tongue lizard) so he sat in his box on my desk for a couple of hours while Kirsty tried not to think about him. I guess on one hand I shouldn’t have let them leave him (as was the general opinion) but on the other (as the girls said) they were going down the creek with a couple of guys and didn’t want anything bad to happen to the lizard. He was no trouble, anyway.

I figure we’re gunna be pretty much screwed by Wednesday because we’re all dropping stuff and falling about laughing already. By Wed, the branch is going to be insane. I look forward to it.

I’m in such a good mood which i’m hoping is not caffine but an actual good mood. Can’t think why, planets must have aligned or something. Although Alicia is going to try and get out of working on the Bowie cinema night, so that’s totally funky and may account for some of the perkiness. if she can’t make it I’ll try Deb, although she’s busy busy at the minute. Other possible causes of alarming perkiness: Bowie DVD arrived today, as did Eggbert Shirt. Also, TSO is rocking and Dash played Tim Curry. I am a woman at peace with the world.

Um, not a lot to say really apart from the crazy woman I served today who had no room in her life for plastic bags. She actually said that. She had just bought a big pile of books from booksale and I said “Would you like a plastic bag for those?” and she said “I have no room in my life for plastic bags”. Then she said “These are good, these are good because we don’t have any money and I can give them away to another family without any money. There was a little girl at that table the other day and she wanted a book but her mother said no and I thought i should buy the book for her, but then again she’s not my little girl and besides the book isn’t there anymore and I always think maybe I’m too generous but then I do it anyway, so that’s no help”. See, libraries and crazy talk - it’s like cheese and chutney - destined to be together.

Not that all patrons are insane, of course.

It’s been an odd sort of a weekend, really. I’ve put in a hellish amount of time on TSO - not as much as some people but way more than I usually do. There’s been some highs and lows. Chatting to Dash was good fun, but while doing that I was also watching tension in the online house, so it’s been– yeah. The game itself has been strange for me recently too and i’m not sure if I’ll stay where I am or move on or quit totally. I don’t know, I think I’ve started to fuck things up a bit.

Today it’s been one year since GirlDog died, which is kind of hard to believe as I still miss her so much. Funny how attached you can get to a dog, really. She was a good girl, though, the best.

Happy birthday Rudy - I’ll send you a box of chalk.

Spent 20 minutes of my paid work time booking tickets for the David Bowie Live In London cinema thing. It didn’t take 20 minutes to book, but there was a lot of being on hold involved. So my company paid me to listen to the radio over the phone. i like that, sticking it to the man and all that. Now I gotta see if Alicia is free on the night and if she wants to go and if she’ll drive us both in if I pay for her ticket.

Can’t think what else I was going to say about today. It was a fairly standard day. I’m waiting for TSO to come back up and also wondering if I have a blank tape for The Glass House as Dash is doing an extended show today. Yes, these are the things that drift about in my head. i should put a disclaimer on this site.

Moment of amusement for today: Woman looks at colour copier and says to Jackie “Is the copier working?” Jackie says “No, that’s why it has an out of order sign on it”. Well, it made me laugh.

OK, so maybe your definition of pretty isn’t going to match mine in this case, but I would love a Reproduction Arcade Game Cabinet. These look just like the ones they used to have up at Mansfield in their time share place there. Albe and I used to spend masses of time (and masses of money) on these. I remember one was a 2 player deal, with one player on each side of the table. I think I was probably quite bad at the games being a tiny person, but I remember vividly how much fun they were. These tables were in the country club bit of the resort (resort makes it sound a bit posh. It was basically a caravan park and some cabins with tennis courts, stables etc. Nothing over the top). Behind the kiosk was a little room with a few stand up games. The room smelled like chewing gum and there was, I believe, an overstuffed and worn out orange chair where I spent a lot of time waiting for a go on the games.

We stopped going to Mansfield when Dad sold the time share, I suppose I was about 7 or 8, possibly younger. A few years ago we went back when Betty had some time there she couldn’t take. The first thing you see when you drive in is the stables where I got a massive splinter from the railings. Next is the giant slide which scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I think one of the times we were there I spent a whole week getting myself brave enough to go down it. I can remember the thrill of standing at the bottom of the slide, knowing that I’d done the undoable. Then you drive past the caravans. There was always someone to play with at the vans, always someone to run up to the playground with. At the gate, I can remember the year we arrived in a dust storm and the woman in the blue dress turning her back to the wind while Mum tried to sheild my eyes from the dust. There’s the hill I hated walking up and there’s the cabin we were in once and there’s…

It was strange, being back there. A lot of things had changed but mostly not. The cabins looking over Lake Eildon were the same, the dead trees were the same. I couldn’t see the shells of houses under the water line, but one year we were there in the drought and the lake was empty revealing those houses. There’s a tree in the lake with steps nailed to it where a treehouse once stood.

Funny what seeing a games cabinet in the paper can bring back.

Sometimes I love the internet. Example, last night I got Tasha to tune into Fueled Radio while Dash was DJing. She wanted a song, told me and I told Dash. Basically, it was a request to the USA from Slovenia via Australia in a matter of seconds and don’t tell me that’s not fun because it is. Now even tho Tasha doesn’t play TSO, she got some vibe and it’s all good. This is what I love most about the internet.

Other times, I hate it. Example: two people I know online are in pain. Their lives are causing them a world of hurt and I am unable to help them in the way I would like to - which is basically taking them out for a drink and offering a shoulder. This is because they are in America and I am in Australia. My heart breaks for them and I can’t tell them so in anything other than plain black type. Plain black type is cold comfort. This is what I hate most about the internet.

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Finally have a Melbourne location for the Bowie Reality cinema thing and it’s a) on a Tuesday and b) tickets are on sale on a Wednesday and I don’t know if I can phone through for those. Damn damn damn damn! Will have to get something worked out for this or I’ll regret it forever.

Spent much of today making a mock up page for the Bridge IT launch. With luck none of the geeks involved will look at my html because it’s very cobbled together at the best of times and in this case more so. Also spent a bit of time mucking about with this site as I found out how to do that with the links (look at a link to see what that is) and since I’ve been wanting to do that for a while, I figured why the hell not? LOL. Didn’t play TSO yet today, I’m as shocked as you are, really.

Happy 3rd Birthday Lexi - even though i think it might have been yesterday. I’m confused. Timezones. You’ll know when you’re older hun :)

Oh my good god indeed but what a day of hilarity. Really. It started when we heard that one of the HQ staff has resigned (one of the giant prats) and someone mentioned the alarmingness of his combover. This brought to mind the day i was talking to him and the combover was lifted by the wind which caused Jackie and Diane to literally fall about. Jackie and I were on desk later on and unable to control ourselves. Both of us took advantage of the mood to try and make eachother laugh again by coming up with book/song/movie titles like “Dark Side of the Combover” “The combover that time forgot” “Queen Kat, Carmel and St Jude get a combover” “It’s my combover and I’ll comb if I want to” and - the winner and the one that sent us rushing for the workroom before the patrons could get too worried - “It seems to me you lived your life like a combover in the wind”. OK, so basically it’s mean but on the other hand, it’s combovers so we’re in a gray area, morally.

Um. That’s about it really. Yesterday IT came and we all pitched in with some good old fashioned faffing about with the PCs. Once more I failed to come across as a serious and industrious type to Tony (Yvette knows I’m not, so no worries there) because Jackie and I were making each other laugh again. Tony came to ask me to help with the PCs shortly after Jackie told me that according to the book of birth years and star signs she was reading, my ideal career would be as a Personal Trainer so we were both kind of speechless laughing. Last time Tony was in Jackie and I ended up helpless on the floor, weeping with the laughing so I kind of wonder what he thinks of the hilarity. Me, I love it :)

I am having terrible “what day is it?” confusion this week. Yesterday, which you well know was Tuesday, felt very Wednesday-y, while today had all the hallmarks of Tuesday in the air. I think, perhaps, someone is playing a cosmic joke on me. It would not be the first time. Perhaps it is simply lack of sleep (self inflicted, not caused by any kind of woe) plus a burst of caffine not seen before in my life (I never used to drink coffee). Perhaps it’s just the time of year. Perhaps the atmosphere of Tuesday has vanished, leaving Wednesday to spread itself thin over two days, meaning that the Wednesday feeling is, by Wednesday, stale and feels like Tuesday. I’d be lying if I said I knew but whatever the reason, it’s very disconcerting.

Today i didn’t have to teach an internet class which was good because yesterday I did and had a repeat “student” who, despite doing the class twice and despite the class being aimed at people who are not entirely sure what a mouse is, remains clueless. The major sticking point for her this time was the date on a flight booking. The date read: 4/9/2003. The woman in question here decided that as it was an American site, that was an American date and would therefore be the 9th of April, which is fine except the site was Australian which I told her several times without any kind of sinking in. I did point out that it was unlikely any airline would still be selling tickets for flights that have already happened, but this also failed to convince her.

Reward for this hour of stress: Bowie DVDs :D I’ve not watched Ziggy yet, I’ll watch it on the proper DVD player tomorrow, but have skimmed the best of and gone utterly girly over it. Yay for me, I don’t often get to go girly LOL.

Just got in from the evening shift. I say just in the sense that I’ve had my tea, a bath and watched some TV. So, it’s not really just got in but my feet still hurt, so I’m within the limits of justness.

Today there was a bloke with a floppy disk that wouldn’t work in our PCs. I know it didn’t because he kept making me try it in various computers. I asked him if he was running Windows 2000 on an IBM and he said yes which ruled out the usual weird-thing-win2000-does-with-some-floppies thing (stop me if I get too technical). So, I spent a long long time with him which, to be honest, was not fun on account of a) he was thick and b) he and soap seem to have parted company quite some time ago. 90 minutes later, the problem is revealed - the disk is formatted for his Apple. Excuse me while I have just the teeniest nervous breakdown over here in this corner. Thanks.

Had the best time on TSO last night with Fueled radio broadcasting from Board to Death where my sim lives. Dash was DJing and played two Bowie songs for me so that was a big yay :)

Speaking of Bowie and big yays, there’s a cinema concerty thing on the way. I have no details, but I am terribly joyous on the subject (Jackie even pretended to care - bless her). Preordered the next Bowie album today too. Bowie bowie bowie. Broken record much? Anyway, the DVDs I ordered the other night aren’t here yet. I’m sure I’ll probably bang on about those when they get here tho.

According to my horoscope today i’m going to be spending a lot of time on computers and/or at the library. Uncanny.

Apart from playng TSO for quite long chunks of time this weekend, I’ve also been revisiting Bobbins, the original strip by John Allison. I highly recommend it but please remember that all those pop-ups are not my fault. They’re worth putting up with tho.

Finally back in touch with Poppett after what, 2 months. Silly misunderstanding there.

Ummm, I’ve not posted for an entire week and that’s about all I can think of to say.

OK, so it’s kind of worrying to have to admit that one of the high lights of the week, if not the month or year, is three guys singing “Throw Your Arms Around Me”, but if those three guys are the Doug Anthony All Stars, then you just have to admit. I’ve been utterly besotted with DAAS since I was a mere scrap of a girl peering at them on a teeny black and white TV. This was back when The Big Gig was on, late 80’s. I was not, technically, allowed to stay up and watch it, but I had the TV in my room so I never missed it. Did I understand it? Probably not even half, but can still remember Anthony Morgan talking about hair wraps and Adelaide, the kidnapping of Pate Biscuit’s sidekick bongo, Candida the loopy fitness woman, the airhostesses and, more than anything, the mass hysteria and chanting of “All Stars! All Stars!” when it was time for the Dougs to come on. I remember them singing “Heard it on the Grapevine” which was amazing. Paul McDermott has made “Throw Your Arms Around Me” his own, but I have never heard it better than with Tim and Rich there. I got quite emotional.

Yeah, OK. It was another “not much happened” day…

It’s time I admitted that this Bowie thing is not fandom. It’s unhealthy. Plus, it’s expensive. LOL. Just bought a couple of Bowie DVDs and am soon to start scouting round to see if anyone wants to come see him in Sydney (I think I’ve got Alicia set up for the Melbourne show). So, ladies and gents, settle in as I tell you how this Bowie thing happened (and not, I should point out, because while trawling through the archives today to find what I’d said in an old post, I noticed my posts are getting kinda short these days).

OK, rewind to the late 1980s and place yourself in the loungeroom at Debbie’s house (you may want to knock first, and also remember that she doesn’t live there anymore). I can’t remember how old we were, but I guess about grade 5 or 6 (11 or 12) and Labyrinth was the movie to be watching, so we did dozens upon dozens of times. Then we moved on. Personally, I moved on to Rocky Horror. I can’t remember what Deb moved onto, but knowing her mum it probably wasn’t Rocky Horror. We still watched Labyrinth from time to time, but not as often as before. So I was kinda aware of Bowie, but not really if you get my drift. Now fast forward to the mid 90s - I dare say around 94/95 - smack between them actually since it was New Years Eve when one of the tv stations ran Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars which I couldn’t switch off. I remember very clearly sitting on the floor of my room staring at the TV like the meaning of life was being transmitted or something. That’s one of the DVDs I just bought actually. Yay for that. So, was that the moment when I dashed out and bought all the CDs? Nope. I did pick up a couple of LPs from the op-shop a few weeks later, but that’s about it. Oh come on, you didn’t think this was going to be interesting did you?

See, you gotta understand that I was - and still am - a Beatles girl. As far as I was concerned, that was pretty much all there was to music. That’s not to say I didn’t listen to other music - U2, Counting Crows (yeah yeah JP, they’re so derivative), Frente and so forth. Mainly though, it was all Beatles all the time. There was also a link to someone that kept me with the Beatles and very reluctant to move on to other things. Well, I saw it as moving on. It wasn’t, in the end. Where was I? Oh yup. Anyway, I heard Rock and Roll Suicide on the radio and was literally stunned so I bought The Best of Bowie 1969/1974 and that was pretty much it, I was hooked. Slower than that, tho. I listened to that one for about 2 solid years before starting to pick up the other albums. I still don’t have them all.

I don’t know what it is, really. I know that if I have an album on while I’m doing something (at this moment I’m listening to Hunky Dory) I quite often have to stop and listen rather than just let it run in the background. Something catches me, a quality of voice, a pattern of lyric. That’s not to say the man is perfect - I’m not much fond of Hours for example but Heathen ripped my heart out. Rock and Roll Suicide is a damned good example of a song I stop for.

A while back I was doing one of those 20 questions things that are handy for journals if you haven’t much to say at the moment. I didn’t end up posting it, but there was a question: If you could be anything, what would you be? to which I replied “A Bowie love song”.

Speaking of not posting, I’m nearly not posting this, but it’s taken ages so you can all shut up and enjoy it. Thanks.

Thursday saw 99% of the staff from my branch out at lunch after winning a little competiton collection patron e-mail addresses. Yay for us. After all the endless faffing about in order to sort the lunch out it was actually nice to get it over with. Of course, everyone complained bitterly about the slowness of the service, but I didn’t mind so much. I never really worry about slow service unless it’s exceptionally slow, maybe that’s the small town girl I am or maybe I’m more laid back. I think it’s probably the latter. I’m not fussed (generally) at being held up, but then I don’t have commitments like kids to worry about. Thankfully.

Friday saw me at the monthly BITS meeting where even I began to wonder at my state of mind as I was in hysterics at the smallest thing. It never seems to matter how clearly or carefully Tony explains something, there’s always at least 15 minutes of people looking utterly blank and asking obvious questions. The clincher on the loss of mental control was the half hour discussion on the colour and wording on signs for the public terminals. People can get quite heated over this, apparently. I was unable to move, being weak with laughter.

Today saw me at work again for a Saturday shift, urgh. The place was dead which is annoying on a Saturday as you really want it to be busy. Sure, it’s a pain in the arse having an overflowing book drop and a queue of people, but at least the time goes fast. More annoying than anything was that I finally managed to catch up with Rudy via Yahoo, and was limited to my lunch break to chat. Honestly, this work thing really gets in the way.