July 29, 2001 (idea)

My job is going well. Life as a full time private investigator's report writer is really not as interesting as it sounds, but I do believe I'm getting better at it. All those "The Claimant walked evenly with his arms by his sides" and "she frequently moved her head with no restriction" sentences are beginning to flow from my fingers into the keyboard with little or no thinking. Which is nice, as I've only been there for a month, and I look forward to the day I realise "Hey, this is hell easy. Now I can turn up to work half asleep and still do a half decent job!" Sweet.

And don't go thinking that it's all dark long coats, sun glasses and bowler hats. Sitting in cars and watching young minxes cheat on their old rich husbands and then reporting back to the old geezer for a handsome sum, film in hand. The investigation company I work for is basically only used to look at insurance fraud. People who claim they can't walk because of a car accident and say that it ruined their future career as a catalogue walker. So far the most unusual one I've heard is a woman who said that she couldn't "be intimate" with her partner, so naturally the pi got video of them doing the wild monkey dance, therefore disproving her theory. Apparently, according to a law-type friend, it's legal to video anything in Oz, as long as your not trespassing on private property. And I guess it's cool as long as you're not just showing the footage in non-related circumstances, ie, "Hey, Stan! Wanna come over and watch a video of my neighbours fucking?" "Yeah, cool, Hal. Be right over! I'll bring the popcorn!"

In other news, my beautiful boy and I went to Nelson Bay on the weekend. It's a cute little beach town near Newcastle, and we've been looking forward to our dolphin cruise and putt putt golf and eating in cute cafes and walking on the beach. Of course it rained. The whole bloody time. They said it hasn't rained like that for a while, that we had bad luck. So we went to a movie ('Evolution', and I liked it, you cantakerous old critics), had a heap of spas (one lasted 3 hours!) and ate a lot. It was still lovely, in spite of hurricane-like weather, and now we have an unused voucher for two people to go dolphin watching. We'll get there one day. If that dang rain ever stops!

It was Autonomy Day at uni on Friday. Autonomy Day is celebrated in commemoration of the day Newcastle Uni became separate from Sydney Uni, and is typically celebrated with drinking, bands, games, drinking games, and boat races (sculling games). I went for the last three years, starting at 5am the first year, 6:00 the next year and the relatively late 6:30am last year. Last year I heard an "old timer" (ie, grad student) say that the spirit of Autonomy Day was dying, that people were turning up later and not drinking as hard. That was sad, in a warped way. Anyway, Friday was the first time I wanted to just stop working and hang out with the gang. To start drinking at 6am and talk to random people (To paraphrase Jip from Human Traffic "Talk codshit to strangers") and just have a great day. But at the same time I didn't really mind. It was like, "Well, I'd love to hang out, but I have to go to work, and I have to do some overtime. We're swamped..." and other superior-sounding things. Of course, that would be stupid because they'd all just call me a wanker and never talk to me again, but I wanted to go to work. And now that I've heard the high-lights I know that I didn't miss much. The usual drinking, getting separated from friends, having altercations over which bar to go to and which events to watch/particpate in. Ah, Autonomy Day, you wacky beast you!

Things I'm looking forward to:

• Emily returning to Oz.
  Emily is an old best buddy from high school and she'll be here next Sunday, after a year away! She's been living and working in England (mmm, an Aussie working in a London pub before travelling? How unusual!) and bussing around Europe with another old friend from high school. I miss her so much, and am terribly excited about the prospect of catching up and hearing all about her adventures and becoming green with jealousy. It's a little scary- I'm so boring, she's so cool, am I fatter than when she left? but mainly exciting. Not long to go! It seems that she's been gone forever.
• Getting Kaspie the rag doll.
  We've paid the deposit and he'll be arriving in just two weeks! Hopefully he'll get on with Xerxes the budgie, but I'm confident he won't eat him. Kaspie is short for Kasparov, and he was named by jt. Only two weeks til we have a rumbly furry ball of fun (ie, a cat)!
• A job interview for a newspaper.
  Yeah, yeah, I know that I've been talking about my job, but I've just gotten a call from a Tamworth newspaper about an application I put in a month ago. And I'm not exactly looking forward to the interview, but I'd just like to see what happens. To get that decision made- a cadetship, from the bottom of the heap to a journalist job, or continue in Newcastle, doing something not really journalism related that pays well? This is my first big career decision, and I'm not dealing with it well. At all.

So that's my life at the moment. Full of work, and crappy weather, and fun. I hope everyone is having a good time and that they're healthy and happy. Have a good week!