Super

I've just eaten my way through the last week or so with about 10 meals coming from outside my house. The reason for this is all the pre-wedding, wedding, post-wedding, pre-Chinese New Year, post-Chinese New Year, special work lunch for editorial and boss' 40th birthday lunch celebrations. No wonder my pants are tight.

Speaking of Chinese New Year, Kung Hei Fat Choy! I cleaned up big time this year. In addition to a swathe of relatives visitng due to my bro's wedding, now that my bro is married, he has to give ang pow (red packets containing money) as well. There's $360 sitting in my kitty at the moment, and that's not including the RM50 that my Malaysian uncle gave me. Very soon I will be able to buy the washing machine I've always wanted.

Had a quiet weekend, which was fantastic. I cleaned the bathroom (only those close to me will understand what this means to me) and did some long overdue laundry (due to cursed rain all week) and then Assumpta came over and she, Sir and I had copious cups of tea and discussed Super Tuesday (ie, what the hell is it?) and the philosophy behind the death penalty. I did spend yesterday transcribing interviews for work (because I'm behind, again) but it felt quite fluid rather than tedious.

Other than that, I seem to be meeting interesting guys named Dan. On Monday, while recovering from the wedding, I went to the Todae shop (enviro store) in Glebe and met the owner Danin (who was HOT) and chatted to him about all things enviro/business. We tried to hatch a scheme that would translate to my boss being more green. This meeting was set up by his PR chick, Dani Lombard, who used to work at Markson Sparks when I was at POL.

Then Danny Cameron, editor of Engineering World, emailed me to ask if he could reprint my mega-projects article from The Project Manager Oct/Nov, which meant I could call Rob (love of my life, apple of my eye) to ask for AIPM permission. I replied to Danny in the affirmative and attached the text. He was profusely grateful for my prompt reply and then somehow we started an exchange about the partial eclipse on Thursday and he began to write strange things describing the sunset as a "pulsating orb of light, reddish behind the melancholy mist" or some such. I really have to get that email and post it up, it's totally bizarre. Especially since I've never met the guy and had only just corresponded with him via email.

Anyway, Danny ended up being a great contact because he also does Water Engineering magazine and our next theme is water so he's kindly given me a selection of articles to pilfer (with credit, of course). If only I could make sense of why he started ranting about the sunset...

TAFE starts tomorrow. To be honest, I'm a bit nervous about starting study again but I'm sure I'll love it once I'm in. Unfortunately the recommended books are expensive (although I found one at work that I may permanently borrow) so I haven't bought them yet. I'm going to see if the co-op bookshop has them cheaper or perhaps I could write to the publishers as a journo requiring review copies - ha!

P.S: And Dan is the new addition to our writing group. I've not met him yet but that's a fair number of Dans. Add to that Skippy's b/f Rob's flatmate, who I met in Brissie, and that's my quota for the year...