29 June 2005

help, my mother just recommended me a "self-help" book!!!

There really is something disturbing about someone recommending you a self-help book. To quote the grandparent of many self-help books, it really is saying "I'm OK, you're not OK!!" at the worst and "I'm not OK, you're not OK!!" at the best!! (or would the other way 'round be preferable? I don't know).

I know I can be too sensitive at times, but really, what is someone trying to tell you when they say you might be interested in a book "on how we use our feelings and emotions to unconsciously manifest negativity or lack into our lives and how we can also use them to turn our lives right around and create the sort of life we really want"??

It really makes me wonder what my stories sound like to her down the other end of the phone line at times... Especially when I'm surrounded by other people who are constantly moaning about how shit their work is and often I feel that if I didn't listen to anyone else's opinion and just kept my head down and worked, I'd probably be a lot happier. And I might add that I spent much of my childhood listening to my own parents moan about their work, and not turning their negative situations right around to the situation they wanted!!!! (mind you, it's hard to just pack up and migrate to a tropical island if you have 2 kids to think of).

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Phew, glad I got that off my chest. Just replied to my mother's email, making a joke about buying an office copy. I'll just treat it like a book recommendation that she thought I might like but got wrong this time (I'll save the recommendation for when I'm driven to despair).

24 June 2005

Bridgit style tally, week 1

Alcohol units since Sunday:

3.4* (oops)

It really is hard to resist a beer at the end of a hard working day when work mates so jovially offer you one (especially when accompanied by home-made, warmed up samosas).

But this is a reduction on last week, and indeed the average week.

Not bad...

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*nb on 3 separate days

21 June 2005

wish me luck...

OK - as from Sunday, I am now officially on a low-to-no alcohol diet. Yes, the "drugs" bit has been removed from the "Sex & drugs & rock'n'roll" (the other two being perfectly OK).

I have a few excuses handy for when in social situations but not really wanting to explain why I'm not drinking (more for reasons of virtue than dependency, I can assure you!!). Excuses I have have in the wings:

"no I don't think I will today/night, thanks..."
"beer/wine isn't agreeing with me at the moment"
"I'm driving"
"I think I feel a cold coming on, so should stick to lemon squash"

That that's enough to go on for now - any others?

17 June 2005

Random late night thoughts

I'm up late for a school night. Don't want to risk going to bed and lying awake for hours thinking about stuff I'd rather not, as my brain is ticking over. My feet are freezing, but I'm too lazy to get up and put some socks on. When rubbing foot to try to warm it up, noticed my big toe is a bit hairy, but this has never bothered me before.

It's good having my C-chan off the study books for a while, and to see smiley corners of mouth sneaking up more often : ) He cooked a massive chocolate cake from my hippy wholefood cafe cookbook, and we've been taking it along for lunch every day since. Need to pencil in a note that if not cooking cake for an actual cafe, half the quantity is plenty.

As my friends each notch up their 30 years, and mine approaches, I realise I'm missing my friends who are scattered around the nation (or soon will be missing for those not yet dispersed... you know who you are...) - happy birthday to NT's roving reporter, and hello to: Ms Antarctic cyanobacterian expert; the freelance contracter commuting far across the not-so-emerald city; and my highly qualified friend Dr Lunchbox, who is no doubt taking the govt service by storm in the nation's capital (and these are just the ones I remember I've sent this link to and I'm hoping read this from time to time - not meaning to leave anyone off). Any chance people can visit me in Synney later on in the year?

Getting sleepy - perhaps now is the time to go and sleep and think deeper and randomer thoughts, brought to me by my sub-conscious? It's been a while since I've had a good, revealing dream, I've realised. I think it's possibly time I was challenged by something different...? Or perhaps that I'm quite challenged enough* thankyou very much and my brain is so knackered at the end of the day that it sleeps with only one goal - giving me a break. Both valid theories. But which is right?? Probably the former.

Good night, sleep tight.

*A new type of "challenged" - not "mentally challenged", "vertically challenged" etc, but "challenged enough".

14 June 2005

vital liquids

I have returned to normal now, I promise. Nice to be annoyingly positive rather than annoyingly negative for a change, isn't it?

The picture above is my beeewdiful beer cosy (stubby holder) which I received at a certain industry conference I attended a few months back. The neck of the bottle goes through the top there and the chesty bits jut out so you kind of feel like you are groping your bottle as you drink. The back has g-string detail!!

The drought - assuming it is a 4-year drought, and not the beginning of a 50-year drier than average cycle as I heard in a scientific report last year - is worrying me. According the the seminar I attended, the last 50 years of last century (1950-2000) was a climatic mini-cycle in which we had wetter than the long term average rainfall. For this neck of the woods anyway. Will have to check whether this just applies to this side of the Great Dividing Range.

What's irritating me most is that my block of flats is apparently doing nothing about it... no system for tennants to save their vege-washing water and re-use it for the garden, no mandatory roll out of flow regulating showerheads, no way of monitoring any one unit's water usage (so that none of us are accountable for the amount of water we are using, and the guy above us has nightly 20 minute long showers). Planning to write a letter with my next rent payment to see if the strata group has any plans, or to at least to get them thinking about it.

03 June 2005

Frost bite

I'm thinking this is the coldest winter I've had yet in Sydney (as you'd expect from a drought year, my more agriculturally minded colleagues tell me). Out west, I've seen more morning frosts and gully mists this year than I did the whole of last winter already. Grass going yellow from the dry first, then the cold. Crisp under foot. Freezing mornings that break late morning into a warm, blue blue blue skied day.

Despite the cold weather, I'm in a nice warm kind of place at the moment. Nice, nice, nice. Beaming love and getting it back (no hormones involved I'm sure).

Work is hellishly overloaded (due to a hiatus in human resourcing while they find us a Director), but I feel like I kind of know how to go about most of what I have to do for a change. Missed a "lets talk about our workload" meeting the other day, but next time I was in the office, I had people come up to me saying... "Meririsa, I had no idea how much work you had on, or the breadth of the work that you are doing at the moment! You know you can always come to me for help if you want to know something, or need someone to run something by??!!" I felt only vaguely patronised (these people are all at least 10 years my senior after all) and very warm and fuzzy, as you know you are part of the "office family" (if you can call it that) when people say such nice sympathetic things. I guess when you stop caring about certain things, and you start to feel like you are hitting your stride for a bit (enjoy it while it lasts!), this is what happens!

Other cool things that have been happening:
- Gave way to a (manual) skooter-er on the footpath the other day, and he beamed at me in return
- Feeling fit and healthy and am not catching the full version of colds and flus going around
- Have the energy to give almost strangers (people you run into regularly but don't know) a smile and a "hello"
- cooking new things such as "beef and guiness pie", "dhal", "vege soup with black eyed beans*", and roast celeriac.
- mananging to wake up early again - love being up and about before anyone else (so long as I've had enough sleep, of course....)
-C-chan has nearly finished study for the semester, and can devote his spare time to me for the next month or 2!!

*new, favourite ingredient