This encyclopaedia series is a bit of a challenge. I could write reminiscences as I had initially planned to with this series but though the madding crowd appeared not to object the gratuitous introspection it was me who was heartily sick of it by about episode 3.
Hopeless.
I guess because the blog tends to be more about processing what’s going on in my world it just doesn’t sit right processing so far back into the distant past. However, as I am one who quails at the thought of not finishing something she’s started Ed. yeah, like the 365 thing… pfff I am instead, making the letters fit the circumstance.
There, enough of the disclaimer already.
Have you ever thought about the myriad meanings for the word ‘Fit’? Man, English is fundamentally mental… Fit – check this out – 22 applications for the word…
So there are a couple of ways in which I wish to apply it in reference to the me (this is an encyclopaedia after all…)
Fit adj. – in good physical condition; in good health.
This I am not. I love food and I hate exercising. There. I said it. Overweight, not thrilled about it… Problem is, most days I’m not hating it more than I feel compelled to get on the treadmill… Having said that I did get on it today… for 20 min. For the 2nd time in a week… This is to be considered good progress…
Fit verb. to adjust or make conform.
This is a problem area too, the fact that it is just not possible to fit the number of things on my to do list into the useable hours in a given day.
I have a list of things to do pertaining to my upcoming birthday celebrations, both in NZ first w/e in April (actual date) and in Australia on May 10th (keep it free people – it’s an afternoon thing). I also have to do some bookkeeping, not to mention file my tax return for last year (eep). I have to undertake various household endeavours… like laundry, grocery shopping (blergh) and tidying up etc… I need to get some more sleep… the cat problem may be sorted (yes, closing the window nailed it) but the staying up too late working hasn’t yet been resolved… of course,
then I still have to find time to blog…
The reason the days are too short are because, I went away for a fabulous weekend in Berry, I work a 40 hour week (officially 35, but who has time to stop for lunch? and yes I get paid for the lunch hour either way…) because I still do babysitting jobs, had 3 last week, and 2 this and finally, because on the days I do have some down time I’m working on a project for the business which will pay for car rego and will take care of some further debt reduction… (Actually, the business project is taking great strides and is a spearhead for all my future projects… it’s good stuff)
Sometimes, in the battle to do EVERYTHING it stuff like blog mojo that gets left at the bottom of the list.
Fit – noun. an onset, spell, or period of emotion, feeling, inclination, activity, etc
At least, though sorely tempted… I haven’t thrown, or pitched one yet…
E is for Enervated
Lost my blog mojo.
Sigh
D is for Do
Well, yesterday came and went without a post. Pfff. To be frank I’m too sleep deprived to care.
If you were the new tenant upstairs you could be forgiven for thinking I had a newborn at the breast given the number of times I’ve been getting woken up by wailing and crying in the middle of the night. The attention seeking behaviour however, belongs to the cat. And hear (see?) me out before you accuse me of being too soft…
I have louvre windows in my bedroom, an unusual choice perhaps, but as they are immediately next to the stairs that are the exit and egress for the upstairs units, the windows needed to be space conscious… They’re old, crappy steel framed panels that are rusted to all billy-o. I took advantage of this decrepitude (ace word, that) in the early summer and wedged the top pane open to allow some fresh air to circulate… I really do prefer to sleep with a window open.
I have also begun to leave them open during the day to give the cat access to the house as I do not have a cat door and I also figured that should a burglar have a go louvres would be harder to break into than the other solid pane window I used to leave open for him.
Anyway the cat has got a bit used to going in and out the windows and at night time while I sleep he feels as though he should be allowed to get outside through the narrow opening left by the open pane regardless of the time of day or the fact that he’s NEVER been allowed outside at night…
The thing is, he won’t fit through the gap and while he shows particular intelligence in attaining the top window by climbing up the louvres paw over paw he hasn’t figured out that no matter how often he attempts it he WILL NOT be able to get himself out. Neither has he got the message that no amount of attempting this feat has made me yield and open the window… (the phrase dumbass springs to mind).
Last night he tried it 4 times. If he could try it quietly I would sleep through… but the glass moves noisily in its frames and the cat bleats (as it were) in frustration and as you know, orientals are not the most meek of miaou-ers…
Now, gentle reader, you may make such a rational suggestion as ‘just shut the cat out of your bedroom at night’ to which I reply… I try this repeatedly… I get up, shut the door, wedge 1, 2 and sometimes even 3 shoes under the door… and the little bugger is so persistent he leaps at the door handle until the door unlatches and he pokes at the shoes and throws himself at the door until he gets enough of a gap thorough which he can wedge himself and he happily says hello. This is not a quiet business…
And then the process starts all over again.
You may then suggest that some behavioural modification ought to be undertaken… and I concur; the outworking of which has seen me go to bed with a water sprayer nestled on the window ledge which I discharge in his direction (and which he hates) whenever he tries it on. Again, he is so determined that this really only inhibits him briefly and he will watch me, waiting to see if I’m going to move towards the bottle and sometimes, even while I’m spraying the living daylights out of him, he’ll still give it a good go…
SO – and this is where the D is for Do comes in…
Today I decided enough was enough and that I was going to have to forego sleeping with the window cracked so I went to restore the window to its natural state -however, the window frame had got used to its new place and would not return to it’s former full upright position…
Oh BOTHER!
Now, if I were a soft, girly girl I might have despaired or prevailed upon VB man to apply some brute strength to my problem… But I’m a strong capable farmer’s daughter who doesn’t let a bit of dirt or brute force get in the way of her and a good night’s sleep.
So I hauled tools and after some dogged determination of my own involving 2 sets of pliers, a screwdriver a hammer and a few liberal doses of WD40 my louvre windows are now restored to their normal state.
And if the cat tries it on he’s bloody sleeping in the cat carrier tonight and I’m wearing earplugs so I can’t hear him squeal.
C is for Computer
I’m old enough to remember a life before computers. I remember drawing squares with an amiga machine plugged into a tv in my last year at primary school. I remember, at high school, seeing a mouse for the first time… My first email account (which I still have, but rarely use) was a hotmail account that I apparently registered on the 17th of October 1997, I didn’t have my own computer… I used to access my mail by popping down to the Whangarei library in my lunch breaks…
I remember doing particularly well at programming in my Computer Science classes in my last year of high school. We were programming in BASIC and Pascal if memory serves me correctly. But no one knew that computers were going to be QUITE so big… and no one thought that encouraging a girl into further study in that field might be a good idea…
So I took the long way round.
I’ve barely documented the three most difficult years I’ve spent here, for good reason, there are sketchy allusions to them dotted around the blog but while I look back on them with varying degrees of chagrin there are elements of that tenure that worked out for good. In a big way.
It was in the course of my time as a personal assistant that I learned the very basic elements of coding html (web programming). I had cause to send out html email notes on a weekly basis to a subscriber list and in doing so the groundwork was laid for a whole new world of opportunity!
When my tenure as a PA ended abruptly I was at a loose end for a number of months; in limbo… I was busily applying for jobs elsewhere but having NO response. NONE.
Instead I took it upon myself to get busy with one of the sites I now look after full time. It was sorely neglected and came alive with some care and attention… I’d really only done it to keep to keep busy but the techy who’d had a brief run at age 17 was getting a revival at age 37!!! It actually only took 20 years!
The short story is that while I’d been trying to find something else, management where trying to figure out what to do with me and the IT department were trying to find someone to take on the (rather large and complicated) website at church full time…
If you were in to that sort of thing you could say that the planets aligned and we all fell into place.
Or you could say that it was Divine Intervention…
Either way… I’m still there, still loving technology and best of ALL…
Still learning.