"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true". – James Branch Caball
Here we are again. Another new year. Everything changes but stays the same. "Change is the only constant." "Have you always thought that?" To quote from the genius of Iain M. Banks.
2009! It only seems like yesterday that Prince was anticipating the millennium and saying "tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1999."
*looks around the internet, sighs. Remembers when all of this was fields*
Continue readingMerry bah humbug to one and all. Well, on the bright side it’s fifty one and a half weeks to xmas. Another one out of the way.
Damn this six day working lark. OK, so I’ve not done as much as some, what with the driving test and time off sick, but it’s buggered my days off over this (not so) festive period. I should have been on my long weekend now, so it would have fallen: Thursday off for xmas Friday, Saturday, Sunday days off, then off Thursday for New Year’s day. As it is I had Thursday and Friday off, worked Saturday, off today, working Thursday and all the way through until next Tuesday or Wednesday. Big bum.
As it happens I do need the overtime, well the money, to make up for being off sick and the general impoverishment of the season. But at this time of year you can’t help but think ‘ I shouldn’t be in here grafting, I should be at home watching Wallace and Gromit, and The Great Escape’.
Continue readingI think I’m going to live. Not forever you understand, just through this cold. I am thinking of risking going back to work tomorrow even though they have said if I go in, am too ill to work and come home again, that will be counted as two absences. Three absences in six months qualifies you for an investigatory hearing.
I really can’t see who that particular rule serves. I dare not go back until I am absolutely sure I am peachy (and this cold seems to be getting better only to return with a vengeance) which means they are going to lose at least one shift when I could have soldiered on through the fag end of the bug.
Whatever. I’ll try to go back tomorrow, even if I can’t work very fast and am a bit weakened it’s only for two days, then off for two.
Continue readingBummer. I’m coming down with the lurgy. I’ve been dodging that particular bullet for weeks now as all around me people have been dropping like flies. No longer I fear.
Sah bum nim was ghastly with it the weekend before last, didn’t catch it, the lads at work have been getting ill and I remained impervious, the boss succumbed and has been off for several days, but I thought I might just hang in there until after xmas, but no. I’m ill and getting iller.
Bum, bum bum!
Continue readingHi again, this really is to be a quick one (Heroes is on in 25 minutes!). Had to commit this to pseudo paper though.
Of late I’ve been struggling with the Taekwondo. If I’m on 2-10 shift I can’t go because I’m working, and 6-2 I’m so tired I just can’t drag myself to go. Then there was missing the grading due to my HGV lesson , and I didn’t go to one lesson I could have made last week as it was the final one before grading and we’d have just been going through the stuff we needed for it. Which I do every time I exercise (most days on 2-10).
So all in all I was losing it. I had to force myself to go tonight or I felt I might just quit. And then there was tonight’s lesson. I am buzzing off it. Sure I’m tired now, and will be worse tomorrow (I am too wired to go straight to bed now even if I didn’t want to watch Heroes), but for the first time in what seems like ages I am invigorated, chipper to the point of cheerful and focused again. I want to learn, to strive, to master the damn painful discipline.
Continue reading