Like, OMG, I am so sure!

So, yesterday I pretty much proved to myself that I haven't moved much past 12 year old girl phase when it comes to close proximity to hunky men in very little clothing.  I went to change in the locker room at the gym and this bit muscley Italian guy starts changing right next to me - strips off to nothing but his tight little red underwear.  I, being infinitely unflappable, entirely maintained my cool while putting on my tank top.  All went entirely well - lots of coolness points - until I managed to put my head through the arm hole of the tank top.  Shit shit shit - reverse reverse reverse!  Trying so very hard to not look like I was a complete spaz, I back off the shirt and manage to stick my head through the other arm hole.  AHHHHHH!!!!  Oh god just please let the ground open up and swallow me now!  Well, I'm sure he was completely overwhelmed as well - so much that he wasn't able to show his - overwhelmedness.  Yeah.  Anyway, I have some nice stamps in my stamp book!  Sigh.

I felt slightly better when, cycling home, some numbnuts cycling down the sidewalk darts out into the street, nearly hits me, ends up running along on top of his bike and then runs his groin into the headset.  "Idiot", I say, as I cycle off, on the road, feeling slightly smug.  Almost made up for being a complete numbnuts.  Almost.

Anyway, I have started trying to put over all the handover documents at work for my leaving.  I've got a month to do this and, honestly, it really doesn't feel like long enough.  So many things to finish!

Blah.

Partly yucky with a continued chance of yuckiness

So, we had spring for about 47 minutes last week, give or take.  The buds of the trees are starting to open, the crocuses are up, the daffodils are sort of up and my face and eyes were puffy and itchy in the wonderful springlike way I look forward to every year.  And then the wind changed.  Back from the east.  And now we're back to an easterly wind, slate grey skies and freezing temperatures.  Yay.  So, what is the best thing to do on such a day of ickiness?  Go for a bike ride of course (with the wind).  I spent today cycling out to Winchester - 83 miles, then took the train back.  Admittedly, it wasn't the nicest bike ride ever - cold and grey and trafficky.  I did finally end up on some proper tinyass country roads at about mile 50, but that was only after 50 miles of endless traffic tedium.  I had forgotten as well that there are many miles of MoD owned land to the west of London - mile after mile after mile of scrubby pine and birch forest with the occasional little sad town interspersed.  There are many signs advising not to pick up unexploded ordnance, as doing so might seriously shorten one's life.  However, and perhaps suprisingly, one can just wander off into these woods - probably unlike most American military owned land (though I doubt they look too kindly on walking onto a firing range).  Had my lunch on a downed tree in the piney forest - large explosions every 30 seconds or so in the distance.  Very bucolic.  Robin suggested that they use sheep as touchpaper (or perhaps they were blowing up sheep?).  Anyway, I need to try to plan a slightly better route next time.  Gotta go get ready for the week now.  Yippydoodah.

All Change, Please, All Change

So, I sit here, trying to think of what to write in the same way I would sit at the beginning of an essay - thinking, ooh, I need to go load the dishwasher, put my clothes away, reroof the house, run a marathon.  Kinda funny really, given that I don't actually have to have an intro or a conclusion, a plot, or even a point.  All I have to do is blather and God knows I can blather.  I suppose a lot of it is just the fact that I'd gotten out of the habit of writing, so I thought, OMG I have to write about every single exciting thing that has happened (or not) over the past x period of time.  That's a bit of a job - work, almost.  So I don't - I put it off, life passes.  I have amazing and astounding thoughts on, um, amazing and astounding things and time passes.  I forget about them - they become bits of mental lint, fluffing away at the slightest breeze.  My whole point of doing this was just to capture the random blatheriness of life, as it happens, to force me to pause for at least a second to comprehend.  Somehow I'm blowing through life at an amazing speed - it always seems to be Friday or Tuesday and I think how the hell can that happen?  My six month dental appointment seems to come up every month or so.  I know this is a "feature" of growing older, but it worries and upsets me, nonetheless, that I somehow, while in college, managed to do really quite a lot of studying, yet managed to have what felt to me like quite a full life.  Now, on the other hand, life seems to consist of a certain amount of boredom at work, commuting, gym and trying (usually in vain) to get enough sleep.  I think I managed to do about an hour of work in the back garden last weekend before it got dark.  Somehow I want to fit into this things like learning German and taking up piano again, but I just don't know how.  I didn't think I was that disorganised... I mean, my God, I make up my lunches (salads) for the week on Sunday night.  That's organised!  Anyway, I have a month left in my current job, after which I take on the role of team leader for the GIS team at Greenwich Council.  They don't really have a team at the moment, not exactly, anyway.  I sure as hell never thought I would be leading a GIS team in some random London local government, considering I discovered GIS pretty much by accident and always assumed I would be a teacher, a lecturer, a volcanologist, whatever, but not a middle manager in a monster sized bureaucracy in a small and silly country in the middle of the Atlantic.  Oh well, these things happen.  Oh, by the way - my recurring dream of trying to get somewhere via public transport, barefoot and in the snow (those elements are always constant, but the details change) has changed.  Now, it seems, I'm on a complicated road network - always the same complicated network (I seem to have it mapped out in my head, rather appropriately).  There is still always snow.  But now instead of trying to get public transport to some ridiculous and far away location, I'm in the back seat of a car, trying to steer it while looking over someone's shoulder.  So, I suppose it is moving from a feeling of disempowerment to being ceded control but being afraid of losing it.  Or something.  Maybe I need therapy.  ECT. ;-)  Anyway, I'm trying to do this over the blare of the TV and it's actually some scientific program, rather than Spongebob, meaning I'm having a hard time focussing on this.  Must try to get back to random and regular blather...