Well hidey ho.

We have a houseguest!

An old friend of Beardie's is staying with us for a couple of weeks while she starts a new job. This means:

• no walking around nakey
• no belching so loud that our household goods vibrate
• no playing with my PC all of the freaking time
• no playing "Joy to the World" over and over on the piano (it's practice, ok?)
• no spontaneously composing songs about bodily functions
• no being Too Weird
  

And Beardie has had to make some major cutbacks too, including cutting down on the farting and drinking straight out of the bottle. I think it is great preparation for being a Grown Up in The Real World.

(The picture of Batman is because we just watched Batman. But the Michael Keaton Batman. Because you can't beat the Michael Keaton Batman.)

Following on from Wednesday's depressing post o' misery, signs I am getting old are as follows:

• When I get up from my seat after having my legs folded up in one of my usual bizarre positions, my joints hurt.
• When I get up (in general), I groan.
• I hand out tissues to people when they've got the sniffles. (Though I'm not yet keeping them in my bra or up my sleeve.)
• I don't understand today's fashion.
• I don't understand kids these days,
• I think that the cartoons on TV totally blow in comparison to the ones I used to watch when I was a wee tyke.
• I don't like CGI movies (the Pixar stuff, you know) or TV shows. I like the type of animation that people draw. With their hands.
• There's nothing like a good cup of tea.
  

Actually, looking over that list, I realise that I've been this way since I was a teenager, really. Except for the groaning and the rusty joints. Conclusion: I have been 70 years old since I was 17.

I bought a pretty dress today!!!!

That is all.

Today is melancholy, headachey Wednesday:

Sometimes I think that I spend so much time working that my youth is passing me by, and when I look at my tired eyes every day I can't help but wonder how long it will be until I turn into a haggard, old crone.

Spending all your time in the house like a hermit is not good for the blog fodder. I contemplated blogging being called a "completist" today, and then figured I couldn't drag it out for more than a couple of sentences. And then I considered blogging about how I had chicken soup for lunch yesterday, but I realised that you would be so fascinated that you would probably combust from the excitement.

So yes, bad for the blog. But excellent for my pockets, as I am hugely loaded with cash after spending absolutely nothing this weekend, except for the compulsory food costs. Normally I would be out and about, buying clothes I won't wear and items I won't use, but sitting on my arse with my hair all bird nesty seems to be working pretty well for me.

Obviously not for the whole social aspect. And it sort of sucks when you're so accustomed to the darkness that the sunlight makes you cower like a vampire.

But other than that, good.

Um. So, hey. How's it going?

How about that chicken soup, hey?

General business:

• Everyone is sick! Work is sick, home is sick, random strangers are sick. There is coughing and spluttering galore, and yet I remain unscathed. How is this possible? That's right, it's not possible, because I'm just not that freaking lucky. So I give it until Saturday morning before I wake up in a pool of my own snot, and will therefore spend my two free days feverish and sniffly, before miraculously recovering on Monday morning, just in time to go back to work.
  
  
• Work is killing me. There is overtime EVERY NIGHT. I was being generous at first, but now I am just making myself unavailable. "Think of the cash!" they say, and yes, the overtime cash is lovely, but is it really worth the destruction of my soul?
  
  
• My piano playing is going super well, and by that I mean that I can play Good King Wenceslas and When The Saints Go Marching In. A friend at work is giving me his sheet music for Cornflake Girl, and soon I will be able to play like Tori. Soon! (estimated time: twenty years)
  
  
• This Saturday, Beardie and I are attending a birthday dinner, As A Couple. Besides last year's Christmas party, where everyone was blotto and I was all burning white rage from some drunken cow spilling wine all over my dress, this will be our first Couple Outing, despite going out for A While. And I can't fall into my 'sit in the corner and guzzle beer' comfort zone, because it is a dinner. A dinner where people sit around and discuss things. How will I cope? Do I have to act like a grown-up? I am afraid.
  

Ok, so I have a digital piano now. This is extremely awesome and worthy of many exclamation marks.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I expect the secret talent that I never knew about to kick in, ASAP. Talent, are you listening to me?

I have this because now I am 25, and yesterday I was 24.

I had a cake with candles and a rude picture made of icing. It was lovely. I did pretty much nothing except arse about, play games and eat curry, but most importantly I was not at work.

The end.

We've just arrived home from Sunday morning grocery shopping. You know that you stayed up too late last night when you try and walk UP the travelator that is going DOWN. We both did it, and then it seriously took us 5 seconds before we went, hey, we're not really getting anywhere here, and why is it so hard to walk up this thing?

Sigh.

And then we played mind games with the stalkers who follow you in their cars so that they can get in your spot. We like to do things like point off to the other side of the car park, so that the car speeds off to make sure that they're close to your spot, only to then get into the car right where we were standing and drive off quickly. There's also the "I can't find where to put my empty trolley" game.

We are mean, cold-hearted people.

My last weekend of 24 is going swimmingly. I bought underpants with butterflies on them. I am going to bake gingerbread, shaped in all sorts of random ways (with possibly something phallic thrown in). I bought one of those drinking bird things and can't, for the life of me, work out how to make the bastard drink his God damn water. Damn you, science. Damn you!

But, uh, yeah.

Seriously. Worst Friday afternoon ever. Who in their right mind would give me five different (urgent) things to do, all of 20 minutes before I'm due to leave for the day. I had to employ some serious Palming Off skills. And I was so busy running around palming everything off, that I didn't actually finish any of my work, and now I will have to be there Extra Early on Monday morning.

But let's take one day at a time, and today is Friday, hoorah!

Weekend plans include:

• Playing with my new ThinkGeek stuff, hoorah!
• Doing diddly squat, hoorah!
• Playing online games like a gigantic geeky nerd geek, hoorah!
• Going shopping at the stocktake sales, hoorah!
• Getting out of bed obscenely early tomorrow morning for a work friend who is coming over to pick up some stuff, hoorah! Oh wait, SHIT.
• Indulging in lovely food like pies and cake, hoorah!
• Enjoying my last weekend before I turn quarter of a century old, hoo...
  

Oh, who gives a shit, hoorah!

I'm just freaking glad it's the weekend.

Hoorah!

Today I went to work with my heavy, bloodshot, WoW eyes, and looked like I had been smoking hash for breakfast. This is what happens when you dedicate your weekend to being a giant nerd. I drank butterscotch hot chocolate for the sickly sugariness and followed it up with a coke, to try and get me some sort of a buzz and just survive my first day back after the long, long weekend.

It worked. Sort of.

At around 10am I started to feel vaguely human, and started to actually do work. Sort of.

At around 10:05am I was told that I would be training a new starter.

At 10:05am I writhed in agony, curled up in a ball and died.

Training is the worst. The worst of the worst. I cannot tolerate training. Simply. Cannot. Surprisingly, it turns out that I have zero patience with people. What a Barry Crocker.

Me: Ok, so you click on the Inbox...
Them: [looks blankly at the screen. Moves mouse cursor in circles.]
Me: Yep, the inbox. At the top-left of the screen.
Them: Inbox, inbox....
Me: THE. INBOX. RIGHT. HERE. [jabs finger at screen, leaving fingerprints]
Them: Oh.

[Later]

Me: Ok, so now let's go back to the Inbox...
Them: [blank, no glimmer of understanding, no flicker of recognition]
Me: [audibly huffs. Dies inside.]

I think I just want people to understand it RIGHT NOW. Not later, NOW. Having to train someone who just doesn't Get It is like scraping off my skin with a fork.

My biggest training pet hate (and I apologise for the rantiness here) is people who Don't Take Notes. Ooh, non-note taker. You have a photographic memory? You think that you will remember this tomorrow? YOU WILL NOT. No. And then you will ask me how to do it again. Where is my whacky stick?

Man. I need to chill. Don't you think?

And sometimes you have those moments when you do actually train somebody who just Gets It, and you are so overjoyed and filled with rapturous bliss that you want to marry them and buy them presents and cover them slobbery kisses.

Well, maybe it's just me.

• I do not really want to mention the Lady Business from yesterday. Suffice it to say, it was about as pleasant as getting naked and rolling around in hot coals, and I never ever want to go back there ever ever again. Ever never ever. I suggested to Beardie that maybe at some point over the next two years I should become a prostitute, because then I'll become desensitized and won't give a rats who checks out my business. I'm not sure that he would be overly happy with this, but it definitely warrants some thought.
• Going with the theme of watching movies to completely put me off my holiday plans, last night we watched a delightful movie called Return to Paradise. Not quite Thailand, but close enough, and the lesson I have learnt is that if I am thrown in prison and the media catch hold of it, then there's the chance that they'll hang me, just to make an example of me. Even if Vince Vaughn does try and save me. So hooray for that. I am going to Blockbuster to ask if there's a movie called I Went To Thailand And Had A Super Fun Time And Didn't Go To Jail Or Die.
• Just when you thought that it was impossible for me to become a bigger nerd than I already am, I have signed up to play World of Warcraft. And by "signed up", I mean I am playing a free 10-day trial, because 1. it is free, and 2. I said I would give it a try because Beardie loves it and wants to have 10000 of its babies. Observations so far:
• When people call you a "noob", they do not mean "oh, you're new? How cute!" They mean "U R LAME I H8 U."
• It is entirely possible for your whole day to disappear and for you to realise that you have achieved diddly squat.
• It is entirely possible for your RSI to become about 12 times worse in the space of a few hours.
• I think that 95% of the WoW population must be around the age of 12, going by the conversations (u r gay) and the many attempts made to Pick Up the laydeez. Except is it a laydee, or is it not? Who can tell!
• It is all good fun, but I suspect that maybe it is not for me. We shall see.
  

I have got the day off work today, and I have been so productive it is pukeworthy. Instead of lying on the couch, watching daytime TV and shovelling my face full of Hello Pandas, I have done two loads of washing, assembled a desk (hooray for build-it-yourself awesomeness), unplugged my PC, moved my PC to the new desk, plugged it all back in and danced a little jig after discovering it was still working, vacuumed, cleaned out a dirty, rank birdcage which had been sitting next to the kitchen bench for a couple of weeks with enough disinfectant to make a pig farm sparkle, took a shower, discovered that I still reek like disinfectant, gagged a little, bought a new cable for my camera and a firewire card for my PC off ebay, placed a huge ThinkGeek order for myself and two girls from work, and I have still found time to bite off most of my fingernails.

But now I am running out of things to do (though I still have a couple of fingernails left), so I am sitting here, blogging and eating miscellaneous crap from the Asian supermarket. And buying things because they have pretty packaging, even though you can't read what the packaging says, means that you will end up eating chewy lollies that taste like sour milk. Or wok cleaner. Guaranteed.

Tomorrow I also have the day off work, but that is so I can visit the doctor who is going to prod my lady equipment. If anyone would like to go in my place, then please volunteer now, and I will be forever indebted to you. Forever and ever and ever. And ever.

Beardie is away at a fully paid boozefest (damn you, private sector) and I am all Macaulay Culkin. This means:

• I can eat instant potato mash for dinner. Beef gravy flavour. This, my friend, is the new Pot Noodle. Tell your friends.
• I can crappily strum that Ben Folds song that Beardie hates and sing it really, REALLY loudly.
• I am going to completely redo my iTunes library. From scratch. Can you feel the excitement???
• I am going to catch up with my Youtube husbands. Swoon.
  

I contemplated watching the whole of Pride and Prejudice, but then decided that trying to cram something like eight hours of viewing into my evening, and still making it to bed early enough to avoid workdeath tomorrow (now with extra overtime!) was pretty much imposs.

I might also draw some pictures in the hope that I will become magically talented.

So. Ok. Bye.

When you are planning a trip to Thailand for later in the year, there are certain movies that you shouldn't watch. The Beach, and Brokedown Palace, for example.

I have just watched both.

I think I may have picked up some good tips, for example:

• Don't befriend any strange men, for fear of inadvertently becoming part of their international drug smuggling plans.
• Don't willingly join a commune.
• If you've failed on point number one, and you're in a Thai prison, COVER YOUR EARS while you sleep.
• If you're going out with a pretty French girl, don't cheat on her with the White Witch from Narnia. I mean, seriously.
• If somebody is half-eaten by a shark and your commune buddies think it's a good idea to shove him in a tent until he dies because they don't like the noise he's making, THERE'S SOMETHING AMISS.
• If everything starts to turn a bit Lord of the Flies, it's time to leave. STAT.
• If your best friend tries to take the blame for a narcotics charge, so that you can go free, you don't just leave and then go back to your pretty American friends, college, life, etc. You stay in Thailand until she's free too, alright? Who leaves their friend to die in prison, really. WHO?
• Um. If you have never seen either of these movies, I am very sorry for completely spoiling them for you.
• And perhaps the ultimate lesson of all, if a quite obviously crazy man kills himself by slashing his body all over the place, and you discover that he's left you a map to follow, don't follow it. Common sense really. Due to the craziness, and the cutting, etc.
  

Sheesh, and here I was thinking all I would have to contend with was ladyboys and ping pong balls. WRONG.