2012 The year that was (January - June)

THIS WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS THE YEAR THAT WAS

INTRODUCTION:

Well it's late enough to be very early indeed and I'm feeling dangerously nostalgic.  For some reason I'm thinking of those letters that people receive every Christmas or other appropriate seasonal holiday.

You know the ones,  they're usually from a distant branch of the family that you might have met a few times and is chock full of information about how various sons, daughters and other assorted relatives are doing.

 

Don't get me wrong .  It's always interesting to read about someone related to you going overseas or taking out the honors in frog identification but it always seems that this branch of the family is terribly organized and permanently hopping from one task to another and another but still managing to complete everything to international standards of excellence while you are reading this in that early morning haze brought on by staying up too late and achieving nothing much in the way of anything.

 

So in the spirit of those kinds of letters I thought I might sit down and pen one for 2012. It's nothing special just a colection of thoughts about the events of this past year.

 

The songs are apparently my most listened tracks for each month.  I might have to do some hardcore headbanging in order to meet my quotas.

 

 

 

(A musical aside which should properly be called an interlude  I believe.  I recollect that dad was talking to me once upon a time and I had some death-metal playing because I was in that sort of mood.

I can't remember exactly who it was but sooner or later all the chugga chugga  beats and growly shirtless men seem to blend into each other. 

Anyway the point was Dad turned the music down to talk to me and when he was finished he indicated the stereo

“This band.  Are they well known?”

“Yeah course” said I

“Do they make a lot of money?”

“Think so”  even back then I was the master of witty repartee

Dad shook his head “Nobody who makes a lot of money should sound that angry”)

 

 

 

(Note: I also take no responsibility if this stuff is in the wrong order all I know is that I've finished my portfolio and am currently on a 9 coffee high)

 

(Note: please also skip over the whiny emotional crap.  I've tried to put in enough jokes to even it out.  But if you need more humor then email me and we'll work something out)

JANUARY

• MOOD: Resignation
• MUSIC:Sweet Transvestite – Rocky Horror Picture ShowDevils Dance Floor – Flogging MollyYesterday – The Beatles
• THOUGHTS:
  They do say that whatever you're doing in the new year is what you'll be doing the whole year through.  I've never heard anyone actually say it but that is what they say.  At any rate the beginning of this year opened with me at work as a security guard in a meatworks.  It gave me a lot of time to think, mainly about how very bored I was The most exciting part of my shift had been a fight between a pair of seagulls over a particularly large piece of my pizza.

FEBRUARY

• MOOD: Fatalisticly Apathetic (if that's even a thing)
• MUSIC:You're not the boss of me – They might be giantsRhapsody in Blue - GershwinDdatsua – Korean rabbit song
• THOUGHTS:
  Work sucks.  Everyone says it but I mean it.  We've been a man down for a while now  and none of the new guards have managed to last beyond a couple of days.  The worst one didn't even go for the entire shift.  The senior officer switches between bragging that we can easily handle this site with three guards and bitching that nobody wants to stay.
  
  Personally I think that these guys are brought into the company with promises of working security at Weta and other high profile sites but are put out in places like this.   I don't say anything about it though because who cares what I think?
  
  For some reason I've become the office bitch and am being blamed for anything that seems to go wrong.  The apathy comes in pretty handy because at this stage in the proceedings I just don't give a damn about anything.
  
  At the end of this month I put in my two weeks notice to do the Certificate in Design Art Course.

MARCH

• MOOD:  Happy.  Worrying like hell but pretty damn good
• MUSIC:I will survive – Gloria GaynorHot Lunch Jam – Irena Carera (Fame)Goldfinger – Shirly Bassey
• THOUGHTS:
  Work had no problems with letting me go.  It's always disappointing when the boss finds out your leaving, nods his head and then goes back to his paper.  I kid, they more or less wished me luck and sent me on my way.
  I've been at the meat plant for five years and the crew that I started with have all long since left for other sites or jobs, sigh, Goodbye Mr Chips.
  
  For me the course is a daunting challenge.  A lot of it is because I have been stuck in a rut of work/sleep/work/sleep rinse and repeat.  Something I notice is that, within minutes of the classes beginning everyone already seems to know everything about everyone else and meanwhile here's me keeping my head down and concentrating intently on my work.  It's not so that I get top marks, although they would be nice, but rather so that people leave me alone,
  
  I like my shell, its comfortable and warm.

APRIL

• MOOD: Still happy but still worried about the little things.  Call it 70/30
• MUSIC:You don't mess around with Jim – Jim CroceWhen you're evil – VoltaireThe Firebird Suite – Igor Stravinsky
• THOUGHTS:
  The aforementioned shell is comfortable and warm but looking back I can begin to see how very restrictive it is and on the whole I'm glad to see it crumbling away and will endeavor not to get caught up in routine in the future.
  At this point I'm still happy to remain in the background but this time it really is to concentrate on work which I believe counts as progress.
  
  The boarding house routinely gets new people.  The fact that Cosmic has gone is a mixed blessing but only because he made good fodder for the blog.  He's been replaced by a woman that I like to call Screechy Cat Lady because when she gets drunk she'll spend hours shouting baby talk at her cats and thinking that she's whispering to them. 
  
  (I totally fail to get this behavior.  I might be able to talk baby talk to a cat of appropriate cuteness for a little while but I generally credit my pets with the ability to understand what I'm saying without dumbing it down.  Certainly my dog never asked for clarification when I explained the finer points of Babylon 5 to him.  Note: this applies to any babies who might be in the room as well.  Moral of the story is don't look to me for baby talk I guess)
  
  She fights with her son and anyone else when she's drunk and so do they.  But what am I going to do?  It's cheap rent and this rotating montage of people only help to add to a table of characters.
  
  In other news: This years A-Z Challenge was attempted and completed.  It's fun but exhausting when your trying to research the most obscure words possible.
  
  In other other news: There is an explosion at the meatworks.  It was in the laundry room and nobody was hurt but I find out later that the Senior Officer quit rather abruptly.  I know that these are probably not connected but I'll rack up a few points of bad karma and make wild assumptions since he really was an asshole.
  
  Although, were I paid to speculate, I would imagine that someone finally made a complaint about his language and behavior, both very bad, towards the meatworks employees and also to us who worked under him

MAY

• MOOD: Executivly exhaustion
• MUSIC:Magic Dance – David Bowie (The Labyrinth)Let me be your song – Jim Henson (Fraggle Rock)Yes we have no bananas
• THOUGHTS:
  
  I honestly don't remember much about this month.  It was just a case of heads down and work work work which is generally a good thing.
  Lots of arguments with Jin yi who is my partner on the Rube Goldberg marble run monster.  At one point she was forced to write out the full equation in order to show that the suggested design just wasn't going to work at the scale we were working at. (Methinks we're both counting this one as a win)
  
  If we'd thought to film these arguments then they would have worked well as performance art, although it's something that I've never actually being able to understand, however the thought occurs that if we'd known that we were being filmed then we'd both have been more self conscious about what we were saying and/or began acting.
  
  A lot of the doors got smashed in at the house during this time.  If I remember right it was Screechy Cat ladies son and the others who get drunk every week and then fall out.  I could say something about the Temperance League but that would be mean. 
  
  About this time we got a new boarder who went from a room to living in the back of his truck.   I don't know  how much  the landlord was getting but I do know that he must have been freezing at night.  His claim to fame is that he howls at the moon at all hours.  While he could be doing it to show that he's a wild and carefree spirit  who can't be controlled by “The Man” I'm leaning towards drunken moron.
  
  Traded in my car at the end of march.  Volkswagen Golf and it was a total lemon.  Just getting it back to the auction house was a mission in itself (but not one of those that  where enough happened to make it a blog post so I was out of luck there)   Thankfully the course is only ten minutes away so there isn't really a need for a car. 

JUNE

• MOOD: AHHH! Portfolios are due!  How has this snuck up on me?  It's the sense of panic that is familiar to any student who has woken up to find the fiend of deadlines and Lucretius, their favorite vulture, peering down at them with considerable interest.
• MUSIC:PANIC! - The GoodiesYou make me feel like dancing – Leo SaylerFlight of the Valkyries - Wagner
• THOUGHTS
  I kid with the portfolio thing because I had it mostly well in hand, mostly.  It's not saying that there weren't a few hairy moments but we all pulled through.
  
  It took a while but I eventually managed to get over to mums for a Sunday dinner.  Also received a set of french curves and a box of oil pastels. Which was just what I needed.
  
  Spent a lot of time staying late at the computer labs with Hanna who was compiling a photographic essay rather than a complete portfolio.  She took my external hard drive with her when she left for her home up north and it was a couple of months before I saw either of them again.
  
  Strange girl that one.  Nice, but strange.
  Anyway, all’s well that ends well.

If you're reading this part then go back to the top and begin again.  Eventually there will be a link to part 2 of this as soon as I get around to actually writing it.