Winter might be on it's way North, if today is anything to go by: big blue sky, the chill in the air has gone and the temperature feels decidedly transitional. It's been warmer at night too. Another month or so and I get to complain about the heat and humidity: whoo hooo ! You know when you're busy at work when you have to hire someone to come in to do your job because you have no time to do it yourself. It's sort of odd that the contractor'll get to do the part of my job that's the most fun - making the graphics. I get to do the cranky side - testing, client contact, liaising, figuring. I'd much rather sit in the corner and colour in but there you go, can't always get to do what you want when you want. I went to see the movie, Signs on Saturday night. I'd decided a while ago I wasn't going to see this movie, but the choice of movies is a bit thin-on-the-ground at the moment and I ended up at the 7pm session. In some ways it was better than I expected - m.night.shyamalan has a really interesting eye and the cinematography and the 'temperature' of the movie was just wonderful. The micro perspective of world events and the attention to detail of the characters and their surroundings was really well done and, I suppose, is the real talent m.night.shyamalan brings to his films. The script was efficient and well written. The story dealing with the family was well contained and retold - my interest was held through until the end. Shyamalan is good at "unfolding" information. The thing I *really* didn't like about the film was the whole "these aliens don't like water" thing. If I had been these intelligent, aggressive, planet hunting aliens, I would have chosen the planet I wanted to invade a little more carefully. I t sure did take them a long time to figure out Earth is two thirds water. They might remember to look out the windows of their spacecraft before entering a planet's atmosphere - our oceans are pretty visible from space. So the idea that Signs puts up: that there are no coincidences is a very interesting one when I think of how this evening worked out.[oh, that reminds me.. the lift stopped suddenly twice today and when i left tonight, it got stuck between ground and first for a while. then took me up to the top floor before travelling back down to ground.. weirdness.. i wish they'd fix the thing] We have a tight deadline with onsite testing tomorrow, and I burned a CD of work to do tonight to help meet that deadline plus I sent the file home too incase there was a problem with the disk. Not only was the disk corrupt, the email never showed up. Weird huh? Well work is really busy, but we can only do what we can do, and try not to stress overly. Today I hired a woman to do my job because I don't have time to do it. Hello, finally, I am a department ! --------

So the jamjar has had a bit of a makeover. It has dodgey links and faulty content, so watch where you are stepping. Achives are a bit shakey: Projects and Teatime are nonexistant: Parklife will expand to include all the old stories it used to hold from all you crazy peoples who do crazy things then tell me about them. New month, new life, new start, new design - fresh start. I've had a time lately, when a couple of people have used what they've read on these pages to hurt me. I considered taking the entire thing down and walking away from everything here. The thing is - I like tinkering around in my corner of the web. I like pouring words onto the screen and taking photograhs of things that catch my eye. I like trying to draw Grumpy Graphics Girl and most of all, I like being able to look back and read myself and see where I've come from and remember those I've met and things I've learned. I guess the risk I run with putting some personal information is that some people will use what they know and what they learn in a negative way. Many people keep their online/offline seperate from each other. I don't. The people in my everyday life read this - people I work with, my family, my relations, my neighbours, my classmates. People who sit next to me everyday at work, on the ferry, across the table at Christmas and you know what? it doesn't matter what you decide to say about me, because people who know me - know better. Thankgoodness for the rest of you who just use it to keep me company. --------

I feel like a train hit me sometime during my sleep. And what a waste of a weekend - sleeping through (almost) the entire thing. Eating at my family's house tonight was a nice break but really I could quite happily have stayed in bed and continued sleeping instead of rousing myself at 5pm and dragging my sad little self off for roast lamb and veggies. Now at a good half past eleven its time for bed again.

And tomorrow's another day of work - I wish there was a smidgen less to do and then I could just stay in bed another couple of days and get over this stinking flu. --------