Life in 2D/3D

I am typing this on my brand new computer. It's exciting! It is actually capable of running more than one program at a time. And it seems so fast compared to my old dinosaur. I love buying new things.

The work Christmas party is this friday! Everyone is counting down the time until we get to go out all night. I, unfortunately, have spent today being quite ill, so i'm hoping it will pass in time for me to get ridiculously drunk and enjoy myself. I think the illness is heat related. The temperature suddenly soared to 30 degrees celcius (i think that's around 86 degrees fahrenheit) last weekend, and has been consistently hot and muggy ever since. It would be nice if it cooled down at night, but unfortuantely no such luck. I sleep in a room upstairs in the house which has this magical ability to hold onto the heat regardless of whether or not it has cooled down outside. I don't have an air conditioner up here, so i'm putting my ilness down to sleeping in 27 degree heat all night last night. I realise that 30 degrees isn't especially hot compared to how hot it gets in other places, but it was so sudden that i think going from non-stop rain to intense heat had thrown my body off.
On the plus side, it promises to stay warm for the xmas party, so i can still get away with wearing the outfit i have picked out.

A chemical reaction is currently taking place on my head. In half an hour my head will be transformed. Things with names like "P-Methylaminophenol Sulfate" and "Phenyl Methyl Pyrazolone" and lots of things ending in '-Acid' are reacting together, creating tiny molecules that are entering into the cortex of my hair and expanding to a size that makes them impossible to remove.
It's like something out of a science fiction movie. But it doesn't stop there. 'Sucrose Polycottonseedate', 'Tocopherol' and 'Polymethylsilsesquioxane ' are seeping into my skin. I am a chemical cocktail. I wonder, if i smoked a cigarette right now, would i catch fire? Why is it that scientists give these chemicals such scary sounding names? Perhaps they like the idea that a hair colour and a moisturizer can sound so dangerous.

They say that the hair colour that will suit you the best is the colour your hair was when you were about 12 years old. It sounds wrong to have to create a chemical reaction on your head so you can go back to something so young and innocent. I suppose beauty is like that nowadays. You have to use science to make things look like nature made them. People are so strange. I am no exception.

My hair will soon be "Starry Night". I like that the name is very surreal. It suits a colour that isn't really mine.

My dad just called me to ask me to come and help him make potato salad. He looked completely lost. He had peeled the potatoes, but was stuck and had no idea where to go from there. I laughed and said "It's funny because you think i know what to do!". We went through the fridge and found a bottle of potato salad dressing that was unopened. the used by date said August 04. It was unopened and had been in the fridge so we're just going to use it and hope for the best.

It is an incredibly gorgeous day outside. the weather could only be described as balmy. It's a stupid word, but it describes the day perfectly. I'm feeling good and relaxed and just all round content.

My new computer arrives tomorrow. I'm excited, because the one i have at home now could quite safely be compared to a cardboard box with a keyboard taped to it. A cardboard box with stones in it, of course - it's a lot heavier than just a plain cardboard box. Tomorrow i will hurl it at something to see what happens. Maybe. Or maybe i'll bury it in a cave so that it can bond with the memories of early man - an era where it would feel right at home.

A short message of warning to you all - don't moisturise your hands and then attempt to type a blog entry.

I realise this is a very disjointed blog entry, but i have a lot of thoughts and only a little patience.

You know what's really annoying? when guy's and girl's use apostrophe's for everything that has an 's' on it's end.

I had my nails done today. i would have liked to have them done the day before the work xmas party (which is next friday!) so they looked good for the occasion, but i guess i'll just have to do very little work until then to keep them tidy. Unfortunately,  i have to change the brake booster on my car, so this isn't likely to happen.
Oh, how i miss my car when it's not working. The little nissan pulsar is like a powerless blip in comparison.

It's too nice (and balmy) to be inside. I'm going out to lounge around before the sun disappears for the night.

there is such an incredible amount of stress flying around the office at the moment that it'a a wonder it hasn't taken someone's eye out. I'm counting the days until the christmas break. 29 and counting.
my car is broken at the moment and so i'm driving a tiny little nissan pulsar, being cut off by crazy peak-hour-drivers left right and centre. Work is erratic, on and off. It's an all round pretty average sort of time of year.
On the plus side i feel better now than i have in a very long time. the trauma of a visit to the doctors was worth it, in the end.
Being in this kind of mood always makes me want to buy things. And since some silly person invented internet shpping, it's just that little bit too easy to spend massive amounts of money on things that i don't really need. I'm even watching infomercials and thinking about buying things - although i do beleive that if you watch infomercials for long enough, you get brainwashed into wanting to buy things you don't really need. It's a law of pysics. really, i swear! Something to do with american talk show hosts and the hypnotic effects of their big shiny white smiles.

Now I don’t normally get political on my blog, but there’s one issue that’s really bugging me that I have to mention. What the hell is the deal with McDonalds cooking their fries in Canola Oil? The greatest French fry in the history of the Universe has been ruined in the name of ‘making Australians healthier.’
Screw the canola oil, i say! I want the good old cholesterol chip back!! Canola oil has a terrible aftertaste. Do the McDonalds people really think that people are unaware of the health issues associated with eating junk food? Do they take us for idiots? It’s like the government wanting to put photos of disease lungs on cigarette packets. People aren’t stupid. We’re aware of what is and isn’t bad for us. How can a corporation (they call themselves a corporation but really we know they’re a cult) as big as McDonalds really think that canola oil will help them sell food? And how can they justify ruining the taste of a worldwide favorite just so that it’s mildly healthier? Surely this must have ruined their French fry sales. Essentially, it’s like changing the recipe. Dopes any other company that big change their recipe? Did coca cola one day decide that they’d change the coke recipe, just in case people thought it was unhealthy? NO!! They just offered a supposedly healthier alternative (ie diet coke). McDonalds offered a ‘new tastes menu’ which morphed into a ‘healthy choice menu’ and has now started to overtake the good old fashioned junk food menu, like some sort of contagious disease. If I wanted to eat healthier fast food, I’d go to Subway!!! It all started with that stupid ‘Super-Size Me’ movie. After that, the CEO of McDonald Australia was on an Ad trying to save face, because he thought people actually cared about what was in the movie. Hey, Mr CEO – We already knew that it was bad for us!! It’s official. McDonalds has lost touch.
I’m hereby starting the Anti-healthy-McDonalds-Gu ild, for all of those who agree that junk food should stay junky. And to those people who worry that mcdonalds is bad for them – A simple solution  - Don’t eat it but stop ruining it for the rest of us!!!

It's approaching that time of year again and i've started my countdown. That's right - I'm counting the days until the work Christmas party. Our work Christmas parties aren't your regular, boring cooule of drinks down at the pub or your boring old bbq after work. Our work christmas party is a little bit bigger than that. Last year's party,  for example, started at 12pm one sunny Thursday December afternoon and wound up 2 meals, 3 pubs and a strip club later at 1am the following morning. Needless to say, 13 odd hours of drinking can leave you slightly hung over the next day. The very best part is that it is possible to drink for 13 hours and not have to buy 1 drink. Or 1 meal. Or even a packet of cigarettes when you run out. Rumour has it that the last Christmas Party left a bill of somewhere around $6000. I'm not sure if i beleive that or not, but when i think of 13 hours of double bourbons at the casino, where a single bourbon is $7.00, and there are around 10 people - well, i guess it adds up after a while. 
The best part is the people - you can find some amazing things out about your co-workers after a few drinks. Our last christmas party was the first time that i had ever seen or touched boob-job-boobs. Our GM has implants, and after a few drinks & a conversation out of curiosity, she got them out so i could see what they looked like. Amazing what people will do with a bit of booze in them. Although I suspect she's the sort who would do it without the alcohol.

This year promises to be even bigger (hopefully! And that's not a boob joke.) so i'm starting the countdown. Only 2 weeks, 3 days to go!

ergh...it's after midnight and i've spent the last 3 hours straight pretending that i have some sort of idea about writing/editing PHP scripts. After 3 hours i still have no idea what it's really all about - but i feel a sense of accomplishment, having peiced together enough bits of code to create what i wanted to create. I've always claimed that making web pages didn't interest me - but for someone who isn't really interested, i seem to do it an awful lot & i seem to get a fair bit of enjoyment out of it. I like to have something to work from first. I don't like starting from scratch. It's so hard to look at a blank page and to put something onto it with nowhere in particular to start. I like to start with something already made and then work with it until it looks completely different.

I've started to do a little bit of web/print/design work for a friend of mine who is self employed . Well, sort of. He's 4 days from completing the course that i started at the same time as him (and subsequently dropped out of). And after that he's doing his business thing fulltime. I've designed his business cards & stationary (stationery? does anyone really know which one is which?) and i'm doing a bit of web design stuff for him. It's fun. I like doing this stuff. But at 12:30am, i have to say - i'm a little bit over the PHP. I think some sleep is in order.

Today i attended a sort of reunion type thing at my old school. It's been 12 years since i attended there, so i was looking forward to catching up with some old friends that i haven't seen in a while. There are a lot of people that i just lost touch with after school finished - a lot of them are now married with children, a lot of them have degrees and some of them...well, some of them are a little less fortunate. I know this because i'd heard through other people about how things were going. So i thought it would be nice to catch up. I went all the way to this reunion - and only saw one person that was in my year level. One. One single, solitary person - and she ignored me. She was one of those people who left school and went to university and got the "now that i'm a university student, i'm too cool and clever for everyone else" attitude. I wasn't entirely devastated that she chose to ignore me. I was a little upset that i didn't get to catch up with anyone - but i suppose there will be other chances. Maybe.

In other news, i am not looking forward to work tomorrow as it promises to be full of confrontation. I'm so incredibly tempted to quit my job at the moment but too paranoid. I'm sure things will be fine, but it has made me realise that working where i am for a long time isn't going to get me anywhere much. The trouble is that i really just don't know what i want to do for a living. If i could get motivated and stick out school for another 3 years then i wouldn't have any problems - unfortunately, i don't quite have that kind of motivation. I suspect i might end up working for myself, but it's hard to know where to start, really.

I'll wait and see how work goes tomorrow.

We're having some crazy crazy weather here at the moment. It's so windy you can barely stand upright. It's also raining that fat kind of rain - you know the kind. It's the sort that has you drenched to the bone after standing in it for 5 seconds.
I think i'd like to go and see a movie today. It has been a horrible, horrible week for me and i feel like doing something nice and mindless to make me forget it all. I'd like to take a holiday, in fact. It's 6 weeks until christmas holidays, but i think i need a holiday before that. I'd like to go somewhere nice and sunny,  somewhere that is in the middle of nowhere where people wouldn't bother me.
I think there's some merit to the idea of becoming a hermit. I can't see anything really bad about the idea, except maybe that you need money to be a really good hermit. I think the important things are:

1) Living in the middle of nowhere, completely alone.
2) Having enough money so that you don't have to work
3) Looking suitably weird, so that when you head to the general store to get supplies, people are too afraid to talk to you
4) Having an air of mystery - i'm not sure how you go about getting one of those.
5) Wearing lots of clothes that don't fit. You have to look like you don't know how to look like a normal person
6) Having soem weird kind of disabilty. Maybe missing an eye, or having a mysterious limp. So that people can speculate about what happened to you
7) Not liking People

I think i could manage no. 1, 3, 5 and 7, but i don't know what i'd do about the rest. Maybe there's a course you can take to learn how to do it properly. I'll have to  look into it. I suspect that having everything from no. 1 - 7 invovles doing something illegal, like robbing a bank, so that you can be rich & disabled (from getting shot in the leg while running away) and have that air of mystery. I think that's a bit beyond my means. I guess i'll just have to seettle for a holiday.

I know my last blog was titled ' Yay for not being dead' but i think is spoke too soon. I am like a magnet for illness. I attract sickness the way er...um...magnets...attract...er...you know, metal stuff.
Anyway, what i'm getting at is that i think i'm suffering from more than one illness. It's like all the bugs that were going around during the year have decided to gang up on me and teach me a lesson for not going to see the doctor unless i was almost dying a horrible horrible death. I was going to blog about my trip to the doctors and the HOUR AND A HALF that i had to wait after being told to come down straight away, but now i'm too scared. I might be back there again shortly, the way things are going and i don't want to jinx it.

I'm supposed to be doing lots of overtime at work at the mometn to try and get some promotional stuff finished, but i haven't been well enough. This presents a teensy bit of a problem, in that i said it would be done before christmas, and christmas seems to be sneaking up awfully fast. Honestly, who can tell how fast christmas is coming up when every year the decorations go up earlier and earlier. I freaked out back in September, thinking that i was running out of time, until i realised that it was just the chain stores cashing in on christmas early. So then i figured i had plenty of time and i could take it easy. now i've realised that i have a month to get a whole lot of work done that would normally take me at least three or so. I'm thinking i might take it up with some of the bigger stores - see if i can't sue them into doing it for me so that i can go to bed and sleep off this sickness. Yes. That will do nicely.

Yay! Visit to the doctor is over with (for now). I'm alive, i survived - only just. And I was right! They stuck a big needle in me! I think they just do it for their own pleasure. Joke's on them - i have wiggly veins. Apparently, my veins move out of the way when someone tries to stick a needle in them. Clever, aren't they? Yes, i trained them that way to avoid people trying to suck out my blood. Good for doctors and for vampires. Cheaper and less odorous than garlic, too. Will blog more about it later – have to celebrate not being chopped up into little bits right now.

My blogging has become quite slack lately - mostly, as I mentioned, because work is so busy, and also because I have been sick on and off now for about the last two years. I've managed to ignore it until recently, when the amount of time i feel sick has overtaken the amount of time i feel well. So tomorrow I’m going to the doctors. Wish me luck. I'm hoping that it will be easily solved and that I’ll be able to start feeling well all the time, as two years of feeling average is probably about one year, 11 months and 29 days too many.
I have a severe paranoia about all forms of doctors. I once put off going to the dentist for 8 months and only went when KJ locked me in the car and drove me there. The thing with doctors is that they always want to stick big needles into you. And really, I’m not overly fond of needles. More than the needle itself, it's the stuff that's in the needles that freaks me out. I am absolutely terrified of anesthetics. I despise the idea of being put to sleep. And what if they tell me that I’m falling to bits and they’re going to have to chop me up and sew me back together again? Uh uh, not gonna happen to me. I prefer to go to the doctors if I know what’s wrong with me and I need someone to write me a prescription for it.
So to be quite honest, I’m absolutely shitting myself about going to the doctors tomorrow. But two years is a long time to ignore that you’re not feeling 100% and while I suspect that I know what it is, it’s not something that I’m entirely happy about.

Today is a public holiday - Melbourne Cup Day. It's the first time in a week that i've had enough time to stop and blog. I'm not entirely sure why we have a public holiday for a horse race, especially since there are a lot of sports in this country that are more widely followed - but i'll assume it has something to do with the terrificly large amount of alcohol that everyone drinks at the races. Some important officals somewhere went to the cup one year, got blind drunk, and in a drunken speech, declared that they loved everyone and that everyone should come to the race and have a drink with them. It then became a public holiday. that's not the official story, but i'm sure that's the one they're trying to sweep under the rug.

This is how my incredibly busy week was filled up:
Last week the new Australian playground standards came into effect, which has thrown my job into turmoil. They're completely 100% different to the current ones in every aspect. It's a nightmare. They're based on the European standards. Crazy Europeans! You're trying to make life difficult for me, aren't you!!??!!

My parents returned from overseas today, which has meant a week of trying to get my sister motivated to clean the stuff she has left lying around for the last week and mostly ending up cleaning it myself.

I have been reading a book, and although i know this doesn't qualify as technically 'being busy', i'm going to include it because i can't put the damn thing down! It's a true story about an english man in a Bolivian Prison where the prisoners are forced to buy their cells like real estate and survive in a miniature economic system inside the prison walls. Thomas, the guy the book is about is the prison tour guide and his story is about drugs, police corruption and violence. Read it. It's fantastic. Although since it isn't finished i can't make any guarantees about the ending.

I have been designing a logo and business stationery for a friend who has started a business. I love doing graphic design work. I could spend every day of my life doing it. Unfortunately, it comes back to that whole 'not having a degree' issue. Degrees are over rated. Who needs a degree anyway!!!

I'm hoping that this week will leave me a little more free to catch up on my blogging. Even now i have to go - i have about 800 digital photos of Europe to look at. I think by number 367 i'll be well and truly asleep.