It's over. YAH! The Bartley-Smith Ballet Academy's Production for 2000 is over. My bones hurt my toe is sore (dropped a prop *doh*) but now I have my life back. I have been superstressed through this entire thing. Three weeks isn't enough to design and make sets when you only have after work or weekends to make them. It's like this every year I should be used to it. (grr's at the printer) I swear, besides word processing packages, using a printer is the hardest thing I have to do. This printer.. no, EVERY printer is so temperamental. I can never get a simple eight page document to print without having some kind of problem. My printer at home is a pain too. It was cheap, it is bottom of the scale printerwise (Epson 300) but really, 12 mins per sheet of type? and it hasn't got a paper catching tray, so if I need to print say, 24 pages of something, I have to set it running and then go to work. I come home to flutters of pages across the carpet - and if I don't make it add page numbers I am stuffed as far as sorting say, 30 pages of code into some sort of sense. Rachelle is laughing at me. The printer has printed .. Oh i cant even describe what the stupid thing has done. gggrrrrr --------

American Independence Day Weekend - apparently - well yes, a date the entire world is aware of.. the fourth of july. My favourite Disney movie was Pollyanna, so I know all about the fourth of July (gradually adding capitals into the mix) corn on the cob and watermelon and little fluttering flags and ka-booming fireworks and singing the National Anthem and winning dolls and falling out of trees and never being able to walk again and the town rallying 'round to show how much they love you and going by train to a surgeon who can help. Yep.. I know allll about the 4th of July celebrations, thanks to that wonderful contraption, the television. We have Waitangi Day on February 6th. It's to celebrate (I use that term loosely) the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. It was an agreement between the British and the Maori to end the conflict over land and ownership etc. A Treaty which is still being contested today, because the Maori claim it was unfair and they didn't or hadn't understood what they were giving up at the time. I really don't know a lot about it, it seems to be simple and complicated. Over the years, different tribes have been paid out in compensation, millions upon millions of dollars. Now I read that they want compensation for the use of the air and the airwaves, and I just, I don't understand it. I'm just mentioning it because I am just mentioning it. I haven't enough information to have any sort of opinion. As I am told, it is complicated. I slept and dreamed restless dreams last night. After sleeping all afternoon I watched tv and kept an eyeball on the computer. Nothing strenuous there. Then back to bed to sleep again. Restlessly waking up through the night seeing it was still dark and drifting back to dreams. My throat is a lot better, I can still feel it but it's not so sore. The pain in my eye is still there. My eye has a headache when it's open. My muscles ache, my neck, my back. I feel better than I did yesterday, which is just as well, because I have a lot to do this weekend. --------

I felt the sunlight on my face. My eyes squeezed to slits not used to the intensity. Almost as if I havent seen sun for so long. Going to work in the almostdark and coming home in the verydark, working in an office without glass or natural light. It was seeming to me that light was no longer an option. I have come home. I have finished pressing work and put my back pack on my back and left work to come home, to my warm, quiet flat. My bed is waiting for me and I intend not to disappoint it. This is the best bed I have ever had. I like it at night and in the morning. I like it tucked tight and sharp and tidy and I like it blanket piled like heapings of cosy. My pillows don't fall down the back and the mattress doesn't saggle in the middle. I can sit up and read or I can curl around and dream. I've had sex in my bed and it has good traction. I can sleep spread like a starfish or coiled like some other rockyshore creature whose name I don't know. My hottie is pretty neat too. Last night I slept with it on my back. My muscles are aching from whichever germ has invaded, but the hottie was comforting and warm and weightyenough. Today in the post there was the invoice from Network Solutions for my domain name. I havent paid for it so it's not official but I seem to be able to upload to it. *smiles* want to know what it's called? michellepark.com People laugh at me when I tell them but I say, if it's good enough for Martha Stewart, its good enough for me *g* I am hoping it will be more a portfolio/work/skill related site. Of course, one needs to find time to actually make the files to upload but that will happen. By the time I pay for the site and get the keys to it, so to speak, I will be chomping at the bit to get stuff up there. This makes me very happy. eep I am so into narrow columns and small type. Well, just thank your lucky stars I am not screwing 'round with the size of the text. --------