Mobile

So, Fiona’s mobile temporarily died, which seemed like the perfect excuse for us to get replacements. I’ve never had one before, and have never really missed the lack, but there’ve been a couple of times when it would have been useful to have one, so I’ve bought into the global communications conspiracy.

Not wholly, mind you. We went for basically the cheapest, most frills-free options available. It makes calls, it receives text messages, and if I forget my watch it will tell me the time. About its most useful function is freeing me up from having to find my address book when I want to call someone whose number I haven’t memorised.

Should this somehow include you, send me an email and I’ll send you my number.

Another lazy weekend

Actually, it was anything but. Had another long weekend as I work off my excess leave before I’m Deemed (a Public Service Capitalisation denoting the odd practise of just striking you off as being on leave whether you’re at work or not). Ironically, because of the short week, that means that I had to come into work on Saturday and do overtime to pull together some documents for a meeting this week.

No, there’s no reason why any of that should make sense to you. It doesn’t to me.

If you don’t play World of Warcraft much…

…then this will make even less sense to you. But it is, in fact, bloody hilarious.

Tired. Details or completeness too much to ask right now.

Haven’t updated in ages. Too much to do at work, not enough time to get anything done at home. Lots has been going on. Ate at Sage. Kicked off a SpyCraft game. Bought The Prisoner DVD box set. Had the first cricket practise of the year. Hurt a lot. Katie crashed her car. Our team won a game of netball. Project Porkpie hit a few snags here and there. I found out what good scotch whiskey tastes like.Heaps of people I know went to a pop culture con in Sydney (but not me).

Lots of stuff’s been happening. It’s hard to keep track. I’m sure you’ll let me know if I’ve left anything out.

Happy birthday, Mistah Simno

Today’s Si’s birthday. This revelation came as something of a surprise to me when he mentioned it in the car last night. Actually, I was a bit annoyed at myself, because I usually do remember the birthdays of close friends and family. But this morning I finally realised the likely reason that I didn’t see it coming – it’s because I missed his last three birthdays as well. Which, because it’s two days after my wedding anniversary, an occasion we usually celebrate by going off somewhere exotic and expensive for several days. Which is a perfectly reasonable excuse for missing the birthday of someone who lives in the same house as you, right? Right?

Anyway, I confess that I’ve been caught offside. I must now make amends by running around and getting something appropriate at the last minute (and it needs to be good, because it has to match or top his present to me this year, which was a Trogdor the Burninator t-shirt). Shopping for Si is rarely easy though, because anything he wants, he buys as a matter of reflex. Still, there will be something out there with his name on’t.

(By the way, if you follow that link, stay with it until the song...)

It’s all coming back to me now

Okay, apart from the fact that I’m not actually doing any work right at the moment, the last couple of days have started to feel a bit more productive. I still have a mountain of work to do on the unappealing quality document I’m supposed to be writing for Project Porkpie (a task for which I have zero interest and possibly even less qualification), but it’s inching towards, if not completion then at least a state viewable by other people.

But there are worrying signs that it’s all going to drag on well past the original expected end date of May next year. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t get that news last week, when I was feeling pretty down on the prospect of having to keep plugging away for much more than another nine months at the same job without a change of scene. I don’t think I could have coped. Now, I’m just a little fretful.

Fortunately, we’re all have a team-building long lunch at some swanky Frenchesque restaurant today. On top of that, it’s beers and dinner with Emma and Chris after work, so I am quite resigned to not getting very much of value done today at all.

Other people’s jobs

Gazza reports that Sonnie has won her promotion, so now she’s an Executive Level 1 like Fiona. Ian’s over the moon, of course (presumably he now believes he’ll never have to work again, which might well be the case). Immediately upon receiving the news, they put the house up for auction. They’ve been looking for a few months for something with a bit more space, and the security of Son’s job’s means that it’s a goer now.

Heh

This comic is pretty amusing. Well, it amused me, anyway.

Commencing Year Four

So today is the third anniversary of my marriage to the wonderful Miz Fazza, which shows no signs of losing any of its myriad appeals. In a sense it feels like it’s understating the longevity of our relationship to just count Octobers the Fifth, since we were together three years before that, but it’s a notable occasion nonetheless. It’s probably traditional to impart some vaguely smug observation about what keeps it all so fresh and wonderful, but since most of us know couples who’ve been together much longer – my Mum and Dad, for example, are closing in pretty fast on 40 years – I might just leave that to wiser minds. Suffice to say we’re deliriously in love and expect the condition to be utterly incurable.

What’s my motivation for this scene?

As is perfectly normal and to be expected, I’m having an appalling time getting back into work since the holiday in New Zealand. Part of that is that I’ve had a cold dogging at me on and off since almost the minute we got back to Canberra. More to the point is the feeling of lost momentum on Project Porkpie. Before, I felt on top of (nearly) everything and had a real sense that I knew how everything was tracking and what needed to be done. Since the holiday, I’ve completely lost that perspective and I’m having a hard time rebuilding it, or even finding the enthusiasm to goad myself into it.

Fortunately, the apparent lack of activity is illusory, or at least it’s more or less exclusive to me and not the project as whole. There have been some delays, and concerns continue to grow about the deadline, but mainly the problem is in my head rather than anything particularly tangible.

That said, I do have rather a lot of work to get done, in the face of a real reluctance to just cowboy up and do it. I’m slowly overcoming the inertia, but maybe too slowly, and the more I procrastinate, the more the pressure builds. I half suspect that I’m subconsciously engineering a crisis for myself, presumably on the assumption that I either work better under the gun or that I will finally be exposed as a complete charlatan and removed from any position of responsibility.

On the other hand, I could be over thinking what is, in essence, acute laziness.

So very disenthused

It’s not just work, mind you. There’s a dozen little projects at the moment that - to borrow from Homer Simpson – “I’d love to want to” work on, but I can’t muster the energy for any of them. Resume learning piano. Continue the renovations. Do the cover artwork for the Spit album. Song writing. Writing in general. Running a regular roleplaying game. Plant a vegetable garden. All potentially spirited endeavours, except that I can’t summon the spirit.

Oh, it will pass, for sure, and I’ll get to all of those things sooner or later. But I’m keenly feeling the absence of a sense of immediacy, of urgency and drive. If I feel like doing anything, it’s kicking back and reading a book or watching a bit of TV or just sort of hanging around and idly chatting. But if I actually do any of those things, I give myself a massive guilt trip for wasting time. Sometimes I think my subconscious is just taking the piss, really.