It's a struggle just to stay a live.... journal
I don't feel like I have anything interesting to write.
This morning I got up and the bus broke down (from heat) and I was late for work but that was okay, the Saturday crew is my favourite.
They have drained the moat. Lo, for it is that time of the year again. So the library was stuffy and smelled a bit of moat scum. What is that you say, internal email? Earthquake damage means no moat till after Christmas, perhaps February?!
Blast.
Ma and Pa showed up while I was deeply engulfed in the life of Bindy MacKenzie and a mocha and Ma told me all about Dad's ex-flatmates partners daughters (there is a Good One who was a lawyer but didn't like it and now makes coffee in Melbourne, and a Bad One who has a son and does not know how to cope with him). Riveting stuff.
And we talked about library study, which I am doing next year, and whether or not I should keep doing two jobs (AND STUDY, Ma you are CRAZY). Long term service for the city libraries gets me an extra week of annual leave a year. That is not quite worth going mental from stress over.
Oh, it all depends how organised you are, says Ma.
Yes, she has met me.
I am quite fond of the idea of organising, and it can be very zen, organising books and making lists and managing the flat budget, but organising my life? Haha!
The courses are long distance, and the university man who talked to us with biscuits said that you want to be dedicating 12-15 hours a week to each course.
168 hours in a week, half that for sleeping (ideally... ok sleeping and reading) that's 84 hours of Stuff Doing Time. Two jobs is 30.5 hours so that's 53.5 leftover. Take out travel time, one hour Mon and Sat, three to four hours Tues (JESUS REALLY??) and an hour and a half, make it two, on Wed Thur and Fri = 11-12 hours travel, call it 12 for bad buses, that's 41.5 leftover.
Two courses a trimester = 30 hours. That's 11.5 leftover now.
Then... eating and showering and general keeping-yourself-going time, maybe an hour a day if you really rush? That makes... four and a half hours of doing-nothing-free-time for me a week! (That's thirty eight minutes a day!)
Eeeeeeeeeeeek.
So I think, probably dropping the random shelving job, don't you think?
(Thanks, maths!)
I like doing nothing. It's relaxing. Plus, the doing-nothing-free time is when I write (sometimes) and I kind of like writing. Not to mention seeing the odd person who I don't work/live with every now and then.
AN. Y. WAY.
There is one of those huge beetle thing on the ceiling and the cat is SO EXCITED. She is pacing the floor underneath it like a little lion, going "MMRR??" periodically.
I spent most of the day (after work) deliciously napping or reading and getting my pillow all wet (from post-shower-hair) and waking up thinking I was in a swamp (not something that has actually happened to me but you never know) because my wet hair was on my face and my pillow was wet and then finally dragging myself out of bed again to hang out my washing (HURRAH for summer and laundry that is very-almost dry if you hang it out at four in the afternoon). Then I drank two bottles of water and stared at my skirt till we went shopping, where I think I managed to convince people I was stoned and/or related to Leah and Lara.
There was a confused discussion about coconut cream that had this huge man walking away from us laughing his face off.
Leah disclosed some personal information about a cucumber which had me and her cackling all the way to the refrigerated section.
The beetle-thing came down from the ceiling and the cat DOES NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO! She is sniffing at it and looking confused. How she ever lived on the streets is a mystery to us.
Well the other two are not so much mystified at the moment because they have gone to bed.
Yes.
Really they have.
Just like last night, and, I think, the night before that. I've been the last one up. Me, who gets up in the mornings for propers. It's kind of scary and weird.
So I've set up the speakers in the lounge and I'm listening to My Space by Evelyn Evelyn and Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine over and over and over and over.
(Oh kitten just EAT THE BEETLETHING already!)
Later on I might watch something. I've been rewatching Six Feet Under since one day last week when I woke up at eight feeling unbelievably crappy and didn't want to read anything or write anything or do anything and after a kind of frustrated miserable hissyfit (a quiet one) I sat on the couch all day and watched Six Feet Under and ate about eight Jucies then made a huge lasagne for dinner and felt better.
(The beetlething is on the ceiling again. The cat is staring at me with her ears back like it's MY fault.)
It's Christmas soon. Me and the fam are going to the lake. Along with the other set of cousins from Chch, the ones with four kids under fifteen and their grandma. The bach can handle these numbers (thirteen people) but it's yet to be seen how the people will handle the sleeping arrangements. Sharing a room with Cath and Jen when there were three beds in said room is fine, sharing a room with Kate and her grandmother when there is one single bed and a double is not quite so fine...
(Now she's failing at catching a moth. She is so useless sometimes but that is okay because she is quite cuddly. The cat not the relatives.)
I don't so much mind bunking up with Kate but I don't think I've ever really had a conversation with the grandmother and plus Kate is a teenager now and I get the impression she is Quite Cool and I am distinctly not, so I'm worried that she's going to hate the rooming arrangements, and... this is from Christmas Day till the FIFTH OF JANUARY OR SOMETHING RIDICULOUS, when they go home. I think we come back on the seventh. I don't know. Peter is going home before NYE so maybe me and Sam will have to drink wine on a beach somewhere.
I am being socially anxious about hanging out with a fourteen year old.
For fucks sake.
So me and Alina are going to make arrangements to meet in town and drink a lot of coffee and mango lassi and write and illustrate a children's book. Also there better be wine at some point.
I love my family, I just get a little claustraphobic sometimes.
Whine whine whine. Sorry. Worse things in the world and all that.
So, books.
I saved a shitload of fairy tale and myth and legend books from NatLibs weeding frenzy (it is not so much a frenzy, to be honest, I can't see many of them getting into a frenzy, a tizzy perhaps, but not a frenzy). Alina saved a second shitload, and Cat saved a third.
Boots of cars and bookshelves were put to good use.
I still want to save more... I have to ask what the policy actually IS, and see if there isn't some way around it.
Do you know there is an organisation called Libraries Without Borders? I didn't. They sound awesome. The original, Bibliothèques Sans Frontières, started in Paris in 2007.
To donate books, though, you have to send them to their office in New York. From Chch, that is going to be very expensive if I wanted to send any decent amount of books.
OHOH I just remembered I bought chocolate at the supermarket today HURRAY!
This morning I got up and the bus broke down (from heat) and I was late for work but that was okay, the Saturday crew is my favourite.
They have drained the moat. Lo, for it is that time of the year again. So the library was stuffy and smelled a bit of moat scum. What is that you say, internal email? Earthquake damage means no moat till after Christmas, perhaps February?!
Blast.
Ma and Pa showed up while I was deeply engulfed in the life of Bindy MacKenzie and a mocha and Ma told me all about Dad's ex-flatmates partners daughters (there is a Good One who was a lawyer but didn't like it and now makes coffee in Melbourne, and a Bad One who has a son and does not know how to cope with him). Riveting stuff.
And we talked about library study, which I am doing next year, and whether or not I should keep doing two jobs (AND STUDY, Ma you are CRAZY). Long term service for the city libraries gets me an extra week of annual leave a year. That is not quite worth going mental from stress over.
Oh, it all depends how organised you are, says Ma.
Yes, she has met me.
I am quite fond of the idea of organising, and it can be very zen, organising books and making lists and managing the flat budget, but organising my life? Haha!
The courses are long distance, and the university man who talked to us with biscuits said that you want to be dedicating 12-15 hours a week to each course.
168 hours in a week, half that for sleeping (ideally... ok sleeping and reading) that's 84 hours of Stuff Doing Time. Two jobs is 30.5 hours so that's 53.5 leftover. Take out travel time, one hour Mon and Sat, three to four hours Tues (JESUS REALLY??) and an hour and a half, make it two, on Wed Thur and Fri = 11-12 hours travel, call it 12 for bad buses, that's 41.5 leftover.
Two courses a trimester = 30 hours. That's 11.5 leftover now.
Then... eating and showering and general keeping-yourself-going time, maybe an hour a day if you really rush? That makes... four and a half hours of doing-nothing-free-time for me a week! (That's thirty eight minutes a day!)
Eeeeeeeeeeeek.
So I think, probably dropping the random shelving job, don't you think?
(Thanks, maths!)
I like doing nothing. It's relaxing. Plus, the doing-nothing-free time is when I write (sometimes) and I kind of like writing. Not to mention seeing the odd person who I don't work/live with every now and then.
AN. Y. WAY.
There is one of those huge beetle thing on the ceiling and the cat is SO EXCITED. She is pacing the floor underneath it like a little lion, going "MMRR??" periodically.
I spent most of the day (after work) deliciously napping or reading and getting my pillow all wet (from post-shower-hair) and waking up thinking I was in a swamp (not something that has actually happened to me but you never know) because my wet hair was on my face and my pillow was wet and then finally dragging myself out of bed again to hang out my washing (HURRAH for summer and laundry that is very-almost dry if you hang it out at four in the afternoon). Then I drank two bottles of water and stared at my skirt till we went shopping, where I think I managed to convince people I was stoned and/or related to Leah and Lara.
There was a confused discussion about coconut cream that had this huge man walking away from us laughing his face off.
Leah disclosed some personal information about a cucumber which had me and her cackling all the way to the refrigerated section.
The beetle-thing came down from the ceiling and the cat DOES NOT KNOW WHAT TO DO! She is sniffing at it and looking confused. How she ever lived on the streets is a mystery to us.
Well the other two are not so much mystified at the moment because they have gone to bed.
Yes.
Really they have.
Just like last night, and, I think, the night before that. I've been the last one up. Me, who gets up in the mornings for propers. It's kind of scary and weird.
So I've set up the speakers in the lounge and I'm listening to My Space by Evelyn Evelyn and Dog Days Are Over by Florence and the Machine over and over and over and over.
(Oh kitten just EAT THE BEETLETHING already!)
Later on I might watch something. I've been rewatching Six Feet Under since one day last week when I woke up at eight feeling unbelievably crappy and didn't want to read anything or write anything or do anything and after a kind of frustrated miserable hissyfit (a quiet one) I sat on the couch all day and watched Six Feet Under and ate about eight Jucies then made a huge lasagne for dinner and felt better.
(The beetlething is on the ceiling again. The cat is staring at me with her ears back like it's MY fault.)
It's Christmas soon. Me and the fam are going to the lake. Along with the other set of cousins from Chch, the ones with four kids under fifteen and their grandma. The bach can handle these numbers (thirteen people) but it's yet to be seen how the people will handle the sleeping arrangements. Sharing a room with Cath and Jen when there were three beds in said room is fine, sharing a room with Kate and her grandmother when there is one single bed and a double is not quite so fine...
(Now she's failing at catching a moth. She is so useless sometimes but that is okay because she is quite cuddly. The cat not the relatives.)
I don't so much mind bunking up with Kate but I don't think I've ever really had a conversation with the grandmother and plus Kate is a teenager now and I get the impression she is Quite Cool and I am distinctly not, so I'm worried that she's going to hate the rooming arrangements, and... this is from Christmas Day till the FIFTH OF JANUARY OR SOMETHING RIDICULOUS, when they go home. I think we come back on the seventh. I don't know. Peter is going home before NYE so maybe me and Sam will have to drink wine on a beach somewhere.
I am being socially anxious about hanging out with a fourteen year old.
For fucks sake.
So me and Alina are going to make arrangements to meet in town and drink a lot of coffee and mango lassi and write and illustrate a children's book. Also there better be wine at some point.
I love my family, I just get a little claustraphobic sometimes.
Whine whine whine. Sorry. Worse things in the world and all that.
So, books.
I saved a shitload of fairy tale and myth and legend books from NatLibs weeding frenzy (it is not so much a frenzy, to be honest, I can't see many of them getting into a frenzy, a tizzy perhaps, but not a frenzy). Alina saved a second shitload, and Cat saved a third.
Boots of cars and bookshelves were put to good use.
I still want to save more... I have to ask what the policy actually IS, and see if there isn't some way around it.
Do you know there is an organisation called Libraries Without Borders? I didn't. They sound awesome. The original, Bibliothèques Sans Frontières, started in Paris in 2007.
To donate books, though, you have to send them to their office in New York. From Chch, that is going to be very expensive if I wanted to send any decent amount of books.
OHOH I just remembered I bought chocolate at the supermarket today HURRAY!