Journal Entries
Friday 14 July 2000
Posted Jul 14, 2000
*Sings...
*
‘I'm a-gonna tell you how it's gonna be...'
*stops singing, and assumes a look of stunned incomprehension...
*
And people wonder where the idea for ‘Mmm-bop' came from. Sheesh!
The world is good today. The weather is sunny, the temperature - if not warm - is at least bearable, and my bike is in for a service. I even cleaned it of mud and leftover bits of gravel from all the trail riding of the HDMBH, and it was gleaming red as I took it in to the bike shop. I've had my first cup of coffee for the day, which I did at a café as a bit of a self- indulgence, and I'm about to have another one before I re-load C++ 5.0 onto my machine. I've never investigated C++ nearly thoroughly enough, and I feel a sense of destiny about starting to do so now - it's just a bugger that none of the web-working tools are included with this version of the compiler (anyone know where I can get the relevant updates...
?).
Mmmm, coffee; good. I still wish that romantic love was as simple as Buddy Holly made it sound. I could sure use some of that simplicity...
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jul 14, 2000
Wednesday 12 July 2000
Posted Jul 13, 2000
I think I might try and re-live some of the angst and agonies of adolescent love. I saw Sophie again today at the gym...
I made the crucial mistake of calling her "the beautiful" when I greeted her, though I think I recovered quickly enough..
I did succeed in making her smile (she laughed when I reminded her, indirectly, that she'd challenged me not to forget her name!), inquiring after her health and what she'd done with the rest of the weekend, and making her feel for my health when I related the story of how I'd eventually reached home on Sunday morning...! About the only part of this which matters to me, though, is the bit about making her smile...
Today was otherwise a good day, too. It was bloody cold for the first half, but even when the sun began to shine properly, at lunch time, it remained cold. I tried to work off some of the cold in my bones by riding around Mt. Ainslie in the afternoon sunshine (the HDMBH rides again - yeeeehaaah!) with the excuse that I was getting the most from my bike before putting it in for a service on Friday, but it didn't help much. I finally only began to get rid of the feeling of the cold by going to the gym, drinking cups of sweetened tea from their machine and conversing with the gang over there - all of whom know me and my periodic employment problems quite well...
Certain members of the gym staff were less than impressed that numerous people had decided to attend the gym's launch of the new BodyCombat track, BodyCombat 4. There was some (sarcastic) suspicion that it was only happening because the Combat instructors (one in particular - you know which one I mean...) are younger, blonder, more attractive women than those who were doing circuits this afternoon. In normal circumstances this would probably be considered the case, but the combination of all of the Combat instructors - all of whom are female, all of whom are very fit and all of whom can hit you rather hard if they put their minds to it - in one place is really terrifying. In any case the attendance at the Combat launch turned out to be almost all female, and I don't think that there are that many lesbian gym-goers, even in Dickson....
I enjoyed the launch - another instructor I know told me afterwards that I looked like I was born for BodyCombat. I wonder how difficult it is to look this way in a room full of women who aren't really physically conversant with the idea of hitting anything...!
I truly hope that Sophie isn't a lesbian, ‘cause that could be incredibly frustrating, as well as embarrassing...
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jul 13, 2000
Sunday 9 July 2000
Posted Jul 9, 2000
An odd morning, this morning.
It started last night, of course: quite a lot of odd mornings do. The Sunday Pump Social Club went to see the Canberra Street Theatre production of *Emma* (not the Jane Austen story, but a play about one woman's life experience, before and after her emigration to Australia). The play was excellent, with some great piano accordion and accompanying choral music, and excellent singing by the choir assembled for the production - of whom one of the Sunday Pump Social Club was a member.
Also at the play, surprisingly to me, was a very beautiful young woman who was with us, and whose name I only found out as she came in, although I have known her for a year or more through the gym. She challenged me not to forget her name, having learned it! I will do my best, although Sophie is not the sort of woman one wishes to know without her name, as the sum is even more beautiful than the parts alone. She's gorgeous, and it's hard to dissuade myself from falling in love with her, even though such mindless infatuation is madness!
So, keeping my emotions in check, I conversed with everyone in our party, enjoyed a good pasta and salad meal which was included in our ticket price and had a wonderful night all round. I set off to walk home once the party had dispersed. It's about four kilometres from the Street Theatre to my place, and I'd walked in to the theatre that evening. I was fairly confident I could follow the bike path home, even in the wooly, reflective prevailing overcast which pervaded the sky. Unfortunately, I got sidetracked at O'Connor, where I was hoping to have a quick sup at one of the cafés. The cafés were closed when I got there, however, and I began to continue on my way through O'Connor towards home. I only made it about two hundred metres more towards Dickson, however, before I collapsed on the side of the road, performed a blood test, and passed out.
Apparently a patrolling police contingent discovered me - a good thing too, as my wallet was full of cash (rent money, Health Care Fund rebates) when they went through it to try and find out who I was. The officer in charge apparently recognised the significance of my blood testing machine - which would still have been on the ground beside me when they arrived - and called the ambulance. I came to in the back of the ambulance during a subdued ride to hospital. Judging by the condition of my clothes (grass stains) I'd been struggling a bit beforehand, which probably explained the grimness of the ambos. I remember a distinct impression of (I think) being an elemental part of the Scottish highlands, at the level of the dirt itself but intricately involved in the clan structure and associated social strata. I suspect it was something to do with which clan I was being attributed to that had caused me to struggle. It was only a fragment of a warped imagining, constructed from chance words which my half-conscious mind had overheard, seized upon and amplified - also confusing them with earlier ideas - as I came round, but it was pretty disconcerting for a moment.
I was taken to Calvary Hospital, and after an hour or so attended by the lovely Nina (the on- call doctor in Casualty - and she was truly lovely, incidentally, especially as she perched on the side of my bed as she interviewed me about what had happened that night, her weight pressing against me...*ooh la la!*), who said that - as I'd been fed and tested sufficiently to allow the hospital to be sure I'd recovered - I was free to go. I left the ward, mainly to free up bed space in Casualty, fixed up my bag - which was still in the mess the police and ambos had left while trying to establish who I was and what I carried with me - and walked home (about eight kilometres this time). I hate catching cabs if I can avoid doing so.
I left the hospital at about 3.30am. I arrived home at about 5.00am. I had a cup of coffee while I waited for McDonalds to open at 6.00am (hotcake breakfast! Yippee!). I am in McDonalds still, at 7.00am or so, as I write this. It's been a long night...
Discuss this Journal entry [7]
Latest reply: Jul 9, 2000
Friday 7 July 2000
Posted Jul 6, 2000
*lurking, lurking...*
"He drinks a whiskey drink,
He drinks a vodka drink,
He drinks a lager drink,
He drinks a cider drink..."
Weather: cold, grey and miserable - perfect winter, really... I just wish my clothes would dry (you can't wear bike pants ALL the time, surely...).
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jul 6, 2000
Friday 30 June 2000
Posted Jun 29, 2000
I finally got kicked off the network at work earlier this morning, as it went down for routine maintenance. I was staying back late to complete as much of the project on which I am still working as possible, before the money - and hence the time which I have to do things - runs out today. I looked up, bleary-eyed, to realise that I was 14 kilometres or so from home as measured on my bike speedo, with no money to catch a cab, and no buses running at this time of night (or morning, as it was in this case). "Oh well," I thought, "14 kilometres isn't THAT far..." I was also impressed to find bubster was still around, too, almost to the time when I started walking, and I thought that if he can stay around to work, surely I can walk a bit...!
The night is dark at one o'clock. It wasn't that cold tonight as I began walking, and the wind on the ground was unnoticeable. There was some wind blowing the clouds over my head as I walked through the park between Manuka and Barton, from behind my shoulders, in exactly the direction I was walking when I noticed them, streaming and wispy and moving fast. I had a sudden sense of something much bigger than me, that achieves all it needs to without effort. I considered again how I could apply this to my own life.
I turned over some other ideas in my head, too, of course. I considered h2g2, and what information it might hold, merely by being there. It occurred to me that h2g2 may be more than the sum of its links, but nobody has figured out - actually done the hard grind of counting and identifying - what that sum might be yet. I suspect that this may be a really big part of h2g2's value, but there is no easy way to quantify it. I wondered how I might be able to apply this to my own web site.
I reached home at about three o'clock, turned on JJJ and made myself a cup of coffee. I don't really think there's any point in going to sleep tonight. I have to be at work as early as possible in the morning! I think I'll just take care of a few things on the web while it's quiet...
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jun 29, 2000
Hypoman
Researcher U49276
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."