What flips someone over from polite mode to friendly mode?

Having been indirectly responsible for the pit of depression Anfy's laptop has plunged itself into (that's a long story on its own, but suffice it to say that the laptop has decided it doesn't want to get up in the morning, or at any other time of the day either), I got the joyful task of taking it into the Apple centre to get it counselling.

It was all going quite smoothly with the sales assistant (let's call him Kevin because that's what his nametag said), checking off the contact details, what was in the laptop bag, etc, etc. He was pleasant, but just your standard non-memorable retail pleasant. But then, as I signed off on the manifest and hesitated over the date, he said, "Today's the 29th, all day" and I, talking out of the back of my brain (like I do) said, "Special offer, today only."

And all of a sudden Kevin's off in friendly mode, quipping about how today is the only day ever it's going to be the 29th of the 11th 2004 and what a unique day it is, and thenceforth for the rest of our dealings it's all chatter smile happy friendly joke quip. Like I flicked a switch.

Which was just as well because it's been a good six months since I used my savings card and I couldn't remember the pin. I needed three attempts. ("Don't worry," he said, "keep trying. I've got two more rolls of EFTPOS paper." and "They say never use your own birthday, so I always use someone else's." and "Well done, I knew you had it in you," when I finally got it right.)

Strange, that's all.

(Whoops. I forget who knows and who doesn't.)

Movements of the Evil Household this summer(/not so summer):
18th Dec - Melbourne>Gladstone (sun!)
23rd Dec - Gladstone>Brisbane (family Christmas!)
26th Dec - Brisbane>Paris>Rome>Potenza (Italy! Anfy's family!)
3rd Jan - Rome>Paris>London (err... London?)
9th Jan - London>gallivanting around England (circa Oxford, Bath, Salisbury, Cornwall, Cardiff, Manchester, Northamptonshire, Cambridge)
23rd Jan - London>Paris>Normandy (cold wet French coastline!)
30th Jan - Normandy>Paris (finally more than just passing through)
7th Feb - Paris>Melbourne

And that's the ball game.

Bad points:
- COLD!
- Missing the cricket season.
- Missing the summer (see first point).
- I don't speak either French or Italian.

Good points:
- Meeting lots of very good internet friends.
- Dude, did you read the itinerantary up there?

That? Out there? Was a damn beautiful day. No, really. It was, what, 32? Wind from the north. Sun like a hammer. Beautiful. The only problems with truly luxuriating in it were that I haven't shaved my legs in forever, so long pants not short skirt, and I'd lost my sunglasses somewhere. But a trip to the market and three bucks out of pocket fixed that one.

A few more days like that and the cold might just be baked out of me.

Then I'll go to Europe and get snowed on.

A bird is twittering outside my window. This is so very strange in the city. Y'all can keep your country shit, man.

Yesterday, in their full front-page coverage of the Australian Idol final, the Herald Sun called it "the country's most popular karaoke competition" and I laughed out loud. One of the only times the Herald Sun's managed that without the adjective "derisive" being applied to the laughter generated.

Friend of a friend sent an article to me via Anfy about middle-aged married women fangirling Viggo Mortensen. I'm not sure if this was because it was full of gushing about the talented man who I think is really quite attractive though not quite as fall-down sexy as Johnny Depp, or if it's supposed to be a subtle "YOU ARE SAD, YOU ARE LIKE THESE PEOPLE EXCEPT NOT MARRIED AND MIDDLE-AGED" nudge.

We don't seem to be missing too much in this year's Big Day Out. Although the Beastie Boys would've been way cool. Europe will be way cold, so it will all even out somehow.

This post has just been a multimedia extravaganza of boring, hasn't it?

I have been invited to a Tupperware party. I am quite excited about this, really. It is, however, on a day which means I can't go. This is disappointing. I actually pouted.

Not sure what all this says about me. Maybe I should consult Mystic Medusa, since she seems to be doing such wonders for my compatriot. Not entirely sure brandname kitchenware is precisely her hip, happening and funky metier, however.

My dark-karmic influence is spreading. This morning it lurked in wait and pounced unexpectedly on people across the street from where I was. (I can only assume it was as bored with the whole Sunday-morning-in-the-bookshop thing as I was, and went for a prowl without me.)

As I wrote a note, I heard a slitherthump and a squawk, and when I looked up saw a cyclist sprawled in the middle of the road, and a guy half out of the driver's side of his car. Assumption based on evidence and imprecations being hurled: that he had opened the door without looking and Ms Cyclist had run smack into it.

Given my associations, my sympathies were all with the cyclist. Thus my rather smug satisfaction to watch as, after she'd cycled shakily onwards, the driver discovered he could no longer close his door. A lift and a bit of a jiggle seemed to fix that, but try as he might, he couldn't pop the dent out of the door. (Not where the cyclist had hit it, but where the impact from the hit had bent the door back.)

I wonder if, if I exercise my Miasma of Minor Evil (tm), I can eventually encompass whole continents.

I'm starting to think there's some sort of weird nasty conflux happening in whatever swirl of energies is depicted in most daily lifestyle predictive means. A bad planet in everyone's sign. A general spitting-on of qi. A giant toilet in the universe's feng shui.

All of my friends seem to be meeting with small disasters. Break-ups, accidents, personal crises. Two thirds of the staff at work are sick.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe I've become a karma sink. Maybe I'm a walking, talking sunspot.

Or maybe everyone should just avoid salads.

Dear Jen,

Desolate without you; come back, all is forgiven.

Love,
Melbourne

PS: Weather lovely, wish you were here.

Yes, we had everyone's favourite Jen for the weekend just gone. It was absolutely wonderful. All of it. Even walking along St Kilda beach as the rain sleeted in off the scungy bay. Perhaps especially that bit. My life is much more like my life when she's around. Miss her already.

I do not tend to get involved in domestic politics, and this is about as domestic as it gets (without going a coup against Anfy, and why would I do that?), but every time I see a Free Craig Johnston (or here) banner (which, in a city with multiple big building works in the inner city, is quite frequently), I feel an overwhelming surge of rage.

Because he is not a "political prisoner". He is not a fucking victim. You know what he did? He - wearing a balaclava - led an armed, inexplicable invasion of other union heavies - also wearing balaclavas - into the workplace of the job placement agency who provided non-union contract employees. Basically, he led an armed sortie of thugs to terrorise office workers who had no idea what was going on.

Think about how you'd feel.

He is a fucking thug and he deserves every single minute of prison time he got.

And people wonder why I don't fucking like unions. Honestly.

I'm almost certain that there must be something wrong with having a tzatziki sandwich, even if I can't see what it might be.