Dark Thoughts

It's been one of those slow days today. Had an arguement with the bank this morning about why they charged me an overlimit fee before my account was over the limit. Apparently it's illegal for them to actually report the charged interest to my account until the end of the statement date, but it's not illegal for them the deduct a fee against the interest charge in the meantime.

It's simply not right. I'm going to fight this one.

I spent last night teaching my housemate the basics of MYOB, so that he can manage the accounts for our house. To the casual reader, that might seem like a bit of an over the top exercise, but seriously, we are going to rent this out, so need to start recording equity positions for distributions, Capital purchases for depreiciation purposes etc. Plus, my housemate really wants to learn the software.

It was a bit frustrating. Apparently he either doesn't like my keyboard or he is Capilal Letter phobic, because he just wanted to type everything in in lowercase. I guess it does get the information across, but it is seriously hard to read. Sentence case is the way to go. Anyway, he's responsible for it, and he needs to explain to our accountant why it's all in lower case, so I'll let him sort it out.

Anyway, the technical side went all right. We covered the banking part of MYOB (Deposits, Withdrawals and Reconcilitations) as well as a bit of an introduction to the Journal Entries. The highlight, as always is getting to stamp all the bits of paper with the "Entered" stamp. Seriously, this must be the reason why accountants do their job, for the big collection of self-inking stamps that they get to acquire.

Anyway, it prooved to be a nice little distraction from me needing to do my own data entry, so I just did lots of filing instead.

In other news - Mongolia in 4 weeks. Looks like it will be fun, but am picking up some travel tips from my cow-orkers in the meantime.

Also, a friend of mine got in contact with me today and wants to work on some collaboration work doing some music. It should be great, because he's got an awsome talent. I think we'll be able to do some seriously good music together. I'll torture the Kurzweil and I'll let him mangle with the DP4+.

I'm also planning on how I'm going to restructure my studio for my trip to China. Probably sell off lots of the boxes and get a Kurzweil KSP8 as a audio interface via firewire. That would rock.

Another strange thing happened to me today. I was going through my in tray and found a letter addressed to me detailing a substantial pay-rise. Wicked. A very pleasant surprise. It's left me in a very good mood, despite my earlier banking conflicts.

Blah, anyway, I've got stuff what needs to be finished before I can go home, and then to Toastmasters. I've got to do a speech tonight. It's going to be called Something about Zen, and it will be a parallel between my experiences on the back of a motorbike between Izmir and Assos in Turkey, and the plot of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Hope it goes OK. I've only had half a day to prepare.

Should be fun though.

Well, Jodie and I had a bit of a moment last night. I don't know if I would call it an arguement as such, but we seemed to have managed to put each other on edge a bit.

What happened was that she sent me an SMS, while I was gaming with my housemate. We were in the middle of a pretty intensive Starcraft battle with some Big bad Doobies and Starcraft, being one of those games that rely on doing lots of stuff instantatneously kinda precludes taking a break to respond to an SMS.

Anyway, I think Jodie really wanted to speak to me right at that point in time, and the problem with SMS's, being a written text medium, intonation, and the sense of urgency normally detected in speech simply doesn't come across, so I thought that the message was just an message of endearment. A short message to remind me that I was on her mind.

Unfortunately, Jodie really did want to speak, and took my silence as some kind of avoidance. A second message about an hour later gave me the impression that I'd really done something wrong. Anyway, to cut a long story short she became angry, and I became confused, and somewhat worried.

As it turns out Jodie has a lot on her mind, especially with the future looming, and many decisions to be made. It's also her birthday soon, so it's a time of inner reflection for her, and to top it all off, I appeared to be ignoring her.

Anyway, the night progressed with yet more SMS's, of which again there was feelings and true intents clouded by the lack of intonation with the SMS's.

In the end I've concluded that SMS's, while convenient, can be menacing at times. Sometimes the tone of the voice and the lack of feeling expressed in the actual comunication can cause the written word to be misinterpreted. I am now officially a victim of that phenomenon.

Friction is one of those things that happens when to objects aren't moving together, which was the case for Jodie and I last night, though to call us objects is pretty impersonal, but probably more correct from a bigger picture definition of friction). There was some heat, some sparks and noise generated when our directions clashed. In some way's it's a good thing, because it reminds me that I need to consider that sometimes direction changes can occur, and it reminded me that I need to keep my guard up for it.

It also reminded me that I need to be wary of not taking Jodie for granted. It's strange what we come to expect of one another, and sometimes we don't realize that there is effort behind those actions. Sometimes we need something to bring this fact to our attention, and last night was one of those moments for me. While not a pleasant experience at the time it I hope that we are a little closer because of it.

It's strange because the song that I am listening to right now seems very relevant.

I don't want to say I'm sorry
Because I know that there is nothing wrong
Don't be afraid, There's no need to worry
Because my feelings for you are so strong

Hold me in your arms, and never let me go
Hold me in your arms, because I need you so.

I see it in your eyes
There is something, something that you want to tell me
I see it in your eyes
There is something that you have for me.

I see it in your eyes
There is something, something that you want to tell me
I see it in your eyes
There is something that you have for me.

I don't want to say I'm sorry
Because I know that there is nothing wrong
Don't be afraid, There's no need to worry
Because my feelings for you are so strong

Hold me in your arms
Hold me in your arms, and never let me go
Hold me in your arms, because I need you so.

I see it in your eyes
There is something, something that you want to tell me
I see it in your eyes
There is something that you have for me.

Is there a reason why, there is something,
Something you want to tell me.
I see it in your eyes
There is something that you have for me.


Kind of apt I think.

Anyway, I'll be seeing her again on Friday, when I go up to Derby to meet her parents. A little daunting, but is should be fun.

Till then - Doobie Trashing with my housemate, until those messages come through ;-)