Work, Socks and the Pacific Rim

Hi!

Well. That week has passed. Hooray. Weekend, went fast as usual, but, weather aside, it was nice.

So yeah. Work. Eh. This week was ok. Fine, but ok. A bit of politics and drama that I'm doing my very best to stay out of. Have narrowed down The Troubles to two people (who are seemingly never happy unless starting or perpetuating rumors and gossip). So now that I know who, I can keep out of their way. Whew! Don't want to get caught up in any petty crap! And get this - I still haven't heard yet if I've been extended past Xmas or not. Although I did get a teeny tidbit out of The Finance Lady - because am a lowly little temp from an agency, they can only extend me 3 months in one go. So that answers that. But I still don't know if they're going to extend me for the next 3 months! I know I keep worrying about it. Sorry. It's just that this time of the year in the Southern Hemisphere is a really rotten time to be job-hunting as the entire country goes on "holidays" for 6 - 8 weeks. So nothing gets done until February, really. Bummer. So, will see what happens hopefully in the next week or so as my boss is one of the lucky millions who's leaving at the beginning of December to go away until the end of January. Fantastic. How much would I love a 7 week paid vacation?!!!!

One bright spark mid-week - on Thursday I went to go hear Michael Palin talk about his new travel book "New Europe" and then afterwards he signed our books (I bought "Full Circle" where he circumnavigates the Pacific Rim - it's really neat, took him (and his tv crew) almost a year to do). So I guess I kinda met him, even if for maybe 10 - 15 seconds! He was really cool!!!! In case you don't know him, he started out in the '70's with Monthy Python and then into films ("A Fish Called Wanda" - he was Ken, the guy with the stutter trying to save the animals), and now he's been commissioned by the BBC over the last 10 or so years to travel all over the globe and make both tv series' and books out of it all. He's been all over and to some really interesting places. It was cool. Very difficult to get photos during his talk, as there was no flash (fair enough) and he kept wiggling around and I have no tripod yet (like I would bring it anyways). So I got what I could!

And Friday, well, we had a pub lunch. Mmmmmm. I had kangaroo steak! And it was goooooooood!!!!!!! I highly recommend it if you ever get the chance and, well, you're not a vegetarian. Medium-rare, no seasoning or sauce or any excitement like that. Just as nature intended. Man it was good. Very light, not at all filling or greasy. It was perfect. So a couple of glasses of wine and good conversation later, my god, I got back to work 3 hours later! Oh my god am in such trouble! I was assured all would be ok, that my boss doesn't really care - she's of the "I don't care what you do as long as the work gets done" school of management. And I don't at all stay out like that, ever. So hopefully all will be ok. The Finance Lady makes me kinda nervous, but I don't report to he, so there! Ahhh, but it was a most excellent afternoon indeed!

And then Saturday, a gal I work with, Jade, invited me to go to a big pub called The Story Bridge Hotel with her and some of her friends and family. Well, I got there and holy cow, it was her hen's night (bachelorette) party! But nonono, it wasn't like that at all, it was just a bunch of gals getting together for a drink. So it wasn't embarrassing or loud and obnoxious. But geez, if I'd known it was her pre-wedding drinks, well, that's for good friends not work monkeys?! Anyways, it was a good night. Neat pub. Massive. Huge sprawling place. The awful trend here seems to be to take a "dark, dingy and previously a biker hangout" pub and strip it of all it's wood, replace it all with modern metal and tricky lighting and call it refurbished. It's a crying shame in my book because refurbish seems to mean strip it of all it's character. But, that's what they seem to like.

And today. Well, the usual chores, a nap, some tv and fighting to install my new 500gig external hard drive. It's been formatting itself for about an hour now. I couldn't get it to work at first so am trying this formatting trick to see if it'll happily back up everything on my little laptop. What a pain. I thought you could just plug it in, click a coupla buttons and that would be that. Oooooh no. There's work involved! So yeah. That's been today's main task. At least I have clean floors and socks!

So there it is. I hope everyone's well up there! Send an email, let me know you're out there alive and well!

BYE!
J!
Weekly: One Good Thing About Little Apartment #14:
It's located in an extremely hilly 'hood - good for walking off the office blues!