A Quiet Start to the New Year

Three days into the New Year and I'm desperately clinging to my resolution for a better 2008. My weeks of scattered work are all culminating with an incredible impatience for my next contract. My mind is going a little spare without work. After all, she's my mistress.

New Year's Eve was one of the less painful of the 24 that I've experienced, although I can hardly count the earlier years as difficult as I was blissfully not thinking much at that point. I was lucky enough to spend brief amounts of time with quite a few friends, I'm sorry to say, achieving more quantity than quality in terms of time spent compared with number of friends seen. Still it was wonderful to see the Monash kids, who I seem to see annually, as well as a few of the Ceremonies crew. It was the first NYE that I've actually gone into the Melbourne CBD (or any city's CBD for that matter) to watch the fireworks. They were pretty and shiny as fireworks are want to be. There was champagne, singing and the odd reveler throwing sparklers from their balcony to mark yet another year passing.

The city was a ghost town the next day until mid-afternoon. Apparently I was up a little "early" for the New Year. I followed up my social evening with more social catch ups before I inevitably disappear from the social scene and drown myself in work. Well, that's sort of the plan any how...

When I finally made it home last night I curled up in bed and read for awhile before falling asleep at a far more respectable 00:30. This allowed me to wake up, for the first time in weeks, in the morning! So I spent much of that time in bed anyway, finishing Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I liked it a lot although it did make me feel a little sad.

One load of laundry later and I feel like the day has been reasonably productive!

Now, I'm waiting for the birds to start their morning song, triggering that part of my brain that allows me to fall asleep. Not long now...

Infrequent Insomnia Blog

Lately it seems that I only write my infrequent blog posts in the wee hours of the morning. Mind you it seems to be getting later each time so who knows, maybe I'll find myself, over time, posting during sensible hours again.

Last time I was up at all hours typing away I talked about awakeness. Well in the day that followed, I remember little of the LX plots - I think one was canceled. Don G was great despite having to leave the theatre just after the start of Act 1 because I was feeling faint. That night I made it home after stopping by the side of the freeway for a nap. The next day I decided to see a doctor. Tonsillitis. Never in my life have I had tonsillitis that made me feel quite so dead. Armed with antibiotics I headed home to sleep off the time that it would take the antibiotics to kick in. Two days apparently. Two days later I was in the doctor's office again. Apparently it had gotten worse and my throat was quite swollen and it was now affecting both sides of the throat which was making breathing, eating and drinking awfully more taxing than usual. Stronger antibiotics were ordered as well as something to help make them easier to stomach. The tech run felt like it went forever. Seems the medication that made the antibiotics easier to stomach were also making me feel cloudy as all hell but I was under the impression that was the tonsillitis. Oops. No more driving if I have that medication again.

Before I knew it the show was running and even sooner it was over. I finally took some time off like I'd been speaking about doing for quite some time. Three days into my break I was bored and looking for work again.

Mind you I've had a rather enjoyable time since then. I've since, many thanks to Tam, seen Alcina and Tales of Hoffman just to complete the season of operas. I've also seen more contemporary dance which was a little lost on me but the set and lighting was very sexy. Aside from that my hours have been spent sorting out paperwork and trying to work out a plan for the foreseeable future. I've also re-discovered reading as a pastime. Robert Charles Wilson's Spin was a fabulously engaging read, now I'm slowly whittling away at the books sitting next to my bed. Steve Martin's Shop Girl is currently battling several sci-fi fantasty novels for my attention. However I did find myself rather taken with the film so it's hard to say which will triumph. I suspect neither and I'll just flit between them.

Given that the sun is likely to appear in the sky shortly I should stop writing and attempt some sleep before it wakes me up. Oh well. I figure that this time on Tuesday I'll be on my way to work so it's probably not a bad thing to be a little nocturnal. Seems to be my natural state anyhow.

End ramble.

Restless

It's been almost a week since I posted and it feels longer and shorter than that at the same time.

I keep meaning to post about things that have been happening. New projects (knitting related of course) and general news but I can barely sit still at the moment. Proverbial goldfish-esque attention span.

Definitely time to get some work. Just something temporary and casual to help fund my future travel plans (Europe again in November with any luck). Something to stop me from feeling like I'm going quietly insane.

At the moment I'm knitting Gene a pair of Space Invader Socks which is taking much longer than anticipated. I'm glad that I decided to start early because it took me about five hours to make it through the 10 rows of the cuff (usually only a 30-40 minute task in front of the TV for anyone who hasn't had my sock knitting inflicted on them). It's also allowing me to do two colour stranding in my knitting (new technique I'm learning) which involves me knitting with a strand of yarn in each hand. Continental (a.k.a. left-handed) and English knitting (normal technique). I'm loving it but when my brain is ready to explode I move onto a pair of lacy socks that I'm making for myself.

Still going strong on the cooking front. More so as our family move to a healthier diet. Anything involving mushrooms and baby spinach is a favourite at the moment. Less baking happening on my part but Dad made a delicious banana cake last night. His first if I'm not mistaken. A proud moment as he got to use our cake mixer and blender last night. Pictures to follow.

I'm so wrapped up in my thoughts at the moment that I'm sure it's not good for me. So far the most exciting thing thats not space-invader-sock-related is my drive to label and catalog things. I spent the better part of Tuesday labeling all 253 posts in this blog. I then spent much of the wee hours of Wednesday starting to catalog my book collection at LibraryThing.

Yeah rock on I say!

Pleasant Day

I've been in home for almost a week now and it feels like I never left.

The job hunt has slowed down a bit but I'm happy just making my way through the laundry and unpacking. I've also started going through old clothes and my wardrobe is already looking much more reasonable.

Sleep patterns are better than normal (ie. I'm awake when most people are and haven't turned nocturnal yet). I think sleeping with the curtains open is helping. It's hard to sleep when the sun is streaming down on your face.

Today Gene's dad, John, came to visit and spent the afternoon chatting with us (Mum, Gene & I) before we headed into town to meet Cathy, Gene's mum, and Dad for dinner. I think we may have ordered a little much which is likely to be my fault as I was keen to catch up on favourite Chinese dishes but it was an excellent meal!

It's looking to be a pleasantly quiet weekend. I think I'll finish reading The Amber Spyglass tomorrow. I'm not particularly far into it but it's been an easy and engaging read for the last two books.

I think I'll spend most of the weekend trawling through the photos from the last six months and posting the ones that aren't too terrible on my Zoto site. When I get bored of that I'll return to my sock knitting which is currently driving me a little crazy. I seem to have lost the ability to count.

I'm actually looking forward to going to rehearsals on Sunday to help Naomi out with her show. It's a show that I wanted to see while I was up in Brisbane last year but failed miserably to make it. So it should be good. Always happy to help. Especially since I'm not doing much at the moment. It'll be good to be back in a rehearsal space. It's been a while!

Day 1 in Melbourne

I achieved most of what I wanted to do today. Admittedly I wasn't aiming very high and my to-do list was questionable but it's a start.

I'm eternally grateful that I'm not suffering too badly from jet lag. Ended up going to bed at 22:30 and getting up at a respectable 08:45. The day started well with a couple of bits of toast and the long awaited vegemite. This was followed by a delicious cup of chai tea. Mmmmmm.

I spent the morning starting my Doha gallery at Zoto but I've only got 16 pictures up so far and the rest will have to wait until Wednesday when I pick Gene, Nick and the laptop up from the airport. I thought I had all the pictures on my hard drive but I was wrong. Ended up posting some pictures that I took in Brisbane as well because I figured I might as well store them online.

After a few hours Mum came home and kindly drove me to VicRoads where I was able to replace my driver's license. Yay for having a license again. Now I just need to replace my fork & EWP licenses, a couple of bank cards, health insurance card... *sigh* Stupid wallet.

Naturally, having no work until March, we headed to the shops for a quick browse (my bad. I wanted to get some cocoa butter to help soothe my skin). We both came back with woolen skirts that we'll have to wait until Winter to wear (but they're pretty!) and a random collection of cosmetics (Mum wanted to get some mascara so it wasn't entirely my fault). It was a fun afternoon but highlights my need to get a job.

Looking forward to Wednesday night where not only will I get to pick up the boys from the airport but Dad will be picking up my laptop. Yay for shiny new toys. I'm looking forward to setting it all up. I'm having laptop withdrawals, sad I know.

As we no long have Gram (Gene's car) I'm without transport. I don't count public transport here. So it could be a while before I'm out and about again (except for job hunting purposes). I am strongly considering trying to make it to Kew for swing dancing though. It's been awhile and I do miss it. I should get as much in as I can as it's looking more and more like I'll have to move away for work.

It's been great getting text messages welcoming me home. I feel very loved :)

Tomorrow I'm aiming to get some more of my random lost cards replaced and sort out some other paperwork. If I'm really good I'll start going through my old clothes because most of them don't fit me any more.

We'll see how I go.

Grumblings

We're back in Melbourne and I'm marveling at how quickly we've settled back into life here.

Gene's back to juggling work shifts and I'm back to the job hunt. I think I might do some temp work while I sort out various jobs that may require some travel. It would be nice to know what the next few months hold for me but at the moment I'm happy just exploring my options.

I'm currently trying out blogging software called ecto and it's working well so far. I'm enjoying the templates and the WYSIWYG features. I also love that it supports multiple blog posts and it's just unfortunate that MySpace don't have remote blog posting capabilities. I've spent the last hour trying to find out info on how I can make this work for MySpace as well and even considered emailing MySpace about it but after my last run in with them regarding the Advanced Editor error messages that seemed to be inconsistent with my experiences, I decided against it. I was happy and disappointed all at once that someone else had tried to ask a question of the team and all they received was "how to change your email address" responses. Happy that it's not just me and disappointed for the same reason.

Aside from that there's nothing new to report. I've got a gig lined up at the start of September but nothing until Fringe after that. I'm still trying to work out what I've got in storage and what I've stashed in Mum & Dad's place... Mainly regarding the various yarns for knitting/crochet purposes (of course) but it'd be nice to know where other things are.

Pictures from our Briz Vegas trip are ready for uploading. That will happen soon I promise.

Jobless-ish

I'm unemployed at the moment and feel this is the best time to take advantage of the spare time to write! Besides, it's good training for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in October. I figure I start with mere few hundred words a day and build up to the 1600 words I'll need to be writing by then. Wish me luck!

It's a little depressing looking at my home page for MySpace at the moment. I only have one friend according to the site... I like too think that in the real world this is not the case - and that I have at least a couple more. For example our pet rat Herman who is currently chewing through his new hammock. I'm not sure why he does this as it will only result in him falling out of his warm little nest one day, but he seems keen on doing so and I don't want to hold him back.

Outside it's a sunny blue sky day and it's still an ice box in our house. I'm curled up in front of our little space heater and I'm strongly considering turning it up to full sun (which I believe is the highest setting). I've had a quick look at the jobs on Arts Hub, called about a stage management gig and have been advised that I'll get a call this evening. Aside from that I've received nothing in the mail, both electronic and regular, that is of note. Unless you include the electricity bill, but I'm hoping to ignore that until after I've done my tax return and actually have money again.

I'm not totallly unemployed. I'm volunteering at MIFF at the moment which has been great fun so far. This is their last week though and tonight's my last night but hopefully this stage management gig will go ahead. Failing that I'm looking at some lighting op jobs and hopefully my letter of offer for the venue officer job I got offered last week will arrive in the near future. I'm always a little unsure how often to follow up on paperwork for a job. After all I want to give the impression of enthusiasm and organisation while not appearing to be desperate or harrassing them. It's a fine line I think.

Aside from the lack of funds I'm actually enjoying the lack of work. I've finished more books in the last week than I have in the last six months - which is a big thing for me. I usually read at least one book a week even during busy weeks.

I'd like to note that production week on a show does not count as a busy week. In fact I don't actually include it as a week in my time as I disappear from the world as we know it and don't surface again for the duration of the "week".

At the moment I'm trying a different approach to job hunting. While it's a little idealistic, hopefully this will avoid me being sucked back into the call centre world (a.k.a my personal "Hotel California"). After 11 months of work in a call centre I feel like part of my soul has died. Perhaps that is exagerating. It's more like part of my soul/spirit has taken industrial action until I made the decision to fully commit my time to employment in the arts where I want to be. I think I've managed to negotiate with myself that I may need to go into some casual soul-sucking work again just to get past the whole rent problem but nothing permanent if I can help it.

I'm also going back to study through Open Learning and I'm looking forward to the intellectual challenge of that. It's been a couple of years since I've really studied and I'm actually a little nervous about starting again. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because I'll be using parts of my brain that have been dormant for a while.

Okay, enough procrastination for now. I'm off to read. Mmmm... good book and a nice warm bed.