Blog Archive — Page 62
This is part of my blog, which I have long since stopped maintaining. The page has been preserved in case its content is of any interest. Please go back to the homepage to see the current contents of this site.
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Dislocation
It’s dark now, when I get up, and it doesn’t feel like morning at all. The feeling was even stronger today, though - it feels almost as if my mind and body are somehow separated. I don’t feel that I’m hearing all the sounds that I should hear, nor seeing all the things that I should see, and when I try to move it’s as if there’s some delay between thinking about it and it actually happening. I can probably put it down to having a cold and only having had about four hours’ sleep last night. But regardless of how I feel now, I wouldn’t have missed that phone call - the reason for my lateness in getting to bed - for anything.
Also, would you like some angst with that? Make it super-size? Have a new fragment, “Memories of a Girl”.
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Waiting for the HSBC Lynching Squad
So, currently… I’m on my overdraft limit, I owe my parents £40 and there’s already £60 on my credit card. I have two weeks, including - hopefully - a trip to Southampton, in which I can spend precisely nothing. Not a very fun situation to be in. My wallet contains twenty-four pence, not even enough to buy breakfast a work…
In other news - at least this is free - Flashbacks is coming along pretty well. In fact, I may have nearly finished, although I’ll continue adding things to it occasionally as I remember them. I took a walk around some of the places I remembered today, taking photos which thanks to my delightful ‘net connection are currently confined to my hard disk. Still, I’ll try to get them uploaded, even if I can only do one a day or so.
While out there today, I also discovered a little more about which memories of my past are real and which were only dreams. Details to appear on Flashbacks: Bronze Lake tomorrow night.
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Gotta' Love My Parents' House
My ping just topped five and a half seconds. It’s like torture, but not as interesting… I’m sure Satan is preparing a special hell for me, where there’s nothing but pay-per-minute 56k dialup for eternity.
EDIT: Already we have a new record! =p
64 bytes from 216.239.59.147: icmp_seq=559 ttl=242 time=14428 ms
EDIT 2: Downloading is bad for you.
64 bytes from 66.102.9.104: icmp_seq=231 ttl=241 time=32788 ms</i>
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This Week's Challenge
Recently, since I’ve been staying at my parents’ house, I’ve been walking near a lot of the places I used to go as a child, and the close encounters have been sparking a lot of memories in my mind. Therefore, my mission for this week (or even this summer/early autumn as a whole) is to get as many of my childhood memories down on paper as possible. On Saturday, hopefully, I’ll grab my mum’s camera and go and visit the places properly, to find out what’s become of them now I’ve - dare I say it - grown up.
I’m putting the results on the ‘net for anyone to read, should they desire:
Flashbacks (Childhood Memories Project)
A warning - it’s already pretty long, just from one day’s work…
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Welcome to Dramaville, Population 19
Ah, the end of another Bournemouth Meet. A successful one, if my standards are anything to go by (which of course they really aren’t).
My recovery from illness - for now, anyway - proved just in time for the descent of no less than 13 friends on what for the sake of argument I might call my home town. Together with the six of us who live here, they’ve made it the biggest Bournemouth Meet so far - although I’m not sure if I could quite call it the best. A lot happened, not all of it good and not all of it bad, but all of it was the kind of stuff that makes memories; that makes stories that’ll be told for years to come. And that, in a way, might be what counts.
There were awesome meals and spectacular fireworks and four hours out in the cold. There was Subway and Shakeaway and running from one bus shelter to another in the pouring rain. There was drinking and laughing and joking and a walk home drenched in anxiety and confusion and barely concealed emotion. There were friends, and there was saying goodbye…
I’m left feeling a little vacant… There was so much activit
y so much of the time, and then with a few hurried hugs and handshakes I ran across to the almost-departing bus and disappeared… No more Bournemouth Meet; just a quiet evening, an early night, and work tomorrow and every weekday, stretching on into the future. Forever? No, not forever. But perhaps for long enough.
Side Notes:
Hard disk died again this weekend. I’d like to construct myself an external hard disk by cannibalising my Rio Riot, but it’s little projects like this that are really draining my finances right now. Does anyone know if the Riot’s internal HDD is a standard laptop 2.5in drive?
This weekend was scarily expensive, I’m super-broke now. Can’t wait until I get paid in two and a half weeks. £1500, whee!
The much-debated £56 costume order arrived yesterday - they said please allow 30 days, actually took three. Next problem - anyone know how to tie a hakama properly? The internet gives me only a rather confusing seven-stage diagram.
Tried Ubuntu Linux earlier. Top marks for user-friendliness, ability to use source rather than binary packages, and an easy install. Thumbs-downs for not detecting NTFS partitions, not having a proper modem dialler out-of-the-box, manual editing of xorg.conf to enable nVidia GLX, and having to use packages from an unsupported repository to get MP3 support.
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Another Passing Day
I guess I was kind of caught off guard by the amount of sympathy I’ve recieved since that last post ^_^; I guess I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it helped a bit, so thank you everyone!
It turns out that I couldn’t get a doctor’s appointment for today, so I’m going tomorrow morning instead. Today I’ve been a bit better - there’s periods of a few hours at a time in which I feel pretty much normal, during which I’ve been mostly talking on the phone, feeling guilty that I feel well but aren’t at work, making a map for Dreaming Awake, and using the ‘net.
Success reports from the latter two:
And, with about as many responses on either side of my MSN screen name “Please stop me from spending £56 on costume!”… I just spent £56 on costume. Oh well…
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This Body Annoys Me
Apologies if I keep this brief, sitting in a chair feels most undesirable at the moment.
Today marks the second day I’ve spent off work, and at this rate I’ll be doing likewise tomorrow as well.
I’ll explain the history to this one, in case it’s relevant. Around two months ago, I first got a kind of whining noise in my left ear, and I couldn’t hear all that well. Dismissing it as a temporary thing, I didn’t worry about it. Apparently that kind of thing can be due to problems with the eardrum which clear up on their own after a while.
A few weeks ago, I started to feel dizzy occasionally. Three weeks yesterday, I woke up dizzy and had to lie down for a while before starting my first say at work. Nerves, perhaps? I wasn’t sure. Anyway, by the time I got to work two and a half hours later, I was feeling fine. Apart from occasionally feeling briefly dizzy when making sharp head movements, I had no problems.
On Sunday afternoon I started feeling a bit unwell, but I went to Ant’s house anyway for the evening and felt fine while I was there. The problem really started on Monday morning.
I woke up a little dizzy, but didn’t worry. I barely finished my breakfast and felt a little sick, but it didn’t feel as bad as that first Monday so I headed to work anyway. Two hours later I was actually sick on the train, but I felt a bit better after that so I continued to work. Once there I was frequently feeling dizzy, was unable to oncentrate and kept almost falling asleep. I went back home, and slept most of the afternoon, evening and night in on-and-off bursts. I didn’t eat that day.
At 6am this morning (I’d set my alarm in case I felt normal again) I was still dizzy, so stayed in bed until 10. Today I’ve been mostly in bed (typing this is the longest period I’ve had out of bed, except for my few slices of toast for lunch). The way things are going I can’t see it being miraculously better by tomorrow, although I’m not at all sure what’s actually wrong. I might try and see a doctor tomorrow, but as my GP is in Southampton I’m not sure if I’ll be able to see one here. Also I don’t quite fancy the 30 minute walk to the doctor’s, since right now any pose other than lying on my right-hand-side makes me feel a bit ill…
I’m sorry for all that, I never meant for the post to be that long. I guess I shouldn’t really rant about my health here, but as I haven’t been able to post anything for a few days I thought I should at least let people k
now what’s going on… (My parents are on holiday abroad at the moment and it’s their Anniversary today, so I’m not letting them know about it otherwise they’d only worry and spoil their holiday.)
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I'll Call That a Success
So, today was… fun. Not quite what I was expecting when I made the morning odyssey to work…
As usual, I was getting odd looks from passers-by and the guards at the front gate, but then as I’m someone who carries an umbrella over one shoulder even on quite sunny days, I’m used to that. As there’s not much to do at work at the moment, I came prepared - all the stuff that I needed to write the next bits of “Hell on Earth” (I should make a page for this sometime) and Second Star on the Right. This happily took up the part of the morning that I didn’t spend eating, drinking and listening to KOTOKO.
At lunch, it transpired that of the twelve people who were supposed to come to a meeting today, only four of us were in fact left - to eat twelve peoples’ lunch. Which we got re-delivered to our office. Doing so (well, not quite managing all of it - we gave about half of it away to friends and random passers-by) took most of the afternoon. Then, after a quick mess around with some GUI changes that the customer wants for one of the programs we’re working on… It’s suddenly five o’clock.
It feels like no time has passed today, very much a change from the usual day’s somewhat dull Solitaire and Minesweeper. (I really should see if my computer meets the spec for Half-Life 2.)
In other news, my parents went on holiday today, so I’m living in their house on my own for the next week and a half. It feels a little odd, I guess. Not as bad as it should do seeing as I’ve got all the disadvantages of living in my parents’ house (having to be an obsessive-compulsive-washer-up, 56k pay-per-minute dialup) with all the disadvantages of living on my own (buying food, washing and ironing clothes)…
Still, I have the internet. Just about. It’s a start…
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A Slow and Subtle Daydream
For a while I’ve had a strange thing with my hearing, as if I listen kind of subconsciously. Sounds slip into my mind without me noticing - I guess that’s why I often ask people to repeat themselves a fraction of a second before realising that I knew what was said after all.
Recently, though, it’s started happening to my sight as well - almost like being drunk, things I see tend to blur; not physically, but mentally. It kind of made itself obvious when crossed the road just now - somehow I knew there were no cars coming but I didn’t actually concentrate on looking.
I’m a bit unsure as to whether this is weird, or if it’s something everyone else takes for granted but I’ve only just discovered.
It feels strange, but not worrying. Kind of like slipping into a daydream, realising that the world arranges itself around your dreams rather than the other way around.
Now I’m looking up at the sky, and smiling, feeling like I could reach out and touch the tiny wisps of cloud that blow past on the wind.
Just now I bumped into a cable, so I followed it to see where it went. There’s something wonderful about being naive and childish occasionally, especially in weather like this where the whole world feels like it’s saturated in happiness.
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A Waking Dream, or Otherwise
Last night was… a little weird. I had a dream - a very long and, I think, important one. Then I dreamed that I woke up, wrote it all down, and went back to bed. There was another dream after that; which was about Lime, Elise, Stel and I in a Spanish seaside bar buying drinks with 5p coins.
Weird, yes. But I’m annoyed that I didn’t actually wake up to take notes on the first one…
