The Duck Pond
Tuesday, December 31, 2002
My printer arrived today - hurrah! This raises the issue of where I'm going to put it as the scanner already takes up most of the free room that was made on my desk by selling the surplus computer. Ah I'm sure I'll sort something out eventually.
I have terrible caffreys-guts today eurgh. I think my body is rebelling against alcohol as drinking made me feel terribly queasy last night and I actually couldn't finish my third pint (almost unheard of for me). I'm also very tired as I didn't sleep too well and what sleep I did get was punctuated by very strange dreams which I can only vaguely remember now so I won't explain them.
So 2002 is almost over and it's possibly a good time to reflect on the year gone by. I remember once describing 2002 as my worst year to date what with the divorce of my parents, the breaking of my engagement and with it a couple of months of utter soul-destroying heartbreak and of course more recently the news of my kidney, amongst other minor upsets. It would be easy to sit here and feel sorry for myself and think how awful I've had it this year and this year does seem to have more than its fair share of disasters but I'm actually feeling positive about the year and here's why:
I actually think this year has been a very good year for me. Certainly I am a more happy and confident person coming out of this year than I have been in any year previously and I feel good about the way I have handled myself and the things I have achieved, and I have achieved quite a lot. Also I have grown to realise that I have a very good bunch of friends who have stuck by me through thick and thin and that's always a good judgement of how things are. If things are going shit and you've got people making sure you're ok and worrying about you, you can pretty much feel content knowing you've got some good friends who think a lot of you and if that's true you can't be that badly off after all.
Also looking at things from a different angle, even the bad things have had their uses. Take the engagement business. I now realise I got caught up in an utter madness which now I can't really explain. Looking back now even before things started going wrong it - and he - was all wrong for me but I guess it's true that love is blind and I did love him so very much. Yet even though it was probably one of the most painful things I've ever had to do in my life I walked away. He'd already dumped me once but we'd got back together to try to work things out. He would probably disagree and maybe he didn't even realise he was doing it but he'd become quite abusive towards the end of the relationship and it was destroying me, I really had become such a sorry creature - anyone who saw me around that time would probably agree. Anyway I went to visit him at his house and, in a sudden moment of clarity, I told him that it (the "relationship") wasn't good enough for me anymore and that while I was trying to make it work I was missing out on the happiness I deserved. He said "fine". It took a lot of courage but I walked out of there with my head held high. I even hugged him. Things went a bit sour when trying to do the friends thing as he was still acting like a twat, wanting it all onnaplate and innabun and I wouldn't put up with it anymore but I digress. Anyone who has ever truly been in love will know how hard it is to walk away, even when it gets to the point where you know it's no good for you, part of you will just not let go for various reasons that I won't go into and it hurts like a huge void in your soul. But yes - knowing that I have the strength to make the difficult decisions when necessary and to do what's right for me in the longterm, even though it might be very difficult in the shortterm makes me feel good about myself. I know not everyone can do this. It's so easy to play the victim - I've been there - and it's so easy for outsiders to see what the person involved should do, but much harder when you are that person. I am also harder and wiser for the experience and I doubt I will put up with further crap from future partners because I know I can handle myself.
So I guess what I'm saying is it's not the events of the year as much as how I've dealt with them, what I've learned from them and the kind of person I've become as a result that's made this such a good year. Obviously there have also been many good times in the year too but this is all sounding terribly introspective and hippah so I will leave it hyah and continue about the good stuff later. Stuii has done a month by month summary of his year which I think is a good idea so I will do the same *copycat*, however I shall leave that until later because I'm spent.
Monday, December 30, 2002
Ok everybody lie down on the floor and keep calm.
So say KLF anyway. Cor I'm in a splendid mood this morning despite being back in work again and having to get up early which was difficult as my sleeping pattern has crept up to me getting up at about lunchtime like the lazy git that I am deep down. Hmm actually really am in a splendid mood, would suspect people have been putting happy juice into my food, except once again I got up too late to have breakfast. I'm currently sat at my desk listening to my work playlist which is about a day's worth of songs. It's cranked up loud, wikkid man and at the moment Scooter is screaming about how he's my pusher or something. Disgusting what they'll put in songs these days. I'm also gently ruminating over my latest bit of work as I can't seem to fathom it out at all but I'm sure my brain will work it out eventually if I give it time and don't try to force it.
Happy happy joy joy :)
Right I know that overly happy people can be very irritating to other people when they aren't in a similar state themselves so in the interest of people who might by some chance be reading this I'll try to tone it down a bit.
I'm really looking forward to tomorrow evening's drunken new year celebration debauchery. I should explain that I'm no longer going to Edinburgh for many reasons including the precarious state of my health lately - doesn't make me too happy about travelling such a great distance. I feel bad about not going but hopefully I'll take a few days off sometime next year and go and look round then when things are more relaxed. Anyway tomorrow should be great. Tonnes of people are descending upon Aberystwyth and if it's anything like last year it will be fab. I already have my costume ready as I do love to do fancy dress. It's not a particularly complicated, expensive or elaborate costume but I think it's stylish and effective. I'll give you a clue - the Matrix. I've been shouted at because apparently the theme that "we" decided was punk although I have no memory of such a theme. Perhaps I just wasn't told because everyone thought I was going to Edinburgh but I'm certainly not changing now and besides I don't think absolutely everyone's following it anyway.
Winamp seems to instinctively know my mood today and is playing all the happy, uplifting songs on my playlist although I'm sure it'll run out soon. Wahey, here's Shakira and those mountains.
Sunday, December 29, 2002
I'm no longer alone in the house hurrah although it didn't go nearly as badly as I thought it would and I actually got quite used to it in the end so it'll be weird when everyone gets back. It still feels a bit like I'm on my own as there's only one other person here and I haven't really seen him much.
I woke up with a bad headache this morning (no I wasn't drinking last night) and it's lingering a bit. I think it's probably too much sleep (very rare). I also had a dream last night that, while not being especially unusual or creepy, was weird because this is about the 6th time I've had it. It doesn't seem to particularly fit in with my life so I'm wondering what it means. I don't usually really pay much attention to dreams but if I keep having the same ones then here must be a reason or something that's going on in my life that's causing them to reoccur and usually I can understand why. I'll try to explain it as well as I can:
It starts off where I'm at a tube station in central London, sometimes alone, sometimes I have a friend with me, and I'm trying to get somewhere. Nowhere in particular - I just have a free day in London and I want to find somewhere interesting to see. I don't know London very well however so I have to study literature around the station to try to decide where to go. While I'm doing this I'm worried that I'll pick somewhere not very good and that I'm missing out on some great places and that makes me really indecisive. I finally find somewhere that sounds really cool, has lots of attractions and stuff to do so I try to find the right platform only to find that I've just missed the last tube of the day to that particular place so I get on another tube with the intention of getting off at the next station that sounds good. The tube then pulls off but instead of stopping anywhere it takes me out somewhere really remote with usually one or two derelict buildings, a road, a bus-stop and lots of flat plains for miles. The tube then disappears. Not in a *puff of smoke* kind of way but in a dreamy, vague, look away then turn back and it's no longer there way. I obviously want to get back into London because I have no clue where I am and there is nothing to do anywhere around so I go to the bus stop. There are usually 4 or 5 people waiting there, who say that they have been waiting for a couple of hours for the bus and it hasn't turned up but they hope it will be there soon because it is the only way of getting into London as it's much too far to walk. This is usually the point where I wake up.
Obviously they are not always exactly the same but they always run along these lines. One variation is that I'm with someone and they manage to get the tube to the decent place but I miss it so I get the next one to try to find them again but end up in the desolate place with the bus-stop with no sign of the person I was with. Anyway they aren't particularly nice dreams although not overly nightmarish either; they just leave me with a funny foreboding feeling the next morning. I just wish I knew why this particular dream is recurring again and again. I'm sure everyone would have different theories on what it all meant. It would appear that I'm very discontent with some part of my life and maybe I feel like I'm trying to get somewhere that I have no hope of getting to. Maybe I feel alone and isolated and don't know where I'm trying to get to. Maybe it doesn't mean anything at all and just keeps recurring to piss me off and make me wonder why the hell I keep having that dream. Who can tell for sure? Answers on a postcard to...
Saturday, December 28, 2002
Hurrah. Well what a Christmas it has been although it really didn't feel like it. I went out on Christmas eve with Dan and some of his family and friends. I was a bit nervous that I wouldn't enjoy it because I only knew Dan out of the many, many people there and was scared it might be a bit cliquey but it wasn't like that at all. Everyone was really friendly and I had a great laugh. Sadly I got a bit too drunk (yes I failed with the 6 units a week) and ended up having to go home because I felt ill and when people rang to check that I was ok I didn't answer my phone (I think I just went straight home and passed out) so everyone got all panicky that something had happened to me and I feel a bit guilty about that but it's cool that people care that much.
Christmas day was a nightmare ho ho ho. The first thing I realised was that I felt very sick so I had to go and do the customary singing into the porcelain microphone which was very unpleasant obviously and it was just after this that I noticed two things. The first was that when I touched the left side of my face just underneath the eye there was pain. Secondly I realised I still had my contacts in. DOH. Looking in the mirror confirmed the pain in my left cheek - a huge angry red graze was mocking me there so I deducted that it had probably been introduced to the floor at some point the previous evening although I really couldn't remember this at all. I then rushed to take my contact lenses out, then contacted people to confirm that I was ok, then collapsed back in bed. I was very ill until about 7 that evening (deservedly) by which point my left eyeball had begun to really sting.
The next morning this had elevated to utter agony so I hobbled blindly over to A&E (they must be sick of me by now) to get it looked at. Turns out I had scratched the front of my eyeball quite nastily although the doc gave me some cream and a humourous eyepatch ye scurvy cur and said it would heal quite quickly. Diagnosing this scratch meant forcing my eye open and shining a great light into it which almost caused me to nut him - it was so painful even with the anaesthetic! However luckily the doc was correct and once I started using the cream it started to recover quite rapidly and was even able to join my friend Dave in the pub that evening although the dye and cream around my eye had made it look incredibly bruised and coupled with the graze I looked like I'd gone a couple of rounds with Tyson and Dave was convinced someone had punched me in the face.
Next day (yesterday) apart from a bit of stinging and lots of watering, my eye had pretty much recovered so I went about building my fighting uruk-bot which has been christened DuckBot and is awesome. After a few false starts - my second serial port not activated in the BIOS (duh) and one of the main pieces being nigh on invisible on carpet - it finally came into being at 2.48AM this morning and I am very proud of it. The first thing it did when I switched it on was try to munt one of my plants: ah the force is strong in this one. Today when I finish the things on my to-do list I shall set about programming it and doing some of the tasks which have been set for it. I daren't start now because I won't get anything else done all day *grin*. Dan is thinking about buying one which will be so cool because then we can have little tournaments and things.
Tuesday, December 24, 2002
And I forgot to say during my christmas rant: AH BUMHUG
Bleurgh I looked like utter shit when I got up this morning. 30 litre backpacks under my eyes, pallow skin and just generally very lacklustre. I know of no particular reason why I should look particularly so this morning. Nearly scared myself to death when I looked in the mirror during the deming process. If it had been halloween I'd be all set for a costume.
But no it's not halloween, it's Christmas Eve ohohohoho(hey, good link there I thought!), that's right, eve, the eve of christmas not actually christmas itself yet which it is if you believe almost everything out there right now. If you believe all the hype it's been christmas for about the last month or so. I know I probably sound like Liz Scrooge (Scrooge McDuck!) but I really like the idea of being with people you care for, giving, love and joy and peace and all the rest of the hippah stuff but all that seems to be lost now. It's just a large bout of commercialised blackmail which sends most people into a mad frenzy of gluttony and debt which they will spend the most part of the following year paying off right before it's time to enter the whole sorry cycle again. The whole idea behind giving is mostly lost too. Last year most presents that I bought were for people because I thought that they'd be upset if I didn't or because I thought they'd get me one. Not out of kindness or love or the desire to make them happy. Also the adverts that seem to be saying "buy our worthless tat or you'll have a miserable christmas and all your friends and family will hate you" really get me angry. It just seems like the whole country goes insane. It's supposed to be the season of "goodwill towards mankind" however I find that this is the time when I least like the human race. I'm not even going to go into whether it's a christian or pagan festival and why so many non-christians and non-pagans celebrate it. Anyway why should we only have the love, giving, goodwill etc, at christmas? Does this mean it's cool to be narky, selfish, miserable gits the rest of the year? Well I'm set then!
The coat that I've had my eye on for ages has been reduced from £95 to £65 so now I'm really relieved that I waited because 95 quid is a lot of wonga to spend on an item of clothing even when it's something as lush as that coat. 65 quid is a lot more like what I was prepared to pay for it so I nabbed it. The coat is a full length one though and I'm a petit woman (read shortarse) so I hope to goodness it doesn't trail on the floor!
I had a dream that I was holidaying somewhere really exotic last night. Not sure what the exact location was supposed to be but my mind created some absolutely gorgeous views of azure seas, green mountains, sandy beaches, beautiful buildings and palm trees. It was lush. If a place exists like the one in my dream I definitely want to go there although by dreaming it I probably saved myself quite a bit of money! It all seemed very real though. It's good to have a vivid imagination sometimes.
Monday, December 23, 2002
Well this evening is my first proper evening alone and while I'm not too tetchy about it I'm rather bored. Probably will spend another evening watching DVDs - it's a good job there are so many of them - and get an early night. I wish I had access to a bath, I could do with a lovely long soak right now.
Well here I am in work with only two other people: - the managing director and the marketing guy. It's pretty cool actually because I get a large open plan office all to myself plus the marketing guy went and got us all coffee and croissants. So here I am sipping my mocha but typically today is the first day in months that I actually managed to get some breakfast before coming in to work so the croissant didn't go down too well.
Thought a lot last night about the general way my life is going and made a few decisions about stuff which I won't go into here but I'll just say that I'm feeling much better about things and quite confident and optimistic about the future. I have an unbeatable short term plan of attack and I believe if you get the short term right then the long term will automatically work out (kind of like: look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves). I've never been much of a long term planner anyway. I _could_ decide now where I want to be in 10 years time but chances are in 10 years time I'll want to be somewhere completely different anyway - much better to do yor best at whatever you do now and if that should lead to any decent opportunities then take them and when a choice arises pick whatever's best at the time, don't waste time faffing over whether you will wish you'd have done things differently later on because you're never going to know where the other path would have led you. I have no truck with "what if"'s. 10 years ago I certainly wouldn't have put myself in the role of software engineer in deepest, darkest wales but that is where my short term choices and plans have led me and I really can't complain because it rocks.
Sunday, December 22, 2002
Haven't blogged for absolutely ages, merely because I am a lazyarse slacker and just haven't been in the mood.
Today I have been starting to think that staying on my own during the Christmas nonsense is a bad idea after all, given my restlessness that comes when I don't have anyone around me for great lengths of time. Tomorrow it'll just be me and the spiders left in the house for about a week and the prospect is not making me feel too good. While it's good to be able to have the run of the house, not to mention several DVDs and a large telly at my disposal all the time, I am very much a pack animal and being on my own really gets to me. That doesn't mean I need to be with people all the time: I can quite happily be alone in my room for hours as long as I know there are other people around me that I can go and talk to whenever I wish. However the thought of just having my own company in the house for the next few days fills me with dread and by the end of the week it wouldn't have surprised me if I've gone a bit freaked out. I think my almost phobic dislike of being alone stems from my earliest memories of being in hospital, when I was left on my own in a cot for hours at a time with nothing to do and my parents could only visit me at certain times and, being very young, I never understood why they'd go away and leave me behind. Apparently I used to scream blue murder and make my mum cry when they did that. Anyway it's only a week. Time to develop little eccentricities and breed my army of mutant insects to take over the world MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Actually my dad bought me the lego robot I was going on about in an earlier blog so I'll be able to play with that and program it to...take over the world MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Hmm I think I'm already going a bit strange..scary.
Went to Shrewsbury yesterday to see Two Towers as annoyingly it isn't out in Aberystwyth until January the 14th. Oh my. There aren't words enough to describe how good I thought the film was. I spent most of the film going "whoooaaahhh" in my head. Absolutely marvellous. SEE IT. SEE IT. I saw an advert for it on telly today which has made me want to go and see it again but I'd better just wait until it comes out in aber I guess. Oh the chafing. I'm not really sure about the Ents or Gollum as they're not quite how I imagined them when I read the book but then everyone will have imagined something different so they can't please everyone I guess. I blubbed like a big girl through part of the film but I won't write any spoilers in here. All I'll say is that it's worth seeing at least once and if you're like me you'll probably want to go and see it again..and again!
Today my flatmate and his girlfriend had me round at her place for christmas dinner which was very kind of them but I made a horrific faux pas. They also had a lot of their churchy mates over and about half way through it dawned on me that I was wearing my levellers top which has a picture of a devil on it. It's not too clear though so hopefully not many of them noticed but it certainly made me feel a little bit uncomfortable although I found it amusing too. They'll probably all come round later with flaming torches and teach me the error of my ways. Oh well at least it's company hehe.
I'm getting really pissed off with adverts and telly programs which happily announce "It's christmas!". No not for another 3 FUCKING DAYS it isn't. I'm amazed that they can make a 1 day a year holiday take up so many months of the year with stupid gimmicks and the like. Soon the whole year will just be a run up to christmas and nothing else will matter and on that day I give up.
Looking forward to going to Edinburgh for Hogmanay as that should be one hell of a party. However all my friends in the whole world (near enough) are descending on Aber for a new year pissup that I will miss and it's making me feel a bit left out. Wish I could clone myself and go to both.
Monday, December 02, 2002
Right, couple of things to blog about. I'll get the miserable, depressing one out of the way first so I can end on a more happy note.
Went to the hospital to get the results of my final tests. I was expecting the usual "Couldn't find anything, all is fine" so I was a little shocked when the doc said that they've found something wrong with my right kidney and suspect that it doesn't actually work at all. Luckily my left one is perfectly fine and has actually grown to compensate for the crappy one but what they've got to work out now is what to do with my faulty one. Apparently they can't fix it, it's too far gone for that but they've got to work out whether leaving it to it's own devices is going to do me any harm or not. It's obviously not doing me any good if it's putting me in hospital but it all depends on how regular this is. If it becomes more regular or the bouts are more severe then they will put me on strong antibiotics and possibly even whip it out and, as you can probably tell, I am more than a tad concerned about all this. I don't want to keep getting ill, suddenly and without warning, and I don't particular want surgery either. I also feel kind of broken, like I have this useless, dead, poisonous thing inside of me (and no I'm not talking about my heart ololol). I'll proably feel better tomorrow, I think I'm still in shock. Compared to what some people have to go through this is nothing.
Went to see one of my favourite bands last night, the Levellers. Absolutely splendid night! I jumped up and down like a moron and got right to the front on a couple of occasions. The music was spectacular and I thoroughly enjoyed it but was rather knackered when it finished, better get back down to that gym! It always amazes me how good they are, not like all this manufactured pap nowadays *awld womayn*. They always jump about like complete nutters too and the sound just makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I also bought myself a gorgeous t-shirt afterwards which I am wearing as I type, although it is a little tight around the mountain area. I went with people that I haven't really known for very long but they are proving to be very cool and a good laugh although were talking about rather bizarre and scary things when we had coffee afterwards. Absolutely super night all in all and certainly makes me want to go to see some more gigs (unfortunately quite hard to do in Aber, especially if you are of discerning tastes). Anyway Levellers rock. This gig was even better than the last one of theirs I went to :)
