I'm grumpy today. I can't shake the feeling of being really annoyed about nothing in particular. Oh, there are plenty of things to be irritated with, such as the freaking stupid weather. London is currently the same temperature as Cape Town, with the same weather conditions, including massive grey clouds and pissing rain. However, it is the middle of summer here, and the middle of winter in CT. Ok you smarmy gits reading this from SA - you can shut off your thoughts of I Told You So right about now. Yes, I know I chose to come to England, and I know it has shiteous weather as a general rule, but there is no law against grumbling about it incessantly! I am also annoyed with the fact that yet again it's rent time, so Shoes and I are broke. Because we both get paid weekly, we have to pay all our expenses over the course of two weeks. So the first two weeks of the month we always have money, and the last two weeks we don't. We've been living like this for a year, but we still can't get used to it - we need that monthly salary to balance things out. I am also annoyed with work. Nothing in particluar has happened. I'm actually having a fairly relaxed day. But I am gritting my teeth with the effort of being nice to everyone. I can't tell if the honeymoon period has worn off and I'm no longer quite as taken with my wonderful working environment as I was last month, or if it's just a case of the grumps and I may enjoy it again tommorrow. I suppose the fact that I've started applying for other jobs again and am not getting any responses might have something to do with this, but I just can't go through that rant again. While it's fine for blog therapy to be used in the process of growth and self-discovery, I have to admit that posting rant after rant on the same topic only serves to highlight a lack of growth, or gross incompetence, or both. Since I do think I've been growing as a person, I must therefore be grossly incompetent, and if that's the case then, in the words of Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that.
At least there are two things to look forward to this week - although with the mood I'm in right now, I'm glowering at the thought of doing both of them. I expect I will feel differently when the time comes though, as they are both very cool events. The first is hooking up with an old friend from CT. Not just a random schoolfriend, but someone who I spent alot of time and teenage angst with and who featured quite prominently in my life for a couple of years in high school. Herman the German, as we called him back then (yes, he is German, it's not just some weird teenage thing) was in my group of friends in Std 7 when we first discovered booze, sex (well, not quite sex but kerfuffling anyway) and how to piss off the parentals. He was also, incidentally, my first real kiss. We were playing spin the bottle at his house when I was 14. I'd pecked another guy on the lips before, but this was the real deal. I remember we had to go in the kitchen by ourselves, as that was the rule - you either got to do a short 10 second kiss in front of everyone or a 2 minute kiss by yourselves in the kitchen, although I can't remember how it was decided what you did. What I do remember is that 14 year olds suck at kissing. Not just him, and not just me (although I'm pretty damn sure I sucked - how can you not when all you really know about a french kiss is that you're supposed to stick your tongue in someone's mouth), but all 14 year olds in general. In fact, high school guys in general suck at kissing. Maybe they have to find the love of a woman patient and tolerant enough of all the washing machine maneouvers to teach them before they get it down to an art. Anyway. So he was my first kiss - although I only told him that years later. We then went through a stage of going to church and youth group together - he became the bad-ass friend with the good heart who I wanted to save (Std 7 was a blip in the radar of my otherwise smooth Christian upbringing - up until the age of 17 I really was a model child). And then we matriculated, and I went off the rails with a rather bad seed of a boyfriend, and we lost touch. I've seen him intermittently in the years since high school. Although we've never actually arranged to go out and do something, we've chatted whenever we've bumped into each other - in the offices of OVC organising flights to come overseas; in my parents' driveway when, after roughly a two year absence, he dropped in to show me his new car; at Pulse where I ran into him and his best friend, my High School Obssession, while out on a chicks' night. I can't really say that I know him anymore. He's my friend, yes, but more by association than actual friendship efforts. Shoes isn't too keen on him, mainly because the few times that they've met, Herman was very intent on impressing whatever fad of the moment he was involved in on me, while Shoes stood there pretty much flatly ignored by him. Not that it really matters whether or not Shoes likes him, Shoes has made it quite clear that my old schoolfriends are just that: MY old schoolfriends. One of Shoes' worst nightmares involves me making him accompany me to an event where the guests consist primarily or entirely of my former classmates, and he spends the night making small talk. The way some people feel about heights, spiders, small spaces or peas (unless that's just me), that's how Shoes feels about small talk. You'd think it had the venom of a Cape Cobra. I know if this UK mini-reunion ever gets off the ground, I'm on my own. And actually, I think I prefer it that way. It means I can spend time flitting from one person to another, spending as long or as little time as I like catching up with each one, and not worrying that my boyfriend is going to a) die of boredom or b) get so uncomfortable and antsy that he heads for the bar one too many times, thereby cutting the evening short with a display of raucousness. And he's absolutely right - why should he be forced into these awkward conversations with people he will never see again?
So that's event number one. Number two is Snow Patrol - live at the O2 Arena in Greenwich this Thursay! Tickets for this event were sold out within minutes, as is the norm for any event in London, so I feel very lucky to be going. Usually, you have to know the exact time that tickets go on sale, and you have to be ready to type in your credit card info at the speed of light so you don't miss your place in the electronic queue. In this case though, the tickets came courtesy of Ebay, and a madly enthusiastic Mello, who wanted to go so badly she just decided to buy the two and give one to some lucky friend so she had company. Lucky friend, being me of course, is now pathetically grateful and indebted to her for life, because the tickets were not cheap. As far as gigs go, the list of bands, artists and theatre productions I want to see is endless. While I don't think any concert I go to will ever top my Robbie Williams Experience, Snow Patrol is fairly high up on my list of must-see bands, and I never would have known a thing about this gig if Mello hadn't been so resourceful.
It's taken me a good couple of hours to write this post, in between doing my work, and I'm quite pleased to say that while I'm no Britney Cheers (cringe, sorry, I just watched Bring It On: All or Nothing), I no longer feel that I can give Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau a run for their money either. The power of writing never ceases to amaze me.
At least there are two things to look forward to this week - although with the mood I'm in right now, I'm glowering at the thought of doing both of them. I expect I will feel differently when the time comes though, as they are both very cool events. The first is hooking up with an old friend from CT. Not just a random schoolfriend, but someone who I spent alot of time and teenage angst with and who featured quite prominently in my life for a couple of years in high school. Herman the German, as we called him back then (yes, he is German, it's not just some weird teenage thing) was in my group of friends in Std 7 when we first discovered booze, sex (well, not quite sex but kerfuffling anyway) and how to piss off the parentals. He was also, incidentally, my first real kiss. We were playing spin the bottle at his house when I was 14. I'd pecked another guy on the lips before, but this was the real deal. I remember we had to go in the kitchen by ourselves, as that was the rule - you either got to do a short 10 second kiss in front of everyone or a 2 minute kiss by yourselves in the kitchen, although I can't remember how it was decided what you did. What I do remember is that 14 year olds suck at kissing. Not just him, and not just me (although I'm pretty damn sure I sucked - how can you not when all you really know about a french kiss is that you're supposed to stick your tongue in someone's mouth), but all 14 year olds in general. In fact, high school guys in general suck at kissing. Maybe they have to find the love of a woman patient and tolerant enough of all the washing machine maneouvers to teach them before they get it down to an art. Anyway. So he was my first kiss - although I only told him that years later. We then went through a stage of going to church and youth group together - he became the bad-ass friend with the good heart who I wanted to save (Std 7 was a blip in the radar of my otherwise smooth Christian upbringing - up until the age of 17 I really was a model child). And then we matriculated, and I went off the rails with a rather bad seed of a boyfriend, and we lost touch. I've seen him intermittently in the years since high school. Although we've never actually arranged to go out and do something, we've chatted whenever we've bumped into each other - in the offices of OVC organising flights to come overseas; in my parents' driveway when, after roughly a two year absence, he dropped in to show me his new car; at Pulse where I ran into him and his best friend, my High School Obssession, while out on a chicks' night. I can't really say that I know him anymore. He's my friend, yes, but more by association than actual friendship efforts. Shoes isn't too keen on him, mainly because the few times that they've met, Herman was very intent on impressing whatever fad of the moment he was involved in on me, while Shoes stood there pretty much flatly ignored by him. Not that it really matters whether or not Shoes likes him, Shoes has made it quite clear that my old schoolfriends are just that: MY old schoolfriends. One of Shoes' worst nightmares involves me making him accompany me to an event where the guests consist primarily or entirely of my former classmates, and he spends the night making small talk. The way some people feel about heights, spiders, small spaces or peas (unless that's just me), that's how Shoes feels about small talk. You'd think it had the venom of a Cape Cobra. I know if this UK mini-reunion ever gets off the ground, I'm on my own. And actually, I think I prefer it that way. It means I can spend time flitting from one person to another, spending as long or as little time as I like catching up with each one, and not worrying that my boyfriend is going to a) die of boredom or b) get so uncomfortable and antsy that he heads for the bar one too many times, thereby cutting the evening short with a display of raucousness. And he's absolutely right - why should he be forced into these awkward conversations with people he will never see again?
So that's event number one. Number two is Snow Patrol - live at the O2 Arena in Greenwich this Thursay! Tickets for this event were sold out within minutes, as is the norm for any event in London, so I feel very lucky to be going. Usually, you have to know the exact time that tickets go on sale, and you have to be ready to type in your credit card info at the speed of light so you don't miss your place in the electronic queue. In this case though, the tickets came courtesy of Ebay, and a madly enthusiastic Mello, who wanted to go so badly she just decided to buy the two and give one to some lucky friend so she had company. Lucky friend, being me of course, is now pathetically grateful and indebted to her for life, because the tickets were not cheap. As far as gigs go, the list of bands, artists and theatre productions I want to see is endless. While I don't think any concert I go to will ever top my Robbie Williams Experience, Snow Patrol is fairly high up on my list of must-see bands, and I never would have known a thing about this gig if Mello hadn't been so resourceful.
It's taken me a good couple of hours to write this post, in between doing my work, and I'm quite pleased to say that while I'm no Britney Cheers (cringe, sorry, I just watched Bring It On: All or Nothing), I no longer feel that I can give Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau a run for their money either. The power of writing never ceases to amaze me.
1 comment:
Nice to reminisce with you :)
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