Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Bric à Brac

Today is my last day at this current temp job, my other nature guide summer job ain't so certain anymore with all the damn sneezing birds (some of the nature parks may not even open if things don't improve)

That said, I'm still eating chicken (mostly out of spite, and because it's cheap cos MAN are people susceptible to media fear-mongering these days.)

Will be moving into my new digs in the next few days - so I'm off to Paris this weekend to have a fun time dismantling furniture thats probably been dismantled and remantled (makes sense as a word in my opinion) one too many times. I participated in a vulture-like raid of an evil grandmothers (not mine, mines nice) house last weekend as she's downsizing (no, that's not a euphemism for 'died'). It was like a bric a brac free for all. Pity she had such crap tastes then.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

lumpy cat


le chat blanc
Originally uploaded by Nyx.
Here I am possums, not to fret (for anyone who is not fortunate enough to understand that cultural reference, I should direct you here).
Karma has been giving me something of a pick and mix assortment of latey. Probably cos I thought I was strong and worldy enough to deal with an online booking system whose call centre appeared to be located somewhere out in Tajikistan and used up all my phone credit trying to sort out the whacky but inevitable fallout (which they obviously refused to sort out anyway but devised to keep me on line while they avoided sorting out the problem for as long as possible). *

So still in my bad karmic loop, the next morning I got stuck in the train thanks to an epic door fail at my stop, so I was an hour late for work (who I couldn’t call because...? See above...) Then I had to make up the time, and get a little telling off for good measure. Yet another reason that temp work can be a drag.

Then, THEN we should add in the joyful (and semi regular) experience of my bfs parents going through one of their “episodes” who managed to extrapolate some series of events scenario via a series of imaginary leaps that ended up with me as a villan and them as some unfortunate victims of circumstance. You know, it’s taken me the best part of 30 years just to get my OWN parents under control, I am SO not ready to start again with a couple whose kids have obviously not taken the time to decently manipulate them into behaving correctly.

Finally my karma balance shifted (conveniently coinciding with the partaking of cocktails). Spent the weekend playing tourguide in Paris, even in the face of craptacular weather. Came to the realisation that my 'cool bar in Montmarte' is in fact shite and expensive, aaaah - disillusionment!) shopping, drinking, the Musée d’Orsay, sharing my physical space with Angelina Jolie and very nearly trampling on her child, drinking...

* Fret not dear readers; I managed to get it cancelled through a sneaky process of calling someone more competent

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

urban vibes

Hey all
Is been a while (I'm too slack for anything - posting to the blogs, writing emails, taking photos...whaddeva)
How’s things then everybody? Keeping well? Hale and hearty (speaking of, after a godawful track run that all most got me admitted to the quarantine ward last year, I’ve had nary so much as a sniffle this winter. Thus it’s as I suspected, and the Paris metro is in fact a biohazardous zone. In fact if they decided to any kind of biohazardous terrorist dumping (are these key words that are going to get me in trouble somewhere along the line?) the chemicals might actually clean the place out a bit.
So, I'm sure this year is going faster than last year, make it stop, make it stop. Already its national ambivalence day (buy the flowers, and conform, or don’t conform, and don’t buy the flowers, but make bloody sure you buy the flowers the rest of the year or your girlfriend will kick you harder than she really needs to when you start to snore, or say its all a pack of hooey because you don’t have a partner anyway, and damn hallmark spite spite) My boyfriend has decided to conform this year because I’ve probably started kicking him harder than he needs – and it’s not like he really even snores much anyway.
I found an apartment yesterday. We’d left it too late – as usual – so for a March availability it’s either the ones that no-one else wants…or well, maybe they just aren’t trying very hard (if you're lucky). So I picked one that I might end up bitching about later (this, evidently is a special sort of hex I'm putting in place - either I end up being proven right - and being all righteous about it, or I end up being wrong, and happy about it - hex fairies get all confused in this situation) – but it does have a lot of classic art nouveau add ons, and I am a sucker for the art nouveau. I think its been a student artist haven for at least as long as its existed, so needless to say for the surprisingly large size, extreme proximity to the city centre and (suspiciously) low price, its going to have a few little problems.
Rising damp is, I suspect, high on the list. I’ll see what I can do to dehumidify the place (a prolonged history of pot smoking artists probably hasn’t helped – but they’ve left some nice doodles on the wall here and there) but considering I’ve already got two ‘could pass for a wetland’ places under my real estate belt since moving to France, you never know, I might be good at dehumidifying…I’ll probably keep the windex company in business for the time I’m there though, there’s a frightening amount of glass in the place. But it’s in the CENTRE people. I’m going to be one of the city centre folk! I’m going to be one of the cinema and bar and other forms of city centre entertainment persons who don’t have to worry about what time the last train leaves, how much a taxi costs or how many standard drinks I’ve had in the last hour. I’m also going to spend most of march with a washcloth in one hand and a bucket in the other I imagine.