Month: November 2004

Punching bags are a godsend at times like this. It only took 15 mins on the damn thing before I was absolutely drenched in sweat and had absolutely zero energy to be upset about anything any more. Maybe I should do it more often? My weight loss has plateaued somewhat, it might help. Not that I’m particularly upset or depressed really – just… empty.

Interestingly enough, I was wondering on the correct spelling for plateaued – so I googled the word plateaud and a number of references to weight loss popped up. Coincidence, huh? Or else perhaps that’s one of the only possible uses for the word….

Can I just say, I’m quite impressed by Maroon5 at the moment. Grabbed myself a copy of Songs About Jane the other day and I can’t seem to stop listening to it. I take it out of the CD player and put something else in for a while, but keep coming back to it….

So I’m sitting here, wondering where I should go from here. It just feels like… I don’t have much to look forward to at the moment. People at work are still being bitchy towards me, although it seems that I’m not the only one at work who thinks that those persons are being unfair and unreasonable. Sadly the people who are on my side are either too scared to speak out to the people that matter (my bosses) or are just telling me what I want to hear.

It’s made work quite unpleasant for me – for a lot of months now. I’ve had so many thoughts about quitting, but for one thing I am damn good at what I do – and for another the money is great, and without that I wouldn’t have had any of the fun that I’ve had. Indeed, if I wasn’t out having fun with the car and doing stuff, I would be absolutely miserable, and I wouldn’t have met any of the friends that I have.

Although I must admit, I sometimes wonder whether they really like me, or they just like the ute. It’s a terrible thing to think, but it’s crossed my mind….

But now things are starting to sound really depressing.

So let’s see here. My work life is currently up the shit – I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall for 12 months trying to get the staff to work with me and see that they don’t know it all, and that I’m in the job for a reason. My 2IC and probably other people are bitching about me to my area manager and our training manager and doing their best to paint me in a bad light, and I’m fighting them all the way.

My social life, what I have of one, basically consists of hanging out with a bunch of revheads – who may or may not like me for who I am. Who knows.

We’ve started a Commodore club and some of the people in that seem really nice.

Again, I have to wonder whether the people involved with that (some of them are the same people mentioned above) have other motivations for being involved.

I’ve given up drinking, I’ve given up smoking, and I’m not sure what other outlets I have other than driving irresponsibly and generally being dangerous. Which I’m trying VERY hard not to do, although I still fail sometimes. Besides which, I’m quite probably on the verge of losing my licence too which will put a total stop to that.

And where once I used to be a ball of nervous energy, lately I’m just… flat. It just feels incredibly hard to get enthusiastic about anything. And anything good that does happen just seems to melt like so much ice.

I feel like… someone who I used to care about very deeply was manic depressive. She thought (so did I) that I probably am too. The way I feel at the moment is quite similar to how she said she used to feel when she was on the medication – just kind of numb. Bright colours seem washed out and faded. It’s hard to get enthusiastic about anything – emotions just feel sort of distant and meaningless – and nothing really seems to have any rhyme or reason.

When you put too much distance between yourself and other people, you can sometimes go too far, to the point where it’s damn hard to come back.

I don’t know why I write some of this stuff, honestly. Part of me wants it to be here so that if anything ever happens to me, people can understand what’s been going on in my head. Another part of me wants it to be here so that maybe one day in the future I can look back on all this depressing dribble and draw strength from the fact that I pulled through. Those two parts are in constant opposition, and the part that’s stronger changes from day to day.

OK, a good cry hasn’t helped. Might try and sleep now…

Well, she just dumped me by email. Sheesh.

I actually came home half expecting it. At least I wasn’t left wondering for too long. But now I’m a bit sad 🙁

Plenty more fish in the sea, and all that crap. Fuckit.

Well I’ve added a mood plugin to the blog, just for the hell of it. Need to add something about books and movies as well.

One of these days, I really must make an actual homepage to link this stuff together! Having said that, a lot of what’s here in my blog is somewhat personal, so I don’t really publicise the address much. If people from work got a hold of the URL it could be very interesting indeed,

Finally finished that Ian Rankin novel – it was quite a pleasant escape from an evening which would otherwise have been spent moping around the house, being bored, and occasionally glancing at my phone to check the time or to check whether I’d missed an SMS from anyone (you be the judge). As I don’t wear a watch, I’m going to go with the former – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

This is going to sound really corny… but one of our marketing guys in Sydney said to us a while ago that every morning before he comes to work he says to himself “something wonderful is going to happen today” as a positive affirmation. This was brought up in a meeting a few months ago, and again while I was up there last week he mentioned it.

I was saying that to myself quite a bit this morning.

Man, I controlled myself well today. People get the shits with me over the stupidest fucking things.

Like greeting someone at work with “Hello – what’s happening?” this morning. I copped a mouthful for it and it’s MY fault that that person finds it annoying when I say that.

I was —> <— this close to asking her if she had sand in her vagina. But then I thought that might not be an appropriate workplace comment so I bit my tongue! 🙂

Anyway – time for me to settle back in with my book. Very tempted to have a decent drink tonight (was last night too, actually) but no matter what happens, I’ve resolved not to slip back into old habits.

Things are never that bad.

Well. Today’s cruise was fun!

A breakdown along the way held us up a bit, but eventually we made it to the pancake place, had a nice lunch, and headed off again. I tried to behave myself on the road given that I had a passenger with me (the girl I’ve been seeing, for those who’ve been reading this blog) – so the cruise was pretty sedate, except for a couple of small dips along the way. Well, maybe 3 or 4…

Anyway as far as I know all’s good – she’d been pretty quiet all day but I couldn’t seem to get her talking. We were supposed to go bowling tonight (it’s a lockin night, so you can bring in grog and drink while you play) but when I dropped her home later she says “you haven’t done anything wrong, but I’d rather go by myself, I’ve had enough of being part of a couple for one day”….

(By myself meaning with her friends, that is… she’s not going completely alone). The thing is, I was really looking forward to tonight.

She’s never communicated with me much… I hope she’ll tell me sooner or later what’s going on in her head. Then again perhaps not. Who knows?

So I headed off into town for dinner with a few mates, and then did a few laps around town. Had quite a lot of people asking for rides in the ute tonight – including 3 girls, one of whom was quite hot! Shame I don’t have much of a way with words… but it was fun. Now I feel a bit better about being rejected tonight, ahah – tomorrow is another day.

Currently reading: Ian Rankin – A Question of Blood.

Not a bad read actually – a typical Ian Rankin novel.  Quite dark and filled with verbal imagery of dark Scottish weather, dark Scottish cities, and a dark Scottish criminal underworld.

Actually so far (I’m about two thirds of the way through) there’s not quite so much criminal underworld, and more insight into Inspector Rebus and his army past, among other things. And he seems to be more close with DC Clarke than I remember..

I need to retire to bed and continue….

Click Me.

Everyone join me in doing a Rove impersonation….

“What Tha?!”

I just noticed Anne’s blog is gone.

Does this mean she’s started smoking again!!?? 🙁

I didn’t buy a new phone today.

Decided I’m too poor right now.

Now I just need to decide what to do with myself this evening. Vote #1 for sitting at home and being a vegie, methinks.

Been a while since I’ve played BZFlag….

Albino Blacksheep / Flash / Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me

Everyone Else Has Had More Sex than Me – TISM – the video clip in flash format…

I love this song, ever since I bought the White Albun (no folks, that’s not a typo)….

😀

I wish these spammers would bugger off. My filters are catching all of their comments, so they’re wasting their time – the problem is it’s wasting my time deleting them all too!

Today I decided I might go out and get a new mobile phone. So I’ll be heading off shortly to do that.

Tonight, maybe go out for a few drinks – or maybe not, even. Tomorrow, the big cruise!

Feeling pretty good today. But a little bored.

I had a 2 hour chat with my 2IC today, trying to work out what exactly she expects of me, so we can finally put this rubbish behind us. I think it was productive.

Then this afternoon I get an invite to a little dinner party over at THE girl’s house. At the time I didn’t know it was a dinner party, didn’t know who was coming at all.

Suffice to say after a few beers and wines and a lot of laughs, I’ve just got home and I’m happy. And I don’t mean in the alcoholic sense… just content. Things seem to be going really well.

I’m trying to work her out still – think she has some trust issues, but not really sure. But she’s lovely.. crazy, but lovely. A good kinda crazy. Crazy like me, I think. Anyway there wasn’t much serious conversation tonight.

She’s still coming on the cruise on the weekend. We should have plenty of time to talk about serious stuff then – and maybe go out partying in the evening, as well. I’m looking forward to it.

But for now, a good night’s sleep, a sleepin tomorrow (no work!) and a lazy day coming up! Life is good.

Well, the novel didn’t last long.

Sydney was going just fine, until I was asked whether I’d overcome my biggest problem which we’d discussed back in March. At the time, my biggest problem was getting the respect of the staff back after spending so much time away on other projects.

Sadly, after this weeks events, the truth is that I haven’t. This resulted in a long discussion with the group – and then a private talk with the manager of our training department – who has been on the receiving end of a lot of bitching from my 2IC over the past 12 months. I’m just so sick of hearing about this shit!

I have private one on one conversations with every member of staff on a weekly basis – but instead of discussing their issues with me, they still (particularly this one person) see fit to make waves, go over my head, and generally go about things the wrong way.

It’s so frustrating, and I keep seeing signs that they don’t want me to be happy, and would much rather see me gone. Which is not going to happen as far as I’m concerned. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am, and for my own well being I need stability in my personal life – moving again will not be beneficial for me at this stage of my life and I feel like I’ve made enough sacrifices for the company that I have a right to be selfish for once.

The training manager asked whether there were issues with my personal life she should know about. It’s the best it’s ever been, and I told her so. Then she tells me they think I’m lazy??? FFS – they were all complaining that I was stressed out and horrible to them, and my 2IC was wanting more responsibility, so I took a step back and reduced my workload, so that I could train her in some areas she hadn’t been trained and so that I wasn’t so under the pump all the time. Geeze, it feels like I can’t do anything right….

I need to have a long talk to this person tomorrow and ask her to be honest with me for once in her life instead of moaning behind my back about things.

*growl*

I really feel like lashing out at the moment. People claim that they want to support me but in reality I don’t really feel that’s true at all.

Just time for a quick blog before I hop in a taxi to the airport – flying to Sydney tonight for a day of training tomorrow..

The shit didn’t hit the fan at work today – not really anyway. As usual though people seem to feel that focussing on me and how I do my job is more important than taking a good hard look at themselves. I’m getting real sick and tired of other people complaining about me – all the time I’m told to stay positive, but when people are throwing shit on me all the time, and have been for 18 months now, it’s bloody hard to do that!

I just feel like no matter what I do I’m screwed…

Anyway I’m out of there for a day, and will forget about it till I get back on Thursday.

No call from the girlfriend yet – I’m playing it cool… (sent her an SMS last night and had a short convo.. she knows I’m thinking of her). Can’t wait till the weekend! 🙂

Anyway, off to the airport. Fly, my pretties! Maybe I’ll finally get a chance to finish this Jonathan Kellerman novel…

Well after 10 days off, I went back to work this morning. I didn’t exactly get a rousing reception – I felt a really bad vibe in the air all day towards me, and that was confirmed when someone commented that I’d find out what the problem was when my area manager visits tomorrow. The unnamed person didn’t want to be drawn into further comment, other than to say that some of the staff were perhaps a bit miffed that I’d taken leave.

Fuck them – I’m entitled to leave, and I’ll take it when I see fit. Everyone else does – it’s just fine for our 2IC to take a couple of weeks every three months for school holidays, but when I’ve taken less leave than anyone (I have almost 50 days owing) and was actually asked by senior management to take leave because I’d accrued so much, they whinge about it?

They’re a pack of ungrateful bastards and if they start anything with the area manager, the shit’s gonna hit the fan, let me tell ya.

Anyway enough griping about work. I actually had a pretty good day. With all the stuff that’s been going on career wise, car wise and work wise, I forgot to mention that I’ve also been on a health kick and things have been going quite well. About 8 weeks ago I was sitting on 107 kilos – this morning I tipped the scales at 98 kilos and it still seems to be dropping off. Pretty happy about that – and the best thing is, the only thing I’ve really changed is reduced my alcohol intake dramatically, and stopped buying takeaway food. I still eat bloody nice meals (toasted chicken and cheese salad sandwiches and a chocolate brownie for lunch every day, steak and pasta and the like for dinner) – but I just try to snack a bit more. I’ve also been off the cigarettes for about the same length of time. It’s pretty pleasing to get on the scales each morning and see the improvements – and I seem to have more energy too.

This morning I woke up at 6 am ready to go – then I stayed in bed and overslept, which made me feel a bit sluggish and vague this morning (you know when you get a nagging headache from too much sleep? Like that.) but if it happens again I might start walking down to the shops to grab a paper and read for an hour or so before work. That’s bound to help the weight loss along even further – which would be good because I really should be around 80-85 kilos – that’s my target weight at the moment.

Really, life is pretty good right now – this work stuff is just driving me nuts though. I suppose I should elaborate a bit on my earlier post about women, too. She came over here yesterday, and we had a good chat. Snuggled on the couch and she inspected my music collection – thankfully we found some common ground in amongst our very different tastes 🙂

Eventually we headed over to her place (in my car… it was a short drive – all she could say was “it’s loud” haha) to watch Australian Idol and do lots more snuggling. She’s very affectionate but doesn’t really say what she feels for me – and she has said quite a few times not to plan too far ahead. So I’m a little confused as to where I stand and what’s going to happen from here – although we pretty much decided that we’re going to play it by ear. I told her yesterday about the work situation, and how there may be another offer coming up soon – but I gave her my background, and told her I’d really like to stay here. Which is true – and it would have been the same whether I’d met her or not. But now I wonder whether I should have mentioned that or not, because it might make her hold back for fear of me moving away – it probably would if it was me…

Then again she’s planning on going overseas for a long (12 months or so, I think) working holiday at the end of next year. So really I’m kinda wondering whether I should get too attached or not myself – but then, as she keeps saying – we shouldn’t plan too far ahead! But the thought has crossed my mind – what would happen if we were still together then. I just push it to the back and try to forget about it – when I’m with her, things are too good to worry about anything else. She has great energy and I seem to be able to make her laugh a lot – I really hope I can keep that up.

Now it’s time for me to cook dinner – the last episode of Friends is on TV but I’m not really watching it – but still.

Life is good.

Women are really hard to understand…

I like this girl – a lot. I think things are going well but she isn’t very communicative (not verbally anyway, if you get what I mean)….

Well I’m home and it’s late – I really should be in bed as I have a big day tomorrow.

Had a lot of fun today – ran a best time of something like 12.6 seconds down the quarter although I’d have to grab the timeslip out of the car to get exact ET and terminal speed. The slicks hook up really well! The last few runs I discovered that you could rev it to around 5500 RPM and dump the clutch, and still launch with very little wheelspin at all.

I discovered that the ute squats. A lot. I was running with the tailgate down and quite a few people commented that it almost banged on the ground when I launched it and even on shifts into 2nd. I didn’t bang it, but it has a lot of stone chips now – next time I’ll just unbolt the damn thing.

So yeah – I’m disappointed I didn’t run an 11 (as that’s what the head/cam was supposed to achieve) but I ran a PB and boy, was it fun! The engine feels so much stronger and I pulled off a couple of great burnouts . There’s definitely a faster time in it if I can get my act together and maybe set the suspension up right.

Tomorrow I have to wash it and clean the house a bit before my female visitor drops in for a visit – I can’t wait 😉

Well today’s the day.

The sun is shining, it’s a glorious day outside, and in less than 2 hours I’ll be meeting a few mates to head out to the dragway.

Just gotta not think about it – it’ll be so much fun once I’m out there racing, it’s just the start that’s a killer on my nerves…..

All I want is an 11…

Well I got home this morning, after a fairly uneventful boat ride, and what can I say – I’m very contented!

The car pulled 278 kilowatts at the treads – I’m not too unhappy about that.

Here’s a dyno graph:

The guys doing the work unplugged the battery (naturally) but unfortunately I didn’t have the PIN code for the stereo.. so all the way through Melbourne last night I had no tunes! Thankfully that was nothing a quick stopover at the local Holden dealer in Devonport couldn’t fix and it’s all sorted now.

Then I picked up some slicks for the drags tomorrow – slightly used, but I think they’ll come in really handy!

OK enough about the car. I’m more happy about the fact that a certain female (why am I so averse to using people’s real names on the internet? I think it’s a throwback from a previous girlfriend) called me last night for a chat. Sent me an SMS today saying she was thinking of me. She’s going to drop over on Sunday (damn I wish it was sooner, but both our schedules suck a bit this weekend). She’s also going to come along with me on the cruise next weekend – so she’ll get to meet some of my friends and stuff.

My main concern now is the fact that I work a fair few weekends, and she has a Monday to Friday job, but I’m sure if things work out, we can deal with that. Mustn’t plan too far ahead, we’ve only just met!

But anyway. I’m a bit of a lovesick puppy at the moment who’s been breathing too many petrol fumes. Must go cook some dinner before I go for the obligatory Friday night cruise. 😀

I’m on a plane in just over 2 hours, to go to Melbourne and pick up my car. Just about jumping out of my skin right now, as you can imagine.

Just got off the phone with the (new) insurance company (I had to change companies because of all the mods) – and organised insurance so if anything happens I’m sweet. Also booked it in for a rego inspection tomorrow when I get back (damn, it comes around fast) so this is going to be a really expensive week.

Had a couple of mates from the cruise club drop over last night and I finally got to go for a spin in the 12 second VL turbo one of them has – it felt fairly quick (and they reckoned it wasn’t running all that great). If mine’s faster than that, it’s going to be a helluva lot of fun to drive. I’m getting an adrenalin rush just thinking about it 🙂

This will probably be my last post before I get back from Melbourne….

Well I’ve been a fairly big fan of Kevin Smith movies for a long time now – but having just watched Jersey Girl, I can tell you that if you go into this expecting a typical Kevin Smith slapstick and fart jokes comedy, then you’ll be disappointed.

What you will see is a fairly sickly sweet sort of romantic family movie, with a small smattering of laughs even from such comedy stalwarts as George Carlin, Jason Biggs and that weird guy who was fired but forgotten about in Office Space, who’s name I can’t remember.

Featuring cameos from all the usual Kevin Smith suspects such as Jason Lee and Matt Damon, as well as a surprise visit from Will Smith, I was sadly disappointed by the lack of laughs. The drama was slightly better, although with such stars as Ben Affleck, Liv Tyler and Jennifer Lopez, it still felt a bit disappointing and contrived at times.

With all these big names, the movie was redeemed by a great performance from young Racquel Castro as the main character’s daughter, who added a lot of life to an otherwise dreary film.

I’d heard other reviews that said something akin to this, but thought “no, it’s a Kevin Smith movie – sometimes people just don’t get his films. But it was still a fun watch, just fairly mediocre on all fronts, even compared to something like Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back – which although crass and sometimes distasteful, was at least riotously funny in places.

Jersey Girl gets 2.5 out of 5 stars from me – if you want to watch a romantic, moving Kevin Smith film – do yourself a favour and watch Chasing Amy, like I’m about to do right now.