Possibly a proper update

...because most of my posts recently have been about crap.

Ah what a beautiful day to be alive. The sun is shining and the birds are chirping and the bees are buzzing round the huge purple bush they like to buzz round. I'd take a photo if I had a digital camera, it's all very suburban and idyllic. Have spent the morning with the Sunday Star Times and a big pot of coffee...ahhh bliss. Would be nicer if the neighbour wasn't mowing his lawn but I suppose you can't have everything.

I am finally settling back into Chch, the city with the soul of a zombie nun -living at home with Mum & Kate is going well now that we've ironed out most of the little things (to give you an idea of just how little, there was recently a very heated debate about whether the shower curtain gets pushed to the left or to the right side of the shower (it's the LEFT, you FUCKERS)) & realised that we are all adults here, people, so let's behave like it. And now we are, apart from the odd conversation like this:

Me: "Why is my phone charger unplugged?"
Kate: "You plugged it into the plug the radio uses."
Me: "Yes, but I was the only person home, and the radio wasn't on. The radio still isn't on. You're not even using the radio."
Kate: "Well, I wanted to use the radio before, so I unplugged your charger, but then I forgot."
Me: "Couldn't you have moved my charger to another plug?"
Kate: "No! You shouldn't have plugged it in there! That's the radio's plug!"

But then I started calling her 'The Socket Lord' and 'Adolf Plugler' and and now I'm allowed to plug things in wherever I like. As long as I plug the resident appliance back in when I'm done. Maybe I should buy a couple of motherboards...are they called that? Those four-socket things that you attach to your plug. They might be called motherboards or I might have made that up. Hmmm. If they aren't called motherboards, they really should be.

I also need to buy a knife sharpening thing - sharpening block, perhaps - as my family seems to enjoy cutting everything with really dull knifes. I mean knives. What a weird typo to make. But apart from dull knifes and weird routines everything is pretty OK.

Speaking of typos (ooh, segue!) I'm going into a temping agency tomorrow morning because the money is running out and I need to start working again. Lame. However, this will mean I get to do psychometric testing (whee) and typing tests (whee) and Excel tests (crap) and spend some of my day not sitting round the house. I have been doing a lot of gardening - my mother has a great garden, mostly NZ natives and veges and things like that, and I've been really hoeing into the weeding.

Zing!

(I have so been looking for an excuse to make that pun for about the last week.)

Went out last night - first night out in Chch, good Lord - and made some friends! (I think.) Which I sorely need, because my social circle is more of a social four-person blob at the moment, and I miss having readily available drinking buddies. It's quite glum-making to realise that you'd really like to have a beer in the sun but that you have no-one to have it with. Ah well. Friends will come! I should advertise.

I was thinking that I might like to be a real estate agent, after I've worked for 6 months or so (you need a financial cushion to keep you going while you get started, and at the moment all I have is a financial whoopee cushion). You basically get to be your own boss, and the amount of money you make directly reflects the amount of work you put in. That was always one of the things that really annoyed me about salaried jobs - you could be giving it 150%, and the guy next to you is doing a half-assed 75%'er at best, and yet you get paid the same. I mean, sure, you may get promoted sooner, but at the end of the day there's no incentive to really work. Real estate, however...if you do a crappy job, you won't last. if you do an average job, you'll make average money. if you work your ass off, you can make ridiculous amounts of money. Ridiculous amounts! The woman I went and talked to about it said, "You have to like three things to be good at this job - hard work, people, and money." I like people and money, and I'm sure I could get used to the other one.

Mind you, I read an article on the Chatham Islands this morning and now I want to go and live there (town of 200 people, one doctor, one 'constable'...I would start a dinky wee business doing God knows what, and go down to the sea and write a lot. I imagine rent is cheap), which kind of implies I am not very good at this whole deciding-what-to-do-with-my-life business.

I think the problem is that half of me wants to be a rich, high-powered and successful city-dweller who wears a lot of black and accessorizes well, and the other half of me wants to be an eccentric writer living in a cottage by the sea. It'll be interesting to see who wins. I'll keep you updated.

Am cooking tonight! Teriyaki squid. How the fuck do you cook squid? I did not think this through. For those of you who know Chow, I'm trying to recreate that squid I used to eat all the time. I doubt it'll work, but it should be...educational. The lesson will probably be "you don't know how to cook squid."

Anyway, I'm really just rambling on here, and should probably go and do something productive.

Like the Sudoku.

PS I totally cheated on this update thing. I wrote a letter to a friend this morning, and this post is pretty much lifted word-for-word from that letter. It's not laziness, people, it's efficiency. Learn from me.