emsk

One of the things that I've been doing, like most bridezillas I suppose, is hunting up jewellery that I think I might want to wear for the wedding.

I've bought quite a lot.

In my defense, it has all been cheap; I love Etsy.

Two sets of earrings arrived in the post yesterday. One of them is frankly ENORMOUS, ridiculous as earrings but lovely when the dangly was detached from the posts and worn as a necklace.

The other is a set of elephant earrings, purchased in honour of my mother's elephant collection. I suspect that on the day, they may end up being worn somewhere on my person.


Admittedly, I'm a magpie and have always been a sucker for jewellery. Which is silly, really, as I rarely wear much. Today's quite extravagant for me, with the elephant earrings AND the necklace.

And yet, I've had two holes in my ears since I was old enough to be allowed to pierce them. I love having pierced ears, for reasons I can't verbalize, I love earrings, but usually I just wear plain old sleepers. There's just something nice about dangly pretties in the earlobes.

Originally published at Spinneretta. » Click here « to leave any comments.

While driving Pstyken home on Sunday, the car decided to develop a nasty whiiine. The whiiine developed into a hooowl, and then a graunch when trying to turn corners. I decided that this was likely an issue with the power steering, informed Tobermory of same, and we arranged to take it back to the garage from whence it came*. After all, it's only lived with us for a month...

I drove it in Tuesday morning (which was the soonest they could book it). I deliberately pulled in tightly, so that the maximum of horrible noises** could be arranged, and did the same while parking it. By the time I got out of the car, two salesmen and two managers had come haring over to find out what on earth was going on.

I politely explained that I was the young lady with the Ford with power steering troubles, and everything was yes ma'am, no ma'am, here is a Mazda 6 as a courtesy car ma'am. I had three of them arranging things - one chap finding insurance papers, one getting keys, general running about in my service. There was also the youngest salesman, who, on driving the car down to the service department, ran back up going "Man, what the HELL did you DO TO IT?" He was awarded death glares from his manager, and told in no uncertain terms to go fetch the Mazda for me. I was highly amused.

(Warranties are a lovely thing. It turns out the power steering pump had completely failed. )

Both Tobermory and I are still losing weight. Neither of us can entirely work out why, as we're not trying very hard - maybe we're eating better? Exercising more, having to run up and down the stairs at home? Sleeping sounder? Tapeworm? Anyway, this culminated in my need to buy a new pair of jeans, as my existing pair are a) two years old b) getting that dangerous white tinge at the seams and thin at the butt c) falling off. Owing to the weight loss, I have no idea what size my butt currently is. So, I took four pairs of jeans into the fitting rooms, and a very helpful young saleslady followed me. Knowing this is a fairly slim-cut line, I optimistically tried on the size of pants I usually buy at old-lady stores.

Her: "How do those look?"
Me: "Weird. I think they're too tight."
Her: *opens door, investigates* "Actually, they're a size too large. Here, try the..."
Me: "Uh, how do I put this. I am fat. There is no way I'll fit those."
Her: "You know how they say the customer is always right? Well, sometimes they're actually wrong, and please, try these on."
Me: *mutter grumble, shut door, change pants*
Me: *stare in mirror*
Her: *open door, grin* "See? Told you so!"

I bought the smaller size. They were $30 more than I intended to pay for a pair of jeans, but they're a skinny bitch line that I haven't been able to fit into since before I moved to Auckland. I'm feeling rather pleased with myself, in fact.


* Second hand car purchased from a dealership. We were hoping for good things, but this was the third trip back in a month!
** I was getting a lot of looks from passers-by on my way in. Apparently the nasty noises were worse from the outside of the car.

Originally published at spinneretta.com. » Click here « to leave any comments.

It has been a good day. The sun is shining, I've done four? possibly five? loads of laundry, and made jam. Much, much jam. One of the things I took up after moving in here was making jam. I don't remember what triggered the interest, but I enjoy it, the results are tasty, and neither of those dissuade me from doing it more...

Today, I have made twenty one jars of jam. I have mint and apple jam, banana nut jam, and peach and apricot jam.

I already have plans for the mint and apple jam (moroccan inspired food), the banana nut jam is extremely tasty on toast or warmed and drizzled over vanilla icecream. Tobermory chews his way through the stuff at an amazing speed (apparently he likes it) so I made a double batch today. Eleven jars, in fact. And the young chap at work begged a jar, when I was talking about making it during the week, so I'll take one along to him.

I was also discussing my jam-making plans in IRC, and it inspired a bit of silliness which amused me greatly.

[MahalWurk] I have seven kilos of sugar in the pantry.
[MahalWurk] And much much fruit.
* MahalWurk will has fun.
* MahalWurk also praise the label maker.
[TheWatcher] ... that sounds like some kind of strange cult's mantra.
[Half] Oh most mighty maker of labels, we praise your name and join your unending hymn, but chiefly are we bound to praise you for the gift of knowing one thing from another, without which we would wander from place to place, asking "Verily, be this the True Jam?"

Originally published at spinneretta.com. » Click here « to leave any comments.

Last night, I curled into bed, and started coughing. Uncontrollably, unstoppably, miserably coughing. Feverish, chilly, tired – and every time I started to relax a little, I coughed again. Painfully.

The night became rather a blur, in the end, of coughing and being miserable. I coughed more-or-less non-stop until about midnight. I was feverish. I ended up crying.

This is me. Stubborn, independent, bolshey. I don’t do that when I’m sick, I soldier on. Thus how I’ve gone to work at all in the last week. For me to cry, I must have been miserable indeed.

I don’t even remember all of it.

It took till 4am for me to have coughed up enough lung-goop to be able to sleep properly.

This morning, I visited the GP. I have a lung infection, and inflamed sinuses. I’m on strong doses of antibiotics for 10 days. I’m off work for, at minimum, another 3 days.

Sigh.

Originally published at kiwi geek. You can comment here or there.

I came home today to find a wealth of Good Things in my mailbox. Stockings (six pairs), my TSC tshirt (I’ve had my quota of stupid for today, please call someone else).

In fact, it’s generally been a good day. Half of work was absent (acts of drunkeness occuring – thanks St Paddy’s Day), so I got work done. Despite the stultifying boredom. Cyclenut contacted me during the day to ask for a website in a Hurry – Father needs something for school cycling – which is just fine as I still have the code leftover from my last attempt at creating a website for him. So, with a few hours work to incorporate some of the Useful Stuff I’ve learned over the last few months, that’ll be done this weekend. And, therefore, some extra money in the kitty.

Lunch was had with WebBoss on Thursday. This was also a Good Thing, as I am still lacking sufficient information about the state of my impending new job! Discussion covered: What I’ll be doing for a job, what I’ll get to help me do the job, and what I’ll be required to do.

So, from April, little Emma will be doing server administration. Basic “Stuff fallen over, fix it”. Create and start maintaining a backup schedule. (I know, I know – they need one already!) Create and maintain a Subversion/Trac box. (This is also a Very Good Thing, with programmers living all over the country. I know of five physical cities, and that doesn’t allow for the fact that we’re scattered around within those cities.) Learn about VMware – WebBoss has plans to be running all servers as VM servers in the long run, for redundancy and stuff.

They’ll give me hardware to be used at home (this is a Big Yay, as it means I’m not dependent on my home machine). Possibly more than one machine, depends what I’m doing at the time. (Note to self, acquire two desks instead of one.) I’ll be working 40 hours a week, but to be done as glide time – eg, if something takes a big poopy at 10pm and I can fix it, I am to do so, and take some time off later in the week, or save up hours and take a week off later. I’ll mostly be working from home, but also at co-location facility (10km away) occasionally. So will have keys to the co-lo, access to server racks, and so on and so forth.

No word on when I get the extra 2k, which is a tad sad, as moving will be tight – doable, but tight – but at least I know it is forthcoming.

I am a happy Emma.

Originally published at kiwi geek. You can comment here or there.