h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

*waves at Phil*

I'm really good at sleeping these days. The trick is to go to bed really early for a few days until you get into a pattern.

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[<¤o¤>]

I should try that. I got a couple of hours sleep when I got in from work, and then about three just now. Someone rang on the buzzer, and since it is 09.30 I am a tadlet late for work. I set my own hours, but even so.

The building next to mine has scaffolding on it, so I have to keep the windows shut - the flat is starting to reek or cigarette smoke. (My lungs are pretty vile at the moment to )

B

"Turns out you can be in an almost constant state of stress and since it never really goes away, you adjust and start thinking it's normal. Pretty sick really."

Absolutely right. In 2001 I moved house twice, I was living in rented accomodation after 15 years of home-owing, I was going through a very slow divorce and was waiting and waiting and waiting for my money to come through so I could buy this flat, I was out of work, my mother died, and I started and then ended the first relationship I had following my marriage.

But the point was that I didn't actually *feel* stressed by any of it.

My periods went completely nuts though - and guess what? I suddenly had a choice between fears of pregnany and fears of some awful gynecological thing to add to the list of stresses.

It wasn't till I made the list out just now that I realised just how extreme 2001 had been. I feel much more stressed up now, but then the stakes are higher, I have a mortgage not rent, to cover while I am out of work. And instead of an affair which just consists of being treateded to lovely meals out and some nice healthy f**king, I have fallen head over heels in love with the man who has so much baggage he has to keep it on both sides of the equator.

Oh - more cheerful news - I have been invited to put my CV in for another job-to-kill-for. I assume it is a job-to-kill-for, it certainly is from the little I know about it so far. The pay is less than the Edinbugh one, and it is less obviously career-enhancing. Edingbugh would position me to go back fighting into IT after a year or so. This one wouldn't. On the other hand it is doing something I have wanted to do for the last 8 years, but never had the chance to. I don't think the goddess gives you these sorts of opportunities twice, so I am going to follow my heart, and run the risk.

As usual.

Ben

Go for it Ben! I passed up an opportunity many years ago that I wish I'd taken and have spent the rest of my life wondering what if....

We had about 3 drops of rain last night. But the clouds are sticking around, so I'm hopeful.

I found a building yeserday that we can afford and that is 'adequate'. We're having a special board meeting tonight to get formal approval for me to lese it and have it delivered. Trouble is, we can't get it until after Labor Day and that's really cutting it short. The architect wants the building empty before the bids are let out. So I'm going to be in a mad rush. Plus, we'll have to push back the bidding schedule - again!

I'm really angry about this whole thing. I was told to leave this task to the board - don't worry about it, we'll take care of it - you have too much to do already. Well, that was 4 months ago. When I threw a fit and the job was given back to me it took me 2 weeks to have something definite lined up, the site secured, the warehouse secured, the utilities ordered, the cable ordered, a data line ordered, and nearly 300 change of address cards sent to vendors, etc. I'm damn good at what I do when people stay out of my way and let me do it.

I agree that you can be in an almost constant state of stress and not notice it. I tend to put my self under a lot of pressure to be constantly alert and active. If I have to spend an evening in front of the TV watching mindless trash because I'm too tired to do anything else I get really really annoyed with myself for wasting all that time.

If I'm not revising for my current exam I ourght to be preparing my presenation for the week afterward, or failing that working on an entry for h2g2, or trying to write something for magazine that might pay me for it, or reading an book that would improve my mind and stop me feeling less intellecutal than my flatmate, (who studies classics!).

On my year out I didn't live like this, I had an office job and no commitments once 5.30 had passed, and the weird thing waws I hated it. I had a very full social life, at one point I was going out clubbing literally almost every night apart from Tuesday, I felt my life was completely aimless. I occupied myself by learning chinese and studying very hard for the exams that we had at evening class. I need to have this constant pressure to stop me getting depressed.

Hypatia well done for agranging all of that so quickly..

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*limps in* Hi y'all. My foot has been healing so nicely, and then last night I went and twisted it. It will probably be ok in a couple of days, but now I can't go work on La Bosquita as planned. A neighbor has been doing some cleaning up over there at a very reasonable rate -- cut down some dead trees, thinned out most of the ones the BLM wanted down, which improves the living conditions for the ones that remain. And I had about half a dozen dead fruitwood trees toward the front which looked scraggly, and Allen has bucked those up for firewood.

My chiefest source of relaxation is to curl up with some fiction -- and that is SO true about how insidious long-term stress can be. It changes your personality. It creates vices. Back at the school in Florida where I used to work, I found that I was constantly hungry for junk food.

*sits down with a fresh cup of tea, wondering whether Wolfgang gives half a hamburger sliced horizontally or vertically*

Garius, have you moved into the new house yet?

I had several health problems a few years back that involved stress, including a very acidic stomach (caused me to vomit nearly every morning for two years), insomnia, blurred vision (even more than usual) and a generaly surly temperment (still with me). Did I feel stressed? No, not really. All I generally felt was sick and tired, which, considering the circumstances, seemed to make sense to me.

Hmmm, stress becoming constant is no longer stress, and summed up with rl life problems becomes a way you live. I don't know the outdoor from it yet.


Hello everyone! At last I have some time for h2g2. I had a paper to write, do you remember? Well as a matter of fact it's not ready yet, so I'll give it back in September... But it's almost finished so I don't have to worry about it right now.

So many things happened since I last logged on.

I met a great girl, Flora, and we spent a copple of beautiful months together. & Unfortunately (for me), she's leaving for San Francisco for a year very soon . She's from southern France, studies English and linguistics (guess how we met?). She's cute and clever, smart and nice.

A totally different matter now. I had some incredible money troubles a month ago, even worse than usually, and that's saying. My banker ()wanted to forbid me having an account at all, in all banks and for 5 years. But it's better now. My dad lent me some money, and I'm working to earn some right now. Scanning, sorting and writing down the numbers of cheques. Extremely boring will you think. Well I can only say you're right, but I got used to it.
I have to forget my holidays again, and will only go to Poland for two weeks to see my mum. Still, I experienced something close to holiday when Frankie Roberto and his brother, along with Toy Box and some of his family came to Paris last week-end. We toured Paris, me doing the guide, estimated the bars, played the pool (almost a first time for me), etc. I guess you can expect some pictures soon from Frankie.
Will you believe it was the first I actually saw hootooers in RL? Just as I expected, they were really . But we had trouble find each other at first. You should have seen me walking acros an daround Notre-Dame's yard asking people different variants of 'Excuse me, do you happen to be from the hitch-hiker's guide?'. Scared the tourists a little, I expect.

It's good to have you back with us, Typolifi .

For immediate stress relief I suggest looking at the picture I drew for today's Editors' Selection A1105552. It's a sort of 'Where's Wally' but with cats .

It's lovely Amy - and put a smile on my face.

B

Thanks Ben . Perhaps I should warn people not to look at it while eating .

[MTG]

Hi Typolifi, I haven't "met" you before,

But I see you know Toybox, he stayed at my house after the Birmingham meet, in fact he is offically the third h2g2 person i met in "real life" - he's a nice guy. Which was luckly because when i asked him to stay he was a complete stranger, I hadn't spoken to him much online at all.

It seems you've had an eventful few months, are you going to be back online for a while now?

Lil asked if we had moved in to our new house yet. Yes, we moved in about a month ago, but still aren't very settled. The house was filthy when we moved in - I don't think the lady had cleaned since she showed it. And it turns out she was a slob anyway - for example, the insides of the kitchen cupboards had streaks of old spills that must have been years old. It took a couple of days of cleaning with a scouring pad to get them clean enough to put our dishes in. On the day we moved, we looked in the bedrooms and found dust dinosaurs, mostly composed of cat hair. Since both my wife and daughter are alergic to cats, it meant that the whole upstairs had to be cleaned before we could move the beds up there. So, after a full day of moving (we did it ourselves) we had a couple of hours of cleaning to do before we could crash into our beds.

And we've been cleaning ever since. Last week we had the heating ducts cleaned and today, the chimney guy is cleaning the chimney (and putting a new damper in it - the old one must have rusted out years ago since it wasn't in the chimney). I'm still working on scrubbing the basement floor (and walls, in places). There were lots of things that were needing fixing - for example, no damper in chimney, the house numbers fell off (!) a few days after we moved in, one electrical outlet came apart when we tried to plug something in (never seen that before), several taps dripped, most windows couldn't be opened (painted shut), finish on dining room floor worn off in spots, and the worst one: the basement stairs were essentially falling apart. The day after we had our washer and dryer delivered and put in the basement, we happened to look at the stairs from behind and saw daylight between the stair treads and the side pieces. The treads were only being held by the nails! Normally, the side pieces have notches into which the treads are fitted, so that weight on the treads is taken by the lower surface of the notches. In this case, the side pieces had separated, so that the treads were out of the notches, with the gap being bridged by a few nails. It's a wonder that the delivery guys didn't crash through with the washer or dryer.

Anyway, it's been very tiring. We also don't have enough storage for our stuff. You would think that moving from an apartment to a house would mean that there would be MORE places to put our stuff, but the apartment had some very large closets and the house has very few. We are planning a trip to IKEA soon.

Oh, and that wallpaper in the dining room? Well, my wife and daughter have stripped one wall of it to reveal...chocolate brown paint.

Sounds like a bit of work to get settled in GL. But I am happy to hear that you are at least in your new home.

GL at least it's your own place, that describes the ritual I've been through every 1st of July for the past four years. - all my places have been on one year contracts and I've always moved on, for a vairiety of reasons.

I've just found a poem online that my Dad's been going on about for ages, it was in his primary school textbook, but he forget the title, and hasn't been able to find it since. It took me about 20 seconds and google.

And he thinks the internet is useless,

http://www.daypoems.net/poems/689.html

Shame my printers broken so I'll have to print it out at university to tomorrow, to make my point.