One Hundred & Third : Twenty Five And Counting

One Hundred & Third : Twenty Five And Counting: "Those of you with adequate memories may recall that January 24th was the 'worst' day of the year, based on some psychologists formula. This finding was calculated by taking fading memories of Christmas, the weather, amount of daylight and it being a Monday, and so on.

Conversely, Friday the 24th of June was given as the 'best' day of the year. Lots of sunlight, just before the weekend, people either on holiday or looking forward to it, it was one of those days which in theory everyone should be having a whale of a time. Once you factor in the fact that the next day (June 25th) was also my birthday, it should, by most measures been counted as an awesome day.

OK, OK, I don't really celebrate my birthday but still. The point remains.

Instead, my Friday was spent being told that I had to move desks because of a restructure or something. Some woman left after twenty billion years service (she started as a Junior Librarian, dontcha know, and ended up as a Property Services Manager!). So that left a vacanacy in our department. Now, every person in my department (except me possibly) is paid under the market level for his or her job. That is, they could get more money if they left and got a job in the private sector at the moment (this is a side effect of the state of the London/South-East construction industry, something that will get worse if we get the Olympics). So vacancies are very rarely filled directly. Sometimes someone can be transferred from another department, but the problem is that to be a Surveyor you need various qualifications to know about the literally thousands of regulations which affect British buildings. We can't raise the rents we charge to customers beyond a fixed framework dictated by central government which means we can't recruit new staff. Leaving customers in a strange trap of low-standards. But I'll stop, I'm boring even myself now.

The point is that they couldn't recruit someone to replace the former librarian and thus had to shuffle everyone around like deck-chairs on the Titanic. I hadn't realised but this also meant a physical reshuffle, i.e. we all had to move seats. Now, where I was sitting before was hardly an unspoilt paradise, but now I had the unfortunate news that my boss was going to be sitting 2-3ft from me, as opposed to 30-40ft as was previously the case. So my best day was not going so well.

Stil, I left home and was determined not to let this affect my mood which theoretically should be so high. So I got home, and waited for someone else to get home (I of course, had forgotten my key for the fifth day in a row. It started to rain. Still, soon someone would be home and I would be able to listen to music, use the internet ('borrowed' from our neighbour) and other related activities. Life would be cool.

And sure enough, one of my happy house mates returned home after half an hour or so. And so I went upstairs and...and, well - the electricity had been cut off. I will spare you the full-story. I will not go into detail of how many times I phoned London Energy, and then London Electricity and then EDF, only to find out all three were in-fact the same organisation now. I shall not fully brief you on how in desperation I phoned our landlord, spoke to our neighbours, and even tried to contact one of my work colleagues who is an expert in electrical matters.

In the end it turned out our supply had been cut off thanks to our landlord (the previous occupant of the property) owing what one call-centre agent informed me confidentially was 'substantial monies' to London Energy. So we were without electricity for the weekend. So my 'best day' and subsequent birthday was spent in our house, without power. The food in our freezer went rotten and soggy, the house fell into darkness and silence without the warm glow of television, computers or allied crafts.

Still, it was fun enough. During the day I decided to be miserable and not do anything at all, but then at 10pm I got the sudden desire to go an do something so I and Hester, in a last-minute rush decided to go to Slimelight. I took a little too much speed at the start of the evening, which seemed to have no effect, but when I combined with a pill later on it made me feel relatively uncomfortable. Aside from that, the night was without fault. We watched 'Sex Lives of the Potato Men' one and a half times while mashed and danced for a couple of hours. My only real complaint was that I am starting to (through associative memory, I swear) actually enjoy the music they play there. To my shame, once our new internet connection was installed (and our power returned) I downloaded many gigs of EBM, 'goth-industrial' and assorted nonsense. Fortunately (for me) most of it is shit, although I can't stop listening to 'Trans-X : Living on Video'.

Birthdays are traditionally supposed to mark periods of reflection and I suppose I can reflect on a number of things at this point.

Physical Health
Fortunately, the day before the best day of the year was my Screening appointment and Guys Drug Research Unit, where I was given a full medical exam.

Weight : 11st.
Recently, I have gained a stone in weight. Admittedly this still puts me at a rather dimunitive 11st, but is still a bit unnerving. I put it down to ritalin abuse, however unlikely that sounds.

Height : 6'2'

According to the doctors at this place, I am comparatively health. My blood pressure is good, my resting pulse rate was good, my EKG was good. Since I don't consume anything resembling nutrition I can only presume I am in fact, a health ninja. Unfortunately I had to have another blood test (today, in fact) because they noticed my liver blood result looked like I had got drunk the night before (it wasn't alcohol, but I didn't see the need to press them on this). Aside from that, everything is good.

Having said that, I have the urge to do a lot more exercise. Perhaps take up boxing or something, as I've said previously. I might as well try to complete a 10k run by June 25th 2006.

Mental Health
I don't really know. My concentration is still as lousy as ever, but that can be cured. I am almost never depressed / unhappy, but my short-term memory is pretty shit.

For instance, I won't put anything in the oven unless I'm really hungry. This may seem a slightly stupid thing to say, but if I put something in to cook and then don't have the hunger pangs to remind me, I will simply let the thing burn to a fucking crisp. It's not that my memory is bad, but I have never been able to remember things which didn't interest me. And the things which don't interest me seem to be growing daily. :(

Philosophy
There are many things I could say here, about politics or ethical philosophy or things like that, but overall I think the thing that becomes more and more obvious is that the meaning of life (as it were) is ...

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbspgrowth

There are many ways you could take this, but that's all I'll bother saying.

The day after my birthday I went to dinner, while still feeling wrecked from the night before, with my mother (who I don't get on with), my girlfriend (with whom I celebrate my one year anniversary last Sunday), and my wife. Go me. \o/

Oh yeah, my new favourite lyrics in the world :
You're wrong 'bout wearing fur and not hating Ann Coulter
Cause she's a cunted cunt"