weight is on its way back down, putting me in good spirits today. remember that i have to eat something. supposed to. i don’t have to, really, do i? no. yes. no. that people do this every day, without sparing a thought, is so fucking foreign. strange creatures.

keeping me sane, i suspect, is the seven packs of malboros i’ve smoked in the last three days. eighth is at my elbow. ninth is in my purse. it’s going to be a long night, bubbles.

Tomorrow I have my first frontline ambulance shift in Wellington as an observer.  I am very excited and interested to see what tomorrow brings.

I am finding that, as someone who has created such an identity for myself out of being lost, it is hard to become acustomed to being found.  There are still moments of doubt, of questioning, of starting to search elsewhere – almost as if I can’t imagine life without searching.  It is unfamiliar to me, and so I find myself tempted to move towards the familiar, towards the search again, the place I have spent my whole adult life.

I believe we can often become comfortable with the situations we say we don’t want.  On one level, we want to find what we’re looking for.  On another level, finding it is so unfamiliar to us, we can be in danger of rejecting it in favour of the comfort of being lost or unhappy.  We begin to define ourselves by our unhappy state, so that chancing upon happiness leave the ego uncertain, leaves our whole definition of ourselves in question.  That can be a scary place to be – because it begs the question “well, who am I then now?” 

Who am I, if not searching, if not questing, if not lost?  That is how I have unconsciously defined myself for so many years, it’s as if I don’t know how to be at peace with being at peace.  NOT being at peace as become so much a part of my self definition, that peace itself has become scary, happiness has become scary, actually being in the place I have been searching for is unfamiliar, scary terrain.

In order to move forward, we must be able to let go of the persona we defined for ourselves around our pain.  We must let go of the little labels we have learnt to live by.  We must let go of being ‘the single person’, ‘the depressed person’, ‘the sad person’, ‘the unhappy person’, ‘the lost person’, ‘the searching person’ – we must let go of these self-created personas we cling to (decrying them all the while) if we ever hope to find out what is beyond them.  Who am I if I am not that persona?  The only way to find out is to push through, be uncomfortable, sit with the unfamiliarity of the true self hiding beneath the labels.

Perhaps we have to realise that to be happy, we have to not only want to be happy – we have to be able to accept that happiness when it comes along, even if it feels scary and unfamiliar at first.

I found this passage by Paulo Coelho the other day, and it resonates so much with me, I feel goosebumps reading it:

In many oral traditions, wisdom is represented by a temple, with two columns at its entrance: these two columns always have names of opposite things, but in order to illustrate what I mean, we will call one Fear and the other Desire. When a man stands at this entrance, he looks at the column of Fear and thinks: “my God, what will I find further ahead?” Then he looks at the column of Desire and thinks: “my God, I’m so accustomed to that which I have, I wish to continue living as I have always lived.” And he remains still; this is what we call tedium.

– Can a person remain his whole life in this situation?

He can be pushed by life, but resist and remain there, always complaining – and his suffering will be useless, will teach him nothing.

Yes, a person can stand for the rest of his days facing one of the many doors he should go through, but he must understand that he has only truly lived up to that point. He may continue to breathe, walk, sleep and eat – but with less and less pleasure, because he is already spiritually dead and does not know it.

Until one day when, as well as his spiritual death, physical death appears; at that moment God will ask: “what did you do with your life?” We must all answer this question, and woe betide those who answer: “I remained standing at the door.”

We must be willing to sit with the strength of both our fear and our desire if we wish to move forward and do something with our lives. 

I believe we are all called to something in each life.  I believe you can miss the calling if you don’t give it the space to make itself heard.  I believe many people spend their whole lives running away from or ignoring their calling.  A calling doesn’t have to be noble or grand.  It can be something that seems quite small or “silly”.  The calling is whatever whispers to you from your heart in the quiet moments.  Remember – the calling at first may just be “the blank urge“.  I believe we have to just keep following that urge and it will clarify itself in the living.

And there is the key.  The clarity comes about by living into the call, the blank urge.  Not by sitting around thinking about it or lamenting the lack of it.  The clarity comes about by just getting out there and doing something.  Solvitur ambulando.   If you don’t know which door to go through, just pick a door.  Pick the door you are most afraid of, the door at whose threshold you feel both Fear and Desire screaming at you the loudest.  Pick a door, any door.

When it is my time, I still don’t know really what my answer will be to the ultimate question: “what did you do with your life?”

But whatever I do, I know one thing – I will not remain standing at the door.

I have twenty posts, or so, to write, and myriad other things to tackle, but I have to say this…
Why, since we got home from our five-day vacation in the snow (which went almost perfectly, considering the trouble we could have had flying into the high desert in December with an almost four-year-old and a whiny pregnant lady to drive into the middle of nowhere for fun in the snow with family and vegetarian posole) has my return home felt like the reverse of the Mr. Miagi clap-and-rub? All energy sucked from me by the cold hands of incessant, useless, endless repetition of rules and basic social tenets, greeted with surly and defiant nastiness. Wax on, wax off. Wax on, wax off. Paint the fence.

At least Daniel got valuable skills in the film, and the chance, eventually, to kick the crap out of the nasty guy. I get the skills but no violent outlet. Mr. Miagi got the pride of being a fabulous coach AND he got his whole to-do list taken care of by someone else.

I get to do all the work and may, MAY someday get to smile as my kid uses his guts and skill to kick the crap out of someone else. For a change, please, kick the crap out of someone else.

What a good start to the day, the bus arrived at the TNG rented offices only to find that despite it being Utterly Bloody Freezing, none of the staff had arrived and the shutters were down. A staff member then appeared and let everyone in. I would like to point out that one of the people on TNG today was a heavily pregnant girl and standing out in freezing winds with no shelter was probably extremely bad for her.

My own day was mostly a tedious and silent experience- that is, I spoke to no one as I managed with some scraping to get my requisite amount of ticks on the sheet early and then say dying of boredom trying in vain to find new things to apply for, whilst the noise level in the room behind me grew to epic proportions. Equally awkward was the fact one girl, LazyText, started the same day I did but was subsequently kicked off the course, and was also kicked out of the shop where I work because of her utterly laziness, was back, gobby, loud and with a voice like a goose laying a square egg, she sat behind me flirting with the boys and making no effort whatsoever to behave cordially.

Listening to the tutor talking to the people on induction was a thorough was of damaging my pride:

“We will get you a job, if you put the effort in, but you’ve got to want a job. We have people who come in here with quals up to their ears, degrees and everything but if they don’t want to work then there’s not much we can do.”

I seethed. Since my last post no one from TNG has approached me regarding any progress made on finding me a suitable placement. If I do manage anything in the next couple of months, it will be down to my own efforts and have eff all to do with them.

As nothing happened really, apart from I died of boredom and felt carsick a lot, I’m going to highlight some of the people who were in TNG today.

The boys outnumber the girls, for no obvious reason.

Those who do appear to want to get down to work are ignored.

We had one lad who actually has been given a job, but his traineeship doesn’t start till January, so he still had to come on TNG in the meantime.

We had the aforementioned heavily pregnant girl, whose baby is due quite soon, but still has to attend despite the fact it’s nigh impossible to even get her a placement considering how soon the baby is due (Christmas baby I gather).

We had one lad who had been working hard since he left school at sixteen, but local industry being what it is at the moment, his place shut down and then he was out of work due to an injury. Owing to a mixup in paperwork, the dole still counted this as time spent unemployed and therefore made him go to TNG too.

So, another day of sitting on my bum getting progressively more world weary as I go. As a commenter has mentioned to me that they would ‘rather stick their hands in a grinder’ than go back to TNG I’m very much afraid I concur. I think, if this were to go on much longer, I would risk poverty and lack of NHS stamps.

THEATRE: Shining City. By Conor McPherson. Inside Job Productions and Griffin Independent, Stables Theatre, Sydney. November 28… From The Australian. Full story

This site may contain information about: city codes. For a different topic see here. The blog is also related to: city furniture.

As you may have caught in the ever-shifting flow of news on Facebook, the date is now set for the surgical replacement of my right hip  – 29th January. I’m pleased – that’s less waiting time between the deciding and the doing than I expected. I actually could’ve had January 4, but I enjoy the swimming/sunbathing/partying/relaxing traditions of a Sydney summer too much to so incapacitate myself at the height of it. I’d rather spend January limping and grumbling in the sun than under fluoros doing physio – and hydrotherapy is a long way short of surf and sand – so the end of January is perfect.

My surgeon is Dr Michael O’Sullivan, who does all the ex-dancers and athletes, and pretty much only does hips. We’ll be at the Mater, according to their website “the largest and one of the most respected orthopaedic surgical hospitals in the Southern Hemisphere, performing over 1,500 joint replacements every year”. I’ll be checking in on the 28th and staying 5 or 6 days. Do come and visit – I plan to be an exceptionally lively patient.

Today I stood for half an hour in the cold and wet waiting to be picked up by the Bus Of Doom to take me to TNG offices for another jobsearch day. Last week’s was so dreadful and pointless I couldn’t even come up with the energy to blog about it.

Today’s wasn’t much better. All day typing out application forms and feeling distinctly pressured to meet ‘joblead’ targets, despite the fact that there weren’t actually, a lot of jobs within my even Possible fields that I hadn’t already applied for. Grr.

But I had my first review session with the man who puts people on placement. He was completely suprised when he was told that I was doing my shop job, he’d somehow got the idea that they had snapped me up so quickly for a specific project that involved utilising my skills, not for me to become a shop-floor supervisor (which basically means ‘carry on as you have been doing only now if the till is out you will catch the blame and if no one’s working hard enough, it’s also your fault’). Lately I’ve been sorting my head out a little regarding directional pulls, assisted by an offer of casual work (not enough hours to escape the dole at all) within one of the fields I had been considering. So I mentioned these things to him and he has concluded that he will now work at getting me a more suitable placement. I thought that he was doing that already, but at least he’s on the right track now. Fingers crossed!

The shop itself was wearing on me a little these past few weeks. I have always found it hard graft, being not particularly suited to retail although competant enough. Some days have been better than others, but I’ve had several days where I am basically responsible for some people who, for one reason and another, physically can’t do a great deal, or are not capable of finding things to do, this leads to my treading a thin line between picking up their slack myself on occasion, and then at other times trying to give them jobs to do without appearing to be ordering them around. If the Manager would deign to confirm my supervisory role then I would not have to tread quite so carefully, but Manager is a hard person for people to get on with quite often, and I’ve already nursed a few wounds from that cutting tongue in the past week, even indirectly aimed missiles graze quite badly.

So, yes, I’m definitely hoping that they might find me a placement more suited to where I want to go. In the meantime, I’m also doing nanowrimo! Yay

I’m home, but I’m in a strange state. It’s 11.30pm, the plane got in after eight but it took me a couple of hours to get from the airport to Redfern.

That was fun… not. Just under a week ago my bank got wind that my debit card details “may have been compromised” and cancelled the damn thing. My financial lifeline in Europe, you understand. I survived on friend credit (fredit? A froan?) as far as the boarding gate, and I had AUD$10 in my wallet.

Not enough for a cab, though I thought I might be able to share one. But the first cabbie I approached with that plan demanded 75% of the fare, which is his right by law, but he was unpleasantly aggro about it and I hadn’t, at that point, the resilience to keep trying. I was hoping to avoid the train because it meant changing at Central and hauling my bags up 30 steps at Redfern. So I investigated the bus. ‘Investigated’ in this context means queued for, since signage at the airport bus/coach stops is minimal and information non-existent, and after 15 minutes along came a bus whose driver said I needed the 400, which would be along in another 15 minutes, and I’d have to change at Mascot shops and cross the road for the 309. I reconsidered the train, in case it came sooner, but it turns out the train fare on that rip-off private line is over $15. Back to the bus.

A journey by car, planes, and buses that began at 9.30 GMT yesterday ended sometime after 22.00 EST tonight with me collapsing into a chair on the terrace, crumb of herbal anaesthetic in hand. No-one was home, but the new presence is everywhere evident in little differences, someone else’s stuff. Where is Casey? Is he coming home tonight? Is he hiding out? Does he even expect me? I really should’ve Facebook messaged him, I realise after a while, because I don’t have his phone number. This is a little weird.

And so I unpack my laptop and set up, but though it tells me I’m connected to my wireless network, Firefox can’t find anything; Skype won’t open, I’m just not online. I plug in, but it’s not that. A problem with my ISP? I don’t know if I even have their phone number, and I’m too sore and tired to go look for it. Worse, I’ve put my Australian SIM back in my phone but my credit’s expired, and I can only top up online. Worse still, like an idiot I months ago let myself be booked to model tomorrow afternoon, and of course with no phone credit the SOS texts I tried to send this evening to organise a replacement wouldn’t have gone. I’ll have to call the models tomorrow morning, because at the moment, my only means of communication is the landline and it’s a little late to be making calls.

Suddenly, I’m strangely isolated. I can’t even call the people I should. All I can do is write – offline – about coming home to strangeness. And try to reassemble the thoughts I had while away, about coming back.

It’s 1am. I’ve cooked and eaten a bowl of noodles, by my calculations my sixth light meal in about 32 hours. I’m tired and buzzy; and I’ve finished the chocolate. I should try to sleep.

Oh yeah. Don’t worry, I do plan to write about the trip, the whole trip (though don’t expect ‘nothing but’) – but at the moment I just have scattered notes, so bear with me while I construct and reconstruct, over the coming days and weeks. Each section will have its moment, backdated to its time. Do backdated entries show up on an RSS feed? Keep me posted.

Someone once told me that the most powerful person in an organization is the receptionist.  Although it may not be entirely true, there is a kernel of wisdom in that advice, because the receptionist touches everyone that comes through the door of a business.  The process of touching allows the receptionist to develop a sense of order about vendors, staff, and clients, allowing her to come to understand the underlying structure of the organization and be able to successfully assess and courteously triage access to executives and other staff.

I recently ran across a director-level staff person not yet ready to relinquish known workarounds and seize the opportunity to transform his work by touching data flows (such as cleaning up a client database).  The rationalizations were typical, “I’m too busy” and “Maybe we could hire someone else to do that?,” failing to recognize the long-term benefits of gathering information oneself and understand the underlying limitations.

I was saddened by emphasis on the short-term urgencies and the limited investment in the important (long-term) that I observed, but this was a case where I did not actually have any influence.  Because I care about the organization, I asked too many questions, so my advice to self is to stop asking such questions, but I digress…

When I look at situations like this one, I recognize that organic learning is often required, because organizations tend to grow organically – they fail to document along the way, they fail to create processes for review and archiving (until it is a crisis), and they allow single person specialists to emerge (that can leave with the organizational history).   Yet it is important (and tedious) to gather, consolidate, or validate information when trying to move an organization to an improved future.  The hard news is that such work often requires tedium and/or assimilating the unknown.  The good news is that the most valued people in every organization are the people who learn, think, and transform by doing this.  As such, my long view advice:

• Seize the opportunity to touch key data flows and learn the limitations of the current system.
• Spend time on the important (learn, think, transform) even when your schedule is filled with urgencies.
• Do not be above tediousness; participate in the tedium and gain appreciation for the efforts of others who complete tedious work regularly.

Are you touching important data flows, learning from them, and creating transformation?

Guess I should finish this journal before resuming the next – then put it away, have done with it.

Strategies for health:
labotomize roommates
avoid V like the plague
take vitamins
move far away
sit this one out
talk not on the telephone
burp and sneeze simultaneously
listen to NPR
write letters
go outside
get some work done
avoid all girls
win lottery
spontaneously combust

One way to fill as many pages as possible – write one word per line. So – I’ve changed – so what? I no longer feel like myself. I hate the entire planet. Actually I’m fine. Doing ok not as ass licking behind as I once thought. Thawt.

So now it seems that V is basically M. Yuck. Or worse. Today is going to drag on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

From today on I’m not going to call M_, V. For three weeks. How’s that? That used to be my stricture for non-masturbation, i.e. I could not talk to a girl unless I had not masturbated for three weeks. Purity versus filth.

If only I could keep a consistent state of mind.
Help! Too much Copenhagen. My head is spinning; my eyes are throbbing. My mind is compressing. My hair is standing on end.

When I lived out west my goal was to come out here to the East Coast and make it big. Fantasy fashion world bizarro mundo magic tragic. Limitations of V drastically knocked me off track. Empty and nothing. Too white trash girl. Farmer’s daughter gone bad. Her moral schema at odds with itself. No safety there. Meet cool strong interesting people. Sunk my strength in V. Tied myself down. Hobbled amputated.
What dreams goals inspirations now?

I can’t stand today, today is endless and drags on and on. I wish I had a clue, someone to talk to, a way to stick to my decisions. A way to restructure my life successfully. A spit can. I threw it away. It’s damn cold in here. Wish I could turn the air off. Wish I had an apartment of my very own – or even a room where the electricity worked. I need to get out of here. Need to get away. Fuck this shit. Fuck the restaurant. Fuck V. God damn it. I gave her so much credit and she dissed me. Fuck this shit. Fuck fuck fuck. you’re so lame. Fuck you. Stupid, stupid girl. Stupid, stupid me.
Stop looking at the clock – asshole. Stupid fuck. Fuck you. No, fuck you. NO FUCK YOU.

More cigarettes. Passing the time. Want to take a nap. Clean my room. Take a break find a mistress, sense of salvation, structure, strength and safety. Go away V. Please just go if you have nothing to offer. I hate you. Despise you. I don’t know why I feel obligated to be nice to you. Lying bitch. I should have read the letter that was in the trash – when I first got back to Philly this last summer. If I was going to read a letter that would have been the one. Should have been the one. This day is never going to end. I’m sick and I’m miserable. I hate today fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you typical [

]

… only a few more pages left in this journal. M_ just walked by – didn’t stop in to say hi today. Probably just another person on the planet sick and tired of me. Fuck everyone.

I then went outside to get I’s number from A. Then smoked cigarette. Feeling much better now.

Pure doldrums. A very boring day. A tedious, endless affair. Not actually boring – but tedious. Endless how slowly the time passes from nothing to the next. People are idiots it’s four pm and everyone sucks. Wish I had television to watch mind mood altering drugs, brain damage, never known V at all. Why do I get involved with stupid girls that are no damn good. Is it because I’m stupid and no damn good myself? Fuck J, what a ditz. Should have known – she was always stoned…

Now I’m left with nothing. Jesus Christ – It’s still only four o’clock – seems like hours should have gone by already well let’s knock it out write without stopping to the end of this journal – yeah, achieve one unimportant, irrelevant goal today now that the entire weekend is shot to shit – my living situation sucks, people suck, life is ass and that’s that. There’s no way in hell I’m gong to have anything to do with anyone new for a good long while – new meaning people I’ve known less than two and a half years – excepting L  – and casual acquaintances and why the hell do I want to be V’s friend anyway? What’s the fucking point? Could it be I’m hung up on her? Should I be dealing with her as if she was M – rather than A_? Because, you see, I don’t know – but she hasn’t shown me that she has shit to offer – just stupid, stupid annoying pain in the ass personality and annoying, upsetting incidents in her stupid life. Hell, I tried but she shot me down at every turn I saw her through so much shit and now that she’s all about fun – hey fun stuff – she doesn’t give a shit. Child. Stupid, spoiled, obnoxious brat. Why should I continue to indulge her? Fuck that shit. I’ll just laugh in her face and not give a mother fuck.

No stopping – yikes that’s tough drain plasma ejaculation spurt spurt stain spastic ejaculation sput sput cum on my face I’m a slut fuck me fuck me let me suck your dick I’m fun girl I’m a blowjob queen I’m shameless and horny. Shameless, horny, drunk and having a good time. Yeah – fucking kids [

] Why the fuck did I try when I wasn’t up for it? What the hell did I expect – that she could somehow save me – and after a year and some months of holding back, did I let myself go – when it  was far too late.? Ass. Idiot – confused, twisted, fucked up shit bag. Fuck you E. I fucking hate you.

Fifteen minutes to go. Just saw M_ – She was nice – we chatted – so I am intentionally creating this opposition – where I believe that people hate me – then next page or so it turns out that they don’t. Maybe I need to chill out and not force the issue. Patience, calm, discretion. All down to girl trouble – V and J. Yep. I can’t be as angry at J because there was really nothing to that whole thing and my castles in the dead, stale air of mu current wreck of a life  were constructed out of two days. I do feel betrayed, used, dissed, like shit – considering the situation it was to be expected. I guess I should have stuck by V – but that was asking the impossible. She was only waiting fro someone better to come along. She had no real intention of re-investing herself in the relationship – and she wanted to have sex with me but could not talk to me about sex. Some five minutes to go. Anything V has done I too have done – in some form – basically we just weren’t cut out for each other. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah weenie bitches all around. Maybe I should be angry at the patriarchy instead.

Yesterday was my first ‘jobsearch’ day where, instead of going to the shop I volunteered at which has taken me on placement I hopped on the horrible bus of doom and nausea and was taken to spend the day at TNG ‘jobsearching’.

There are many things wrong with this: my computer is a  whizzy and respectable little thing, they have about eight lower-ability computers and about 20 people there on ‘jobsearch’. Additionally, I discovered when I finally did get on a computer that the website I needed to access in order to apply for a job was blocked and none of the advisors had any sort of pass-code to let me on to it, even if I permitted them to watch me do so to ensure I wasn’t doing anything BUT applying for a job.

But that isn’t the thing that has haunted me since.

One of the people at TNG is a woman with a distinctly steely manner. She sat down next to me (interrupting my filling in applications, I might add and causing me to start late for dinner) and began asking me about my career plans and such and I explained my current predicament and how I would be very happy with admin or some other job that would serve whilst I sorted myself out a bit more, but career wise there were several avenues I was looking at and whichever one I managed to get my foot in the door of would likely have my fealty.

She told me that she believed that everyone at TNG could go out and walk into a job, but they kept setting themself up to fail.

She told me that by applying for a minimum of 20jobs per week was me ’sitting on my backside’ and not doing anything.

She told me that ‘deep down’ I knew what career I wanted I just needed to go out there and GET it.

She told me that I was very good at ‘talking the talk’ but was not walking the walk.

Finally, when I insisted that I hadn’t been spending my time being completely idle (several work placements, voluntary work and doing several other quite major things which I don’t like to go into detail here because it would simply serve as a distraction from the Everyman purpose of this blog as a whole)  she told me that I was still ‘not walking the walk’ AND had I ever considered pursuing my talent freelance?

If I hadn’t been fighting not to cry by this point I would have replied “Yes. I have. I’ve also considered starving in a ditch.”

“Well, it happened to [name of famous person] it could happen to you.”

Well I’m sorry, I’m not going to go freelance, condemning myself to a continual existance without the security of routine and order that I crave in employment and condemning myself to become a parasite living on my family’s non-existant wealth because freelancing in that particular industry is one of the hardest things to do in the world. So hard, in fact that my ELEVEN YEAR OLD SELF considered and decided that such pleasures would have to be relegated to hobby status because it wasn’t a viable career path for me.

In other words, the woman, to borrow a phrase from my fellows “was wrecking my head” in the worst possible way. I now wander around surrounded by thoughts of gloom and worthlessness that someone doesn’t actually see how bloody hard I’m trying.

One of the key things which strikes you about being homeless is the tedium. My room in the B&B is roughly on the same scale as a prison cell but lacks even a toilet.

I do have a television which can receive the five over-the-air channels though. And that is a very irrelevant though. I don’t watch broadcast television and I haven’t for quite some time. I’m used to being able to torrent or youtube or use the BBC’s iPlayer to watch whatever I want to watch (although as a slight coincidence, Channel 4 were showing True Blood and Generation Kill when I put the telly on because I needed the background noise and these happen to be two shows I torrented regularly when they first aired). Additionally, I would use my lovefilm subscription to whore my way through DVDs – three at a time and as many in a month as I could post and receive whilst also ripping them as ISOs for a more ahem permanent solution.

I’d play videogames. Sometimes obsessively. My 360, my Wii and my PC were essential parts of my entertainment philosophy. When I boxed everything up the resultant boxes hosting the videogames were amongst the heaviest of my possessions.

I miss being able to surf the net whenever I desire. Previously if I had a thought about something then I could instantaneously google it or browse the relevant site if I already knew the URL. Now I’m restricted to only being able to do this when I can find a net connection. B&Bs do not do wi-fi.

I don’t have my books to read. Any of them. My library was vast enough that when I was putting everything into storage one of the individuals who assisted me in moving the boxes commented that I obviously liked to read. This struck me as a somewhat curious comment. After all, who doesn’t like to read? It turns out the answer is most people. For most, as soon as they finish the highest level of education they achieve then they never or rarely read a book again. As someone who would oft have three books on the go at the same time this strikes me as a disturbing scenario – how can you be so lacking in imagination that you do not want to delve into the worlds that others have sought to conjure?

I miss having my background noise in the form of the always-on radio. I can at least use my phone for that function to a limited extent. Yet I miss the discussion-based shows that are my bread and butter.

You are truly left with nothing to do.

The tedium could drive you stir crazy trying to fill your days with some little thing which could give you purpose. Except, after a fashion, it is far worse than being in prison. In a gaol you know that you will (with certain exceptions) eventually get out; that life can eventually assume some form of normality. Being homeless you lack this definity. You suffer until you do not suffer anymore, but you know not when that suffering ends.

Co-op midterm reports are due tomorrow morning, so I just whipped mine up this evening. I was already painfully aware of how tedious and menial my co-op is, but it reached a new low writing the report: I have almost two pages describing the function and structure of the organization, and just two short paragraphs describing my own job.

I’m doing the kind of job that made me go back to school in the first place, for the sake of never having to do this kind of job again. FML.

The World as manifest in Twitter was rocked at the news. Miley Cyrus has stopped tweeting, saying it was becoming a drug, affecting her personal life

“I need to be able to live and learn in private. I never want to quit entertaining it is my life, my love, and my passion but I can’t have my personal life be other people’s entertainment. If we spent more time enjoying what we are doing besides tweeting about it, we would enjoy our lives a whole lot more.”

One tweeter does not make a summer, nor one less the start of winter. Already the movement to get Miley back tweeting has taken off through #mileycomeback.

Miley Cyrus
Caught the virus
Caught it real bad

Must admit her
Love of twitter
Made her real sad

Miley Cyrus
Beat the virus
Put it in a sack

Will Country’s fears
And Western tears
Bring our Miley back?

All day Thursday and all day Friday, a plumber was here “fixing” our bathroom. Our plumbing had been acting moderately weird for a couple of days but no red flags. On Wednesday night, oh may god. Total plumbing nuclear meltdown. Toilet doesn’t flush but drains into out neighbor’s toilet which overflows. Then it backs up and comes up in our bathtub. Kitchen sink overflows neighbor’s toilet. It’s a holy mess. So the landlord called the plumber and he was here all day Thursday and Friday. We woke up today and it happened all over again. I called the landlord and by the time she stopped by, naturally everything was working fine. When we went to go get ready, of course, the while shebang started again. There is SO MUCH dirty water in our bathtub it is sickening ugh. And this morning Monster jumped into it by accident which made us have to give him a bath! And while we were at it we gave Elvira one too…*sigh* so anyway the plumber AND the landlord will be here at 9am, 10am latest. Ugh.

The rest of the day was nice though. We had breakfast, watched Grey Gardens, I crocheted…the cats smelled good and sat in a sunbeam to dry off…we had a good time. But the bathroom thing made us crazy and want to get out of the house so we went to the movies at The Grove to see “Paranormal Activity”. It was pretty good but not as scary as I thought it would be. They DID master “dread” though. You spend the entire movie in a total state of dread. It actually made me feel kind of sick. Go see it if you get a chance. It did actually make people scream in the theater and I DID rip my thumbnails off in anxiety…haha…

Now we’re home and Kristyn put on the Golden Girls to comfort us. I had some hot chocolate too and am feeling very sleepy…(that’s why this blog is very dry and unentertaining haha…) Oh! We are 99% sure we saw Audrina from “The Hills” walking down the street in Hollywood tonight. That sort of fulfills my “seeing someone from the Hills” goal. It’s good to have lofty goals.

Oh and take a look at this picture. See if you can find what is out of place:

A travesty of disorganisation today. The people working there may be nice, but nothing can excuse the intense boredom of being from just before 9am till well after 12.30 without any work to do because some booklets hadn’t been finished/sorted/given to us. Our tutor handed out a few of those riddle games and a general knowledge quiz that enabled me to work out ‘Spot The Other Graduate On The Table’ and I finished my library book by 10.30am.

I had brought a sewing kit with me, but after the Health And Safety lecture yesterday warning that even some items of jewellery may be considered weapons I decided that the scissors I’d packed to cut my embroidery threads probably had best stay well hidden.

When the booklets finally arrived I was disappointed to find they were basically glossy ‘fill out’ boxes in order to create a CV. Like the one sitting next to me on the table. But I had to still fill out the information. Application forms are bad enough for making one do this over and over until one can repeat one’s marks and years of attendance in one’s head- but to fill out eight or so pages that Would Not Be Going Anywhere was quite painful.

Things picked up in the last quarter of an hour as I was allowed on the computers and managed to fill in and print off an application form;I finished the envelope just as the Horrendous Bus came to take me home.

But things are improving! Owing to the shop I already volunteer at often accepting TNG people, the minute they heard I was going on there they were all “WE’LL HAVE YOU. COME TO US!” and so that is what I will be doing. Tomorrow I shall be working there hurray!

So yesterday I had my appointment at the Dole at 9.30. This was quite handy, as it meant I could get it out of the way, go to the library and then do other things with my day (baking, mostly). However, I live a couple of miles from the dole offices and thus got somewhat drenched by the very fine, but no less wet rain.

It actually went passably well. Probably because I just sat back passively and let the world wash over me. My ‘Advisor’ looked at the job-website for me (to little avail as I’d spent the weekend after coming back from holiday on Friday night applying for all I could find on there) and then printed off a couple of things.

She did manage to nearly (again) provide me with someone else’s job-search print out- which includes the person’s name and FULL ADDRESS in the top left hand corner. I pointed it out but (again) no apology. Data Protection? What Data Protection? *sigh*Lucky I’m honest really.

Then she booked me in to meet with the man from TNG. This will hopefully not be too bad, as the charity shop I volunteer at take a lot of people on through TNG and the manager was going to Have Words on my behalf because they like me and trust me and I’ve done all the health and safety and CRB hoops- and I already work there on the weekend. I’m hoping, in truth, to see whether, provided I do get to go there, I could appease TNG and only work 4 (or is it 3 if I have to go to the TNG offices once a week?) days of the main week and keep working on Saturdays, when the shop is at its most short-staffed.

Ah well, that’s all for Friday to deal with. I intend to try and make the most of the next couple of days whilst I’ve still the time and energy to do Life.

There comes a point in every project where the initial enthusiasm has worn off and the excitement of seeing the finish coming over the horizon has not yet started. I seem to have reached that point with all the projects I’m working on at the moment, and I’m struggling as a result.

I’m trying to take comfort in the beauty of the materials, and the rhythm of the process, but it’s hard going.

Best get back to work then…

Yesterday when I was stalking Dominic West on line (what´s a girl supposed to do until her Mim visits and brings her The Wire, Season 2?), I realised that he played the lead role in Tom Stoppard´s Rock ´n´ Roll, a production which I had the misfortune of seeing in London in January 2007.

I don´t precisely remember why I disliked the play so intensely, just that it was intensely tedious*. Now, if only I had thought to bring my opera glasses, I´m sure I would´ve had more fun watching Mr West at close range.

* It did make me want to catch a Plastic People of the Universe gig someday though. A good excuse to visit Prague, I guess.

Hello, ladies. Hello, gentler men.

As we enter September, we near the close of our vicarious vacation/local eating week.  Tomorrow will be the project’s two month mark!  That means we are 2/13 through, as far as I can gather.  But my math is only at a 5th grade level, so I might be wrong. This calculation required me to close my eyes & count on my fingers, while whispering aloud how many times two goes into fifty-two & so forth.

Today was a long, lazy day– one of the first I’ve had in ages!  Allyson’s schedule for the day was remarkably lenient: her only stipulation was that I 1. eat a local diet &, of course, 2. post one reason why people should eat locally at the end of the day.  Well, I managed. Will manage!

I stayed in bed for ages. AGES!  Till noon! I had a bunch of tedious tasks ahead of me, like paying bills & returning videos, & I didn’t want to do any of them.  So I put it off by sleeping an incredible amount.  I’ll have you know, none of my chores got done.  But I did dream of Allyson, this week’s puppetmaster!

After I arose, I ate a salami sandwich– the first of many throughout the day.  Very simple (& local!), my sandwich consisted of 3. venison salami, 4. butter, 5. organic fantain bread.  The breakfast of champions indeed!  Spent the next several hours tooling around facebook, catching up on blogs & so forth I haven’t read since I began this project, & playing a lot of Word Challenge. I also 6. snacked on blueberries.

Then I ate some leftover spring rolls from my fridge.  I’d intended to give away my leftovers, but Allyson, in a comment below, informed me that:

Eating what you already have in the cupboard, particularly condiments is more than acceptable! It is the RIGHT thing to do. [...]When I started my local eating project with my own family…we ate through what existed in our pantry until it was gone…that included a lot of non-local foods, but wasting would have been the greater offense.

So I did the right thing.

Then I went to bed to read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which is, by the way, much more interesting now that I’m not nineteen, & take a nap before doing my chores.  Well, I napped through the chore-doing window.  But I feel little remorse, if much dread for the future & my credit score.

After waking, lazed around some more.  Ate another salami sandwich (I believe this was my third).  This time I added 7. tomato, 8. goat cheese, & 9. romaine lettuce.

The tomato is in hiding, but it was delicious.

Much better than soggy leftover non-local spring roll.

Made an album on facebook & continued to play Word Challenge.  Despite my fondest efforts, I have yet to beat my high score of 37,945.  (I am ranked as an Anagram Cyborg, the highest possible level.  But how I yearn for more points!)

Then I dared to 10. eat a peach.

I am, by nature, lazy & indolent.  I enjoyed myself immensely today, as such laziness is a rare privilege these days, but did feel a little guilty that I wasn’t hunting out exciting local food challenges all over the city.  Future participants should perhaps be forewarned that, if I have no real orders in a day I will likely stay in my pajamas reading till nightfall.   I take direction like a real pro & have never missed a deadline in my life.  But without direction & deadlines?  I’m a slug-a-bed.

Things would have continued much in this vein (ie. nothing to write home about about which to write home, as you can see) if it weren’t for Olivia who called me to save the day!  She & her sisters, Magali & Cat, have great plans for me for Week 9.  My presence was requested at Magali’s new apartment, where I would drink some wine & pick up some supplies for the coming week.

Here's a hint.

After dressing myself (around 7:00pm) & receiving a phone call from our friend TD (who saw a whale in Maine), I headed over Magali’s way.  I picked up a bottle of 11. local wine, since I didn’t know what they’d be drinking.

Glad I did!  Their wine was from Argentina (very good, from the sounds of it). I happily opened my bottle.  They also had snacks– some of which I could actually eat!  The pita bread, olives, hummus, & celery sticks were verboten.  But there were also some local 12. blueberries & 13. carrot sticks.  I felt a little annoying when I had to ask Are you SURE these are local? But it was heartening that they knew for sure.  “The carrots are definitely local,” said Jamie (?), Magali’s roommate, “I bought them myself!”

Welcome to the love snack.

I normally don’t know where the food I buy comes from. Now, of course, I’m much more conscious of it. So there was something very nice (& humbling) about the idea that other people, people who don’t spend all their time thinking of eating locally, are aware of where the food they eat is produced!

After discussing local diets & the impending Week 9, we settled into a nice long chat about love & marriage & all those sort of things.  I may have scarred poor Olivia for life.  How I miss the innocence of youth!  It’s tough being a world-weary, hardened 25. But you try spending two years in a graduate program at the University of Michigan & see if you still walk out believing in love as they sell it to you.

Magali & ... Jamie? I really liked her, even if I'm not quite sure of her name...

All good things must come to, etc. & I left with Olivia shortly before midnight.  We spent some time pondering the tallest building in Vancouver.  Walked her to her bus stop, then headed home.  Energized by this past week & looking forward to next one.

Once home, I 14. ate a carrot.  Tried to get a picture, but my Mac (the old one) was not very co-operative.

Then took Bella for her walk.  They’re filming on our street right now, & she’s not too sure about that.  Also she’s still mourning the loss of TD.

Now I’m home, writing to you lovely people. There’s a man playing guitar on the balcony across the street.  It’s nice when men earnestly strum guitars if they’re not in your living room. He’s much more pleasant to “be around” now that he broke up with his girlfriend.  How do I know this?  I’m a very unashamed voyeur.  If you’re here with me now, you know how it is.

Anyway, I have a reason why you should eat locally. It’s inevitably much healthier.  When your food options are severely limited, you delight in finding things that you might otherwise find boring. Not only are processed foods, sodas, etc. off the horizon, but suddenly, potatoes & green beans become exciting!  I assume this would be particularly good for people with children.  The “hunting & gathering” effect that local eating simulates makes food feel like a reward for careful labor, instead of something you take for granted.

Happy September, everyone.  New bios & schedule will be up tomorrow.  You’ll also witness me plan & execute a small local foods dinner party!

Argile:  you busy again today?

 Sven:  nope

in fact, the office is empty except for me right now

I know my boss has meetings all morning

you?

 Argile:  I’ve got a meeting at 10:30, some random stuff to do all day

 Sven:  nothing pressing?

 Argile:  not really

 Sven:  cool

or not, depends I guess

I’m kinda tired today, so I’m fine with not having much to do

 Sent at 8:07 AM on Friday

 Argile:  oh yeah? up to wild things last night?

 Sven:  you know it

met my cousin at a hookah bar, but I didn’t partake there

and then it was dublin after that

helped his rather naive girlfriend of 1 week get in

ran into stacey

she made me promise to call her

 Sent at 8:10 AM on Friday

 Argile:  lol, helped your cousin’s girlfriend of one week?

he’s already got one, huh?

 Sent at 8:12 AM on Friday

 Sven:  yeah, he’s definitely a smooth operator

she’s pretty damn cute

 Argile:  solid

maybe he can hook you up?

 Sven:  he seems to think he can

I declined last night, but I may take him up on his offer later this year

 Sent at 8:16 AM on Friday

 Argile:  don’t decline, but be discerning

for every dopey girl out there, I’m sure there are a bunch roughly like us, smart people just having fun for the night

so, whomever he introduces you to could be someone really cool

 Sven:  yep, I’ll bear that in mind

just, last night I was in no position to be putting forth the effort to score a hookup or whatever

I was there to chill w/my cousin, and I’d had a really long day

and I still had to come to work today

 Sent at 8:20 AM on Friday

 Argile:  true, true

I was out w/ Kaylee and some other ppl till 1

so I’m a little zonked too

 Sven:  would expect nothing less

 Argile:  yeah, yeah

your derision has been noted

 Sven:  I have no idea what you’re talking about

 Sent at 8:23 AM on Friday

 Argile:  I remind you that I’m coming down next week and I do so enjoy a good revenge

 Sven:  duly noted

 Sent at 8:26 AM on Friday

 Argile:  Another critical debate for our times: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/08/great-geek-debates-stormtrooper-vs-redshirt/

 Sent at 8:27 AM on Friday

 Argile:  also, view the results. Stormtrooper by a landslide!

 Sent at 8:30 AM on Friday

 Sven:  that’s the second time this guy has sided with Trek over Wars

 Sent at 8:31 AM on Friday

 Argile:  yeah… and his reasoning isn’t all that great this time

not sayin’ that stormtroopers are all that great, but the empire took over the galaxy somehow

 Sven:  not to mention, they had no problem hitting unimportant characters

 Argile:  true

 Sven:  it was just main characters that they couldn’t shoot to save their lives

 Argile:  and since I doubt a redshirt ever shot a major trek villain, you might say the same rule applies to them

Sent at 8:45 AM on Friday

 Sven:  I just made labels for 14 envelopes

that was a bit tedious

 Sent at 8:48 AM on Friday

 Argile:  woo!

working hard today, huh?

 Sven:  today, and every day

I’m not alone in the office anymore, so I can’t fall asleep at my desk

kind of a bummer

 Sent at 8:50 AM on Friday

 Sven:  so how’s the weekend looking for you?

 Sent at 8:52 AM on Friday

 Argile:  well, it’s Kaylee’s last weekend in town, so I might have to make a move just on principle

I’m going to tone down on the drinking though, I want to stop pre-gaming before going out

booze is so cheap here that, unlike dsm, I wind up getting much more once I’m actually out

 Sven:  good notion

 Argile:  not like I’ve been getting drunk or anything

but I’ve still been having late, fuzzy mornings

 Sven:  no good

Sent at 9:01 AM on Friday

 Argile:  also, college kids are back in town, which means rampant craziness

there was someone dressed in a pig costume last night

 Sven:  like ya do

 Argile:  yeah, and the cops were having fun

 Sven:  oh I’m sure

see anyone get tasered?

Sent at 9:04 AM on Friday

 Argile:  nah, just some shirtless guys getting taken away and flashing cherries and berries on every street corner

 Sven:  how tame

 Sent at 9:09 AM on Friday

 Argile:  yeah

I’m sure it’ll improve

 Sent at 9:10 AM on Friday

 Sven:  it’s to be hoped

 Sent at 9:12 AM on Friday

 Argile:  but, more importantly, it means the utter availability of college girls

 Sven:  that is important

 Argile:  and wow, does it feel strange to say that

 Sven:  yeah…you’ve become one of “those guys”

 Sent at 9:15 AM on Friday

 Argile:  not quite

if I were 5 years older, definitely

I’m still college-age, and I have a job, but I don’t have a kid

so I’m not quite creepy

 Sven:  knockin’ on the door…

 Sent at 9:18 AM on Friday

 Argile:  says the guy who might use his younger cousin as a source for poon

 Sven:  hey, I said “might”

that’s if a couple other things don’t pan out

Sent at 9:21 AM on Friday

 Argile:  couple of other things?

 Sven:  yep

 Sent at 9:25 AM on Friday

 Argile:  elaboration not forthcoming, I assume?

 Sven:  I’m thinkin’ about it

see how frustrating it is when people you think are your friends withhold info?

 Sent at 9:28 AM on Friday

 Sven:  that bitter tangy taste you are experiencing is a little flavor I like to call “your own medicine”

bwahahahahaha

 Argile:  meh

I’m taking a mafia quiz, so I’m not too concerned

http://popurls.com/go/howstuffworks.com/lda4ce02a84798092c580c157c895800b

see, the problem with keeping information from me is that I quickly lose interest

 Sven:  fair enough

 Argile:  not that I don’t care or anything, just that if it isn’t immediately going to impact my well-being, I’m not going to push it

 Sven:  uh huh

but inside, you’re still curious

your self-control of that curiosity is admirable

 Sent at 9:32 AM on Friday

 Argile:  well, when you have this to look at, it’s not hard to repress other things: http://www.tofslie.com/hey/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/popeye-590×442.jpg

Sent at 9:36 AM on Friday

 Sven:  meh, 6 out of 10 on the mafia quiz

and that popeye thing is a truly disturbing image

 Sent at 9:37 AM on Friday

 Argile:  beat me on the mafia thing, and yes, I agree that popeye is a freakish thing

 Sven:  I’ll probably have nightmares tonight

 Sent at 9:41 AM on Friday

 Argile:  nope, because you’re such a ladies’ man that you’ll spend tonight wide awake and loving it

 Sent at 9:42 AM on Friday

 Sven:  um, I don’t think I quite have the stones to go find a girl while visiting my grandparents and bring her back to their place for the night

 Argile:  lol

that would be amazing

 Sven:  that would be

 Argile:  where are your grandparents?

 Sven:  S*****.  my brother and his wife are stopping there for the weekend on their way to duluth

so I’m gonna go hang with them for the weekend

 Sent at 9:46 AM on Friday

 Sven:  get me some good cookin’

 Argile:  nice.

Sent at 9:59 AM on Friday

Argile:  brb

 Sent at 12:06 PM on Friday

 Argile:  had to secure pizza for dinner tonight

 Sven:  pizza is secured?

 Sent at 12:21 PM on Friday

 Argile:  parents normally get pizza on fridays

if I call soon enough, sometimes they’ll get me one

Also, I dare you not to burst into inappropriate hilariously laughter: http://www.cracked.com/blog/ted-kennedy-the-movie/

 Sent at 12:33 PM on Friday

 Sven:  wow that’s…I don’t even know to call that

seems like string reminiscent of the “don’t even reply” guy

 Sent at 12:40 PM on Friday

 Argile:  yeah, but on a level above wackiness

that picture, with JFK, and the robot in the background is great

 Sven:  yeah, the pics were pretty sweet

 Sent at 12:42 PM on Friday

 Sven:  have I ever told you about our problem here with getting wrong numbers constantly from people looking for the same wrong company?

we get at least 2 or 3 calls a day from someone looking for Dana Corp

 Sent at 12:46 PM on Friday

 Sven:  anyway, I kinda feel like prank calling them a few times a day so they get a taste of what we constantly deal with ‘cuz our phone numbers are 1 digit apart

 Sent at 12:48 PM on Friday

 Argile:  hahaha, I recently had to deal with a “Romance Messages” text spammer

who insisted I owed them $10 to receive romance messages

 Sven:  that’d be pretty irritating

 Argile:  yeah, but what annoyed me more was that they were able to actually put this on my account somehow

 Sven:  I suppose your parents saw that?

 Argile:  oh, no

this happened a couple of days ago, and I talked to Sprint and they took it off

 Sven:  ah

that must have been fun

 Argile:  but what was worse is that the message I got was stupid anyway

it suggested sharing food at dinner to create more intimacy

whoopee

 Sven:  how helpful

 Argile:  anyone who’s watched Lady and the Tramp knows that trick

I’m going to be doing a bunch of data entry, so I’ll be in and out here

 Sven:  okeydokey

I’m gonna be doin’ a whole lotta nothing

but I’ll probably also be leaving a little after 3 today

 S

ent at 1:11 PM on Friday

 Argile:  yeah, I recommend just bouncing around cracked, it’s pretty funny stuff

 Sent at 1:12 PM on Friday

 Argile:  and, of course, my data entry involves gmail

 Sven:  right on

 Argile:  yeah, but it involves creating new accounts for ppl

I’m trying to trick google, and it’s not completely working

 Sven:  I see

google is wily

Sent at 1:21 PM on Friday

 Argile:  well, google hates me now

 Sven:  uh oh

I recommend groveling

 Argile:  it called me a spammer and won’t let me create more accounts

 Sven:  bwahahahaha

I mean, I’m sorry to hear that

so, you’re trying to create accounts for work?

Sent at 2:13 PM on Friday

 Argile:  well, a bunch of our older clients have older stat-tracking things

so we need to update those

to google analytics

 Sven:  so what will you do now?

 Argile:  and, of course, we have a company profile that we’ve been using to host all of these reports

for all of our sites – but to prevent one client from seeing another client’s stats, we can’t give them administrator access

you know, if they’re administrators for our account, they could see everyones

so we’ve been restricting them to “view” the reports

but that limits customization and other options, plus it means they have to go through us to change anything

so we wanted to create independent accounts for each site so that they could do their own thing

get it?

 Sven:  I think I follow you

 Argile:  however, because several of us were creating gmail accounts for these clients

and it looked to google like all the requests were coming from the same location (sitepro)

it thinks we’re spamming it with new accounts

 Sven:  hmm

that’s a pickle

Sent at 2:24 PM on Friday

 Argile:  yes, yes it is

 Sent at 2:29 PM on Friday

 Argile:  bwahahaha

I don’t know if you remember, but I took a test last semester

for Drake that was a critical writing assesment

 Sent at 2:52 PM on Friday

 Argile:  that they use to measure education nationwide

 Sven:  I don’t remember that

just got your results back?

 Argile:  it was only for a randomly chosen 15 kids

yeah

top 4% in the country biatch

 Sven:  well, congrats

it’s a good thing you’re the last person who’d ever have ego issues

 Argile:  oh, you bet your ass I’m gonna be parading this one around

 Sven:  how could you not?

put that on your business cards

 Sent at 2:56 PM on Friday

 Argile:  tattoo it onto my forehead

 Sven:  that’d be subtle

 Sent at 3:02 PM on Friday

 Argile:  and I’ll put it on my t-shirts, and record a ring-tone with me stating my awesomeness

put it in my email signature, facebook profile

and hire a skywriter to write it over NYC

 Sven:  these are all excellent ideas

and, whatever the results of them, I’m sure that one of them wouldn’t be you getting punched in the throat

 Argile:  I’m sure I’ll get on CNN

 Sven:  they’ll be calling you any moment

 Argile:  actually, now that I know just how awesome I am, I plan to drink until I return to average

wouldn’t wanna be all superior

 Sent at 3:06 PM on Friday

 Sven:  I like this plan

 Argile:  2 hours till the starting gun goes off

 Sven:  neat

I’ll be bored on the road until about 7, feel free to drunk dial

This was an insufferably long & mundane day.  Please excuse me if this post drips occasionally with venom.

Things began at 11 am when I left the house to get the week’s required supplies.  What did I need?  Three specified books of Spanish poetry, a DVD player, fruit, oatmeal, & five criterion collection DVDs.  But I couldn’t eat breakfast until any of this was done.

I got a library card, finally (remember my mishaps Week 1?) & checked out the three required books.  I checked to see if they had any of the DVDs but they only had one copy of each, all out.

As my pocketbook resigned itself to the idea of purchasing them, I went to Futureshop (carrying my heavy purse on my left shoulder to even my posture out, thanks Week 5!).  They did not have a single one.  I went to Chapters.  None.  One might be available on special order.  By now I was getting very irritated.  Some people seem to think that expensive DVDs of obscure foreign films just materialize instantly whenever you need them.  This is not the case, especially not on the west coast of Canada, which has neither Netflix nor interesting art of any kind.

It's foreign to me, too.

I went to a used DVD store & showed them the list.  “Are these French?”  The guy led me to the World Music CDs.  “They’re movies.” I said.

That certainly narrowed it down.  They had a shelf of fewer than 100 foreign films, including such timeless classics as The Break Up, starring Jennifer Aniston.  Most of the films were Japanese.  No dice.

Well, I don’t have enough impotent rage in my life anyway.

I started walking toward Burrard & 4th, about two miles away, where the guy at Chapters had told me there might or might not be a building with a silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock on the side of it.  This building might or might not have one of the movies I needed for the week.

“Is it walking distance?” I’d asked him.

“I don’t know what’s it’s called.”

Uh.

Earlier in the day, I’d taken these directions with a grain of salt, but this mysterious Alfred Hitchcock building seemed to be my only recourse.  I trudged along.  The bottoms of my feet, by the way, are now covered in blisters.  I spent all last week in a wheelchair, remember?

Also, my purse was full of heavy library books.

Fortunately, on the way I spotted a little hole-in-the-wall video store.  The guy behind the counter helped me search all the movies in their database. They only had Exterminating Angels.  Well, I thought the film was called Exterminating Angel, but presumed it was a typo.  This was in their computer as a foreign film, after all.  & it was my movie for the day. Full of relief, I rented it– or tried.  My credit card was declined.  What?  Has someone stolen my identity?  I’ll sort that out tomorrow.

The man let me borrow it anyway, without a deposit.  Because I look like an honest girl.  Lucky for him, I am one.  I could’ve run off with Exterminating Angels & never returned!

Earlier, I had refrained from buying a DVD player because, I thought bitterly to myself, there was no point in buying one if I didn’t have any DVDs.  But now I did.  I went to Futureshop & bought the cheapest one.  Then, stopped at a grocery store & bought oatmeal & frozen blueberries.  Are you on the edge of your seat or what?

I arrived home & heaved a sigh of disgusted relief.  The whole excursion had taken me over three hours & it was past 2:00.   Also, I am always in a terrible mood when I can’t have my juice.

I angrily 1. cooked my oatmeal the old-fashioned way, stirred in some 2. blueberries & 3. sweetened with honey. Ate it pacing around the living room.  Then attempted to set up the DVD player.  It works– the TV doesn’t.  Nearly smashed it (eerily foreshadowing the film that was to come!)

Then TD called to tell me he had just eaten a pint of ice cream.  It soothed my nerves a little to know that there are still people out there living lives of lazy indolence.  I’m not being sarcastic.  It really did.

I had to watch the movie after breakfast.  Had no way of watching it.  What was I to do?  I resolved to buy a new computer.  I’ve been meaning to ask for one for Christmas, but this was an emergency.  Went to the Apple Store but realized I just can’t afford it.

Called Braden.  He saved my life.  Or rather, he saved Fernando’s.  He was having lunch, but he’d lend me his computer when he got back!

I went home & poured myself some 4. wine. It was that or water, people.  I also found many of the required films online.  They’re not DVDs, but they’ll have to do.  I also got some good tips on other video stores from my Twitter pals & will seek out some other films on my day off.

Decompressed until around 4:00 when Braden arrived to save the day.

We all worship him around here.

Braden decided to stick around for some wine & a movie.

Friends, Exterminating Angels is not a Bunuel film.  But the fundamentalist Christian in me reared its head & told me there was a reason for everything.  Thanks, Week 3.  We 5. watched it anyway.

The plot is very tragic.  Set in (approximately) the present day, it’s about a middle-aged director, Francois, who has a brilliant & groundbreaking vision for a film. Young women masturbating on camera!  Not pornography– an exploration of taboo. Why did nobody invent this idea before?  It’s great!

Anyway, everything goes wrong, as it always does when well-meaning older gentlemen are victimized by young women.

The film opens with Francois’s dead grandmother appearing to him in the night.  Then, two dark angels also appear (20-something brunettes clad in low-budget mismatched black tank-tops)—they’re invisible to him.  “Be careful with him!” says Grandmere – “He’s only a child.”

I guess you’re always a baby to your grandma.

Next, Francois is videotaping a young actress for a screen test in which she has involuntarily started masturbating for the camera.  It’s just something about him! He makes her feel so safe.  He wears a bemused, world-weary expression & a long untucked button-down shirt—as he will every time we see him.

The auditioning actress confides that she just experienced her first ever orgasm. Though Francois chooses to go with “a slightly better actress” for the role, the seeds of an idea begin to form!  At the prompting of the dark angels (they prompt his subconscious self, anyway), he begins auditioning women for his innovative film on “taboo.”

The auditions involve Francois choreographing (though certainly not filming– these are only auditions, after all) mutual masturbation in fancy restaurants, hotel room threesomes, & a lot public lesbian fondling– etc.  Our director is strictly an observer, of course.  This is all in the name of art.

The girls are all quite young & pretty & one of them is periodically possessed by the devil.

All WHAT? Bella is scandalized.

Poor beleaguered man!  These young women inevitably fall in love with him left right & center.  He doesn’t understand it! He tucks them into bed after they suffer schizophrenic episodes, kisses their foreheads after videotaping their threesomes, all while maintaining a very professional directorial distance– he’s just like a father to them, as he emphasizes more than once.

“Be careful!” His wife warns him.  These lovelorn girls are dangerous & will take advantage of him.

Old women are so wise.

After Francois allows the producer to fire the two main actresses on the first day of shooting (Charlotte, possessed by the devil, destroys the set) the film is made & it’s a big success!  But, as if our poor Francois hasn’t been victimized enough, one of the girls goes to the “gutter papers” with a totally unfounded accusation of sexual harassment.  The exact nature of her claim is not specified in the film.  Anyway, this libelous act gets Francois sent to prison for a year!  Tabloids have so much power these days.

When he returns his wife has left him.  Quel dommage!

"Let's go out & bop until we drop"

Then, a gang of masked intruders break into his apartment & tenderize him with a baseball bat.  Do we spot the devil-possessed young lady behind one of the masks?  Is there no end to this poor man’s victimization?

The film ends with our long-suffering director being wheeled onto set in a wheelchair.  Grandmother appears again.  “Francois?  Francois!”  But he doesn’t respond.

Roll credits.

Are you surprised to learn that it’s semi-autobiographical?  We googled & the director  (slash writer, of course) was recently imprisoned for a year for sexually harassing two actresses.  Likely their charges were even more baseless than the ones our good Francois faced!

Anyway, it was a lol & a half, maybe I should get the director to do a week for me!  I promise I won’t send him to prison.

One of my favorite things about the film, aside from the nudity, of course, was that Francois carried his camera around in a plastic grocery bag.  Also, after the first threesome, one of the women turned to the other & said “Let’s go out & bop until we drop!”

Though it’s not worth watching all the tedious dialogue & clumsy attempts at symbolism just for a few dimly lit scenes of soft-core lesbian pornography, I believe this film would make an excellent drinking game.  I will write one for it some day, when I’m not so busy.

(Sidenote: as soon as the movie started, Braden exclaimed, “Ptolemy will like this!”)

The moral of the story?  The symbolic meaning behind this?  What have I taken & learned? From my misadventures? From Francois’s?  Sloppy art has dire consequences.  Think about it.

I was supposed to 6. Read the booklet that came with the DVD immediately after.  There was no such booklet.  There will never be one.  I will likely go to my grave without having read this informative booklet.  I firmly hold that this isn’t my failure. It won’t go in the failure book.

Then I 7. Went for a walk. Fernando generously told me “You have 45 minutes.”  Well, you know me, I’m an overachiever.  I got the walk to the liquor store out of the way in around 10.

Then I 8. Sat in a coffee shop & wrote about what I’d just seen.  Sitting in a coffee shop isn’t much fun when you’re not allowed carbohydrates or any beverages besides water. I bought some Perrier & wrote some of the above.  Once this entry goes up, I’ve 9. Posted it.

Oh good.  It was finally time for 10. Lunch.  8 o’clock, after all.  I got some ginger beef from a Chinese restaurant, since I’m not allowed carbohydrates.  I wonder, does Fernando know what a carbohydrate is?  I 11. Took my time & enjoyed the queasy sensation of eating a meal consisting entirely of a handful of greasy meat & water glass of red wine.

Meanwhile, I 11. Flipped through the complete poems of Cesar Vallejo.  They were a little too Whitmanesque & life-affirming for me at that point, though I certainly enjoyed one or two of the quieter ones.  I also 12. Learned something about the author in that time.  I looked in the book jacket. He’s from Peru.

9:15, my trusty (canine) companion & I headed out for 13. A 45 minute walk.  We witnessed many stages of canoodling on the grass, from outright fornication to tender proposals of marriage.  Sure, I felt a few pangs of loneliness, but as you know I’m married to my art.  As I walked, I 14. Thought about what I’d read. Conclusion? Men & women are, like, different in lots of ways.

Once home, I was supposed to 15. Write for an hour, with the day’s texts acting as a trigger for something. Well, here you see the result of that hour– & the following half hour too.  Fernando probably wanted me to write poetry or something, but– well– I 16. Just let it happen.

Now I just have to 17. Eat dinner — a carbless one.  Well, there’s some cut-rate salmon burning a hole in my fridge.  Some wilting dill too.  I’m sure it will be delicious.

Then, after 18. An hour without any electronic devices, I will 19. Go to bed for eight hours. I’m going to aim for a bedtime of 2:00am, as I need to 20. Keep my bedtime consistent throughout the week.  The project requires that I keep late hours & I don’t want to get stuck partway through a blog entry at 12:30am or something like that.

Prognosis? Wino.

Tomorrow you should witness a return to our standard inspirational fare.  & soon I’ll figure a way to make this interesting.

I’m not always for boys in suits.  Sometimes I like them in t shirts, and sometimes I like them in just jeans, and sometimes I like them a little au naturale.  But sometimes, it’s nice to see a boy in a suit.

I have known Timmie since high school and I’m twenty four now.  I have never ever seen Timmie in a suit.  Fact.  Timmie has worm pretty much the same thing for as long as I’ve known him.  T shirt, over shirt, pants (shorts in the summer).  In high school and part way through college the pants were kahkis, now they’re jeans. (See, people DO change.)  But I’d bet any amount of money that Timothie looks bangin’ in a suit.  I was proven correct by picture of him at a wedding.  I was going somewhere with this, but it will take me a while to get there, so you can go get popcorn.

I came home from work today and finished “Bitter is the new Black”  A memoir of a girl who starts off her writing career by posting a blog on the internets for her own enjoyment.  About ten seconds after I finished I was in the kitchen getting IBProfen for my massive headache when my phone buzzed.  It was a text from Timmie.

So we chatted for a bit and afterwards I surfed facebook and eventually fell asleep thinking about boys in suits.  One boy specificallie.  When I woke up though I wasn’t thinking about the esthetics, but more about the reasons.  Timmie is not a suit kind of guy.  I have not seen him in one (except in those wedding photos) in the entire span of time I have known him and am not likely to do so for sometime (if ever).  So why now and why a suit?  I mean hell I could have dressed him up like Batman in my head and the Dark Knight is a definite winner.  So why a suit?

I geuss the realism factor is nice.  I mean suits exist (where as Batman, however I might wish is were different, does not).  And it’s completelie conceivable that someday I might witness Timmie in a suit.  But honestly, fantasies are usuallie more, well, fantastic.  But I geuss in a way it kind of is.  Timmie in a suit is not a usual thing, so maybe good fantasies are ones that might possiblie someday be real, but right now are just prettie pictures in your head.

And now I’ve taken up alot of note with boys in suits… and totallie failed to tell you about the mind numbing tedium.  I have a good job.  It’s indoors, with air conditioning.  There’s very little heavie lifting, the dress code isn’t too strict, and they pay me decentlie.  But much of what I do, could be done by a well trained ape.  I type.  They call it data entry, but I know what it really is.

Picture your basement, (or if yours is finished the basement of someone you know) and it’s packed to the rafters with stuff.  Important stuff that you just had to save, but now you have so much of that no one can possiblie find anything.  There’s no organization or logical order, it’s just stuff.

That’s what this data entry is.  It’s saving junk just to say you have it… somewhere.  Or letters.  I do a lot of mailing.  Googling addresses, filling in form letters, trifolding stacks and reams and whole trees of paper and stuffing them into enough envelopes to blanket Rhode Island.  And then I seal up the envelopes… and carry them off to the mail office (this is part of the lifting bit, paper can get heavy).

And it’s dull and it’s awful, but they pay me well and oddly I do get the sense that I’m accomplishing things.  Still somedays I come home from only five hours of work and I lay on my bed (sans work clothes) and I stay there, to exhausted by the tedium to do much of anything…

Anything except fall asleep and dream of boys in suits…