June already?

This year seems to be disappearing faster than I’ve got time to draw breath. I can’t figure out where it’s all gone. At this rate it’ll be Christmas before we know it. Maybe it’s because I’m having such a busy year that it’s going so fast – between work, study, bookcrossing, and my union involvement, the year so far seems to have been a continual series of deadlines. This week, for example: I had a major project for work that needed to be done by the end of this week (which I somehow managed to finish yesterday – phew!), I’ve got a huge pile of discussion papers I’m supposed to have read before this afternoon’s union meeting (I’ve read the first few on the pile, but there’s still several more to go – guess what I’ll be spending my lunch hour doing?), and I’ve got an essay due tomorrow for my Spanish class (which I’ve started, but I’ve only written about half as much as I need to – so unless I find a spare hour or two today at work I’ll be finishing that off tonight)… hmm, so why am I wasting time writing a diary entry instead of using this quiet patch to get on with one of those things? Answers on a postcard, please… (any answer that includes the word “procrastination” will be disqualified for being too close to the truth).

Anyway, my point here is not to complain (as MrPloppy keeps saying, I don’t have to keep taking on all this extra stuff), but to attempt to explain to myself why the year is rushing past so quickly – I think it’s probably because I’ve spent all year saying “as soon as I’ve got that {meeting/essay/convention/project/visit/test/whatever} out of the way, I’ll be able to…” All year I’ve looked away to the future, to the horizon, never my mind on where I was, what I was doing… (oops, sorry, bit of a Yoda moment there, where was I?). No wonder everything’s been racing by so fast. But am I going to do anything about it? No, probably not. Half the fun of life is in the anticipation 😉

Sorry, this entry wasn’t actually supposed to be a philosophical musing on the nature of time, it was just the shock of seeing the date that set that off. On to more mundane matters:

My brother and his family came to stay on Monday night, on their way back to Auckland. It was a fun visit (if short – we keep telling them one day they have to come for a proper visit instead of just stopping in on their way past), even though we kept the kids up well past their bedtime playing Lego Star Wars on the playstation, and then kept ourselves up well past our own bedtimes talking after the kids finally went to bed. And then Nephew#2 woke us all up again at some point in the very early hours shouting “Mum, Mum, Mum!” I heard Sister-in-law get up and go through to ask him what was wrong, to which the reply was “I can’t sleep” !!!! Weird, that, neither could we – might have been something to do with all the shouting! Strangely enough, I spent most of Tuesday in a zombie-like daze from lack of sleep… At least I kind of got my revenge, because the kids had to get up early too, to catch their plane back to Auckland (where Nephew#1 is starting school this week! Now that really is time flying!)

I’ve been the recipient of a couple of RABCKs this week: first awaywithfairies sent me the graphic novel version of Terry Pratchett’s The Light Fantastic, which I’ve been looking for for years, ever since I saw it in a shop in London and was stupid enough not to buy it (and of course haven’t seen it anywhere since). And then The-Organist sent me The Third Day, the Frost, the third book in John Marsden’s young adult series about the invasion of Australia. We both discovered the series at about the same time, so we’ve been exchanging copies of whichever volumes we’ve managed to lay our hands on.

I was severely tempted to spend vast amounts of money this week. As I may have mentioned, this year’s Australian Bookcrossing Convention is being held in Adelaide in October, and as soon as it was announced I decided I wouldn’t be going, because Adelaide is just too expensive to get to from New Zealand, and we’re just not in a strong enough financial position for me to have another holiday to Australia. So, I was totally resigned to not going, until someone posted a message in the Bookcrossing forums mentioning that Jetstar have a special 2-for-1 deal going at the moment. I had a look at the prices, and for a few mad moments entertained the thought of asking Mum if she’d like to have another attempt at a trip to Australia with me (after last year’s aborted effort), because the flights would only work out to about $300 each. But by the end of the day, sanity had prevailed. Because the convention is during our Labour Weekend, although there were plenty of cheap flights from Melbourne to Adelaide, all the cheap flights from Christchurch to Melbourne were already sold out, so to get the 2-for-1 deal we would have had to go over a few days before the convention, and come back a few days after. Which would mean staying away nearly a week, by which time the cost of accommodation and eating out 3 meals a day starts to really mount up. Even if we stayed in a cheap backpackers and ate McDonalds for every meal (what a horrible concept!), we’d still be looking at a few hundred dollars for the week each, and that’s not even including the costs of the convention itself, or allowing any money for sightseeing. All too suddenly, the costs for this “cheap” trip to Australia were going to be nudging $1000 each. And I just can’t justify spending that much for a holiday right now. Oh well, it was a nice dream while it lasted. Hopefully next year they’ll have the convention somewhere cheaper to get to…

Currently reading: Julie and Julia by Julie Powell

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One Comment

  1. RYC: LOL! BassPlayer thinks he should now get his resume together and start sending it out to Christchurch. Hmmm…his company may actually have an office in NZ, too…hmmm…

    Thanks for stopping by!

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