Tempered Fragility

The weekend has begun, and I feel so much better now that test is done, and I don’t have to stress about it any more. Of course, I have to wait for my marks now, which is almost as stressful as sitting the test. I’m hopeful, though - which is to say, I’ll be surprised if I don’t pass. Anything over a pass at this stage is a bonus, although secretly I’m hoping for a Distinction. Or, not so secretly now, I suppose.

I’ve ordered the invitations for my birthday, and I’m hoping they arrive on Monday so I can send them out that evening. Although, you know.. sometimes I think it would be nice if some of them got ‘lost’ in the mail. I’m nervous about the party. Most people are excited, but I hate having people’s attention focused on me, and everyone is expecting me to drink. I don’t want to; I’ll even be drinking Maison for the toast.

There’s another thing: the toast. And speeches, if people want to give them. And there’ll be so many people there, and everyone will want to talk to me - for once in my life I’ll be popular - and they’ll all sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and watch me the whole night. Is it just me, or does this sound like hell to other people, too? I can’t wait until this birthday has come and gone; after this, I get to plan my own birthdays.

And by plan, I mean do nothing.

I’m hoping to be able to buy a tape recorder at some stage over the next week or so. I think I mentioned in my last post that interviewing is the longest and most important part of Journalism; it goes for six or seven weeks, and we have to do a proper interview at the end of it. In between, we also do lots of other small interviews, and the recorder really is an invaluable tool. Writing stuff down as people say it is impossible.

I’ve been in SQ for much of the night, mining and doing Lore quests - trying to raise my strength so I can go and see the Sorceror, which is kind of the whole point. Then I find out that my intelligence needs to be 100 as well, so now I have 20 points to raise in that. Bleh. Stats training is the worst, it really is. On VL, the stats raised as you ran around; on SQ, you have to actually perform actions or quests for them to raise. FAIL.

I’m going up to Anthony and Nicole’s tomorrow, and will be playing Wii for most of the night, and probably much of the next day as well. I’m excited; I’ve never played before, and I’ve always wanted to. I suppose I shall regale you all with stories of my escapades on Sunday, when I get home. Hopefully they will be enjoyable stories, and not ‘I made a fool of myself’ type stories. We can only hope.

Today was my first day back at the office for two weeks, and it was blissful. Seriously, Mr. Gabriel was so considerate today. He brought the files out to me three at a time, spaced evenly throughout the day, and didn’t rush me at all. It was a great day, really. I actually enjoyed doing the work, and was able to get everything done on time without stressing and feeling frustrated.

I had Industry Overview tonight, and although I’m one of the few people who take the lectures seriously, even I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for the speaker tonight. He was a published author, several times over actually, yet his speech was clumsy and boring. Repetition can successfully emphasise parts of a speech, but not when almost everything is said two, sometimes even three times.

This weekend, I’ve organised to go up to Anthony and Nicole’s with Gentil so we can play Wii! I’m excited, although a little worried about being treated differently now that Gentil and I aren’t together any more. They were his friends first, and I wouldn’t really blame them for being a little peeved at me. Still, they don’t seem to be like that at all, and I mean they wouldn’t have invited me if they hated me, right?

Alright, I have to get up early in the morning, as I have work again. I better get some sleep. =)

Well, I’m home from work. I’ve logged into MSN, checked my e-mail (which is empty), and I’m browsing the forums at WB as I write this. Tonight wasn’t particularly busy, but since I didn’t get much sleep last night, I’m tired and very glad to be off my feet. I didn’t really enjoy working today; I think the incident with Mr. Choose My Porn left me a little wary.

Last night was a lot of fun; hopefully not just for Gentil and I. We watched the Hostel movies, ate homemade popcorn with butter and salt, stayed up playing games and talking, and went to bed at ridiculous times in the morning. We also discussed going to the movies on Valentine’s Day, since none of us had planned anything, to see Jumper.

Ideally, I would love to go into Melbourne Central and see it at the Halfpipe, so we can laze around and snuggle in the huge beanbags they have there. Unfortunately it is quite expensive, and it’s also pretty far out of Anthony and Nicole’s way, so I’m not sure if we’ll do that or not. It’s a plan in progress. =)

I am kicking ass at Harvest Moon, and absolutely loving it. It’s a lot of fun, although you definitely need the manual to get started, otherwise you run around aimlessly for a while when you could be harvesting. Because, as Anthony said, it’s all about growing vegetables.

He must have asked me like a million times over the night, “How’s your vegetable garden going?” Because growing vegetables is just so immature and pointless when compared to making the guy in GTA eat until he throws up. For real.

I went to Sunbury (with Gentil, of course) last night to see friends of ours, and before I left, I scheduled a post for 10pm. Anthony and Nicole don’t have internet access up there, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to post, you see.

So, I scheduled it and I wrote the title and everything, and then I must have forgotten to actually publish it, because when I got back today, it was still in ‘Drafts’, and was drastically reduced in length. By ‘drastically’, I mean NEARLY ALL GONE.

That’s ok though, because I have a pretty good memory, and although the re-written tale isn’t as good as when I first wrote it? It’s still pretty damn good. I’ll be posting tonight after work as well, most likely about last night.

I have a terrible headache as I write this, and I have no idea why. I didn’t drink today, and it wasn’t exceptionally noisy at Nicole and Anthony’s, so I’m not sure what’s going on, really. It’s just this terrible, throbbing ache right between my eyes, where your skin kind of crinkles when you frown, you know?

*sigh* Anyway. Today was a lot of fun, despite getting lost on the way there. If Gentil’s dad had listened to me, we wouldn’t have been, but what can you do, huh? Men will never listen. We finally arrived, even if we were a little bit late, and everyone was fine. Nicole and Anthony had invited some other people over, and surprisingly I tensed a little bit when I realised. I felt nervous immediately, and I had to consciously use the CBT to calm myself down. That was an odd experience; it has been a long time since I have actually had to think about using it.

I got to see Zita’s baby! Aww. She called her Shanelle (or Chanelle, or maybe even Chanel, I don’t know), and she is the cutest little thing ever. Absolutely adorable, and I got to hold her. *swoons* She made me all clucky, hehe. Zita looked really happy and healthy, which was good. Although her fiancé was nowhere to be found. Meh. I’m not going to judge the guy. I know he doesn’t exactly get along with Nicole and Anthony, so maybe he just wasn’t in the mood.

You know, I had such great things planned for this blog post, but I just spent three million hours surfing a site advertising free stuff, and I forgot all about it. So I’m posting it and going back to look at it again. Because you can never have too much stuff. Ever.

Today I joined del.icio.us, and Ma.gnolia; the first because I thought it would be an awesome way to manage my bookmarks and the second because I didn’t like the first site I joined. Despite some lag when managing bookmarks on Ma.gnolia, it seems to be performing well, and I find it a lot more user-friendly than del.icio.us.

So, today was spent sorting, tagging and re-sorting bookmarks. Not a very fun day, really. Still, it was rather productive, and I did get some cleaning done, so I can’t complain too much. It was my day off, and I’m glad that I got to spend some time just relaxing and not doing much of anything. I needed it.

Tomorrow we’re heading up to Nicole and Anthony’s for a barbecue before I have to go to work. It should be a lot of fun; I’m looking forward to it, even though it will cut into my internet time dreadfully. Socialising tends to do that; I think that’s why I have no friends. They’re just so high maintenance. All those phone calls, and events and such. =P

I’ll be sorting out how to put my recent links on Ma.gnolia into the sidebar soon, and won’t that be like, so totally awesome! Tee hee. I’m excited, anyway. It’s a cool feature: you know you all want to know what I’m bookmarking right now. *wiggles eyebrows* Yeah, I know. Not funny. Meh, that’s all I’ve got tonight people.

Ciao. =)

My resolution for the new year is to write something everyday, and post it here. Sounds so easy.. but considering my success (*cough*) with NaBloPoMO, I’m guessing it will last a week. Maybe two. *shrug*

NYE was generally pretty low key; we went to Sunbury and watched the fireworks with Anthony and Nicole. Next year I am determined to go into the city and document the whole thing with my camera, and possibly a voice recorder.

This post is really short because I’m in the middle of cutting Rylee’s fur.. she may not be all that stylish, but at least she’ll be cool. She was panting non-stop in the heat today, and I’m worried about her losing weight or dehydrating under all that fur. We have a bag full so far, and there is still 1/4 of a puppy to do.

Oh! I wrote a poem today, but I’m still editing it. I will post it here when I’m done though.

I’m also currently in the middle of coding a layout for my Mum’s blog.. ugh. I did something to it, somewhere, but do you think I can find it? I’m considering commenting out ALL of the styling so I can maybe isolate the problem.. wish me luck!