This is my 1000th blog post...

I feel that it should somehow be momentous, or about something meaningful.

It is worth noting that from tomorrow at 3pm I will be unemployed. That's a bit of a scary thought. However it's also worth pointing out that I am hoping to have at least one job interview in Canberra when I go up for Aidan's graduation ceremony.

I'm really really tired. I did actually sleep last night, for quite a long time... but not the nights before. Plus work has been pretty busy. But I guess I don't have to worry about that anymore, after tomorrow.

I bought myself my birthday present from mum and dad today. I mean to say, they'll give me the money when I see them next. It's a lovely new motorcycle jacket, leather with armour and all cool and stuff. Expensive, but worth it for my safety! It's not actually my birthday for a couple of weeks, March 8th.

I see from a comment on my previous post that my friend Chantell is in Copenhagen right now. Good for you, girl. I bet you're having the time of your life and wondering if you really have to go home... You have to at least visit!

And that's it for my highly memorable and exciting 1000th blog post. Wasn't that fun?

Two more days! I'm about to head in for my second-last day of work, and then on Thursday my in-laws will pick me up and we'll all go to visit Aidan! It's been a very long five weeks. Very long.

I spent my whole weekend packing and cleaning... in my dreams. Actually I was at Aidan's cousin's place, I didn't get home until Monday morning about ten minutes before I had to leave for work! Lots of fun.

Two more days!

I've been home for a couple of days, but have shamefully neglected you all! Been busy and tired. Mostly tired. I had a really nice weekend up at mum and dad's place, very restful. It was strange being there with no dog, though. There's always been a dog at my parents' place, this is the first time I've been there since Ebony was put down. Oh well, some friends came round and they brought their two dogs, so that was a bit better!

Work has been crazy the last couple of weeks. Our storeman is unavailable this month, so it's down to two of us (plus the girl I'm "training" to be the new me) to do everything including some nice big orders for two of our largest customers. Training the new girl is going quite well, she seems to be picking things up quickly, and I'm confident she'll work out well. I'm glad she's got over a week with me still there - unlike when I started, I spent about two hours with the previous girl and then I was on my own with the boss!

Plans for the Big Move are coming along nicely. I have to email Aidan an inventory of all our belongings, for some insurance reason or something, and tell them what day I want them there... I've got my parents and my in-laws coming over on March 3rd for a big day of packing and cleaning, which will be wonderful. So I hope to have the removalists on the 4th, and probably the carpet steam-cleaner dude on the 5th. Then, with any luck, I'll be free to do whatever - such as getting to Canberra to live with my husband! Wow, how weird will that be. I've been more or less single since October, and I haven't seen him in 5 weeks!

I've gotten more used to the idea of moving. I think since I've given notice at work and with the real estate agent, and started packing things, it's appeared more inevitable. It's not that I suddenly want to move, but the move is in motion and it's easier to go along with it than try to stop it and stay home!

So now we just need to find somewhere to live, and I need to find a job up there... easier said than done, of course, but it'll probably be easier to find work once I'm actually there. I think prospective employers are put off by the knowledge that I would have to make a special trip from Melbourne to Canberra just for a job interview, when I might not even get the job... Heck, even I'm put off by that. Oh well, things will come together...

I have to get an early night tonight... I need to be awake enough to ride my scooter to work tomorrow, because I have to drop it at the mechanic on my way home. It'll be fixed over the weekend, and then on Monday I'll have a fully operational vehicle again! Yay!

But for now, I really should go and do stuff like washing the dishes and putting away my clean clothes... maybe...

Yay! Two things!

1 - I have started packing! I have filled six of my ten boxes: four with books, two with DVD's. So all the movies are packed now, but only about a quarter of our books. I'm going to need a LOT more boxes!

2 - I arranged for a rose to be sent to Aidan today because it's "being bludgeoned to death with big rocks" day (oops, I mean Valentines Day) and he got the rose tonight and it made him all happy and stuff!

So I'm all happy and excited!

Also I'm going to my parents place for the weekend, leaving tomorrow afternoon, so I probably won't be blogging for a few days. I'm sure you'll all survive my brief absence without too much difficulty!

I bought some boxes today. One more step towards moving! I haven't actually packed anything into them yet - I don't know where to start! I could only buy a pack of 10 boxes, since I had to carry them home... I don't have a car. So what can I do with 10 boxes? They won't fit all the books, not even half, and they probably won't take all the movies/cds either... but I have to start somewhere!

Just 17 more sleeps till I see Aidan again! Andrew has rightly observed that these last few weeks are the hardest. However, friends have rallied round and been mighty helpful, whether they meant to be or not. And there's always music. In the depths of despair, who wouldn't be cheered by Bob Marley singing "Three Little Birds" and AC/DC belting out "Highway To Hell"? Not at the same time.

I think what makes it the worst is that it's totally out of my control. I've contemplated moving before, of course... But moving to a place of my choosing at a time I'm comfortable with would have been a very different thing from uprooting my life because of somebody else's decisions. It's not as though Aidan is making me move, but practically speaking I don't have much choice. I could tell him to choose between me and his job, but that's cruel. The job makes him happy, he'll never find anything else that he could get so excited about, I couldn't ask him to leave it, or choose, or anything. Woman I am, complete bitch I am not.

I also find it hard to imagine life being any better, or even as good, as it currently is for me. I have a great job in a good location, I have friends within coo-eee, and I think most importantly I have familiarity with my area. I know which areas to avoid after dark, there are places which have significance to me for one reason or another, I know how to get into the shopping centre if I need something after the main doors are locked for the night. I even know Melbourne's weather patterns! They're mostly not very nice, but I'll miss them!

I am finding it hard to mentally adjust to the idea of all that changing. Suddenly I will have no job, I'll be staying in a hotel while looking for a place to live, I'll most likely be moving to somewhere I've never been before. My friends will have to shell out a couple of hundred bucks to visit me, or vice versa.

On the plus side, I'll be with Aidan.

He seems to think that saying "I love you" will make all of the above go away for me. He tries, he knows how I feel and he really wants me to be happy. I'm trying to be happy. I'm definately happy for his sake.

I can only hope that, with time, things will get better. I will get over my doldrums, I will find a job I like just as much as this one, I will become familiar with Our Nation's Small and Insignificant Capital. And in this case, I hope that familiarity will not breed contempt. I might even make new friends, although it's hard to imagine any new friends being as good than the ones I've got! (Hi Andrew!)

I try to maintain optimism. But as the time draws nearer, optimism gets harder...

An American journalist has referred to the late Heath Ledger as selfish, reckless, and greedy. So Australians have bombarded her newspaper with protest. Patriotism strikes again. Seriously, who cares? There's no doubt that he was a good actor, and he was mildly attractive (more so when he was younger, I think). But as to his character traits, who cares? He's gone now and can't possibly care what anybody says about him. I can't help but notice that most of the things being said in public are said by people who never actually knew him personally. Maybe he was selfish, maybe he wasn't. Why does it matter now? Let his family lay him to rest in peace; the people who truly loved him don't need to hear the whole world's uninformed opinions.

I was talking to a friend of mine this afternoon. Now, when I say "friend", I've never actually met him. We worked for the same company for over a year, and we spoke on the phone almost every day as part of our jobs. And as soon as he figured out I had a personality behind the professional front I used to put up over the phone, we clicked. We've stayed in contact since I left that company, even though he doesn't even live in the same state as me. And it struck me, yet again, how it's amazing the friends you can make when you don't have appearances to put you off. We've had a crack at describing ourselves to each other, and we agreed that if we'd met in a more conventional manner we would never have bothered with each other! Instead, because we dared to venture beyond the superficial, we have a lasting and rewarding friendship. Much like those I have developed here with other bloggers. Except he's in the same timezone and I have his phone number.

If everybody could meet online or telephonically, nobody could tell what anybody's racial background is (assuming they don't still have an accent), and nobody would know if someone is ugly or fat or has a physical deformity. We would develop friendship or hatred based on individual personalities, instead of making an instant judgement based on how someone looks. Wouldn't that be nice?

One of my favourite descriptions of Jesus: A man who was nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change. (Douglas Adams, RIP)

I've decided to go insane.

Tagged by Fathorse!

The Rules:
- Pick up the nearest book of at least 123 pages
- Open the book to page 123
- Find the 5th sentence
- Post the next 3 sentences
- Tag 5 more people

Well, the first book I laid my hands on was The Song of Wirrun by Patricia Wrightson, and if you've never heard of it I'm not surprised.

Silently the small dark men dropped their food and grasped the heavy sticks that lay about them on the rock. Silently they melted out of the cave and vanished. The sky grew softly bright with the moon and was hung with stars.

It's quite a good book, a sort of fantasy fiction based around Australian Aboriginal mythologies. I'll be happy to lend my copy to anybody once I've finished re-reading it!

I found this wig tonight. I was reminiscing. I bought it in Madrid about two years ago, and wore it around the city all day... it was some kind of fair or festival, I seem to recall. So much fun! I'm sure it looked better on me then. Then again, it's been in a bag in the bottom of a cupboard for about two years, so it's gonna look a bit bedraggled!

I find Disney very worrying. For starters, every princess looks exactly the same. Then there's the talking animals. But even worse than that, there is the pure calculation and analysis that I know goes on behind every scene and song. It's the knowledge that every single thing done is done to make money. Touching stories, moving songs, inspirational characters... it's all figured out down to a T. Even I, when watching a Disney movie, sometimes find myself getting emotionally involved - just the way they want us to. They do it so well that it's easy to overlook the fact that they're doing it at all.

Everything Disney is such a cliche. I was astonished recently to watch a new Disney movie - Enchanted. It is obviously supposed to be an anti-cliche - the ditzy princess actually turns out to be a decent human being, and the practical woman goes to live in fairyland with the animated wanker of a prince. But the very fact of turning a cliche on it's head is already cliched! Does that make sense? It was so obvious what they were trying to do that I felt bored, and sometimes a little disgusted with it.

Somebody needs to start making children's movies that challenge the imagination, rather than merely evoke and reinforce ridiculous notions the kids are already saturated with.

I take a moment to salute Playschool's decision a couple of years ago to run a short segment on a girl with "two mums" - a lesbian couple.

When will Disney bring out a movie about a child who isn't trying to get his divorced parents back together? They divorced for a reason, kiddo! When will Disney bring out a movie portraying animals as actual animals, rather than four-legged humans? When will Disney bring out a movie featuring a gay couple? (If they have actually done any of these things, please tell me, I'm keen to see it.) I'm not talking rocket science here, I'm talking about things that kids are increasingly seeing all the time - in their own lives or their friends'. I'm all for escapism, but I'm for some realism too. The last thing we all need is yet more reinforcement of unrealistic expectations, like happy endings. I'm sure it must have some effect on depression or at least severe disappointment later in life.

"Why haven't I met my true love? I'm 20 already, and all these princesses don't look any older than fifteen, but they're married!"
"Why did my puppy get hit by a car? That's not how stories go... Puppies are meant to grow up into loving and loyal companions!"
"Why doesn't life come with a touching and inspirational soundtrack to tell me how I should feel?"

In the Absence of Aidan, I have good days and bad days. This is a Bad Day. It started badly when I awoke from a dream of him shouting at me, which is something he's never done. It continued badly when I was so tired all through work. It got badder when I burst into tears while washing the dishes this afternoon. You're meant to salt the water when you cook pasta, but not while washing the pot. Am I just a quivering heap of female hormones and emotions gone haywire? Is there a cure for being such a thing? Maybe a herbal tea might help. Or a hallucinagenic drug, but I don't have any of those. Can you dry out an Aidan and put it in a little bag, then steep that in hot water for three minutes?

On the whole I think I've done pretty well. I've taken over the household finances and copped all the housework (including conducting ritual exocutions of spiders), I've been seeing my friends and keeping busy, I've managed this whole bloody mess with the computer problems. Through it all I've kept pretty happy and positive.

But today I am overwhelmed. Not actually by anything specific. Just generally overwhelmed.

I haven't had any responses to job applications in Canberra. No real estate agent there will accept a rental application without me first inspecting the property. I have to start packing but I don't have any boxes. I should clean the house completely, but I just can't get started. I have to formally inform our current real estate agent that we're leaving. But I don't even know exactly when I'm moving.

I think I need a hug.

I just fancied a small dose of soothing imagery...

1st Feb:
Gunmen opened fire on the Israeli embassy in Mauritiana, wounding three French citizens.
A police officer in Sydney, Australia, was shot in the stomach. He's recovering in hospital.

2nd Feb:
Two police officers in Gwinnett, USA, shot at each other and obtained minor injuries.
The owner of a business in Lancaster, USA, was shot to death by an employee over a debt.

3rd Feb:
Five people were shot and killed in a mall in Chicago, USA.
A 17 year old Australian girl is in a critical condition after being shot in Vrindavan, India. The gunman then shot himself.

That's six (6) instances of violence involving guns in just three days, and if I'd searched the news just a minute or two longer I'm sure I'd have found at least another six. And I haven't even started on knives and other deliberate violence. What is it about we humans, that we feel the need to inflict pain and cause death??? It's not enough to conquer, to effectively own the planet, to have power over every other creature. We have to do it to each other too. When our species finally becomes extinct, I am quite sure it will be our own doing. Will that be such a bad thing? It often seems that the negative points of our race far outweigh the positive. Yes, there are nice people out there. There are people and organisations working for the greater good. But human greed and selfishness may never be overcome. You know things are skewed when you celebrate human kindness as though it's a rarity, rather than accept it as though it's normal. Instead we accept violence as normality. Violence doesn't need publicity and donations from the public. Have you ever seen an ad on TV asking you to donate to a terrorist cell?

I have an idea. I would like each person reading this blog to at least consider this... I'm sure all of us have homeless or destitute people living in our cities. I'm sure all of us have seen somebody who just needs a smile. Give those homeless people a dollar. Smile at those lonely and miserable people. Buy them a coffee. Sign a petition against the war the Middle East. I want every single person to perform an act of kindness before the end of this week - either on a personal level, for an individual, or by writing to or donating to an organisation. Something, anything. Small or large, whatever you have the time and resources for. Please. The world needs you.

I finally have my computer back, all fixed, with Windows XP instead of Vista. THANK GOD! This is wonderful. So my blogging and commenting frequency should shortly return to usual levels, and my apologies to anybody who thinks I've neglected them :)