Our car has been causing no ends of the drama lately. Stopping, jerking around, needing multiple jumpstarts, and then stopping dead flat with less than 30 minutes till my next appointment. There is a rainbow at the end of the storm though, some much-needed repairs are being carried out under warranty. And in this case, it's a brand new gearbox. Normally this would cost $4k. Dayum. We managed to overcome most of the things we needed a car for, but we'll be better at it this week. Forewarned is forearmed, and all that. And thank god for the in-laws and their loan of a car for the weekend work that I will discuss in bullet point number 3. OMG FORESHADOWING!!

Because of this my posts have started to fall to the wayside on Deadzone. Sorry to everyone who is waiting for me to post--skip me if you can. But today was full-on, and I needed all of the night to get my paperwork and stuff sorted. I will be posting by this time tomorrow night. Can someone link to this post in chat so they know what's going on with me?

Hey, remember this guy?? well I bumped into him this week, whilst we were both working. He seemed to have forgiven the last few things that've happened between us, or has a flawed/skewed memory of the matter, or has just decided to forgive and forget. He's in a customer-service-ish role, so I guess some of his more colourful words have been suppressed. It was damn weird.

Thanks to car woes, my work performance has not been great this week. I was lucky to make up for it by working a 6th day this week, where I caught up with (and exceeded) my weekly quota. I have a pretty good crew with my current job. After working in Tauranga, we went to Mt Maunganui for a while. They are intelligent and thoughtful, and I always enjoy discussions with them. There are some very good jokers, we always crack each other up.

Speaking about cracking other people up, I got a pleasant ego-boost from beckyh2112 with her recent (and very in-jokey) post quoting some of the stuff I've bantered at various times. Thanks, Becca.

At 7:28pm today, in the dark, whilst I was driving back home on the other side of Cambridge, I saw a shooting star for the first time today. It was beautiful. I wish someone was with me to share it with.

'Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life' must be played at my funeral. Must. And sung along to by the attendees. And I am serious about this. Don't make me haunt you.

 

God tonight was awesome.

I'm still so drunk.

Mario Kart's just been turned off. Hot Cho colates then bed.

Everyone did so well with their costumes. Well, almost everyone. Pictures later.

Thanks for such a great birthday party, everyone.

Zzz.

I has it.

Time to put the week I've had into context.

Yes, I lost a phone and a wallet. And hey, other shit stuff that has happened includes:

( The Bad )

So yeah, hasn't been the best of weeks But there's been plenty of good stuff too:
( The Good )

So yeah, job situation is shit at the moment. Noone's hiring, and I came into some unexpected stress and expenses as I flailed around trying to regain my eft-pos card and license. But things could be a lot worse. There's good in there with the bad. And after the initial stress, the helplessness of knowing my property is never coming back to me, I'm over it.

And as I go through the good things list I have just written for myself, I see that the good things that have come to me have come thanks in no small part to friends and the people I love in my life.

Thanks, guys.

No luck in the job extension. She is sticking with her guns, which is fair enough, since a Redundancy isn't supposed to be something that is flexbile. But damn it, those extra hours to take me up to Christmas would have been handy.

Bah.

I have a job interview to go to in a few minutes, I don't really want to have to do this job, but it's work. Gah.

Haven't made a substantial post for a while, might as well post now.

A fortnight ago, we traded in our crappy '91 Camry in for a 2004 Honda Jazz. In Red. It's a fantastic car, and we're really loving everything about it. Whether it's the presence of an air conditioner, the fact that three-point-turns are now just, well, turns, or that the rear demister works the way it should. Just think--if the old car's demister was working perhaps I would have been able to see where I was going before I broke the rear window! Oh wells.
( The last two weekends )

It's been a great couple of weekends. After this weekend Izabella is going to be at her grandparents, so we might have to see if we can't get up to some antics then too. Another trip to Auckland, perhaps..?

Not one of those temp things.

An actual, permanent job with hours that are not ideal, but still reasonable, and pays a respectable wage.

And there was much rejoicing.

Now, is it the one I want...?

More info later.

Oh internets, how I've missed you.

What a weekend. We're almost entirely moved in now. All that's left are some random bits and pieces at the old flat--we've got most things here at this point. There's a lot of cleaning to do, but we'll get there. The computer was finally set up late Sunday evening (talk about restraint on my part!)

Lyz and I make a pretty good team when it comes to general moving. Between her logic and forethought and my spatial awareness and (most importantly) ability to lift heavy things, we are an excellent combination.

Saturday was insane. We had some quiet time until about 8:30am, and then got into it. Izabella was picked up by the parents of a friend of hers--they gave us a neat yellow trolley which has seen us well all weekend. The rest of the day was a blurr of packing, shifting, unpacking, having some good times with friends and driving cars with trailers and vans to and fro. The highlights, for me, were spending quality time with some good friends, with a distant second being loading up trailers. I couldn't help myself, that was genuinely fun, though more than one correlation was made to playing Tetris. Our friends got to have a look around the new place for the first time, and really liked it. Lots said they're looking forward to geek nights held in it, which we hope there will be many. We had pizza for dinner before I did one final small van-load of things for the day (and ran some pizza out to lord_reluctant since he was at work when we got it) and called it a night.

Sunday we got a lot less done, but that's what happens when it's just the two of us and with no child minding. Mind you, it's been a pretty good, the house is nearly finished. All of the large furniture things have been moved, as has most of the rubbish/green waste. we're just down to annoying pieces of paper and bits and bobs now. Late at night I realized how grateful I am for my wonderful and clever Lyz who had the foresight to ensure I had dress clothes for work and school clothes for Izabella. However I now have a mild-ish case of Sunburn, and I also ache in places where I didn't know I had places.

There are some people who definitely need thanking, and without whose dedication and help we wouldn't be here today:

The parents of Izabella's friend, they don't read this but for casual friends they did a lot.

lord_reluctant. We didn't expect anything from him this time; he was the one that helped with our last shift. Not only did he secure a van for us, when he learned he had an afternoon shift he put a good three hours of light (and not-too-light) work in the morning. Amazing!

darknedchivarly, who did an amazing amount of work and whose loyalty and dependability is incredible.

3_2_1_letsdance, who despite being sick as a dog and would have been completely forgiven for calling in sick on the day, showed up anyway and did everything he possibly could to help us out.

te_hazazel, who had every understandable reason not to show up, including another engagement on the day, but surprised us all and showed up to help after said engagement. An incredible trooper and a total sweetheart who deserves more hugs than I have time to give her.

And of course hazazel's excellent husband, An understated genius with a solution for every problem we faced and... well I want to say "he's good with rope" but I can't trust certain members of my flist to not make jokes about that, do I?

You guys all rock, and thank you so much again for your help.

So yeah. I got the temp work. As in ACTUALLY GOT IT I SIGNED THE CONTRACT AND EVERYTHING. It's call centre work, which will be interesting.

It's also only for 3 1/2 weeks, but that'll give me some time to find a more permanent job. And looking for work whilst making money is ALWAYS more comfortable than not. I start on Monday.

Of course, all of this is coming together pretty damn quickly. Next week I am:

-Starting my first day at my new job
-Finishing packing and starting moving/cleaning
-Attending my last Indian cooking class
-Meeting the boy I'll be mentoring for Big Brothers Big Sisters
-Attending a career day for another place I might be trying to land a job with
-Going to a parent-teacher conference for Izabella

BUSY.

I've also been told by the blood bank that I should donate platelets, so I hope they can fit me in tomorrow sometime since next week is completely out.

Oh, and before I forget. Thank you so much to the support people have offered on last week, both in the replies to my stressful posts and through other mediums. I really, truly appreciate it. It's good to have friends who are there for you. Thank you, thank you.

So, I got back from picking up Izabella from the after-school care that we enrolled her in this week.

You know. The one that we got her into because I couldn't pick her up myself. Because I had a job.

So, after three fucking days of them being such great caregivers for her, and being understanding about our financial situation while we move and all, and with Izabella spending time with one of her school friends after hours, I've had to tell them that I would be severing the contract with them immediately.

More than anything else these last two days, this just really got to me. I'm so humiliated, I'm infuriated with the fucker who told me everything would be fine, I just.. GAAAH.

Last week, everything was looking good. I mean sure, we've still got the nice flat we're moving to, but we're going to be moving to it on a single income.

I really just want to cry. Any time life wants to stop crapping on me, that'd be just peachy.

So, uh, yeah. That job thing? Not happening.

Apparently when I said that I was putting my family first and didn't want to work crazy hours, they figured that ending the day between 10pm and midnight was okay.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Oh well, just as well I've still got CVs out there.

*sighs, curls up, and mentally prepares for more crushing job-hunting tomorrow*

The guy wants us to move in! We're moving in three weeks!

What a shitty time to move (income is shifting to monthly, I won't be paid until after we're moving and all) but GOD this house is great. Nice family neighbourhood, pleasant landlord, great fixtures and fittings (dishwasher and garbage disposal! Hurrah!) three bedrooms and some nice living room area.

Oh my GOD so much to do this week! *flails*

Viewed another house today. It's a little further from school than we might have liked, but it looks GREAT and has a lot of awesome features. In spite of the lousy luck we've been having, dare I hope that we could actually get this place?

Yes. I dare.

Heh. I'm so slack. First, I'm slack for not getting out there to look for a job. I've never really had to do that, so I was dragging my feet on finishing my CV and getting out there. Then, I was slack in posting to LJ the fact that I'm now out and looking for work.

Of course, that's now out of date as One day later I now have job.

The thing is, I don't know how good a job it is right now. At the moment I consider it an interim job, as it's not in IT like I was hoping for. But hey, the hours are reasonable and I can't argue with the pay.

I start next Wednesday. I'll get some more CVs out there and see what else is in the IT department. But this is a much more comfortable place to be looking for work from.

Annnnd bullet points!

-Saw Transformers again today with lord_reluctant. I didn't pay this time either, thanks to a free pass on my film squad card. Between free passes, birthday presents, prizes and competitions won, and the free kids meal toy the girl at the Burger King drivethrough gave me, there hasn't been a lot I've spent money on for this movie. The stuff I have bought was on special, too. Heh.

-To this end, I'm surprised with how much of a resurgence the movie has created. At a party I went to last weekend, people kept on asking questions about the original TF toys/cartoon, and were blown away by my encylopaedic knowledge on the subject. I know at least one guy who has taken to collecting the movie figures - and through some browbeating subtle persuasion on my part, has also joined up to a New Zealand TF community and is considering doing some repainting. ONE OF US. ONE OF US.

-Izabella lost her two front teeth recently. She has the most adorable lisp.

-I tried to make another AMV, but it didn't pan out how I had hoped. The music was too fast and the video was too slow. But I still liked the intro so I just posted the start of it. Maybe if I sped up everything it'd work out. We'd have to see.( Eh, it's okay. ) heatherbeast put a nice comment on a messageboard complimenting my AMV-Fu, which really made my day. Thanks, Heather. *hugs*

-School is going okay. I need to study more, but I'm having fun. My tutor is a couple of years older than me and a real geek, so the training atmosphere is really relaxed and pleasant. Plus, the other person learning at the same time as I worked at an appliance store and got us $50 off the HDD+DVD recorder we've been eyeing up!

-I really think that if you can't be bothered reading that you should reconsider whether or not a text-based roleplaying system is for you. Just sayin'.

-I was hoping for some help from Firefox users. I want to know if there is a user profile list that you can get for Firefox in a similar vein to windows users. Ideally, what this would mean is that if I were to manage multiple message board identities or gmail accounts, I could just swap my profile over rather than going through tedious logging out/logging in pages. Anyone who could help?

-I REALLY need more early nights.

So apparently I've fallen off the wagon as far as health and activity goes following quitting my job and going into study.

Today I've resumed my walking after several months of not doing it - funny how that didn't get a mention in my blog, isn't it?

If you are talking or chatting with me in the next few days, could you just ask how this is going? I really want to keep this up now that I've started it.

So, YET AGAIN I discover that someone is aggravated with me, and I had NO IDEA. Yeah.

EDIT: Also, I've now gotten some replies aimed at mocking those who are annoyed at me. I should probably clarify and say that this post is me being disappointed in myself for not noticing the signs before it came to a head (of sorts) rather than anger at anyone else for DARING to be upset.

So I played my tabletop game of Mutants and Masterminds tonight. Apparently the GM has set us up against Cthulu.

Quote of the evening:

You can't make knives out of play-doh.
-The shape shifting Malleable Man, as played by water_to_air, expresses some limitations on his powers.

Today I called into my old job. I had some paperwork to finish off, so I dropped that off and talked with Sharon. I asked her how Bevan was. She tells me he wasn't working there anymore. I asked her why. She says she's not at liberty to say.

For those of you who have been following his exploits, what do you think the chances are that this was an amicable departure?

I just realized I haven't said anything about school since I started last week. I'd better do something about that.

Today, playing Wii Sports, Izabella said 'oh fuck'. Dang. I was hoping she wouldn't use that word until she was at least eight.

So, I did the parental thing and gave her a time out. When she was done I went and gave her a hug.

While hugging me, she says to me "I'm sorry I said fuck."

It's so difficult to tell your daughter that she's not allowed to say that word even then when you're struggling to resist cracking up laughing.