Blogspiration has been lacking of late. My general outlook has been poor. This has a lot to do with work right now. The job and the people are still fine, no problem. The problem is job security. They can't afford to pay me; I've worked only three days in the last fortnight and will probably only work two days next week. Also I've just found out that, this Friday, we will be told whether or not our office will remain open - in other words, whether or not we still have jobs. Admittedly I'm only on a 3-month contract, but the expectation was always that I would be offered the job permanently at the end of that time. But the lack of hours, and the fact that the company's going under... not cool. Also the secrecy that surrounds many aspects of the business and the way I found out about this Friday third-hand rather than straight from the boss... it all gets very irritating. It sometimes seems like there's some conspiracy afoot! Fortunately I have the coolest recruitment agent in the world, he knows the situation, and he's already keeping an eye out for other jobs for me. But really, I hate job-hunting and job interviews and updating my resume and having to dye my hair a "normal" colour that isn't purple... I just want to keep this job that I like, with the added bonus of working enough hours to pay the rent and eat (and save money and pay off a loan)! I guess there's always the chance the company will start making some money in the next week or so...

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but our computer went screwy again recently. It's alive and kicking now, but once again we've lost everything. Photos, music, programs... so we've had a fun couple of days making it fully functional again. It's not as though I don't have plenty of time; my boss currently can't afford for me to work much, so I'm only working Thursday and Friday this week. I need a new job, as soon as my contract ends in a few weeks.

However, I have discovered a new way to waste time (I mean, a constructive and healthy use of time...)!! I may be the very last on the bandwagon, you probably all know about Geocaching?! It looks to me like a lot of fun, so I'm tossing up whether or not I'm going to stay interested long enough to justify buying a GPS unit. I did go for a fruitless wander today, in the general area of where a cache is supposed to be; but lacking a GPS unit or a particularly good map, I didn't find anything. However, it was a really nice walk (almost a hike, up a mountain), giving wonderful views over the city, somewhere close to home that I hadn't even thought of going to before. So even though I didn't find the cache, it was still a worthwhile trip. (Yes, this photo is our capital city, taken about 5 or 6 kilometres from the city centre.)

In other news... I'm bored. I need to find something to do for the next three days; Aidan will be working but I'll be home. I could, of course, just MUD, but that's probably not a constructive use of my time and is really lazy. Suggestions??

This is the glorious vegetable soup I made last night! Sometimes I surprise myself!

Ingredients:
Potato (3)
Carrot (2)
Celery (lots)
Turnip (1)
Onion (1)
Red kidney beans (1 can)
Chick peas (1 can)
Pepper & Salt (to taste)
Beef stock (quite a bit)

Instructions:
Cut stuff up, simmer everything until you get bored, eat!


This is the equally delectable bread that Aidan made - well, it's half of it, because the other half got eaten before I could photograph it. I don't know the recipe for this, it's Aidan's speciality!

Together they made a perfectly scruptious meal, which I fully intend to duplicate with the left-overs tonight while Aidan is at work!

It's such a wonderful feeling to produce entire meals from scratch like this, particularly meals that most people buy in cans, boxes, or bags. It's very satisfying, lots of fun, and it tastes better too. The next step is to grow everything ourselves, in an ideal world.

We keep talking about a self-sufficient lifestyle: growing fruit and vegetables, keeping some livestock, even milling our own flour! We both grew up in more or less rural areas, and such ideas hark back to our childhood and our mothers' homegrown produce. One day, when we're tired of travel and we've saved enough that we don't need to work, it would be marvellous to get back to nature. Not entirely - I do like my electricity, flushing toilets, and so on! Did anybody ever see The Good Life? That's what I'd love to emulate, one day! (I mean as Barbara, not Margot.)

I suggested to Aidan that we should move to a commune. Not the hippy druggy ones, but a nice community of people who just want a simple life with outdoor work and animals! That would be nice.

In the meantime, I'm going to re-heat some of that soup, butter some bread, and try to find The Good Life clips on YouTube.

Second singing lesson this afternoon! Unfortunately I'd spent the whole afternoon working in the warehouse, so my throat was full of dust. It wasn't too bad, Nina (the teacher) was still pleased, but it could have been better. Still fun though! Lots of practice this week, I hope. I really didn't practice last week, I guess I need to get back into the habit of "learning" or "studying" something - it's been quite a while!

Work today was hectic. I stayed half an hour longer than I'm meant to, and still didn't get everything done. We had some people from TNT come to install a program on our new warehouse computer, and train us how to use it, but of course that ate into our usual Friday dispatch routine. We had a lot to dispatch today because we just received a shipment, so everybody with backorders had their stock sent out today. Eventually we had to send everything without invoices, since I didn't have time to prepare them and nobody else knows how, so I'll have to remember to post all the invoices out on Monday.


I think I'm definately going to need a beer tonight. Thank god for homebrew. Aidan makes a good beer, especially after it's been left in a dark cupboard for six months, forgotten about, moved to Canberra, re-discovered, refridgerated, and then drunk!

While I'm drinking my beer, I will certainly continue playing the Discworld MUD, which I have recently become re-obsessed with! I've been playing for years, but I stopped for a while... and now I've started a new and better character, and I'm hooked again! It's not the game for everybody - text-based, and revolving around the Discworld books by Terry Pratchett. But if you like reading, it's great!

Anyway, enough blather about what I'm going to do. I'm going to go and do it!

I get so sleepy at work... one of my colleagues, Ian, insists on having two heaters going at all times, and it gets so warm and stuffy in here! I have a small window next to me, which I try to keep open, but it doesn't help very much. I do have work to do - I could be downstairs in the warehouse re-organising it and making it make sense. But I feel like emulating this kitty. Flop.

I should get a job where I can work from home. My own conditions, heaters off and windows open (unless it gets too cold), and flexibility, and all that! And no kitties going flop.

I've just come home from my first singing lesson since I was about 17. I was pleasantly surprised that the tutor seemed rather impressed with my voice, but maybe she just says that to everybody! So we did some breathing excercises (very different to how I was originally taught, I'll have to un-learn some bad habits), and she's given me a song to learn and practice. The song, I was thrilled to realise, is "I Dreamed A Dream" from Les Miserables, which I love. I've already spent a significant period of my life singing that song when I thought nobody could hear me, so the only unfamiliar thing will be doing it in front of somebody!

So that was fun, but now I must return to mundanity and go shopping for dinner. I'm thinking of a wonderful, nuitritious, healthy microwave meal that will only taste a little bit like cardboard.