...Where did this New Year come from?
So, everyone seems to be doing the summary-of-the-year thing, obviously enough. We've just sat in the living room, had dinner and traded anecdotes about various nefarious things that we've done or had done to us at school, so it seems like a good enough time to get contemplative.
At the beginning of 2007, I was stuck in a miserable household where we had an extra body lolling around on the sofa, another housemate hiding in the back bedroom and the other two shrieking at the top of their lungs upstairs for eighteen hours a day. I was writing a thousand words a week for my dissertation, steadily working through my word count, and reading up on coffee, women in breeches and why men went to meeting houses to pretend to have babies with my laptop locked to my bedpost so no-one threw it in the river.
A few months later, I finished my dissertation in a state of nervous god-knows-what and stayed in bed for a week to get over the resulting practically-flu. The university had screwed up the dates, my housemates were screwing around with the bills and I was beginning to get the feeling I was going to get screwed over by everyone except the too-distant girlfriend I was pining for. It was a kind of tense equilibrium that lasted for about four months afterwards, until I came back from America with yet another bout of disgusting flu, more aches and pains, bags under my eyes and the realisation that no-one had bothered to deal with the council tax like they were supposed to when I was away.
And then the housing situation exploded, shortly after I got the first real full-time job of my very short career and discovered that the nine-to-six thing was far worse than I ever imagined a nine-to-five ever being. (I'm still maintaining that I've not been so ill on and off in a five-month period as I have when I started working there.) The money situation got better, the housing situation got worse, and we've only just cottoned on to the fact that if circumstances hadn't aligned at exactly the right time Mikki and me'd have effectively been out on our ears or carrying four people's rent between us.
...Which brings me to the last month or so, which has undoubtedly been the most fantastic bout of housemate-related lunacy I've ever had the priviledge to live through. It's been like living with a real family instead of housemates, except I can honestly say I like the lot of them. ;)
So, this, then - may all your housemates be honest, may your family be close by but not in your pocket, and may the next year be better with bills than this one. And thank anyone listening for my Triad, 'cause I highly doubt I would have got this far without going spare without them.))
At the beginning of 2007, I was stuck in a miserable household where we had an extra body lolling around on the sofa, another housemate hiding in the back bedroom and the other two shrieking at the top of their lungs upstairs for eighteen hours a day. I was writing a thousand words a week for my dissertation, steadily working through my word count, and reading up on coffee, women in breeches and why men went to meeting houses to pretend to have babies with my laptop locked to my bedpost so no-one threw it in the river.
A few months later, I finished my dissertation in a state of nervous god-knows-what and stayed in bed for a week to get over the resulting practically-flu. The university had screwed up the dates, my housemates were screwing around with the bills and I was beginning to get the feeling I was going to get screwed over by everyone except the too-distant girlfriend I was pining for. It was a kind of tense equilibrium that lasted for about four months afterwards, until I came back from America with yet another bout of disgusting flu, more aches and pains, bags under my eyes and the realisation that no-one had bothered to deal with the council tax like they were supposed to when I was away.
And then the housing situation exploded, shortly after I got the first real full-time job of my very short career and discovered that the nine-to-six thing was far worse than I ever imagined a nine-to-five ever being. (I'm still maintaining that I've not been so ill on and off in a five-month period as I have when I started working there.) The money situation got better, the housing situation got worse, and we've only just cottoned on to the fact that if circumstances hadn't aligned at exactly the right time Mikki and me'd have effectively been out on our ears or carrying four people's rent between us.
...Which brings me to the last month or so, which has undoubtedly been the most fantastic bout of housemate-related lunacy I've ever had the priviledge to live through. It's been like living with a real family instead of housemates, except I can honestly say I like the lot of them. ;)
So, this, then - may all your housemates be honest, may your family be close by but not in your pocket, and may the next year be better with bills than this one. And thank anyone listening for my Triad, 'cause I highly doubt I would have got this far without going spare without them.))