Tuesday, August 17, 2004

atrociously titled tuesday

So. It's a horribly evening, cold & the rain is fair thumping down out there. And dripping through the hole in the ceiling in our kitchen, artfully placed so that water comes down alarmingly close to the wiring at the back of the stove. If I electrocute myself cooking dinner I'm definitely finding a nicer place to haunt.

I'm aware that the cold we have here is nothing compared to the cold in ol' Christchurch, where it was snowing the other day. But I'm feeling sorry for myself so naturally I discount anyone else from having a worse time.

Well, today was pretty nondescript. After an interrupted night's sleep (bloody kookaburras wake up too goddamn early) and weird dreams (reading that 300 Love Letters site didn't help - there were at least 6 ex-girlfriends in my dreams...), the work day was frustrating & annoying. Too much calling of funeral directors and querying of paperwork. On the plus side I had some interesting deaths: my first mad cow, a medical procedure that took about 45 minutes to figure out (doctors handwriting = epileptic chicken scratches) and turned out to be one no-one else had heard of either (warfarinisation), and an 80 year old man with 9 kids but no marriages (must have been a bit of a Casanova 'cause the eldest was 60-something and the youngest in his late 20s. I won't tell you how he died...).

Other than that and my boring, mumbling, inept and, as it turns out, religious workmate trying to engage me in a spiritual/ philosophical debate (while I was trying to read my book! He got the rant for that... though I let him get a word in after 5 or 10 minutes) the day was pretty blah. I'm being trained by a surly Irishman and he's kinda fun to play with, trying to get a smile. I've taken to calling him Andy Won-Kenobi just to see how long before he cracks. You gotta make your own fun in some jobs.

Nothing else new really. Well, I discovered this, once again on the words theme. Who'da thought diphthong would only be number 50536? I mean doesn't everyone else use it regularly?

And of course there's this test for your reading speed. My results this time were better than the first time, but I think I might have skimmed it a bit:

You read between 450 - 500 words per minute. Well above average reading level. (The average rate is between 200 - 250 words per minute.) It is assumed that you did not skim the words nor fail to understand the meaning of what was read.

Interesting but kinda useless. Which is very much like me. Although I did kill 35 people today so it hasn't been totally wasted.

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