Claire's Blog...Stuff that came into me hed.

Claire is feeling The current mood of unwittyname@hotmail.com at www.imood.com




























 
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About me: I'm 23 years old, female, and I live in Sydney (yes, in Australia.)
You can see the rest of my page here, but there's not much at the moment.
Write to me at unwittyname@hotmail.com




























Blee Oh Gee Gee Blogg
 
Friday, September 05, 2003  
The Last Post

I'm not going to post here anymore. I doubt very much if anyone reads this aside from the people I've already told, but in case someone accidentally stumbles across this and wants to find it, my new livejournal is here. I've also saved my Blog and its archives here.

'Til next time!

Cheers,

Claire.

5:08 PM

Tuesday, September 02, 2003  
Fie.

I wrote all that stuff this morning and now TRIPOD IS DOWN! Repeated attempts to post have been to no avail. I can't even log into tripod to check up what's going on. It is all bad.

On top of this, I think I am coming down with something. For the last few weeks, I have had the odd sniffle, and a bit of a sore throat in the mornings. I was hoping that it was my body valiantly fighting off some bug, but it appears that even if this is the case, I am losing: I have swollen glands today and I had a headache and felt sick in my stomach. A sleep this afternoon made me feel a little better, but I am still living with the sense of impending doom.

9:06 PM

 
I had a fantastic weekend, which left me feeling like I hadn't had a weekend at all. This always feels bad on Monday, but I wonder if I would choose differently? I guess I wouldn't want every weekend to be so chocked with stuff, but I still had a great time. I guess this makes up for doing sweet F. A. last weekend.

On Saturday morning, I went second-hand shopping with my mum. I got a pair of sandals which I really like, and some speakers that I can use with my discman so that I don't have to be a victim of dodgy commercial radio at work. We also bought a foot spa. I have always looked at foot spas in K-Mart catalogues for about $60AU and thought that they were an unnecessary piece of luxury. But Mum likes to soak her feet every now and again, and it is surprisingly hard to find a vessel that is an appropriate size and shape to soak your feet in. This foot spa also heats and massages, which is very cool. Oh, and did I mention that it was $6? Sweet. I might be trying it out soon.

On Saturday afternoon I worked. It was a lovely warm afternoon, and the short walk left me feeling delighted and glowing. I am a volunteer telephone counsellor, and I occasionally do paid shifts, which is great when I can get them. The shift in question was a bit bizarre because I was there all by myself, and it was deafeningly quiet for most of the time, except when I was on a call, when the phone would ring interminably. I had two difficult calls right at the end of the shift (one right after the other) so I was really glad when the next person arrived and I could debrief a bit.

After this, I went out with the b/f and one of his old mates. I know not why, but we decided to go to Xerts. This was a "family restaurant", so we should have expected lots of screaming kids, and on that basis it wasn't too bad. There was a booth of 10 year old girls across from us, whose repertoire began with "S Club Party", which was followed very scarily by "Boys and Girls" (Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money). Each table has a touch-screen which has games, videos and a menu, and you order your food through this. It was an experience, at least. On the down side, they only had one vegetarian meal on the menu (unless you count salads, which I don't because I don't think a salad on its own is a meal) was mediterranean pizza. So that's what I had. It turns out that the waitress was also vegetarian and she smiled sympathetically with me while explaining that there wasn't anything else. This caused some hilarity a moment later when M asked her if the ribs were any good. Silly boy.

On Sunday we went on a picnic. I haven't been on a picnic in quite a while and was looking forward to this one with an absurd amount of glee for a considerable time beforehand. It was a lovely day, the sky was blue and the breeze was only a little chilly in the shade. We always take a ridiculous amount of food on picnics; I sometimes think that if we headed off on a picnic and then decided to go on a two day hike instead it would not be a problem. After some eating, there were diversions of the ball-kicking, cricket-bowling and kite-flying types. We practiced being cricket infielders, holding out a hand to catch the ball and then transforming this movement into pointing in the direction of the ball to indicate that someone else should catch it.

In the same park as us was a large group who had taken over the whole of a large pergola. They had their own barbeque and what looked like a large wooden keg on a stand. I'm pretty sure there was a large amount of liquor involved. They also had a piano-accordion, and one man was singing along loudly with this for ages. It seemed kind of eerie when they stopped playing, because the song they were playing seemed to go on for about 45 minutes. As if recognising our discomfort, they quickly struck up a new song. Or the same song, I couldn't really tell. We were about 20 metres from them, so the effect was not altogether unpleasant.

Sunday evening meant church, and Craig and I were on the organising team. Sunday was Refugee Sunday. Australia claims to be a civilised nation but we treat refugees like crap. If I came to you and said "hey, that dude over there is going to kill me and my family, help me!" what would you say? If you were the Australian government, you would probably say "gee that's too bad, tell someone who cares." Then you would keep me in gaol for a couple of years and then probably send me back to get killed.

I got sent a "Daily Dig" from an article called "A Warning to the West" which said:

Once when I was in the Himalayas, I was sitting upon the bank of a river; I drew out of the water a beautiful, hard, round stone and smashed it. The inside was quite dry. The stone had been lying a long time in the water, but the water had not penetrated the stone. It is just like that with the "Christian" people of the West. They have for centuries been surrounded by Christianity, entirely steeped in its blessings, but the Master's truth has not penetrated them. Christianity is not at fault; the reason lies rather in the hardness of their hearts. Materialism and intellectualism have made their hearts hard. So I am not surprised that many people in the West do not understand what Christianity really is.


This really summarises how I'm feeling about stuff at the moment, and I'm wondering and struggling with the idea of how to allow myself to be changed.



11:35 AM

Sunday, August 24, 2003  
Wow, it is so windy today! I keep hearing these rumbling sounds and wondering if there's going to be a roof when I look up. There is currently a wind warning for Sydney! It seems there is some kind of swirly cold wind thing. But it's supposed to be fine and sunny tomorrow. It would probably be quite warm right now except for the wind chill factor. Makes me glad I don't live somewhere that hurricanes or cyclones inhabit! Even the sound of this wind makes me want to hide in the cellar.

The b/f has been away all weekend visiting his grandmother, and I have lounged around doing absolutely nothing (Ich faulenze). This is not such a bad thing. It was Mum's birthday on Friday, and the whole weekend has been a house party! Heh, not really. B/f and I had a heated debate about unionism on Friday, which left me wondering if we really have any common values, but then I tend to lurch between feeling as though our relationship is perfect and feeling that it is a total train wreck, so I can never really trust either feeling.

5:42 PM

Wednesday, August 20, 2003  



How Would YOU Take Over the World?



I tell you what, I wouldn't have minded doing a bit of that this morning. It took me approximately 35 minutes to travel a distance of less than 1 kilometre, which normally takes a nominal amount of time. Since I take the train to work, I don't usually experience peak hour traffic, and this exceeded all my expectations. The radio announced later that a bus had broken down on the route I was travelling: I don't think the break-down caused the traffic, I think the bus over-heated due to all the sitting around. Later in the day, I also had train-rage: I went up onto the platform to catch an express train. The train was delayed, in the end, for about 25 minutes, but in such a way that it always appeared to be only a few minutes away. I thereby missed two slow trains, either of which would have gotten me there faster. Although I like the bright colours and straightforward message of the new train displays, it's far too easy to be fooled into thinking the train is on time when in fact you've been standing there for bloody ages. The "due" time just stays the same, or flickers up and down in a random fashion. Today, other trains that were due on the same platform kept overtaking my long-awaited train, which was especially infuriating.


11:15 PM

 
I've been preparing for a presentation in a couple of weeks (yes, I did say that I've been preparing for it now and it's in a couple of weeks) about work-home role strain - the stress that people experience between having a job that wants to own you and a home life that you would like to put more into. I was reading an ACTU report called Fifty Families which is about the effect of unreasonable hours on families, the community, etc. They described the case of a man who was working ridiculous hours for his job. The man had a nervous breakdown, and was awarded workers' compensation (ie. the employer was found to have breached it's duty of care towards him) and the man's boss was still pressuring him to work the unreasonable hours. I think there should be a new category of retardation based on that kind behaviour:

Title: Acute inability to empathise
Criteria: Both of the following:
1. Behaviour towards another that ignores their needs AND would be considered reprehensible by any disinterested observer.
2. Inability to amend said behaviour even in the presence of direct censure.

You get the idea.

5:07 PM

Monday, August 18, 2003  
On pain of death...

My desk needs cleaning, and I was heading upstairs with the avowed intention of cleaning the aforementioned desk, before I realised that the computer was free and calling for me. This is permitted, I understand, as long as I use the time to update my blog. It's funny, I used to think that eldest children (like me) made the rules. Apparently not. ;-)

Today, I finally finished a chunk of work that had been on my desk for six weeks. It had 4 different colours of highlighter on it. This made it look more fun than it really was, I can assure you. But now it is off my desk and back in the cupboard where it belongs, ready to fall out and stun a hapless passerby.

The cupboards in the hallway where the aforementioned folder lives go about six shelves high. As I am somewhat abbreviated in stature, I can only reach the top shelf by standing on my tippy-toes and reaching up as far as I can, grasping the bottom of the folder with my outstreched fingers, and pulling the folder out until it tips over and falls downwards into my hand. We used to have one of those cool library stool thingies, but I think it's now disappeared downstairs, and my plans to yoink it back have thus far been thwarted.


9:17 PM

 
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