Copyright ©
Carey Evans.
Last modified: Wed, 11 February 2004.
Why am I putting my life on the web, where anyone can see what I write here? I dunno.
OK. It’s 10:00 on a Saturday morning, and it’s dark, wet and cold outside, and it’s just been snowing. Winter has definitely arrived.
Right at the moment, I’m also cold, and feeling very unhappy with myself, although I’m quite happy with how life in general seems to be going. I’m restarting this diary for all the world to read (if they find it), although I wonder if I might be better off just keeping one to myself.
I suppose I should explain what I’ve written above. Why I’m cold: because it’s very cold outside, and there’s a cold draught coming in around the door behind me. Why I’m happy: because Tasha finally managed to take an evening off working at University, and go out to dinner with me; I had a great time, and she seemed to enjoy my company. Why I’m unhappy: actually, the heater, coffee, thick woolen jersey and polyprop long-johns seem to be helping the cold, and writing this down has made me feel better, so now I’m only feeling mildly annoyed with myself. Life goes on, and who knows what the future will bring?
Saturday was a really bad day to be at all stressed, depressed or worried about anything. About the only thing I can say about weather like that, is that at least it’s good for the ski fields.
And at least the weather today was good, since everyone at work had to go out in it when the fire alarm went off.
I’ve bought something at the supermarket that should help with the winter blues though; some lemon and barley concentrate (which has lots of sugar in it). The recipe: mix with water, heat in the microwave, then stir in some honey for a delicious, warming, sickly-sweet drink. To make it even better, I guess I need to find out what kind of alcohol to add to it.
I guess I’m being a bit slack updating this, but the previous two entries don’t seem that inspiring from here anyway.
About all I’ve got to say today is a little about the movie I went to see on Tuesday night with my brother, ‘The Matrix’. This is a really good movie, especially the awesome special effects, although the background story seems slightly ridiculous.
My brother thinks that Neo’s story in The Matrix is probably every cracker’s wet dream. I think it’s actually more likely that Trinity is.
I guess there’s nothing really happening in my life at the moment, because there doesn’t seem to have been anything for me to write in here.
That’s not quite true though. My last entry doesn’t really do justice to how good a movie ‘The Matrix’ is; maybe I should have written the entry after I got home from watching it and it was fresh in my mind. Anyway, I’d just like to say, if you haven’t seen it yet, and you like action or SF movies, go and see it.
I suppose I should also write something about my feelings about what happened in Littleton in America. I don’t generally go to a lot of trouble to remember anything from high school, but I’m sure it was nothing like as bad for me as it was, or is, for some of the people that posted comments to Slashdot, and for the two teenagers that killed a lot of fellow students and themselves.
Given the sort of things I’ve read on Slashdot, alt.sysadmin.recovery and alt.tech-support.recovery, I’m not exactly hopeful that things will get much better, either. I really think you should take a look at this Slashdot article and another one.
On a more personal level, I suppose I’m a little surprised that the person I was at high school didn’t get picked on more, especially for a school (Papanui High School) that isn’t exactly known as the best of Christchurch’s schools. Perhaps because of this, they did more about any troublemakers.
In fact, after rereading the articles I’ve linked to above, I have to think that in comparison, my time at high school was wonderful.
I’m not really very good at putting stuff in here, am I? I’ve got a bit of stuff to catch up on because of this.
First, it’s occurred to me rereading my last entry that it might give the impression that I didn’t really like my time at high school, but that’s wrong. I didn’t tend to get involved with other people maybe as much as I should have, but I had a group of friends that I “hung out” with in the Computer Room there. I didn’t really see any of the kind of discrimination that seems to take place in American schools.
I haven’t really been getting as much sleep as I should have been over the last week. Part of this is my fault for staying up too late (like now) doing things on the computer. I’ve also been working a bit harder at work, which I need a little extra sleep for. And finally, I dragged myself out of bed too early on Tuesday, to get down to the Casino at 7 am for Tasha’s birthday breakfast; and I didn’t actually get to bed until after midnight, after watching Red Dwarf and doing more fiddling with things on the computer.
Which is made worse because we’re back onto instant coffee at work.
Going back a bit further, I went to the Dux (by myself, unfortunately) on Friday night to see ‘She’s Insane’, a great New Zealand band, performing there. To help support the New Zealand music scene, I bought their CD on Monday. This makes 17% of my (modern) CDs by New Zealand artists or groups, so I don’t need to feel hypocritical if I support a 10% local music quota on the radio.
To finish up for tonight, I’m going to talk about... the weather! It’s actually been quite awesome tonight, especially since I’ve been sitting inside with the heater going. Earlier tonight there was a very impressive roll of thunder that went on for several seconds; just before there was a hailstorm that came into my balcony and collected in the deck chairs. It’s a good reminder of the positive features of the weather that I’m going to have to walk in to get to work tomorrow.
Yes, today was Mother’s Day, when companies try to make you and your Mum feel better by indulging in the crass commercialism of 90’s western society. I fell for it in a big way, and spent $100 taking the family out to lunch at Sticky Fingers, as well as buying her imported Belgian chocolates and a nice coffee-table book.
It was a wonderful day in terms of weather today, so every table, inside and outside, in all the cafes down Oxford Terrace were full. The waiter at Sticky Fingers seemed quite relieved that we had a booking, and weren’t just hoping to walk in and find somewhere to sit. TV3 even had a news crew on Oxford Terrace talking to people, although we didn’t see it.
I was actually feeling quite well today, considering that I’d been out past midnight yesterday. Tasha has a party for her birthday, with some of her friends from University and cycling. The theme was ‘T’, so I went as a Target by buying two army targets from the army surplus store on Colombo St and taping them to myself. Unfortunately I left the ammo for the dart guns at home.
Although it was a good party, I think it might have been better if I hadn’t gotten there to find that Tasha was in hospital, having come off her bike and gotten concussion early that afternoon. Apparently, she could remember the dog’s name, and her home phone number, but not her flatmate’s name, or who was with her. Paraphrased, and altered by second-hand reporting and hazy memory: “I was with two guys. I think one of them was my boyfriend.”
Sometime, she’s going to find this page and I’m going to get in trouble. It’s occurred to me that it’s not so much having any random stranger on the Internet read these pages that’s a problem, it’s the people I’m closer to that I worry about. Which may be why I went back and deleted a sentence today, despite my assurances that I wouldn’t change anything.
I’m also going to go against one of the rules I set myself, and talk about the future. It’s not exactly speculation or anything that will matter if it changes though. I’ve got a jury summons for tomorrow, which might require me to take a week off work for it. I’m not exactly looking forward to it, but I suppose if I actually get selected for the jury on the day, I’ll try my best to carry it out properly.
And that’s it for tonight. We’ll see when I feel like writing anything here again. Bye!