Welcome to June

Can you believe it’s June?! Wow…feels like I should start thinking about Christmas soon (okay not quite, but you know what I mean?). Yesterday was Palm Day - the day that we celebrate my brother’s survival after falling asleep behind the wheel and taking on two huge palm trees. Every year on the 31st of May I give him a small palm tree with a ball of foil in it (he used to drive a silver car), and this year Wanette was kind enough to keep up the tradition on my behalf! Here is the little man with his latest palm tree! (A million thank you’s Wanette!).

You may have noticed that the winter header for this year is up (ta-dah! :-D) and I can honestly say, I’m starting to feel it. It’s getting quite chilly at night now.

News on the home front: We still don’t know when we need to move, or if. And the Vox phone/router/wireless-wonder-if-it-will-ever-work has finally arrived. Only it doesn’t work properly. I have to admit, I am not blown away by it. I have internet at home but I have to plug in with a cable instead of wirelessly (as I’m supposed to) because even though my laptop can “see” the router and the router can “see” my laptop I can’t get them to connect wirelessly and the Vox helpdesk is something that you should only approach if you have extreme patience and roughly half a day to waste. Yesterday I was on hold for 20 minutes and I never actually got to speak to anyone other than the switchboard lady - who was keeping me on hold for the engineer and who later confirmed my suspicion that there was only one actual engineer on duty. “Fantastic”. Allegedly you can schedule a callback for when it suits you, but don’t bother - that doesn’t work like it should either. Anyway, still works by cable so fine then for now. It was put the phone down or learn how to travel through the line so I can go biatch-slap someone.

*breathe in*…*breathe out*… right, moving on.

I’ve had a look at the special events calendar for June, not as funny as the one for May - but there are still some gems in there.

1. Children’s Day
2. Praise Yourself Day
3. Repeat Day
4. International Innocent Child Abuse Victim Day
5. World Environment Day
6. D-Day landings (Europe)
7. National Chocolate Ice Cream Day (US) …brr…Wanette says it’s never to cold for ice cream, but I really hope this is a slightly warmer day that the ones were having at the moment
8. World Ocean Day
9. Donald Duck Day
10. Mat Hatter Day…Uhuh, I could do something with this I’m sure, I think the hamster hat will see the light of day again!
11. YoYo Day
12. Machine Day
13. Juggling Day…This could get messy…where can I track down some flare barmen to watch for technique?
14. International Weblogger’s Day…Like every day?
15. Elder Abuse Awareness Day
16. Youth Day
17. Eat Your Vegetables Day…must be someone’s mom that came up with this one
18. International Panic Day
19. World Sauntering Day
20. World Refugee Day
21. International Surfing Day
22. Redemption Day
23. Pink Day
24. Glory Day
25. Play With Yourself Day…it seems every month on this calendar has at least one of these on it, I am starting to wonder about the creators of this list
26. The United Nations’ Day In Support Of Victims Of Torture
27. Stonewall Day
28. Handshake Day
29. Camera Day
30. Go For The Underdog Day…when they say “go for” does that mean support or attack?

There you go, keep up to date on reasons to celebrate.

Ill write again a bit later, but for now there is also the small matter of an outstanding tag by Wipneus for baby pics and a few up to the age of 10 to take care of. Here you go - a few random pics of me from way back when. (The first one is the first photo of me ever at 4 days, second one is me crawling at 6 months, third one is me having second beer that I stole from my dad 14 months, and the last one is me in primary school looking all innocent and so on at 10.). Now, this has been fun…but on a slightly serious note - I am not doing any more tags about the past.

As before if you feel like playing along, please be so kind as to tag yourself.

Oh for crying in a bucket!

Let me start off my saying that Discovery Medical “Aid” and the South African Revenue “Service” are both on my shit-list. Between the two of the them they owe me a small fortune. The reality is that they are probably going to hang onto it till my phone gets cut off and I can’t bug them about it anymore. Ass-holes. That day is not nearly as far away as I would like it to be…(when I go quiet next week you’ll know why, right?)

Fuck it…

I mean: FUCK IT!! FUCK IT!! FUCK IT!! FUCK IT!! AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! FUUUUuuuuuUUUUUUUUCK!!!

As if I don’t have enough shit on my plate at the moment I also got saddled with spectacularly intense PMS-ness today. I’m sorry, I usually don’t like to harp on about it - but seriously…I was a basket case.

Yes. I am stressed. I am hormonal. And I am just barely hanging onto my sanity (or what generally passes for sanity in my case) by a very thin, fragile, teeny, tiny thread. It’s the kind of day where you just want to curl up with a warm water bottle and pull the blanket over your head for the whole day. A “This Too Shall Pass” kind of day. D’you know what I mean?!

I love my team. Almost everyone today at some point either asked me if I was okay, hugged me, or told me they were there for me if I needed to talk…subsequently I was in tears almost all of it. (Damn these traitorous leaky eyes - I am not very well equipped to deal with compassion people!).

Highlight of the day: It’s over! (Aint I just a ray of sunshine?)

Oh yeah, and before I forget…I’m not drinking (at all) from the 9th of May till the 13th of June while I write exams. Nothing…Nada…Zip…Squat…Niks…F-all…as far as possible I usually cut it out while I write and just as I was ready to give up on that tradition for this year Sparrow said he’d join me for the “No Drinking month and half”. So there you have it.

The end is near. Dry season is upon us.

Oh yeah, completely off topic I wanted to share this with you. Every morning I drive past this refinery on my way to work.

It’s not too ugly as refineries go I’m sure - but it’s still fairly ugly compared to anything else. And then just on the other side of the road is this funny wall of inspiration. Every panel has something else painted on it. I like driving past “Courage”,”Support”, “Integrity” and all kind of other nice things every day. I wonder about the people who painted those messages years before - do they still go past it and remember how they painted it - did they put the emotion behind the word as they painted it onto the wall?

Oh no - what have I done?!

What a lovely day at the office…filing magically disappeared (read: I filed it super fast of course)…in basket filled up slower than the out basket…managed to chit chat to good friends without getting glared at to fiercely…I even took lunch for a change.

It was going pretty damn good, just before I decided to f#@k it all up. It was time to book the trailer for my move to Cape Town. (For your entertainment here follows roughly the conversation I had with the man…you know THE man who can give me the trailer that I really really want/need/must have).

• Me: “Hi! I’d like to book a trailer”
• Him: ” For which date?”
• Me: “The 26th of December”
• Him: “Sorry we’re closed that day, you’d have to take it on the 24th”
• Me: “Oh well…I suppose I could take it on the 24th” (I was actually going to ask for this anyway to be honest)
• Him: “So you’ll have to pay rental for three days”
• Me: “I was kind of hoping to negotiate a discount from you for that, but if you really have to…” (queue pathetic voice)
• Him: “Uhm…let’s see. What trailer are you looking for?”
• Me:” I was one your your C1 trailers one way to Cape Town”
• Him (laughing): “No sorry, we don’t rent those out one way cause they never come back” (I’m missing something - is this not the point of one way?)
• Me: “So which ones do you rent out one way in that case?”
• Him: “The W1s are the only ones” (I call up the image from their site…it’s okay)
• Me: “Okay fine I’ll take one of those then”

(I give him all my info like name and contact details and the dates)

• Him: “So I’ll let you know if we have a trailer for you closer to the time”
• Me: “What?! No! I need to know now.”
• Him: “You see, we are only allowed to let out a certain quota of our trailers at a time”
• Me: “Excuse me…but if I BOOK a trailer with you now, do I not form part of this magical quota?”
• Him: “Yeeess…but…I’ll only be able to see closer to the time”
• Me: “I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to do here. I have to move on the 26th, quota or not, so if you can’t guarantee me a trailer I need to look somewhere else now.”
• Him: “Okay, we’ll try”

(This is about as far as I got him to commit)

After this very frustrating conversation I put the phone down and yell out: “FOR F*#@K SAKES!!! SAVE ME FROM STUPID PEOPLE!!!!” and then I hear *click*.

Turns out I hadn’t rung off, I had in fact put it on speaker phone. Karma…such a bitch. This has never happened to me before and I’ve had this phone for 7 months already. *sigh* I suppose I will have to phone this guy back tomorrow and see if I’m still on the list for the quota to get rental trailers - or otherwise I may have to start looking for a team of donkeys to haul my worldly belongings to my new home.

I am such an idiot…anyway…trailer rental man…in the unlikely event that you are a reader of mine…I stand by my first opinion. You are an idiot too - what is the point of a BOOKING if it doesn’t become a sure thing after that? Explain that to me if you can - use pictures if you have to.

*Clicking on the image will take you to DeviantART where you can learn more about the art and the artist

The smashing start to my weekend

It started out very much like any other day - nothing special - oh no wait! There was one thing that set it apart…usually I set my alarm for 5:30 and then snooze it continuously till about 06:00 (that really speaks to my rebellious nature…it’s not that I sleep or anything in that half hour…I just refuse to get up).

But today I woke up at 5:15 and actually got up straight away….I should have stayed in bed. If I hadn’t gotten up early I wouldn’t have left the house 20 minutes earlier than usual and I may have completely missed what happened next! I’m not likely to repeat this mistake, I’ll tell you that! (loooong ramble - enter at own risk).

Enough already…bring on the bloody weekend!

Look…usually I try to be cheerful and upbeat – but this was a f-ing awful day. The highlight of my day was realizing that it’s almost over. There is now 6 people sick at work, but the one that makes my life the most difficult is the morning receptionist. AntsInPants should never ever have been appointed to sit still for any amount of time, she just doesn’t have it in her. For the last three days she has been off sick with the eye thing because she allegedly can’t see, however this has not kept her from playing taxi with her grandchildren. Again…it’s none of my business. If they let her get away with it, then good for her.

But…tomorrow I am having her tied to that bloody chair. I haven’t managed to finish my work yet (and I get very itchy about this) because I’ve been doing hers. Now usually she is away from her station for a couple of minutes on a continuous basis anyway, but tomorrow I think I might just looooooose it if she phones me even once to say, “Oh lovey! Please answer the phones for me I just need to go to the toilet.” No. I don’t feel like it. Go in the f-ing bin for all I care. *sigh* Okay, I probably won’t say that – but I’ll be thinking it every single time (about 6 x 10 minutes in a 4 hour stretch). I might get fired tomorrow – watch this space for more info.

More telephone troubles today as I have not managed to secure Truffle’s phone despite some of my better bullying tactics. Embarrassing to say the least. The battle has now progressed to a writing stage – I might not be getting the phone but I sure am having fun trying. Truffle gets a kick out of reading my bitching, so I copy him on everything now.

And closer to home my bloody MSN mysteriously stopped working as it should. My IT-guru Tiaan tells me that it is in fact thanks to the friendly folk at Telkom and temporary in nature. I tested it with my data-card instead of the ADSL and it looks like he’s right! Tiaan, very cool – how long did it take you to memorise all of the error codes buddy? I’m very impressed (with you). The people from Telkom are now also on my shit list…really…not my day for phones.

Clicking on the image will take you to DeviantART where you can learn more about the art and the artist (Scream-1 by Sorenquist)

Poem day today…I’m sorry I haven’t been able to get any writing done on new ones, so I’m sharing this one again from my archives. It’s all about trust in relationships…if there’s no trust there’s nothing, in my opinion.  

Have a kick-@ss Thursday! And by that I mean you get to do the kicking instead of being kicked.