Well, today has been thoroughly enjoyable :)

I woke up to the sound of my lovely little bedside radio, pottered around and woke up the various creatures, and fielded a few phonecalls for work while the 'office staff' were masquerading as 'warehouse staff'. Shortly after, my mother arrived, rubber gloves in hand, and proceded to clean parts of my house for me. BLISS!
My little abode now almost gleams with lived-in love and devotion... or is at least a little less furry.

After our cleaning marathon (and I do use the term 'our' loosely) Mum navigated our way to the offices of the CFS society...and then right past, and around the corner andjustintherebehindthattruck.

The first person I met was Ferdinand or Ferdi as eveyone seems to call him. He speaks gently, somewhat like you would expect a paediatrician to speak, in a sort of melodic monotone.
Next was Jan, who seems to recall a time that we had met before. I do not disbelieve her, as I have a patchy memory of that time in my life, but it was nice to know that on some level, she was a familiar face.
I was then introduced to the office staff, Karina and Madeline. Madeline kept her distance as she was possibly infectious, and Karina came over and introduced herself. Good firm handshake she has, very reassuring :) Karina has a wonderful accent, and a thoughtful way with words, I sort of wanted her to just keep talking just so I could listen :lol:
Lastly was Greg, who reminded me of someone I have met before. He is going to be our new treasurer in the year to come, and had a little book with him full of calculations. He seems very friendly, and in the same personality bracket as most of my friends :)

Personality bracket, that sounds mighty pigeon-holey... OK, lets rephrase and say that he has a similar way about things as most of my friends do.

The meeting was long, but ultimately productive, and I have a few projects to do before the next meeting :)
Somewhere in there I'm also supposed to be visiting parliament house, but I am unsure if I will be well enough to force myself out of bed on time. I think I may have been a little too outspoken today, but really, I do not think anyone took my actions as a bad thing. I only piped up a few times, and it was about relevant concerns... like the milk content of rice crakers...

I'll have to bring cake next time. Cake works. :)

Well, I'm doing it!

Tomorrow (today, but about 16 hours from now) is my first meeting of the management comittee for the CFS society of NSW! I'm finally doing something that I can be proud of!

I know a lot of people take it for granted, but I would LOVE to have something to talk about when people ask "so, what have you been doing?" That is, other than feebly offering up my latest piece of craftwork.
Crafting and housewifing are great and all, but its not what counts in this day and age. People want to see you working and doing something with other people. I think they really want to see bloodthirsty office jelly wrestling and interstellar takeovers, but they settle for doing something with other people.

So tomorrow I try :) I am going to do a lot of listening and a lot of learning, and after a few meetings, I might try a bit of changing, to try to make the society a bit more sicko-friendly :) I'm thinking blue pages and some find-a-words and colouring in, and stuff like that, maybe even a crossword or something.

I'm not sure how much use I will be, but at least if I conk out on the desk, they won't bother asking why :D

Well, I'd *like* to put in a positive story, but alas, I have done it again.

I have spent a good deal of time this week fighting an unwinnable fight with an administrator of what is supposedly an Australian fish site. It should have been a non-event. In theory anyway.

Its funny you know, how many people will argue with you without even listening to what you have to say.
Its hardly even an arguement then, its just a shouting match, and its embarrassing! I spent a lot of time thinking through why I was determined to get my point across, and these people decided that yelling over me was going to help their cause... :?

Basically, this particular tiff (yes, there have been many more before this) was about removing the name 'Australian' from the forum title. Now, putting aside the fact that the administrator gave his word that the forum would always be Australian, the reasoning behind this move was unsound.

As far as I can figure, the reasoning behind removing the name was in order to merge another international failing site with the Australian one. I understand that this other board may have felt slightly uncomfortable gaining an 'Australian' but the members of ours, who more than outnumber the board that was joining would have felt pretty rotten having to lose it.
Plus, you have to take into account that the Australian site is the successful one. It is a big gamble to take to remove part of what accounts for that success, you could easily lose the main drawcard for members, the fact that it declares it is Australian. That was certainly the reason that I joined.

An arguement was put up that it is just a name, Australian was just a name, and not at all our identity.
I'd have to disagree. A lot of weight is placed on a name as a means of identifying things.
If it wasn't, we would be a world of thingamibobs or whatsamijigs. A name is important, its part of who you are, its a grounding force. When all else fails, you can stand there and say " I am Fred Blogs" and somehow that small thing encompasses every thing that you are. Names are very important.

Anyway, after lowering myself to a public arguement with these people, I have decided it was hardly worth the hassle. They own the company that runs the site, and they have the most horrid trouble keeping their word.
Whatever decisions they make, they will merrily change on a whim if it suits them or disadvantages their competitors.

I wasted about 7 pages of wonderful debating skills on what was essentially a wave on the beach, a fleeting folly.

So I have decided to put this here, to remind myself that even though I was shot down and had people in back rooms of the site referring to my writings as 'disgusting' and 'bullshit' and people who have little to no involvement taking up arms in defense of the opposition, even though all of that is true, that we must always stand up for what is right, what is true.

For if we don't, those who can shout louder will prevail, and nobody wants that *lol* We'll all end up with thumping headaches!

Let the little voices be heard!

We may not always come out on top, but maybe we can kick some minds into gear and get people thinking :)

There is nowhere near enough thinking going on these days....

Well, this week has been a doozy. As weeks go, this is possibly the most action packed.

(Actually, due to internet issues, this week is actually LAST WEEK. This week is still this week, but references to this week in this post are in reference to last week... and it would be so much easier if I had posted this in the week that it was supposed to be posted *sigh*)

I think Monday was possibly the worst of it, but today has come mighty close.

On Monday:
* Grandma passed away. The funeral home details were misplaced, so she was left in the nursing home all day. They, of course, have no holding facilities for this type of thing, so the nurses kept calling, and I had no idea what to tell them.
* My gut hurt. Possibly some sort of long term bug, or maybe an actual physical problem, either way, it was ouchy.
* Mum managed to get me a perished hot water bottle. I gave it back to her with gusto, though not quite fast enough I’m afraid. We spent a good 3 hours in Emergency where I discovered that morphine is largely a useless drug and Panadeine Forte is loads better. I am now the proud owner of 2nd degree burns to my right abdominal region.

So in general, it was a great day.

Jerry came to get me the day after, and took me home to some sort of thread algae in my planted tank, and a rather widespread outbreak of velvet. It was in my wild bubble-nesters, my 3 batches of fry, and one of my male fighters.

So yes, it’s been a great week.

This was all possibly topped off today by a very, very, very long wait at the local medical centre for a redressing on the burn wound.
I asked to see the nurses in the treatment room. The thing is that every doctor and his dog kept jumping the queue to get in to see the nurses, so people who arrived much later than us got in to see the nurses far earlier. It was incredibly rude.
By the time we were called, I had lost all feeling in my legs and couldn’t walk. This just tipped me over the edge and I just started bawling. The nurses were pleasant, but rather unsympathetic. Jerry had to lift me onto the treatment table. The doctor came in and tried to tell me everything I already knew, and tried to tell me to take Nurofen Plus for the pain. He assumed my crying was for pain… even when he was told twice that it wasn’t. Jerry and I finally just said yes, and then merrily ignored him.

Useless git.

I miss my doctors, and my town.

This new place is rather cruel on a poor little suburbanite with morals and standards and wobbily health.

I have TV! well, its fuzzy, and snowy, but it IS recognisably TV.
I can now watch boring daytime soaps and the news, oh how I missed the news *sigh*
I'll be spending most of tomorrow cross stitching in front of the TV :) Oh glorious television, Oh how I have missed you :)

Turns out my crampiness and stomach dramas are "excess acid production caused by stress", and I have some lovely tablets to take to try to settle my gut down.

Why do you think stomachs' the world over produce acid in response to stress? are they perhaps thinking that they can burn their enemies with their gastric juices? Perhaps this is organ suicide? I just don't see the point. I've got enough to deal with without having my guts chuck a wobbly on me.

I have been photographing items to jazz up the place. No gerberas, or colourful cats, but hopefully soon we can move away from this drab olive colour and into something (ANYTHING) more exciting.
Tomorrow I'll be eating the props, so If the pictures haven't turned out, I'll have to start all over again.

I have decided to spend the week tidying up my internet life. I'm going to clean out my many galleries, and log in to my many forums, and I'll even redirect my Yahoo! and Google group mail to my ISP email instead of my hotmail. Hotmail is giving me the dirts. I haven't had RTF for months! And the customer service webby will not work for me at all, some service :( you would think that there would be a way to enter complaints or problems direct from your account, but so far, I haven't found a way.

Surely Microsoft isn't going to let me down on this one though, no doubt next hotmail release I'll find a little box I can write my woes in, and send it off into the never never... Somewhat like this, but with absolutely no expectation of anyone ever reading it...

Actually, exactly like this.

...

Dear Hotmail Staff.

Thankyou for your constant Member Letters, they are an absolute hoot.
I find knowing how much I have to spend on upgrading to a premium service a real comfort.
Is the service with this new package as rip-roaringly good as the current service I have been
getting?
I don't know what I would do if my features didn't randomly deactivate or my letters were
answered by a real person. That might turn me off signing up completely.

Your loyal freeloading user,
Abbey

...

yup, now, wait for it.... Ahh, silence.

Oh well, maybe one day they will randomly reappear, and I can finally have the blue, centered, italicised signature I have always wanted *sigh*

I woke at 1am on Sunday morning with an excruciating pain in my leg. I've had cramps before, but these wake-you-up ones are the pits. I couldn't even call out, I just inhaled really loudly *lol* Thankfully my local Jerry heard my distress and came to rub it out, but the damage was done.

I have spent the past few days hobbling around. Sunday arvo was fine, I could feel the muscle, but it didn't hurt. Monday was the pits and today isn't much better!

To top it off my gut is being decidedly unfriendly towards foods and the like, ordering armies of nausea to march all over me.

Such hostile activities will not be tolerated... I'm going to starve them out ;)

well, a bit...

I would ordinarily try to bore the armies with oodles of daytime TV, but we don't have TV anymore :( no springer for me :( no Neighbours :( no Desperate Housewives.

Its a bit like a death in the family.

Well, a coma... the TV is here, just no reception.

Do you think large amounts of chocolate cure post-cramp pain?