Zeborah

There's a moth here determined to prove the adage.

Three unpleasant blips that make it sound like life sucks more than it does:

1) Thursday I went shopping to Barrington. My book-of-the-bus-trip was an Amnesty International collection of stories about human rights; in particular, I reached one about residents walking to get water after Hurricane Katrina and being blocked on the way. This... proved to be mildly triggering. Especially because the 'moral' at the end of the story was that people have the right to go where they want in their own country - nothing about the right to have clean drinking water. This right was only resolved fairly recently and New Zealand first opposed it then abstained from the vote.

You know what, I have strong opinions about the right of people to have clean drinking water. I really like clean drinking water and am willing, when necessary, to take half an hour out of my day to go and collect it.

So there was that, and then I had to buy as many groceries as I could feasibly carry back to the bus, which proved really heavy and so I was feeling quite worn down even before the busdriver (I think the busdrivers are being pushed too hard; a lot of them are... not themselves) took off before we'd all managed to get seats, and proceeded to drive as fast as one can drive on bumpy roads and several times failed to hear people ding the bell for their stops so had to be shouted at. Which doesn't make anyone happier.

2) Yesterday I visited New Brighton to go to the library. The roads that way were bumpy, and there were more shops fenced off or shored up with timber, and by the time I reached the library I was feeling distinctly glum. I read a C. L. Moore story (the only one by a woman in the Mammoth Collection of Golden Age SF or whatever it was called) while looking out over the pier and grey-green waves and seagulls. That library has one of the best locations ever. Then I went to wait at the busstop. Or anyway, at the lamppost which is the de facto busstop since the previous bus shelter got buried under a pile of bricks.

(When I got home, I candied the petals of two roses while watching two and a half episodes of season 2 Buffy. Practice might speed things up I guess? Also there needs to be a way not to leave brown bruise marks from holding the petal with tweezers.)

3) Today I met some new quake-friends for a writing meeting at the Borders cafe. Riccarton Mall was busier than Christmas Eve and Boxing Day combined. It reminded me of being in a Seoul mall soon after its opening when it was The trendy place to be and so crowded I felt mildly claustrophobic.

Also then this evening we got a lovely 5.3 aftershock. This was possibly my fault: earlier today I reshelved a pile of my books. (They were blocking access to the gasfire which someone's coming to look at on Monday, hopefully to say that it's safe despite the rather visible shifting of the chimney. If not, I guess I'll have to try and get the chimney removed before winter.) On the plus side none of them fell down, though they did wobble distinctly towards the edge. Also the light swayed and piano wobbled as I made my dash to the safest-looking place in the room; but nothing fell at all.

Some water did splash out of the toilet cistern.

I have power still but was told my parents were cooking over gas anyway so came as normal to our Saturday evening dinner.


Anyway, really life's pretty good when one's on leave from work. I could definitely get used to being on leave.


Will post this when they get power back or I get back home, whichever is first... --Ooh, power's back! Unfortunately the ISP isn't. Fortunately we have access to another network. You know, snuffing out a candle looks a lot suaver in the movies.

There's a moth lying on the table, slightly singed.

Worked while my house got painted on. It's gonna be awesome especially when they start with the purple ("troubadour" though I don't think troubadours were particularly renowned for wearing purple, but anyway) and all the people who got pained expressions on their faces when I mentioned purple will be proved wrong, haHA!

More or less after work I wandered down the road a bit for three purposes:

1. to see if the corner shops whose walls used to be perpendicular to the ground but after the quake were attempting to form a funky W shape were in fact now more reminiscent of this photo:
   
   [ETA: Okay I shouldn't have tried to hotlink. Try http://twitpic.com/4cyyg5.]
   And sure enough they were.
2. to see if my wee library of books had disappeared from the busstop. Not only had they all disappeared, but someone had tagged the sign I'd made. Ah Linwood, never change! I'll make another sign and put book-protection plastic on this time.
3. to see if the updated city council map was correct that there's a place to pour one's toilet waste in the next street over. Sure enough there is. It says "Human waste only" and "Beware of splashback!" and has a bottle of hand sanitiser duct taped to it.

I'm still gearing myself up to using the actual chemical toilet. Have been reading the instructions and looking at it mistrustfully. There's a water tank and a waste tank and a bottle of chemicals, and there's levers and knobs and lots of dire warnings.

I'm slightly disappointed that no-one commented about the exploding toilets I mentioned. Seriously, exploding toilets! However this is outweighed by the amount of disappointment I contain that the newspaper didn't use the opportunity to comment on the possibility that the contents of said exploding toilets might hit the bathroom fan.

Gotta go, Boots wants food. I was thinking of starving her a while longer so she'd catch and nom more of the flies that have been bugging me, but then one of them landed on my back and she launched herself at it and caught my back with her claws. She apologised very prettily, with lots of rubbing against me and looking cute and so forth, but I have my suspicions.

I got to my desk today to find an email waiting, telling me someone's made an application on my behalf and I need to fill out a questionnaire to complete it. This email sounding startlingly similar to one I received yesterday, I phoned to confirm. After a short discussion, we worked out that I didn't have to.

Then a bit before lunch I got an email whose subject says the deadline has been extended to [closing date listed (possibly accidentally) on an important external website] and whose body says the selection process is well under way and I should hear from them in the near future. I'm not sure if they consider two weeks to be the near future or if their message got a bit jumbled in the confusion.

In between emails, I moved some more hundreds of books, with a brief pause to put into some semblance of order about ten shelves' worth that had obviously all fallen onto the floor and been put back randomly on the shelves by building contractors. This was particularly fun because they're in the internet programming section of the classification range, so these ten shelves of books ranged from TK 5105.888 [etc] to TK 5105.8885 [etc] (through such numbers as TK 5105.88815 [etc]) so one gets cross-eyed very quickly, and then also one discovers a stray TK 5105.85 from the next bay over, or a TK 7182 that must have fallen in from the other side of the stack).

We did as much of that area as can be done right now in the morning; in the afternoon (after an all-library meeting to update us on some technology changes planned for the summer) we went to another area to do some easier straightening of shelves. Not many had fallen off in this area; mostly they were all leaning over. Though we did find a book that seems to have fallen down from the mezzanine level straight above, and yes I mean that if the book had moved in a straight line it would have had to pass through the floor. I suppose there might have been human intervention at some point pre- or post-quake, but I dunno. Things move weirdly in earthquakes.

I've started... hmm. I haven't started actually writing again, but I've regained my interest in writing and am once more glaring at the unfinished short story that I was glaring at pre-quake.

Oh, I had an awesome dream last night that I was writing a bunch of fairytales in verse. Most were bare-bones ones, but there was a longer one in an aabccb rhyme scheme that involved a witch (rhymed with ditch), a princess carrying all her worldly possessions (maiden rhymed with laden) and a dwarf (which I think I managed to put in the middle of a line so as not to have to rhyme).

I rather expect I'll continue having rough moments/hours/days (and I remain easily brain-fried, which means my capacity for socialness, even the basic socialness of replying to comments, is a bit eclectic at present) but purposeful hard labour is awefully therapeutic.

Work today was quiet, part twiddling thumbs, part tidying up details, part bonding and settling in.

There was the thing with noticing that one of our shear walls has a crack running the length of it. A crack which you can see on both sides of the wall. This made us a little nervous but when FM came along to check it they promised it was safe.

Not so one of our photocopiers, though, which received a yellow sticker. (The others got green stickers. I think the whole city is being triaged, piece by piece.)

I spent most of the morning sort of informally liaising between various departments. (In Central Library there's a whiteboard up to sign in and out of the building.) When I came back to my own branch I started by cleaning the ceiling plaster dust off my desk.

Some of my colleagues thought they felt slight tremors at lunch, but I missed them. Half an hour later I said, "I felt that one." (It turned out to be smaller than several I've missed, but near and shallow.)

I learned I'm not the only person avoiding my bed: a colleague's grandson is convinced the earthquakes are being caused by his bedroom in her house (fortunately he was staying there that night, rather than in his normal bedroom in his mother's house). I already knew I wasn't the only person sleeping in clothes (though I've finally stopped now) and pretty much everyone is keeping a flashlight and cellphone close to hand. Also, no-one laughed when I mentioned I keep my shoes upside down to prevent glass falling inside. Instead I got told of a colleague's friend whose thermometer broke inside one shoe, and she carefully brushed and vacuumed out all the glass but when she wore it her foot gradually got more and more sore, and at the end of the day she realised she'd burnt her whole foot on whatever liquid had been inside the thermometer.

At afternoon tea I shifted in my chair, accidentally making it creak, and my colleague next to me jumped. As we gathered to say our goodbyes and go home, another colleague leaned wearily against the lockers, making them clatter, and a fourth colleague jumped.

The roads are crowded and the buses running late.

Staring out the window as we drove through the suburbs, I mused. Thinking about that link that was talking about how one has to reconcile one's ordinary belief that the world isn't out to kill you with those moments when it did kind of give it a go. It's like these two things exist in your head at the same time, in some quantam superposition thing, and it hurts your brain. And over time I've been resolving that back to the single state of "The world doesn't want to kill me" (albeit with the caveat "but how about I get my emergency kit ready just in case"). This avoids brain-hurtiness, and it gets my anxiety levels down.

And the thing that enrages me about 9/11 is the huge effort Certain Interests put in to resolve the quantam superposition in the opposite direction. To convince people that the (Islamic) world is out to get them. And doing this doesn't make the world any safer. All it does is keep people anxious. And (even if the various reasons the Certain Interests have for doing this were pure as the snow, which they're really not), keeping people anxious after a traumatic incident is itself evil. It is so many kinds of nasty I just cannot express.

Three wonderful hours. (It looks like there were only a couple of little aftershocks during that time, which explains why I wasn't woken.) I dreamed that we were recovering from an earthquake.

The university has photos of the Central Library and says, "Be aware that the clean up operation will be specialised and is potentially hazardous in some places. For example we have library books mixed with window glass [...]" My manager mentioned that the branches might open before Central Library, now I can really see why.

I just saw my cat. She was hesitating about coming inside so I took her food out to her. She looked interested but too nervous to actually settle down and eat properly. (She might have nommed a bit of kibble or two before a noise distracted her.) On reflection I took half the kibble away in case she does manage to gobble it all at once and get sick; it's two days since she last ate here and if she's this nervous now she probably hasn't been thinking about scavenging either.

The buses still aren't running tomorrow.

The local mall looks like nothing ever happened - and so does the library there. Single-storey probably helps, and I think there's just something about the land in this part of town too.

As I went to bed the other night Boots scooted around behind my headboard-less bed. I lay down, and I guess some locks of my hair hung over the edge of the bed, because next thing I know a paw comes up to bat at it.

*

Managers should know how to perform basic desk functions because then, if they're trying to talk to other staff at the desk when a not-so-sudden onslaught of students arrives and they decide to help, they can in fact help, instead of interrupting another staff member trying to deal with another student to ask where the requested books are held, and then to ask if you issue it in the "check in" screen, and then instead of selecting the "check out" screen to minimise it, and so on and so forth, taking up more of said staff member's time than if the manager had stayed well out of it in the first place. --Alternatively they should know to stay away from the front desk when a major assignment is taking place, and I'm talking about an assignment that one year famously cleaned out all the books on the history of engineering from every library in town.

*

Dear colleague:

...Never mind, it'll be quicker to start reciting Latin straight away. Domine, dominus noster, quam admirabile est nomen tuum, quoniam est terminus hebdomis!

So I went into work today despite feeling like the Earth's centre of mass was constantly shifting under my feet. Fortunately, yesterday's excessive sleeping was successful in preventing my eyes from leaking today. Also, I got an email from a certain library vendor saying I'd won a prize draw at conference, which explained the mysterious arrival of a glossy book of photos in the post yesterday. I must confess I'm still a bit jealous of the person who won the 1-terabyte hard drive.

However, I must not be distracted from my miracle of science!

Today is the last day of the university teaching year before study week and exams begin, and you can guess what that means. Yes, it's the annual Tea Party! (Note that little tea is consumed at the Tea Party. In fact, if any of the liquids consumed at the Tea Party are tea then they almost certainly come from Long Island.) Every year, Central Library closes at 5pm on Tea Party Day because, being the nearest library to the Tea Party, it's the most likely to be disrupted and vomited in by Tea Partygoers.

The Tea Party officially begins on the Friday afternoon, but in practice people begin consuming appropriate liquids on Thursday evening, and continue consuming them through the morning. Thus it was that at about 10:30 this morning, several women wandered past Engineering Library with bottles in their hands and pink and white tights and tutus on their cheerfully swaying bodies.

It is this swayingness to which I wish to draw my readers' discerning attention. For, sometime in the late morning / early noon region of the day, my own propensity to sway began fading away. It is my hypothesis, therefore, that the presence of so many, so very inebriated, young people in one location caused a singularity to form in the sway-time continuum, attracting all symptoms reminiscent of inebriation towards the centre of mass of the Tea Partygoers.(1) Never let it be said that young people today bring no benefit to their community!

As the bus drove me home this evening, a little swayingness returned to me (see, my hypothesis could have predicted that swayingness would increase according to the square of the distance from the Tea Party, so it must be true!) but all in all, I feel approximately 82.3% better than I did this morning. My colleagues have made me promise not to make any sudden movements this weekend; but I feel this is excellent advice in general, which is bound to stand me in good stead for all sorts of situations, such as if I should come face to face with a rhinoceros, an avalanche, or a certain felis catus(2) staring intently at my hand as her tail switches back and forth.

(1) Do I have the coolest medical hypotheses since germ theory or what?
(2) I've decided to name her Scruffles for the rest of the day. Until she annoys me, and then it's back to "Ts!"

There was the tide-coming-in dream, for when I was worried about deadlines, and there was the packing-anxiety dream, for when I was thinking of travelling somewhere that would require packing. (Actually travelling there was unnecessary: being homesick sufficed.) These have both trailed off because I rarely have deadlines these days and no longer travel much.

What I do do is work at the library until closing time on a Wednesday evening. Enter the library-closing-anxiety dream.

Basic plot: It's 9pm. I want to close the library and go home. But the students won't leave! Worse than that, they keep coming in!

Variations and elaborations:

• The first time I had this dream, the students were making sandwiches in a discussion room.
• The second-most-recent time, we were actually opening the library but the students were coming in before they were ready, and also our lending desk had been renovated into oblivion and the students kept coming into the staff-only area to take books off the shelves.
• Last night the students (instead of being merely oblivious to closing time as normal) actually had a reason for not leaving, to wit, they had assignments/exams the next morning, needed a place to study, and didn't see why I couldn't just go home and leave them in the building. They even went into the floors where we'd turned off the lights, apparently intending to study by streetlight or something. At 9:12 I decided to call Security but I kept losing my place in the list of phone numbers, and then when I found it, it was some formula that required multiplying one of the digits and I couldn't tell if I was meant to carry the one onto the next digit or just forget it.

I actually have an obscure fondness for the tide-coming-in-and-going-to-drown-me dreams, and the packing-anxiety dreams at least mean that yay, I'm travelling somewhere! But library-closing-anxiety dreams? Just Plain Annoying.

[I just arrived at work and asked my colleagues if they ever get this dream. "Every Sunday," says the one who closes on Sundays. "Every Tuesday," says the one who closes Tuesdays. Somehow I feel both reassured and depressed by the inevitability of it all.]

Hey everyone, I will be on holiday from Thursday morning until the night of Sunday week. Just in case you wonder why I've disappeared from the face of the internet.

Hey, and my fridge is now startlingly clean, due to the fact that I just threw all sorts of containers full of dubious substances into the garbage.

I still need to:
* buy a suitcase to replace the one with the zip that's corroded shut
* visit the doctor for medicaments which, in my befuddled state on Friday, I told the other doctor I had enough of (I did! Because I was planning to visit the doctor and knew I had enough to last until then...) Anyway, a check-up will probably be good.
* give my sister a key to make it easier for her to feed my cat
* do the dishes
* everything else I've forgotten

Hey everyone, while on holiday with nothing to do but nature walks and other such tortures, shall I:

a) finish this blasted novel for once and for all (quarter of an accursed novel in 10 days should be doable, right?)

b) recreate the entirety of 16th century Copenhagen in Inform 7 for an open-ended interactive fiction/game/thing where you can choose by your actions whether the story is a romance, mystery, quest, political thriller, etc etc (so far I have a few rooms in the castle; candles and oil lamps that burn until consumed; coins in various denominations and kings; and some randomly generated NPCs who'll tell you when asked what time it is and, if they're a priest in a chapel and it happens to be the change of the canonical hour, will start saying their offices)

c) make Criminal Minds fanvids (this would involve packing all my DVDs plus the old laptop because the new laptop inexplicably refuses to read my Criminal Minds DVDs, do not even *get* me started)

d) plan properly for the workshop I'll be facilitating at the library conference in a month and a half (except this probably requires the internet for research which I won't have)

e) do my overdue taxes (um, whoops)

f) read piles of books (involves packing piles of books)

g) all of the above?