Melbourne

I went and bought those Aldi coffee beans, gave my espresso machine a good clean and attempted my first coffee in a long long time.

Took 2 attempts to get the extraction right and it's not my sexiest milk pour but it was a damn fine cup of coffee ☕

Ted Cat telling me he is starving and needs another tin of fish and some of those delicious turkey crunchies

Stupid work anxiety, I'm so close to the end - just the equivalent of two FT weeks of work and I can leave forever instead of being in this strange limbo - but I just can't sleep out of sheer dread. So much negativity instead of looking forward to new beginnings!

I was drifting off nicely to sleep with this book when I decided to switch off the lamp and remembered I needed to set the alarm... that woke me right up with a pang of realisation followed by a sinking feeling of sadness. I don't remember feeling this bad even at school. I'll have to will myself to sleep and work and find purpose through this quagmire of deep seated aversion!

E: I was up till 4:30 am. halp

I downloaded an app on my phone that allows you to block other apps and websites.

It also allows you to set it up so you cannot uninstall it if you get "cravings".

I blocked all socials and Reddit and honestly I feel so much better it's crazy. I love having my headspace free of outrage and negativity drawn from an online source.

Okay okay okay. I have accepted I've developed some severe anxiety/avoidance around work. This is a Thing. However, I don't need to fix it that immediately, that's why I'm on casual now and not doing ongoing jobs. I'm gonna roll with it and see the opportunities I have ahead of me instead. I designed this flexibility in!

Instead of feeling bad all day I can tick off some things that'll make me feel good. Yesterday I "accidentally" did a heap of long overdue clothes organisation. Today perhaps I can clear out the gross carport. And maybe get started on my very overdue Dead Plant Clearout. The graveyard stares at me sullenly.

Just made friends with a new resident magpie. Gave it a little mince (cooked from frozen with food grade calcium carbonate) as a once off bribe. I think it worked.

Flew off to its nest (you could here the little ones squawking nearby). Flew back realised it wasn't getting any more and just waddled around pecking at bugs right near my feet.

Eyeballs and scalp are safe for now.

Totally forgot about mandatory WFH this week on account of office remodeling. Nice.

Ouch. I hadn't been to get breakfast and coffee from my old regular cafe downstairs for maybe 6 months. I used to get a bacon and egg roll + large coffee for $15 fairly regularly but now it's $21. Definitely an incentive to not do that too often. No discount for bringing my own cup like some cafes do either.

It's 5 am and I've woken up absolutely baking.

Checking in - still feeling wiped after the effort to get the house to buyer viewing standard.
Found my ancient VCR (though alas not the remote) and have a stack of videos I never culled, so my plan is to go through those and go on from there.

PSA 50% off Uber rides courtesy OzBargain: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/804283

If you don't want to open the link, go onto your uber app, then wallet, then scroll to the bottom under promotions and press "add promo code", and type AUS101, AUS103 and AUS112

Back at work now.

I totally forgot how to make my coffee when I'm at work and it tastes horrible, well more horrible than usual since I'm using instant nescafe, god their instant coffee sucks.

Body isn't quite adjusted to waking up so early in the morning, pray for me.

Miss Meow worked out how to get the ball out of her toy.

I've made some good progress on the garden today, and the first load of soil is being delivered tomorrow morning. I have purchased myself the ~~finest~~ cheapest garden cart money can buy to haul it all around to the back yard. As the only place I can dump the soil is on the driveway which blocks access I will be extra motivated to get it moved, as I will be unable to leave until a large part of it is gone. I've bought 2m this time and estimated I will need three all up for the new beds, plus maybe another one for the other bed for the lemon tree and a couple of other areas. All going well I will be able to get the second load on Wednesday and have it all moved before the predicted showers set in.

Thanks to being the only senior staff member in my area, I'm stuck working 12ers until my week ends, it's day one I'm ready to die.

In more exciting news I have like 5ish work days until I am a free man, no more shift work!

Well it happened. It stung a little but not as bad as expected because I was expecting it and I've been dealing with it. Just need to not let it let me spiral too much and look forward and inward.

My friend had to get up early (reason she's staying over is so she didn't have to get up even earlier to get to her work thing in South Yarra) and we stayed up until like 2:30 chatting. I feel for my neighbours because she doesn't have an "night time apartment" speaking volume lol

Anyway I think I see a nap in my future. Feeling pretty great to wake to a clean apartment though! Hope you all have as good of a Monday as possible.

7am on the dot and someone just started up some power tools

I harvested the potatoes I planted in the front yard from some sprouting spuds in the cupboard. A couple of kilos, not a bad haul for minimal effort. I'll probably find a few suprise potatoes in there when I plant the next lot of plants in there, I let them plants die down too much and was not sure where they all were. Digging potatoes always feels like someone is playing a joke on you, there's just these random potatoes in the ground.

I suppose I should start organising for Christmas….

For some reason I thought I'd watched Rake but I haven't so I'm fixing that now. Watching from the start, that 2010 pre smartphone pre 4k nostalgia really hits, and it's easily one of the best written/acted ABC series without a doubt

Damn, business hotels are pretty damn booked out in Tokyo.

It seems that the options are either the Hotel chain that puts Nanjing massacre denial propaganda in every room, or unleash my inner hypocrite with AirBnB. At least there's no housing crisis in Japan.

A new uni subject which starts next week opened up today, which usually means you can look through the unit information, see what the assignments and when they are due. Someone messed up and all the dates are for the last semester, and all the content is already available. I presume it will get fixed soon, but it does mean I got a sneak peak at the content - there is a lot of material to read. It looks really interesting though - the course is "Living with Fire" and the assignments focus on doing a bushfire risk assessment for your own or someone else's property. I'll do my sister's house, as she backs onto a National Park and actually has some risk from bushfires, which I don't.

I pre loaded some workouts a while ago on my garmin connect app and I found out today I could access them on my watch. IT TOOK ME AN HOUR TO FIND THEM. It's press a button, swipe up and select. Fuck me. I am slow.

But mum I don't wanna

decadently in a hotel bed with a bag of chips watching bluey

Hanging out with a friend and feeling super self conscious for over sharing about things. Worst timing ever being due for my period.

Every time I open this website, on every device/browser, I've had to log back in for the last week.

Went to a mates kids bithday on the weekend. First time we've done something like that. we had 4 or 5 mates (or more like friends of friends these days) with all our kids and it sort of hit me that we're the old guys now. I mean, not old, most of us are in our 30s but we were all standing around, most of them talking about their kids or work or whatever and just yeah.... all feels a bit different hey.

Breakfast 🍏🍎🍐🍊🍋🍈🫐🍓🍇🍉🍌🍒🍑🥭🍍🥥🥦🥑🫛🍆🍅🥝🥬🥒🌽🥕🥐🍠🫚🥔🧅🥯🍞🥖🥨🧀🧇🥞🧈🍳🥚🥓🥩🍗🍖🫓🍕🍟🍔🌭🥙🧆🌮🌯🥗🍲🍜🍝🥘🍛🍣🍱🥟🦪🍥🍘🍚🍙🐠🍤🪼🦀🐙 🍗🥮🍢🍡🍧🍰🧁🥧🍦🍨🎂🍮🍭🍬🍫🥜🌰🍪🍿🍯🥛☕️🍵🍺🍶🥤🧋🧃🥂🍷🥃🍸🍹🧉🔋

s5 of ghosts and a bit of a dead day at work that involves a lot of waiting for various scans to finish.

Score.