Just did my eTax thing for the 07/08 financial year. Looked like I was in for a pretty big refund for a minute there.
Then I remembered I had a HECS debt.
…did I say ‘refund’?
Archive for the 'Ma vie' Category
Things I was going to do tonight
- tweak template
- some overdue photoshop work
- subsequent posting to flickr
- listen to new tunes
- play the bass guitar
- play the electric (non-bass) guitar
- play the acoustic guitar if it’s not too loud and might wake the kids
- drink Guinness, eat twisties and dark chocolate
Things I’ve done so far tonight
- Listened to the Flight of the Conchords BBC series (bits thereof)
- Read other blogs and wonder if anyone writes about anything other than cats and young children
- 8.
I’m at a bit of a loss at the moment, feeling as though I’ve hit a wall in the career department.
And I can’t stop thinking about a book my kids have, about a family who buy a hotel by the beach but realise quickly that it’s windy ten months of the year, so business is bad, which is why the place was on the market to begin with.
So instead of selling up/giving up, they make a whole lot of kites and by the end of the book their little seaside hotel is full ten months of the year because it’s known as the kite-flying capital of whatever country they’re in. During the non-windy months, they have a nice summer holiday. Lovely.
I know there’s a great next step for me. Something creative, something original, something that will let me put to use the skills I have. I just don’t know what form my kite will take.
And please, don’t comment and tell me the answer is blowin’ in the wind.
I was home from work last Friday and actually answered the door to a guy selling something: insulation. For anything else I would have thanked him and bid him fond farewell but I happen to need insulation. It’s one of those next big jobs we have to do around the house. So I let him do his prepared speech and picked a not-too-inconvenient time for a sales rep to come around and give us a quote. We set this up for Monday night.
They gave me a confirmation call on the Monday morning to make sure I’d be home at the time I said I’d be home. I was thinking, he’ll come in, go through the features of his product, get up in the roof for a quick look, maybe measure up the place, give us a quote, we’ll say thanks but not right at the moment and he’ll be on his way; the whole thing should take 45 minutes, tops, then we can eat, get the kids to bed and begin to wind down ourselves.
Now, the guy who came was lovely. Really nice guy. Had I met him at a party, I would have gotten on very well with him and would gladly chat over a few beers. And that’s rare for me but he was all right. He was into his music and we had similar taste; he was a bit of a rev-head but I wouldn’t hold that against him; his wife is expecting their first in five or six weeks. You’ll notice though, that very litte of that stuff is related in anyway to recycled-newspaper-treated-with-borax-and-boric-acid insulation. Everytime he went off on a tangent, we’d have to bring him back on topic.
“Yeah, I had to go to Port Pirie last week, then drive home. Then they rang me and said they wanted me to go back the next day”
“…so… it’s recycled, you say?”
Two and a half hours later, we finally got to say our goodbyes. Through all this we’ve managed to feed the kids, get them changed and teeth-brushed, put them to bed, get our own dinner on and keep it warm in anticipation. We’d already given him a cup of tea, no way was he staying for the meat & veg. We said our goodbyes, he got his satchel, his ladder and I helped him with his blowtorch. He was packing his car, telling us all about how messy it was and gave us a recipe book some relative of his had done for her year 12 assignment that his boss had loved and had published.
I thought we were getting a quote on insulation; I could have written this guy’s biography by the time he left. C said that’s the strategy: stay as long as you can and be nice, so they feel guilty if they say no. For me, every minute he spent here past the 45 I had allocated in my head me less likely to say yes.
So this morning, when there was a knock on the door, I stayed hidden in the bedroom. I don’t need the latest copy of The Watchtower.
So where was I? Yeah, that’s right, I went to Melbourne then came home and sort of just fell asleep.
Melbourne was great. Good to be back in my home state. I don’t know what to make of myself sometimes because I don’t often feel very Australian and despite, or probably because of, my football-filled youth, I can no longer stand the sport, or the constant news coverage it gets, or the nugget fans (nugget fans being a majority sub-species of fans in general; I know there are some quite normal, respectable, educated people who are not nuggets but are, paradoxically, football fans) who can talk about nothing else. Yet I still feel some kind of connection with Victoria. I’m not sure if it’s the landscape, the people, the weather, or the fact that, unlike South Australia, it doesn’t have it’s head stuck up its own arse (just my crude way of saying that South Australia is way too parochial, introspective, isolated (not only geographically) hostile to external influence (especially from Victoria) and has an inflated, ‘we’re as good as the other states’ complex that the other states don’t have because they’re not secretly worried that they aren’t).
So yeah, there’s that.
And I seem to have realised just how deeply entrenched I am in my current rut. Not enjoying the job and have had a sick kiddie, which means waking up at all hours of the night and being generally very tired, which kind of sucks. I’ve never had the SADs (the lack of light thing) but am wondering if there might not be something to it this winter.
And I’ve been shocked to notice how vague I have been of late. Only last night, after a day of staring blankly at a screen, I put in my headphones, stepped outside, and while crossing the road, forgot to look and stepped out in front of a motorbike. Then, as I was getting on the train, I put my ticket in the validator… and forgot to take it out again.
Where the fuck was my brain?
Just realised that yesterday marked my 6th anniversary with my current employer.
What am I doing with my life?
I’m actually pretty excited about tomorrow.
I’ll have a couple of hours free in the afternoon, during which time I’ll be meeting a friend and we’ll be throwing a frisbee to each other.
It’s been a long time but I finally feel ready to have a bit of a run around. I’m even toying with having a hit of volleyball in the coming weeks.
As I was running for the train, the fucker dropped out of my bag.
So if anyone would like either
a) a recently refurbished and button-flattened SE K800i, or
b) to return said recently refurbished button-flattened SE K800i to me
there’s one laying in the grass at the bottom of Hawthorndene Drive, just near where it turns into Watahuna Ave.
I’ll be ringing it every few seconds to help you find it.
…later
Phew. Luckily, C has today off, so she nipped down the road and found it. I’m rather relieved, though still pissed I don’t have it with me.
Have just updated my first (successful) roll of shots from my Holga to Flickr. (The first roll of film was over a decade old so results weren’t exactly publishable).
I love the train ride home: that brief period of being able to sit and just be. That time between the busy-ness of work and the seagull persistence of young kids. Time to slow down (which, let’s face it, is something the Adelaide rail network has perfected).
Things are hectic but in a good way, and it’s possible that the change I was hoping would come this year may be imminent. (Yes, that’s right… I’m switching to decaf.)
