October 2004
Tuesday, October 26th, 2004 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverai
At the beginning of October 2004, I got quite a nice substantial pay rise. This helped my saving considerably! I managed to break the $1000 barrier in savings, which I've never done before when saving. I don't have this much anymore, due to things happening later in the month, but I'm aiming for it again. It's such a lovely number to aim for.
I now have 6 christmas presents and a wedding present. Seems like good progress, until I remember christmas is not too far over 8 weeks away. Should knuckle down and cut my spendings, so I can spend my money on the presents instead. It's not just presents for christmas either. I still have to get the present for the second couple getting married in November, a birthday present for both my nephew and my niece, and buy a ticket for a wine tour that's in lieu of the hen's night for the first couple. Couple this with my steady diet of fast food for lunch and most dinners, along with my phone bill each month, and I'm amazed I managed to save as much as I did! At least my car runs cheap.
I booked into a learner brass band with my mum. I was going to pick up my trumpet again, but they need trombones more, so I said I'd do that instead. It wasn't until a week later that I remembered I actually played trombone in the jazz band in highschool for at least a term. It's funny how one's memory escapes without one even noticing it. It feels like learning from scratch, since I remember hardly anything from before. The proper band meets on Tuesday nights, but the learner band mum and I will be in meets on Thursday. It's rather neat. They loan you an instrument, teach you, and loan you a uniform when required all for free. There's more on the subject, but in the interests of keeping my post moving....
Wow, seems longer than that now. The Cat had stopped eating, so we finally took it the vet. We learnt it had mouth ulcers or something, and they took a blood test. If the results said The Cat's kidneys would cause the problem to happen again and again, then we'd have to put The Cat down. Z and I had/have grown very attached to The Cat in the few months it has hung around. So attached, in fact, that we ended up forking out $440 for the vet bill. The Cat is now fine and eating and all that. Still, I didn't find out The Cat would be fine until the next day sometime, and The Cat possibly having to be put down was the first shock of the evening.
The second shock came when I called my parents. It was heralded with the words "Oh, that's right. You haven't been filled in yet." This is generally a bad phrase for them to say to me, since everytime I instantly think my Gran has just passed away. :( Nothing too drastically horrible, as it's not much of a life my Gran has right now, but it added to the overall tension. So, my dad's ... urm...prostate....has been slowly becoming a problem over the years. I guess he is older than other people's dads tend to be. So, this problem just meant he had to get up several times a night, and had to go to the toilet with not as much warning as one may have liked sometimes. Well, the problem went bust when my parents were down in Albany. He had no control over his "waterworks" at all. He was in hospital for a couple of days down there apparently, until the doctor grudgingly released him and they drove back to Perth. I not finding out about this until I call them. I called them 30 minutes after finding out about the cat.
My dad is in his 60's. I should probably have been expecting some sort of health problems. I still have troubles coming to terms with it though. See, people ain't supposed to bust until they're at least in the 70's. It put into the forefront of my mind that my dad is mortal, and I've been busy avoiding that fact for ages. I'm proud of him, and only really started getting along with him in the last few years. If anything happened now, I would feel that the quality time I had with him was too short. Z didn't seem to be bothered by the news at all, which is fine, but when I'm having trouble with something, I need sympathy. Like usual, Z was in short supply. Not that he's callous or anything, he just has difficulty understanding why I get so worked up emotionally like I do sometimes. Z and my brother are two peas in a pod with that, they both take things in their emotional stride much more easily than I do.
Back to the plot. I handled it fairly ok that night, as far as I handle things. I went to work the next day and felt fine then too. First up, mega mega MEGA horrible customer complaints. Two of them. In a row. Well, that turned out the be the straw that broke this camel's back. I went out the back and bawled my eyes out for 30 minutes before deciding I should probably give up composing myself enough for work and just go home. I ended up going over my parents and having a good talk with my brother about many things. He was taking events in his stride like usual, didn't quite get why I was having a problem with it, but accepted it. He's good like that. He mentioned that people with emphasemia (s/p?) are usually given 10 years to live. Nice. That didn't help, since my dad was told he had that about 7-8 years ago, although he has been combatting it with a fairly good success rate. Dammit, people aren't supposed to die until they're in their 80's at least. Especially not my parents.
Onto the good news. I get the WASO (West Australian Symphony Orchaestra) newsletter in my email every so often. Two weeks in a row, they had a competition at the very end of their emails. If you were one of the first 20 or so to reply with your name and address, then they'd post you free to tickets to this movie. I replied both emails, and won both times. Each competition was a different movie, although the second movie was during work and I passed those tickets on to other people to enjoy. Z and I used the first lot of tickets I won, and that was nice. Afterwards, I didn't feel like going home, but Z did. We had separate transport, so he went home and I stayed behind with a hot chocolate and did a lot of thinking. It's amazing how I haven't actually stopped to think for many months. There's always something I find to fill in the blank in my brain so that I don't actually have to think. I thought about this and that, and discovered a few nasty revelations about myself that I hadn't noticed before. I thought about those until I had resolved them. I'd talk about them, but this post is getting rather long already. So I arrived home, and Z had glorious carnations waiting for me! *swoon* He'd used an angle grinder to cut the top off a wine bottle and smoothed the edges to create a vase. Surprisingly, it looked rather elegant.
In wine bottle related news, I have suddenly started liking wine. I haven't experimented to far with it, mainly stuck to the two I've discovered I like. Houghton's late picked verdello (white), and Jacob's Creek brut (champagne). It's odd, but since I discovered I like wine all of a sudden, I also have suddenly not minded getting drunk either. I think I've been at least tipsy-drunk every weekend for the last month at least. Rather odd. I'm enjoying the sensation of drunken youthfulness. I restrict it a little though, since wine doesn't actually agree with me all that much. It makes my digestion go odd for the next day or so. One bottle a weekend and that's it.
Yesterday my new glasses arrived. I have two new pairs of spectacles, due the "buy one get one free" deal at Just Spectacles. The perscription (s/p?) for my left eye stayed the same, but my right eye had changed. Everything I looked at is now photo quality again, and no more having to constantly tighten up the screws in my five-year-old pair. Yay!
....and various other things, but that'll do for now.
I now have 6 christmas presents and a wedding present. Seems like good progress, until I remember christmas is not too far over 8 weeks away. Should knuckle down and cut my spendings, so I can spend my money on the presents instead. It's not just presents for christmas either. I still have to get the present for the second couple getting married in November, a birthday present for both my nephew and my niece, and buy a ticket for a wine tour that's in lieu of the hen's night for the first couple. Couple this with my steady diet of fast food for lunch and most dinners, along with my phone bill each month, and I'm amazed I managed to save as much as I did! At least my car runs cheap.
I booked into a learner brass band with my mum. I was going to pick up my trumpet again, but they need trombones more, so I said I'd do that instead. It wasn't until a week later that I remembered I actually played trombone in the jazz band in highschool for at least a term. It's funny how one's memory escapes without one even noticing it. It feels like learning from scratch, since I remember hardly anything from before. The proper band meets on Tuesday nights, but the learner band mum and I will be in meets on Thursday. It's rather neat. They loan you an instrument, teach you, and loan you a uniform when required all for free. There's more on the subject, but in the interests of keeping my post moving....
Wow, seems longer than that now. The Cat had stopped eating, so we finally took it the vet. We learnt it had mouth ulcers or something, and they took a blood test. If the results said The Cat's kidneys would cause the problem to happen again and again, then we'd have to put The Cat down. Z and I had/have grown very attached to The Cat in the few months it has hung around. So attached, in fact, that we ended up forking out $440 for the vet bill. The Cat is now fine and eating and all that. Still, I didn't find out The Cat would be fine until the next day sometime, and The Cat possibly having to be put down was the first shock of the evening.
The second shock came when I called my parents. It was heralded with the words "Oh, that's right. You haven't been filled in yet." This is generally a bad phrase for them to say to me, since everytime I instantly think my Gran has just passed away. :( Nothing too drastically horrible, as it's not much of a life my Gran has right now, but it added to the overall tension. So, my dad's ... urm...prostate....has been slowly becoming a problem over the years. I guess he is older than other people's dads tend to be. So, this problem just meant he had to get up several times a night, and had to go to the toilet with not as much warning as one may have liked sometimes. Well, the problem went bust when my parents were down in Albany. He had no control over his "waterworks" at all. He was in hospital for a couple of days down there apparently, until the doctor grudgingly released him and they drove back to Perth. I not finding out about this until I call them. I called them 30 minutes after finding out about the cat.
My dad is in his 60's. I should probably have been expecting some sort of health problems. I still have troubles coming to terms with it though. See, people ain't supposed to bust until they're at least in the 70's. It put into the forefront of my mind that my dad is mortal, and I've been busy avoiding that fact for ages. I'm proud of him, and only really started getting along with him in the last few years. If anything happened now, I would feel that the quality time I had with him was too short. Z didn't seem to be bothered by the news at all, which is fine, but when I'm having trouble with something, I need sympathy. Like usual, Z was in short supply. Not that he's callous or anything, he just has difficulty understanding why I get so worked up emotionally like I do sometimes. Z and my brother are two peas in a pod with that, they both take things in their emotional stride much more easily than I do.
Back to the plot. I handled it fairly ok that night, as far as I handle things. I went to work the next day and felt fine then too. First up, mega mega MEGA horrible customer complaints. Two of them. In a row. Well, that turned out the be the straw that broke this camel's back. I went out the back and bawled my eyes out for 30 minutes before deciding I should probably give up composing myself enough for work and just go home. I ended up going over my parents and having a good talk with my brother about many things. He was taking events in his stride like usual, didn't quite get why I was having a problem with it, but accepted it. He's good like that. He mentioned that people with emphasemia (s/p?) are usually given 10 years to live. Nice. That didn't help, since my dad was told he had that about 7-8 years ago, although he has been combatting it with a fairly good success rate. Dammit, people aren't supposed to die until they're in their 80's at least. Especially not my parents.
Onto the good news. I get the WASO (West Australian Symphony Orchaestra) newsletter in my email every so often. Two weeks in a row, they had a competition at the very end of their emails. If you were one of the first 20 or so to reply with your name and address, then they'd post you free to tickets to this movie. I replied both emails, and won both times. Each competition was a different movie, although the second movie was during work and I passed those tickets on to other people to enjoy. Z and I used the first lot of tickets I won, and that was nice. Afterwards, I didn't feel like going home, but Z did. We had separate transport, so he went home and I stayed behind with a hot chocolate and did a lot of thinking. It's amazing how I haven't actually stopped to think for many months. There's always something I find to fill in the blank in my brain so that I don't actually have to think. I thought about this and that, and discovered a few nasty revelations about myself that I hadn't noticed before. I thought about those until I had resolved them. I'd talk about them, but this post is getting rather long already. So I arrived home, and Z had glorious carnations waiting for me! *swoon* He'd used an angle grinder to cut the top off a wine bottle and smoothed the edges to create a vase. Surprisingly, it looked rather elegant.
In wine bottle related news, I have suddenly started liking wine. I haven't experimented to far with it, mainly stuck to the two I've discovered I like. Houghton's late picked verdello (white), and Jacob's Creek brut (champagne). It's odd, but since I discovered I like wine all of a sudden, I also have suddenly not minded getting drunk either. I think I've been at least tipsy-drunk every weekend for the last month at least. Rather odd. I'm enjoying the sensation of drunken youthfulness. I restrict it a little though, since wine doesn't actually agree with me all that much. It makes my digestion go odd for the next day or so. One bottle a weekend and that's it.
Yesterday my new glasses arrived. I have two new pairs of spectacles, due the "buy one get one free" deal at Just Spectacles. The perscription (s/p?) for my left eye stayed the same, but my right eye had changed. Everything I looked at is now photo quality again, and no more having to constantly tighten up the screws in my five-year-old pair. Yay!
....and various other things, but that'll do for now.
