luckycanuck

I watched the Wallabies play today and was pleased with their overall performance though I did enjoy making fun of James O'Connor for looking like the love child of Ellen Degeneres and Justin Beiber.

Judge for yourself.

Also he is hawking vitamins, saying "the last thing I need is to get sick."  No James, the last thing you need is to get in fights with your teammates.  The second last thing you need is to fail to turn up to team functions.  The third last thing you need is to run out of hair product.  Getting sick would come next.

I went off to the gym and had a good workout now that I had gotten some sleep.

TW: AMRAP 30 minutes - 10 deadlifts, 8 dips, 6 cleans, 4 floor wipers, 200m row. - 9 rounds exactly.  Those cleans were tough.

I came home hoping to watch the Wales v South Africa match.  It wasn't on live.  Fine.  Annoying, but fine.  I check to see when it will be shown.  If I have to stay up until 2am to watch, I'll do it.  Except it won't be on at 2am either.  In fact, it won't be on Channel Nine at all.  They are only showing matches that Australia is in, and the later stages of the tournament, but not most games in the preliminaries.  I won't get to see any of Canada's games or heaps of other interesting matchups unless I go and live in the pub for the next month.

It seems that Nine, which owns a large slice of the pay network showing all the games live, bought the broadcast rights and is now not showing most games or is showing them at delayed hours at best while it screens reruns of Friends or CSI or Scooby Doo and the Alien Invaders.  Your only option is to subscribe to their pay channel.

Last year SBS showed every match of the soccer world cup.  It had never occurred to me that they wouldn't show all the games at some point, even if they were delayed.

James Packer, you are ruining the world cup.  I hope you and all your Channel Nine execs gets your hands caught in a meat grinder.

In better news, Ginger Harpist moved in.  I even helped when a friend delivered her harp.  I had an extended chat with her as she cooked dinner and she is very nice.  It turns out that Holly Valance is her first cousin.  Odd.

I put some margin loan money into a coal seam gas operator that has been tipped for strong growth and that is being accumulated and so is also rumoured to be a takeover target.  BOW has slipped back a bit so I got a bit more today while it's cheap.  ERA and my favoured AUT have slipped back a bit with the selling that gripped the market yesterday but I will hold on to them both.  I did think about moving AUT into other operators in the same oil fields with smaller market caps, but it come with lower risk and it is currently providing a lot of the security for my margin loan so I think I will keep it as it is.

I did apply for an increase in my credit limit while I am still in full time employment, and they gave it seemingly without a second thought.  Maybe I should have applied for more?  No.  I've got enough to enable me to capitalise on opportunities when they arise.

Ok enough dull stuff.

Alleluia's leaving day is getting closer.  She has been packing a lot and her removalists will come and cart her stuff away on Friday.  That means we need to replace some things, so the rest of us went out yesterday and picked up some sofas.  There was some aspie stress as we drove around trying to find the place and I was advised to turn far too late, but I did manage to carry both sofas into the house single handedly, which made me feel much better.  Then we rejigged the lounge room to fit everything and it's actually much better now I think.  We had our last household chocolate and wine evening before the changing of the guard.

Late last night after setting up the TV to replace the one Alleluia is taking with her, I came across the Facebook status of someone I know from the election campaign last year.  It read: Australia is holding a Census next week. Don't leave the “religion” section blank. Be sure to at least mark Christian (or your own faith). 1 million Muslims will mark their box. 10,000,000 Australians will leave it blank then wonder why Christmas carols are being banned in schools as well as Easter hat parades! It's not about religion, it's about keeping our way of life.

That pissed me off.  The relationship between Islam and the west is a perfectly legitimate subject for criticism.  There are legitimate issues related to the clash of civilisations if you want to call it that, but this is pure fiction and it adds nothing of value or intelligence to the debate.  It's the kind of pandering that stirs up people I am really sick of hearing from, and I wouldn't be surprised if we got correspondence on this subject as a result of this.

For my part, I posted this as my status in response: Luckycanuck thinks people should answer the religion question on the census honestly. Answer all the questions honestly. But 10 million people leaving the religion question blank? You really think roughly half the population is going to leave that question blank and that this will pave the way for a mosque on every street? There are reasonable things related to Islam in the west that can and should be debated. You don't need to make stuff up or repost things that are alarmist or inaccurate.

This morning I dropped off the trailer we used to cart the sofas, and then spent over an hour on a commute that would normally take about 15 minutes.  Apparently a body was found outside a block of flats along the way, so the police shut down all three lanes of a major traffic artery for the whole of peak hour traffic.  The body wasn't found on the road.  There wasn't a crash.  There was just a body outside of a building next to the road.  So the whole road gets shut down.  I almost feel like calling the police to complain, but that wouldn't accomplish anything.  Bad traffic brings out the worst in people at times.  As I took a detour on a side street, I saw one guy bypass about twenty cars and then pull into the intersection and drive on the wrong side of the road.  As he sped away I actually shouted him that if I ever found him I was going to stab him right in the throat.

On a happier note, I give you the cat video to end all cat videos.


HOLY CHRIST IT'S A PIECE OF PAPER!

Frustration seems to have caught up with me.

Yesterday there was a work lunch that involved us going down to the Canberra Yacht Club.  I don't especially like the yact club as I think the food is overpriced for what it is.  Looking around, I also foud myself annoyed by what looked like a bunch of smug grey haired people who dine in yacht clubs on Friday afternoons.  I was also annoyed by the fact that I was sat next to a co-worker who snorts when he laughs and who smelled like nicotine.  I was also annoyed by having to make conversation with a guy who used to work for W before my time and who I've seen before, but who means nothing at all to me.  I had nothing to add to conversations about home renovations or about taking the kids to see a show in Sydney on the weekend or about the footy tipping competition.  As soon as I sat down I decided I would rather have stayed at the office alone (but that would have been noticed by everyone else.)  I said very little, and I left as soon as I could.

At one point I looked out on the lake and two guys were on the lake in a canoe.  I would much rather have been doing what they were doing.  I had also read an article about the training of Navy SEALs.  I was awestruck by the Hell Week training, and sitting at lunch I would much rather have been in the early stages of hypothermia doing pushups on a beach in California than sitting in a warm dining room.  (And that's not hyperbole, that is literally true.)

Back at work, I waded through heaps of letters that had accumulated during my time away and they finally got to me.  I loathed the people who sent us timewasting letters expounding half baked ideas written by hand in difficult to decipher script and even those that were legitimate.  We even got a letter from an organisation concerned about the curriculum in schools.  This was an organisation with letterhead and with staff, and their letter began with the salutation "Dear Member of Parliament".  Attention groups trying to get the attention of politicians!  If you are going to send a letter to a politician, you might want to actually write down their name.  I am considering sending them a letter in return in an unmarked envelope and on ordinary non-letterhead paper saying "Dear Organisation, Thank you for your letter or e-mail or fax.  I value the contributions and insights of your organisation on the issues you raised, whatever they were.  I can assure you that I either agree entirely with your views, I agree with some of them, or I think you are a bunch crackpots who should be locked up until you are no longer a danger to society.  Sincerely, Random Member of Parliament to whom you wrote.  P.S. I would be happy to meet with representatives of your organisation if you can figure out which one of the 150 Members of Parliament I am."

I made it to the gym after work, with a sense of rage bubbling away beneath the surface.  On the walk to the gym I found myself having somewhat violent fantasies about taking on gangs of street thugs who dared to harass me, and sending them running before humiliating their leader by taking his shoes and shirt and pants and forcing him to walk home barefoot and clad only in his underpants.  Anyone who approached me was likely to get yelled at.

I managed the heaviest workout I've taken on since getting back from holiday.

YW: 30 80kg deadlifts, 30 pullups, run 800m - 3 rounds.

It took me just over half an hour.  I would have liked to have done it faster, but that is a lot to deadlift and pull and I found myself getting dizzy and gasping for breath more than once.  This workout really smacked me around, but luckily not a single person spoke to me the whole time.

The thing is, I didn't really feel less frustrated.  I got home and tried to set up the new modem I picked up to hopefully allow our house to get our wireless started again but could barely accomplish anything on accout of being so bent out of shape.  bakerypenguin wound up coming over to help and diagnosed the problems we had (which are the problem of our provider rather than us) and I spent most of the time thinking "I'm not well.  Something is wrong."

Helga and Alleluia and Roxy came home and we all watched Paris Je T'aime and I felt a bit better knowing there was nothing I could do, but I still went to bed all frustrated.

Today I'm feeling a bit better despite waking up at 4am due to it being the coldest night I can recall so far this year.  There will be another major workout which will probably smack me aroud some more, some shopping, and I suspect a lot of barricading myself into solitude.  Maybe I will do something nice for dinner tonight.

I don't think I'm supposed to feel like this.

A few months ago on the morning after the last election, I hit the wall with frustration when asked to stay in the field for another week and wound up putting a hole in the wall.

Today I received a letter sent to my work address from the local campaign saying they hold me responsible for the damage and the cost of repairing it.

I'm not paying.

Whether or not I am morally or legally liable, I am not paying $214.50 to the campaign that I worked on every day for a month in a town far from home where I didn't know anyone outside of work.  I am not paying a campaign that got a month of days and nights out of my life at no cost whatsoever to them.

I'm not paying.

I've been feeling detached from work recently.  Basically, it's my job to take an interest in what people think.  The problem is, I don't care.  Whatever your problem or idea or opinion, if you write into us, I will resent you for disturbing my day.  Of course this always applied to the timewasters, but I've come to feel the same way about the members of the public who contact us with a good reason.

It seems that my sense of detachment is now spreading.  The conversations held by friends or work colleagues on subjects like wine or the housing market or $500 sunglasses worn by people who don't run because if they did they might break a sweat are of markedly less interest.  Tennis is taking over the sports coverage.  We had an Australia Day BBQ with a bunch of people over, few of whom I could be bothered spending time with.  I almost told a guy at the gym to f*ck off yesterday when he commented on my form whilst doing pullups.  My parents arrived this morning from Canada, and though I'm going up this afternoon to visit them, it's almost as though I can't be asked.  The thought of doing something that inconveniences me in the slightest is repellent.

There is the prospect that I am becoming bitter about life in general.  There is also the prospect that I am just in a profoundly selfish mode right now.  I've really got very little to complain about.  I have a good job that pays me more than I need to live on, I'm healthy, I have things that interest me.  But the list of things that I can be counted on to take an interest in seems to be shrinking.  Going to the gym is generally fine because I can focus on my work and shut out everything else with sweat and endorphins.  Being at home is fine because I like the people I live with.  Being around people I already know and who know me is fine because they understand what I'm like.  There is, however, a growing sense of annoyance at other people, even if they're not doing anything wrong.

Part of it is probably compassion fatigue.  If I hear one more appeal to make a donation to the people in Queensland who have lost property in the recent floods I think I might just go there with a garden hose and try to recreate the catastrophe.  I am tired of hearing about other people's problems and of being expected to do something to fix them.

But my default reaction to a lot of things seem to be becoming "I dont care".  Changing jobs to something that doesn't require me to interact with insane and annoying people won't be enough if the sense of malaise goes deeper.

There is a new guy temporarily in our office, and his presence is annoying me.  It's nothing that he's done, he's just there and in being there he has changed the equilibrium to which I had become accustomed.  I am happy with the way things are, but now they have changed slightly.  Here endeth the pettiness.

Ok, the pettiness will now continue.  I foud out today that I probably won't get any frequent flyer points or status credits for two flights I took in America.  I chose to fly from Newark to Calgary via Dallas on American Airlines solely to get the status credits on Qantas which is partners with American.  No points had shown up in my account, so I rang Qantas to find out why.  It turns out that the ticket was in a fare class that doesn't award points.  I took those flights specifically to get the points, deciding against more direct flights with other airlines.  Moreover, there was no indication amongst the airline jargon in the terms and conditions that indicated that I would not get points, and the woman at check in specifically told me I would get points when I checked in.  This does bother me.  I read about a woman who had been knocked back by an airline and mentioned her annoyance on Twitter which brought almost immediate results.  I mentioned this on Twitter and got no response so far and on Facebook where some friends have sympathised, but I suspect I won't be able to turn this my way.

I am currently 300 points short of Gold status with Qantas, and I can get this if I travel with work enough between now and the end of February.  Whether that happens or not will determine my status for the next year.  It's petty, but I would like to graduate to the Gold level.

We had a work Christmas parry tonight as it was the last night when all the politicians will be aroud before the break.  The theme was "Hollywood", and I came as the Terminator again, complete with a business card from Governor Schwarzenegger and a plastic replica gun that I managed to get past security.  (Plastic guns don't set off metal detectors or show up on x-ray scans.)

The election is over, and it looks as though Candidate won.  It is not yet clear who has won nationally though.  Some electorates are still too close to call, but at any rate, neither major party has a majority.  A group of what will probably be four independents and one Green will have to decide who to support.  There may also be another election before too long.

I am back in Canberra, having averted being stuck in Mackay.  They need someone experienced to observe the counting of votes and apparently I was the first name they thought of and I was informed that I would probably need to stay for another week.

That made me sad.  Then it made me angry.  I was tired, I had been far from home for a long time, I had been in an angry environment and had been feeling aspie stress, I was down to my last pair of clean underpants, I was about to get on a plane in three hours, and then I was told I was expected to stay for several more days.

There was a stress cry, and then a distinct snapping over the assumption that I have no life and can be expected to go anywhere at anytime to do anything.  I stomped on some cans, picked up a chair and slammed it into the ground, and finally picked up the nearest object (which was a long tube of stiff and thick cardboard) and used it to hit the wall.  It made a pretty big hole.

( Click here for a photo of the result Luckycanuck's wrath. )

It's good to be home at Chez Canuck again (where soome household improvements had been made), and it's good to be going to (normal) work again (even though a huge pile of corro has appeared.)  How the results of the election will play out will be a subject of note over the next couple of weeks.

Is how long it took to come off the election high and feel like I don't want to be here.

The campaign itself is going fine. Our guy is rated by the bookies as the favourite, paying out at $1.50 against $2.42 for Labor, and although there were some nerves this week, overall it feels like I'm not working at an impossible task. On top of that, I do like the central people on the campaign. Still, I've got over three weeks and it seems like forever.

I will be spending over a month in a town that is fine, but that is not my home. There are a bunch of circles of friends that I am cut off from. I am currently living in a room that is not mine (although soon I will have a room to myself again.) I can't really go anywhere of my own accord. Also I'm working in a room without windows or natural light.

Would it be different if I was in HQ? Possibly. I counted, and it turns out that in five years in Australia, this is my 11th election. For every single one, I was in the field. I am ready to do something other than hanging around local party members in just one electorate for the duration. I was told that this time I would be in HQ, but that hasn't panned out. I know that HQ is a bit of a sweatshop, but after the last federal election I remember colleagues talking about the fun they had, and I wanted a part of it. (I wonder if hearing about the hijinks of HQ this time will make me want to stab someone.)

At the end of my last campaign I literally collapsed on the night before the election out of some fatigue and a lot more frustration. I think I may be hitting the wall with this.

I don't hate my job. Overall I like working in politics. But I may be starting to hate this aspect of it, and there are still over three weeks to go.

One of my stocks made the news today.  The evening news carried a story about a class action lawsuit against a number of banks over a variety of their fees including those on bounced cheques and overdrafts.  The lawsuit is being funded by litigation funder IMF, which is partly owned (a very small part) by me.  So if anyone has every payed penalty fees to an Australian bank, you can visit www.financialredress.com.au or call 1300 473 373.  IMF and I will take a cut, so it's win win unless you are a bank.

There was a run today with a work colleague in form Perth for the week at a pace I was comfortable with.  No slowing down and no walking

( Political stuff behind the cut... )