EXCHANGE INTERFACE

Am using a more uplifting moment to get past it.

Neighbour down the road (friendly-ish, but we're not hugely close, we just have similar thoughts on a bunch of topics) heard about my trip and was all "if I can get time free during school holidays, would you be interested in travelling around Iceland with me?"

Now I don't think it was a serious offer - you know how people say things but don't actually follow through? That said, she's messaged me before about doing a road trip out of the area for an evening so we could see some astronomical event that wasn't visible from Sydney. I kind of wish I hadn't had to be realistic about it. It would have been fun!

Anyway, it was lovely to have her make that offer, as though she didn't mind spending time with me. After some of the anxiety/depression/negative thoughts that I've been having, it's...so nice to know that someone thinks I'm someone they'd like to spend a week with, maybe even two.

I have to hold onto that when the brainweasels have the conn.

It's been rough lately, what with politics throughout the world and, well, some saddening/oblivious comments from friends. I love them, and I recognise that they don't have the emotional wherewithal for a broader perspective, but...

So, turned up at Trivia Night, and one of my friends...had grown his mustache out! So he was "incognito"! And he did it specifically!

♥

That was so sweet of him, and a lovely pick-me-up for me, especially after I was feeling down about everyone else not being onboard.

Thank you to everyone who hugged and reassured by the way. I do appreciate it; it's been a kind of big week on several fronts.

I'm reading through the LJ entries of two decades ago.

Wow, there was a lot of fannish stuff going on back in the day. Also, a lot of personal angst. Interestingy, I spotted a few familiar names from all those years ago - adafrog, I can't believe we've known each other for about 20 years!

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Got through the 2nd week of work. *breathes* Now just another *counts on fingers and gives up* one, two, many, lots of weeks to go!

One problem: I didn't get paid for last week and the week before. Unfortunately, whoever was supposed to be approving the timesheets didn't get to it before close-of-payroll. So I'll be waiting another fortnight before being paid.

I wonder what the other contractors (contractors need manager approval of their hours in order to get their payroll done) did. I probably should have asked.

Yes, I have savings and I'm not in a dire position. But it's particularly annoying because I haven't been paid since the start of September.

One of the big things (the thing which I was brought on to help deal with) was delayed. Indefinitely so. Upper management is sorting through all the details of it, the lawyers are having a field day. And down in the trenches, we're wondering a little what's going on.

But hey, I'm still employed. (For the moment.)

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Parentals are going away on a tour of Italy and Greece this Sunday. They'll be gone for 6 weeks.

I had lunch with mum today in the city, and we'll go over and have dinner with them tomomrrow. Then I drive them in to the airport on Sunday morning.

Hm. I wonder if I could go over to visit a friend who recently (in the last 6 months) moved into a new place out that way... I might text her and see if she's up to a visit. Although 8am in the morning is probably waaaay too early for her.

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I had a night in on Tuesday and Wednesday - I was going to go out to dinner with some of the hockey women, but nobody could make it, so we cancelled for some other time. And next week is when summer competition starts. Which is not going to be conducive to going out to dinner.

Thursday was trivia night with the usual crowd. It feels like I've seen a lot of them lately, although this may also be because we're solving Cryptic puzzles during the day (c/o a whatsapp group) and so I feel like I'm talking to most of them every day...

A couple of weeks back, some of the guys invited another guy from their bible study to come along. Our trivia team is weak in the sports department, and this guy apparently knows sport. He (and his wife and kids and a friend of kid) turned up on Thursday. Another couple have been on the Whatsapp group about trivia for the last six months, but have never turned up... You guess it right - they also turned up on Thursday.

So we had about 22 people in total on the team, and although we checked it was okay (it was), we decided to split, just for fairness.

A couple of the 'regulars' went over to the 'new' team: they ended up with about 15 people, we ended up with 8...

We came 9th out of 12 - we did very badly - and they came...2nd. D'oh!

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There's a gaming miniatures place across the road from where I come out at the station. I have a bunch of miniatures which I bought a decade ago and then didn't have the time, energy, or space to paint. But there's this shop, and they have painting stations, and the guy I spoke to looked...well, normal in a "could pass in the city without being mentally considered a neckbeard" way, which is not always the case in gaming stores. Or didn't use to be, anyway...

I chatted with the guy, asked about whether there are painting sessions, what the options are, how to go about it. He suggested I drop in one day after work, paint one of the freebie minis (already assembled and undercoated) to get a feel for it, and then I get to take the mini home. It's a thought. I might turn up one Thursday night when I'm not triviating.

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Today is some gardening, some sewing, possibly some shopping. I'm wondering if I could find a sports bra that doesn't crossover - one that allows my dragon to peek over the top of the bra strap.

I also want to sort out some root bleaching. My hair is black, and I'd like to bleach the roots to blonde, then dye it electric blue. And then let the 'colour band' in my hair grow out in an odd-yet-distinctive manner.

I'd better get out in the garden - it's starting to look like rain...

A YTer from Sydney whom I follow posted a vid about what he was planting this year, and how he'd started his planting for September already.

Which got me thinking about what I want to plant this year. Which I have to consider now, becuase otherwise it won't happen and it will get complicated and UGH.

The big question I always have is whether to try to grow melons or not. I say 'try to grow' because that's all I ever seem to manage to do: I "try" to grow melons and am ultimately unsuccessful.

I can get pumpkins to grow late, but the melons never seem to get very far. Maybe the soil isn't right for it, and I really need to set better conditions for them?

And then there is, of course, always the problem of where to grow them. Melons and pumpkins and whatnot take up space, and there is not a lot of space in the garden beds and not enough growing time in the back yard.

I think I should pull out the sweet potato bed now, and start feeding it in prep for the early summer cropness.

Friday night trivia at a new club. Dinner was ordinary. Dessert was quite nice. We came 2nd place. Again. We do that a lot.

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Early this morning (Saturday) I drove down to pick up an old chaff-cutter for trimming things with less RSI than I currently end up with when pruning trees. I'l still use the electric chipper for the big things, but sometimes I want to just chop small branches without having to hook everything up and periodically dig fragments out of the hidey-hole corners of the chipper.

Since it was down in the city where I used to live, I contacted an old friend there who I'm still in occasional but periodic contact with, and she wanted to meet! So I turned up after picking up the chaff-cutter and we sat and talked...for FIVE HOURS.

It was the best. She's about 6-7 years older than me, and was a spiritual mentor of mine back in my 20s. I'm so glad to see her - she's been through a separation/divorce since I last saw her, and has now met a new man and he seems a sweetheart. (A bit geeky, but a sweetheart; which her ex seemed to be, too. I don't know what happened, I didn't ask, but I think they just grew apart in different ways and couldn't reconcile who'd they'd grown to be.)

Anyway, so nice to see her, and I listened to podcasts on the way down and on the way back which were excellent, so that helped my brain.

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Came back home, bought dinner on the way (because I didn't want to cook and I didn't like the sound of what the Bs were cooking), got on and read my flist - thank you all for being...IDK...a touchstone for me. I'm feeling weirdly off-the-handle right now, witness my hysterical laugh-sobbing while reading the story of Richard by Allie from Hyperbole & A Half.

I tried to write but my brain is not focusing - it doesn't focus at night anymore. So I'm going to go into my room, turn on the heater, re-read 'The Order of the Air' series again (for a desperate bit of hope in the midst of darkness) and cuddle my cats.

Tomorrow the only thing I have is a hockey game in the middle of the day. Thankfully.

Once again, the universe has thrown the dice and come up sixes for me.

The unfortunately timed show ticket has be reassigned to Thursday night, same seat, PHEW.

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I'm not sure that I like this trend of my early 00s fantasy authors going back to their old series.

I just finished the "Queen's" series by Anne Bishop, which...IDK. It kind of took all the things I liked about the tying-up of the series in 'Twilight's Dawn' and unravelled them again.

And now it seems Jacqueline Carey has a story out about Josselin's childhood in the Brotherhood of Cassiel.

I mean, I do want stories by authors I enjoy, but I am lately finding that after the first series, I'm not enjoying them as much.

cf. Nalini Singh's Psy-Changelings - the Trinity series are enjoyable but somehow lacking. Also, I read Carey's first two Naamah books but never managed to get into the third. The 2nd Naamah was slow-going.

It's not that they're bad, it's just that they don't feel as good as the original series. Or maybe they don't speak to my id as much. I enjoyed Bishop's Invisible Ring, and the (kind of) sequels of The Shadow Queen and Shalador's Lady; but that might be my id speaking.

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Tonight, I am trying to do some actual crafting: the backing on my show quilt. Which is due on the 25th. So, twenty days to quilt, bind, sleeve, and label it.

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I'm neaaaaaarly finished the last chapter of the last story in the 30 days of OTP. Looks like we're about to hit 10K on the full story.

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Counselling was good. I just explained out all the stuff going on in my life and in my head, and the counsellor reiterated the tools I'd been using to parse things out. I think that was most of what I needed - to be able to say this to someone who didn't know the other side, but could say that my feelings were valid and provide practical structures on how to deal with everything going on in my life and the concerns I have.

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Had lunch with a couple of friends today - his dad is in hospital, they don't know that he's going to come out of it. They live 12 hours drive away and spent yesterday driving up. It was a simple lunch - they just wanted a break from the hospital and a chance to see me. She can probably be classed as one of my oldest fannish friends - we met in SG1 fandom when she responded immediately to a short fic I posted at lunch, and I punted a bet that she lived on the East Coast of Australia. I think that was 2002. She met him a few years later, they lived together, married, had kids. The kids are now nearly teenagers.

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B1 comes back from her holiday this week. One of the cousins returns to Sydney for his Aussie wedding lunch. And Aunt Flo has turned up in full murderous glory, just in time for my birthday.

It's 6:30pm and I think it might be time for bed.

While writing a poem to my mum, I made a realisation:

There've been people who only saw my opinions and actions and disagreed with them. Who wrote me off for who I was in the moment, because it wasn't who they wanted me to be.

And there've been people who saw my opinions or my actions and disagreed with them, but who saw who I could be. And they were willing to bank on who I might be in the future, not just who I was at the point in time where our perspectives clashed.

I understand the need to protect oneself - that we sometimes have to 'write off' people who aren't healthy influences in our lives. But I'm so, so grateful to the people who were - and are - willing to stick with me, and not dump me the first (or second, or umpteenth) time I said or did something they disagreed with.

Last night, I attended the 'start night' for the small groups of my church's service. It's a 'youth' service that's trying to cater for a broader range of people as the years go by - with more workers, families with children, and mature-life-stage members.

( a story therein, small tidbit, nice feeling )