Well, I quit my job on Friday. I gave two weeks notice, so I finish up here on September 5th. Lovely! I'm fed up with taking the same phone messages 6 times over the space of 3 weeks because she's unable to resolve issues immediately. I'm also fed up with being paid late, lied to, kept uninformed, and fed up with the complete lack of organisation or effeciency around here. I'm gone. The boss doesn't need me - she doesn't need an office administrator, she needs a co-manager. She's never here, she's unreliable, she doesn't get things done. She needs somebody to be here and do things. And NO, I wouldn't do that if she asked me to. I am a rat, deserting this sinking ship! (Yeah, we're so broke she can't afford to pay our couriers so now nothing is getting sent to our customers... and she couldn't afford to pay me until a week and a half late... the list goes on...)

So now I need to find alternative employment. This is a bitch of a city for getting jobs, for me. Most jobs advertised are one of three things: IT, retail, or government. I'm not qualified for IT, I don't really want to do retail unless I can't avoid it, and government jobs are all fancy-pants stuff like project management or policy making. You need degrees and contacts and smarminess to get jobs like that, even if you wanted them.

So, whilst I am applying for office admin/PA/EA roles, I'm also mulling over business ideas. Gothic clothing? Sci-fi bookshop? Gluten free frozen meals? I'm also hoping to get into the Diploma of Technical Music at CIT at some point, so should I already be thinking about co-ordinating working hours with school, and find a casual or part-time job? That can probably wait.

My future is once again a blank page, waiting to be written on...

Well, I've been in denial for a little while now, but I can't close my eyes to the truth anymore: I'm gaining weight. I think I'm now about the heaviest I've ever been in my life, at a whopping 64 kilograms. That's 141 pounds. When I walk, I can actually feel my tummy jiggling. My face looks chubby. My thighs aren't nice. Fortunately my fingers are so far ok - I can still get my wedding ring on and off. I've never had to worry about my weight before... I've always been naturally pretty slim.

I think there are a couple of things contributing to this new phenomenom... firstly, as you may have gathered, I haven't been the happiest Stace in the world since moving to Canberra. Depression does tend to lead to more eating/snacking, and for me it also leads to apathy and lethargy. There's also the weather. Oh god, the weather. How do you go for a morning or evening run/walk/ride/crawl, when the mornings and evenings are icy cold?! It's discouraging, to say the least...

So, I think I need to take action. I'm going to begin a bit of a diet - not a fad diet or something fashionable, I just mean I'm really going to pay attention to what I'm eating and when I'm eating it, and be sensible about it. I'm going to put the M&M's I'm eating in the bin. I'm also going to get Aidan to set up his bike with the thingie so you can ride it inside like an exercise bike. I'm going to be an indoor cyclist! I'm going to get back into the daily situps which I stopped doing six months ago. When the weather starts to warm up, I'm going to at least consider walking to work a couple of times a week - it'd be a good 45 minutes or an hour each way, I'm guessing.

Now that's all in writing, you can all encourage me, and mock me if I don't keep to my promises.

I am feeling a very great need to vent about my boss. Are you ready? Go!

She lies, both directly and by omission, to myself and to customers. She also expects me to lie to customers, or, as she put it, "Be careful what you say". This, incidentally, was in response to me telling a customer the truth about the status and location of her own item. I think this customer had every right to know that something valuable belonging to her was no longer in our care.

She never keeps me informed. I hear from our solicitor of changes to scheduling, or that she won't be at work today, and generally I hear too late to be of any use. Last week I was under the impression she was attending appointments interstate, as I had arranged for her previously. I was told, by the solicitor, hours after the appointments, that she was ill and had stayed home. So I had to call the other party and apologise, and make both myself and the company look bad. And today, again, our solicitor has informed me (at 10.30, after I've been here since 9am) that she has appointments and won't be in the office today at all.

She repeatedly fails to pay me on time. Her absence today will mean she won't process my pay as she's supposed to, so it will be at least one day late - probably several days, knowing her memory.

Her responses to queries are incomplete or irrelevant. As she's been out of the office so much lately, my correspondence with her has predominantly been via email. Her answers to my emails frequently do not answer the question I asked, or imply that there was no need to ask it. I would not be emailing her if she'd left the information for me as she claimed she had.

She appears to forget that I am now her only staff member left in this office. One guy got fired a while back, the other is in hospital. So, if somebody calls trying to contact her, I'm the only one to take that phone call. I need to know when she'll be available, I need to know how to contact her; there is nobody else to assist me or deal with urgent queries. I continually have to tell people "She's not in the office, can I take a message and have her call you? Oh, I don't know when!"

Is that enough? As much as I like her as a person, and have some great conversations with her, and get along with her very well on a personal level... she's a bloody awful manager!!!

Yay, I got tagged!! Thanks Elizabeth!

1. What is his name? Aidan, but surely you know that if you've spent any time reading this blog!

2. Who eats more? Ummmm he eats bigger meals, but I snack more (but I'm trying to cut down!)

3. Who said, “I love you” first? Me, kind of... I wrote it. With my finger. On his back.

5. Who drives most when you are out together? I can't drive. So, him.

6. Who is more sensitive? Tough call. I show it more.

7. Who does the laundry? Mostly me, which is fair enough since he works more.

8. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? We seem to switch sides every time we move house...

9. Who pays the bills? Both of us. I mean, it's our money, but I physically do the paying.

10. Who cooks more? Hm. Probably him...

11. Who is more stubborn? Him.

12. Who is the first to admit they are wrong? I have no idea, I don't know that it comes up too often.

13. Who has more siblings? Me, with a grand total of one.

14. Who wears the pants in the relationship? I think we're fairly equal.

15. What do you like to do together? Cook. It's fun when we're together.

16. Who eats more sweets? Me. Trying not to!

17. Guilty Pleasures? I don't feel guilty about anything. Ha!

18. How did you meet? Mutual friend. Party. Alcohol. You get the idea.

19. Who asked whom out first? Well, he gave me his number, and I called it. I guess you could say it was a collaborative effort.

20. Who kissed who first? You know, I don't quite remember. I think possibly I kissed him.

21. Who proposed? He did, but I more or less dragged it out of him!

22. His best features and qualities? Best? There is no worst, so it's all best!

23. Tag some people... I don't know any bloggers with partners who would actually do this... Sorry!

Warning: Christians may be offended by this post. Do not read if you are sensitive about faith. If you read it anyway and get pissed off at me, don't say I didn't warn you.

I enjoy a good, logical debate. I particularly enjoy debating about religion, mostly because it's hard to find somebody who will talk about it openly. But there is one thing that I don't like about debating with Christians. (This is a generalisation, and obviously doesn't apply to every Christian.) They never seem to fully comprehend that they're talking to somebody who does not believe in God, and does not regard the Bible as an adequate source or proof of anything. They use God as his own justification, arguing in circles without saying anything real. They quote the bible to give reasons for their faith. That's like quoting Star Wars to prove that Luke Skywalker exists and has Jedi powers. "The force is strong with this one" and "God loves you" are on equal footing with me. Give me something real.

You see, it's like this: I reckon Jesus of Nazarath probably did exist. Although I'm pretty certain his mum wasn't a virgin in any literal sense. Jesus sounds like a pretty decent guy on the whole, but he obviously stirred up enough trouble to get himself crucified. As did thousands of others in that time and place. In his case, it was probably because he had a mental illness or smoked too much weed and thought he spoke to God. I envisage Jesus as like the leader of a band of hippies (aka apostles), all so doped up they believe everything he says he sees. Then the Romans catch up with him, do the deed on the cross, and suddenly the hippies are missing their visionary leader. Given the human penchant for dramatisation, they begin to tell their friends, relatives, anybody who'll listen, about this awesome dude, totally rad, but the bastards killed him, right?! An outrage, man, it totally sucks. Gradually over time, with hundreds or thousands of re-tellings of the story, people forget the hippies and the pot smoking, and only remember the bits that make them feel good about the shitty life they're leading: heaven, god's love, etc. It'll all be better after we're dead, I'll never have to push out another screaming brat again, or work until my fingers bleed just to feed my family, or see my youngest child freeze to death for lack of a blanket. That sounds great! Sure, I'll believe in a God that'll do that for me, when all I have to do is... what?! No sex outside of marriage?! Oh, fine, I guess it's worth it... Be nice to my neighbour? Sure, in this day and age I'm probably going to need his help, best to keep him on side... and so on. A few more rules thrown in to make living in that time and place a bit easier, and we've turned the whole she-bang into a religion. Several religions, actually. With all the different interpretations and denominations out there, who's to say my flippant little effort isn't just as valid?