The Upside of McDs
It’s been a pretty normal week, getting used being a manager at Maccas hasn’t really been that hard because it seems as though a lot of the people there already have some respect for me so it doesn’t come as a huge shock now that I’m there boss (of sorts). This shift has also meant one really good thing: I’m guaranteed 40 hours of work a week. No more wondering whether I’d have enough hours to cover all my bills etc., now I’ll be able to figure what I’m going to get paid each week so that I’ll know what I can afford to spend and what needs to go towards my bills. It’s like growing up you know, once you have bills to pay every week and the need to earn enough money to pay them all you realise that you have grown up – kinda sucks in some ways.

I am missing university a little this year, being away from the education system for the first time in forever. But it’s a healthy ‘missing’, one which says that I don’t mind working fulltime this year because it’s something different and is giving me a break, but at the same time is making me look forward to next year and doing my masters degree as I know that I don’t want to be in the McDonald’s business forever. Hopefully I’m also learning stuff this year, about managing people and other things that may indeed prove to be useful in the future.

I guess the positive side of working fulltime this year so far has been the people I’ve met and worked with, and the whole different side to life that working fulltime brings. As I’m probably going to spend most of the next 40 years of my life working fulltime I sure as hell better get used to it, and I think that this year is going to help me lots in the long-run. I’m also quite a lot happier than last year, although I don’t think this fact has anything to do with the fact that I’m working rather than at university maybe by me not being as stressed out as I was for much of last year I’ve become a bit more laid back about things and I’m not as easily bothered as I used to be. Maybe that’s also part of growing up, learning to say “oh well, shit happens, better luck next time” and to not get all stressed about everything.

Angelfire seems to have been playing up quite a lot lately, when I go to the page which I update from nothing appears except for a blue screen, sure it's quite a nice blank blue screen, but no matter how long I wait for it just never loads. So if there are gaps between my entries it's not always my fault. Although what I should probably be doing is writing my updates in Microsoft Word and then copying and pasting them into my webpage editor if something like that happens. But I just can never be bothered.

Argh I'm Even Dreaming About McDonald's!
My life is revolving around work way too much at the moment. It's even getting to my dreams more than usual. I've always dreamed about work, whether it was me being shifted to a completely different store for a day, going back to one of my old stores, panicking because I can see that we're about to have the biggest lunch rush and there's nobody in the kitchen but me etc. etc. But recently it seems as though barely a night goes past without my dreams floating towards work in some way or another. About a week ago I had a really odd dream that my parents' house also doubled as a really small McDonald's restaurant, and I was worried that we would hardly ever get any customers because there weren't any signs telling people that this was the case. A couple of weeks ago I had a dream that seemed to go on forever, where I was working a shift that started sometime on a Thursday morning but didn't finish until Saturday. My dreams are always screwed up creatures, which don't seem to stick around in my memory as much more than a few snapshots - although I'm fairly sure that when I'm in the middle of them it's like real life just mixed and jumbled together in a completely incoherent manner.

Funnily enough the earliest dream I ever remember was from when I was either 3 or 4, and I was dreaming about jumping around in the playground of (you guessed it) a McDonald's, maybe I was destined for this job. Over the years my sleep time has played upon my fears and anxieties, from being sucked down the plug-hole of our bath (had continuous nightmares about that for a couple of years) to being late for school because I kept on forgetting things and had to go back (such as forgetting my bike when I used to ride it to school). I've been late for many exams, sat my school bursary exams about 10 times, got lost on the way to school and much much more. I guess the saddest thing about dreams is that you don't remember more, at least not until you are asleep yet again and your memories of past dreams seem to come flooding back only for you to forget it all yet again once you wake up. Maybe I need to be hypnotised to a point where my subconscious, which holds all my memories of dreams, can be unlocked. It annoys me that so much of what I've experienced and thought about whilst asleep just disappears...

In real-life matters I finally had a day off work today, after working from Monday to Saturday. We had a pretty quiet day, going over to Nats' mothers to drop off a misbehaving comptuer (not mine), before doing a little bit of shopping. But it's back to work tomorrow, for anotehr pretty long week which shouldn't be too bad as it will be my first full week as a manager and might prove to be a little bit different to how things have been in the past. When you've worked for McD's as long as I have anything new can make your day. It's a bit sad when you think about it.

Yay... Finally!
Finally, finally, finally I got my managers uniform yesterday, which kind of officially means that I've joined the ranks of a shift manager at McDonald's. I remember on my second ever day at McDonald's (now this was a bloody long time ago back in January 2000) one of the managers said that he was really impressed with how I was picking up things and that he thought I had good potential to become a manager within the next few months. Now, about three and a half years later this finally comes true - an excellent example of how the McDonald's system works.

Life is being rather dominated by work at the moment, which is actually not too bad because work isn't annoying the hell out of me for once. The past couple of days have actually been surprisingly busy - but we've managed to cope pretty well. I'm working tomorrow for the first time on a Saturday for ages, mainly because Nats is working and it gives me a chance to earn a few extra dollars for this week. My money situation is becoming potentially quite stressful, as I realised this morning that when I add together the money I pay for board, my gym membership, the repayments for the car, and other stuff like car insurance etc. it all adds up to about $200 a week, while normally I'm only getting paid around $300 a week. Good thing that I can now get free food as a manager, although this will probably mean that my diet will consist of a fair amount of McDonald's which cannot be healthy for me. Well, I seem to have managed my finances quite well so far this year, so hopefully with the lower food costs and the pay rise once I finish my management course, things won't become critical like they were for the whole of last year, and I'll still be able to have a bit of a buffer and maybe even eat into the $2000 I need to save for next year's university fees.

Uneventfulness
I feel really wiped out tonight, which is rather odd since I didn't work a particularly long shift today and I had a pretty good sleep last night. Maybe it's everything just compounding upon itself and eventually it's all going to hit me and I'll be totally wasted. But that hasn't really happened in the past which makes me wonder why the hell I felt so tired today?

My writing has kind of trailed off in the past few weeks, although again I can't really explain it. For some reason it just doesn't seem to cool to keep my webpage up to date anymore, it's become almost a hassle rather than something I look forward to writing in. This is definitely not a good thing, and I presume that I'll get over it. Life just seems... uneventful... at the moment, the kind of time which will probably completely slip my mind a few months from now. Well, except for the ways that having a car is making things so much easier, that's something which seems to stand out among the haze of the rest of my life at the moment. My days at work at become rather repetitive, and are blending into one really long day of increasing disorganisation. I'm supposed to be moving into the management team, but it seems like everyone has just forgot about it, and nothing's happening at all. I'm sure that things will improve in the long run, but I'm glad that this is only a one year journey of full-time work at Maccas as I don't think I could handle it for much longer.

Ah... Freedom
Having a car is really beginning to reveal its usefulness, in giving us much more freedom than before. Not having to rely upon buses, and making sure that all our journeys aren't too far from bus routes. I think that having a car is going to become one of those "how the hell did we live without one" things. Like a cellphone and my laptop. I guess that before we did survive, but things are just so much easier now. Nats should be ready to take her driving test pretty soon, although I'm a little bit further behind these days as I haven't had the chance for much practice. Once Nats gets her proprt restricted license things should be even better as we'll be properly able to drive around wherever we like.

My parents have gone away for the weekend, so me and Nats decided to crash here for a couple of nights and take advantage of the fast(er) internet speeds, furthermore when you're the only people in the house you don't have to worry about keeping the stereo down or hogging the phone lines. So I spent about 18 hours on the net continuously (that did include a sleep you know!) and managed to download about 300 mb of music and viedeos which would have taken me weeks at home.

Work was quite busy last week, I think that things are really just starting to pick up at that store for some reason. Probably because we're finally sorting all the shit out which has been going on for months. For once it seems as though we're concentrating on customer satisfaction and not just making a profit - which means that ironically the sales will increase as people want to come back, meaning that profit levels incrase. Moreover, from Tuesday next week I should officially be a manager, as I get my uniform and hopefully progress a bit further in my management training.

Utter Normality
I had one of those 'completely and utterly normal' days at work today. In some ways that's slightly sad, as I know that today will be one of those just which just disappears from my memory bank within a week or two. One of those days which just quickly disappeared, as the days seem to have done over the past couple of months. Full-time work is rather repititious, and although having a bank balance which isn't critical all the time does feel nice I do sometimes miss the intellectual stimulation of university. I suppose that's a good thing, as I wouldn't want to have the feeling that I really don't want to go back next year, as it would have meant that giving myself a break this year would have been a bad idea. But at the moment I am still enjoying not having too many stresses in my life - although instead of worrying about my essays and when they're due I start worrying about Nats' essays and when they're due. Yet at the same time I'm not enjoying things too much so that I get to the point of not wanting to go back. The univesity has opened a whole new huge student commmons building which is really cool and will be very very useful for me next year.

No chance for me to drive today, as I had a rather long day at work. But hopefully I'll be able to have a little drive around before the end of the week, and then have a driving lesson with my parents some time on the weekend. I probably just need lots more practice, getting used to doing heaps of things at once and making sure that I keep my eyes on the road and not on the gear stick when changing gears!

According to previous entries, this page has been going for three years as of today. Now that figure is most probably wrong, as I was never actually sure when I started this website. I know that it was up and running in time to put some of my first university essays up on my Essays Page, but something tells me that I may have actually created it back in 1999, although I can't remember for sure. But anyway, keeping a website up and running for at least three years is pretty cool, and I'm pretty happy with myself at being able to do that. Hopefully it's got better and better as time has gone on, and is a great improvement upon my original website.

Driving
I went driving with Nats today, and we're making improvements which is really great. It's still difficult in some patches, like not freaking out when you start rolling backwards on a hill-start. But hopefully we're going to get to the point where we can really drive ourselves around in the next few weeks, so that we won't have to rely upon buses all the time. I'm feeling much more confident with steering and getting the car going, although changing gears is still a bit of a pain. Nats is quite a bit ahead of me at the moment as she's had quite a lot more practice, and she'll probably get her license before me which is OK as it means she'll have to drive me around. Ha Ha!

Work's pretty boring at the moment, my management course seems to have stalled for the time being, as everyone just seems a little bit too busy to spend time training up the new managers. But as I was told a couple of the current managers are going to be shifting to other stores in the not-so-distant future which means that the store is going to need more managers. That's hopefully where I fit in.

Graduation
It’s been four days since I last updated, and I suppose that’s pretty bad considering quite a lot has happened since then. Friday was a pretty cool day, being my graduation and all. Then yesterday I had a crew outing with my fellow McDonald’s workers, which was pretty cool although took a bit longer than I thought it would which has meant that now on Sunday night I feel totally wiped out when I should be all refreshed and ready to go for the upcoming week.

But back to the important stuff: my graduation day on Friday. I got to wear the silly academic regalia which you would normally not want to be seen dead in, but makes you feel special as people congratulate you out of the blue. We started off by having a breakfast in a huge marquee along with about 10 million other people, before assembling all 400 graduands in alphabetical order – which proved to be a bit of a mission. Then we made our way out of the marquee and slowly down to the Auckland Town Hall. I thought that it was really cool that they stopped all the traffic so that we could all walk down the middle of some of the roads in central Auckland. There were people lined up on the sides of the road and it almost felt that I was in some kind of parade (which I suppose that I was), something that I am used to watching rather than be part of. Once we reached the Town Hall we all assembled again in one of the rooms there, perfecting our order which had been totally lost while walking down the hill from the university – then we walked into the Town Hall which was pretty much packed with people graduating, and their friends and family. I looked around for a bit to check if I could see Nats, Ella and my Mum and I eventually spotted them right at the back of the place on the top area of seating. The actual ceremony was pretty long and boring, with lots and lots of names being read out - although of course I had my moment of glory going up on stage to get capped and receive my degree. We got some cool photos, and all round it was a pretty cool day.

Then that night we went out which was pretty cool. I got rather drunk for a while, although it wore off quite quickly after I had something to eat. We got home at about 4am, which meant hardly any sleep at all for me because I had a McDonald's work outing yesterday. That basically turned into a giant piss-up, with about $800 of Maccas money being spent on alcohol, and everyone ending up on the bus that we hired driving all around the North Shore. I didn't have much to drink, as getting drunk twice on the same weekend is probably not the greatest idea ever - but some of the other people...

Bleah
I haven't really felt like writing that much lately, for some reason the idea of having to update a page seems a little bit of a drag. Maybe it's because I feel a bit 'bleh' at the moment and can't really be bothered with anything or maybe it's something else altogether. My life is fairly monotonous at the moment, which doesn't make for particularly interesting reading, but it doesn't seem to really concern me too much. Maybe having some pattern and predictability is a good thing for me at the moment, or maybe I just don't know what I want.

Something in my life for the past few weeks just hasn't seemed right. Things seem to be stagnating and not really going anywhere, although there isn't a reason why this should be the case. Everything should be pretty great at the moment: we just bought a car, my graduation is coming up and I just turned 21. But for some reason something isn't right and I just don't know what it is. Ugh, annoying.

Driving Lessons
I had a couple of driving lessons today, and in my opinion I made pretty good progress. In the past I've been shit scared of hitting anything which has made me panic, and that's hardly helped things at all. But today I felt pretty calm and I made good progress, I'm fairly confident with my steering now, as well as changing gears (our new car's a manual) so hopefully I'll be driving well before too long. It's a little bit scary realising how much power you've got at the touch of a pedal, especially once you've got it into second gear and it jumps when you step on the accelerator.

My latest craze on the net seems to be downloading music videos for songs. Now it's all really nice, being able to watch the music video for a song that you really like - adds more than just listening to the song. Only problem is the size of the bloody things, at an average of about 50mb. So on our crappy internet connection it takes about 4 hours to download each and every video - so I'm going to be selective and I'll definitely not end up with over 2000 videos!

A Car!
It's been a pretty long week so far for me, with work being the rather dominant feature in my life at the moment. It's been "get up at 7am, go to work, come home at about 6, eat, sleep then do it again" which has become slightly depressing, but at least tomorrow I have a later start so I'll have a chance to have at least a small sleep-in. Work has also been more interesting than usual, with my management training as well as the Crew Training development programme which I'm doing.

The other main thing that's happened this week is us buying our car, which is now nicely parked in the carport. We even got an alarm installed which is pretty cool - although it turns itself on after 30 seconds which can be slightly disconcerting at first. But at least it's finally sinking in that we actually have a car, although it probably won't really seem like much of a great thing until I've learned how to drive the darn thing!

My graduation is just over a week away, which is kind of exciting as I'm finally going to be one of those people dressed up funny who I have seen every year that I've been at university. All those "one day I'll be doing that" thoughts are about to become a reality, and although it's a pretty weird tradition with all the clothes etc. it's the kind of thing that you're not exactly going to do too many times in your life so you may as well savour the moment. It also means that I finally get the degree that I've worked so hard for in paper, now we just need to figure out a place to put it...

Well Finally
I've finally embarked upon the McDonald's management programme, which looks like it's going to be fairly interesting, although I can expect a lot of "hey.... I already knew that.... been doing that for the past year", but hopefully there will be quite a few new things to learn. I'll eventually get better pay and a slightly different job, so that's something to look forward to.

We've also bought a car, and we were very very careful about spending such a large amount of money in my opinion. We got the car AA checked, which meant that we ended up getting a couple of tyres replaced and a wheel alignment all for the price of the check. So soon we'll have a car to use, although at first it's simply going to be something for both Nats and myself to learn to drive in. But Nats seems to be picking up driving really quickly, and I know most of the theory of it all I just need to get used to doing quite a few things at once and not panicking if everything doesn't got perfectly first time.

21... Yikes!
Happy Birthday to me! 21 today, although as always it doens't feel any different to yesterday. But I suppose that I'm really an adult now no matter what way you think about it so maybe that's quite important. I had a pretty good day today, lunch at a really nice restaurant and then seeing my Nana for the first time in a while was really nice.

It's nice feeling special for at least one day of the year. I suppose being my 21st birthday it made everyone reflect a little bit about what's gone on in my life so far - talking about what was happening this time 21 years ago. This last year has been an interesting one for me, although possibly there wasn't quite as much change as there was for me between the ages of 19 and 20, it was still quite an important year in my life. I guess that I can just look forward to my years to come, and thank everyone for who I am today, from my family and Nats to all those people who have drifted in and out of my life over the past 21 years. It has been an interesting journey, that's for sure!

Dreams
I had the weirdest dream last night, and I actually remember quite a bit of it for a change, normally they completely disappear the instant I wake up - but towards the end of my dream I must have realised that it was only a dream and that it would be good to remember so that I could tell Nats in the morning. But anyway, in my dream some computer hacker had put some virus in all the world's banking systems which meant that when you made an EFTPOS transaction the actual amount of money coming out of your account was way more than what you were actually paying. All over the news people were saying don't use your cards and hang onto your receipts, but I had just spent $100 on a refundable deposit with the people selling our car to us (actually did happen yesterday), and when I checked my account about $600 had come out of it in that transaction. There were also other transactions of over $125 when I hadn't actually spent anything. I remember feeling totally helpless and really sad - when you earn money at about $8 an hour after tax you don't want it disappearning on you. And then I couldn't find any of my reciepts so I had no way of proving that I hadn't actually spent that much once everything got sorted out. After a while my dream went a little hazy, I think that I came across the person who was reponsible for everything, and argued with him. Then I remember something about lifts in the university library (not the actual library lifts, but what the university is in my dreams) and thumping this guy over the head with something.

It was a pretty odd dream, details about my dreams are always a little scratcy and the things that I remember are usually how I was feeling, rather than any words which were spoken or details of things that I noticed. I know that I was really upest about what was going on in this dream, but perhaps slightly comforted that it wasn't only me who was getting screwed over. Oh.... and I also dreamed (later on I think), that Nats was driving over the Auckland Harbour Bridge and trying not to drive off the edges which for some reason were missing half the normal fences which stop people from driving off the bridge into the water. It's nice to be able to remember my dreams for once.

Time Flies When You're.... Um... Doing Nothing
The last three days seem to have just completely disappeared - last Monday really feels like yesterday and this whole (short) week seems to have just vanished. Work has been alright I suppose, we have someone who is training up to become a big manager at head office but needs to learn how everything works at the coal face so I've been traning for most of the week which has been quite interesting, although a lot of talking and quite a bit of hard work. But I guess having to only work three days this week means that it's been pretty cruisy.

It looks as though Nats and I are buying a car, which will be rather useful as we won't have to be spending half our lives waiting for buses which are either late or don't go to where they should be going. I guess that there's only so much you can take with Auckland's crap public transport system, and having a car will give us a lot more freedom. I just need to learn how to drive now! Pity cars are so bloody expensive, although as we don't want to buy a crap car that needs replacing we have to make a pretty decent investment.

I'm not really quite sure why I haven't updated for the past few days, as I said the time seems to have vanished as I though that I was doing pretty well keeping my page up to date. But nothing too interesting has happend apart from the car business, my 21st birthday is coming up this Sunday which is kind of exciting but apart from that my life seems to just be moving along slowly but surely.

Flash
I've been playing around in Flash 5 quite a lot today, figuring out how it works and trying to create a little bit more than a ball which rolls around the screen. Sure, it might look cute, but in terms of creating something which might actually be useful I'm sure that Flash can be put to much better use. I just need to figure out how to do interactive stuff, so that if someone does something they get feedback, more than just watching a movie. I generally learn how to use a new piece of software by just playing around with it a little, finding out what does what and making millions of mistakes, although I downloaded heaps of Flash tutorials this afternoon which proved quite useful when I occasionally (OK.... frequently) got stuck. Maybe if I persevere with it then there might be a couple of exciting additions to this site - although at the moment I'm highly aware that the page takes long enough to open, and adding anything more is probably not too wise at all.

It's back to work tomorrow morning, after almost a four day weekend. I suppose as I worked Saturday night I only really had one day off, then two days off - but as that shift went by so bloody easily it really does seem like I've had quite a long time away from work. But tomorrow it should be back to busy again - with all the businesses back after the long weekend and the schools still on holiday.

Sarah's gone back home, which leaves the house feeling a little bit empty. We might be able to look after her in the next holidays Nats has, which will be at the end of June once her exams are finished - but as we're sort of on the lookout for both a new place to live and a car at the moment who knows what's going to be happening in the next couple of months. As far as my life goes, the past couple of months have been pretty stable, with not much really changing - in itself seemingly a change from normality. But I can tell the next couple of months are going to be pretty hectice, with Nats having exams not too far away and me learning how to be a shift manager (bloody well better be!)

Is Time Getting Faster?
As I seem to continuously be stating, this year seems to be disappearing awfully quickly. As winter is knocking on our door in the past couple of days (banging with a bloody huge sledge hammer to be a little more precise), it makes me realise that we're just about halfway through 2003 already - and even saying that we're in 2003 still seems a little odd. Maybe its simply because as the years pass by, each individual year is a smaller percentage of our lives, that makes time seem to go faster every year - or maybe it's some weird cosmic thing that I heard the other day, where our solar system is passing through a certain part of the Milky Way glaxy which has some strange stuff in it that makes time seem to go faster. Either way, New Years and Christmas certainly don't seem that long ago, although on the other hand it does seem like I've had my laptop for a while, and that only got delivered on Christmas Eve.

We've had another quiet day today, I felt incredibly sleepy this morning, after working last night and not going to sleep until 2:30am meant that I was pretty tired when awoken at 8am this morning. We've been looking after Nats' neice Sarah for the past week and a half, and while it's been cool in many ways she does have a habit of waking up pretty early in the morning. But I managed to sort of go back to sleep for a while, so I'm not too wasted now.

I was talking to one of the senior managers at work last night, and he said that my managers uniform had been ordered along with about three other people who were 'moving up', to become area or shift managers in the next couple of weeks. So it seem that finally I'm going to make that step up. In some ways for the first time ever, I really feel like I'm ready for it - although in the past I have done pretty well looking after parts of the shift while the manager has been on a break, or stuff like that. But now, I feel pretty confident that with a little training and help I could run a pretty good shift at work. There are quite a few things that I need to learn, including how to use the computer to print off certain sheets which are needed, as well as learning how to organise the cash at the end of my shift - but apart from those technical things I think that I'm ready. Also, feedback from other crew people and managers has been quite good, as they have generally said stuff like "I can understand you.... but the others??" Hopefully it's going to be a bit more of an interesting job, and a little bit more of a challenge.

4 Day Weekends
Four day weekends are GOOD! Especially when you've been working 35 to 40 hours weeks for the past month and a half (yeah I know some of you will be saying "I've been doing that for years"). Yesterday we spent something like 13 hours on the internet, which was a little bit excessive perhaps, but isn't that what holidays are for? I am feeling very much like a fulltime worker lately, looking forward to Fridays because that's the end of the week, and then enjoying having long weekends because of public holidays. In the past, I've normally worked a bit here and there, sometimes on the weekend and sometimes during the week - and working pretty much between 7 and 5 Monday to Friday is rather new to me, although I had probably better get used to it!

It was Natalie's sister Grace's 5th birthday today, which is always an important milestone in anyone's life, as in New Zealand you start school once you've turned 5. I don't actually remember my 5th birthday, whereas I have snippets of memories from both my 3rd and 4th birthdays. But anyway, it was a pretty big party with lots of pressies, especially when combined with all the Easter Eggs which were given out. I got called by work to come in about halfway through, which was slightly frustrating, but as I need the money I went to work from 4-11 and it was actually a really easy and cruisy shift that just flew by.

You know those days when it absolutely pours down with rain? Well lucky me got stuck in a massive storm coming home from work tonight. Even on the bus I figured that it was raining a little bit heavier than normal, as the bus ploughed through puddle after puddle it seemed pretty cool at first - the cars next to us were spraying huge amounts of water to the side and it all looked pretty cool. Unfortunately I then remembered that on Saturday's the bus I have to catch ends up about 10 minutes walk from home, and not a 2 minutes walk like the other days of the week. Once I got off the bus, it wasn't really raining that heavily, so I though that I might get lucky and if I ran home quickly I might not get too wet - but boy was I wrong. 10 minutes later I resembled a drowned rat as I walked in the door, very thankful that I had grabbed my jacket in case it was cold when I finished work but still soaked nonetheless.

Storms have always interested me, I remember being at school when I must have been about six watching one of the biggest storms to ever hit New Zealand (cyclone Bola) outside. My parents must have told me that this storm was a little different, because I sitll remember how I noticed that it was so windy and so rainy. A couple of years later I remember watching a huge thunderstorm from the safety of the classroom, as my classmates played around on some prehistoric computer chess game (back in the days of green on black screens). Even these days it's always exciting to see cars splash through big puddles, or to watch how the little puddle in the back yard grows and grows into a giant lake. Maybe next time though, it would be better to see it all from the peace of a window, or maybe even from inside a car, then I wouldn't get quite so wet!

Public Holidays... YAY!
As it's Good Friday tomorrow, today was the last day of the week for me and the start of a four day weekend. Yay! Cleverly I've managed to screw over the McDonald's public holiday policies (which really really suck), and I'll be getting paid for both Good Friday and Easter Monday even though I'll be at home sleeping. Unfortunately, not working tomorrow means that I'll get nothing for not working on ANZAC day next Friday - which is a bit of a bitch but oh well. At least for once I'll be getting the money I desever for public holidays rather than getting roped in to work and getting nothing extra for it, as has happened in previous years far too many times.

The down-side of it being the end of the week is that my body seems to realise that it doesn't have to walk around for eight hours a day for a little while, so decides it's the perfect time to hibernate. Hence, I end up really sleepy when I probably should be wanting to go out and enjoy myself. Oh well, I guess a good night's sleep will do me the world of good.

My birthday's in just over a week now - and I've kinda figured out what I'm going to do, with a few drinks on Saturday night and then going out for lunch with family and Nats on Sunday. It'll be nice, not quite the huge party that James had - but I'm not really the party person so that's maybe not a bad thing. It's only another year really, but I suppose that it's pretty cool having one birthday in particular which is a little more special than the others, going from being a 'child' to an 'adult'. Now how can I avoid having to drink copious amounts of beer???

Blogshares
I seem to have lost a little interest in writing here, although I may be spending more time on the net than I have for ages and ages. Blogshares accepted my blog, and it's slowly increasing in value, although the couple of people who did hold a rather large number of shares in my site recently sold, which brought down the share price a little. Apparentely the whole game is going to reset on May 1st, when it 'goes live' - any shares you own will no longer be worth anything and you'll only keep what money you have. Maybe with all the selling that's going to happen, it might be best to get out early before all the share prices crash. Damn I'm sounding like a real economist now.

Work today was busy, school holidays making the place much much busier than normal. A lot of the people at work complain when it's really busy, because of the extra work and having to rush all the time. But I actually prefer it when things are busy, as long as we have enough people on, as time goes faster and it just seems the way that things are meant to be. The store I work at can get incredibly busy - during special occassions such as the Santa Parade once a year, and that's the way it just ought to be in some ways. When things are quiet, it can get pretty boring and all, so if we have enough staff on it's normally a good thing when we have a real busy lunch rush.

I've got four days off in a row over Easter which is pretty cool, especially as I'm going to get paid for both Good Friday and Easter Monday. So hopefully the next week and a half is going to be quite relaxing, a chance for both Nats and I to have a little bit of a holiday.