This evening I made lemon sugar cookies and wrapped up a pair of tiny, tiny pink baby shoes with ducklings to take to a baby shower for a workmate tomorrow night. Late last year she and I went out drinking with a few other workmates and ended up at the Dixon St toilets at 1am on a Friday morning, drunk off our faces and eating pies. In a few weeks, she's going to be a mum. I really like her and her partner—they're a really sweet couple who got together when she was 23 and he was 18—and I think they're going to be awesome at the parenthood thing. It's weird, though; she's by far the closest to me in age in my team (and, actually, she's 30, and there are maybe 5 staff members in the entire office in their 20s out of a staff of 85ish).

The lemon sugar cookies are really good.

I have been sleeping shittily for the past few weeks, getting about 6 hours sleep on worknights. I don't know. It takes me forever to get to sleep because my toes are cold or my nose is cold or I'm thinking about, like, the tragic/hilarious Mary-Sue of the Week and her life drama. And then I wake up every morning at twenty to seven when my alarm goes off, overheated and cranky. Sigh. I'm currently planning out my annual leave for the rest of the year. I've a week off in late August, during which I'm going to Auckland to visit my parents and jessikast, and with the 14 other days of leave I'm vaguely planning adventures.

So, Panic at the Disco have split in twain.

I felt really weird about this all day: like, I don't engage with canon much (and haven't in any of my major fandoms since Harry Potter, which I tripped and fell out of sometime around 2003 or 2004) and I was feeling sad! But I didn't know why I was feeling sad! It was WEIRD!

And then. Like—

1. although RPS has this really strange engagement with reality, where there is an absolute awareness on the part of all sane participants that the X you are reading or writing about is not the X of reality (and this happens with all fandoms) AND there's this sense that reality can't be simply dismissed in RPS fandoms in the same way that film/book/tv canon can be dismissed (or at least I get that sense), so that you can't, say, ignore Gerard Way getting married in the same way you could ignore or rewrite Snape killing Dumbledore. Maybe that's just me. Also I know a lot of people totally ignored or rewrote Snape killing Dumbledore, particularly between books 6 and 7 being released. I hope my point is semi-clear?
   
2. Actually, 5 years is a really long time to work with the same people. And music IS work for these people.
   
3. Also, the making of music is (a) creative, (b) meticulous, and (c) probably bloody frustrating sometimes. It would be hard to work with people who didn't have the same creative goals or visions as you! It IS hard to do work that you're not that into.
   
4. The music business, and most creative industry, requires the participants to at least pretend to be enjoying themselves or what they're doing part of the time. The "I'm just doing this for the money and because I have no other life skills, fuck this noise" line doesn't sell tickets. At least if I am having a shit day at work I don't have to fake it.
   
5. I don't of course know whether any of the Panic members, current or former, were having actualfax Shit Days At Work, like the ones where you cry in the bathrooms or under your desk or eat entire packets of biscuits while glaring at your computer screen and refusing to talk to people.
   
6. But, whether they were or were not, it is generally better to get out of jobs (if you can) before the situation gets so bad you can't face anyone involved anymore, and that does seem to be by and large what they—all of them—have done.
   
7. I really want to know what everyone's going to come up with!
   
8. This is true of both reality and fandom.

So I've been listening to a lot of Neko Case. A lot, a lot. <3

From a comment I left on someone else's blog:

Anyway. My bugbear at the moment is that I live in a city in the southern hemisphere and it is winter at the moment and, although it doesn't snow, we do get strong southerly winds and frosts and heavy rain. And, despite this, the 2 major stores that sell plus-size clothing (and the 4 or 5 boutiques) have apparently all completely independently decided that long sleeves are unnecessary evils contributing to the oppression of fat women everywhere, and that knitted jerseys that close at the front are another great wrong. So it has been like 3 winters since I've found a single warm long-sleeved work-appropriate top in my size. No, seriously. No, seriously. And I fit into the plus-size range; I don't know what the hell women who are significantly larger than I do.

... the not-long-sleeved/doesn't-close-at-the-front thing extends to 4 out of 5 of the winter coats. I don't even know.

DISCUSS*

For the record: I am about 5'9" or 175cm. I weigh about 130kg, last time I checked, or about 290lb. I wear between size 20 and 24 depending on brand (usually a 22 or 2XL). I have been this size for the last 5 years. I do not have any major medical problems except asthma in the winters and a distressing tendency to ear infections, both of which I have carried through baby plumpness, childhood and early-teenage slenderness, and late-teenage and adult obesity. My eating philosophy is simple: if I want to eat it, I will eat it. My exercising philosophy is simple: I get bored easily and like walking places with headphones, so I walk round town a lot and to and from the bus stop but do virtually nothing else.

I'm don't feel guilty about this. There are a number of things—my intellect; my inability to concentrate on my studies; my laziness; my being a massive, massive cow to a lot of people—that I can and do feel guilty about and may or may not feel moved to apologise for. But I am not going to apologise for the size of my fucking waistband.

* You are totally welcome to tell me I should learn to sew. I even have a sewing machine! What I do not have, however, are (a) design skills, and (b) patience. Alas.

Saturday! I—

1. wandered back and forth between bed and my computer for all the hours between 9am and 2pm
   
2. then I showered. It was a bit cold but the pressure was awesome
   
3. after that, I ate leftover fish lasagne for lunch
   
4. me and C made a terrific stew out of gravy beef, potato, carrot, kumara, onion, garlic, coriander seeds, worcestershire sauce, black pepper, marjoram, thyme, and steinlager
   
5. no seriously, terrific
   
6. we ate it with bread. It was choice
   
7. I read a lot of fic
   
8. I also played 2 games of Civ IV
   
9. we folded washing while watching music videos on C4
   
10. I uploaded a bunch of stuff, which took ages (but I really like babbling about music, so)
    
11. I changed my sheets, yay
    
12. tobias turned up for headscritching, cuddles, and food several times

Now, like, I think I'm going to go to bed.

Things that have happened:

• I had a mince and cheese pie for breakfast
  
• I got photoshop installed on my computer at work (I do not in fact know how to use photoshop. It shall be a learning experience) for legitimate work purposes
  
• I did quite a bit of work for the drafter (not one of my usual ones) who writes everything in red ink and gives really detailed instructions. I know his regular secretary doesn't mind this, but omg it would piss me off if I had to deal with that regularly. It makes me feel like I'm being judged, even though each round of changes has nothing to do with me making mistakes.
  
• I had lunch with callie and we bitched about our mothers
  
• I spent ages trying to find things on the website, and bitching about how I can't easily find things on the website. This is because the website sucks, not because I do.
  
• I got really nice feedback from the head of IS
  
• I had a conversation with one of my drafters that went like this:
  • Him: do you normally do the Sudoku?
    
  • Me: Yes. I think it's good for me to spend 20 minutes a day thinking.
    
  • Him: ...
    
  • Him: O.o
    
  • Him: AHAHAHA
    
  • Him: that's pretty damning
    
  • Me: *innocent* What?
• This is the drafter whom I spend so much time talking to about shit that it's getting hard for me to maintain the correct level of lawyer/secretary distance
  
• Also, I'm really mean to him
  
• Actually, I think one of the drafters on level 12 is scared of me coz I sort of told him off—very gently! I smiled the whole time and told him his mistake wasn't irrevocable, just a pain to fix!—last week
  
• I typed up the journal jessikast and I wrote last summer during our road trip. Once she's written her bit and uploaded some of the million billion photographs to flickr or somewhere we can post this great literary work to the interwebs
  
• In retrospect, we spent a lot of that week drinking
  
• bullet points are awesome

tamarillow's mittens as made by clockworkflight behind ( the cut. )

And so today has been a very lazy day. I think I'm going to make brownies sometime soon and also vacuum and also call my parents. I've booked a trip to Auckland in late August. That's about it.

Torts test: that could have been shittier.

Then I went out with a bunch of mature students to the Occidental for brunch and, er, rum-and-ginger-beer, and we chatted for an hour about how difficult it is to not be entirely immersed in the student lifestyle and have time to, like, talk about class directly after class, and about how this is mitigated by not being entirely immersed in the student lifestyle and therefore having money to do things like pay rent and buy shoes. We're maybe going to get a study group going on Saturday afternoons; I'm very excited.

SO. For the rest of the weekend, and for the next two weeks, I can play computer games and read non-Law books at my leisure and not feel the slightest guilt at doing so. Whee!

I rode halfway home tonight on a bus that did not like to go up hills. It broke down—and didn't start again—just past the Northland shops, and I walked round the corner and ended up getting a ride from a lovely woman on the same bus whose partner came to pick her up.

Now I have cramps. It's pretty awesome, for a definition of awesome that happens to include NOT AWESOME WHY GOD UTERUS I HATE YOUR STUPID FACE AND YOUR STUPID TUBES I WOULD CUT THEM OUT IF I COULD HELL IF I WANT KIDS AND THEIR STUPID LAMER CRYING FACES ANYWAY.

Question: if I change my lj name to sadiesays, would you think I'm a lamer? I'm looking at you, jessikast.

I have failed to manage work this week. Monday and Tuesday I was exhausted and headachey so I stayed home and slept; today I managed to get to work, but came home at 9.50. Ugh. I have started coughing, in the I-really-should-find-my-inhaler way; I am entirely sick of my house; and I was really looking forward to sushi for lunch today. >:|

For various reasons - mostly that i am drunk - i have uploaded the soundtrack to Cruel Intentions. If you do not already have it, you can upload it here.

that flatmate of mine just forgot my name, yo. we're so drunk and stuff.

hi internets!

i'm kind of drunk and sloppy right now. like, after dinner - which was lasagne! which tamarillow made! - i didn't feel like returning to the interweb, so me and nishatalitha broke out the apple sourz and then the tequila. i had 2 more shots of tequila than nishatalitha, but we drank pretty quickly - i think dinner was at 8 or so and we had ~a lot of apple sourz and ~a lot of tequila, so. it hasn't hit yet? idk.

but point is.

i don't think i have a point.

anyways.

i'm kind of drunk! it's really fun! i've been stressing out lately with work and uni, and like- like if i hadn't been doing uat testing at work i would totally have taken a week off since it's uni holidays and MAAAAAAAAN i could do with a break but like. i have to do testing? so i can't. and the end of testing coincides with one of the 2 other CAs on my floor going on holiday for a month coz she's moving house, so i can't go on holiday then. and then i'm back at uni. for six weeks. i think i can take some time off in september, maybe? idk.

the shift key is for losers. that is all.

uh. some people might point out that i have demonstrated use of the shift key in the course of this post, to which i would just like to say: maaaaan, I KNOOOOOOOW. exclamation point.

Language is a funny thing. There are two of us at work with my first name (which is a fairly uncommon one) and so we've begun calling each other "Miss —" or, rather, other people have started calling each of us that, which feels something like a throwback to the fifties and also something like convenient. Uh. Also, I've begun saying "jolly good" and calling things "gumph"—the latter because of one of my lawyers, who is very british and also very proper, in that slightly eccentric madcap English way, says it a lot. I don't know where the "jolly good" comes from though. It's about as useful as awesomesocks, in my opinion, which is to say very.

Uhhhhh. Work continues apace; we're halfway through UAT and I'm doing mostly cleanup of documents plus a lot of other vaguely productive things. I had my performance appraisal yesterday, which consisted of Boss saying she had no problems and me saying I didn't either, followed by a discussion which ranged from Addled through my university studies and how that impacts on my ability/willingness to do a short professional course on Word (it's technically in my performance plan for this year. I don't have time to do it, though) through office politics and the testing process and finally ending up in how I don't really want a man in my life because I like my independance. Yeah. My boss is totally understanding of this life plan.

University: torts test next saturday, completely unprepared. Passed the contracts test solidly, if unexceptionally; I'm sitting right at the bottom of the top third of the class. My LRW opinions do bring that up, though. I'm greatly enjoying my hour-long lunchbreaks.

I love my flatmates, I really do. <3 I'm totes not saying why as it is a source of both embarrassment and hilarity (to all three of us, in more or less equal measure), but—just. *hands*

There's a 1–year fixed-term contract coming up very soon to do my job, for someone in my team who's going on maternity leave. If you think you might be interested (or know someone who is) then comment and I'll send you a link to the job ad when it's online or answer any questions you have.

University is over for the semester, so for the next five weeks I have hour-long lunchbreaks. I am greatly looking forward to this.

I have had a busy past few days, and I think I should have perhaps taken a few more days off work. I'll look at my schedule for the break and talk to Boss sometime next week, I think—it feels like time for a holiday.

Poll #1410275 so totally awesome!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Complete this sentence: "XXX is awesome___________"

I finished LRW Opinion #3 tonight! It's not due until noon on Friday. THIS IS WHAT SUCCESS FEELS LIKE.

( talk of abortion and ethics )

I have to write Opinion #3 for LRW today. Ahaha ha ha.

Contract test: done.
LRW case research assignment: half done (the rest is online sources).
LRW opinion #3: ahahaha, no.
Torts exam: in a month, must sort shit out.

I'm—GOD! I swear to god that my life used to be more interesting than this! I used to talk about things other than my squillion billion assignments and tests and the lectures and the cases and—my fucking LIFE.

I woke up in the dark this morning and it was poxy and then I showered and got dressed and read fic and left the house before 8; when I got into McDonalds there were a surprising number of people there, and I had a bacon and egg bagel and a hashbrown (oh god) and coke; and then I wandered to uni and chatted with a couple of classmates until it was time for the test. The test itself wasn't really that bad, once I got going: 8 short answer questions worth 5 marks each in an hour. And I'm reasonably sure I passed.

After that I went and did half my case research poxy assignment of blah and then waited for like 30 minutes for the stupid bastard Mairangi to turn up and it was cold and poxy and I am NOT AMUSED.

I think people are coming round for afternoon tea, but apart from that I'm probably going to spend my day either napping, baking, or killing other countries in a rousing game of Civ IV. There will be TANKS and possibly BOMBER JETS. I will WIN, even if I have to CHEAT.

Sometimes I seriously think that the Evil Overlord list should be read and understood by governments, particularly points 12 and 17.

That is all.

So I got Opinion #2 back today, and I got an A for it—which (a) I would not have got if one of the lawyers had not told me that all my reasoning was shitty; and (b) was the highest mark, at 82%, of all the opinions my particular tutor marked.

I asked him what makes a good opinion; not my opinion specifically, because I don't really think it is that good, and also because rules cannot really be extrapolated from one example. And he said, you know, it's getting the issues right and arguing well and writing well generally, and that there really aren't any rules. Except, sort of, IRAC.

I. Just. There is this weird assumption that goes along with decent marks—namely, that you know what the hell you are doing. And I don't. And, oh. Pity me, for my life is terribly difficult, et cetera.

I have always, always, always felt that my writing style is incredibly unsophisticated; I never manage the tricks of phrasing or the neat turns of argument to argument, folding and twisting over one another, that other people seem to write (whether or not that is with effort is outside the scope of this whine). I write in plain, short sentences and misuse commas horrendously; I edit myself compulsively; I—I, god, I want to understand the rules.

I do not, however, think that law school is the be-all and end-all of education. And I don't, despite being told so at every opportunity, think that a degree in law provides anyone with a good general education. It teaches a certain kind of analysis, and I think a certain kind of cynicism (though that may pass with age), but—for the love of heaven, Torts is taught with one eye to cutting everything but the bare bones out of every case and the other to learning a set of rules which we are then told are, hey, not ever applied like that in real life. And that is so weird—it is bizarre that we grapple with huge concepts like justice and freedom and fairness without ever looking at them as more than a public policy argument to win or lose our tutorial examples. I wish we looked at, as a starting point, some of the background to the bastardized version of the Socratic method; that we looked at basic reasoning and fallacies and actually considered what we mean when we throw around terms like law reform. But that might be my own bias showing.:|