Diary of an up and coming sociopath

Things I forgot to do so far this week:

1. Do an update yesterday. I had this vague plan to see if I could do a whole week of blog entries in list format, though somehow I forgot to write one yesterday. Didn’t even cross my mind. Oh well. I can’t imagine anyone will be adversely affected by this oversight. If you feel you are affected by this issue, please construct an elaborate fantasy about why this should lead you to receiving compensation, and then leave it in the comments section. Compensation requests will be ignored.

2. Check the car oil. The other day, the car oil light came on while I was driving, for about a second. This has never, ever happened before. I only noticed it because I was looking at the Dashboard thinking “Hey, what the fuck is that blue light?” Given the recent problems as the car starts to feel its gradually advancing age, on Sunday I intended to stick some oil in the bastard, prior to the MOT. Amidst Sunday’s chaotic visitations of people, I somehow managed to miss this out.

3. Buy Bin Bags. It’s a pretty mundane task. Tom and I had resorted to using a cereal box, which was becoming pretty full. This isn’t our usual behaviour, but when you’re used to 6 people thinking about bin bags and it’s suddenly reduced to 2, it’s hard to get into the rhythm. Luckily, Ian come home and we went to Tescos, where the aforementioned forgetment of garbage receptacles occured. When we got back, Ian found a spare one which kept us going for today. I guess tomorrow one of us will have to actually go to Tescos and buy a pack. Each time I buy a pack of something, I wonder just how close it is to being the final time I’ll buy that particular item for this house. Will I need any more washing up liquid? Toilet paper? Is this cooking oil the last ever cooking oil I’ll need to buy in Oxford? It’s making me various shades of queasy, thinking about how close we are to being turfed out of here (once the contract runs out) despite the fact we’ve got no place sorted out for afterwards.

And speaking of bin bags, because as you can tell they’re causing me some grief at the moment, today Ian and I finally took action against the horrible bushes/giant weeds that were obstructing us in removing the bins each week. These plants have been growing since we moved in and this summer, they finally expanded to the point where we couldn’t walk past them on the pavement. Ian and I just took a couple of knives to them, and with our best ninja-style slices, pruned the fuckers back into totally stripped bare twigs, mere shadows of their former rampant selves. The pavement is now traversable and hopefully, taking out the bins next week will be a far less horrible experience.

On a side note, today a second person came round to check out our “room to rent,” which is great, except we don’t have one. As far as we can gather, the landlord is advertising a room here, but hasn’t told us. I can unequivocally say that there is not a room available for rent here, because even though David and Rhys have vacated theirs, neither has handed in the key. We think the house owning man might be telling people there’s a room with the intention of allowing them to move in during August, once we’re gone, but you’d think he’d actually tell them that instead of sending them to our door.

Well, I guess that kind of degenerated into some misdirected whinging about the current state of the house situation. To be pretty honest, I chose a bad topic to do a list about. I don’t forget things that often. Well, I probably do, but perhaps I forget when I’ve forgotten things. Either way, it’s not leading me towards the wight light of inspiration, and is instead pushing me towards the black light of blogger’s block.

Yesterday I started reading Intimacy, by Sartre. I don’t normally go for existentialist literature, but…well, okay, before I continue, that’s a half-truth. I’ve only ever tried reading Kerouac and I can’t stand the bastard, and from what I can tell this book isn’t even overtly existentialist, if at all. Maybe too early. What I’m trying to say is, I wouldn’t normally be reading Sartre, but I figured I should grasp on to my final amounts of studenthood by reading some of the stereotypical authors, and also that Tom rarely seems to recommend books and films to people, so if he does it must have something going for it. So, yesterday I started reading it. After this, it’s my loose intention to read that goddamn book, the Catcher in the Rye, since it’s, christ, 5 years now since I last had a read. That seems like an utter epoch, I can remember taking it to school as if it were yesterday. Must be all this changing location that makes it seem like a long time.