A leetle update

Day Job - Building virtual 3D models of underground geology

Going really well. Seems the contract will run beyond March which is good news. Will allow me to build up a good cushion for slow months. My first invoice gets paid tomorrow. Most will go to clearing all my debt and doing some maintenance on the car which is working overtime right now. My second invoice (end of next month) will go to spoiling myself, and subsequent payments will go to savings.

Evening Job - Photo Retouching

I am hating this now. Been doing it too long for the same clients, who take the same pics, and I do the same stuff over and over..... already told my biggest client that I am going to find someone else to do his work cos I just don't have the time or motivation to continue. And I am just too cheap anyway - classic overworked underpaid scenario.

Weekend Job - Actual real event photography (no weddings thank you)

Been doing some dance competitions and despite no real selling efforts on my part, it is starting to significantly cover my beer bill (which is what Evening Job started out as). And I really enjoy it. So I am having a website set up over the next few weeks, with an ordering system etc etc... and I am going to invest in a new lens, and later also a new camera (one with fewer numbers Torchy!)

And I am shopping for a Laptop, and was wondering about Win7....

Vista and the software I use for my A-Job don't work well together, so I stick to XP. The Laptop I want comes with XP discs (Vista loaded) but they also offering 7 as an option.

And the software is just too expensive (the cost of about 200 laptops) to upgrade to the Vista friendly version. And the 'new' version of my current s/ware doesn't have any significant improvements in the areas I work in....

Lol, the office I work from is full of (about fifteen) people that just sit behind their screens and work. And only one eye candy candidate among the lot of them. I went out to the open plan area and put the question about Win7 out there, and all I got was looks of "look, he talks!"

I have my own office, which I have figured out is the domain of the directors only.... so I think they think I am a demi-god or something.

Anyways, the eye-candy guy came round after a few minutes and was pretty friendly in a subordinate kind of way (Images of handcuffs and a four poster bed) and chatted about W7 and other tech stuff I wasn't really listening to....

And I am also getting that stupid error message pop-up when I want to view my blog! I wonder what the fuck it is...

Um....

Some pressure is off. My photographer client stuff was delivered tonight. Worked till after 1am last night to finish off.

Had a super productive day at work, and found myself finished by 3pm, so I headed for home and found time to to take a power nap before fetching my daughter who is spending the night.

She is super stressed cos she dropped to a C in one of her subjects, but she will be okay. Her mom is the one who puts the pressure on.

I may even get 8hrs sleep tonight if it comes.

I hate being cranky through lack of sleep.....

Nighty night fellow bloggers....

Magnet

So I had a really crappy day yesterday, but it just served to remind me that my ability to say "no" is seriously lacking. I need lessons, or a Personal (hot boy) Assistant - or both.

This is not to say I always just wanna please others, I have serious empathy for those in need, and often put others' needs ahead of my own.

I am getting there though... lolz....

So yesterday, 630am, the ex calls and immediately starts at me with a seriously raised voice. I don't think she really has latched onto the concept of divorce where this scenario really doesn't play out well with me anymore. So I hang up. So she calls again, and I ask her before she starts to talk whether she is still going to shout or else I will just hang up again. It's really easy when she is geographically somewhere else. Just prod the End Call button.

So I hung up again after about 42 seconds when the volume got to banshee.

Karma is going to bite her in the ass one day, that is one thing I am sure of.

More to the story and why, but it's really not important except that I am just tired of being taken advantage of.

Later, Craig calls me to ask if I can help him with a budget proposal. So I laugh and tell him sure, around June 23rd 2010 after 4pm.

Even later, my ex mother-in-law texts me to ask if I can meet her (today) and not to tell my ex (like I am even talking to her right now after the morning fiasco).

So I have lunch with her today, only to hear she has lost her job etc etc.... She knows I can't help her, but I think she just needed to share.

And Wesley boy is sick as hell (personally I think Tick Bite fever), so I went for a short visit and made him some chamomile tea while he moaned on the couch. Speaking of Wesley....

I am getting some signals from him that I hope I am misreading. The last thing I need is for him to declare some sort of need for anything romantically inclined... Small things like "I been missing seeing you the last few days" texts. I been working really long hours, so being social is not on my agenda right now.

Last Saturday, we spent the whole day together, starting out with a two hour breakfast, a trip to the mega hardware place (we both love hardware stores), then a long walk through a bunch of furniture and home decor places. After that, we did some meat on the fire with salads and stuff at his place, and lay on the couch watching dvd's till latish in the evening.

All that was missing was holding hands at the stores, and lying in each others arms at home, and heading off to bed together.... the rest makes everyone else think we are a married couple. Lying on the couch, there was this air of almost sexual tension which I haven't felt with him for ages.

Like I really need a complication like that right now lol......

Oh, and Friday night, we went to some old friends of mine for dinner - like a couple.....

Though after he left, one of the girls said to me she doesn't think he is intelligent enough for me hehe... actually, he was drunk when he arrived, having come straight from a work lunch thingy at the local pub.

So today... is ummm... two and half days since we last saw each other and he texts that he is missing me...

He is a long way from getting over Andrew though. I actually think it's almost exactly three yrs ago since we actually slept together. Will have to check my journal.

And I had a really good, productive day today. My current daily schedule is as follows:

05.30 wake, shower, breakfast, coffee.

06.15 - 08.00 long drive thru the traffic to work

08.00 - 16.00 put in my 8 hrs eating a packed lunch while behind the laptop

16.00 - 17.30 long drive home

17.30 - 18.00 me time

18.00 - 19.00 dinner

19.00 - 20.00 internet time

20.00 - 23.00 photo work (2nd income job)

23.00 - 0.00 me time (blush)

and start all over again........

It can be debilitating at times

It always amazes me how a fleeting smell, a flicker of an image, an unexpected emotional state, can bring back a sudden flood of memories.

Yesterday, it was the Dead Poets Society. Specifically the character Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard).

Though the personality of the character didn't match, his mannerisms, smile, jawline, nose... they were all my high school boy friend. My very secret high school boyfriend.

I dreamed of him all night last night, heard his laugh.

I cried in my dreams as he left.

It left me feeling in the weirdest down mood I have had in ages. Sometimes it feels like I am living someone else's life, like I silently watch as it plays out in front of me, with only minimal control, devoid of real emotion.

I will be better tomorrow, but tonight is for him as I go back and hold his hand.

We swapped three short mails about five years ago, but they were just empty keystrokes from both of us. I wish I could tell him I loved him without consequence.

Too many 'what ifs' today.

Dear *insert highschool bf here*

Dear A,

It's been more years than I care to contemplate since I have seen you.

I think about you still after all this time.

Your shy smile.... It's brief flashes in company almost as if you never wanted others to see it. The generosity of it when we were alone. It shone in the light, and glowed warm in the dark.

The touch of your lips... Never has a kiss meant so much, spoke so much, been so insanely gentle. The way we could simply be so close, a single molecule of yours against mine. We breathed each other in. The night we lay in the dark, whispering words quietly, the words meaning nothing, but the touch of our lips as we spoke saying everything.

Your laugh, how it still makes me cry...

Your skin, the back of your hands, the shape of your neck.

The way you sat, the way you stood quietly in the shadows, silently watching me.

I have never loved anyone the way I loved you.

I watched a movie yesterday. For a fleeting moment, in one of the characters, I saw your eyes, the jawline, the shy way you look up.

I dreamed of you.

I dreamed of you.

I am just sorry that it was all so confusing for both of us, so overwhelming, so intense.

It's days like these I like to imagine being with you, no words, just back in the forest, lying side by side on the cool pine needles.

And I wonder, as you go about your life, with your wife, with your kids, tending farmers horses, looking after spinsters' cats. I wonder if you ever look back at that one night, when we forgot about the impossibility of it all, the one night we never questioned one facet, that one night a miracle gave us enough time alone to wake together with the sun on our feet.

It's hard not being able to fall out of love.

I love you still.

S

Building puzzles and not getting much sleep

So I am working my ass off at the moment. I managed to secure a small loan to make it through October till my first pay day with this contract.

It's been interesting - a lot of goal post changing, and a few challenges.

Today I drove 100km to site only to find I had left my data behind on the old memory stick in my bedroom.... So I drove back, sped through the last of the data and mailed them the results aghh!

I guess it happened because I have been giving two of my friends a hard time about doing similar things over the last few weeks. Wes twice left his laptop at home last week, and Gav left his laptop and cellphone at a friends pub in London on a quick stopover from Budapest- He has his laptop (life) back, though the cell phone loss may have occurred during the inebriated trip to Heathrow.

And speaking of Gav - he is up from Cape Town for the weekend for a wedding on Saturday, so got to spend some time with him and Stef today.

And apparently the Italian government considers Gav and I citizens due to some technical procedural thing when our great grandfather emigrated here more than a hundred years ago.

Stef proposed to me today on this basis hehe! Funny thing is that we could probably make a balanced couple.... As he was leaving he said he would call to invite me over for dinner, because we had to start planning soon. A June wedding is apparently what he wants. lol... Imagine a young version of Meatloaf, only more fem....

Had a long chat to him about his recent breakup, and we chatted about what happened between Nev and I too. I don't see him nearly enough since he moved to the city, though he insisted I come to their Halloween Party, well HallowQueen Party technically as all costumes have to be drag. have to check my busy schedule though.....

So since I never got much done today with the silly to and from the middle of nowhere and Stef and Gav being around for the rest of the day, I guess I need to put in some hours tonight.

And Nix won't be here for Christmas.....

But she will be here April with her son. It will be better in terms of timing, and Durban is not as unbearably humid as it is over December. She may have a few more chapters done on her book by then which should be interesting. One of the characters is loosely based on me....

My cat is meowing for attention. His latest thing is to stomp all over the keyboard while I am trying to work.... silly boi, he's not exactly small either.

And I've been so damn horny lately..... almost annoyingly so.