Further witterings of the Hamster

Ack, tis a sorry state of affairs. The fact that I update this so infrequently, and the fact that I have seemingly so little inclination to do so, is a sad testament to the fact that being a grown-up is just not as much fun as being a student.

Ah well.

Nik and I went out for dinner yesterday, and (demonstrating one of the ways in which being a grown-up can be more fun than being a student, at least if you're an actuary) spent approximately four times our weekly food budget on a single meal. I kept looking at the price of my steak and thinking, 'That's two and a half veg boxes! Preposterous!' However, I suppose, the veg box doesn't come with truffle sauce. EVERYTHING on the menu came with truffle sauce (seemingly - one thing came with lentils, so that restricted my options). And it was by far the best food in Wokingham, by quite some way. (I did wonder how Italians have the energy to be so enthusiastic about sex, though, if they eat like that all the time. Maybe it's just an act. Or maybe they normally eat pasta and fresh, seasonal vegetables and go easy on the steak.)

I'm currently in the middle of transcribing some DULL financial conference about complaints. Dull, dull, dull, though marginally more fun than the one about financial regulations. Yawn. I really have to go out and get some bits for my dressmaking course, but I'm so tired (woke up at 5 for some reason) I don't know if I can face going to Bracknell this evening, let alone compos mentis enough to operate a sewing machine. While I don't want to start unmitigatedly slagging off Bracknell, as that's far too much of a cliche, it is one of those places that is designed for cars, and is thus impossible to navigate your way round on foot. My first week at the college, I tried to follow the footpath that went in the right direction, and ended up getting shunted round a deserted shopping centre and trying every exit in a labyrinthine underpass in the middle of a roundabout. And, of course, it being designed for cars, nobody else is walking. I never felt particularly unsafe, there were no gangs of youths leering threateningly from doorways, but there was nobody around to ask directions from. Bah. Nearly finished my skirt though. Need a pattern to start next week now (or tonight, if I can drag my weary carcass to John Lewis, back again and out to BRacknell, having done a respectable amount of work).

Parents coming this weekend, sans chien this time. Not that the chien was a particular problem, but we have got bacon curing all over the kitchen, so perhaps it's best she's not sleeping by it. (Yes, my food-buying obsessiveness led me to buy half a pig from the butcher at the farmer's market. We got very funny looks carrying the crate between us through the streets of suburbia. We had the most divine pork chops the other day... and can have them again... and again.... and again..... and again.... till next year! Nik thought we'd been swizzled and been given a whole pig instead of a half, but seeing as we were only charged for a half, it would be the world's worst swizzle...) Have no idea what we're going to do with them. Last time we all got horribly worked up about going to dinner with Nik's family and spent the entire afternoon stressing over a cake, but I don't think any of us is ready to go through that again, so we may be on that never-ending search for entertainment that is far enough away from Wokingham to be interesting, but near enough that my poor beleagured parents, who will be sandwiched between days involving hours spent on the M-sodding-1, won't balk at the idea of travelling to it. Hmm.

Anyhow, must press on with the dull financial conference. A particularly camp bloke is explaining how retired actuaries are really annoying. Yes, I know, but I need to keep body and soul together and all that. Hohumm.

Wrestling with the tax office and a treadle machine

Oof, have just rung the tax office. Been putting it off for... well, until about a week before they'd fine me for not having told them I'm self-employed! And, as ever, the chap on the end of the phone was very helpful, not at all scary and it was all fiiiiine. Don't know why I get so worked up about dealings with the Tax Office - I always get in a tizz and put it off for ages and ages, and then it's never as bad as I think! I shall let that be a lesson....

Been rather busy with work after a downturn over January, when I sorted out all the cupboards in the kitchen and various other worthy and boring things like that. Got called in to do an emergency eleventh-hour translation by the rubbish agency who have never given me any work before (I'm basically so unmarketable as a translator that I've given up responding to their emails), which required me to get up at six in the morning and do it in 'real time' online so someone could proof-read it simultaneously. I felt somewhat naked, sharing my rather idiosyncratic work processes with total strangers who might be judging me and my warped brain.

Still plodding away with my dressmaking course, though, have to pin and press the hem of my skirt for tomorrow and then I should be able to finish it off, with a bit of help. The sewing machine is almost working - I had it at the stage where the mechanism was fine, but I couldn't thread it, and now Nik's mum has shown me how to thread it, and something seems to have gone wrong with the belt.... Grrrr......

The veg box sent us a mixed fruit and veg box instead of just a veg box, which means no sprouting broccoli (one of my favourite vegetables) and a surfeit of bananas this week. Hohumm.

Anyhoo, have hemming and shopping to get on with. I'm having a 'freelancer's weekend' today. We've run out of almost all dry goods imaginable, and I feel rather vulnerable not having a well-stocked cupboard. There might be a nuclear holocaust or something.