World · Of · Twits

I haven't been on LJ very much....Facebook and other crap has been consuming my time instead.

Anyway.

Uh. Oh yeah, update:

1. I'm still working at the hellish debt collections call center job. I worked 8 - noon today and got yelled at by a lovely woman - "Have a great day you FUCKING BITCH!" Same to you, lady. Talk to you tomorrow.

2. I applied for a delivery job at Pizza Luce downtown. I'm actually excited about this prospect, hoping I can make some good tips and pay off my always-growing debt. I talked to the manager last week and he sounded interested in taking me on.

3. Yesterday I had an appointment with my endocrinologist at the U. I had blood work done to test my thyroid levels again and Monday I have to have another ultrasound scan to see if my giant cyst has changed or gotten bigger. I'm still really conflicted about if I should just have the thing removed. Ugh.

4. I got a bike light so now I can go on night bike rides. YAY!!!! Who wants to go with me?

5. Currently trying to study for the Foreign Service exam in October.
6. Met a new dude whom I actually quite like...although I'm afraid now that he's turning out to be a douchebag (like always). Let's hope I'm wrong.
7. Today is Day 6 of NO POP. I'm very proud of this! I'm drinking tons of water instead. Hooray for lots of peeing.
8. I've happily come across some exciting job opportunities that I also plan to apply for. Maybe I'll get lucky one of these times...
9. Nine...? Nine? I've been reading a lot more lately which is really fun. I'm hooked on Asne Seierstad's non-fiction international journalism stuff now. I want to be her, basically.
10. Despite current disappointment with the boy and constant health frustrations, I'm pretty happy and pumped about things. Baby steps, baby steps.

The End
(for now)

My cyst looks similar to this....that big black circular blob in the middle there.  Cool, huh.

If you want to see a really gross photo of a thyroid cyst, click here.

Yesterday, I actually came back from the library with some books to read. I’ve nearly finished The Girl from the Fiction Department, about Sonia Orwell. Hilary Spurling felt Sonia’s reputation had been besmirched and set out to put the record straight. The Sue Cook I think I’ve seen well reviewed somewhere and Fannie Flagg, well, I’ll give her a try. I only wanted light reading. The Georgette Heyer was a 10p trolley buy and it’s falling apart; the other library reject, by Robert Goddard, is a hardback in excellent condition. Tsk.

This morning I trundled down the stairs in a state of semi-awake (as per) and found myself face to face with an axe.

To clarify: when I go down the stairs from our bedroom to the first floor, there is a point when my eyeline is level with the bedroom floor. There was an axe on our bedroom floor. More specifically, under the bed.

Now this axe and I already have a bit of a chequered past. I once tried to wrestle it from the hands of a very drunk Clyde who was attempting to chop wood for the Chimnea Of Doom at about 3am. He resisted spectacularly and called me a very nasty name, so I had to leave him in the capable hands of Finbar. Finbar (a teacher) deals with stubborn teenagers on a near daily basis, and extracted the scary axe with minimum fuss.

Anyway, given that we have a (currently near empty) shed big enough to house a small family AND an outside utility room that is currently base-camp for Clyde's numerous DIY projects, I was more than baffled to see an axe on our bedroom floor. Or, to be even more specific, under the bed on Clyde's side of the bed.

Me: "Why is there an axe under the bed?"
Clyde: (manoeuvres into a responsive position) "Huh?"
Me: "An axe. Under the bed"
Clyde: (eyes half shut, scratches head) "I think I may have been a little bit drunk last night."

I'll be sleeping with one eye open tonight, good people...

We have been in Northumberland this week. Now we are back. And I saw sea and castles and seals (the Woskars of the maritime world) and puffins. So here are some puffins:

I think that's Fat Puffin on the far right.

No posts in a while... So, it's time for an update I suppose.

Really, not much is going on. Yesterday was a very good day, my buddy Jon stopped in town on his way back to Windsor with the family after a few days at the cottage. I met up with them for lunch just outside the ROM and we grabbed a bite to eat and caught up. I haven't seen his wife and kids since before the baby arrived. They're all freakin' huge!

I hit Fight Club for the 2 hour class and it was big fun. Manny, the instructor partnered with me for the first drill of the night. I was rapidly tenderized and pleasantly massaged by his heavy fists. (it sounds worse than it is... seriously) I got a little sloppy during a multiple attacker drill and got elbowed in the eye for my trouble... This opened up a neat little cut under my right eye, but I was sweating pretty hard at that point and didn't notice it until someone pointed it out. I thought I'd have a shiner today, but it's just a little red welt under the eye... Sexy!!!

The second hour was a lot of fun and I was feeling good despite the eye thing... I partnered up with a new guy who had big muscles and the personality of drywall. He wanted to wrestle and throw me around... I tried to take it easy on the new guy. Eventually things got to a point where one of us would get hurt. I even advised him to slow down and try to be more relaxed with his movement so we wouldn't get hurt, no change (drywall has poor listening skillz) When he sat on my chest and actually tried to throttle me, I decided that he was gonna be the one to get hurt... He landed on his head, asked to take five, took his ball and went home. I felt pretty bad about it for a little while. The instructor came and told me he'd been watching this guy all class and that what I did simply had to be done. I suppose he's right, but it's not really in my nature to put the hurt on people... I AM a nurse after all.

Anyway, today everyone at work is asking me about the eye. I make up a different story each time. I'm gonna have fun with this for a while.

What's up with the rest of y'all?

Temperature in Dorset 15°, humidity 89%. Thrilling Test Match. Proms start tonight. RIAT weekend. Pouring with rain most of the day. It must be high summer.

I’ve spent the afternoon driving around between my builders’ units and it looks as though the solution to my storage problems could be ( this )

Grey Gardens [1975]

1. Feeding the raccoons Wonder bread and cat food.
2. "This is concentrated ground." "Consecrated."
3. Jerry lies across the bed. Bored? Stoned?

Hey, York people! You too could end up with a couple of Big Holes In The Ground just like the ones in Bradford now that your city's council has hired Kersten England as its new chief executive. Ms. England, whose BA thesis at Manchester University was on the subject of "A Political Economy of Black Female Labour in Zimbabwe, 1900-1980" by way of interest, was previously best known for being the partner of Bradford Council leader and Tory PPC Kris Hopkins, and for claiming "there are no ghettos in Bradford" when she was "director of policy" at the local council here, upon whose watch the ongoing destruction of the city centre was sanctioned. Ah well, at least if they were to pull a stunt like Bradford's Westfield "development" in the centre of York it may have the by-product of becoming another significant archaeological site like Coppergate was, even if like here the businesses never arrive; you folks can boast Romans and Saxons and Vikings and Normans in your city's history while we only had barbarians. Hat tip to Baht, who consistently picks up on the news that the Telegraph & Argus chooses not to.

Ah well, just waiting for this chap to pick up this old telly that's lying redundant in the bedroom, and then I can get the washing done, roll in for the afternoon shift where I have the fun prospect of filling in six months' worth of time and expenses sheets destined to sit unread in a filing cabinet in Brussels - and with a bit of luck I'll be done in time to catch something of the Continental market that's in town today, because I don't need much of an excuse to buy GREAT CHEESE and SOSSIGE. Don't know whether I'll bother with the crocodile steaks that one of the stalls has on offer though.

Finally, I'd be grateful if you'd vote for this blog in the annual Total Politics poll; I know some on the side of the angels are boycotting it this year, but the way I see it is that by doing so it merely helps the dross to rise to the top; and boy, there's some dross out there. Think of it not as scabbing, but more like Roger Taylor's heroic but doomed attempt to win Wimbledon in 1973 when half the top players in the world boycotted the event. Full details are here; many thanks! Not sure if they want the blog name, my name, or the URL, but, hey, might as well cover all the bases. Incidentally, what *are* your favourite political blogs, readers? I'd be interested to see what kind of a cross-section there is here, compared to the so-called "big boys".

When I quoted from Billy Liar in my journal recently, it was suddenly another of those books I had to read again, immediately. Coincidentally, it’s an anniversary. The book was first published in 1959, cybersofa inscribed this copy ‘1969’, Keith Waterhouse was born in 1929. So Keith Waterhouse was eighty earlier this year, Billy Liar is fifty, cybersofa would have been sixty. Good job I’m not Iain Sinclair, or I’d be making something of it.

This book was a success from its first publication, suiting the Angry Young Man fashion of the period: Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and so on. What sets it apart in my opinion is how funny it is. Billy Fisher lives in the Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton with his parents, who are proud to describe themselves as ‘ordinary folk’. Teenage Billy is literate and knowledgeable, having been to the Technical School but has still ended up as a clerk in an undertakers’ office. He's screamingly bored with his family, work and Stradhoughton in general, and ambitious to be a writer. Unfortunately he lacks the will and gumption to do anything about it but resorts to fantasy in the imaginary world of Ambrosia. He’s unable to face reality at all, spinning ludicrous tales and at one time getting himself engaged to three girls at the same time.
( read more )

Yay! The Duckworth-Lewis Method are playing live on TMS! Whatever would John Arlott have said?

there should be a fucking ban on morons using samples of very good music in order to pass their records off as barely listenable.

Yesterday Clyde called me into the living room to watch an abomination. Someone sampled classic 'choon' and one-hit-wonder 'Echo Beach' into an otherwise utterly tedious R'n'B vomit-fest. The equivalent of dusting a turd with 24 carat gold.

A bit of research on the old spazz has revealed the monster responsible.

Switch, with the greatest respect (as the law of averages dicatates that you must have produced something that I've liked in the past), leave the fucking classics alone. Seriously. Stop now before I have to pay you a visit. I have the contents of a nappy wrapper with your name on it.

...and talking of names, all the 'cool' DJ monikers in the world can't take away the fact that you are actually called Dave.