There are a lot of things to love and hate about my job. We deal with so many people that you quickly become immune to a lot of the drama that goes on around you. Every once in awhile (and twice this weekend, thanks for that God) you get some people which really stick with you.
Like the little old lady, practically deaf, very arthritic and totally in love with a house we are selling. Two offers later she is at her maximum bid and every time I speak to her she tells me a little bit more about her life, apologising (completely unnecessarily) profusely for being elderly and deaf. The whole time we are talking I am silently begging for her not to tell me about her three legged cat with no eyes or fur because my heart only has enough room for three more caring moments this century and she is hogging THEM ALL.
Every time I speak to her I get a little bit more desperate for this deal to go through. To the point where I am practically pacing up and down the office knitting jumpers for her fur less cat. Next up is crafting it a peg leg from spare chopsticks. My middle name is not MacGyver for nothing.
Ok, I am kidding about MacGyver and the hairless cat, but she might as well have one because I am close to peaking in terms of emotional investment and so she may as well go and tip me over the edge, then I can explode and not have to deal with this odd emotion ever again.
Or another old couple, (do you see a theme here?), both in their late 80s, wife just out of hospital, and ready to exchange contracts on another house we are selling. Sadly these people are being totally normal and waiting for the structural survey to come back before sinking their savings into this house. This displeases the vendors greatly and I have lost count of the number of times one of us has answered the phone to a tirade of abuse from them because it is taking a bit of time. Funnily enough this is actually one of the quicker sales to go through so far. Property selling..it takes this thing called time yo.
Sadly I am only allowed to be polite and courteous at all times, but it still doesn’t stop me wishing for some very obscure and painful jungle disease to fall upon them. Preferably something that involves flesh eating, or larvae to grow in their brain. Or maybe I should be nice and wish for someone to remove that large stick from their arse so that they can then claim to be humans and not have Satan jump up and laugh in their face before sending them down to purgatory to perform the Soulja Boy dance from now until eternity, actually change that to when Britney gets sane, I think eternity has better odds.
- During a seminar today I was discussing something I had read on the BBC website about how Obama is distantly related to G.W. Bush and someone piped up in the background ‘who is Barack Obama?’. I am pretty sure she also still thinks that Tony Blair is our Prime Minister and that the world is flat.
- During research for the same seminar I found out that one of the most feared US prison gangs; Nuestra Familia were, in the 1960s, known as the ‘Blooming Flowers’. I presume they changed their name shortly after because they kept being mistaken for horticulturists. Or laughed at by little old ladies.
-I only have one lecture and one seminar left in my undergraduate study. While everyone else is practically bouncing about this fact it makes me a little sad. I think this means that I clearly need psychological help.
-I seem to have the urge to write on this here blog a lot, you’ll have to forgive the boring and pointless updates but it’s procrastination season so I am representing yo.
I sat down to watch TV the other day and I realised something. It was the first time I had actually sat down in front of an actual television set in months.
At this point I would hope you aren’t dead from laughing so hard. I watch ALOT of TV shows so how could this be? Well, all of the TV I watch is done so through my computer, either through streaming or things like the BBC iplayer, or even just loading up DVDs. The TV in my room has become redundant. In fact I think the last thing I watched on it was a nature documentary in February, total rockstar that I am.
It would probably horrify me (and quite possibly you) if I sat down and totalled up the hours per week I spend using a computer. To be fair a lot of use is required for dissertation writing, research and stats but there is quite a lot of personal hours logged during a day too, probably way too many.
Quite scary for a girl who’d never really used the internet properly until she came to University 4 years ago.
With the big jump to online TV I wonder how many more people are finding the same thing.
Oh and randomly. Do you know what is annoying? Putting your beer the in freezer because you like it colder than your mothers heart, then taking it out 30 minutes later after forgetting all about it to find it’s still liquid. You rejoice. You remove the cap and then the instant that it comes in contact with air it freezes solid. And then the ice expands out of the bottle so fast that you are forced to drink your slushie adult edition as if you were 16 years old. In one breath, Dude.
On this most special chocolate based Sunday I decided it was my duty to make a tribute to the best thing to happen to Easter..since..well..ever.
So here you have it. Happy Easter people!
Today also snowed, not a lot of snow, but enough for me to get excited, run around and then come back in complaining that it was cold. Good times.
So, it’s been 2000 something for what? 8 years? It should probably be worrying to me that 4 times this morning I have referred to the year as being 1997.
One or two years either side of ‘08 I could understand but I am not sure if I can get away with 11. It happens quite a lot, It’s like my brain resets to it’s default of 1997 every now and again and so I must recondition myself to the fact that nope I no longer live in the decade of Vanilla Ice, neon coloured clothing and Fried Green Tomatoes.
This is mostly all good, except that it’s no longer socially acceptable to gleefully proclaim that it is hammer time.
Every single morning I go downstairs, make some coffee, come back upstairs, sit at my desk and do the usual routine of emails and checking that the web hasn’t done anything exciting without me overnight.
Every single morning I will go to take a sip of my coffee and find the cup empty and I will think ‘Huh? I sure don’t remember drinking that’.
Seriously, every time.
My next tattoo shall read ‘Yes it was you who drank the coffee’ in true Memento style because my short-term memory? She is about as good as Paris Hilton would be on ‘Are you smarter than a 5th grader?’
While I may have tons to do today I refuse. I am going on strike. Today is stormy outside (ok ok so I can’t attest to the truth to that statement because I haven’t actually looked outside yet, but..but..it sounds it), and it’s Sunday..all the excuses I need wrapped up in one little convenient 24 hour package. I will do nothing but lie in bed, occasionally moving to my computer to load up a new dvd. Maybe I won’t even be that adventurous since I have a wireless mouse and that can be operated from bed (best invention evah!). I might go downstairs and make some toast..because I kinda dig eating and think that although it’ll be a lot of effort getting from here to there the reward in the end will be worth it.
I think the only remotely productive thing I will do today will be to put some clothes into the washing machine. Even this is still in the planning stages at the moment don’t be disappointed if, at closing today, I am still where I am now..thinking about doing it.
I heard this song a while back and I didn’t really like it very much.
I have since heard it abut 58032840 times because the radio people heart it deeply and since then I too have come to love it one hell of a lot. It is also stuck firmly in my head and will not leave.
You will either love or hate it, there seems to be no middle ground, but I thought I would share just so you too know how it feels to be endlessly singing this song over and over and over.
Her album rocks my socks and the fact she is the exact same age as me and has a voice like this does not depress me in the slightest..honest.
So when you go to a gig you generally have the same type of format. You queue for ages in the cold, eventually file in and go through the security check procedure, find your seats/area, wait for a bit, support act comes on, plays their set then leaves, main act comes on, you clap, you sing along, laugh at the fangirls going mental, applaud at the end demanding an encore, encore happens, you leave to go home and get into a nice warm bed, wake up the next day and proceed to open the day with a ‘duuude that was so awesome’ line. Easy right?
While much of that formula happened last night when we went to see Uh Huh Her there was one slight hitch. The support act. I am not one to rag on a support act because well, they are either very very good or just there to kill some time and get the crowd going a bit. But last night?!
Ok picture this:
You are in your seat, two girls come out and approach a laptop on a table, the crowd cheers. Girls hit play on their iTunes and some random songs play. You are like ok..they are just out here as the warm up for the warm up.. *1 hour later* the same girls are still stood there, occasionally nodding their head and having a shared muscle spasm. I think it’s what they called dancing.
At this point I too am having a muscle spasm because my muscles are primed to throw my camera at one of the girls to see if they are actual humans instead of robot like creatures but my brain is fighting the urge because getting removed by security wouldn’t be any fun, even if I did it for the benefit of mankind.
Honestly, I have never been to a gig where the audience has looked so willing to instigate a mass suicide lemmings style off of the balcony. I also find out that these people are an actual band, not just frightened audience members forced on stage and told to just hit the big play button. I did briefly contemplate going on stage and asking the crowd if they wanted to play a giant interactive game of minesweeper instead because it was THAT FUN.
Still, they left the stage then Uh Huh Her came out, rocked their set to a very appreciative audience and all was right with the world again. Anyway Maren said it better than me.
