broken smiley

it was a bit nippy today - good thing my mac hall goodies arrived. the XXXL broken smiley shirt just made my day ^_^

i had an excellent egg 'n avo breakfast at cafeneto with my mum, then walked to the absorption assistance agency to sort out my most-alienable rights. the woman was rather unpleasant, and then she took offence when i tried to understand how long my rights will continue to exist.

i walked home, picked up my id book and some cash and returned to get it stamped and sorted. good thing i had a book with me (mark twain - the adventures of huckleberry finn) because the systems were down... and we spent half an hour filling out forms for something unrelated to my request... and then another excruciating ten minutes on a visa application form (an international and cost-free one)... and then it took forever to figure out what she was on about as far as my request was concerned.

the fact that this all took about an hour - not including the quick break when one of her teeth fell out - and that my mother was waiting for me at the mall kinda set me on edge. the frustration i experienced while trying to be polite in the face of her overwhelming demonstration of complete and utter incompetence lasted a while after the experience was over.

colour me unimpressed.

at least lunch was good (the usual shinto always goes down well), and we organized a gift for my niece (25*) and bought the discworld graphic novels: "the colour of magic", "the light fantastic" for me.

totalwaste trivia: cuz's copy of the colour of magic was the first real graphic novel i ever read, and it was what got me reading discworld books in the first place.

pity i left all my book gift vouchers at home...

no bus for old men - waiting for bus 56 in the sun was unpleasant, and the bus to herzeliya was crowded. my mother wasn't feeling well and there weren't enough young 'uns prepared to stand.

i'm an expiry date detector: for the second time, i managed to pick the one item in the stack that wasn't good. today's was a chocolate bar.

i crashed for an hour or two, woke up feeling awful. my mother and i took the train to the airport, and sat down to eat and wash a beer down with coffee after dealing with remarkably stupid security personnel and an idiot who held up the check-in line. [um - not like robbed, like made us all wait for nothing for a very long time - and got the girl all defensive for everyone else]

so after a pleasant rip-off dinner and an interesting chat, we said our goodbyes and i went to wait for the train... it arrived an hour later, so i sat reading until then. i got back home just in time to watch house with the kid, showered and have (in my head) gone to bed. tomorrow morning we'll do the lincoln thing.

because we can.

* i told her i'm glad she made it this far, and her response was "i reckon you had something to do with it you really redeemed yourself at the hospital for trying to murder me in my youth" - a reference to an incident (once upon a time) when my father caught me trying to smother her with a pillow. times change, i guess :P