Two weeks.

It's creeping up behind me. Three weeks seems a long time. The three weeks left before I finish at work seem to stretch into eternity. That's partly because I've got MASSES of work to do and the mental piles are tottering around my ears...and mass clearly equates to length.

Two weeks is tomorrow.

I'll be doing something else - sales analysis for a theatre. Working out a glitzy bit of number crunching on a new piece of software. Walking to work. Drifting around the supermarket. Planning a party. And then...

Two weeks.

My birthday is less far away than that. I hate my birthday, it reminds me of all the things I haven't done yet. I discovered yesterday that someone I sat through classes with at uni has not only founded a reasonably well known and certainly very outspoken climate change activists group - but has written a book about it. I am in awe. And support what she's doing, definitely. She keeps inviting me to events on Facebook, though I suspect she doesn't know who I am or where I came from in her life. But I am a little jealous.

Two weeks.

I hate deadlines. At least the ones that are to do with life and not to do with work. With work, they're ok. I like to plan, and generally make sure the decks are cleared down enough that I finish things well in advance to leave time for things to go wrong. Even if that actually isn't a very efficient use of time. But in life? I never have strong enough plans to work out what I should have done when far enough in advance, so when New Year and my birthday go whizzing by I'm always left with a nebulous guilt for Things Not Done. It's too late for me to write a book before my birthday (still an ambition - maybe I will have written one before ONE of my birthdays?), and I think it's probably too late for me to do a ton of the things with Traci I wanted to do before she goes...we don't have time, and what time we have we need to fill with packing and admin.

She goes in two weeks, and we have no idea when she might come home.

I'm going to miss her like crazy.

Colin

Colin 1
Originally uploaded by hazelsheard

This is (a bad photo of) Colin. He's Azrael, Boris and the snails' newest friend. I wanted to call him Simon, because he has amazing whiskers and is equally difficult to find, but Colin fitted better with my naming scheme (guess my naming scheme). He's decided the back of the filter's a good home, and has gone black because that's a good colour to be on the filter. He can CHANGE COLOUR though. Yay. He's one of these, specifically Ancistrus spinosus or a bristle or bush nosed ancistrus. Mostly, he's awesome. There's a picture of an albino version on wikipedia.

My birthday was lovely, though a little stressful what with one thing and another, and being ill. Thanks for all the good wishes though! I had curry on Brick Lane, and went to the theatre. Was nice.

I had second birthday in Cambridge on Sunday night - sang in Robinson and then went for dinner in Pizza Express. Robinson Choir is now HUGE - it's expanded way beyond anyone's wildest dreams of last year. Granted it's got a lot of non-Binsonites in it, but it's THIRTY odd strong, and just sounding great. We went expecting to be singing stuff in two parts that bored us stupid, but we sang Rachmaninov (Bogoroditsye Dyevo, or Hail Mary to you and me), and Locus Iste (by Bruckner). AND all the graduation hymns. It was fantastic. Came out on a complete high, augmented by the new organ scholar saying nice things after the service. He's someone drafted in from Sidney because we didn't have one. He's a composition student, and is clearly very musical and has a great rapport with the choir, but his conducting's a bit crap. That, though, he can learn. All in all, things look great for them this year, and I definitely intend to be singing up there plenty.

I came home to a heap of job rejections. Pleasant. Meh. Ah well. Hanna and I had a good bitch about job stuff at the weekend. Today I went into Cafe Roma and handed them a CV. Advantages to working there: I can fall out of bed and into work. Disadvantages: Chance of serving a former teacher = pretty damn high. Bah. I really had better get that job. I'm likely to feel myself utterly and completely without hope or point if I don't. Will mean that I don't have to feel so desperate for a job though.