Right up to the brightness

It's a glorious day today, and to my surprise I find I'm well able to appreciate it. The Summer Term at work began today, an event which brought with it the return of bells and pupils to the school. I am heartily sick of having my working life subjected to the institutional clatter of the bells, as much as I am of the frustratingly intractable and often incredibly rude teenagers my job requires me to herd. I knew all that and was prepared to be quite grumpy today but I find (with great relief) that I'm not.

This morning back at home I mounted the stairs on my way to the coffee machine, and found my loft-living room ablaze with morning sunlight. I enjoyed it in a sleepily sad sort of way: thinking what a shame it would be to spend such a brightly spring-like day indoors at all, let alone in the vault-like gloom of the Library here at work. I still smiled though, as I continued to do all the way over the sunny moorland, driving Anita's spunky red 306 and shielding my eyes with sunglasses against the morning glare. 'nite's car had some more work done recently to repair a little more of the accumulated neglect of its previous owner - a new belt or two somewhere in the power steering system I understand - which together with a few other recent few tweaks and fixes have made Lexie (for that's the car's name, yes she's as bad as I am) feel much newer and sharper to drive than any P-reg could really be expected to. While I'm naturally still biased in favour of my own car Bags, the drive into the city is great fun whichever wheel I find myself behind.

The excellent weather held, and we arrived in leafy Morningside under the same brilliant sun which woke me. Anita brightly set out for an interview nearby which I hope has since gone well. I trundled my way to my desk, where I've found to my surprise I've been smiling ever since. There's no particular reason behind it, and the daily business of work in term-time is every bit as unpalatable as I'd expected, but somehow I'm still happy - perhaps it's something about the spring? A bright feeling of renewal and change... whatever it is I'm glad of it.

hm

OK so yesterday I was being a little dramatic. Life is a series of mistakes from which we learn and grow... today I'm feeling brighter and better, the mistake part is done, it's time for the growing part

of booze & barn doors

I learned something about myself this weekend that I should have got figured out a long time ago: I'm a really unpleasant person when I'm drunk. I don't mean just a little bit either, no I'm a thoroughly nasty piece of work when I've had a skinful: a person who does thoughtless stupid selfish things and hurts the people I love... I've had plenty of occasions to recognise drunkPatrick for the bastard that he is before, but somehow in the past "but I was drunk" has always seeemed like an explanation...

Point is I've decided that drunkPatrick doesn't get to exist anymore - from now until I figure out exactly why he's such a git, (and what if anything I can do about it) I'm just not going to drink at all because I'm sick and tired of waking up to the mess that this particular Mr Hyde all too often leaves behind.

As the title suggests I'm a little too late with this in some respects. On Saturday at the end of one of the most congenial evenings I've enjoyed in a long time I inexplicably did something horrible to a very dear friend and I don't expect he's going to be able to forgive me, certainly not any time soon... so it's an empty barn I'm closing the door on here but better late than never eh?

Cyrillic-ious

clearing out my pigeon hole at work this morning I found a parcel containing a CD I ordered about a month ago from a mail-order firm in Russia - it's Volumes one and three of the Traveling Wilburys on one CD. As far as I know the two albums were never released like this by Warner who appear to have deleted both from their catalogues (at least this Russian outfit was about the only place I could find selling 'em new and on CD)

The contents of the CD is of course what I'm most excited about ('tis a playing as I type and sounds every bit as great as the first time I heard Dad's tapes of it) but the packaging was unexpectedly exciting too... in fact it's probably the coolest parcel I've ever received - look:



's pretty blurred because I don't have my real camera with me so I snapped it with the phone (and I wasn't going to hold off opening it until I get home!) but you get some idea - the labels are printed in Cyrillic except for the one with my address, it's covered in exotic looking stamps and squiggles and best of all it's tied up with string! 's like getting a parcel from the past... anyway the library catalogue's nearly finished its mammoth update so I'd better get on with some work.

Oh yeah - today's my first day back not yesterday: yesterday morning I woke up to find that stretching was a bad idea and my back felt worse than it had all week so I stayed in bed and lay flat on my back (something I find really difficult) all day which seems to have reduced it to manageable twinging.

Right, work.

note: I originally posted this with the wrong language name - I blame my excitement at all that brown paper

ketchup

So I hurt my back on Saturday, no idea how - I think I've somehow tweaked the damaged part from a couple of years back when I used my spine as a lever for lifting to old Marine-Ply floor in the kitchen, it feels the same but I honestly wasn't doing anything that should have hurt it... anyway it's put a real crimp on things these past few days and made me all mope-ey, hence the absence of posts here. It's mostly better now: I spent much of today doing gentle stretching excercises and generally footering about (as opposed to lying in my bed feeling miserable.) so I thought an update was in order.

Friday last week I went out with most of the usual crowd and caught up which was great I've really missed them all, and although I did drink rather too much* I had a really good night.

The first part of Saturday was fine, I met up with Anita and drove us home in time for a lunchtime return to bed for each of us... come to think of it I could have slept funny and done in my back... anyway the evening was less fun with twingey-spiney-ness and from there until now it's mostly just me either moping or playing computer games (which isn't worth blogging about)

There's no news about the job yet, other than that I'm still feeling optimistic... back to the old job later today (after I've slept some) but no kids for most of this month so that's not so bad... and that's us up to date I think, I'll try and come up with something more interesting next time.

*Appologies to those of you who made it as far as Nicol Edwards for wandering off part way through the movie - an old (bad) habit which won't be happening again.

Normal Service... (II)

So you'll probably have noticed that things haven't been running smoothly here of late? The casue? My domain hosting has been being shifted, and the service interuptions are because it wasn't planned. Hopefully things should run smoothly again from now on.

road trip!

YAY! rather unexpectedly my holiday is now starting a day early - this afternoon in fact, and the trip south I had planned with my mate Hamish starts today instead of tomorrow... in seven hours and forty minutes I get to leave this place and not come back until the middle of the month! WOOO!

and maybe (just maybe) by then I'll have a new job lined up...