I hate being sick...

It's weird. I get sick maybe once a year (twice at most). I generally complain about this because it means I don't get time off work. Problem is, when I do get sick, I complain about endlessly. In fact, I'm so pathetic and needy and whiny when I get sick that my wife usually can't take more than a day of it (two at most) before telling me I must be feeling better and shouldn't I be going back to work now?

Right now, I'm sick. Sore throat, dripping sinuses, aching back and neck and pretty cranky (actually, that last one is true on just about any given day). I've got an assignment due in just over a week, but that can wait until tomorrow.

I hate being sick. Bleh.

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Taking better pics

There's some great tips here for how to take a better photograph. Some of my favourites:

• tilt the camera
• get up close, don't use the zoom
• stop looking through the viewfinder (you'll have more fun this way)
• turn off the flash (the difference can be amazing).

I know that for the photos of our trip to Tasmania, the ones I liked the best were ones where I went for different perspectives or just snapped off a quick shot without thinking too much.

I'll post my favourite Tassie photos later, but they're all in our Tasmania Gallery.

New Shoes

Last Friday I bought new shoes.

This may not seem like a monumental and earth shattering activity for normal people but as a quick perusal of this blog would demonstrate, normality is not my "thing". My recently departed shoes (actually they're sitting in the kitchen waiting for me to remember to remove the shoe laces and then dump them in the industrial bin) had a small hole over the left big toe (I have no idea how it got there but the leather just got thin I guess) and the sole of the right shoe had begun separating from the upper, leaving a gaping chasm where, if it ever rained here, water could seep in when splashing in puddles. My shoes have been in this condition for about 3 months, which is a conservative estimate.

I last bought new dress shoes for wearing to work in the months leading up to my wedding (which was in July '03). I had had those shoes since 1999. They replaced shoes that I had for seven years. I had got those shoes at the beginning of Grade 11 and only replaced them after I slipped over in the kitchen of the restaurant where I managed the bar and fractured my elbow. They had already been re-soled once and I didn't see the value in doing it again as the soles wouldn't be non-slip (nor were the new shoes for that matter - curse you lying sales assistant at Colorado, Myer Centre!)

I don't replace shoes very often, although football boots is another matter (if they last two seasons, I've done well).

I don't have much of a point here except to say I like my new shoes. Comfy. Shiny. Leathery.

I wonder if I can break double figures with these ones...

US bans vegemite

Edit 29/10: As has been pointed out, this is in fact not true: http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/vegemite.asp

Heresy!

The US government has banned vegemite! Apparently it's because vegemite has folate added, and in the US you can only add folate to bread and cereals. Bah! Weak excuse if I ever heard one.

This should be considered a declaration of war, in my opinion. Vegemite on toast is one of the finest delicacies known to man (to this man anyway) and now thousands of expat Aussies will be denied this simple pleasure unless they can smuggle it in from Canada or Mexico.

Is this any way to treat an ally, Uncle Sam?

A new job

Most people who read this would be aware that I'm merely a small administrative cog in a large, federal, administrative wheel.  On 16 November, I'll officially enter the lowest rungs of management as I become the least powerful executive level administrative functionary.

It's actually pretty cool to me and is the culmination of my 5 year plan when I moved to Canberra back at the start of 2002 (which means it just scrapes in to my 5 year plan, but it still made it).  One of the positive personal benefits is that it provides just enough security of income that my wife can continue to be a stay at home mother for the forseeable future.  This, more than anything else, is what I love about this promotion.

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4 down, 2 to go

I did the exam tonight and got 37 out of 40 (I did it online through WebCT which means it got marked straight away), which translates into 14 out of 15 (there's some beneficial rounding going on there, I'll concede but that's the way the system does it). That leaves me sitting on nearly 84% for this subject, but there's still 45% of the marks to go (one assignment submitted but not yet graded and one due 27 October).

I now have just 2 assignments to go and then I'm free for the year and Helen can have her husband back and Elijah can have his Daddy back (although I always try and make room for Elijah, but I have been woefully neglectful to my wife - I am well aware that some things must change).

Yay. The end of the year is in sight! Woo!

3 down, 3 to go

Assignments and exams still suck, but at least there is a whole let less of them now...

Creative void

How do people manage to be creative and still live the 9 to 5 life?

When I get home after work, I can barely find the energy to feed myself, yet alone spend precious mental energy doing anything creative, whether it be writing, composing, playing my guitar or even free form day dreaming.

Admittedly, I'm probably burning my mental and physical reserves pretty low right now, between work and study and a lad who has decided that, at nearly 6 months of age, sleeping through the night is for little babies and since he's a big baby now, he'll wake up and scream when he wants to, but still...

Two things of interest:

1. Creating Minds.org - tools, techniques, methods on all matters creative. It fits well with my renewed interest in lifehacks and when I've got some time to breathe again, I'll see if I can combine this with some of the things I'm learning off 43folders.
2. You too can be creative; it just takes hard work - great, more hard work. Woo.
   

Maybe I'm just stretched too thin to create right now. I can feel the creative burn, but the flame is so faint and struggling for oxygen that sometimes I'm scared it won't come back. Ever.

Perhaps what I really need to do is to just go to bed.

Good night.

Fat, scrawny, infertile and impotent

Judging by the email I'm getting lately, this must be what I am. Why else would I be getting all these emails selling "v1@gr@" and cialis (what? no levitra? are they too good for me or something?), weightloss pills, steroids and medications to increase the number of "swimmers" I can produce (but clearly only after I've taken the viagra), which is apparently what really impresses the ladies. Oh, and I'm not as big as I could be either, apparently. Yeah, and steroids will help that problem...

The weird thing is pharma-spam is the only spam I get. Do I have a file somewhere marked "erectile dysfunction only. Has no money so no emails from Nigeria. Try Euro lottery in 6 months if viagra works"? I remember the good old days when spam tried to help me work from home, send on mail, help me to update my bank account details and inform me that Paypal needed me to log in straight away.

Spam just isn't what it used to be when I was a lad.

Assignments suck

'nuff said.

Between doing assignments and the boy's currently unsettled sleeping patterns, I haven't had more than about 6 hours sleep (and often much less) in almost three weeks.

Thank god for caffeine.

Crunched

Four assignments and 1 exam due between now and 6 November.

Temporary promotion leading to longer work hours on top of my standard full-time working week (and then there is the hour each-way commute on the bus).

A sad, weed infested lawn and garden with not enough hours of daylight (yet) after work to do much with it, which just leaves me with spare hours here and there on the weekend (I sowed some lawn seed yesterday, covered it with some granulated wetting agent and watered it in - a small patch of lawn still took two hours to do!).

A nearly six month-old son who insists (quite rightly) that he is the most important thing in the whole wide world (and the cutest, too) and that everything else should come second to him.

Somewhere in there is cooking, cleaning, ironing, sleeping and (gasp) spending some quality time with my wife.

*sigh*

If you don't hear much from me over the next six weeks, I'm bound up in all of that. Somewhere.