Oooooooooh...it's Beltaine tomorrow and I have people to celebrate with. Or at least people who know what the hell I'm talking about when I say it's Beltaine.

Mayday always was my favourite holiday.

I'm afraid I went a tad unglued this past week. Apologies to those caught in the crossfire, especially those it frightened/worried.

Suffice it to say I'd been ignoring a couple of important things that were weighing on my mind by not admitting they were valid things to worry about. *sigh* you'd think I'd have learned not to do that by now. Of course it didn't help that it came right at the peak of PMT.

Today is bright and sunny and I didn't get enough sleep last night but I don't care, I feel human again and that's a nice difference. Well, maybe half-human, but in the good way. *wink*

~Ash the nutso garb-sewing photo-taking faerie.

MARCKY!! I've been wanting to call for a couple of weeks, but always thought of it when it was way past your Brittish Summer Time Bedtime. Old friends rock. Especially old friends with gossip.

I just had a wonderful realization, my class is three hours long, and informal, so I can bloody well show up at 6.45 and it's still fine. That gives me time to swim first.

Me sleepy. Damn warm sunny weather and yummy Boudin [>] pea and ham soup in a sourdough bread bowl. But I gotta keep awake till after photography tonight. I'm sure those lovely chemical smells will perk me right up!

;-P

Wow, everybody's having roomate, or potential-roomate problems. I'd say it must be something in the water, but that doesn't explain my sister's loud and obnoxious bathroom-hogging DSL cable-stealing flatmate in Berlin.

There are odd things in the air, though I suppose that's pretty natural for my environment. It's passed over before, it'll probably pass over again. That doesn't change the fact that it feels so completely uneccesary.

I have roses on my workbench. The P.I. of the next door lab grows roses for a hobby, he told me he has 75 different rosebushes. He comes in to work every week with a cart loaded up with buckets and vases full of gorgeous roses, which he proceeds to hand out around the labs and the hospital. So I have two lilac, one pink, one yellow and one sunset colour rose in an erlinmeyer flask on my desk.

It's so lovely that he not only makes a hobby out of growing them, but that part of it is distributing them to everyone he can, spreading the joy.

Gragh @ being back at work. I want three day weekends.

The creative B&W photography class started on Tuesday, it seems to be exactly what I had hoped for, darkroom tricks and techniques, working on fibre paper(yay), with the added bonus of a small class size and a very enthusiastic instructor. We are to focus on one or two negs for the duration of the class, but can work on other stuff while taking advantage of the 24/7 access to the darkroom. (again I say: yay)

I've yet to pick a neg to work with, but I'll enlist the teacher's help for that. I have a couple of ideas.

You gave me one of the more unusual compliments I've ever had, telling me that it was lovely to hear someone pronounce "whom" so nicely.

Blessed Be, Doris Hurford. I'll never know if you believed in heaven, but I hope you're there now.

~Your Niece.

With Her Lips Only

This honest wife, challenged at dusk
At the garden gate, under a moon perhaps,
In scent of honeysuckle, dared to deny
Love to an urgent lover: with her lips only,
Not with her heart. It was no assignation;
Taken aback, what could she say else?
For the children's sake, the lie was venial;
For the children's sake, she argued with her conscience.

Yet a mortal lie must follow before dawn:
Challenged as usual in her own bed,
She protests love to an urgent husband,
Not with her heart but with her lips only;
For the children's sake, she argues with her conscience,
For the children--turning suddenly cold towards them.

~Robert Graves

Better mood today. I guess I'm resigned to the whole volunteer thing now, life goes on.

I'm also a complete and utter cat when it comes to comfort. Good food and hugs, and maybe being scratched behind my ear. No that's not a metaphor, I really do mean being scratched behind my ear. Purrrrrrrr. Now where's my saucer of cream?

Welcome to the wonderful world of being a volunteer.

I am not a happy bunny, I can't figure out if I'm getting ill or just really stressed out.

At least my health benefits won't lapse until the end of May though.

Last night makes three people who have now accused me of being Bridget Jones, and it's not just because I'm a Brit. So I guess I'd better start writing like her...

Thursday
Weight: 1lb lighter than last week, will be back in a bikini in no time
Cigarettes: None, am wonderful, virtuous, clean living example of womanhood.
Units of Alcohol: Six. Rome wasn't built in a day you know...

Have begun to think that employers are completely incompetent when it comes to anything other than wandering about and arranging lunches, leaving it up to poor defenseless me to tackle the hideous task of fixing the computer problems of said employers. Possibly they assume that because I am under 40 (thank God) I must know everything about the superannuated calculators we have dotted about the place.

On a brighter note, my much dreaded fitness assessment went rather well. Apparently I have "Great abs" though this clearly refers to their strength and stamina, not their outward appearance. Personally I still feel they resemble a roughly stomach-shaped lump of tofu, definitely not for public consumption. The personal trainer lady was ridiculously slim and athletic, and is the same age as my dear old Mum, not entirely sure yet whether this makes me feel better, or stunningly inadequate.

Have discovered that red wine is almost as comforting as chocolate at times, and is considerably less fattening.

Thus ends the Bridget Jones section of my Blog, I'm not even going to try to put my love-life analysis into Jones-isms, that would just be way too scary.

Further proof [>] that I'm noir to the core, and I'm not just posting it because it shows I've got something in common with the great Greg Dulli.

James Ellroy and Greg Dulli...what a truly messed up combination. It' s not really a surprise that one of my favourite bands' lead singers was obsessed with noir crime novels, and wrote a whole album inspired by the Ellroy Los Angeles quartet of novels. It makes a hell of a lot of sense actually. I have to go home and listen through Black Love [>] all over again.

That man (Greg Dulli) just gets more and more impressive, writing an album inspired by a movie genre and a series of sadistically dark crime novels, catching the spirit of it all in a new media. That is art to me, taking something that speaks to you and making it your own in a way that enables it to speak to countless others who may have missed the original form.

Should I be insulted that Vincenzo didn't ask me if I'm interested in doing a PhD here? Even though I probably wouldn't want to do it, it's a big commitment and stuff, but he said we desperately need a couple of fellows, maybe a post-doc and someone to do a docterate here, and did I know anyone who'd be interested. I guess he already has me as STAFF, so if I switched over he'd have to replace my spot on the payroll. Hrm.

No, I don't want to do a PhD in this field, MS maybe, that's a definite possibility, but not a PhD. Perhaps I'll see the lay of the land and bring that up to him as a possibility.

Do I just not come across as grad-school material?

I went for a wander along the beach last night after dark. The air was mild, but the sand felt cool between my toes as I stumbled in the glare of passing headlights. I keep forgetting how calming the ocean is to me.

What a nice weekend I've had, starting with coffee on Friday night with Matt, proceeding to the Gaslamp, talking and talking and talking (and holding hands *blush*) then home for sleep, then a drive into the mountains. Off-road no less. Before you try to imagine my little car going off-road, it was in Matt's xterra. I can't tell you how nice it was to be out in the cold misty hills, it really felt like the highlands in some places, as long as I didn't look too closely at the flora.

Unfortunately I was greeted this morning by an email stating that my temp contract ends on the 15th of THIS MONTH and I'll most likely have to take a break in service. Vincenzo thinks we'll be able to extend my temp contract by 4-5 weeks to cover that hole, but it's still not a nice thing to wake up to.

Heigh ho, it was still a lovely weekend. *waves to Matt in Hawaii*

And yes, Matt is a new person, if you want to know more, you know where I live. If you don't know where I live then you probably don't know me well enough to ask anyway...

Prayers for Queenie, she's having knee surgery today. I'm still working on getting you that medal dear! *snicker*

The funny thing is, even with the spectacularly pouffy hair yesterday, and having to buy shorts today, I'm still in a great mood. It's sunny and balmy outside, I had a really fun coffee date (still working on actually using the "D" word solo) last night, and I keep looking up and realising that I'm here, that I made it to living independantly in San Diego, this time last year I didn't even dream this would be possible, and here I am, settled in and finding even more to love about this place all the time.

May I also state, for the record, that I HATE athletic shorts. The whole point of exercise is to escape my thighs, but it seems I have to confront them fully and in great detail (along with the rest of the seeing world) to get to the stage of being allowed to banish them.

Gah, correction to previous statement: I need a haircut from someone who doesn't think the best look for me is the pouffy pom-pom look. I know I have a lot of hair, but do we really need to emphasise that by drying it so it increases my head size by 3 inches??

Actually, it's a decent cut, I just do not understand the sudden obsession in hairdresser's with big, messy, RIDICULOUS hair.

Gah, I need a haircut.

Why does my hair insist on growing sideways instead of downwards? Though I shall never rival Agent Big Hair on volume, it certainly feels like it some days.

what time is it? [>]

Wow, I'm actually chocolatted out. Well, as much as I ever can be. I feel quite proud of myself that I limited myself to only having the chocolates I like from the Thornton's selection box Mum brought, rather than eating whatever was there even if I don't particularly like it. Evie ate almost all of my chocolate coins too, I told her to. Muah hah hah, inflicting my chocolate on my sister in a cunning plan to balance out our weights? I doubt it, that girl's got one killer metabolism.