Cas is currently

So today has had its ups, and its downs.

The first downs were catalogued in the previous post, followed swiftly by getting into the lab and finding I’d left my teabags at home, so twice today I had to shell out 52 pence for some very dubious tetley tea.

Then there were some ups – finding a way to hack the wiki and get the Cute Canadian able to log onto the wiki being one of them.

Though the fact that even I can hack the wiki doesn’t bode well for the security of the bloody thing, so perhaps that should be a down…

Then there were some more downs – mainly centered around me crashing out at about 2 pm suddenly unable to form coherent thought or even keep my eyes open. It happens sometimes. At least I didn’t faint this time, which has happened in the past, much to the consternation of all around me. The sudden appearance on the scene of the Misogynistic Belgian didn’t make for my day improving any, especially not when his form of greeting is punching me, then going in for the leg-stroke. Words just don’t do justice to how much this guy creeps the fuck out of me.

Normally at this point, I would trudge home and take a nap. It really is the only thing to do in those situations. But alas, even that simple pleasure was denied me, when Moose came on MSN to tell me there were two large men in blue overalls in my room.

Now, there are certain situations under which a girl is not averse to having men in her room: sadly, neither of them was the man Cas had been dreaming of lately. They were maintenance men here to finally replace my sink – it’s been leaking like a very leaky thing since about March, and I’d given up hope of them appearing before I leave the flat in a month. Under any other circumstances, I would have been overjoyed at this news, and happily stayed in the lab till they’d finished, but I so wanted my bed.

Finally though they were done and it was safe for me to return.

I now have a shiny new sink! That doesn’t leak! And despite the fact my room stinks of sealant, I am so happy! Now all I need is users for my wiki and my cup would overfloweth. Ok, so there are a few other things I would like to happen, but a girl has to take happiness where she finds it these days.

The Latvian Lovely had this to say on the whole thing of finding random men in our flat:
“I walked into the kitchen, there were two men on the table, so I turned round and walked right out again.”

She has this deadpan delivery and a totally straight face, and it just cracked me up.

Cas is currently

I really should be working right now, but bleck. Can’t bothered. Too many cute distractions online.
So, I have once again bowed to pressure, and made the foolish decision to post another story over at Blackcurrant Cheesecake. Not the really long serial one – still need to work on that – but something short and well, not sweet, but short anyways.

And here is a link to it: Alright?.

And because apparently I am being too depressing with these stories, the closest to an up-beat one I could find. No Worries.

Cas is currently

In the long running saga of ways to really ruin the start of your day (evil anonymous comments, random Germans, Clompy, soggy toast), we have a new entry.

The university library telling you that you have a massive fine for a book that is way over due. This is, of course, the book that I took back on time, last week. We won’t go into them taking 3 months to inter library loan a couple of books that I am still waiting for. Or silly maximum numbers of items that mean post-grad students can’t take out more than 10 items at once. Yes, 10 ^*1*. Which, when you consider an average piece of work for the undergraduate course was expected to have a bibliography of a minimum of 20/25 books, is just a little silly.

But we’re not going into that now. No, we are moaning about the stupidity of the loans clerk who took my book, checked it through the machine, made the point of saying “oh this is an inter library loan book”, and still manages to get me in trouble with the library. I have no proof I gave the book back, just my say so, and the fact I have never in the entire year had another book back late. If I’d known I was going to get in trouble with this book, I’d have kept it a couple of extra days to finish it at my leisure, instead of staying up till about 1 am the night before finishing making notes.

And then I get another email from them, telling me that the inter library loan I requested over a month ago is ready for collection. This bugs me because (due to time pressures), I had to get a copy off the godhead, so had informed the ILL office a good couple of weeks back that I no longer required the item.

On the phone just now, they informed me that, because they don’t staff the ILL desk on Fridays (who did I speak to then, a ghost?), if your book is due back on a Friday, you will automatically get a fine till they can clear the book on Monday. Or when they can be bothered. But they will very kindly wipe the fine in this case. How big of them. And when I, as their own email requested, informed them that I didn’t want to collect my inter library loan that had come through, they got all huffy with me. I’d told them three weeks ago I didn’t want it! And again today, so they didn’t have to waste time emailing me every day to tell me it was ready! So now they have a copy of a paper from ARCHEOLOGIA E CALCOLATORI that they didn’t have before. I am sure that someone else will find a use for it.

Grrrr. I used to work in the public service sector. I was considered very very good at my job ^*2*. Dealing with the public isn’t hard. So why is it I get the impression that they give you a full frontal lobotomy and remove any shred of common sense you might once have had, if you choose to work for, say, the library? I am sure these people really aren’t that thick. They would not be able to breathe and walk at the same time if they were.

So there you have it, way no 5 to really piss Cas off in the morning. Yes, it’s easy to do, but once again this got me before I’d had my cup of tea. I really should stop checking my email before I’ve drunk it.

But now it is raining, and I have to walk up to the lab to try and wrest the Cute Canadian’s password for the wiki from the dread server, so that’s my hairstyle ruined half an hour after I got out of the shower.

Yes, today is most definitely going to be one of those days.

Ok, I am being badgered on both sides of the pond now to post up some stories.

The question is, what format should this be done in? The reverse chronological order of the blog makes it not ideal for the posting of longer works of fiction and, bearing in mind this is me we are discussing, I do tend to prefer the longer winded form of writing.

Should I

1. Post the last chapter first, then the second last, and so on, till the first is at the top of the page and you read it all in one go?
2. Post first chapter first, then second, till the last is at the top, but provide linking between somehow?
3. Post it in serial form (a chapter per day/week/random interval)?
4. You tell me.

Seriously, I’m not the one that has to read it, you are.
Also, is there even an audience out there if I do this? I am going to feel a right muppet if there is zero interest. Though lack of audience hasn’t stopped me blogging, for some reason fiction is different in that respect.

Anyway, feedback on the above, and anything else you care to think about, please. I’m off to stare at wiki’s some more and stick pins on the voodoo doll I just made of random-cyclist-chappy from last night.

Ok, I have come to the decision that I deserve to die the crazy old cat lady and be found a week later, mouldering away, with my fingers eaten off by my 50 feral cats. Just wanted to get that out in the open there.

*shakes head in sad, disconsolate fashion*

Also, half two in the morning is quite late to get back to the flat. You’d think you’d be able to get some privacy at that time in the morning. No. Enter random cyclists who just completely ruin everything.

*shakes head some more*

Good job I tend to see the funny side of things and, on the scale, this has to rate pretty high on the Cas-O-Meter.

Really. Old Cat Lady. No hope for me.

More coherent (and hopefully more humourous) post later. Right now I am going to go drown myself in the shower.

You know you’ve reached that point with your thesis and research when you start having dreams about your supervisor chasing you with sharp pointy objects and trying to brainwash you.

After the third such subconscious visitation from the godhead, it was decided that I needed a night off, and I was taken to see ‘Crash‘ for some light relief. Odd choice for a date movie. Odd choice for any movie actually. Definitely not one of this years happy-fluffy films, and I would not recommend moving to LA – they are all psychos out there! The good guys end up shooting people, you start to sympathize with the most racist bigot of the lot… Odd movie.

Right, because I always over analyze stuff ^*1* and I really shouldn’t, I am going to stop discussing my exploits and return normal service to the blog by once more riffling through the trash that has accumulated in the Random folder.

Random Insult Generator. Can’t remember if this was a JB gem, or a Mata gem, but it is very funny. Apparently I am a politically illiterate bloodsucker. Nice.

Once more into the gadget fray: Full Metal Keyboard.

3D browser. Oooh, contextual browsing. Fun.

Scilly Knicker Thief exiled for 7 years. What I found funniest about this? The police asked the women to identify their belongings. Think about this for a moment. Would you want to go down to the local station and pick out your diamante-studded G-string from all the others? It’s also the idenifying “other items” that gets me. “Yes officer, that is indeed my Rampant Rabbit”…

the Onion – Michael Bay ‘interview’. Funny on so many levels. Also, there’s an Intelligent Falling article that made me laugh a lot. Won’t link to it though, because I guess some people might not find it so funny. It’s on that site if you want to go look.

Frist Urges teaching of ID. And it continues. I don’t have a problem with people learning about Intelligent Design. It’s when it is taught as a science that I start to get all worried. It’s not a science. Never will be. Teach it as sociology, religion, etc, but not in the same breath as an established scientific theory. And before you get all pissy about the use of the word “theory” there, all science is just a theory. Gravity is just a theory, yet… Nope, no way to finish that sentence without offending people, so I’m just going to simmer quietly over here.

Gallery told to drop ‘gay’ Batman. Awwww, this is just mean. Everyone knows Batman and Robin are lovers. Why do DC comics keep trying to get them back in the closet?

Book Vending Machines. Good idea, but what’s wrong with, you know, a book store?

E-Paper. Shiny futuristic futures coming even more real… Ok, would try to make that sentence more, you know, in keeping with words written by someone who claims to be proud of her grasp of the English language, but house hunting has kinda sapped any will to live right now.

And finishing on an appropriately surreal note, student held over online mugging.

I’ve been musing on Perception with a capital “P” for the last couple of days now. Not in any major fashion, but enough for it to be a thing in my brain. The following musings are a result of a few conversations with different people over the last couple of days, some of them drunken conversations, so that might clue you into what you are about to experience.

Firstly, which is the correct perception: our perception of ourselves; or people’s perception of us? If we were going by mob-rule, I would be one of the coolest cucumbers on the planet, at least under first impressions. As far as I personally am concerned though, I am as neurotic and shy as they come.

The evidence. Apparently, I give off the “cool college girl” vibe the first time the CC ^*1* met me. That, and on the first day here at Southampton I gave the impression of seeming so laid back, that any further and I would have been horizontal. Yet inside, I was, and still am, a gibbering wreck. The memories of the first week or so on the course are a bit hazy, but I do remember the feeling of being a fraud and hoping no one found out were rather prevalent.

Again, in the last week at Liverpool, I found out that I, and the group of friends I was in, was considered to be the “cool group” (as cool as archaeologists get). So cool, in fact, that it made a couple of people loath to talk to us for the three years.

Now this is wrong to me. I have never been the cool kid. Ever. I am even perversely proud of this fact. I don’t want to be the cool kid. The cool kids made my life crap in secondary school (High School basically). My experience of the cool kids is not a good one. So I want to believe that we were the “anti-cool” group, above all those petty class rivalries, just hanging out, having fun, doing our own thing.

One time Bimbostar (her choice of name) and myself we talking about it in a lull in both of our dating escapades ^*2*, and I complained how guys never came up to talk to me in bars. It turns out that this is because I give off the vibe of being so cool, calm, and collected that I must be already totally hooked-up with someone, or just so not looking, which couldn’t be further from the truth. But I don’t know how to be any other way – I just act myself in those situations. I can’t help it that I’ve been single so long that I am pretty much fine that way most of the time. Nor, for that matter, do I want to look desperate. I must be a better actor than I’d thought.

Jeff holds firmly to the conviction that I will happily talk to anyone, fit into any new group of friends, and rapidly become the life-and-soul. Whilst the truth of the matter is that I loathe meeting new people, and scared out of my tiny little brain most of the time, and am quite happy to sit in my room and never talk to any one face to face.

So who has more authority to say which the true version of Claire is?

I’m not sure either how I manage to give off such a misleading vibe – the only thing I can think of is that it stems from the fact I just find life inherently funny. When this is all over, I am going to be sitting on my cloud, looking down at everything, laughing hysterically. I’ve spent so long laughing at myself and the pathetic mess I make of things, that it becomes very easy not to take myself seriously, and when that happens you start to realise that everyone is pretty much as fucked up as you are, and just as scared witless. Once you’ve made your peace with that fact, life does become that little bit simpler.

In all of the above, it’s a case of do as I say, not do as I do. Whilst yes, I do find life just one big cosmic joke most of the time (I mean, the Platypus?!), I still get excruciatingly nervous round people and I have a self-esteem so low it’s in negative figures. Then again, I have no desire to become the creepy old cat lady, so I’m working hard.

A few other random musings.

The CC holds that none of us are “average”. We are all perfect yet flawed at the same time, and are perfect in that very flawed-ness.

Yes, a bit deep for this time of day, but having just danced around the lab (long story) and tried to explain to the Godhead why I was “Cas the Supreme and Merciful” on MSN without actually explaining (even longer story), I am so not in the mood for research right now.

In the course of a few conversations lately, I think I’ve worked out a better definition, or description, of what this blog is. The best way I can describe it is as a conversation you’d have with your best friend, only your best friend is a composite of the imaginary, people that know and love you, and complete random strangers.

I was also asked if there was anything I wouldn’t blog about, and the answer is a definite yes. Some things really should remain private or for one-to-one communication. Bimbostar told me the tale of a friend who let everyone know his mother had just died via the blog. I wouldn’t do that, for example. At the same time, whilst there is shit I don’t blog about, the real heavy stuff does seem to have found its way, in the past, into bits and pieces I’ve written. Crown, for example.

That being true, I am starting to think I should hand out disclaimers to my friends before I talk to them, warning them that anything and everything they say is being taken down and might be blogged against them. Some consider this a good thing, imbuing deeper meaning to conversations and a kind of immortality to their words. To others the idea is anathema, which is why I rarely, if ever, talk about the Scouse One on the blog. He exists, is important to me, but has made it clear he isn’t happy with being on the blog, so I don’t blog about him.

Which is my way of saying, in my own inimitable long-winded style, – if you think this blog is giving you the full picture on my life, and that you ‘know’ me properly, you are sadly disillusioned. For starters there are people who’ve known me decades to whom I am still a puzzle wrapped in an enigma. I still confuse myself most times. People’s perceptions are notoriously unreliable.

~fin~