Why Me?

Simon jumped out of his tank no less than three times yesterday, two of which were within 10 minutes of each other and at about 4.45 in the morning. Then I found him under the fridge this morning; what is wrong with him? More to the point - how is he doing it?

I spent the week making a choker out of a complex structure of swarovski beads and wire, only to put it on and decide I didn't like it. Maybe it will grow on me. Life sucks.

Simon - an unrecognised genius or a total thicky..? The debate continues.

Simon flew the coop again this morning which made it the third time. I thought I had foiled his attempts to break out of jail by moving the toy he was climbing on. Apparently, I was wrong. His pattern changed this morning though, he didn't crawl on my pillow - he just motored about my room near my bed and I was too slow to catch him. So, since it was 4.30AM I decided to leave him to it until he came back. Well, he didn't come back. So at 10.25, after I had woken up, I was forced to crawl around on the floor looking for him with a torch. Eventually, I found him in my wardrobe chewing up my Hello Kitty slippers. So the question remains; does he know what he is doing, or is he really that thick?!

Fight or Flee...? There's a third way with The Kingdom...

But what is it and how do you find it...?

Simon - an unrecognised genius or a total thicky..?

So I woke up at the unholy hour of 6.30 this morning (having gone to bed at about 3am- lovely) to find Simon wandering about on my pillow. Now being as I didn't feel like getting up right then, I thought I would leave him to motor about my room until I could be bothered to get up and catch him. I do mean motor; he does this curious snuffling thing as he explores and he's so fat that he can't really run, so he sounds like a depressed moped. Two minutes later, he was back at my pillow about to climb on my face so I had to get up and take him back to his tank. Now it might not seem like anything strange for a hamster to escape his box and go on a mission of exploration but Simon lives in a tank with very high sides and it's on the top of my computer desk, just below head height. Not only that but under the shelf is a load of junk including about 8 cardboard boxes, so I simply cannot understand how he made it out of his tank and down to the floor without killing himself. I also wonder whether he is completely thick and didn't know that he was wandering around in circles, or if he knew I would take him back to his tank and came to wake me up on purpose..

According to certain parties, parts of my blog are not very amusing, indeed, apparently my *Letters* are becoming "tiresome". Sorry about that, but as I have said before, my blog is mine. In other words, it is not for you, it is for me.
I never promised entertainment, in fact I believe what I said was that most people would probably not enjoy it. It is what it is. Cathartic. Therapeutic. Maybe it's not what you had in mind but as I have also said before, this is a free country. May I respectfully suggest that if you are not enjoying reading it, perhaps you should stay away for a while until I have finished venting my spleen. To your suggestion commenter, do you not think that if there were that I would be doing?!

Letters, 3.

Dear Colin,

I must say that this has come somewhat sooner than I expected but I find myself so puzzled by the email you sent following the one concerning Christmas that I thought I had better drop you a quick line and clarify a couple of points.

You say that you imagine that I find "all this discussion about Koinonia rather frustrating" - sorry, what discussion would that be, exactly? The last time I recall speaking to you at all, as I remember it, I was sat at the office computer swearing under my breath because I had just lost two whole hours worth of my work as it was doing that annoying thing where it refuses to recognise any external discs and won't save anything and then it crashes so you lose everything again. Now to the best of my recollection, the conversation went something like this:

BW: Are you working on the Koinonia?

T: Yes and I am not best pleased as I have just lost two hours work...

BW: Oh, why's that?

T: Because it is doing that annoying thing where it refuses to recognise any external discs and then it crashes so you lose everything again so I am not in the best mood.

BW: Yes, it can be frustrating sometimes, well I guess I'll leave you to it.

T: Yeah, see you.

Obviously, that may well not be verbatim, my memory is not fantastic at details when I am irritated, but it was something like that. So when exactly did we "discuss" anything?

On the other hand, I do most definitely recall that at no time did you ask me when I would be finished, or what I usually do with the Koinonia when it *is* finished. Which, incidentally, is to put a hard copy on Megumi's desk, with a big old note that says "Megumi, here is the absolute final version of the Koinonia." A fact which, had you bothered to ask, you could easily have found out. I also remember quite clearly that you did not ask if you could see it when it was done. Now I realise that you do have a right to see it before publication since you are, in accordance with the church by-laws, acting on behalf of the pastor in his or her absence -(we will leave the "discussion" as to why you are only choosing to do this with selected duties, not all of them, for another time.) - however, I think it only courteous to actually ask the person doing all the work for their permission before taking it and bandying it around an admin meeting. Especially since most of them wouldn't know a decent piece of writing if it jumped up and slapped them in the face, let alone appreciate the fact that the People in Profile alone piece took 6 hours of my life which I will never get back and that's not to mention the time it took to type up Hugh's boring archaeological epics since he doesn't have a computer and they sent me asleep every time I started one so I can't even measure how long they took!

What I am really having difficulty understanding though, is what business it is of admin's anyway.... after all, the constitution does not say "the church newsletter must be approved by the congregational President, vice-President, Clerk and Treasurer, as well as the Pastor" does it? No. It doesn't. In case you haven't quite picked up my feelings about admin yet, let me iterate that I think they are well representative of the congregation at large with the exception of a few. That is to say ingrate Philistines.

Lastly, before I continue to address my concerns about your mismanagement of the church and the appropriation of admin as your personal posse in another epistle, may I just ask why it is exactly, that when I slagged off the entire congregation for being rude and noisy during Ms Nishimura's divine solo one Choir Sunday, no one raised so much as an eyebrow. When I dismissed the novel "The Da Vinci Code" for being a load of dross written by someone who only knows three adjectives and who has created a cast of cardboard cut outs with the emotional depth of a piece of plywood (or something like that) there wasn't even a murmur. But when I write about something that is actually important, that requires readers to actually think about someone other than themselves for more than 30 seconds for their lives, THEN you and your little coterie want me silenced?!

I hope you have a good explanation ready.


As usual,

Yours etc etc

Terri