In which I wonder how much of a fuck to give.

Danny went down/up/etc the coast last weekend for a boys' weekend before one of our good mates gets married in a couple of weeks (which, quick aside, oh my God I feel so unbelievably old as a result).  I found a cheapish one-way flight up to Orange and decided to take myself up there for the weekend to see my parents.  It was a great place to go, to remind oneself to give less of a fuck about whether or not a company has correctly booked the redetermination of the useful life of its Fixed Assets. 

 

The last few weeks have been pretty good, work-wise.  I worked on my nightmare client for a week which was far less of a nightmare this time around and now I'm on another publicly-listed bad boy, but much smaller and a bit more relaxed.  I've also been enforcing 6.30/7.00pm finishes all of this week, which has made me feel a lot better in general about my work-life balance.  I'm not sure if everyone in the office is lacking enthusiasm right now because it's the busy period, or whether it's just me - and if it's just me, whether it's incredibly obvious.  I still feel cheery during the day and 80% of the time I love what I do, but I do get sick of the relentless hours, as well as the relentless expectation that goes along with those hours.  I know that seems to be a thread weaving its way through most of these posts, but it's something that I've been thinking about quite a bit and I haven't decided whether it's worth it yet.

Dan is up in Queensland for the next two days for a family wedding, so a friend came over tonight for dinner, then I watched that One Born Every Minute show with the crazy women giving birth and an episode of Hoarders.  I'm going to try to hit up the library on Saturday morning before he gets back, to at least try to shoehorn in some study.  I'm taking Financial Accounting 2 and Management Accounting.  Disco times.

A Bad Afternoon

 Not really for any reason.  I'm working on a teeny, tiny pro-bono client this week pretty much on my own which is quite interesting and means I can do lots of things that would otherwise be done by someone far more senior.  

But for some reason this evening I found myself in a mutinous mood.  It hit 5.30pm and I couldn't bear to look at my computer any longer.  I think it was because the Senior I'm working with asked me to complete a bunch of things that I knew could wait until tomorrow, and I had to cancel dinner with a friend to stay back.  I ended up bailing at 6.30, but every second between 5.30 and 6.30 was excruciating.  

I think it also might have been a mistake to run home at lunchtime.  I forgot my lunch, so I decided to come back and eat it here, rather than waste money on eating out and it was incredibly hard to get back into work mode after a few minutes on the couch.

Anyway, I feel like I mostly enjoy this job and mostly feel like it's where I want to be (or at least, getting me where I want to be), but I'd be lying if I didn't sometimes wish for smaller things.

We're in

We still haven't got a dining table, there's a whole load of bookshelves we need to put in, it's not perfect, but it's more than liveable and we're here.  The magical trip to Ikea (that I had been looking forward to for months) was actually a pretty shitty trip to Ikea.  Having just dropped ourselves into massive amounts of mortgage debt and being utterly exhausted from all the painting and moving, it was pretty draining to have to drag a mattress, a couch, a bed frame, and all the various bits of kitchenware and hobnobs that we'd collected, pay for it all (ouch), then schlep it back to the apartment and put it all together.

Ikea is a lot more fun when you're there on an exploratory mission, where you don't actually have to buy anything and the realities of your budget don't hinder your overactive imagination.

We thought we'd be able to do all the moving ourselves, with our baby hatchback and one of my parents' cars, but it pretty soon became apparent that this wasn't going to happen, so we rented a van from the world's dodgiest rental company for the world's cheapest price (about $50 for 24 hours) that pretty much looked like this:

I went to return it the following morning and it just straight-up wouldn't start.  I decided that since it was a manual, I could do a rolling start because we live at the top of the hill and Kippax Street is pretty straight, though maybe a little heavy with traffic but whatever.  Dan helped me roll it around the corner, then I let 'er rip, coasting at a terrific pace with no power steering through roundabouts and intersections towards Elizabeth Street, all the while trying to get the engine to tick over.  It finally did, about 100m from the end of the street, when I figured out that you actually have to put the thing into gear and mash the accelerator for a rolling start to work (I had never actually tried this before).  Anyway, thank christ the beast started.  When the guy at the yard asked me whether I had any issues with it, I shook my head and walked away, praying for the return of my security deposit.

Also, underneath my teacup in that picture of the living room above is the nasty-ass ottoman that I bought from Officeworks.  I haven't properly re-upholstered it yet (just wrapped the fabric around the lid and plonked it on), but it's functional!  It's probably a little too small for the living area, but I'll use it as a bedside table or something anyway.