Disclaimer

Though a "Diary" my online diary is a work of FICTION.

It may at times strongly reflect actual events of my life, often how I honestly perceived them and display my genuine reactions. But not always and everything contained within should be treated as a fiction.

This is also a personal diary, so by reading it you are violating my privacy. And as it is a personal diary you are not allowed to hold anything you read in it against me, as you shouldn't have been reading it anyway.

Also, this diary is not to be read by anyone who has gone out with me, would like to go out with me in the future, or suspects I may like to go out with them.






Click Here for the old site, as backed up by Wayback Machine (I have gone with the 2007 version as it is the latest that is still before vodafone crunched a bunch of my files)

Saturday, 18 April 2026

That was a mistake

On Wednesday I briefly thought I was having a heart attack.  Full body weird gross feeling, and unusual sharp tightness right in the middle of my chest.

It took about a minute for me to realise, when I put my hand to the sensation and realised the surface was twitching, that the chest tightness was the central edges of my pectoral muscles spasming against my sternum.  And soon after realised the full body grossness was Post-exertional malaise (PEM, if you are nasty), the chronic fatigue thing that last time a specialist talked to me about it they still seemed to think was only possibly a real thing and was possibly entirely in my head - and yet I had forgotten about it until it got me again and then the unpleasantness slowly dredged up the memory of what was going on.

I had had another physiotherapist led gym session the day before, and after the earlier ones had mostly gone fine I guess I pushed things too far this time.  And thus the flesh much punish me.

Days later, things are still pretty damn uncomfortable but recovering slowly.

 

Otherwise I have not been up to a lot.  Working through some old Ursula K Le Guin books.

Had a plumber come and fix something in my flat that I had been feeling embarrassed about failing to ever fix myself, to learn that it was built wrong and literally couldn't be fixed without replacement parts - which made me feel a bit better about my incompetence.  

Caught up with my cousin Pen briefly when she was in town so her daughter could go to a university tour - that made me feel old. 

Had a flat inspection that I failed to properly clean for and still got complimented by the tenancy manager for having one of the cleanest units in the complex.  Which does leave me worried about the levels of filth my neighbours are living in.  I had had intentions of cleaning but the spoons ran out when I tried.

One of these days I will cave and accept Dalton's offers to help.  I just have to work out the socially acceptable way to pay him for it afterwards. 

Monday, 16 March 2026

About time

I realised today I had never gone back and purged my phone of the old pictures of Shitlord.  Back in 2019 it was too fresh and painful, and by the time it had stopped being painful I had forgotten the pictures were still there. 

Today, I purged them.

No narcissistic Magyar cluttering up on phone.

In the process of hunting them to delete them seeing he was not as pretty as I had thought at the time. 

Saturday, 7 March 2026

Why do I even try to use tinder

I mostly don't try to match people on Tinder but open the app occasionally and realise how few people seem remotely suitable.

But swiping on a couple of 40 somethings claiming to seek long term relationships that then actually matched over the last couple of months has matched me to a couple of people.

The first very quickly revealed himself to be a romance scammer of some sort when he said he was a research student in the university's research department.  Come on people, if you are going to make up a fake identity, do a little bit of homework for your legend.  (Look at me revealing I partake in spy thrillers, and don't really know anything about being a conman.)

The newer did a better job of passing for human, but if definitely using AI to make his answers seem something... maybe, smarter, which is making me assume he is probably also a catfish of some sort.  And they are fairly generic.  So will probably turn out to be a romance scammer, but has at least done a bit of homework of sounding convincingly in Dunedin.  If not convincingly an actual human.   Why do people bother?

 But more to the point, why have I bothered replying.

The internet produces nothing good. 

 

But hey, the US and Israel and war criming Iran and Lebanon, and maybe starting WWIII.  Nuclear armageddon could wipe out humanity before anything else has a chance of being a problem.  With any luck.

Tuesday, 3 March 2026

Arm of achiness because needle

Going to the 40th birthday on the correct day was actually very nice.  Though I hadn't seen the birthday girl in a very long time (maybe a decade) she was very excited to catch up and I ended up dominating her time far more than I my fair share considering the number of people there.

Otherwise have not been up to a lot.

Got a slightly overdue COVID booster yesterday so my arm is currently sore.

The guy I was borderline dating late last year messaged some more to (having not interacted with me in any way, and thus having no idea what was going on with me or my opinions) explain to me what I was thinking, but fortunately sign off by saying he would be deleting my number.  Until he went very weird, I had assumed we would end up friends, but his tendency to talk about me, about things he had decided about me with no actual information to back them up, had been slightly irksome right from when we had first met.  Realising that was only going to grow in scope as things went on makes me glad he decided to make up a version of me that was entirely not worthwhile after all.

Sunday, 22 February 2026

Because I am a fucking idjit

Facebook reminder about an event I didn't really want to go to but felt I should.  Panicked, thought I had correctly read it.

Got myself dressed.

Went through my gift cupboard and found something that would work, wrapped it.

Sorted someone who could drive me to slightly awkward to get to pub. 

Got there.

Was the wrong day.

Can't read.

Am an idiot. 

Saturday, 21 February 2026

Dresdens done for now

Twelve Months, the 18th  full novel in the Dresden Files, has now moved from my Currently Reading to my Read list.  After about a month of Dresden reimmersion, I am refresh and then up to date with the new one.

 And glad to have them done.

Doing them all together was not the best plan.  There is too much of them. 

But I did at least enjoy the last one. 

Wednesday, 18 February 2026

When did my taste become all silver foxes

I had my pain clinic appointment today.  I am not sure how actually useful it was.  I guess I will see, I have follow up with a physio for an exercise plan which they seem to think will be a good first step to helping manage the pain, I refrained from pointing out how much it didn't help last time I was doing regular exercise, because I fall into not being a whiner when in specialist appointments - thus stop being one at the single time when it is most useful and appropriate. 

I am such a fail human.

Between noticing the hotness of the main doctor, and then the eye-candy I notice in the O-week tent village and on the walk home I noticed a distinct pattern.  I was only checking out silver haired nerds.  I was just wondering when I had developed a new weird twist on my taste when it occurred to me it is just my old nerd fancying remaining age appropriate.  I have almost mostly checked out about my own age.  I am so failing to be a proper predatory man.  I am so boring.

I am also blaming the wandering eye on having had a cute horny youngster hitting on me fairly hardcore, trying to get me to sext.  He has clearly got me worked up enough to be noticing people, even if he hasn't got me worked up enough to be taking the nudes he keeps asking for multiple times a day. I am too old to find it as flattering as it is clearly intended to be.

 

Also, there were no free pens at the tent village.  What is the point of O week?