The Book of Ashes

tuesday 8:53AM

Ok an Early entry tonight. Think I might go to bed early as well. Serves me right for staying up so late last night. Well my left thigh was just a little stiff today, I hobbled round like an old man. This is good though, it will only last while the muscles rebuild themselves into a stronger, tougher form.

I got to sleep in a little this morning. Our normal weekly development meeting was an hour later than normal. I am currently taking Tuesdays off work due to OOS problems but usually come in for our weekly meeting. It was boring as usual, the only slightly interesting bit being when noise from a parade below waffled up to us and we all looked out the window at it. Its amazing how the sound travels all the way up to the 31st floor!

Went home, caught up with my sister. We went up to my Nana & Poppas to visit and for lunch. My Poppa had just had an operation on his knee so had to see how he was. He seemed good but a little worn out by it all. I talked to Mereana, a younger cousin. She is six years old and was practising her 1 times tables and 10 times tables, she knew some other ones as well but I was quite impressed, she hadn't been taught this stuff at school yet but was learning off her other cousins. I taught her how to do her 100 times tables and her 1000 times tables! She picked it up pretty fast, I just love to see young minds learn, it is great. She then quizzed me giving me 1000x1000 and 100x100 thinking they were hard, I kicked arse at those so she made up a few harder ones like 364x364 and worse... I had to admit they were too hard for me (couldn't be bothered calculating them out, would take too long and the trusty calculator has made my mind lazy). My Nana reminded me how at age 5 I came into their room one day when they were visiting and asked if they knew how high I could count. Apparently I kept counting and counting, writing down what I was up too then continuing the next day. I think I got somewhere near a 1000...

Came back home and did a little work on the server with Damian. He had hurt his back from skateboarding too hard the night before. Quite funny as I had stiff muscles as well. I had 20 mins before I had to be home to meet my cousin so challenged him to a quick game of chess, he pulled out a smoke and I said ""Can you wait 5 mins before lighting that?"" He knows I don't like breathing in his smoke, but he looked at me and said, ""So you think you're going to beat me in that time?"" and put the smoke aside. I managed to checkmate him in five moves, a classic attack, I think the quickest you can win in, I told him how it works and how to counter it so I will not beat him again so easily.

tuesday continued 9:03AM

Got home and soon after my cousin came around. In case you haven't realised I have lots of cousins, I am the oldest (and wisest) of all, something like 20 on one side and 10 on the other. This cousin was James, lead singer from Flinch and in his final year at high school. He wanted a little bit of maths tutoring, which was quite funny considering I had tutored Mereana on her times tables earlier that day. Gave him a few tips and then he confirmed that I had tuned my guitar ok. Sweet I have tuned my guitar all by myself. Yay!

Ok I've got lots to write about but have written too much for this day already so I will save it for tomorrow. Let me just say that I can smell some big changes brewing in the air, life altering changes, the kind that you look back upon as forks in your life, where one way leads to better things and the other to worse things. Nuff said, if my sense of smell if acurate then you will find out soon enough..

netball 12:01PM

Hmmm... what to write about, do I start with the raincoat I thought I had lost, yeah thats right the dark blue Gortex raincoat, only $399 on sale, fuck! It wasn't at home and when I came to work it wasn't there either. I tried the usual look in the place it usually hangs 10 times but that didn't make it magically appear like I was hoping. I must have taken it out on Friday night, but I don't even remember getting myself home that night let alone whether I was wearing a raincoat or not. No one else could help me either so I went for a walk to the pub we had been at, not holding out much hope as usually someone just nicks it. It must have been my lucky day as they had picked it up. I was stoked, that was a whole lot of cash I wasn't going to have to fork out on. But then I could have really done with it this morning...

This morning we had a meeting out at Hut Valley Polytech. Sweet, we'll just hoon out there, do the meeting thing and come back. But it was not to be so. On the way there we got a flat tire. Outside it was cold and my raincoat was still lost at this stage. Bugger. We got to our meeting eventually but that was the morning gone.

Went to lunch with this hot red hair chick I had met the other night. She seems interested and asked me out to a movie some time. Yeah right, as if! Back to reality... I brought a chicken curry pie and ate it by myself huddled inside wearing my recently returned to me raincoat. I didn't take that coat of for about 3 hours, it was nice and warm.

So yet another day passed. Came home, did the mother shop, brought everything nice, icecream, juice, cashew nuts, marshmellows (for my hot chocolates), good meat, good veges, good everything. I even got a frozen chicken... I got enough food to last me through a nuclear holocast. Always be prepared I say :) Cooked myself a nice macarnoi cheese, scoffed down half of it then walked off to netball. The walk wasn't as cold as last nights (did I mention I played last night as well?) but everyone else was cold when we got there. My muscles were a little stiff, maybe from the game the night before, maybe from trying lifting some weights with my legs. Anyway we played, at least in my humble opinion, the best game we have played yet. Everyone was on fire, the other team played pretty well but we were kings and queens of interception, shooting and other things netball-like in appearance. Damn this sub off thing. I hate going off on the last quarter when the games got all tense so that someone else can have a turn, I want to play all the time

bitch 12:24PM

Ok now tell me if this is cool or not. My work brought me a book. Alright you say hesitantly, that could be cool, depends on the book. Well, it was entitled ""True Professionalism"" with ""The courage to care about your people, your clients, and your career"" written underneath. Right, just from the title you can tell its going to be suck. We're expected to read this in our own time and enjoy it. Yay (not!). Now they could have brought us a book like ""How to make your first million"" or ""Cool tricks to play on your workmates"" and we'd all love and read and cherish this book. But instead we now have next years christmas present to give to that father-in-law you don't get along with or that aunt you never visit. Let me tell you this, my company is going to kick arse, none of this corporate, do it the right (formal) way bullshit. We are going to be relaxed and interesting, and people will take notice. Just on a side note, I just realised that I am sitting hear listening to NIN, wearing the headphones that Sifty is pictured wearing on his page. Hehehe cool. You might be interested to know that they still have glitter in them from that night dude. We dressed him on his last day (see his photo) like a boy band singer then took him down onto a busy street and made him busk to music he hates (venga boys, spice girls etc). He made quite a bit of money though, more than he ever made in an hour of doing real work.

Anything more? My father sent me a movie from his digital camera in Alexandra (doesn't technology rock) of it snowing down there today. That was cool. I wanted it to snow in Wellington today (Monday) but it didn't and this was the next best thing. Doesn't it suck how this entry will come up on Tuesday yet I'm writing it on Monday night (technically early Tuesday morning but it feels like Monday night). Because of this I missed an entry for Monday, dagnamit. And Sifty has pointed out that being overseas it notes the server time, not his local time. Solution, Sifty dude, write the local time in your entries for now, I'll write a fix later that stores both dates and we'll come back thru and fix up all the old ones. Best I can do for now.

K, gonna get another marshmellow or 4, read my book then try the sleep thing. I've worked it out and you only need about 6 hours sleep each night, that is if you sleep properly. Talk to Dan about power sleeping if you aspire to be a deity. Did you realise that if you sleep 1 hour less each night then you have 356 extra hours in your life each year in which to do things? Thats about 30 (12 hour) days extra per year, way more holidays than work gives you. Did you ever think of that. Man thats heaps, thinking about it I might just stay up another hour, maybe learn how to make soap from human body fat..