Unhistoric acts
It feels like I haven't posted for a really long time, and it probably feels that way because it is true.
You know what that means? Time for a LIST!
Since last episode:
- I've been to Australia and back. Me and Leah flew over on the 11th of September and when I told my coworker this she went O.O but like I said, who is going to bother with a flight from Christchurch to Coolangatta? Exactly. We both went a little crazy trying to check in through the auto-check in machines because they didn't give up the option of sitting together and AUGH TECHNOLOGY YOU ARE SO COOL WHEN YOU WORK but usually you are optimistic and disappointing. We ended up sitting together right at the back of the plane, which was awesome because it meant we could watch the first two episodes of The Walking Dead without worrying about traumatising anyone with delicate sensibilities sitting behind us. It's GORY but very well done and awesome and I totally love the main guy.
Although I did have to look at Leah or the ceiling (do they still call it a ceiling, in a plane, Jen?) in some of the more, uh, intestinal parts.
Nimbin, for those of you who don't know, is almost like paradise. Carl (Leah's dad, loves cars and martinis and puns) and Gwen (stepmum, loves organising parties and falling asleep at the table so Carl can put peas on her forehead) have a gorgeous house made of wood and glass, held together with books and liquor, decorated with bugles and spears and spiders. Well, one spider, Spindles McGee, who we met last year and lives in the bookcase in the toilet behind the 5 leatherbound volumes of How To Fly A Plane manuals.
The loo is a composting toilet, which grossed me out a little the first time, but now I can compare it to hand dug long drops and chemical toilets, and it blows those both out of the water (try not to picture that image too hard.)
Leah posted about the Viking Feast, was which fantastic. There were about thirty people there, three legs of lamb, one huge fish, mushroom tarts (a la me) soups and breads and mead and roast veges and cheese and SO MUCH FOOD it was a true medieval feast - although the garb was just a fun approximation - there was a man there dressed as a wizard, for example.
He was great though! He had rigged his pointy hat to flop when he was talking to a man and point up straight and rigid whenever he talked to a beautiful woman. I laughed every time I heard him tell that joke.
There was a woman there who was 84 and told me she was sick of old people with bad attitudes. We bonded. I think we were the oldest and youngest people there. She'd grown up in Indonesia, till she was twenty, and the last four years there was WWI. WORLD WAR ONE. She talked about that and Merlin talked about Cyclone Tracey and I talked about earthquakes for a while, and then our conversation just went down the wonderful alcohol-lubricated path, most of which I don't remember, but she was awesome. She hugged me twice and wished me well on my journey, and Merlin said that he sensed I had a sweet spirit, because that's just how the people in Nimbin talk.
A german woman called Ingrid came round to the house the next day and gave us all (except Leah) full body massages till we were no longer hungover. I'd never had a full body massage before. It ROCKED. I turned into mellow jelly Ali.
I managed not to think about work most of the time... Till I checked my email and found out that I had to go to Palmy the day after I got back, grr grr people who book me places without properly asking grr grr.
And for three or four nights I couldn't really sleep. I'd drift off easily enough (usually because I was half or fully drunk) but wake up a couple of hours later, wide awake and crispy, totally unable to get back to sleep. SO I read ALL the books! With my cellphone torch wedged between my boobs because I couldn't reach the lamp.
I read Deathless, by Cathrynne Valente, which was HOLY GOD FANTASTIC.
Wither, by someone, which was the kind of crap that I had to share with Leah and then Alina. It wasn't terribly written but so badly thought out and often ridiculous. If you are going to have someone raised in a world where women die at 20, why would your main character (age 16) think a 13 year old being pregnant was something to be harshly judged as unnatural and wrong? And also, you can't possibly live in a world where all countries except North America have been bombed to smithereens - as in aren't even above the water anymore, because that is STUPID. This book was a MULTITUDE of the stupid.
You Must Go and Win, an autobiography by musician Alina Simone, which was funny and interesting and then depressing, but still made me want to, well, Go and Win.
Fat Vampire, by someone, which was a lot funnier and smarter than I expected and once I got into it I loved it.
And... many other books. I didn't write a thing till I was on the plane home, but I started getting ideas, which was glorious. Now I just have to sit down and actually write. A lot. Every day. Goddammit.
(It's 12:34 am)
(Also I have half a margarita I must drink now. It's the very last of my duty free tequila. Last night Bath and Kemp came over to catch up and we margaritad the hell out of it. One litre of tequila, gone in three nights. Brilliant.)
I miss writing madly for hours at a time. I hate that this year I've been so exhausted and depressed and distracted and clinically frustrated (okay there isn't such a thing, but there should be, and I could diagnose manymany people with it) to write much apart from blog posts. There was a time a few months ago that I wasn't even reading anymore, but that seems to have passed (although I still watch QI to go to sleep at night.)
Work problems are still as mangled and frustrating and mind boggling as usual. I am sick of it all. I nearly went for another job but decided that I could probably do more to fix things where I am. I emailed my manager about the latest problem (team leader had forgotten where she'd sent me that day, called up my house to find out why I wasn't at work and freaked out Leah, who had heard me leave for work hours before the phone call and thought I might be dead - AUGH I hate that she is screwing with people who don't even get paid to deal with her! So I emailed manager about how it made me feel unsafe, to say the least, that she didn't know where I was (what if the world had broken again!?!) and... haven't heard anything back.
So... whatever.
I am going to concentrate on other parts of my life.
One of those should be study but I can't be arsed at the moment.
I'll work something out.
In the meantime, I still have stuff to look forward to. I might go to Sheffield this weekend, and I know a really cool massage guy in Chch.
I didn't get to go to the library conference I wanted to go to. It was (is) in Wellington, and had (has) exciting people coming in from all over the world to talk about exciting library happenings (this might not sound exciting to you, but TRUST ME, I was getting hyper butterflies in my stomach reading the programme). But I'm kind of relieved that I didn't get it, because (and I would not say this to my boss or parental units because it is a matter of Priorities and Getting Them Straight) I don't want to miss the Halloween party, or the first two days of Nano (which DAMMIT I am doing this year, I really really need the crazyjuice to cure my brain). And right now, for me, parties/catching up with people I haven't seen in WAY too long/writing madly/drinking/being as silly as possible/horror movies with Lara is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> career related experience.
So - that didn't really turn out being much of a 'list', as such... But oh well, at least I blogged, and now you all know I am still here.
You know what that means? Time for a LIST!
Since last episode:
- I've been to Australia and back. Me and Leah flew over on the 11th of September and when I told my coworker this she went O.O but like I said, who is going to bother with a flight from Christchurch to Coolangatta? Exactly. We both went a little crazy trying to check in through the auto-check in machines because they didn't give up the option of sitting together and AUGH TECHNOLOGY YOU ARE SO COOL WHEN YOU WORK but usually you are optimistic and disappointing. We ended up sitting together right at the back of the plane, which was awesome because it meant we could watch the first two episodes of The Walking Dead without worrying about traumatising anyone with delicate sensibilities sitting behind us. It's GORY but very well done and awesome and I totally love the main guy.
Although I did have to look at Leah or the ceiling (do they still call it a ceiling, in a plane, Jen?) in some of the more, uh, intestinal parts.
Nimbin, for those of you who don't know, is almost like paradise. Carl (Leah's dad, loves cars and martinis and puns) and Gwen (stepmum, loves organising parties and falling asleep at the table so Carl can put peas on her forehead) have a gorgeous house made of wood and glass, held together with books and liquor, decorated with bugles and spears and spiders. Well, one spider, Spindles McGee, who we met last year and lives in the bookcase in the toilet behind the 5 leatherbound volumes of How To Fly A Plane manuals.
The loo is a composting toilet, which grossed me out a little the first time, but now I can compare it to hand dug long drops and chemical toilets, and it blows those both out of the water (try not to picture that image too hard.)
Leah posted about the Viking Feast, was which fantastic. There were about thirty people there, three legs of lamb, one huge fish, mushroom tarts (a la me) soups and breads and mead and roast veges and cheese and SO MUCH FOOD it was a true medieval feast - although the garb was just a fun approximation - there was a man there dressed as a wizard, for example.
He was great though! He had rigged his pointy hat to flop when he was talking to a man and point up straight and rigid whenever he talked to a beautiful woman. I laughed every time I heard him tell that joke.
There was a woman there who was 84 and told me she was sick of old people with bad attitudes. We bonded. I think we were the oldest and youngest people there. She'd grown up in Indonesia, till she was twenty, and the last four years there was WWI. WORLD WAR ONE. She talked about that and Merlin talked about Cyclone Tracey and I talked about earthquakes for a while, and then our conversation just went down the wonderful alcohol-lubricated path, most of which I don't remember, but she was awesome. She hugged me twice and wished me well on my journey, and Merlin said that he sensed I had a sweet spirit, because that's just how the people in Nimbin talk.
A german woman called Ingrid came round to the house the next day and gave us all (except Leah) full body massages till we were no longer hungover. I'd never had a full body massage before. It ROCKED. I turned into mellow jelly Ali.
I managed not to think about work most of the time... Till I checked my email and found out that I had to go to Palmy the day after I got back, grr grr people who book me places without properly asking grr grr.
And for three or four nights I couldn't really sleep. I'd drift off easily enough (usually because I was half or fully drunk) but wake up a couple of hours later, wide awake and crispy, totally unable to get back to sleep. SO I read ALL the books! With my cellphone torch wedged between my boobs because I couldn't reach the lamp.
I read Deathless, by Cathrynne Valente, which was HOLY GOD FANTASTIC.
Wither, by someone, which was the kind of crap that I had to share with Leah and then Alina. It wasn't terribly written but so badly thought out and often ridiculous. If you are going to have someone raised in a world where women die at 20, why would your main character (age 16) think a 13 year old being pregnant was something to be harshly judged as unnatural and wrong? And also, you can't possibly live in a world where all countries except North America have been bombed to smithereens - as in aren't even above the water anymore, because that is STUPID. This book was a MULTITUDE of the stupid.
You Must Go and Win, an autobiography by musician Alina Simone, which was funny and interesting and then depressing, but still made me want to, well, Go and Win.
Fat Vampire, by someone, which was a lot funnier and smarter than I expected and once I got into it I loved it.
And... many other books. I didn't write a thing till I was on the plane home, but I started getting ideas, which was glorious. Now I just have to sit down and actually write. A lot. Every day. Goddammit.
(It's 12:34 am)
(Also I have half a margarita I must drink now. It's the very last of my duty free tequila. Last night Bath and Kemp came over to catch up and we margaritad the hell out of it. One litre of tequila, gone in three nights. Brilliant.)
I miss writing madly for hours at a time. I hate that this year I've been so exhausted and depressed and distracted and clinically frustrated (okay there isn't such a thing, but there should be, and I could diagnose manymany people with it) to write much apart from blog posts. There was a time a few months ago that I wasn't even reading anymore, but that seems to have passed (although I still watch QI to go to sleep at night.)
Work problems are still as mangled and frustrating and mind boggling as usual. I am sick of it all. I nearly went for another job but decided that I could probably do more to fix things where I am. I emailed my manager about the latest problem (team leader had forgotten where she'd sent me that day, called up my house to find out why I wasn't at work and freaked out Leah, who had heard me leave for work hours before the phone call and thought I might be dead - AUGH I hate that she is screwing with people who don't even get paid to deal with her! So I emailed manager about how it made me feel unsafe, to say the least, that she didn't know where I was (what if the world had broken again!?!) and... haven't heard anything back.
So... whatever.
I am going to concentrate on other parts of my life.
One of those should be study but I can't be arsed at the moment.
I'll work something out.
In the meantime, I still have stuff to look forward to. I might go to Sheffield this weekend, and I know a really cool massage guy in Chch.
I didn't get to go to the library conference I wanted to go to. It was (is) in Wellington, and had (has) exciting people coming in from all over the world to talk about exciting library happenings (this might not sound exciting to you, but TRUST ME, I was getting hyper butterflies in my stomach reading the programme). But I'm kind of relieved that I didn't get it, because (and I would not say this to my boss or parental units because it is a matter of Priorities and Getting Them Straight) I don't want to miss the Halloween party, or the first two days of Nano (which DAMMIT I am doing this year, I really really need the crazyjuice to cure my brain). And right now, for me, parties/catching up with people I haven't seen in WAY too long/writing madly/drinking/being as silly as possible/horror movies with Lara is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> career related experience.
So - that didn't really turn out being much of a 'list', as such... But oh well, at least I blogged, and now you all know I am still here.