Heartdrops.org

What does your shirt say?

Georgie — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:37:25 +0000

As I sit here, still ill, with a cold, but drinking vegetable soup garnished with generous amounts of chili, I feel my nose draining itself. Yesterday, James bought me a bowl of spicy egg noodles with wontons. It was great, and it actually got rid of the soreness in my throat. I’m not feeling any pain there anymore, just an odd emptiness. My voice still sounds like P!nk, or as one of my workmates said, “like a man”.

I guess my cold is just stuffing things up but I hope to be better soon. Smelling some Vaporub seems to do the trick, too. I think the wind also gets to me easily. Yesterday I let myself into work (I have my own keys now) and I opened the windows because I was rather out of breath from walking from the station and up the flights of stairs, but soon enough the wind was making me feel cold so I shut them. The good thing about working in a converted loft is that it rarely gets muggy in there.

I caught up with Johnny and Fern the other day – I hadn’t seen them in months! I didn’t have a jacket with me and as I was waiting for them outside our meeting place, I was hoping it wasn’t going to make my cold worse.

I was wearing my shirt that said, “The art of conversation is, like, kinda dead and stuff”. A boy about my age was nearby with another two girls, and he asked, “Hey, excuse me, what does your shirt say?”

I walked towards them and let them read it out aloud. “Hey, that’s cool! Thanks,” he nodded.

Thankfully, that’s probably the only geeky shirt I own that has words on it; the others have prints of LEGO, rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock or a TARDIS, which doesn’t really encourage people to ask what my shirt reads, or say. A popular online store from which I bought some of these shirts is ThinkGeek.com. I used to shop there quite often before I found their shipping costs to Australia were too high for my taste, not to mention they seemed to be out of any good merchandise.

More often than not, I find geeky shirts that quote certain memes or have Pedobear on them, or Double Rainbow, or reference some game like Skyrim or Minecraft or Pacman, or have some programming or HTML or blogger joke on it. I find the majority of these shirts, particularly the ones with jokes on them, to be very unfunny and very lame. Yes, I think a shirt with on it is a pretty cool shirt, but I wouldn’t buy one and wear it.

It’s not hip and it’s not funny or cool or totally rad or fully sick [bro]. Let’s just say, if I saw an English teacher wearing a shirt like the one I mentioned earlier, I’d think he was being rather pretentious or trying to be cool. It makes sense for me to wear it because I’m part of the younger generation and even though I prefer writing formally and with verbose words at times, I do kinda, like, talk like that.

There’s a shirt that reads “Just shut up and reboot already”. If I saw an IT support guy, or just someone working in a computer shop or anyone interested in computers wearing that, I’d honestly think he was a snob.

It’s as if whoever chooses to wear these shirts will think that whoever is interested in the same thing as them or has the same kind of knowledge as them will understand their shirt and likewise, think it’s cool. Perhaps it does seem cool to that person, but you’re just showing off, really. I don’t see my boss wearing a shirt with on it. I would understand it, but if someone else sees someone with a shirt like that and has no idea what HTML is or is unfamiliar with the internet, they wouldn’t think twice about it.

James agreed with me and stated that it was the reason why he wouldn’t buy something like a ROS shirt. (I’m sure that 98% of you would have no clue what that means.)

“It’s sad. It’s like you’re saying ‘I want you to ask me what my shirt is about so I can boast of my knowledge. NOT to converse, but for me to tell you about my specialised expertise on a topic. FOR I WAS HEAVILY NEGLECTED AS AN EARLY TEENAGER’.” And after a pause – he laughed.

If it makes someone feel good wearing a shirt that shows off some of your knowledge, well, fine, be my guest, I’d say to them. Hats off to you, mate. But don’t expect me to ask you what it means if I haven’t a clue, then mope and have a booboo at home because no one asked. Finally, if you do see someone with a shirt with something you like on them, are you seriously going to approach them and say it’s zarking awesome? I still think that giving strangers compliments makes my shoulder feel like spiders have crawled over it. I also think that receiving compliments from strangers gives me the same feeling (but on my other shoulder).

Maybe it brings this sense of community or something. “O HEY YOU LIKE VLOGBROTHERS TOO WELL SO DO I OMG…”
“Then why the fuck don’t you have a DFTBA shirt?”

“I would also take an arrow to the knee omg you play Skyrim? Man I love your boobs.”
“Ugh, go away.”

So even if girls do play Skyrim, or any other game for that matter, it doesn’t mean you get to make out with them. I know couples end up together because they have the same geeky obsession with something – they might have met online through playing a game, or found out in school that they had common interests, but I bet you my left foot that it wasn’t from wearing some godforsaken t-shirt with some geek joke on it.

(If you’re still wondering, ROS = Robot Operating System.)

Yours indecisively, Weather

Georgie — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:53:19 +0000

Last week, it rained to the point where I had water fill up my favourite shoes. I suppose they’re not my favourite shoes – I’m not a hundred percent sure they are my favourite. But these shoes are flat (not completely flat, but with a small, tolerable heel), a bit glossy, with a ribbed pattern, and they’re black, and are cute, fashionable, and formal. You can dress them up or down and they’re just so comfortable. In the photo below, from Easy Steps, my pair of shoes is the third pair from the front.

You can see how cute they are! I have to say they are my favourite shoes in terms of versatility. I find versatility in clothing and accessories to be pretty important. I don’t like changing things every day to suit my mood, so it’s nice to have some staple pieces that aren’t just staple pieces, but ones that you can wear comfortably almost any time.

I was disappointed when it rained last week and my shoes got soaked all the way through. I wasn’t wearing tights or stockings because it had been very hot, so I was bare-legged. Despite having an umbrella (which was lent to me by my boss because I didn’t bring one as I didn’t see the rain coming at all – it only started raining around 5:00pm), the rain hit my knees and my legs and just aimed for my shoes.

I got The Squelch. It’s just about the worst feeling you can get when you walk in the rain. You can feel the water wetting your toes or your socks, slowly, as you’re walking through the rain. Be it slow or fast… that feeling is just terrible.

Anyway, I was walking, with this Squelch, and I saw all these other people wearing high heels and other people wearing boots with their shoelaces just dragging behind on the wet pavement. It was raining so heavily that you could hardly see in front of you and there were puddles everywhere. You were probably pretty lucky if a car didn’t half-drench you by driving in a puddle. I saw some people with umbrellas who still looked relatively dry, and I was guessing they either got lucky or only just stepped outside. Hmm.

Yesterday I’m not sure what the weather was thinking but it was so hot. It is supposed to be summer where I live, but lately we’ve just been receiving a lot of rain, so I guess you could say that it was what we had been expecting since December. Today, it seemed to cool down as it was exceptionally windy in the morning, but as soon as I stepped outside after noon, to go to work, it was so hot I perspired straight away.

At work I had to train a new guy working there. He’s in the same grade as my brother, used to do the education program when he was younger so was pretty familiar with how things worked. He made a few mistakes which I had to point out. He was also a bit slow. However, being slow is usually experienced with most new workers, as it does take some time to get used to the marking system. That said though, he did a great job for his first day, and he picked up the workings of the centre pretty quickly and didn’t hesitate or get distracted. I have to say I’m actually pretty proud of him! I remember training a girl before who kept chatting to me and kept asking questions, and she also kept watching around her and not really paying attention.

The boy is coming on Thursday as well where I hope he continues to work at a steady pace. He was a very fast learner, I must say. I will be stopping work there soon… so I really hope he is a good replacement. Fingers crossed.

I bought some ball stud earrings on eBay a couple of weeks ago and I was excited to get them but when I received them in the mail today, I was less than pleased. They were just wrapped once in paper and put in a standard envelope; no padding or box or anything. I noticed that while the seller had 98% positive feedback, they did have at least 20 different buyers give negative feedback. My earrings were a bit bent at the posts, which I could fix by bending them back… but the balls were meant to be a shade of silver and they were already rather discoloured. Giving them a rub sort of helped even out the colour. I still sent a message asking for a refund.

The weather forecast says it’ll rain tomorrow. Surprise, surprise. I might bring a change of shoes. Just in case.

Edit: I’m still sick. -___- I have a terrible cold now.

I like gypsy music

Georgie — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 12:19:57 +0000

This morning I woke up with a sore throat. It hurt like hell to talk. Okay, let’s just say I had reached the point of untalkableness. Making any vocal noise was rather painful and swallowing the fluids that my mouth naturally produced also became rather unpleasant because it felt like someone was rubbing a cheese grater against my pharynx.

I’ve had laryngitis and pharyngitis before and they have both inherently sucked. My mum takes to giving me this ridiculous Asian stuff called watermelon frost. I instantly think of an land where the ground is made of watermelon crust and I can make pink snowballs and untouched ice is the pale lime green that the edges of watermelon slices are like.

In fact, watermelon frost is the complete opposite. It’s this… powder that looks like someone probably coloured heroin a green colour. Not the pretty green colour of the exterior of watermelons, but the green that the colour of your stool is if you ate too much spinach the night before.

That’s often hard for me to imagine, so sometimes I imagine I’m a cavewoman with a crummy mortar and pestle made from two really sketchily shaped rocks. And I just crushed some leaves into a powder until it was… powder.

Nonetheless, this crap is horrible to put in your throat. I dislike unnatural remedies a lot of the time, especially when it comes to things like headaches, sore throats, and colds. Whenever I’m sick, I opt for honey tea, vitamin C, warm soups, and my personal favourite – water. And maybe some grapes. I don’t like taking painkillers because I’ve had experiences where they don’t really help.

I developed a headache throughout the day, which was really unpleasant. For the most part, watching Futurama cured it. I took apple cider vinegar for my throat, and I can tell you it burned like hell. Probably just as bad as chugging down plain vinegar. I can tell you though, if you think salt water is bad, this burns about a hundred times more than salt water could ever.

I’m listening to gypsy music now, since James told me about Armik, a flamenco guitarist with over twenty albums under his belt. I have listened to some gypsy music and it’s the kind of music that puts you to sleep. I dearly love instrumental music, and I really love listening to orchestral versions of classic songs or sonatas. Songs are very lovely when they can put you to sleep, and they can be very relaxing. I find that a lot of music from Japanese animation can be very lovely as well (think Laputa and Naruto – I don’t even watch Naruto but the music is beautiful). And then you get to artists like Explosions in the Sky, whom I saw last year with James. When you get to things like shoegazing and post-rock, it’s where it starts getting interesting.

I begin to see the structural and melodic similarities between instrumental post-rock and Mozart. Not all music does that, I guess.

I don’t feel like I hit many dead ends. I can sleep to heavy metal. I’ve tried dancing the Macarena to a rap song. Surprisingly, it works. I plan to develop a theory out of that.

Until then, I need to make sure my nose stops running and my throat stops feeling like it’s being poked with a flamethrower.

Unworry

Georgie — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:29:06 +0000

I miss being a child. I remember when 10:00pm was “late”, but at the age of ten my best friend called my home phone at that time and I was already in bed. I remember coming home from school and as soon as I had my tea (which was really just fruit), I had to shower and get changed and ready for ballet or piano; as soon as I got home I ate dinner and did my homework, and after that if I was lucky I’d play computer games for an hour, brush my teeth, and go to bed.

It was easy. I could be exaggerating, but it was so easy to have so many things to do. It was so easy juggling four or more dance classes a week, along with piano and swimming. I got enough sleep and I got to finish all my homework and I never struggled and I never stressed out.

I took a long time to shower. I took my time. I was also a terrible eater. I was picky, but I ate very slowly. I struggled to eat. For a while I’ve dealt with a small stomach problem, and as a child I would often take over an hour to eat my dinner and down my spinach and corn.

I remember my brother stressing out at that age. I remember him being temperamental and disorganised before he even began seventh grade. I know I wasn’t like that at all. It was when I was sixteen that things took a toll and I gradually dropped my extracurricular activities. I had an order. What I liked the least was what I dropped first. Swimming. Then funk. Then tap dance. Then singing. Then jazz. Then…

I believe that over the years, I accumulated a deep sense of worry for more than just my extracurricular activities. As many of them demanded my attention and my practice, often pushing me forward with exams of their own – or in the cases of dance; shows, competitions, performances, – I had to weave such events into my schedule. Dance school was like another school altogether, and the pressure to attend regular school for six hours a day along with all those commitments began to quash my ability to keep atop the homework tasks set daily.

Time and time again I worried that I’d run out of time to keep on top of everything. I can’t pick out the exact point where it got worse. My secondary school days are now – in my head – a blur of hastened friendships, relationships, and struggles with depression.

No, it wasn’t simple. But I remember once being unworried, then being worried.

Now I’m unworried.

It was Australia Day today, and I didn’t have to go to work because this date, the 26th January, is recognised as a public holiday. I sat at home for most of the day listening to the Triple J Hottest 100, and played guitar and painted my nails a jellybean blue. Not too far into the future, I’ll be working, I’ll be studying, and life will be just as hectic as it was last year. But briefly, I think about how having so much to do can be a burden on even the most organised, energetic person. I think that shooing the worries that will soon come my way will not work unless I put in some effort.

So much to worry about as an adult. Money. People. Education. Work. Responsibility. Yet I believe I have changed. I am no longer scared of growing up. I am no longer scared of time passing. But those are things that will doubtlessly arrive at one point or another, or that overcome me at some point. If I can keep pushing away the worries that haven’t arrived, then surely they will keep their distance.

I miss being a kid, being unworried.

But when I think about it, I too am a kid at heart.

After almost exactly four years…

Georgie — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:16:53 +0000

I quit my first job. Ooaohohooh. So. I haven’t exactly quit, but I told my boss that I can’t work after the 16th February.

I don’t remember exactly when I started this job at the education centre, but I remember that in early 2008, shortly after James and I began dating, I was happy to receive this job at all. James told me it was going to suck and the pay was going to suck, and he seemed to know what to expect. I went ahead with it, really unsure of what to expect for my first job. I didn’t like it in the beginning and I had to get used to their rules of marking papers, and I had to deal with little children, which, to that date, I hated.

So it’s been about four years since I’ve had this job. I can’t say I love it, but I’ve grown to like it over the years. I was close to quitting at one point because I wasn’t really enjoying it. I guess what held me back from making this decision to quit was the fact that they needed me. For a small centre, I was the only English marker, compared to many of the other girls and other staff who worked with maths or with the younger children. There wasn’t much change over the years but I found myself tolerating the children with less effort. I grew to like some of them. I felt so attached to the job, as my first job ever. But it was time for me to quit, having another job with more demanding work and one that I thoroughly enjoy, not to mention the fact that my classes will clash with my shifts over at the education centre.

I loved having a job near home, I loved that it was rather easy work and not so intensive, and that it was close to public transport so if I needed to travel there and I couldn’t get dropped off by my dad for whatever reason, or if I needed to go to university in the morning, I could still get there somehow.

That said, I have received my timetable for the duration of the year. I don’t know why people post their timetables on their blogs when they get them – I usually don’t like sharing that kind of thing, but I’ll have you know that I am in class four days a week.

Well, more like four evenings a week. With the exception of Fridays in Autumn semester (February until July) – I have a 9am-12pm class. I’m planning to go to work afterwards. All my other classes start at 6:00pm and end at 8:00pm or 9:00pm, so during the day, I’ll be working. I have this strong feeling that I can do it, that I won’t be dead by the time I get home, that I’ll have every ounce of energy I’ll need. I don’t start classes until the end of February.

In my last post I mentioned my new computer Kepler, and he has consequently been added to The Cavalry. James and I managed to sort out the operating system (Windows 7 64-bit!) and install absolutely everything I needed. Well I haven’t installed WampServer, but I’ll do that eventually. James pretty much spent the weekend at my house.

We had wraps for lunch (on both days!) and between him, my brother and myself, we probably ate four bags of chicken strips over the weekend. Although we had problems installing some things, a few restarts did the trick. I had prepared myself pretty well by downloading the installer files for most of the programs I needed prior to buying the computer.

iTunes, as usual, was a pain in the backside to deal with but thankfully this time around I did not lose all my play counts and playlists and library history. Ah well, I have Last.fm to found for most of the plays. On the topic of music, James encouraged me to look in my record collection and find something to play. My favourite records are by the record player and my others in my bookshelf, and usually I just play my favourites… but I put on some Stevie Wonder and I realised how great that was.

I think you can see some of the physical photos of Kepler in the enlarged screenshot. I’ll post them on my photoblog shortly. Yep, I went and hid the taskbar so I can use the icons in RocketDock as shortcuts.

Also, I just washed my hair with new conditioner and not only does it smell nice but it’s left my hair so very soft. It’s specially for damaged hair and since I’ve had some split hairs (not ends, but hairs ) lately, it’s leaving me with the impression that it’ll do well.

The Construction of Kepler

Georgie — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:56:43 +0000

The lowdown: He can’t really say hello yet, but you can say hello to him. You don’t get to see him yet, but you get to hear all about him.

Today, James picked me up at my house early in the morning and we went to a mall about fifteen minutes from my house. After we got lost and found ourselves in a homeware mega mall full of furniture stores (no, we’re not ready to buy furniture yet, at least not until we get a house) and drove past a shop called “OMG Lighting” (they really couldn’t have picked a better name), we lined up for about ten minutes watching this idiot in overalls ask the guy over the counter for assistance. It wasn’t the kind of place you could look into and browse around. You had to know what you were getting.

James remembered everything, bless him. I didn’t really quite understand all the specifications, but we walked out with a motherboard, four gigabytes of ram and a processor. Only Intel i3, because this computer’s just for doing work, study, designing, watching some movies – nothing big and heavy like gaming.

Of course, there was a phase during which I was so excited about the game Duke Nukem Forever, but half a year down the track I’m not as thrilled. I actually took the time to read reviews about the game and I wasn’t too pleased; many hardcore fans were also disappointed. James knows me well and he says it isn’t the kind of game I’d like, and he wouldn’t like it very much either. (He’s more of a gamer than I am.) I suppose I’d better go back to the 80s and 90s when video games were not full of sexist remarks and were all about explosions and female assets. Right.

We went across the road and I spied a black and red case. Oh cheeseballs, it was the sexiest thing I’d seen that day, before James said that it would gather dust so easily even if I did put it on a table and vacuum my desk once a week. It had red. I think I just totally fell in love. At $200 though, I felt it was much better to buy the $70 one and get something that wasn’t aesthetically pleasing but something that was just a better idea.

When we finally went back to my place after getting a spill-resistant keyboard, webcam and a 24 inch monitor, we had fun looking at all the bits and pieces and fitting them together. I was excited to open up the monitor, but we looked at it last. It took us some time to fit things together and get things together, but after about two hours we had it going. When I finally saw the monitor I couldn’t help but exclaim, “It’s gorgeous!”

I wasn’t too fond of the size before getting it. 24 inches seemed rather large. It seemed a little too large, but I think it’s just the right size. I use a 27 inch Mac at work and I can’t believe it’s that big. James’s monitor seemed bigger and I got the one that is the same size as his.

Unfortunately the software wasn’t all cool; we had a lot of trouble trying to install Windows 7. While James tried to figure out the cause of the problem I grilled some chicken and washed some lettuce so we could have some chicken wraps for lunch.

At the end of the day not all was well. But hopefully we get it figured out tomorrow. I plugged Fin (my laptop) into the monitor. I remembered that this was what I wanted in the first place; just a monitor to use with my laptop. My mum was the one who suggested a new computer for me and I can’t thank her enough for that. I hope that my laptop lasts longer since I’ll be using it less.

So, he hasn’t come out of his shell yet. But say hi. His name’s Kepler. After Johannes Kepler. Because Kepler’s Laws are as follows:

The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
A line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit.

And, you know, because I like space and all.

I love the internet, but…

Georgie — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:33:21 +0000

I get too attached to it. Correction: got. What with this SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) issue getting heated up, yakking on to my brother about it…

I see many people are involved. Many people blocked out their websites for the 18th day of January. People tweeted about it everywhere. People posted about it on their blogs. People posted about it on forums. People expressed their opinion virtually everywhere – on the internet. I guess I didn’t really want to put much thought into the issue, thinking that a lot of these internet-related laws or acts usually don’t garner much of a problem in the end. Of course, it crushes the right that people have to free speech, but when I look at it in light of other things, I feel like it’s not going to take a massive toll on my life.

I could be wrong, though.

My brother seemed to only have become interested in the issue today. I hardly talk to him since he’s occupied with studying and activities like taekwondo, and I have work myself, but when we do get to chat, it’s usually about the internet or music or something that is indirectly related to the internet. Today he brought up SOPA, as if it was completely new to him. He does use the internet a lot – just as much as I do – but he doesn’t do much other than play games and watch videos occasionally. That said, I’m not surprised he wasn’t as educated on SOPA as I was.

My parents find me to be very terrible when it comes to “general knowledge” and world news and “current affairs”. Truth be told, I hate current affairs and I find news incredibly dull.

It’s always “three thousand people were killed when a ship ran aground on the east coast of Whatchamacallit. About fifty of them are believed to be Australians”. The latter sentence always ticks me off, because for some reason, when a large number of people have died, the fact is always put forward that so-and-so Australians have died. I begin to wonder if it is like that in other countries. Perhaps not. My brother, on the other hand, gratuitously laughs and repeats lines from newsreaders that follow as such: “Good evening a man has died…” where there is no pause for breath between the greeting and the announcement of a tragic incident.

But when it comes to internet-related things, oh, I like to believe I’m on the ball. Which is why I wasn’t at all surprised when my mum said, “What are you guys talking about?” Neither she or my dad had any idea what SOPA was about, though my dad had a faint grasp of the situation. My dad uses the internet to download music, and my mum sends and receives emails. That’s about it. If the internet were to go down for whatever reason, they wouldn’t feel that affected.

I guess in the past few weeks, being busy with work, I haven’t felt so attached to the internet as I have before. I know, I work with the internet with web design and I have to be connected to the internet, but I still don’t feel that need to check my email every two minutes. My consolidation has done me really well; I have cut down on a lot of online projects and I’ve relaxed in terms of blogging and reading blogs. It’s something I enjoy, but after nine hours at work, sometimes I really do just want to read a book, or watch Futurama, or crash on the couch and just see whatever movie is on television. I have hated many things about the internet – the drama, the idiots, the YouTube commentators, the YouTube “community” (as my boss says, “what community? More like a flash mob”), the Tumblr bitches, Tumblr in general, the whiny bloggers, the paedophiles, the sex advertisements, the thieves, the…

Oh, I could go on. But you know, it’s times like these when I really appreciate a good walk out of the office and Vietnamese food with the gang (I’m just referring to workmates here), a walk to the bus stop with Jebediah ringing in my ears, or just curled up in bed on a Saturday morning finishing a really good book.

Whatever happens with SOPA, well, rest assured that it can go right back up the backsides of anyone who makes the internet an unpleasant place.

Maybe we all do. But a lot of us take photos that aren’t ours to use as avatars, rephrase things, quote Wikipedia, have downloaded an album without paying, have shared music with everyone else – maybe we do get a taste of our own medicine, but who’s going to stop us? It’s the freakin’ internet.

Self-errands

Georgie — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 12:58:11 +0000

Ryan used to tell me, when we parted ways, that he needed to “do the rounds”. Yes, I get that. But I just preferred to say “running errands”, even though the definition of errands is doing tasks on someone else’s behalf. Either way, in the context of this blog post, let’s think of errands as mini-missions, which can be for yourself or for someone else.

Yesterday I had a mini-mission: shopping.

Right, that isn’t really practical. I went shopping with my mum and my brother, meaning that we all had to make a bit of a sacrifice. My mum was sacrificing her day off, and her time, for me. I was sacrificing my reading time and day off as well (I’d worked all week), but in turn she was doing me a favour. Since my brother was tagging along, I had to sacrifice some of my time knowing full well that he had some things in mind to buy too.

I suppose we weren’t doing this for fun; we actually need some new clothes. My brother’s feet are growing fast and he needs new shoes; his shirts are getting too small and he needs new ones. I’m running out of skirts (no really, I know it’s unimaginable that someone like me could be running out of skirts, but when you think about it, all I really wear is my “signature skirt”, the same blue denim skirt I wear practically everywhere), and I am also in need of some simple girly tees.

I’m bored of band shirts and geek shirts.

A little. Just a little. I’m not lying, I’m trying to be honest. I just want… more girly tees?

Either way, I’ll admit it. I’m a girl and sometimes I want new clothes.

I had a mini-mission: Find a new skirt. The sad thing is that I didn’t, and at the end of the day I walked away with two new pairs of jeans. Jeans?! Georgina wearing jeans? What have I done?

For those who know me well, I hate jeans. But I found jeans that actually fit me. I know, the legs were too long as usual because I’m ridiculously tiny, but they actually fit me. I can’t wait to wear them. I hope they don’t loosen up and get bigger later like the majority of my jeans did.

Parking at the shopping centre was free for three hours, but we checked the time and realised we would have to pay a fee because we had our car parked for three hours and five minutes. My mum was unfamiliar with how to use the pay machine, so my brother instructed her to put the parking ticket in.

The screen just read, “Thank you for shopping. Drive safely”. We were just confused for a moment, then my brother said, “We don’t have to pay, I guess.”
“The time on the machine said 16:26. We were right on time, exactly three hours…” I said as we ran to our car. “Hurry!”
I didn’t realise that we didn’t actually have to run because the machine had printed 16:26 on the ticket, exactly three hours after we had arrived. We got out of the carpark without any hassle. Another minute and we would have had to pay.

Another mini-mission. Change phone providers. Yesterday I approached Vodafone, my phone provider, and asked them to change my dad’s details to my own. As my phone number was registered under my dad’s name when I was underage, and now I’m an adult, I thought it would be best to do that before I changed providers. After the man at the Vodafone store asked for identification and such, he realised that he made a mistake and I could not change my dad’s details to my own unless I changed plans to post-paid. He couldn’t make any kind of exception and the details would not be changed because of some idiotic “policy”. I don’t know what policy doesn’t let you change owner details unless you change to a post-paid plan. Sounds like they’re trying to fork us into a contract.

After that happened, I decided to go to Optus (my new provider! ) with my dad. Thankfully, they could switch my number to their network under my dad’s name, and later I would be able to change to my details. The people in-store are really friendly. My mum doesn’t like their phone representatives though. I have to agree I prefer to go in-store when it comes to mobile phone issues. I don’t like waiting on the line when I call customer service. Mini-mission: Complete!

On another happy note, I went to the brain centre today to have some tests done eight weeks after taking my medication. It’s not a true and final conclusion but they have found that I have responded so well to the medication that I don’t have depression anymore. I’m not sure how much longer I have to take the medication but it has to stay this way – so I predict it’ll still be quite some time.

So how do I feel? Great, really. I don’t know if I’ve noticed it too much myself but I don’t feel as easily irritated, I haven’t felt down for no reason, and I haven’t felt stressed despite working almost full-time. Normally I’d complain about going to the shops or doing chores but I have complained so much less. I have had less time for having “me time” and have been out and about doing things that need to be done, but I don’t feel like it’s wasting my time at all. I’m not itching to go on the internet and I’ve found my love for reading again… I think this is going very positively.

The “Add to cart” button

Georgie — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:23:31 +0000

The “add to cart” button will be the death of me, I swear. A couple of days ago I decided to look on eBay for… something. I don’t remember what it was exactly – because when you go online shopping, one thing always leads to another – but I just thought about something I needed (read: needed, not wanted) and thought, “Let’s see if it’s on eBay.”

Alas, it was, for a much cheaper price than I had expected.

Oh. now I remember what it was. I was looking for earrings. I have been thinking about getting a cartilage piercing recently, like an outer conch piercing. I wanted to originally have the tip of my ear done but now I would prefer something subtle and not just on the edge but on a flatter part of my ear. I have three piercings in each ear already, and they’re in my earlobes. I remember having two pairs of piercings done at the same time. It didn’t hurt that much and I could deal with it – the healing process also wasn’t so bad. I was about twelve years old. I know a cartilage piercing might be a bit more painful and I haven’t had experience of a needle going through my ear (as far as I remember, all my piercings were done with the piercing gun, now a tool that is not recommended because of the damage it can cause). This got me looking at photographs of people with cartilage piercings and ears adorned with jewellery, which made me want some new earrings. I have rather sensitive ears so if I wear earrings that aren’t real silver or gold, I can only wear them for a day otherwise my ears react badly. That’s why they call those pieces fashion jewellery, I guess.

Regardless, I couldn’t stop myself from buying a few simple ball/bead stud earrings from eBay. I am a bit bored of my gold earrings. They’re very lovely, but they’re not as simple as studs and I would actually like to have some very simple earrings. This search for earrings, which took place a couple of nights ago, resulted in me sleeping at 3:30am this morning looking for other jewellery on eBay. I was just amazed at some of the prices, and I know it’s just fashion jewellery and it’s not real, but I really couldn’t help myself. I had so many tabs open in my browser, trying to decide what to get. I had so many tabs that I couldn’t see what was in each tab; all I could see of the tab was a bit of grey.

Finally, through looking through all those tabs, I chose carefully and had a good long think about everything. I put about 30 items in my cart. I was spamming that “Add to cart” button like crazy. After looking at the stuff in my cart, I started sorting it out. Since I was using James’s eBay account, I kept telling him what I was up to. I took about three hours sorting out everything in my cart. He told me to take my time.

I decided against a few rings and earrings, knowing that I wouldn’t wear them all at once. It’s a bit like my mum telling me I didn’t need a bigger iPod than 8GB because I wouldn’t listen to 8GB of music in one day. I did tell her that sometimes I feel like listening to a song and it might not be on my iPod… I guess that doesn’t happen often, but when you think about it, spending a few hundred bucks on something that only dissipates a bit of disappointment that you might only experience once a week… is probably not worth it. So I thought that buying an incredulous amount of rings and earrings was silly. I’ll let the $20 worth of jewellery arrive in the mail, and I’ll enjoy each piece without being overwhelmed.

The good thing is that with everything I was buying – shipping was free of charge. I usually absolutely despise shipping and check shipping every time I buy something over the internet. Shipping fees are usually rather expensive to Australia. I can’t count the times I’ve chosen so many items and discovered that shipping cost more than the items themselves. Just a few days ago I wanted to buy a shirt for $12, but the shipping was $16. Oh, come on.

Today my mum and I went shopping. She had a weekend off work and being the loving mother she is, took me clothes shopping. I wore my Avenged Sevenfold band shirt and my mum commented on me looking like a tomboy. I said it was easy to take off to change clothes. I didn’t want to get into an argument like “I love this band and there is nothing you can do about it”.

Later, she pointed out that there was a biker smoking a cigarette who kept on staring at me. I just shrugged it off and didn’t make eye contact. My mum thought it was very strange and once the coast was clear, she told me he was actually looking at my shirt.

“What’s wrong with your shirt? Why is he looking at your shirt?”
“Oh…” I realised. “He probably recognises the band on my shirt.”
“I can’t believe a guy like that was looking at your shirt.”
“I like metal music.”

Anyway, we ended up buying me about 17 dresses. I am so happy with all of them. It’s so hard to find me dresses because of my tiny frame, and I was really after some casual tops and skirts… but I ended up with a range of casual and semi-formal dresses (mostly semi-formal). We were in a rush at the end as we sorted out all the dresses we were holding, choosing only what was best. The stall was soon to close and the owner was getting annoying pestering us to hurry up.

I can imagine now if I had been sorting through the items in my eBay cart in the real world, someone would have yelled at me many times. Especially for removing things from my cart and going back to look for them and re-add them, only to remove them again and come out with less than half of what I put in.

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Georgie — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:58:23 +0000

Another two days of work has come and gone. I am beginning to feel the heaviness of having what is almost a full-time job, and admittedly, I am beginning to dread what it’ll be like when classes start for me this semester. I haven’t been able to choose my classes yet, which is rather irritating because I want to quit my job at the education centre and just have my one newest job. It is going pretty well, and since I’ll be in the heart of the city more often with classes and work, they mesh into a schedule better. The hours I work at the education centre are also at an awkward time in the afternoon to evening, and since I’ll most likely have afternoon classes, I’d very much rather not have to worry about travelling back and forth.

Feeling the heaviness is partially good, and partially bad. I like that I’m filling my time with something other than mindless websurfing and watching Futurama. I don’t think many people would agree with me that it puts more value into life, but I feel that it does. I find that everything is of more value when I am working long hours, because I return home and I certainly don’t take my time for granted, I certainly don’t take my sleep for granted…

But heck, I slept at 1:30am this morning because I was just online shopping. Not the best idea, and something I tend to get stuck doing. I really do value my sleep, and though I don’t get much, I don’t really force myself to stay awake. If my eyes droop, it’s really time to stop. Despite walking into work feeling groggy, and having nearly fallen asleep on the train because I chose to read a novel instead of power napping, I felt pretty good the rest of the day.

Unfortunately the iMac I was using (that belongs to my boss) had problems with its hard drive, forcing my boss to go down the road and buy a new drive. It took about two hours to create a backup, take apart the iMac, install the new drive, reinstall OS X Lion and restore the backup. I managed to finish reading the rest of my novel in that time. I started reading yesterday, and it’s the third book I’ve read this year. I have made a goal to read 50 books this year, and I’m compiling a list on my other blog. I love reading, but the past three years I haven’t read very much because I’ve been so busy. I’ve decided to make use of my commutes to work and read, read, read. It feels good to be able to read and I don’t feel like I’m just wasting time. I like thinking and planning in my head but I like that I can get through many pages of a book while I sit there.

Sometimes I feel like I want to fast forward parts of life that are mundane, like showering, brushing teeth, sleeping… well, I can’t say sleeping is mundane, but there are points in life where I feel like I wish time would pass more quickly. I suppose the feeling was caused by getting bored on train rides, but now that I am getting back into reading, perhaps I don’t feel that way anymore.

I had lunch with James, Mike and Shirley – we ate at a little Japanese restaurant down the road from work. I chose the bento box – it was just too irresistible and I was dying for some (grilled) salmon. Mike got a bento box too, while Shirley went for the curry chicken rice and James opted for the mushroom spaghetti. I think we all enjoyed our lunch there.

Today at work I got to work on WordPress. I was excited, I’m not kidding. I wanted to jump up and down. I don’t have a problem with Textpattern but I always like variety and doing something different. WordPress is in no way new to me, so when I had to make a mobile theme for a website my hands shook with excitement. I had already coded the main parts in HTML5 and created a stylesheet, and I converted the whole thing to a complete (mobile) WordPress theme in less than ten minutes. I wasn’t really trying to race myself but I just felt this great feeling of glee.

I used the WPtap mobile detector – it’s great. One of the best mobile detecting plugins you will find. I like WPTouch, but the thing is – it does it for you. I am in love with the idea of making my own mobile theme (totally going to do this at some point), and this plugin will set a different theme when it detects that the user is on a mobile device. You pretty much just have to make a new mobile-friendly theme and install the plugin and change the settings.

Too much fun.

I love work.