Diary of an up and coming sociopath

once again, I’m back from Nikki’s. It occurs to me I’ve left a whole bunch of unresolved threads about what I’ve been doing and where I’ve been, so seems as it’s also the end of the month I’m going to wrap up October.

So, looking back. At the start of the month, I claimed I was looking for a bookcase to buy. I still am. I can’t really afford to spend money on, well, anything right now, so unecessary shelving is way, way down the list. I think I’ll have a look on eBay, actually. Always chance of a bargain there.

I never got around to re-doing the stylesheets for the page, because I keep thinking I’ll get the other design up and running soon, but I did fix the font so that it was readable. Quite why the default font had spacing set to -1 I’ll never know.

I didn’t mention that last weekend Nikki and I spent some time wandering around central London in the rain. We started at Edgeware road, in spite of the multiple tube outages, and thenwandered up to Oxford Street. Nikki stopped for a McDonalds on the way back, and I restrained myself but I did eat some of her burger, and it gave me thirst for more. When I went home this weekend, I had small fries, a burger and 4 chicken nuggets, and while it was inexpensive and filling, it reminded me why I avoid fast food as much as possible these days. After we’d been to McDonalds, we went up Tottenham Court Road, and then back down the other end of Oxford Street to go, via Borders, to Selfridges, which is not unlike my vision of hell. Floor upon floor of pointless, pointless items to own, which all cost a lot of money because they’re unusually shaped. If I ever wanted a fridge shaped like an egg, I’d go there, but by christ, not before.

To add insult to injury, when we actually decided to leave it slowly dawned on us that we had somehow become totally lost within the labyrinthe building and at times I felt like clutching my head and screaming, because it seemed like we’d never find a way out. We finally managed it when I successfully spotted cars in teh distance, though I wasn’t sure if I was just leading us towards the “Automobile” department.

Last week, I had a job interview. It went very well, but I found out on Wednesday that despite impressing the interviewers, other people had the job. I was likely the choice if either of those turned it down, apparantly, but this time it looks like it wasn’t to be. They said that my interview and test scores were good and that I was clearly able, and that I would’ve been the next choice after, but that the people doing the job had more experience. There’s clearly some kind of term for the catch-22 involved when you are unable to get experience doing a job because of your lack of experience, but I suspect the specific word has yet to be discovered. If anyone out there knows, I’d like to hear.

And then there was Friday, where I had an interview at Millward Brown. It was a strange day, a lot like being at university but without actually learning anything useful. I was asked to give a presentation on the job even though I didn’t really know anything about it, so I just made some stuff up which seemed relevant and spent the previous night concentrating on doing a structured and clear presentation that would show I knew what I was doing.

On Saturday Nikki and I went up to Coventry (alternate 2004 fad-influenced nomenclature: Chaventry) and poked around a few shops there, and were surprised to bump into Kate and Charl who are acquaintances from the easyworld messageboard. At first I didn’t notice who it was because I was thinking “hey, that girl’s wearing a beautiful garbage hoodie. That album sucked.” then suddenly Nikki saw who it was. I bought a couple of Comics (New Demo issue! I know you don’t care.) and we stood bemusedly in the West Orchards shopping centre wondering how a shop named “Hallowe’en” can have a business model that works. Either they’re in for a lean 11 months, or, I’d more readily assume they’ll be changing their name to “Christmas,” then trying to figure out the choice for the next holiday to financially rape. I notice that Hallowe’en started 2-3 days early this year, and given how Christmas started sometime this month as well, it occurs to me that the length of your average holiday has ballooned in duration to roughly 300% of its original. With this in mind, I want my birthday next year to encompass August 30th-September 2nd inclusive. I will make you all advent calendars to remind you of the days from the 30th leading to the 2nd, and in return you have to give me 5 traditional geese-a-laying or something, until my actual birthday when you give me my actual presents. Don’t worry about remembering all this though, there’ll be a reminder closer to the time.

I think that just about wraps up October. I got my birthday Zim DVD off Rob, which means I can finally put September to rest as well. If you have any further questions about the previous time period, please leave them with this entry and I’ll get back to you.

(Hey, I didn’t even mention the clocks going back, which is usually a source of great mirth for me. Let’s just say that I’m glad we’re back to GMT. I reason that at some point in the past it became easier, economically and environmentally, for everyone to put their clocks to BST and back rather than for farmers to all get up an hour earlier/later at the appropriate juncture. For this to be the case, there would need to have been more farmers than people. Dwell on that for a while and come to your own conclusions.)