Diary of an up and coming sociopath

It’s been a damn quick week. These days I actually do stuff at work that, while not necessarily interesting per se, is certainly mentally stimulating. It helps the hours fly by. And the days. And then probably the weeks. Weekends, unfortunately, become subject to the same compression. I’m actually booked solid for the next few weekends - at home tomorrow and sunday, Tom’s coming down next weekend, the one after is Reading and the one after that is my Birthday (though the day itself is a Friday) Then, actually, the weekend after /that/ is this work Tenerife deal, assuming my passport arrives in time. After all that leisure I’m going to need some time off. I’ve got loads of holiday to take before the end of the year, so I’d better start cramming it in there.

Actually, the approach of my birthday makes me wonder what to ask for. I forget whether I’ve mentioned, but I’ve recently come to the conclusion that it’s time to build myself a new PC, so a birthday would be a good time to take advantage of that. Having a salary makes birthdays seem far less about the acquisition of material goods, though, and more about the acquisition of an extra year on the corpse.

Though speaking of material goods, I’m really overspending this month. I had planned to go into FP yesterday, buy my comics and get the hell out without wasting more money, but they discounted a bunch of Marvel Pocketbooks, which are Digest-sized full color reprints of silver-age comics. I bought two for £7 and got 18 issues worth of reading material - Giant Size X-Men #1, and Uncanny X-Men #94-118 - It’s about 95 stuff I’ve never read and which I’d otherwise have trouble getting to read properly (since I don’t care for the “Essential” line of black and white reprints) so it was an unmissable purchase really. I’m less bothered about the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four ones, but the Hulk book reprinting the original Hulk 6-issue series is tempting me deeply. I’ll think about it next week.

Despite my many problems with SMS, mine and Nikki’s Reading tickets were delivered to me at work today. I feel much better now they’re in my hand because frankly, I wouldn’t trust SMS to deliver something 2 doors down the street without significant delays. There’s a very helpful customer service woman who has answered my every question and done her best to sort out the deliveries, but given how i’ve needed to converse with her twice having only had two deliveries from them, it’s not exactly a glowing selling point. As of now, I’m sworn off See Tickets, Wayahead, gigsandtours.com and any of their affiliates for every gig where alternate vendors can be found from now on, until they stop using SMS to deliver the tickets. I shouldn’t have to work so hard to get something I’ve already paid for. I get the feeling most of my postage charges are going into See’s back pocket while they hire SMS for a tuppence per package. Yuu only have to look at their reviews page to see what sort of business they’re running.