Today I am going to the doctors, which is really just an excuse to get a late appointment, sleep in and go to work at my leisure.

best foot forward, two steps back

I dislike my job intensely at the best of times, for various reasons.

This week's reason is that yesterday a team member told a team member who told a team member who told me that the original team member felt that 'they' were bullying her. I take this to mean that I am one of 'them'.

It makes me rather nauseaus to find that my indifference towards someone can be twisted so maliciously. The team member in question holds herself aloof from the sociality which binds my team together and then complains when no one sends her pictures of kittens. If this team member were to take her hurt feelings to my boss it could potentially lead to disciplinary proceedings. I abhor faking being nice in order to avoid being reported for something I'm not even doing. It means she wins - she demands that everyone behave according to her will, even when that means forcing your personality down weird routes, without her ever making any concessions to the majority. Her cowardice makes me hate her. This from a woman who thinks she is fit to apply for positions where she would be leading others, too! Ridiculous.

I spent some time telling my new boyfriend's glazed expression about all this last night, before he floored me completely after I singlehandedly paid for our meal after a brief but desultory argument. No girl has ever done that before, he said. Apparently I am the first girl to stand her ground and wield her cash with pride. What is this?! I've never heard anything so backwardsly anti-equality. Stands to reason that boys like to be treated, too :)

shadow cabinet

I am light on work at the moment because all my planning is done and in place and I am literally drowning in hayfever stock, which is hard to sell when people are preoccupied with dodging hailstones the size of cannonballs.

Also I overindulged last night, which is why I couldn't manage to do anything today and also why I'm sitting in my house without any trousers on (they were too confining in my delicate condition).

So today I spent a considerable amount of time reading Wikipedia. Wikipedia is my go-to time-wasting arena now Facebook has been banned at work. Today the topic of interest was school massacres. Previous forays have included the Titanic; Robert Mugabe; the Khmer Rouge; American deth-row prisoners; American female serial killers; Australian prison colonies; SOS and CQD; the Bay of Pigs invasion; the history of the Rus'; and the American Emergency Broadcast System. It's hard to know where my interest will take me on any given day.

Anyway, today's expedition was prompted by today being the one-year anniversary of the Virgina Tech massacre. I was intrigued, as I heard on the radio this morning that the kids at Virginia Tech apparantly still don't feel safe and want to be allowed to carry handguns on campus.

I read a lot about America because I'm very interested in any country whose inhabitants think that the way to reduce the number of gun-related incidents is not to restrict the sale of handguns to people who can prove that they would not be subject to unfavourable psychological evaluations, but to actually increase their availability to allcomers with $50 and a copy of the constitution.

What America can't see is that I am slow-handclapping them in the most sarcastic way.

Here endeth today's out-of-character editorial comment.

PREVIOUSLY, on APRIL 15th:

1450: French forces annihilate English forces at the Battle of Formigny, during the Hundred Years' War

1812: Titanic sinks, killing 1,500 passengers and crew

1865: Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot by John Wilkes Booth

1984: Tommy Cooper has a heart attack live on TV

1987: Thomas James Barks born

1989: Chinese General Secretary Hu Yaobang dies, triggering the events that lead to the Tiananmen Square Massacre

1989: a human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, killing 96 people


People with this auspicious birthdate share it with:

- Leonardo Da Vinci

- Guru Nanak Dev, founder of Sikhism

- Dodi al-Fayed

- Emma "Hermione" Watson


Happy birthday Eric!

Your future success is written in the stars!

forewarned is forearmed.

Every night in my house is like an explosion. We all come home at different times, and once more than one us is in it is non stop talking, singing, accents, dancing, TV, gossip, laughing, phonecalls, comings and going and banter.

Hence, I really really love living with my friends. Apart from last night, when my brain had been replaced with a piece of that soft green Oasis flower-block-stuff you used to get in art class which is good for ornamental flowers but terrible for thinking with.

Zoe and Donna spent forty minutes talkingtalkingtalking excitedly about absolute shit in the worst, most nasal chav estate accents they could muster. I had been using exactly the same accent not two minutes earlier and all day the previous day but something had snapped and I didn't ever want to hear it again and, more importantly, wanted the knowledge of it stricken from my brain. Then Zoe spent twenty minutes telling me how and why she planned to replace the boxes under her bed with plastic containers in infinite detail, and then Donna explained how many Saturdays she has to work out of the next five - no - six! This was over the top of the TV thing we were watching and the cumulative effect was that I thought I was going to flip out and go on a murderous killing spree up and down the street, River Tam-style, to end only when faced with police in riot gear armed with nuclear warheads, or when I dropped dead through sheer exhaustion.

Then I realised that it was just PMT and so kept my mouth shut. I'm ok today.

sleeping is giving in

Today, my brain is trying to get out of my head via my eyeballs and my whole insides are in revolt at the thought of movement or food or anything else.

I spent all night going slowly crazy. Every time I fell asleep I got entangled in a vicious nightmare whereby a Venetian man tricked me into getting into a speeding tram and then locked me in the driver's booth with no way of getting out or slowing down. Each time I leapt out the window and skidded across the tarmac, and each time I tried to phone the authorities to warn them about the tram but then realised I hadn't unlocked my phone for use in a foreign country and the call wouldn't connect.

Then the man would see me in the street and start chasing me again.

Sometimes I got a different dream, where a colleague suddenly pointed out that a set of numbers weren't quantities but were in fact percentage splits. Unichem didn't want 555 units of Ceterizine 12s; they wanted a 55:50 split between Ceterizine and Loratadine and I hadn't got it.

But today is Meet A Murderer Day, so I don't want to go home even though I'm useless, because we'll all miss out on an important bonding session :(

WTF

really really nice to meetcha

So my new 'boyfriend' has bought Guitar Hero, whatever that may be. This means that while he is willing and able to make all sorts of plans for us in a morning (regardless of whether or not I want or agree to see him) he will actually be incommunicado by 3.30pm because his indie-than-thou friend Ross has suggested a marathon two-player session while they both wear amusing hats.

If I actually liked him I would be in serious trouble and would probably be unable to leave my bed due to a severe personality crisis. As it is I am mildly inconvenienced because I don't have any plans for Saturday night and I don't want to go and sit his sweaty, untidy pit while he plays computer games in the dark.

I just don't understand boys, or maybe girls too for that matter. When I see a fat indie boy with glasses on the Link at work, my legs go to jelly and I start flicking my hair uncontrollably while talking absolute shit to Vik as I walk past his table. The thought of maybe going up to him and saying, "I fancy you, would you like to go for a drink?" is just unthinkable. Likewise when Horrible Boy comes to talk to Vik, I have to staple my lips shut and avert my eyes and think about Jesus and Mary and all the tiny angels just so I don't blurt out my undying love and desire to do rude things to him. It is getting so bad that I might have to start supergluing my fingers to the desk so I don't try to gesticulate or write huge flashcards in stolen highlighter.

But god forbid that blond guy should try and talk to me in Dogma! It took him twenty minutes to convince my suspicious alcholic brain that he hadn't been sent over as a dare and did, indeed, find my hair-flicking alluring. Once he did have me convinced I was immediately wary about what was wrong with him, as obviously only someone incredibly damaged would show any interest in me, and concluded that he was probably a very polite but sinister rapist.

Then Zoe and I spent forty minutes wondering why we didn't have boyfriends. I helpfully ignored her assertations that my 'boyfriend' was more than happy to let the world know that I do, in fact, have a boyfriend, but that I go red and protest strongly whenever he suggests it, and that I have said on more than one occasion that I like being independant too much to agree to being in a 'couple' with anyone, except maybe Stephen Fry. Plus all that 'couple' stuff makes me psychosomatically have the flu, and also leprosy.

Boys; girls like a chase. I didn't get a chase, so I am humouring him until I do. But we also like to chase someone we already know likes us. So basically, make the first move and smooth the path, but don't fill out all the blanks straight away.

And for fuck's sake don't talk about your fucking exes. We don't care.

me me me

1. I'm so pale I'm seethrough.

2. I'm on top of my workload and no longer feel like I'm chasing a runaway locomotive wearing nothing but concrete shoes and jam.

3. I went to teach at High Bank Primary on Thursday and I've been assigned two adorable future murderers.

4. I painted my room and hung a picture and fixed a cupboard with my new drill stepladder and powers of concentration.

5. It's nearly summer!