Yesterday and I went on a 5.75 mile hike/walk around the Bibury area. It was a pleasant experience, but afterwards we were crossing a bridge in the car and a silly woman yelled “that's brainless” at me when I drove past her car and didn't wait for her to go onto the bridge. I wanted to yell it back at her, since there was plenty of room for both of us to cross at once, and it wasn't one of those weak bridges or anything, so there was really no reason for her to be at a standstill before the bridge. I didn't say anything to her, but Steph yelled “shut up” or something. It was amusing.
Today as a workday has been slightly annoying, because I've been required to do actual work. Also, we have a meeting with Management, which I assume is just going to be WhineFest 2005. When I say “Management” I'm really just speaking of one individual, who I will call Ms. Stumpy from now on. This woman is basically my boss's boss. I have a supervisor, but we are both under another guy who runs Network Administration. He in turn is under Ms. Stumpy, who is in charge of the Information Systems portion of Communications. Anyway, this woman is my bane. She can be nice occasionally, but only in an annoying way. She can usually be found overreacting where anything unimportant is happening, or offering us some sort of strange foreign soup or stew. She makes these frightening foodstuffs quite often and practically begs us to eat them. I think she's trying to compensate for her complete ineptitude as a manager and her bitchiness of nature. Let me assure you, her reputation at my place of work leaves much to be desired and daily life involving her is a very harrowing experience.
I think I had some more to say, but I've got to fortify myself for the meeting. It draws inexorably closer, as if Death himself beckons and whispers in my ear.
A day of work for me is now a strange world of nothingness. I don't really do anything. I arrive at work and put up a shield to protect myself from the barrage of questions and demands that will surely come my way, and then I start to ignore everything. I don't really do any work at all unless I am somehow forced. I have no initiative as far as career advancement goes, I'm not fueled by competition, and I don't care about recognition. My day is spent trying to avoid work and querying Google for tidbits of information. Obviously everyone has to do some sort of work once in a while. I do have hot periods which require a lot of effort, but I try to avoid that sort of thing.
I woke up early this morning and wrote out 3 stream-of-consciousness pages. It's my first time doing this, and it was interesting. I'm trying to recover my creativity via a book I bought. I think it's a 12 week course, and I hope that by the end of it, I'll be much more developed in that area of my life. The good thing about getting up early to do this was that I had time to meditate before I went to work, and I also got to walk to work instead of driving. I could totally get into this.
Oh, so I found out today that I have to go to ALS (Airman Leadership School) in July, which I've been avoiding like the plague for a while now. I think they have finally got me. I'm going to have to go. Oh well. 5 weeks of pain is just 5 weeks of pain. Maybe I can work on my mad phat writing skillz while I'm there. Oh, in other news, I may be required to deploy next summer, probably to some horrible desert location. I don't see myself standing for that, really. So, we'll see what happens. I expect a big clash. Mike vs. Uncle Sam. SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY. See Mike and Uncle Sam battle it out at the Arena!
Good thing Uncle Sam doesn't know about my 1337 chi powers. Secret weapon, anyone? I think so.
So I think I really want to get into writing. I need a professional writer to take me under his or her wing, and feed me delicious informative worms. Speaking of weird crawly things…I have Sea Monkeys (also known as brine shrimp outside of the Mean Marketing for Children world) on my desk. They are pretty cool.
Anyone want to buy a novel based on Jimmy the Sea Monkey and his Algae Adventures?
As explained in one of her posts, my friend Ryan and I embarked on an epic journey to Cornwall this past weekend. Once there, we were greeted by weather both foul and fair, sleeping arrangements which left much to be desired, and many delicious vittles. Above all, though, we were blessed with some of the finest scenery around, and I shall provide some of my pictures within this post. It was a good trip despite Ryan's poor constitution during the car journey. I had a pleasant time, and the hike we went on served to alleviate some of the stresses I've had of late. Nature seems to be the flashlight beaming into the dark dusty corners of the soul…so that one can extract one's inner spiders.
Please pardon our camera. It's good as far as point and shoot cameras go, but is nowhere near professional quality. I did the best I could with what I had at hand. I keep thinking about getting a very nice Digital SLR Camera, but they cost so much and I'm not really sure how useful it would be short of me becoming an exceptional digital photographer.
In other news, Steph finally came home from her brother's house yesterday, which is nice. She was there working with her brother for a little over a week. I missed her quite a lot, so I'm glad she's back at home now. We've both been a bit stressed out lately and we're thinking about taking a vacation somewhere. I'm not sure where we'll go, but it will certainly be nice to get away together.
I should probably end this post, as I can't think of anything else to say. I hope all who read this are doing well.