Dark Thoughts

Hehe - I just realized that my blog is 2 years old today.

Happy birthday to my blog :D

It's been a while since I blogged last. Work has been absolutely flat out, so I've had little time to put keyboard to w.bloggar. Things are going well at work. I've been doing lots of drawings with the digital crayons, some database work, lots of spreadsheets, and basically trying to keep up with the demands for work placed on me.

The weight thing is still a bit of a struggle, but we're still working on it. The low GI diet is going great. The food in the menu's is fantastic, and I haven't felt hungry for about a week, despite eating less than normal.

Played squash today. Won some lost some.

Off to Busselton this weekend with Jodie, for a relaxing weekend away. Hopefully I'll be buying a house as well, though we're yet to see the one I'm interested in.

Not much music of late, but hopefully in the coming weeks.

Ciao for now....

I arrived back from my brief jaunt to Shanghai, China, complete with a nasty cold, and just in time for my birthday. The cold is one of those nasty ones that gums up your head, such that even thinking feels like you are wading through a room of alien goop. It's definately a sudafed grade cold, and I really feel like I could just snuggle up and go to bed.

The trip to China went well. I delivered a paper at a conference, and we met a few mining company's in China who are interested in our technology. There's a lot of work yet to be done, but the technology is slowly gaining acceptance, and producers are beginning to understand the advantages of bacterial leaching.

It was my Birthday on Monday as well, yeah, I know, one day after Sept 11, but ya get that. I had a really mellow day, which was exactly what I needed. I got some cool stuff, but the best is yet to come. Jodie is planning a little weekend retreat thing, I think. She's been pretty secretive about it, but I know it involves travel, and it's in a southerly direction. We will be away on the next long weekend, which is really cool.

My pop died yesterday as well. He will be dearly missed by his grand-children. I have very fond memories of the times I spent with him, from a young age, whether it was fishing, or sitting on his knee, waiting for him to offer me a peppermint from his jar. His health in recent years has been in decline, and I hope that he is at peace. I feel for my Nanna who's dedication and love to my Pop is a model for our generation. Love like that, it seems, is a rare commodity now days.

I will miss my pop dearly.

I haven't given an update on my weight for a while, but it's slipped back to the 102 kg, which is frustrating. I'm not going to gym at the moment, due to my illness, and I missed out on gym while in China, but I am eating healthy, and Jodie and I are working on reducing our portions. It's a long slow battle, but one that I am determined to win.

I got a very pleasant email in my inbox this afternoon from Garage Band informing me that Signum is to be the Ambient track of the day on the 8th of September, which I'm seriously stoked about. I've had 6 reviews in so far and the song is slowly moving up the charts. All of the reviews have been positive, though the concensus is that the ending just doesn't quite work properly, which I tend to agree with. Most reviewers have wanted it to go on longer, so I think that's what I'm going to do. I enjoy the next 2 tracks off the album far more than I enjoy this track, so if these reviews are anything to go by the rest of the songs should be well received.

Anyway, click on the logo below if you want to have a listen to the track.



A bit of an update with the whole weight thing. I weighed myself using the gym scales the other day and came in at about 99kg, though this is fully clothed, so I'm happy that things are heading in the right direction. Jodie went and saw a dietician the other day and we were encouraged that we are generally going well with our overall diet (ie we are eating well), but there's a few things that we have learnt and will take on board to try to become even healthier.

My housemate and Jode are kind of butting heads at the moment, which is very frustrating for me. I'm trying to be both a good friend and a good boyfriend, but there are a few issues that are causing drama's. The biggest is the cat's and their hygeine habits. Frankly it is disgusting, and two of my housemate's cat's aren't being cared for particularly well, though there are a few other issues, such as my housemate's overall contributions to the household, but I'm not going to go into details about that, suffice to say that generally I can see Jodie's point. My housemate is feeling frustrated because... well I'm not sure why, but I'm thinking it's because Jodie and I have kind of taken over the house pretty much entirely and relegated him to his bedroom and his portion of the office. This came to a bit of a crisis point this morning.

I took it upon myself to clean up the office on the weekend, and part of the clean up was to find a home for a lot of stationary and clear away boxes of files from the floor. In order to keep the place clean and in order, I emptied one set of drawers of my housemate's into a box and put stationery into them. It made sense to me because the drawers are part of the desk that Jodie and I work from, and it was our stationery. There is another set of drawers in the office, which I though my housemate also had a bunch of stuff in, but as he pointed out, he really didn't have anything in those drawers, and it was, in fact our stuff in the drawers.

My housemate was understandably upset, and I talked to him and apologised for booting him out completely, and offered a more sensible approach where he can use the other set of drawers, and immediately proceeded to empty them.

I seriously think that we all need to sit down and sort stuff out, and clear the air. Jodie and I are leaving the house at the end of the year anyway. Most likely to China, but if not, to one of my other houses, where there is a lot more room for us, until my work has made a decision about where they want me to work. The cats really are getting to Jodie and there's a few things that are frustrating me as well.

I think that the living situation has gone on for too long and we need some space between us, before we end up stifling and suffocating each other.

We really need to get the house finished off completely before that happens to make it a viable prospect to rent out. As it is at the moment would create problems with renting, so I am puting a lot of effort into acheiving that, and hopefully I can have it finished inside the next month or so, but, to date, it's been pretty much a solo effort on my part, which is part of what is annoying me.

Anyway, I sound like I'm whinging a lot here, but it's something I need to get off my chest. The friction between Jodie and my housemate is getting to me. I'm doing my best to span the divide but I feel stretched and somehow irrelevant and ignored in the whole conflict.

Anyway, that's about it for me today. I'm off to China again next week for a conference, but I'll try to keep on bloggin...