just dropped a load,

a fat wad of cash, on our landlord. the kid and i have had to pay in spot's half because the guy we decided was good pulled out. i almost wrote "pulled out last-minute", but the whole damn story's last minute. the next on the list is coming back for another peek.

and spot still hasn't removed all his things.

yesterday:

singer woke me up forty five minutes post-alarm (if she hadn't, i probably would have snored past lunchtime), and missing the shuttle made me an hour and a half late. and it's not like i could "jump to" once i was up, my body was in agony. the stress build-up from sunday and monday was just too much.

yesterday was REALLY rough. no cigarettes, no caffeine, i cannot express here how aweful and agitated i felt. i was a zombie from start to finish. i was given a task in the morning that took more than the work hours available, although i did finish it. one of the reasons it took so long:

unix treats the last line of a file as an EOF, meaning it ignores it. so one needs to add an empty line at the end, or the line is disregarded.

i ate a ton of non-coloured food at lunch in the mess hall, and stayed late to eat on base because if i hadn't i wouldn't have arrived home before the fourteen hour fast began.

i arrived home for two seconds, just to pick up my gear, and i bussed to singer. i barely had a chance to get my boots off, she threw me down on the bed and gave me a massage that took all the anguish in my back, neck and head and melted it into pure bliss. i had just enough energy remaining to shower and brush my teeth, and then i fell into totally peaceful, dreamless sleep.

today:

i spent the morning being poked, prodded, bled, electrified, rubber-gloved and thrown into a sound-proofed torture chamber, all in aid of discovering that i'm no less healthy than i suspected.

the sat phone story got sorted out, and not only can i now take it for servicing but it's been fixed to boot :)

the day wasn't easy, but it was a huge improvement over yesterday. today i didn't have to abstain from coffee and cigarettes, but i did so anyway. at one point i overcompensated with sugar, and now that's out too. my whiteboard looks like this:

i will quit smoking. i will quit caffeine. i will not eat too much sugar.
i will quit smoking. i will quit caffeine. i will not eat too much sugar.
... (repeated a few times)

in the early evening (the sun's setting early now, early evening is before we leave work at 5pm) i received an email response to my complaint the other day, and at 17.10 somebody arrived to have a chat with the driver. not quite what we were hoping for, but nothing can be done now.

which reminds me - i put in a formal complaint on sunday regarding the dude, and it seems to have been misfiled. i am not letting this slide.

oh, right - apparently i've been okayed for officer's course... my bluff hasn't been contested ;)