That was not a fun night at all.

Seriously, not fun.

Also, I'm heading to Ireland with a can of petrol, a shovel, and a bag of lime. I owe someone an immolation, a whack around the head, and a shallow grave in the forest, roughly in that order.

Looks like you where right again, Nat.

Sorry.

Don't worry, I won't ring you up and whinge.

SOOOOOOOOOOOO

The other week, Holly calls me up and asks if she can move back in with me.

So I said yes.

Should work out this time :3

As my FB buddies would know, I bought myself a second car a couple of weeks ago. A 1992 Hyundai Excel hatchback, 152,000 on the clock, for cheap as chips. Its a handy runabout, cheaper to run than my big thirsty BT-50, and I bought it mostly for trips in and out of work so I'm not running the BT-50 into the ground for no reason.

Even though it is a little second-hand car, I've decided to take care of it. A mate and I have been getting a good service done on it, and it needed it something bad. I got new 13" tyres put on it today, and we replaced the spark plugs, changed out the oil and fuel filters, and replaced the engine and gearbox oils.

The gearbox oil came out looking like quicksilver. The fuel filter was full of black crap. The engine oil was a thick black goo, and the spark plugs where fucked.

All that's fixed now, the next major task will be to drain and flush the power steering fluid, clutch fluid, and drain out and clean the coolant system.

It's gone from something that shudders and nearly stalls out when idling to a roaring little beast. Its breathing easier, drinking easier, and running a lot smoother. I'll put some gearbox treatment in next time we flush the oil to smooth out a few noises from the thrust bearing, and keep running bottles of injector cleaner through each time I fill it to clear all the crap from the fuel lines and injectors.

Nothing like coming home from work coated in black and grey dust, overalls soaked through with sweat, and exhausted.

There's a water leak somewhere in our dust conveying system, and its making my job a nightmare.

I sometimes feel a little left behind, as my friends get married and start families. It seems that lately half my friends are up the duff or popping out spawnlings, the other half are getting married and heading in that direction.

Then I realise that, well, at the end of the day I'm doing pretty well for myself. I've got a job I'm valued and respected at, I own my own pretty nice house, shiny toys parked in the driveway. Not bad for being a uni dropout four years ago to this. I've also proven that I'm capable of taking care of myself: I can cook myself decent meals, housework is not a challenge, and I can maintain a good standard of cleanliness without someone else around to carry me.

I also remember that according to my master plan (which I've been following since I was 16 or so) I've got another four years to go until I'm due to start a family. I always planned to have everything else (career, house, solid car) in place beforehand, rather than go through the 'struggling as a couple' deal.

Oh, and I get kitty-snuggles every night. Three cats have also turned me off having kids, cats are trouble enough.

Lord Foul's speech at the beginning of "Lord Foul's Bane" still ranks as one of my favorite pieces of prose.

I am very, very tempted to end sentences with "Behold, I have begun!" now.

Haven't updated in a while.

My folks visited and left, other than that its been the usual rounds of work, sleeping, and eating. The weather has warmed up too, so I'm heading out bush more often, and I'm finally on the callout list for fire brigade, so I'm starting to see some action there.

Just nothing quite that interesting to post about lately. Its been a fairly 'flat' year in terms of anything really exciting going on. No huge life-changing events, just things settling into place slowly.

I don't think I've had a full four days off just sitting around home lately. Its been pretty busy, and more to come: after helping out at a community event (bartending at an 18+ girls pajama party. Boobs everywhere), finishing up at 1:00 am, and all this on the night after I finish night shift, my body clock is still out of whack. Plus I need to finish cleaning the house before my folks arrive here from Tasmania in under a week. AND the major shutdown starts at work day after tomorrow, and we get the fun task of draining the furnace: basically, keep tapping out pots until we hit slag, they estimate we'll have to tap about 15-20 pots out to drain it. Then all the other rundown tasks to get done, three shifts of doing crap (at least I've lined up a cushy job: hooning around on a forklift), and finally on holidays for two rosters after that.

I'm not used to being so busy!

Alrighty, off for another day trip of tooling around in the bush in 4x4s.