three days over breakfast

having just completed tuesday night's pre-post and an excellent roast-beef sandwich breakfast at cafesito (yay! they have internet!), i'm ready to tackle wednesday and thursday.

wednesday:

the day began well - much better than tuesday. the chef was at work, and i began singing happy birthday as i crossed the road. i sat over a croissant and coffee while tapping away at my keyboard, enjoying my human being disguise as much as i could before returning home and getting into uniform.

i was still feeling the saké, and continued to feel it for the rest of the day :P

between great frisbee and great rollerblading, i'd managed to put my neck out a bit. i spent a lot of time in the massage chair at work; both days. it's hard to nap when you're in agony, but i think it helped. i suddenly remembered that i can (theoretically) take sick leave if my back's in trouble, but i don't see myself ever actually taking advantage of this.

a bit silly, really.

the wedding song has finally been selected, and it's moby. they definitely didn't need *my* help, i can't stand him :P

big news for the day: my third request has been authorized by the big chief! this would be fantastic news, but there are still a few hurdles to clear. specifically, the form is right now sitting on the desk of the woman who didn't deal correctly with my transfer to the unit in december '06, and whose brilliance was entirely responsible for my lack of a salary during the months of april and may in 2008.

my favourite person in the whole world.

i feel like a right ponce concerning what happened at lunchtime: i phoned my TL to berate him for his cleaning policy - whoever's turn it is has to clean while everyone else is at lunch, and so ends up eating alone. he came to talk to me afterwards, and made a very valid point: i should have stayed behind as well and gone to eat with nystire when he was done. how did this basic solution escape me? [i blame the extreme sleep deprivation, my easy answer to everything :P]

the walk back was inspired by the animaniacs. there was a lot of wisdom in that show.

back at work, and i caught myself doing a lot of manual labour instead of automating my code a little. a dictionary solves a lot of problems in c#.

it wasn't all serious, though - the motivational "dare to soar" poster needed modifying. the text below is now covered by a paper with similar text to the title:
"W·I·T·H·O·U·T A P·A·R·A·C·H·U·T·E"
"(DOUBLE DARE YOU)"

nystire and i went out to do pull-ups, after which i returned to the massage chair. after it had powered down i managed to nap for a bit, and woke up with the shakes again. this time there were witnesses who could attest to the fact that no part of me was physically vibrating... i guess there's not much to be done.

it suddenly occurred to me that i've now accrued enough experience to consider myself to have mastered c#.

i finished reading this month's wired on the way home, and was blown away by art of the thief: a real man straight out of a hollywood film.

everything went wrong when i got home, and i definitely needed to get out.

the sign, when i looked at it, read "150 < 70 < 2", and i turned left. the numbering on the buildings was non-existent, and i walked more than five minutes before discovering that they were going down. on my way back i noticed one number, visible only from the other direction. i double-checked the sign when i returned to my starting point, and verified that i hadn't been confused... when i crossed the road, i looked up to find "2 > 72 > 150". i turned right, and a few minutes later knew that i was headed the right way.

the road was a lot longer than i'd anticipated.

my mother called a few minutes after i arrived, and by that time i'd already filled a glass from the 4l bottle of johnnie walker red; it's impossible to understand just how *big* that is without seeing it for oneself.

the flatmate's cat appears to be possessed. making creepy noises and attacking itself, hair constantly on end and spitting in every direction...

we never got around to watching firefly; we played two games of munchkin, and they lasted until stupid o'clock in the morning. scrapper and a friend of his joined us, and the evening was a lot of fun and very loud.

the ride back home was positive and we talked about a lot of interesting things.

thursday:

it bothers me that at 6.20am, i have to power-walk to make the bus. there's a bus that goes right from my place to the train station, but it only allows me to get there on time 90% of the mornings that i need it :/

i passed out on the shuttle, and was surprised to be woken just outside the entrance to our inner base: we're not allowed to travel without security. this may be a very stupid rule, but i've never seen it broken so brazenly. i don't know how i feel about that, because i was far more comfortable walking fifteen minutes than having to wait for a bus and then walk for thirty.

on my walk to my building i heard a bunch of noisy girls catching up to me. i couldn't take their broadcast stupidity, so i slowed down to let them pass. no use, they stopped where i did.
"hi! could you please give my friend your beret? hers isn't looking so good."

kids these days.

while waiting for the section breakfast to begin, i sat sharing stories with the vyomanaut [i've been calling him the village idiot for the longest time, long after he proved himself to be one of the section's brighter members]. there's a section competition for embarrassing and surprising stories, and apparently mine aren't the worst of the bunch :)

breakfast was good; our SC convinced me that eating yellow cheese shouldn't cause me too much trouble, and i think he's right. also, we had cake.

the section using the meeting room after us also had cake, far superior to ours. now that i'm sitting at the entrance to it, i was invited as well :)

between lunch and dinner (both on the base), tahoma and i mixed metaphors enough to reach the conclusion that in contrast to c (constructing the aeroplane you wish to fly on), coding in c# is the equivalent of building the interface between the passenger and his chair - in other words, making an arse. that would place documenting it in the realm of wiping said bum.

after lunch, i passed out in the massage chair again. i was wasted, dragging myself to the section meeting unwillingly and having difficulty keeping my eyes open. i was passed the key to one of the dorms by a considerate section-mate, and disappeared to crawl onto his bed and pass out for an hour. i'm so glad nobody was looking for me, as i would've had a hard time explaining that to my commanders :P

the sleep was superb, although i could definitely have used more. i returned to the building to participate in the writing of songs for the people leaving our section (the farewell is next week) - only i had to leave at a certain point because i'm one of those people :P

i rewrote the uml for my project when i got back, and tidied up the code a considerable amount. there was a boisterous meeting going on next door; one of the participants walked out halfway, and stopped as he neared the door.
"wow, things are improving around here - last time i was in this office the secretary was a 19-year old female corporal."

i missed the perfect opportunity:
"yeah, i remember you. i've grown a bit since then."

the work i got done at the end of the day got me excited, and it's been a while since i've been enthusiastic about anything in the office. i think it might be helped by the fact that i can see the end of my service approaching rapidly, and that does me no end of good.

dinner was standard fare, and a few of us snuck into a restricted area to grab a few cups of coke (why we couldn't just have water or coffee, i don't know) before sitting down for the ceremony for the families of fallen soldiers who served in our unit. surprisingly, the ceremony wasn't drawn out, it was nicely put together and it was tasteful.

i still felt very much removed and distant, but that's part of the response to the past year's unpleasantness.

i got home late, and went straight to bed. i was thinking of going out after i'd gotten up to hang up the laundry, but i was way too tired and i slept until this morning. after putting the new shelves to use, i came here for breakfast and am almost ready to begin the day.

that was a long, long week.