Stressy Weeks

Cal and I are both feeling pretty stressed at the mo. Too much to do! It isn’t cool. We’re managing very well, I feel, and the stress isn’t turning into bitter angry HATE HATE BITE DESTROY anything, it’s just an ‘aaargh! too much to do!’ vibe.
We are looking after each other with cuddles and NZ chocolate and the occasional episode of Firefly or season one Dawson’s Creek (which I will defend to my dying day, HAH).
Little-known fact: for an entire year of my job at Massey University, my screen background was a Dawson’s Creek cast shot. I thought it helped me get ‘down with the kids’. Yeeeeah.
At work we have just had a total rebuild of all our PCs. Now we are not allowed any screen backgrounds other than the mandatory blue-with-PC-specifications-on. It isn’t gonna help morale much, but I’m cool with it.
If you’re at all interested in what’s going on in Gaza right now, check out Rafah Kid in my links list – he’s getting regular updates from the field. The comments are pretty interesting too. Some big debates that seem to be staying pretty rational all the time, which is good.
Last night I went to the Opal Lounge, which is big-trendy Edin bar, for my boss’s 29th birthday. It was pretty cool. I was underdressed (typical) but didn’t particularly care (also typical). There were many hen nights. One gaggle of young women from Milton Keynes filled up the area near us, sat around not talking much and sipping drinks, then got up and left twenty minutes later. Luckily the bouncers made them take off the bobble-headbands with spangly penises at the end of the springs. Hen nights are an Edinburgh menace, on account of our ridiculously late licensing laws. (Pubs in England shut at 11, remember.)
Anyway. I have managed to get some good writing done, including an entry for the BBC3 ‘Get Writing’ competition which involves finishing off a very short story by a Famous And Successful Author. I went for horror churn-out-er Shaun Hutson’s one, on account of not having to think so much. I don’t think I could ever be a horror genre author, I don’t have the commitment to grime and misery, but I can definitely do dark’n’scary. I’ll email it to anyone interested once I’ve keyed in all the amendments.
Right. I’ve got to get sorted to go into town and run some roleplaying games for enthusiastic people in this club I started. It is a beautiful day, and I might try and get us to play in the park. Ahhhhh. Park.
Peace to you all. I am reading your emails, and will respond as soon as I can!