As yet another month of 2003 disappears without a trace... Sure, I'm going to look back at August 2003 and realise that month did indeed change my life, but now it really seems as though the whole month has just flown by. I've worked a lot this month, I've stressed a lot this month, but I think that things are finally on the up. I guess the only real way to improve your life is to start with yourself and try to make a difference about how you're feeling, and then to spread that to the people around you which will hopefully make things improve.

I've also given my site a bit of a trim tonight, having Angelfire disable my site for a while probably gave me a bit of a wakeup call that I need to be a little more careful about how I approach this site to ensure that the important stuff is backed up regularly. True, I had been smart enough to download some of my archived journal entries, but the most recently downloaded one was March this year - so I would have still lost a huge chunk of my life. From now on I'm going to make it a bit of a habit to backup my site at least once a month so that if Angelfire are real assholes ever in the future I will not lose too much... and I doubt that anyone's going to miss the couple of pages that I deleted, they only averaged about 10 hits a month.

Funny to think that this time last year I was about to head down to the Hawke's Bay on my Geography fieldtrip. In some ways that feels like ages ago, but in other ways it doesn't really seem like that long ago. Funnily enough, that fieldtrip was a bit of a turning point in last year as things really began to improve in my life after I got back, a process that continued well into this year. So maybe September, and the start of spring is a time when my life looks set to improve and we can all enjoy the (slightly) warmer weather.

Yay! Had my first day off in almost two weeks today! Although work hasn't exactly been horrible lately, it's a really nice feeling waking up in the morning knowing that you don't have a due time you have to be anywhere, knowing that it's alright to sleep in because you're not going to be late for your shift, and knowing that you just don't have another bloody eight hour shift to do for once!

Instead I went shopping with Nats for a while, as we continued to organise our stuff for the impending 'move out'. Today it was a lot of the small things that are needed for any decent kitchen that we bought: like can openers, graters, potato peelers and spatulas. All in all they were pretty cheap, although when you buy lots of things it all adds up and I know that we still have the large purchases to come (whiteware, furniture etc.) It's a bit stressful trying to work out how we're going to afford everything next year - even at the moment with me working fulltime and Nats getting her student allowance it can be a struggle, while next year we'll have to find more money for rent, more money for the baby, while at the same time neither of us are going to be working fulltime. Hmmmmm.... unfortunately that doesn't look like it's going to work extremely well at first site, although we need to have a good look at what benefits and allowances we are going to be eligible for.

I went out this evening, to see a few friends and also caught up with Ella for the first time in a while. Over the past couple of weeks I haven't really seen anyone outside either home or work so it was nice to get out of the house, but to not be at McDonald's for once. I've got tomorrow off work as well, and we're going out to buy a computer for Nats' friend, which is always a whole heap of fun. I think that sometimes looking for the best computer deal is almost as much fun as when you finally get it, comparing all the processors, hard drives and other accessories and finding out what's really the best deal can be a long, but somewhat interesting process. Furthemore, I know from experience that a little bit of research can save hundreds of dollars as computer prices vary enormously from shop to shop.

Phhhhhhhhewwwwwww........ I felt a huge sense of relief today when Nats called me to let me know that my site had been reactivated, after Angelfire had apparentely removed it on Tuesday for some terms of service issue. I guess it's a good message to me to ensure that I back up all my files more regularly than I do at the moment, and that maybe I should invest in a webpage provider that is slightly more reliable and safe than Angelfire seems to be. I was fairly sure that there could be no terms of service issues - this is hardly a porn site (unless you count those stunning photos of me on my photos page ...yeah yeah, go ahead and laugh) and I have a reasonably consistent bandwidth usage and hit count, and I update it regularly. Luckily it was just a hiccup in the system and I haven't lost it all.

Finally, I have a day off tomorrow. After working for 12 days in a row (which feels like forever) I can wake up tomorrow morning safe in the knowledge that I don't have to rush out the door, that I don't have to make another set of Big Macs or serve anymore customers until Sunday. I guess it hasn't really been that bad in the last couple of days, as I've spent most of my time working at Head Office which is quite a pleasant chagne from usual. I'm going to go get some stylee professional photos taken of me and Nats tomorrow, as a "before she started looking pregnant" reference point I suppose. I guess it's also a pretty cool thing, because as far as I know there's only a couple of photos out there which are of the both of us together. We're also going to do a bit of house supplies shopping, which has actually been coming along quite nicely in the last couple of weeks. Luckily for us, when we do eventually move out of here (possibly around New Years) it will be a fairly smooth change and we won't have to go without everything for ages.

Next week is going to be a rather interesting week, as I've got four graveyard 11pm-7am shifts at work. I've done a couple of graveyard shifts there in the past, but never as a manager, and they've always been fairly simple and easy, so hopefully it'll be a nice and easy week at work. However it's a bit of a pain as my body doesn't really time-shift that well and I generally feel really odd at about 5am in the morning if I haven't got any sleep.

Weekend day shifts at work are most definitely the cruisiest shifts of the week. It's not really busy at all, just a slow steady stream of customers - while you actually have enough people working for once (of course, to McDonald's, enough people means too many people). But it means that I worked over 57 hours this week, which should mean that I have a good pay-day on Wednesday, even if it meant that this week has seemed to take absolutely forever. Man, I can't wait for my day off on Friday.

I've finally finished all the Harry Potter books, reading the end of Chamber of Secrets tonight. I guess that I didn't read them in the best order: the third, fourth and fifth books, and then the first and second. But on the other hand, I had seen the first movie so I had some idea of what all it's about. They really are quite an amazing series of books, and now I almost feel like reading all of them again - as I would imagine that you could get quite a lot out of the books reading them a second time as you understand what's going on a lot more. It would also be nice to watch the movies of the first two - as I would 'get it' a lot better now that I've read the books. I guess for now I'll have to read the fan fiction, and just imagine what might happen in the next book, whenever it's released.

I haven't really had that much to say over the past few days, hence the lack of writing for the past couple of days and the stupidly short entry on Tuesday. I've been working lots, which is kinda good as I get the feeling that I'm finally finding management at Maccas is becoming second nature. Quite often I don't have to think whether things are going well, I don't have to think what needs to be done I just know it. Funnily enough, after doing the same things again and again and again (McDonald's has lots of repitition) you begin to know what to do by second nature. You can cook a set of Big Macs while thinking of something completely unrelated and your hands just seem to know what to do. I think that managing, which is obviously a more demanding skill, is starting to click with me. I've realised that a lot the things I learned on my shift management course were useful, but also need to be seen in context. Sometimes the best way to run the place isn't exactly by the book, and you just have to adjust and make do the best you can - although I did understand that before I even became a manager.

The last few days seem to have been incredibly surreal, my dreams and real life seem to have merged into one - resulting in my whole week seeming like one big long shift at work. I really need to start sorting out everything that's going on in my life, start getting my head around all the zillions of changes which are going to occur over the next year - but at the moment I just seem to be putting it all the the 'too hard' basket. I just seem to be pusing it all into the future, telling myself that I've got time to think about it all, April next year is a long time away, when in fact I know that I really need to sort my shit out now otherwise there are going to be big problems. But I just can't seem to make this whole thing real, my mind just can't believe everything is happening and not matter how much I force myself to believe that indeed, come March or April next year, I'm going to be a father - the whole idea just seems to impossible to believe and therefore just won't sink in. Meanwhile I just seem to live in my comfortable bubble ignoring everything that's going on, while knowing that some day I'm going to need to wake up and face reality.

The last couple of days have been pretty much dominated by work, as I've done a couple of long shifts. Work has been pretty messy lately, as lots of people are sick and there are also lots of new people who need to be trained. It's rather difficult when you're running shift and you look at the schedules in the morning to see that about three people are either sick or have just not shown up and you're left in the lurch with people who don't know what they're doing. Ahhhh.... the thrills of shift management at McDonald's.

Life seems to be returning to some sort of normality, although I have my doubts whether that's a good thing or not. It might just be because I'm pushing all the changes in my life into the back of my mind so that my life can return to some sense of normality while I realise that this is just going to mean that I'll be caught by some sort of surprise and shock yet again when I finally do realise that this isn't something that is just going to go away.

Fortunately my illness yesterday indeed proved to be one of those 24 hour things, and by the time I woke up this morning I felt pretty much normal. Which meant that I spent the day at work, mostly training Natalie's cousin Ben which was pretty cool. He seemed to learn things pretty quickly, although it's always pretty difficult at first at there are so many things to remember. After three and a half years working at Maccas it's all subconscious and second nature to me so I probably don't really appreciate how difficult everything can be to learn in the first place. Although on the other hand I spent a lot of my time working at Maccas as a Crew Trainer, which meant that I saw a lot of new people so hopefully I am in a pretty good position to make comparisons.

I'm still not sure whether this whole 'going to be a father' shock has really sunk in yet, or whether I'm just ignoring it and that's the reason why I don't feel so stunned and stressed out anymore. I know that for the first week after Nats told me everything else in my life seemed to pale into insignificance. All the problems in my life seemed to become so trivial, all the other issues that were going on just didn't seem to be worth worrying about anymore. But now I find myself concentrating more on the same things that were on my mind before I found out - I just don't know whether this is a sign that I've accepted what's going to happen and I'm getting on with my life, or whether I'm just pretending that it's all a dream and that my life is just the same as it was two weeks ago. I guess that only time will tell, and I suppose that at some stage it might hit me again, and I'll realise that I was just ignoring it - or alternatively I'll realise that I have accepted what's going to happen and that it has sunk in. I suppose that only time will tell.

I woke up this morning feeling really nauseous for some odd reason. Nats reckoned that I had 'sympathy morning sickness', although it's also beginning to develop into a slight fever which is not good. Last time I was sick (only a month or so ago) I had to have almost a week off work, something that I can't really afford again. Hopefully it was just something I ate and it'll pass quickly enough so that I can resume normality. At the moment I feel really dizzy after standing up for any length of time, as well as having a headache which has been hanging around for almost a week now and is not going away.

It is very scary how expensive it is going to be moving out of Natalie's grandmother's house and into our own, let alone having a baby at roughly a similar time. We went shopping yesterday for a while, which was basically a process of "oh... we'll need one of those.... aarrrgghh.... and one of those too". Fortunately Nats is fairly well prepared for leaving home, and has many of the necessary requirements for setting up a house. I think that one of the best things about having our own place is that we won't have to squish such an enormous amount of stuff into one smallish room (as we do at the moment). I can just picture the day (or week as it may be) that we move all our stuff into a new place and realise just how much 'stuff' we have. Looking out over our bedroom, every possible free space is clogged with something, while half the floor area is taken up by things that just can't go anywhere else.

I spent about five hours on the net last night just downloading songs and reading Harry Potter fan fiction, and it reminded me of the times when I used to spend days on the net, normally in a chat room talking to people I had never, and would never, meet. I guess it was just a stage in my life that I went through, university was a fairly lonely place for those not confident enough to go out and make friends at will - and as none of my good friends from high school went to the same university as me, I probably found solace in chat rooms. I also met Nats in chat, something which has changed my live forever and the person who has brought me forward from that stage in my life into another. But it is interesting to reminisce about the days when I did have internet marathons - and I do particlarly recall a day when I was in Sydney and had nothing to do that day because of various reasons. Anyway, I managed to spend from about 11am - 11pm in an internet cafe talking in a chat room without leaving that computer once, as most internet cafes in Sydney have an unlimited time as long as you pay in advance. I was totally absorbed in my conversations that I really didn't know that such a long time had passed until I realised that I needed to leave in order to catch the last train back to where I was staying and to pick up something to eat at the Burger King nearby (trust me, I was real hungry by then. Now I can't imagine finding anything that would keep me occupied on the net for quite that long, chat rooms seem rather pathetic these days, probably because all the people that I knew have moved on with their lives like me. But there was a time when chat was a great part of my life, and it did significantly contribute to where I am now.

My life seems too strange at the moment, I feel as though I'm on the edge of being really happy but something just won't let me. Or alternatively, I'm on the edge of being really depressed but am just avoiding the real issues in my life because I'm scared of how I'll really react. I know that whenever I did think about being a father before it became something that's 'actually going to happen soon', I always had really positive and excited feelings: I was going to be the best father ever and teach my child how to play cricket and play Lego with them and so on... all the happy moments of my childhood I could pass on to my child. But for some reason when it really is happening, all I can think of is fears of how I'm going to cope, are we going to have enough money, am I really ready to be a father? Where have all my positive thoughts gone, why aren't I incredibly excited and happy about it all? I guess it's all because it's so unexpected. Sure I always figured I would have children, but only after I had finished uni, gone travelling and really settled down. I guess I'm probably still in shock a little, and that I'm not really dealing with it all that well. But watching the episode of 'McLeod's Daughters' where one of the women on the programme was giving birth possibly made it a little more real, telling my head that's actually going to happen to Nats and that I'm going to be a father in about 8 months. That thought actually gave me happy feelings, made me feel excited about there being someone who is part me, someone who I have passed on my genes to (hopefully only the good ones!)

Nats' cousin Ben may end up working at the same Maccas as I do, which would be pretty cool I think. He's been working at Lolipops playland for the past few months, but when I told him that Maccas pays more than $2 an hour better than what he's currently getting he became rather interested. I think that it would be kinda cool to have him working there, as I always feel as though I have two separate lives: the one when I'm at work at the one outside of work. While this is sometimes a good thing, as one life can be a respite from the other when one gets a bit too much, at the same time it'll be nice to mix them together. Well I suppose that I can't really count my chickens before they hatch, as he's got a trial shift on SUnday to see whether Maccas is right for him and he's right for Maccas. But as I have a pretty good idea about what people are looking for in someone doing a trial shift, so I'll be able to tell him what he needs to do to make a good impression. I'll also be there doing my shift at the same time so I might be able to show him the ropes which would make things a lot easier I think.

I don't know whether life seems to be returning to reality. Maybe I'm just ignoring this "going to be a father", although it is always there, always lurking away at the back of my mind going "hey.... you really need to be thinking about this!" I don't know when things are really going to sink in, maybe once everything calms down a little bit it will start to become more real. I just think that at the moment I probably need to have a couple of weeks which are really, really normal and really boring just so that I have some sense of normality back in my life as the last week has been totally insane.

Work is actually not too bad at the moment, I seem to be picking up this 'shift manager' role quite well and the course that I went on a couple of weeks ago (feels like a couple of years ago) has helped me quite a lot. I still get the feeling that a lot of what McDonald's Head Office wants to happen just isn't possible because you're always busy and you never seem to have enough staff on - but I have learned what's really important and can't afford to be overlooked.

I guess this page will become quite a bit more interesting over the next few months (or years even), as a result of what's happened in the past week. I figure that eventually things will sink in and I will think of what's happening as a really good thing and not just an enormous shock. I always thought that when my first child was born it would be one of the happiest moments of my life, so I guess that I really should be looking forward to such a moment. I just guess I never thought it would happen quite so soon...

Well in the past four days my life has turned completely upside-down and everything has changed... well not everything but a hell of a lot. On Tuesday Nats picked me up from work and showed me the result of her pregnancy test, and I figured that she wouldn't be showing it to me if it was negative would she? I don't really know how I reacted at first, I didn't really know what to think or say although I was in a fairly calm mood as work had been pretty good that day. I just knew that something huge had happened and that my life wouldn't be the same again. The last few days have been really hard, I never anticipated being a father this early in my life, it was always something that I wanted to do, just a few years in the future. But I guess that you can never plan for everything and you just have to take it all as it comes. I don't think that it's sunk in yet, people keep saying that it probably won't completely sink in for quite a few months - you think it's just one of those dreams or one of those funny jokes the world is playing on you and that someone will just say "ha..... gotcha with that one real good!" But I think that maybe I'm just starting to figure out that it's not something which is going to go away, it's happening and I'll just have to deal.

Nats has been feeling really strange all week too, feeling nauseous and overly emotional (crying out of nowhere and the like). I guess the combination of hormones with all the emotions that everyone's feeling at the moment has understandably gotten the better of her a few times. Telling everyone has been difficult, although Ella has taken it all really well and keeps coming up with all these really odd names we should be calling the baby. I know that in the long run it's going to be one of those things that will make me incredibly happy, I'm just overcome with everything at the moment and to be completely honest - utterly terrified.

Wow.... I finally wrote an entry in this journal of mine which might be slightly interesting to read. I would have written earlier, but not everyone knew about it, plus my emotions have been riding a huge rollercoaster in the last couple of days and I think that I'm only starting to pull them together today. I haven't told anyone at work, although I was probably acting very unusual and preoccupied on Wednesday morning. Maybe that's a good way to keep things for a little while, to give my mind a little rest from it all. I have shit loads to say, just not quite sure how to say it all - which is probably an excellent indicator of how I feel at the moment, so many emotions running through me that they're all clogging themselves up.

Went away for the weekend, and while it was very nice to get out of the city the whole weekend seemed to rub in everything which is going wrong in my life at the moment. Which was a pity, as I did have a pretty relaxing time and felt reasonably refreshed this morning. It's uncanny how this year seems to be following the same pattern as last year, starting off pretty good and then having things deteriorate in the middle of the year. Hopefully things will improve, although I don't really want to have to wait until October for that to happen. Maybe I really need to take things by the scruff of the neck (as they say), but on the other hand maybe that's the worst thing to do. Either way, I seem to be coming to the sad conclusion that I really have no clue what to do with myself and my life at the moment. Oh well.....

Back to work, and also starting what's going to be a rather long six day week for me. I guess that's a good thing in a roundabout way - as I've got heaps of bills to pay at the moment while my account sits about $20 overdrawn. I'm also utterly determined that each week I'm going to put some extra money aside for savings. I'm sick of having the feeling that I'm going nowhere with my finances - just lurching from one crisis to the next, I guess the only way to cope is going to be to cut back on all unnecessary expenses and force myself to save some money each week. I do have to remember the $2000 I need for my university fees by March next year.