September 2007
It's that time of year again - stress related illness kicks in.
1st September 2007 - Giles, Ab.
Too tired to write, but couldn't miss St. Giles's.
Time for crap novel in bed.
2nd September 2007.
Friday, I spent the day in the office trying to turn a list of ideas for my gender topic in to a linked and coherent skeleton argument. For this, I achieved sweet eff all. I gave up a bit before five and headed to Oli's work for their Friday drinks. After a very pleasant evening, I headed home to pick up my left-over box of flame (bought as cheap beer for my party in case guests came unprepared - and I'm a bit Scottish) and ended up chatting to a net friend, who seemed to be trying to pick me up. Weirder things supposedly happen, possibly. But I was expected at a party and I like to think I have morals. So no one-night-stands for me, regardless how drunk I am. I got to the party, and discovered party was the wrong word. It was a few people I know, and I few more I didn't (and quickly released I didn't care too either) sitting around a couple of picnic tables in the dark. Lame even on my scale of lameness.
Saturday was pretty lazy until lunch time when i headed to the beach with Oli, Bacon and the Irish guy to play hurling and kick around a rugby ball. The rugby ball proved a good time waster - and there was some entertainingly bad aim from the Irish guy as he tried to meet girls is the most shameless ways. After pizza for dinner with Oli I came home to de-sand and ended up just blobbing at home for the night, starting in to Temeraire, a pulp fantasy book Emily kindly passed to me.
Today, lay in all morning reading - having not slept well due to the noisiness of the weather. Then after lunch with Alana, proving my accidentally invoking her wrath yesterday (yes, I know, I accidentally invoke wrath from too many sources far too often and ought try to be less of a tard) had been forgiven, I hit the office for a few hours more trying to sort my chapter plans for Greg. I gave up slightly earlier than planned due to unpleasant smelliness in my office and slowly wandered to my grandparents for dinner, it being father's day and my grandfather liking the excuse to be glorified. Pleasant day, but not as productive as I'd hoped. Now I'm off to finish the book.
5th September 2007 - Bertin, Ab. and Conf.
I have just spent forty minutes on the phone to Xtra, and am currently on hold. First call lead to a long unfruitful chat to a cheerful if inept woman with a fake and implacable accent who redirected me to an Indian man who hung up on me. I hate out-sourced tele-ops. I'm starting to plan a socialist revolution simply so we can nationalise the phone infrasructure and use people actually in New Zealand to answer the freaking phones. Just had my fourth "Thanks again for your patience" of this current call. Soon I'll get another Indian who'll probably cut me off again.
Anyway, on Sunday night I finished the book. It was better than I had thought it was going to be, yet bad enough that Peter Jackson having the rights to film it doesn't bother me in the slightest.
Monday, I was in the office working away on stuff and got it handed in to Greg. Monday night I went to a cycle and was left feeling like I'd been kicked in the arse.
Tuesday, I woke up after very poor sleep feeling like crap. So I attempted to cheer myself up with a haircut. This just lead to the hairdressing pointing out that I've gotten a bit too bald to keep getting my same old haircut, and modified it. No-one has yet noticed I've even had it cut, which I think it saying something about its non-descriptness.
What people have been noticing is the unfortunate photo in Critic (which was clearly photoshopped).
Hooray, telephone Indian actually able to help got me sorted-ish...
Last night, again with the crap sleep. So today I'm feeling like arse and I have to go in to the office and redo all I'd done of recent days - Greg having declared it wrong.
The day in the office was extremely unproductive. I seem to be suffering fuzzy brain. Possibly from the several nights of insomnia. Stupid stress. At least, it is not as bad as the stress rash (boring on hives) that I had last week (at there worst on a day when I was feeling weirdly prettier than usual - my brain is a worrisome place).
Anyway, I should have tea and then try to get hold of Oli again. I really should know the phone numbers of more people on my soccer team, the relying on Oli thing may lead to me not making it this week due to his not being home.
Soccer was pretty good, if a significantly smaller turnout. I fell wrong in a tackle though, and now have a distinctly uncomfortable right buttock/hip-joint thingee-bob (I don't recall anything much of anatomy, I studied it eight years ago).
Since I got home I discovered the vain and stupid reason I've been not growing my beard back is entirely not that at all. And also that I'm completely out of the loop with a couple of people I consider close friends. I now have a driving desire to sulk about people not liking me enough to tell me about their lives - and the bad part is that no matter how much I say I won't, it is probably how I'm going to fill the rest of the night. Sucks to be me.
11th September 2007 - SS. Prothus and Hyacinth, Martt.
Thursday, of last week, I spent in the office. I had lunch at the Crib with Meg and dinner with Alana - after which we watched Wedding Crashers. Overall I pretty pleasant day. Until I went to bed and not long after my flatmates threw an impromptu party.
At 3am I became the crazy old guy who get up in his pjs and screams at his flatmates to shut up already. At some point I think I may even have politely offered to suffocate them all to death, if they had thought it would help them reduce the noise. In the morning I felt like shite. I'd had little over three hours sleep and just felt terrible. I come online before heading to the office and got asked out for lunch but a net friend whom I have been talking to for a couple of months. We ended up going out to Outram for a very pleasant meal before I volunteered to help with surprise house moving that afternoon. A little part of me is suspicious the lunch offer had been an attempt to recruit so extra muscle for the shift. After a few beers, we headed back to my place and split a pizza. The plan was to get nicely drunk and then head to town and go clubbing (possibly, seals (I entirely can't remember which of my friends I stole that one off)). At some point after I was good and drunk, my whiskey was joined by surprise prescription medication. The going to town was then doomed to never happen. Chemical sensitive me with lots of alcohol and unplanned drugs in my system - not a good look. I ended up just lying in my room feeling very content and thinking I had sunlight inside of me (in a metaphor way, not in a crazy person way). And then I fell asleep. Sleep being a wonderful thing.
Saturday morning was a bit weird. Waking from alco-sleep to a non-empty bed, even if it was innocent, was a new and not-entirely-pleasant experience. Otherwise, just weird. I got myself to the pool at lunch time and it was only while I was swimming that I felt myself actually sobering up. Heading through town afterwards I started to feel quite horribly hungover and generally gross. In the evening I went for dinner with Dad and my brother, which was all well and good until I got hit by the worst muscle cramp of my life - which left me limping out of the restaurant and cursing in the street. The evening was spent being token boring sober guy at a party with Oli and co.
Sunday morning I went to the museum with my god-daughter, her brother and mother, and Alana. It was quite nice. When I headed to the office to catch up on work not done on Friday, I promptly fell asleep at my desk. I headed home and stuffed about a while before I got invited around to dinner with Si and Renate. The dinner was nice and then I went for a nice long chat with Simon, during which my hoard of recent personal insecurity, mindless stress and nagging self-hatred escaped my attempts at bottling it all nicely up. Simon is an amazing friend when the mood takes him, he took it all in stride. He's like my rock (a statement that would probably make the psychotherapist I used to see cry). After letting me get it out as much as I could, he loaded me up with Veronica Mars season 2 and delivered me safely home. Maybe I should include him on my list of people I like there to be clone armies of...
Yesterday, still feeling weirdly tired and a bit sickly, I went to the office and spent several hours achieving nothing, though featuring a pleasant chat with Emily. I came home and spent the evening watching Veronica Mars, and for a while being entertained by Midget - whom I hadn't seen in quite the while.
Today still feeling tired and sickly. Less tired but possibly more sickly than yesterday. After the hives and other psychosomatic stress symptoms of the last fortnight and the going completely bursar on Sunday night, I decided to have a mental health day today. So I'm spending it in bed watching Veronica Mars. And I'm trying to make things up to Simon by not talking to him for a few days so he can have time away from my neuroses. I think I've been enough work for this week already.
12th September 2007.
I hadn't been sure if I was physically sick or just depressed. but this evening at soccer it became pretty clear I'm physically not too well. Could be a bug, or could just be my punishment for the weekend.
Too tired and sore after soccer to right proper. Will try tomorrow.
14th September 2007 - Exaltation of Holy Cross. Middle Lessons of SS. Cornelius and Cyprian.
Plegm lead me to the believe it's a cold and not just the mother of all hangovers.
Anyway, the week that has been. Tuesday's sicky left me feeling a little more able to function in the world. So Wednesday, I spent in the office, chugging away. On Wednesday evening I went to an inaugural professorial lecture on early modern philosophy, which was interesting and landed me free dinner. Then soccer, which was pretty good but - as usual - left me very sore.
Yesterday, spent in office, chugging away (though frustratingly unproductively). In the evening I went to Jocelyn Harris's book launch (anyone interested in Jane Austen ought buy a copy), and was cornered by the now retired departmental secretary/administrator, Muriel. People often told me that she was formidable but I never bought it, she was so pleasant. When she realised I hadn't submitted yet - out came the formidable. Turns out that she is quite a scary woman after all. She cornered me and my supervisor and gave us both a thorough telling off. I suspect my supervisory meeting today is going to be quite unpleasant as a result there of. After the launch I headed to my brother's birthday dinner at Filadelfio's, and then (full of cheese) home to blob out and watch Borat before sleeping. Borat, funny but not to the level that people had been making out - I think it would have been funnier in the cinema, with the mass hysteria thing going on. And humour high point of the night - my ex inviting me to third wheel at a ball, until realising that was how it'd have worked out and retracting said invitation. I was amused.
I should sort myself and head to school. If I'm lambing toward slaughter (less interesting than slouching toward Bethlehem, but the best I can do) I should try and be a little prepared.
17th September 2007 - Lambert, Bp. and Mart.
Some wanker stole the lights off my bike, I think while I was at the supermarket. I am not pleased by this development.
Friday went much less terrifying than expected. I think my supervisor was just as embarrassed about the whole affair as I was and didn't appear angry at all. In fact, he was quite pleasant and helpful - uncharacteristically so. I spent the day in the office, chugging away on work before heading to Oli's work to hang out having quite drinks with him and some of his workmates for the evening. It was most pleasant.
Saturday, I arsed about at home all morning. Went to the pool and did slightly less than enough exercise to make me feel like I was achieving anything and then walked to Roslyn (possibly Mornington (I'm not sure where one becomes the other)) for lunch with Meg and then wandered home. So I got in a lot of walking, and as such piked on my planned cycling for the afternoon due to tiredness. Had I, I could have had my lights anger then instead of now.... Anyway, I settled in for a quite night watching Children of Men and playing computer games as my normal bunch were off at Taieri Mouth at a party which I'd told them I didn't want to go to because I had stuff to do on Sunday (which was true) but which I was more importantly not going to as I'd not actually been invited.
Sunday, quiet morning was followed by a quick lunch with Alana before I spent the better part of the day in the office working away. At tea time Lynda gave me a ride to my grandparents' where the family was celebrating my brother's birthday yet again. But were I so appreciated...
Today was spent in the office, though not particularly productively. Seems I'm a bit randomly depressed and it is proving distracting - counterproductive considering the most likely source is thesis frustration. I'm also distracted being annoyed at my haircut off a couple of weeks ago - the woman at headquarters did a miserable job. I have random hairs of much longer than the rest hair all over the place. And tufts.
I should go play computer games, I think I'm pissing off everyone I'm talking to on msn.
18th September 2007.
I've put on ten kilos since Easter, a few more and I'll be back at my peak giant grossness of a couple of years ago. Though, being honest, I weigh only about one and half more than I did at Christmas.
Logic doesn't stand in the path of being depressed about it. So I got a giant thing of Chinese takeaways for dinner. And there goes that logic thing again.
Today was not constructive on the thesis front. Hour and hours reworking one paragraph and the end result was almost identical to what I started with, possibly even a little worse.
20th September 2007.
I want a Icelandic keyboard - then I'd only be missing one of the letters that I frequently use in my thesis. And when I am done with my thesis, it's allow greater medieval geekery.
Yesterday, thesis chugging. I wrote a little, but much loess than intended. I also watched the Johnny Lee Miller vehicle adaptation of The Pardoner's Tale. It was a surprisingly good adaptation, I carried the feeling of the original across very well - ie. it made me feel like I could be sick.
In the evening I headed home and got my bike, so i could cycle over and water dad's plants (I'm doing a shite job of looking after his house). The ride was actually pretty good, though I was a touch worried about getting home before dark (what with my lights having been stolen and all). I barely had time for dinner before it was soccer. I was a bit sore from cycling to truly appreciate the game. I'm not really fit enough for that much exercise in one day. Then I took a ball to the back of the head jarring my neck and pretty much making the rest of the night suck balls.
Today, I've been tired and cranky after my neck did bad things to my sleep. Thesis work, as usual, is frustration embodied. Basically, I've been generally unpleasant all day. I did have a very nice dinner with Alana though.
21st September 2007 - Matthew, Ap. and Evan.
Okay, didn't actually write an entry on this day - but it's St. Matthew's, it needs acknonwledged.
22nd September 2007 - no longer Matthew, Ap. and Evan. but merely Maurice and Compp. Martt. instead (I always pronounce Maurice the American, as it is written way - and every time my inner Anglophile cries in pain, saying "Morris").
I am surprisingly drunk and not entirely certain how it happened. Which is making typing quite entertaining. I spent a chunk of the evening at a party where I made the mistake of taking a mug of Campari, as it was offered to me. It was the most horrible thing ever and I ended up stealing a significant amount of Jagermeister from some guy called Steve-O (or possibly Stevooooo (the pronunciation was interesting)), who was very nice about it, just to get the after taste out of my mouth/throat. Never drink Campari (I think that is what it was called, someday I'll find out proper like). At some point afterwards I realised I was feeling very pleasantly warm, and that I was hard out hitting on someone who answers to the name Pumpkin (a name only acceptable when called by a father of his six year old daughter - from anyone except a progenitor it is just wrong, and even from a dad it is wrong when applied to an over ten year old). Not a good look, so instead of continuing out for a night on the town I have come home early to get some sleep.
Fire truck, I just stabbed myself in the chin with the stick of my ice cream. Ow. And spelt fire truck with a surprising abundance of J's.
I'm supposed to be at Backstage listening to Hey Man, but I'm at home in my room about to go to bed.
I feel very warm. Which is weird as I'm all damp and gross from walking home in the rain. I didn't have to walk up my hill though as when I bought my ice cream at the Willowbank I bumped in to my dad, who was buying hot chips, and landed a ride home. Reduced moistness is all good - in this context, at least.
And some guy at the pool today seemed to think I was stalking him - which was entirely unfair, it's not my fault he seems to turn up everywhere I am - but he was clearly giving me a look which I'm taking to mean something along the lines of "stay away you creepy psycho". If I was going to be a stalker, I'd at least find out who i was stalking first. I'm pretty sure that's an essential part of the ettiquette (I think I put too many tees in that).
I should sleep, I suspect I'll be embarrassed enough about this in the morning as is - and I have that whole stupid policy about not removing crap from this thing.....
23rd September 2007 - Thecla, V., not Mart.
Wow, drunkenness makes me positively linear.....
Not the most productive thesis day. I went for lunch with my father and brother and ended up going to see Stardust. It is really not the book, but it is a pleasant watch. Then after lunch of bad asian food, I headed to the office. I was there about half an hour - which was mostly setting up and getting in to the head space sort of time, when my brother turns up as it seems I was expected at my grandparents. The joy of family.
25th September 2007 - Firminus, Bp. and Mart.
Found out yesterday that my suspicions of being thought a stalker were probably just paranoia.
Otherwise not all the much to say for the last couple of days. Thesis work going nowhere due to being a little bit under the weather. I'm hoping my optometrists appointment on Friday, and subsequent new glasses, will reduce how often I get debilitating level headaches.
Sickliness, so overrated...
I did have lunch with Alana yesterday, and spent last, and pretty much all of this, evening reading Paul J McAuley's Confluence books. They should fill my evenings and keep me mostly off the computer for the week.
That said, in the tiny amount of time I've spent online I still seem to have entirely fucked off one of my friends, and I can't work out how I actually did it. Part of me thinks it could just be the fact of my existence.
