Some people get the blues, Holly Golightly got the mean reds. I think I have the browns!

I’ve been splashing round in denial for months but today I am just going to admit to myself that things have gone a bit brown. Brown is not all bad, you know. It’s a nice hue for those with ginger hair and brown eyes. But it also the colour of shit.

So. I have this wee list of things - job husband family friends authoring health sanity hundreds of strangers who write and ask me how to fix their lives - and I’m screwing it all up. Sometimes my priorities have been completely wrong. Despite my lists! Why put “send Mothership text message” on a list? It would be quicker to send the text, DICKHEAD!

Anyway I am just about to put on my brown boots and my brown hoodie then head to London on the sleeper train and write things down that aren’t lists. Sorting out the rubbish in my head instead of ignoring it. Just in London for a day - hitting the shops with Rhiannon and our mate Margaret. I’ve been too lazy to buy new clothes for a couple of years and I’m tired of looking boring. And BROWN!

I’m slowly adjusting to life in the private sector, but I need to get to work earlier. How is it that I used to leave home at 6.30AM for the train and be in the office by 7.30 (mmm, flexi time), but now the office is a mere eleven minute walk away, I’m sprinting up the street at 8.55 every bloody morning?

This phenomenon can be expressed by the following formula, wherein likelihood of timely arrival at workplace is inversely proportional to distance from workplace:

 

I found a box of Special K in my bottom drawer the other day. My colleagues said it belonged to the web coordinator before last. Would you believe she used to eat her breakfast at her desk? they said, She had a bowl and spoon and everything!

I hope my expression of outrage was convincing, but inside I was cringing at the memory of hundreds of desktop brekkies at my old job. I’d make porridge, even chopping up bits of apple to sprinkle on top. I had two kinds of sugar in my desk. Sometimes I’d have toast; my favourite topping was avocado. I’d even squeeze on fresh lime juice with black pepper and poncy sea salt. BLOODY HELL, I wanted to curl up and die now, thinking of my dear boss dropping a letter into my in-tray as I gnashed away on multigrains saying, “Whenever you’re ready, Shauna.”

Not really, it’s Brooklyn.

So I’m all Big Kev excited about the news that Radiohead’s new album is coming out in ten teeny little days. I love their stealth tactics too, bypassing the record companies and avoiding the usual leaked copy hoopla by offering the album for download on their website, with the downloadee deciding how much to pay.

My only worry is what’s going to happen on the big day when everyone is trying to collect their copy? HOW MANY SERVERS HAVE THEY GOT AND ARE THEY MADE OF CAST IRON AND SELLOTAPE because I remember last year I spent seven sad little fangirl hours trying to buy presale concert tickets on their website to no avail. It struggled and stuttered like a herd of constipated cows, as if shocked by the surge in popularity. Already today its been difficult to access, with lovely Jonny posting another message en blog to say, “it’s getting busy in there - busier than they expected.”

Arrgh! Fellas! Will you ever learn? EXPECT A FEW VISITORS! Stock up the fridge! Borrow some spare chairs from your nanna’s house! YOU’RE POPULAR DARNIT!

Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!

In other news, I start a new job tomorrow, doing web stuff. For the first time in 4.5 years my work won’t involve typing letters and making appalling cups of instant coffee. I’m absolutely shitscared, especially considering my recent display of skill and flair with the blog upgrade. Pray for me!

Actual email received at work today:

Good morning

Thank you.

!!!

Well, I've been a moody little shit this week. The Darkness is getting to me again. Going to work in the dark, getting home in the dark. Etcetera, etcetera. Then I got into a huff at work this morning because I had to put up the Christmas decorations, and they were in the same jingle jangle tangled state I'd left them in last Christmas, when I'd once again stuffed them into the box in a huff because I'd been convinced Gareth wouldn't propose and I'd be deported from the UK and definitely not be around the next Christmas and some other Antipodean temp would have to deal with them. Ha!

Putting up the decs at work contains none of the joy of putting up the decs at home. There's no nostalgic crowing over heirloom ornaments or fighting over who gets to put the star on top of the tree. There's not even anyone to fight with, because you have sole decorating duties. And there's no tree, unless you count the plastic plants. There's just a pile of tinsel bought at Safeway ten years ago, choked with ancient lumps of cellotape.

After I halfheartedly threw Christmas cheer over all the cubicles I asked one of the managers could I take the afternoon off.

"Why?" he asked. "Is it because you're cranky?"

"Yes!"

"On you go then."

I really love the guys I work with. They are gems.

So I stomped off at lunch time, stopping at the gym to do a Body Pump class in the hope of producing some happy chemicals. Then I came home, did the dishes, then decided to go back out and take a photo of the wintery landscape for you, in order to illustrate my shitty mood. By the time I got beanied and gloved up it was too dark to get a decent shot. Instead I am going to post a mediocre blog entry, and by the time it's finished I will have snapped out of my sulk and be sane again, so I'll scurry off to watch Ready Steady Cook.

During my first Scottish winter I began to notice all these lost gloves in the streets of Edinburgh. Some on footpaths, some on stone walls, some impaled on fence posts, some stuck up trees, some floating down the canal, some caked with spew. I don't know how so many people come to lose just one glove. I started taking photos of them and had this brilliant idea that I would create a photo gallery called Abandoned Gloves of Scotland and put it on the internet. But once it got to the next winter I realised what a crap idea it was, because 95% of the gloves are black and 95% of them are found upon grey backgrounds (pavement, road, cobblestones) which makes for really shithouse photos. Och well.

Dunvegan, Isle of Skye, April 2004.
The only non-black glove with a non-grey backdrop. But still crap!

"Well, if you became a filthy rich author then you too could work from home!"

"Ha! Only JK Rowling gets to do that."

"Hmmm. You could write legal blockbusters like John Grisham!"

"But I'm not a lawyer! I'm a lowly administrator. I'd have to write A Time To File and The Coffeemaker. Or The Runaway Stapler.

"Or maybe you could churn out Barbara Cartland-style romance novels with an administration theme."

"How?"

"Like, Algernon took Stacey into the stationery cupboard and gave it to her from behind!"

"Just the way she likes it!"

"Then she couldnae walk proper for a week!"

"Classy!"

"See, this writing lark is totally easy."

Merry Christmas from Geriatric Rescue HQ! So far there's been one drunk geezer, three burning turkeys and one Ah've Fallen And Cannae Get Up Hen. No one's toppled into their tree yet.

I'd been feeling a little blue today with all my family on the other side of the globe, but it's sobering to be working here and realising there's a lot of elderly people who are genuinely alone. Surround yourself with people, this is my advice to you! Be nice to folk and make as many friends as possible. That way, when you're old and needing help you can phone them instead of some hapless Australian in a call centre.

People look less anxious in the tearoom this time of year when finding themselves beside some colleague who they don't really care for during the agonising wait for the kettle to boil. There's no need for fiddling with spoons or pretending to be really interested in the expiry date of the milk or the ancient notices of the noticeboard. All they have to do is say, Are you all organised for Christmas? and the other person will go, Oh hardly! Leaving it til the last minute as usual! And they both faux-chortle just as the water rumbles. Pour, stir, hasty exit.

Old Town, Tallinn

Today I tackled the workplace Christmas decorations. Nothing makes me crankier than a big pile of tangled tinsel. I'd lazily shoved everything into a box in the New Year thinking some poor sucker could deal with it in December. I never expected that sucker to be me. How did a four week temp job turn into fifteen months? I could hear The Mothership's voice in my ear, "You should have done it properly in the first place!"

Top Five Mothership Phrases

1. Use your brain!
2. I'll put a bomb under you!
3. Are you wearing a bra?
4. If you had brains you'd be dynamite!
5. Did you LOOK?

If Kate Potter of South Australia is reading, please email or leave a comment! Kate sent Christmas cookie cutters off my Amazon wishlist. Kate, you rule the school! Does anyone have any good cookie recipes?

Recently a kind person had linked to this here site and called it a "travel blog". I liked how sexy and glamourous that sounded, and thought very smugly, "Why, woohoo. Indeed it is a travel blog. Long gone are the days of blogging about death, depression and supermarkets!"

But then I wondered if I had earned the title of "travel blog", and even though I am allergic to numbers I came up with some exciting statistics.

The three new dads were talking about their babies with the passion and in-depth analysis they used to reserve for football and chicks with enormous tits.

DAD 1:  What nappies y'usin these days?

DAD 2:  Pampers.

D1:  Size 1 or Size 2?

D2:  Size 2, I think. He's only 6 weeks old but he's a big bairn.

D1:  Aye, but not fat like.

D2:  Aye, not fat. Just a solid unit. Stevo, what nappies do you use?

DAD 3:  Pampers, mate.

D2:  That's what we're using too, but we're having problems with them.

D3:  Bet yer putting them on backwards, ya numpty!

D2:  Nooo. They're just not working. No absorption, leaking everywhere, the poor wee fellae's got shite up his back and that's not nice.

D1 & D3:  Nooo.

D1:  Do you remember their very first shite?

D2 & D3:  [faraway smiles] Aye!

D1:  It's sooo long. And it stretches out forever.

D2:  And it's black!

D3:  It's like tar. Stretchy tar.

D1:  It's boggin'.

SHAUNA:  Goodbye, maternal urges.

Ahh, Mr. Photocopier, I said. So we meet again. I have travelled thousands of miles across the seas just to let you spit your inky crap all over my hands.

It should have been a brief encounter, I only had ten pages to copy, but the display was shrieking CHANGE TONER. Beside the copier was a sign that said SEE SHAUNA IF TONER NEEDS CHANGING. As far as I knew I was the only Shauna.

I'd been shown how to change it four times already, but it's like changing a tyre. You can watch it being done a million times but performing the deed yourself is a different story. Being a stubborn buffoon, I wasn't about to ask for another demonstration.

No worries, I said, taking the new cartridge from the box. I studied the diagrams. All I had to do was stick the cartridge thingy on top of the long thingy, then pull this little plastic thingy that empties the ink thingy until it says STOP. Righto.

I gave the plastic thingy a good firm tug, just to show it who was boss. Sure enough the STOP message came up. But it didn't stop! I'd pulled too hard! The flat plastic thingy that holds the ink inside ended up in my hands and the whole apparatus just sort of exploded. Ink powder vomited into every crevice of the copier, black dust pouffed up into my face. It was chaos.

I stumbled back into the office, "Help! I've fucked up big time!"

Two colleagues came to investigate. "Marshy, that is the fuckup of the year."

I wanted to cry. Today on the bus I'd decided I would write a Proper Entry, not just another episode of Shauna Screws Up. Where's my profound travellers experiences? My personal growth? They fetched me an old t-shirt, a bucket and some paper towels. I spent the next hour on my hands and knees, scooping out ink by the handful. I scrubbed and swore and entertained passers-by with renditions of Mammy.

The ink was a sneaky omnipresent bastard. As soon as I wiped it from one place it would laugh and splatter elsewhere - on the screen, the buttons, under my nails, over my official Talented Athlete Program shirt.

But as I sat there trying to pull back my sleeves with my teeth, I tried looking at the situation in a different light. If I was back in Australia at my old job, would I have spent the morning on the floor with a bucket of water, colleagues cackling at me, ink up my nose? Oh no. I'd have commanded some admin slaveboy to tackle the task!

So really, this was a new and exciting experience. I brushed and scrubbed, brushed and scrubbed; slowly and tenderly uncovering lost bits of machine from under the rubble, like my own personal Pompeii.

My new post at Lost In Transit features the following words: Tinsel, fake, beanie, twinge, arm, longing, the, [and] of. Have a squizz!

Meanwhile, we're still manning the phones on weekends for Scotland's seniors. Many clients have extreme temperature sensors installed, which means we automatically get a call if there is a sudden rise or drop in temperature inside their house. Rhiannon recently had a classic moment with a 95-year-old lady, let's call her Mrs McElderly.

RHI:  Hello Mrs McElderly. We've had a call from your Extreme Heat temperature sensor. Are you okay there?

MRS McELDERLY:  Oh yes! I'm alright hen! I was running a very high temperature early today actually. But I've taken my pills and I've been in my bed so it's come down a lot, I'm feeling much better now. Thank you!

There's no escape from old people. I spent a lot of my weekend on the phone to them. They call in for all sorts of reasons. They fall over or get ill or burn their steak or worse still, they die on us. It's an intense sort of job.

"My purse fell down the toilet," announced one lady today.

"Oh dear. What happened?"

"It was in my pocket, and I bent over, and it fell out of my pocket, plop. I feel so stupid."

"You shouldn't feel stupid... it's easy enough done!"

"One press of the button and it was gone."

"Oh dear."

For the next fifteen minutes she outlined this very complex tale. Between the accent and her rising level of distress, it was hard to figure out what was going on. Soon enough I realised that it had been sorted for her, now she just needed to vent a little.

"Is there anything I can do for you?"

"Would it do any good to call a plumber?"

"Well, it's been 24 hours, I'm not sure what they could do..."

"Oh hen. I'm so sorry to be taking up your time, I'm so sorry."

"Not at all! You can talk to us any time you like!"

"It's just been a bad day, hen. A bad day."

After my shift, it seemed I was the only one on the bus without a snowy white perm. The main topic of conversation, as always, was the buses. How late the buses are, how early the buses are, how they go too fast, how they brake too sharply, with bonus commentary on every bus that passes.

"I waited 15 minutes for the 1."

"Well I stepped out the door 5 minutes before the 1 was due and it whizzed right past me."

"Oh look, there's another 1 now in the other direction."

"Aye. And there's a 2 coming roond the roondabout."

"Hold on, looks like another 2 behind it."

"Two 2's in a row, that's not right."

"You're right. Now there's a 22. Where's the 22 off to?"

"I don't get the 22. I like the 1 or the 2."

"Aye. Me too."

A brown perm with a tweed coat sat down beside me, just as we went past a pub. There were a dozen skinny lads lurking round the door, one of them sprawled on the pavement with his face covered in blood.

"Oooh what's going on there?" she asked me, without waiting for an answer. "You know they try and try to make this city more beautiful, but the likes of them just love to ruin it."

There was a chorus of creaky ayes around the bus.

Finally it was my stop. I was leaning against the pole, trying to stay awake, when I noticed an old man watching at me with a goofy grin. I raised an eyebrow.

"Smile, hen! Even though yer heart is breaking."

I laughed, hopped off the bus and took my breaking heart home, where I could finally talk to someone under seventy.

Well, things aren't what they used to be, I can tell you that much, and I've been here twenty-three years.

People work funny hours now. They work from home, they work on the road; it's all modems, mobiles and bullshit. What happened to an honest 9 to 5? I come in around 8 and they're still here, eating donuts, looking nervous, getting their feet in my way.

And if they're working late, they're working. It's been a good five years since I've caught execs getting down and dirty on a desk.

All the sexiness has gone out of the workplace.

You don't even see people photocopying their body parts anymore. Those all-in-one machines put an end to that. They're just not built as sturdy and they're always doing something. I mean, you can hardly hop aboard and xerox your ass when there's a fax coming through at the same time.

Hot-desking was another disappointment. A desk without knick knacks is like a body without soul. Back in the day, I could look at the little troll doll on top of the monitor or the World's Greatest Golfer coffee mug and think, now there's someone I'd like to know better.

Now I'll tell you what hasn't changed, and that's my job. Have you see any great advances in Hoovers? No you have not. They're still goddamn noisy and cumbersome and they knock the walls around no matter how good you are. And they can give cleaning products all the fancy names in the world but at the end of the day it's the same old some chemical shit in a bulk container that makes my skin tingle.

"Butterflies are great," mused the Outgoing Secretary. "In fact, all insects are great. Even wasps. Why do people hate wasps? Unless you shove a big stick at their nests, they don't bother anyone."

"Indeedy," said I, the Incoming Secretary.

"I'm a fan of all the misunderstood animals," she went on, "Wasps, crocodiles, lions, killer whales."

Everyone in the company knew the Outgoing Secretary -- important bosses, worker bees, the canteen lady, the man who put the big snowball bags of CONFIDENTIAL shredding onto a truck. She was weird but utterly charming. It was such a change from the usual bland office slugs. She bubbled along with her loopy stories and jokes, so comfortable in her own skin. She took me around the building for introductions, leaving a trail of smiling colleagues behind us.

She was leaving to study Meteorology. They gave her a cake. And a card. And gift vouchers. And a fancy necklace. After only one year as a temp! She was adored!

They all talked about Weather while I quietly shredded a choc chip muffin and felt inadequate.

"I met a wasp on a scorching day last summer," she was saying. "I was on my way home, running from tree to tree, trying to soak up some shade. There on the grass was the wee wasp. He was in a bad way, so very weak, only the occasional half-hearted flap of his wings.

"I got out my water bottle and poured some into the lid. He must have been so dehydrated, coz he just lapped away at it, schloooop schloop schloop. We just sat there on the grass together for half an hour. It was so sweet, you could have almost patted him! But he was so hot I was worried he'd crumble."

"Ohhh!" piped up the Incoming Secretary, in a stunning display of intelligence and conversation skills. "Cool."

But I had an equally endearing Insect/Summer story. They'd soon be warming up to the Incoming Secretary, yes siree. I was nine years old. My sister and I collected some bugs from around the playground - peeled bark from trees, crawled under the classroom, dug around in flower beds.

Then we put them into plastic cups, filled the cups with water and stuck them in the school canteen freezer. Once they were solid we ripped off the cups and erected our Frozen Bug Museum bedside the monkey bars. They looked beautiful, suspended in their frosty domes. Tiny/red, metallic green/scary horns, brown/weird.

The domes began to sweat under the frowning sun. Despite my lack of medical knowledge (Mel Gibson was yet to star in Forever Young), I was confident the bugs would come back to life once the ice melted. They'd shake the water off their spindly legs and get right back to work.

But then I peered closer. I saw tiny helpless claws and surprised wings. I saw little bug faces, expressions snap-frozen into fear or outrage. My stomach curled up in guilt.

We picked up the icy prisons and pounded them against the monkey bars. We hacked away until there was a pile of a shattered ice and sand and twigs at our feet, with only the core left in our hands, a little chunk with the bug inside. We sat with them cupped in our palms and waited for the melting and the waking-up.

I realised it wasn't an endearing story at all. I was just a cold-blooded killer. I decided to keep that information quiet, eat the muffin, and win them over in the days to come with my staple-removing prowess.

They sat around a table full of muffins and a bizarre Rice Krispie/toffee concoction, cackling and talking about Coronation Street. Once again I was the new kid, quietly and politely sipping tea even though I don't drink tea, but I couldn't just sit there looking like a pussy who doesn't drink tea.

One of them plonked down beside me and peered at me all too closely. The hue of her thick sunbed-toasted face reminded me of the cows on our farm, with deep wriggly crevices like soil erosion. She had cropped bleached hair and her eyes were almost black. She reminded me of someone who would bash you up in the canteen line at school if you didn't surrender your lunch money.

"Have I met you?"

"No! I'm Shauna."

"You're SHOR-NA!" She smirked. "Are you from where I think you're from?"

"I'm from Australia."

"AH-STRAY-LI-UH! Whereabouts in AH-STRAY-LI-UH?"

"I'm from Canberra."

"KEHHHHN-BRUH! Why don't you live in Sydney?"

"Um."

"Ha! How long are you working here for?"

"Just this week. I'm temping."

"Just this WOIK. You're TEMPEN."

"Yes. Yes I am."

"Well I gotta go. NOICE TO MEET YA MATE!"

A few hours later I was waiting for the bus when a young man with equally dark eyes shuffled up beside me. He smiled and mumbled something in a thick Scots accent.

I smiled helplessly. "Sorry?"

"Nniiidddeee?"

"I'm really sorry..."

He rolled his eyes. "Nniiidddeee?"

"You need change? For the bus? I don't have any, honest. I just use my bus pass thingy you see..."

"Noooo! I said, nnniiddeee?"

Did he want to kill me? There was noone else around. I shrugged meekly.

"Nniiidddeee?"

"OH! Nice day? Yes! Yes I did have a nice day. Thanks for asking! God I am so sorry, I --"

"Noo. Noo. I am so sorry."

He rolled his eyes again and disappeared before I could explain about being Australian and particularly stupid.

The next day at work I wandered down the hall to the kitchen when I heard those mocking tones behind me.

"Well well well. It's SHOR-NA from KEHHHHN-BRUH!"

Momo wrote wonderfully about those suffocating office days when you want to throw a printer through the window and take yourself with it.

This kind of feeling is all too common. Mouse Rage is my problem - the act of rapidly pounding the poor beasts belly on the desk while hissing Motherfucker! motherfucker! And it's rarely the mouse's fault.

What to do with all this office-induced aggression? It's one of the great questions of the modern age. It reminds me of that other great question of the modern age (yes, there's only two) - what to do with the millions of obsolete computers?

You can solve both problems in one neat little package: PC Driving Ranges. Instead of golf balls it's beige plastic goodness. Build it in the middle of some depressing industrial estate, thousands of little booths to simulate that cubicled feeling. Then step right up and for a fiver you can hurl half a dozen computers from a great height. Shout and scream and let the blood boil in your belly as you watch a machine soar across the sky and split its guts all over the ground. That's theraputic.

And you know those pools filled with coloured balls that kids like to splash in? How about we dig a hole in the ground and throw in all the discarded non-optical mice of the world. You know, the ones with the dirty balls that limp uselessly along your mouse mat. Can you imagine jumping in and hearing the delicious plasticky clickityclickityclickity of a thousand mouse buttons? Rawk.

It is ridiculous that I have been hired as the Personal Assistant. He is having to remind me to remind him to go the meetings. Asking me to organise your working day is about as logical as asking Elizabeth Taylor how to fix your crappy marriage.

I have newfound respect for the cool efficiency of secretaries and PAs. Meanwhile, I've stabbed myself three times with the stapler, written on the whiteboard with permanent marker, and cannot grasp the concept of folding letters so the address shows up in the window envelope. How can I organise someone else when I can't even organise myself? Where's my bloody PA? It would be nice to have the little secretary there every morning, handing me some toast and a glass of orange juice. Time to get out of bed, ma'am. Here are your messages. Here are your pants. You have three minutes to get to the bus stop.

Now I am somebody's secretary for two and a half weeks. Today I was reunited with my old friend, the Staple Remover. Then I got acquainted with an industrial-sized Shredding Machine, desiccating some Important Documents. The machine was covered in hilarious warning labels - apparently it is a bad idea to dangle your necktie and/or Rapunzel locks over these fearsome jaws of death.

In this office the desks are sandwiched together, so it's easy to spot who is reading a novel, who is on the phone to his wife, and who has his index finger wedged firmly up his nostril yet again. Are you looking for buried treasure? Must you dig so vigorously?

I took my lunch outside and found a nice spot under a tree, where a strange fluffy bird peered down at my salad. His monotonous chirp sounded precisely like the shooting noise in Space Invaders. Which was music to my ears, so long as he agreed not to drop a bomb on my head.

The sky was heavy and glowering, the wind slightly bitey. I must be getting used to this climate, because I found myself thinking, "Mmm, sure is warm today!". Back in Australia, you'd have said it was miserable, perfect for chucking a sickie and curling up on the couch with Oprah and a jar of Nutella.

Last week I was receptionist at possibly the world's busiest recruitment agency. Reception is a dirty bitch. You can't swear when you hang up the phone, and you have to actually do you hair in the morning, you must smile and be polite, you can't nick off to the bathrooms for a nap without anyone noticing.

All day long the "candidates" traipse in, all scrubbed and awkward in their suits, CV tucked under their arm. They look so full of hope, or so painfully desperate, not knowing their handiwork will most likely be transferred to the cobwebbed place where CVs go to die.

Of course, there are some grubby little buggers that don't deserve a job. If you can't be bothered to bathe or chisel the crumbs and cat-hairs off your pants, then I can't help you. But for the most part I'm extremely sympathetic, knowing I'll be in their boat at the end of the week. And some people try so hard that you want to give them a big cuddle. Like the sweet old guy who just got made redundant after 45 years, or the apologetic middle aged woman returning to work and confessing that she's scared of computers.

One guy came in with smouldering looks, thick Spanish accent and three years experience fixing vending machines. I perused his CV. Interests: extreme sports, reading, salsa dancing. "We're actually only looking for office staff," I explained sadly. But I've got a job for YOU, baby... oh yes.

Armed with an incredible three days experience as a recruitment receptionist, I was snapped up by different agency this week. This place is mercifully quieter. I sit at my desk with a little security television beside me, watching the world outside. It's been raining, and I can see the windscreen wipers on the cars, people wrestling with their umbrellas or picking their undies out of their arse cracks.

There's three different businesses in this building, so there's three different entry buttons outside for visitors to press. So I sit here watching them squint at the nameplates, hoping they don't press my button. Please don't press my button, I silently urge them. Please. In much the same way I glare at the phone and will it not to ring. Why? Because every bloody time I can't understand who they're asking for or what they want. These accents have me stumped. I ask them to repeat it, but it's all Blah Blah Blahdy McBlah to me.

"Archie Jones on line two for you!" I trilled to the manager this morning, only to find out later it was actually her Aunty Joan. People should just send e-mails, or write letters, or send good old fashioned smoke signals, it would really be much more convenient for me.

They let me out of the attic yesterday.

I've graduated from data entry. They let me file things now. Since the office is so ridiculously tiny, they are forced to store their documents in this weird garden shed in the car park. They call it the Sin Bin, and it's stuffed to the gills with files and boxes and ye olde office chairs.

So out I went with the filing pile and my headphones, from one confined space to another.

My brain must be shrinking the longer I spend here, because I seem to derive great happiness and satisfaction from menial tasks. I was in the airless room for an hour, putting the enormous pile of records into numerical order, stuffing them inside their correct folders, all the while bellowing along to Radiohead. Through the tiny window I watched the pensioners shuffling by with their yappy dogs, the parking inspectors on the prowl. A weedy lad was on the way home from Tesco. He looked around to make sure noone was around, then proceeded to do bicep curls with his loaded shopping bags as he walked. I cackled away, before remembering that I used to do that, and wondered if some sicko in a shed had been watching me too.

Then it rained, in that way that Scotland has a habit of doing. The sun had been sashaying around all morning, just long enough to make you think it was going to be a nice day, then suddenly it's grey and chucking down again. So I stayed another half hour and had a little snooze.

It's a pity this job finishes up on Friday, just when I am getting to like that shed. Someone could make it into a reality TV show. The concept would be simple: Ewan McGregor and I get locked inside the Sin Bin for ten weeks. They'd have to screen it late at night.

Cross-posted to Lost In Transit

It's easy to forget that you're a foreigner. There's so many Aussies over here that you can blend in quite easily. But the other day I was repeatedly reminded that I sound "a wee bit funny, hen" by members of the blue rinse set...

Here in Edinburgh, I'm temping at a place that provides emergency alarms for elderly people. I call it Geriatric Rescue, or the I've Fallen And I Can't Get Up Hotline. The other day I was given a list of 150 wrinklies and told to call them up and arrange appointments for their alarms to be reprogrammed.

SHAUNA: Hello! Is that Mrs McWrinkly?

GEEZER: What? Speak up!

SHAUNA: IS THAT MRS McWRINKLY?

GEEZER: Oh aye hen. I'm deaf. What do you want?

SHAUNA: This Shauna from Blahdy Blah, I'm calling about your alarm.

GEEZER: My what!??

Once we'd taken ten minutes to establish what I was calling for, I'd launch into my spiel. But over and over, they kept interrupting me to ask about the accent. Some highlights:

"I'm not paying for this am I? I've not got a lot of money, you know."

"Sooo, you're Australian then, luvvie? Will you personally be fixing my alarm? I'd like to meet you. Ooh yes."

"But I don't understand. Why are you working for them if you're in Australia? How are you going to help me from over there?"

"Is it like Neighbours over there? It's like Neighbours, isn't it. I watch Neighbours."

Cabin fever really set in last week. Well, attic fever, to be more precise. Rhi and I do our endless data entry holed up in a little room at the top of the stairs, with some servers and a very quiet secretary for company. Every time she leaves the room, we degenerate into behaviour not seen since kindergarten. Chronic boredom seems to have pushed us to the brink of madness. There's hair pulling, tickling, stomping on toes, Chinese burns, graffiting of limbs with highlighters, and very nasty insults. As soon as we hear the secretary on the stair, we drop our weapons and nonchalantly resume our typing.

Eight hours of daily attic confinement combined with living together has taken its toll. It all came to a head on Friday when Rhiannon "accidentally" smacked me across the face.

"Whoops!" she said. "I didn't mean to do that. Really."

"Really. Really?! What the hell is happening to us?" I cried, rubbing my nose. "We've become savages!"

"I know! We're worse than the Romans! Killing people for entertainment!"

We sat there contemplating our sad state. A mere hour later, Rhi got a call and was offered a job elsewhere. A real job, with a desk of her own, no attic, no data entry. She starts tomorrow. Left alone I will no doubt start talking to myself, but at least there will be an end to the violence.

Team Australia are working as administrators for a company concerned with aged health care. This means data entry and filing. Remember that period of insanity I went through last year as Secretary Girl? Well I'm there again, baby!

But I'm not whinging this time. Why? Because I really don't care. I know I'm not here forever, and Rhi's working with me. So we're going batty together. We spend our days in a teeny tiny office, typing in medical details for old fogies and climbing over staff to reach the shelves to file things. The longer we're there, the more loopy and juvenile we seem to be become.

SHAUNY:  What would you like us to do now?
SCOTTISH DUDE:  Umm. I'm afraid it's more filing. Do you mind filing?
SHAUNY:  Noooo! I was born to file!

It gets rather depressing occassionally, seeing all this information about people in their twilight years. Some of them are really in a bad way. It's quite an eye opener. I spend a lot of time sitting there wondering if they're happy or if they're lonely, if they're alone in their house watching godawful Coronation Street or if they're got enough legs to pop out to the Bingo. I type in their contact details and wonder who will be my contacts when I'm old and grey and need someone to come over and pick up my wrinkly bod when I've fallen over in the garden. Perhaps I should be nicer to people now.

And it also scares me, all these things that can go wrong with your mind and body. We've seen stomach ulcers and paralysis and hernias and cancers and dementia, all manner of things. Sometimes I feel like nicking out of the office and to go do things like climb some hills or write a book or shag some kilt guys while I'm still relatively spritely.

All this musing aside, the urge to be unprofessional quite often prevails. We amuse ourselves by setting challenges to find the oldest client (101), the most common geezer names (Mary and Alex), the one with the weirdest ailments.

The first one to find someone with a goitre wins a fiver.

RHI:  Hey look at these two old ducks. They're sisters.
SHAUNY:  Oooh er. Just like us!
RHI:  Do you want to be Margaret or Mary?
SHAUNY:  It depends who's got the worse ailments.
RHI:  Well, you have to be Margaret because she's older.
SHAUNY:  But I don't wanna be! I'm arthritic and blind in one eye!
RHI:  Well how do you think I feel? I've got bowel troubles and I'm mildly confused!

Twenty minutes left of my last day at the best job I've ever had. It feels strange not to be leaving a job and screaming WOOHOO! or spitting on the stairs as I run out the door.

We had a lovely farewell lunch with presents and speeches and margaritas and more kilt and haggis jokes than I ever thought possible. And this comes on top of half a dozen different farewell gatherings this week so I am just on the point of bawling and babbling, I love youse all!

So... how about you tell me all your travel tips. Where to go, what to do, what not to do. Tell me what floats your boat, what butters your muffin, what the weather's like in Edinburgh. Anything at all. Don't mention the war.

Well that was the best christmas party of any employer i've ever been employed with EVER! i never write about my new job, why? because i LURVE IT. i like being the marketing communications chicky and writing things and being creative and the people are the bestest loveleist people i've ever worked with and they make me feel like i have a brain and what i do means something. and WOW i had that whole bottle of red on my own. there's onlysomething to werite about if the job is bad, right? so that's why there's nothing to sya about it. life is good people, if you just stop lookingh at the tiny bad things. and i love YOU and you over there too. merry xmas to you all.

UPDATE: I just wanted to add that I walked into a tree as I wandered home. Hehe.

I should keep you posted on the Stupid Things I've managed to do in my new job. There is quite a comprehensive list. Every time I have a new job there is always a phase where you do a lot of Stupid Things. It started at my first job at KFC where the boss asked me to scrub the floors and there I was on my hands and knees with this pissy little scrubbing brush that may as well have been a toothbrush, trying to blast away 27 levels of chicken grease. The boss stood over me and cackled for a full ten minutes before showing me where the big broom-like scrubbers were.

I was 15, so I can blame that on youth. But almost ten years later I am running out of excuses. Yesterday I had to print off 150 copies of a newsletter I'd made and I was rather smug about how sexy it looked. I didn't realise til the bloody thing had been distributed that I'd printed off my draft copy, the one where the contact details said Call Mr. Blah on 123 456 for further information.

I go to the Ladies Room at work about six times a day. The bladder is fine, thanks for asking. The new job is perfectly fine too. It's just sometimes you need to escape for a power nap.

(I still use the same pillows as I did two years ago. Has anyone been reading that long? I tried resting my chin in my hands but if you stay that way too long you end up with big red streaks on your face like gigantic love bites.)

Anyway. I was barging through through the door yesterday when I noticed the door makes a very pronounced groaning sound. And it's a very masculine groan. Like a kick to the groin. I felt kind of bad for the door. Sorry door, I said in my head.

So next time I went I was very gentle and the groan sounded almost like an appreciative moan. It is a door of many moods.

Today the office was almost deserted so I napped even more than usual and tried out all sorts of techniques on the door, to see what sort of notes I could hit.

You know when you kind of open a door with your butt/hip? This guy in the hallway wouldn't stop yapping and I was all, "Yes yes, gotta go gotta go" and sort of entered the Ladies Room backwards. The door gave a pained "Ooof!".

Then this afternoon for something different I got violent and charged at it with my shoulder, like a rugby player with a tackle bag. I just thought of a few nasty bastards that I would like to barge and it was quite satisfying to hear that "Urrrrrrrgh" from the door.

Tomorrow I will practice my roundhouse kicks.

Sniffer Guy has intruiged the hell out of me all week.

Monday I was all new-kid bashful and doing my best to be invisible. I looked straight at my screen all day, but was distracted by a faint sniff sniff sniff coming from a nearby desk.

Tuesday I managed to look over my shoulder without fear of turning into a pillar of salt and successfully identified the sniffer.

Wednesday I thought I had it figured out. It was one of those Laugh Sniffles, that hfffft that squeezes from your nostrils when reading a funny email but not wanting to laugh aloud lest the boss discovers you have no work to do.

By Thursday I had some more theories. The snuffling was so constant that it couldn't possibly be an email. Everybody knows that emails are never that funny. So it was either freaky allergies or shennanigans with snortable substances.

Today it was becoming all too much. Every sniff single sniff word sniff was punctuated by raspy rattly nose noise.

For fuck's sake, buddy! I wanted to whack him over the head with a box of Man Size Kleenex. Blow! BLOW!

Problem is, he's a really nice guy. So is everyone else I've met on the first week. When I did the rounds of introductions, every single one had a friendly smile for me. On Tuesday I was hunting through the fridge for my salad when someone came in for a cuppa and started talking. I looked around, briefly checked the freezer compartment, before realising they were talking to me. I was rather surprised.

I made some brilliant mates at the Other Place, but for the most part it was impossible to get a nod in the hallway. I guess that came from the pressure of deadlines, budget cuts, layoffs and general sense of doom. But here these people just seem so relaxed and smiley and I like the coziness of it all.

Thanks to the people who wrote to ask me how it was going, I got a kick out of it that you remembered. I was too chicken to write about it for awhile. Monday I was too busy crying on the phone to the Mothership that I sucked and was too stupid to do the job. But as the week went on I found myself getting the hang of things. It's the first job I've had where I've had to use my brain. Almost three years of HTML monkeying and of course my photocopying glory days, I am used to being on autopilot. It's so strange to have to think and write and talk and come up with ideas.

I don't want to say I am enjoying it, you should know by now I am ridiculously paranoid and superstitious and think if I dare to say I am happy that it will all turn to shit next week. So let me rephrase. This week was great. There was no crying in the loos from sheer boredom and frustration, no photocopying, no staple removing, no data entry.

But I do miss the staple removing.

Late last year I was bored at work and decided to start sticking all the stickers from my pieces of fruit on an old Expense sheet in my company diary. Since I do no work of real consequence for said company and never have any expenses, I could think of no better use for a beautiful blank page.

Soon I became rather obsessive about it, and decided to set myself the Great Apple Challenge. I was determined that by the time the page was full o' fruit, I would have a new job. Each time I was cruelly rejected for a position, I'd say to myself, "Oh! Well! That's because I haven't eaten enough fruit yet! Ahem."

Last Thursday I ate a mandarin and attached the sticker to the last little bitty of space left. If you click on the pic below you can see this glorious work of art in full:

Then I counted the stickers: 72.

Then I did a tally to determine how many of each different fruit I had eaten, including the various varieties of apple:

Then I made a pie chart to show off my stellar secretarial skillz:

Then out the blue, just as I saved the file, I got a call about a job.

Then on Monday I had an interview.

Then an hour after that they offered it to me.

Then today after almost three years with the same employer, I handed in my notice with a "woohoo!" and I finish next Wednesday.

The new job is only a shortish contract but I've decided what the hell, it's time to take a risk. After all these bloody entries about needing to find a new job, won't it be a refreshing change for you lot?

Plus I am really sick of apples.

HUZZAH!

Imagine my surprise when I discovered yesterday there was such a thing as a staple remover. For years I've painstakingly plucked with my fingernails. But there's this little contraption with fearsome teeth that yoinks the staple out for you. Amazing. I found myself stapling random pieces of paper together, just so I'd have some staples to remove.

I had nine paper jams yesterday afternoon. I know the photocopier sees me coming and cackles to itself, Ahh ha ha, look at this amateur. That bloody machine has far too many orifices for paper to hide in.

As I dismantled and declogged, I thought of paper jams and how there's so really many types of paper jam. Like the pulpy kind you spread on your toast. It keeps you regular. Or when there's a whole bunch of tired notebooks and Post-Its™ driving home from work and the roads get all congested. Or when the ream of A4 calls up his old highschool buddy the legal pad and they get together with drums and guitars in their garage. Paper jam.

CANBERRA, AAP -- Local blogging identity Miss Shauny was coaxed down from a tall building today after receiving the seventeenth rejection letter in her fruitless quest for a new job.

"This one really gutted me," said the distraught Braddon resident. "I've been looking since January and this time I dared to dream. Thirty-five applicants and I actually managed to get an interview, I prepared like crazy and thought I had it in the bag."

After receiving her rejection letter, Miss Shauny went to Telstra Tower where she stood on the viewing deck and bellowed "Goodbye cruel world" to anyone who would listen, dangling her toes over the edge.

Her deranged cries were heard by two Japanese tourists who notified Tower staff. After three hours of intense negotiations and use of megaphones, Miss Shauny was lured from her perch with the promise of chocolate and an agreement that Channel 10 would reduce its screenings of Everybody Loves Raymond by 75 percent.

Representatives from the interview panel were hesitant to comment on why Miss Shauny was not offered the position; a web developer role in an unnamed large government building located on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin that resembles a poor man's Parthenon and houses a shitload of books.

"While Miss Shauny believes we don't want her because she is untalented, unattractive and incapable, there's more to it than that. Let's just say that we get a lot of people applying for jobs here purely because they always wanted to shag in a library and see this as their chance. She has that look about her."

Meanwhile, the secretarial world rejoiced at the news that they would not be losing one of their brightest new talents.

"She is really coming along with that Excel," said an anonymous source. "And today she learned how to change the toner cartridge on the printer and only got a small amount of ink on her clothes. We all gathered round and clapped politely."

There's talk of a wedding in the office.

"My mother is being such a control freak. We had a roast chicken for lunch the other day and I went to throw the carcass out and she starts shrieking, No no! Put the chicken down!

I say, but it's an empty chicken, mother! But she's all, No no! I have to save the wishbone!

She huffs and puffs and takes the chicken off me and ferrets round for the wishbone. She wipes the little bits of chook off it then goes to the pantry and pulls out this plastic bag. And there's a dozen wishbones in there!

Crikey Mum, I say, what are you up to?

I am collecting wishbones for the wedding. I'll spraypaint them silver and put them on the tables.

And I'm like, Muuum! That's bloody revolting!

But she thinks it's a fantastic idea! Everyone at the reception can sit around pulling skanky silver wishbones.

So I say, Mum, I have one hundred and twenty guests, how are you going to collect so many wishbones by then?

But she has a strategy. She's told all the neighbours to save them, and she even went down to Charcoal Chicken Land and asked them did they have any lying around.

And I'm like, jeeeeez Mum. I am going to have to put a note on every table, Disclaimer: This Was My Mother's Stupid Idea.

But she protests, Well it's better than those stupid sugared almonds!"

Advice needed: should I get a little loan for a new puter NOW and get double my memory for free (if you purchase by June 30) OR do I stick to my original plan of no new puter until I have a new job?

You see, I've had this master plan for months now, as soon as I get a new job, I will use some of my leave payout (I have almost 5 weeks of annual leave accrued) towards buying a laptop. Why do I want a laptop? Coz I just freaking DO. Well, mostly for this dorky reason: it makes me write like the clappers.

My boss nicked off to Spain last November and I borrowed her laptop for Nanowrimo. I wrote in the garden, in bed, at the library, by the lake, and I just couldn't stop. I felt so writerly and alive. Ever since I handed it back to her, I haven't written a freaking word more aside from this here blog.

So yes, my plan was to get the laptop as a reward to myself for finally finding a new job. But new job has not eventuated yet, and every day I find myself sitting at work doing data entry or photocopying and almost in tears coz I just feel so freaking miserable and grumpy, wondering if that dirty bitch Fate has me destined to be a secretary.

(Speaking of which, I truly stink at being a secretary. The job wouldn't be so bad if I possessed an ounce of organisation skills or attention to detail. That part of my brain must have been in the finger that got lopped off.

I sat in a meeting this afternoon and listened to folks bitching about the legions who hadn't shown up. When I got back to my desk, I saw sitting pretty in the Outbox the email that I was supposed to send out today reminding people about said meeting, and also the email I was supposed to send out yesterday informing people that the meeting existed in the first place. Shoot the messenger!)

Anyway, I have this element of Catholic guilt or something, that prevents me doing anything nice for myself unless I have earned it somehow. Like if I am eating dinner, I won't eat the nice thing (like lasagna or mashed potatoes) unless I have eaten all the yucky things (like broccoli or squash). If I don't do the yucky, I don't deserve the nice. Or I don't let myself have a bubble bath or watch that movie until I've vacuumed the house or cleaned the loo or other appropriate toil.

I don't know where this deranged logic originated, but either way, I feel like if I go out and buy this stupid new puter now, I will burst into flames for being so reckless and as punishment, I will never get another job. But another part of me says, it's a good deal, get it now, do whatever you need to do to make you feel like writing again, whatever it takes to make you a little happier.

Do you SEE what a fuckwit I am? Do you SEE how I spend my data entering photocopying stapling days torturing myself with these BIG issues? Hasn't anyone noticed lately that I am completely losing the plot? Well I am, dammit! You should be paying attention!

And I miss my puppy.

I would just like to say that this whole thanks but no thanks you're too inexperienced not confident enough too overqualified not as good as that guy over there too tall short browneyed twolegged for this position caper is getting very tired very fucking quickly!

This week I've learned the importance of good signage in the workplace to warn employees of potential hazards. I've also learned the importance of ensuring none of these posters are designed any later than 1985.

There are hundreds of signs available from the National Safety Council of Australia and fall into four different categories:

1. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by using good old-fasioned shock value.

2. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by using terrifying fashions from the 1970s.

3. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by using patronising phrases stolen from your mother.

4. Posters designed to shock employees into awareness by celebrity cameos from the likes of Olivia Newton-John and one of the guys from The Village People.

Oh ho ho! So it seems the Big Boss has been whisked away more important things, so the meetings have been postponed until Tuesday! Bloody hell. I don't think my butt would squeeze that well into the mouth of a cannon, so methinks I'll have a looky elsewhere. My brain is turning to mush here with every passing day.

Please let me know if you have any ideas or job nibbles. And don't say "Move back to Bathurst and resume your fish frying career." Did you know I cooked 480 pieces of fish on Good Friday 1999? I went home and cried from exhaustion and general crapness and disappointment in myself, then vowed to get out of my rut. So I moved to Canberra and studied some more then got the job that became my current rut. I guess that's what life is about, getting into one rut after the other and learning to know the right time to claw out of it. Heh.

10AM tomorrow is my allocated time for Discussion With Important Dude about The Future™. The agenda revolves around the following four questions:

1. What do I do in my current role?
2. What would I like to do?
3. Where might I do it?
4. What do we need to do to make it happen?

Answers are as follows:

1. Sweet fuck all.
2. I wanna be a paperback writer. Paperback writerrrrrrr.
3. Well certainly not in this cold multinational conglomerate.
4. Get me some talent, imagination, alcohol.

I looked at my CV last night, untouched since I first got this job on 1 November, 1999. I always seem to score employment on my birthday. Granted the other jobs I got on my birthday were shitty ones: 1) a coffee shop 2) a fish n chip shop. And it's a long time until my next birthday, I'll be living in the gutter if I have to wait til then.

You should see my sisters CV. She's so impressive she makes me sick. She's only 21 and been out of uni for a pissy little year, but she's had lofty employment in fancy places all over the world, and she worked for SOCOG during the Olympics. That looks damn fine on a resume, I tells ya. And she graduated top of her class and made the Dean's list 5 times. Plus she's witty, sharp, gorgeous and incredibly charming.

I on the other hand am an inarticulate clod with no skills and I have trouble staying awake on the job. Hire me?

So when the powers that be start telling everyone to prepare for 'redeployment', what the hell does that mean in this dot-bomb crazy world? It sounds like I am to be stuffed into a cannon with a laptop tucked under my arm and blasted off into the ether, and whichever random spot I land, I am to dust myself off and get back to work.

Whatever it means, the winds of change are a-blowing. It's not Cyclone Tracy kind of wind, but enough of a breeze to send your skirt billowing up around your legs, like Marilyn Monroe.

I worry because I've no bloody idea what to do next. I've been a professional Cut and Paster for the past two years so I'm not exactly o'erbrimming with skills. There's that journalism degree but no experience (or interest) to accompany it. Who the bloody hell would employ me?

Me tired.

Last year I took the Real Age test, and it said although I was 23, I was looking more like 30. But after almost a year of reforming rotten habits, it tells me I now have a real age of 16.8! I am just one big beacon of good health. Maybe I can put that on my CV.

A week off work begins with the traditional re-alphabetising (is that a word?) of CD collection. They're housed in an old set of pigeonholes from a school. It even used to have the labelmaker names of teachers stuck in front of each hole. Sweet! When I got it five years ago I only had two holes filled, methinks it'll be completely chockers by next year.

I feel kind of stupid blogging about this crap, but I just kind of need to start writing the usual tripe again, y'know?

Speaking of chickens, you may or may not recall, I was a slave to the Colonel throughtout highschool. Here's what I learned in those three and a half years: "If you sleep with me, I'll tell you the eleven secret herbs and spices" does not work as a proposition.

BBQ Chicken Theatre: get a couple of the Colonel's tenderoast BBQ chickens. Stick a pair of tongs up its arse to hold it up. Get your audience to stand on the outside of the drive-thru window, while you crouch below it on the inside, for you are the chicken puppeteer. Fling open the curtains (drive-thru window) and it's SHOW TIME! Make your chickens dance and sing and flap their oven-roasted herb and spicey wings.

Or if the crowd is particularly hard to please, get one chicken to furiously hump the other while making various low, gutteral "bwaaaaaaaaaark bwaaaaaaaaaark" sounds til their stuffing explodes. BBQ Chicken Porn.

Two years ago I was earning $8.50 an hour in the fish and chip shop and I wonder how I survived? Now I am earning a respectable salary yet I am always skint. How does this happen?

CUSTOMER: Can I please have a minimum chips?
BOSS: Sure mate. That'll be $1.50. Plain salt or chicken salt?
CUSTOMER: Chicken salt, thanks.
BOSS: That'll be $1.70 then.
CUSTOMER: A dollar bloody seventy? How can you charge extra for chicken salt?
BOSS: Because you're paying for the chickens!

I don't know if it's my rosy complexion or lack of dress sense that gives me that look of youth, but twice today I've had random strangers in the lifts look at me and my temporary staff pass and say, "Hi there, you must be here on work experience from the high school?". I sputter indignantly and say, "I'm a contractor from A Big Nasty Company! I'm 23.5 years old! I have a car loan and everything!"

I've been pimped out to a government department for the week to peform extra shitty mind-numbing shoulder-breaking trained monkey hijinks, so once again there'll be few dispatches from moi. What's worse the only software they have here is goddamn Microsoft Frontpage! What an abomination. "It's doesn't matter does it?" said the client, "It's all HTML, right?"

Is it a crime to desire a job with less accountability? I'm beginning to think I have no ambition at all. I have no desire to learn anything more about this internet shit. I don't want to become the resident usability accessibility impossibility expert or whatever crap it was I was just asked to become, I don't know because I tuned out after the first half an hour. Some parts of the job I could do with my eyes closed, other parts baffle and terrify me. The one constant is the feeling that this is not for me.

But what is for me? I don't bloody know! I feel like I have the capacity to be good at something, but I have no idea what. I failed miserably as a journalist, and now failing at web chick. I'm not worried about being a disappointment to my parents anymore, as I was after I failed to set the news world on fire. Now I just feel like a thumping huge disappointment to myself.

It's so pathetic to have such lofty expectations of oneself but have no direction whatsoever towards achieving anything.

I'm rapidly heading toward insanity. Had an Ooh Er Angry Redhead Moment™ today:

BOSS 1:  Look at this invoice for Client X, it's $7000!
BOSS 2:  How could it be 7 grand? How could have you taken that long to do it? It's only content! HTML is piss easy!
SHAUNY:  OH I KNOW! Why don't you bring in the trained monkeys and just send me home?!?!

Some statistical information about my work week thus far:

5 calls to the Help Desk
4 times Help Desk hold music was Run To Me by the Bee Gees
1 time Help Desk hold music was How Do You Mend A Broken Heart by the Bee Gees
3 red gala apples eaten
3 monitors that have ceased working in my presence
14 inches of screen in the shitty monitor I am now forced to use due to above
800 x 600 shitty resolution of above screen
2 times I accidentally stapled my finger
6 attempts at starting a report but read weblogs instead
3 out of 100 tissues left in box of Aloe Vera Kleenex
4 re-installations of Macromedia UltraDev before someone believed me that my puter was ill
3 hours computerless while puter was rebuilt
750ml orange juice drank
43 records entered into our invoicing system before I realised I didn't put them in under my name, rather same of someone away on holidays
3 number of times I said "you bloody moron!" after above occurred
1 printer that ran out of toner just as I queued up 30 page document for printing
1 times I ran away from said printer and hid in the loos til someone else discovered problem and changed cartridge.

Look at those stats, will ya.... Dreamweaver's Clean Up Word HTML function is a thing of beauty! *ahhh*

It took 3 minutes to cruise to work today in a blur of amber lights, talking to myself all the way. Remember in American Beauty when Annette Bening is scrubbing windows, "I will sell this house today... I will sell this house today..."? With me it's all about talking myself into showing a hint of confidence instead of slinking around the place, to not look like I will crumble if there's the slightest bit of criticism, not to let it show that I get so overwhelmed by the work. I have this terrible face that is incapable of hiding anything. I never look professional. When the boss approaches me, or any colleague for that matter, I am all quiet and meek as if I was sent to the principals office at school.

Things of note about my new work:

1. I actually do work now
2. The stationary cupboard is not as exciting as previous job
3. The loos are dark and dingy and not conducive to napping
4. The lovely girl next to me plays goddamn Backstreet Boys and I can hear it out of her headphones and it SHITS MEEEE!
5. There's free Milo
6. But the Milo tin is empty

One nice thing is that my window looks out on Telstra Tower (woobloodyhoo) and Fenner Hall, one of the ANU residences. You can't tell how close it is from the picture, but it's nice and Rear Window-ish. Yesterday morning I watched a girl pick up a sweatshirt from the floor, shake it off, have a good sniff at the armpits, slip it over her head, then waltz out the door for the day. Hehe. Love them students.

I'm just about to go to my last Webmasters Forum. I will miss the sexy job title if nothing else. I just had one of my minions come over all teary to say goodbye and that she doesn't know how they'll survive (*snort*) and that noone cares about their webpages like I do! Well lady, I didn't care either, I am just a supremely talented actress. Mwahaha.

Things I Must Do Before Leaving:

1. stock up on stationary
2. return "borrowed" software
3. clean crumbs from keyboard
4. search though desk one more time for missing Gomez Bring It On CD
5. delete non-work related favourites
6. clear cache
7. remove blog graphics, letters and half-finished stories from hard drive
8. have one last snooze in the ladies room
9. mark up the 47 word docs I was given yesterday... YEAH RIGHT!
10. do a happy dance! woo!

Hee hee hee.

I only have seven more working days to lay claim to the job title of WEBMISTRESS. This disappoints me so. It always scores me raised eyebrows and/or saucy looks. It's just not going to be the same anymore. And what to do with all these whips and chains?

Hello kiddies! Did you know that my workplace is nothing more than a putrid pit of disease? No matter how healthily I eat (8 weeks on the chocolate wagon) and fling myself around in the name of fitness (my butt is still numb from that goddamn bike at the gym), I manage to pick up some bug. Old Bill's been sneezin' from the cube in front and Old Rob's been wheezing from the cube next door, and here I am trapped helplessly in the middle like a stunned mullet. (Well not really like a stunned mullet, it's just that I know someone who gets a kick out of that phrase) Anyway, I have used approximately 87 tissues today, and they were the nasty sandpapery kind. My nose makes Rudolph look positively pastel. It feels like someone is bashing away at my sinuses with a jackhammer. I have been talking shit all afternoon and my forehead is blazing with a fever. Woo. I just took some stuff to get me through the rest of the day, I have my second writing class tonight and it'd be nice to be coherent for it. Then again, quite often the best writing comes from your loopiest moods. Hmmm.

I wonder how the hell I got here. Every minute of the working day I feel like I am either going to cry, fall asleep, or throw my monitor out the window. I do not enjoy what I do. I don't give a flying fuck about your webpages. I don't know how I've managed to keep this job for so long because every day is a struggle. This geeky shit does not come naturally to me. It makes my brain hurt to think in a logical or technical kind of way. Everytime there's a problem I feel sick inside because I just don't know if I will have the knowledge to solve it. Worse still, I do not give a rats arse about the problem to begin with. I can't bring myself to care about a website or code or a computer or some techy shite. I come home from work every day feeling so numb and blank and my sister asks me how my day went and I can't remember what I did. All I want to do is sleep or cry. Feels like all the spark has fizzled out of me. I have a nice little salary with a nice big company and it's all very nice and secure so I shouldn't complain at all especially in the current climate but each day it feels like my spirit has deflated a little bit more.

This test thingo that pops out a poem in accordance with your mood. While the brooding Lukester, from whom I pilfered the link, was dished up Shelley's Bereavement, I got e.e. cummings' when God lets my body be. Ooh la!

"...their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
with the bulge and nuzzle of the sea"

But if they were really in touch with my current frame of mind, they would have surely suggested I Went Nuts At Work Today And Stapled My Boss To The Photocopier And Drew A Swastika On Her Forehead With A Whiteboard Marker by little known boutique poet Miss Shauna, but anyway.

I kicked $10 into a Powerball syndicate with a bunch of colleagues to try and win Thursday's $30 million jackpot. We ended up with a few winning numbers which means we all get $20. Not bad eh? But what really sucks this big one is that our boss chose the all-important Powerball number. She chose 17, which is her daughters age. What I wish I didn't know is that she was tossing up between picking her daughters age or her son's age. Her son is 19. And what was the powerball? 19!

Taking out $15 mill for the Perth dude who also chose the correct numbers, we would have collected $833,333 each! WAH!!! Coincidentally, the boss' last day was Thursday, she has now very conveniently moved to Melbourne and will escape our wrath!

Is there anyone reading this who has a technical kind of job amongst a bunch of non-technical people? I am the Webmistress *cracks whip* amongst a herd of buffoon public servants, and every time there is something vaguely icky about a machine, they come to me thinking that my web knowledge somehow extends to anything that goes bleep. It really shits me, because I really DO NOT BLOODY KNOW how to fix machines or whatnot. Don't they know I am not even really a web person, that I am just pretending? Just this week I have had asked of me:

• Why is the printer smudging ink on my report?
• Do you know how to do styles in Word?
• How do you spell Adelaide?
• Can you change my monitor around so it points up more?
• How do I type a dollar sign on my Palm Pilot?
• Hey Shauna, how come when I pulled this big chunk of plastic out of the printer, the printer won't go back together again?
• What's another word for yours sincerely?
• What's these red and green squiggles in my word document?
• How do you refill the stapler?
• Can you make me a diagram in Excel?
• Can you fix my calculator?
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