Wearing My Sunglasses At Night

There is an awful lot of glare on an iPad screen under fluorescent lighting.

I've applied for a job with a different hospital and health service. The hours are longer, but the conditions are better - I get consecutive nights off. I really, really, really, want this job, so I'm waiting with bated breath. Not baited breath. That's only good if you're Baldrick and want to catch a mouse.

I may have a life again. What a wonderful thought.

My plans, aside from basking in the glow of being awake, include writing in all of that free time. Going out to dinner with friends (hell, going out to lunch with friends, I'm not picky). Spending time plotting and planning the new kitchen and bathroom. Spending time with the boys. That sort of thing.

At the moment, while specimens happily sit on my instruments, I sit with my feet up typing in here. That sounds very relaxed, doesn't it? It's really because my feet hurt nearly all of the time, and sitting with my feet up helps.

It's a marvellous thought that this time next year I could be sitting in some other lab in the middle of the night, feet up (probably, night shift involves a lot of walking, so little doubt my feet will still hurt), much less woolly in the head, less deranged and able to plan life weeks in advance.

Onward, although I am having the nagging doubts about whether it will be better, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't, etc., etc. I keep reminding myself this is not about a job I'm getting, but rather the job I want to have. I'm not leaving the job I have because of all of its issues (of which there are legion); I'm going because I have other things I want to do.

Is it better to leave because things are awful and running away is the only option, or to leave because an opportunity exists? I'm going with the second one. If the first one also applies, so much the better.

Tomorrow is the end of my run of five midnights in a row; I have a whole one night off before I do another three. I would like to do some useful things tomorrow instead of just sleeping, but I think sleeping is probably the best option. I'll surface occasionally for the mum-ly things.

Or something..

Awesome iMac and not much else

Yesterday saw the arrival of the gorgeous and gorgeously huge new iMac. I love Apple products, so many things are so easy to do. I've had a little MacBook for about nine months and I love that to pieces anyway. Yesterday I spent time using Migration Assistant to transfer everything over. Took about an hour.

While the two macs talked to each other, t'yoong man and I went to buy some new jackets and shirts for school. He's made it into size 10, which for some reason grieves me. It's the double-figures size, I'm sure.

When we got home, the two macs had finished having their chat and then I discovered that none of my iTunes had transferred over. Okay, so what did I do wrong. A quick reboot and I discover that my account names are different. Ahh, easy fix then; delete the new ID and leave the user from the MacBook intact. It's all good.

Migration Assistant transferred everything, including TweetDeck, which I'd forgotten about in all of the excitement of unpacking and fiddling around.

While I fiddled around with that, Alex made himself castles (yes, castles, plural - if he didn't like it one way, he'd change it over to something else) and even made himself a flag he coloured in and flew proudly over whichever box was his turret. Now that's dedication.

I spent most of yesterday saying the word awesome a ridiculous number of times. Nothing else seemed to fit. Today I'm over the word awesome and would like another one.

Chilli?

Talons O'Death At Your Service

Toenails! It's all about toenails.

I've decided I am a very boring person, since I have spent this week doing virtually nothing but reading books, playing the Wii and painting pictures on small canvas squares; school holidays are my kryptonite. I've been off from work for the last two weeks and I'm down to my last day of freedom. I had plans to do a number of things, but the martini drinking got in the way.

At least, at least, the majority of study-related tidying has been done. I have ordered the new Apples. I have fiddled around with some writing (and then realised how out of practice I am...rewrite! rewrite!). I also realised that most people who have seen my new-look study keep referring to it as a home office. Because it looks very different to the rest of the house (it does, black and red and glass versus Tasmanian Oak and blues)? Because a home office is considered the in thing? Because small ferrets only travel clockwise after the full moon?

Speaking of the moon, I was watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies a week ago (or thereabouts...who cares anyway?) and realised the moon was up the right way. For Southern Hemisphere-eans, the moon is always upside down in movies and film.

I have no real plans today, world domination seems like too much effort for a lot of administrative headaches. Since I'm planning on opting out of the administrative headaches department in as many ways as I can, I'll restrict myself to maniacal laughter.

Evil laughter has three discernible spellings from my researches (i.e. laughter spelled out in facebook, twitter and a great RPG called Dink Smallwood):

• bahahahaha
• bwahahahaha
• mwahahahaha

But it only works with three or four ha-ha's at the end, okay? Any more and it looks like you're trying too hard. One ha sounds like "ah-ha!" (Eureka! I have discovered a mess of malcontents with whom I shall form an evil army of robots!); two ha-ha's sound like some do-gooder just shot you in the middle of a triumphant evil laugh, and five ha-ha's (or more) sound like you've been sniffing nitrous.

What scare me most in the world? I sat here evil-laughing quietly to myself for the last five minutes to test out all of those theories about the length of evil laughter in print.

Of course, all of these can work as general laughter as well. For anyone who has played Dink Smallwood, "MWAAHAHAHAHA" is the strict province of the evil.

One day of freedom left. On to coffee!

The Wonders of Sleep

I've had (I'm counting) sixteen hours of sleep. Now that's a Nanna nap. I feel so cheerful!

Broken sleep, of course; I woke up about six yesterday evening to have dinner. I staggered off to bed about six-thirty, read for a little while, out like a light in ten minutes. The next time I looked at a clock it said 10:40. I told myself I didn't have to work tonight and myself went back to sleep. A brief surface at twelve in case I really did have to go to work and had now overslept. I woke up for good at five.

My back is stiff, my eyes are gluggy; I have an entire couple of weeks to work that off, I get to sleep at night and do whatever during the day. With no potential for a phone call on my nights off to ask if I could possibly come in. I say ask with that inflection because it never seems a choice, but perhaps that's the bitter and twisted midnights talking.

Off work and onward! I have a house full of things to do.

Out Of The Loop, Into The Fire

I have more days off than expected (yippee!), having a cancellation on my agenda. I didn't have to climb out of bed this morning at an ungodly hour to pretend to be godly (as in, knowing things about something and passing along said wisdom to others). Friday and Saturday midnight shifts are still on the cards, but after that I'm off on holiday for a whole twelve days.

I feel special.

I'm deranged after all of these midnights, but feel cautiously optimistic and willing to work on other things. I chickened out on Tuesday (bok, bok, bugack!), but will still be there next week armed with various writerly things.

Well that's oblique, but never mind. Onward to dishes and housework. For now.

If my neighbour keeps yelling today I'm over there to kick some arse. So over there.