Floating Leaf

Here's a list of annoying/frustrating things about this weekend:

1) My toilet is backed up. I flushed it this morning and got at least a gallon of water all over the bathroom floor.:/ ( Read more... )

2) Daylight Savings Time starts tonight. Which means that on Monday I have to get up at what will effectively feel like 4:30 a.m. I honestly don't know how I am going to cope.

3) It is still so damn cold. Doesn't even feel like early spring anymore - just full-on winter weather. So yes, I am totally wearing the brand new winter boots that I bought on clearance (which are wonderfully warm and comfy, I have to say, and definitely a great bargain). Even though most clothing stores are already selling shorts and swimsuits...

4) My sinuses are totally gunked up, and I don't quite know if it's due to the cold, or the two packets of soy sauce I had last night. ( Read more... )

And now it's really late, and I can't be bothered to counteract this negative list with a positive one (I was going to, I swear, but I'm too tired). So, once again, please excuse my grumpiness. I'm sure it's a temporary relapse, not a permanent return to my cranky old self. Once I am able to use my toilet again like a normal civilized person, and once I am again able to breathe through the mucus clogging my airways, I will be all sweetness and light - I promise. And now, let's try to get some sleep...

Lord, I am such an idiot. I was so frustrated by all those hours of pointless waiting yesterday that I decided I just couldn't face another day of this, and that I'd much rather be at work. Besides, I was sort of hoping the plumber might come in anyway while I was gone - it has happened before on occasion. The rental company does have the keys, and they once asked me if it was OK for workers to come in and patch up a hole in the ceiling in my absence. So I figured maybe the plumber guy was too busy yesterday, but today he just might let himself in and fix the problem, without me needing to take another day off work. Also, last night, after I made the ranty post, the leak seemed to have slowed down again; I wrapped the pipe in a kitchen towel and some plastic bags, and the bucket was taking quite a while to fill up. So I was actually able to get some decent sleep (I did wake up briefly around 2 a.m., but then slept again until six). In the morning, the situation didn't seem too dire - the bucket wasn't even half-full - so I convinced myself everything was more or less fine, and went to work. I did exchange the bucket for the big garbage can, though, before I left - which turned out to be a brilliant move. As you may be guessing by now, nobody has come in while I was gone - and the massive garbage can was very nearly full when I came back.:/

Incidentally, I had scheduled next Monday off, because on Sunday I am going to visit my parents. So I thought, well, if the plumber doesn't come today or tomorrow while I'm at work, I'll call the rental office again on Monday. And that's what I told my boss. But right now I'm pretty sure it's NOT a good idea to leave this hanging until Monday. I had wrapped the pipe in more plastic bags, but that can only do so much. If it gets any worse - and in a few days it might - I will not be able to leave the house, or fall asleep, for more than 2-3 hours. If even that. So I HAVE to get it fixed tomorrow. Which means ANOTHER vacation day. And I've already used almost half of my PTO for this year... *sigh*

I can't even remember the last time I took a day off for something fun. It's always either a sickie, or an errand day, or an emergency repair day, or a cleaning/laundry day, because I can't seem to fit those momentous activities into a regular 2-day weekend.:/ And let's not even mention taking several days at a time. I think I haven't done that since... 2011, probably? And even then, it was just to attend a few shows at a local film festival. So when my LJ friends talk about going on 2-3 week vacations - either actual trips, or just "chilling out" at home - every year, I get very envious. To me, that's just not viable, even though "technically" I have over 20 days off per year. It seemed like so much when I was younger, too (and had even less). Now it's barely enough to cover my basic needs...

Today was another failure of a day. Again, it took me several hours to decide what I needed from the grocery store - and when I finally put myself together and went there, I got drenched in buckets of torrential rain on my way back. Of course, minutes after I got home - looking like a wet rat, I might add - the rain stopped. But when I changed all my clothes and went out again, to the other grocery store, the skies opened for the second time. Now I had an umbrella, though, so I only got soaked from the knees down.:| Anyway... I had been planning to cook tonight, but somehow lost the will to do it after this little adventure, so I decided to spend the evening making a long LJ post instead. Except the long post never materialized either, as you can see. It was the usual "OMG I have so much to say I don't know where to start", and then "OMG why is my brain a blank now???" syndrome.:/

And now it's late and I just want to sleep. Gahhh. This is so pathetic I can't even. How do people manage to actually DO STUFF on weekends, like go to clubs or the movies or see friends or whatever?... I barely seem able to cope with the basics. Is it just me, or is this what "middle age" feels like? If so, then I don't want. I need extra 12 hours added to each day - otherwise it just doesn't make sense anymore. I might just as well die now, because I will never do anything worthwhile again. Unless I hire someone to take care of all my daily chores for me - but then I would need to work two jobs so I could afford it, which would defeat the purpose. Anyway, I'll stop babbling and go to bed. No need to make this overwhelming feeling of futility worse by wallowing in it.:/

Where does the time go? How come it's been a week since my latest post? Why does it feel like I can't keep up with life anymore, even though nothing out of the ordinary has been going on?...

To be honest, I guess I've always felt this way - but recently it's getting worse. This past weekend just flew by like a rocket, and I barely managed to take care of some incredibly boring mundane stuff. I'm afraid I might never say anything vaguely interesting in this journal again - not because there aren't tons of fascinating topics I could talk about, but because I will never find the time to go beyond "Hey, I'm still here, another week has passed, nothing momentous happened, but I was busy with the daily grind." That would pretty much cancel the purpose of this journal to me, because I'm not interested in keeping a Facebook account.:P Or a goddamn Twitter... LOL. I like the LJ format precisely because it allows you to write long, rambling posts - except you need to actually have the time and energy to do that. Otherwise you might just as well shut up and only lurk silently in the background, reading other people's entries. I am usually annoyed by LJ-ers who only pop in about once a month to say: "Hey, I'm still here, see you later!" - but what if it's either that or nothing?... Is it worth the effort?...

I don't know. It just feels grossly unfair, somehow. Life is fleeting, and so much of it has to be spent doing such trivial stuff (like work, for example :P). There is a whole lot of something missing from this picture, but I don't seem to have the time to even focus on it... *weary sigh*

So there's this new lovely Viggo article in the New York Times Style magazine. Called Viggo Talks and Talks.:D With quite a few nice photos, I might add. You can view the whole thing here (someone kindly provided the link on viggo_daily):

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/02/viggo-talks-and-talks/

My favorite part:

Mortensen’s combination of cheekbones and limpid-eyed sincerity has tended to inspire a slightly awestruck tone in journalists over the years. Some of their more breathless accounts of his chilled-out, barefoot demeanor have come perilously close to making him sound a bit of a pill: a parody of the soulful gypsy artiste, all flared nostrils and rippling Kant quotations. Happily, he is not really as oppressively soulful or as grandiose as such reports might suggest. He is earnest, God knows, and his pronouncements on life and art verge, occasionally, on the sententious. But he’s not a preening nostril-flarer. What he brings to mind, more than anything, is your older brother’s hippie friend from childhood — the one who played you your first Velvet Underground album and instructed you in Trotskyist politics.

Yep. That's our Viggo. The one we all know and love. *sporfle*

( And now for something completely different - long, work-related rant under the cut. )

I just saw Vanilla Sky. And I am reminded, yet again, why I don't watch American movies anymore. ( mild spoilers in the unlikely event you haven't seen it by now )

Thank you, dissonant_dream, for the cute baby otter! Your virtual hugs and support mean a lot to me these days. Well, not just these days, but... you know. *hearts*

( Also, mother nature must really hate me for some reason. )

Did I just make a post whinging about jury duty?... Let's forget about that one. It's a non-issue right now. Life surely has a way of making you realize how petty your problems were... by increasing them tenfold.:/

My car died on me - again - last night as I was driving home from work. And by died, I mean just randomly stopped moving in the middle of the road. With no warning whatsoever. ( Read more... )

Okay, this is weird. I am on some sort of mad quest for new LJ-friends, because most of my current LJ-friends are way too quiet most of the time and I feel like I have no-one to talk to. I mean, I can monologue here till I'm blue in the face, and maybe someone will even read it and think "Oh crap, there she goes again" - and keep that remark to themselves out of polite consideration for my fragile ego - but that still doesn't in any way address my need for CONVERSATION. Or, you know, thought EXCHANGE. And I don't mean casual remarks about the weather or the price of eggs, thank you very much. I want to talk ABOUT stuff. I don't know, fandom (any fandom I am even remotely interested in), art, cinema, music, books, astrology, paranormal phenomena, gender, sexuality, the meaning of life (yes, even Monty Python, LOL)... you name it. I want to become friends with more people who discuss such (or other) stimulating topics in their journals on a regular basis - so I can participate in the discussion and keep my grey matter from withering away into a bleak moonscape of nothingness. And no, I am not interested in searching for people with similar interests through dating sites - because then someone might get the idea that I am simply looking to get laid. I am not. It is my BRAIN that needs stimulation like whoa, and yes, reading/watching good stuff on my own gives me that, but I also need to DISCUSS that stuff with other people, not just monologue endlessly about it. I need someone who actually has an OPINION on that weird indie flick I watched a while ago, and can also perhaps recommend to me another similar one that I might like. I also need that someone (or someones) to update their journal more than once a month. I don't know, maybe LJ isn't the right place for this, but I feel at home here and don't necessarily want to open another journal somewhere else just so I could beg random strangers to TALK to me, dammit. There MUST be people out there who have so much on their minds that they need a regular outlet in the form of a journal which doesn't only talk about highly personal stuff. Not that I mind highly personal stuff about people I already know - far from it - but I am hardly going to approach a stranger who posts exclusively about their sex life, for example.:P Anyway... I feel like an idiot trolling about through my interest list and reading random people's profiles - but I can't resist the compulsion to do it. I have no idea what came over me. I think I need help. Or a life, perhaps. Except THIS is my life. EXCHANGING THOUGHTS with people IS my life, it has always been. I can totally live without seeing another human face for a week or a month, but I need to HEAR from a human brain far more often than that. Or, you know, READ from it. And have some sort of communication, if possible. Otherwise I feel like a wrecked spaceship hurtling towards a black hole. Or something. And I'm not even into sci-fi. Or not much, anyway. But I can talk about the end of the world. Or the Age of Aquarius, you know. Or whatever. Just give me a topic you want to discuss, or tell me where I can find a journal/community that is relatively active and welcomes new friends/members. I need an outlet. Ranting on here just isn't cutting it anymore.

End of transmission. Thanks for putting up with my frustrations once again, and good night.

So... I'll be going to my parents' house for Easter tomorrow. I'm not particularly looking forward to it, since I have to stay overnight (dad's neurologist appointment is on Monday, and it wouldn't make sense to drive back here tomorrow night only to drive back there the next day - it's over 40 miles one way, after all) - but I guess I'll find something to occupy myself. I might actually use the time to go through all the stuff in my old bedroom and decide what should go in the recycling bin - or make a dent in my sister's impressive gothic novel bookshelf.;) They do have a computer, btw, but it's situated in a very "public" area of the house - so I don't expect to be able to do much more than perhaps check my email. And I probably won't be responding to comments and stuff until Monday night or later (depending on what time I get back here etc.).

In other news, we had another company meeting at work this week, and our CEO announced that, financially speaking, we are slowly getting out of the dump and that there will be raises in July. No more than 2%, probably, but we haven't had any since 2008, so we'll take that, thank you very much. *relieved sigh* Oh, and btw: the management of my apartment building did get their act together and send me the lease renewal, only about a month late.:P And they did NOT raise my rent. I think they are very anxious to keep the tenants that they've got at this point, because there are several empty apartments in my building alone. Anyway - there is hope that my bank account will not reach negative balance.;) Unless my car breaks down again, that is - which it hasn't done in a while. *knocks on wood fiercely*

Also, I've added another wonderful recipe to my list of favorites: Mexican Sweet Potato & Black Bean Salad, with chipotle-chili dressing. OMG... yummmm.:D It has a rich taste, with just the right balance between heat and sweetness. It's also pretty quick & easy, as well as equally delicious either warm or cold. Definitely a keeper.:D

Oh, and I've finally seen Michael Moore's Sicko - but I'm not sure if I want to write about it. I would probably end up ranting for hours, and I don't really have the time. ( Read more... )

And one more thing, just to end on a positive note: I LOVE MY FLIST, and I love LJ in general. There are some absolutely amazing people on it. Some of my most wonderful friendships started here, and I can't think of a better way to CONNECT on a very deep level. Which reminds me of this conversation I had recently with a coworker. We were talking about the internet and various ways of online interaction, as well as being anonymous versus revealing your legal name on a public forum etc. - and I said that I usually prefer to use a nick, unless I have a deeper personal connection with someone. Whereupon my coworker stared at me like I was insane. "Deeper personal connection? Through THIS???", he asked incredulously, pointing at his computer screen. He just couldn't fathom what on earth I was trying to say. Well... I wasn't about to go into any details of fanfic porn and general awesome silliness/mental exhibitionism that goes on in these parts, LOL. So I'll just let him think that I am slightly off my rocker. And I will never tell him that my flist actually includes people who have met their SIGNIFICANT OTHER through LJ and are now LIVING TOGETHER as couples in real life, because they first had a deep personal connection through THIS.;) Just saying.

Oh, and THANK YOU for more postcards, dissonant_dream! They are gorgeous. Especially the one from Charlecote Park. Oh, how I'd love to live close to such a beautiful spot!... Damn, I miss Europe so much. Not just Poland by itself, but all of Europe - including places I've never been to, LOL. I miss historic areas, cultural atmosphere, my friends... everything. It's just... displacement syndrome, I has it.:(

Have to go do some cooking now. I might be able to respond to some comments later tonight, but if not, then I will hopefully catch up with them sometime next week. The main addressee of this cryptic remark certainly knows who she is.:D <333