So everything was going great, the beers and pad thai was flowing, conversation jovial and merry when the team ruined my attempt to avoid all conversation regarding my imminent departure by handing me a giant “Goodbye and good luck” card signed by most in the office.

There was the obligatory comments from randoms who I regretfully never spoke to, those who I got along well with and then those who I had no idea who they were. The comments were appropriate in this regard, the randoms were like “good luck buddy (who are you?) the ones who i saw around but never spoke to were slightly more personal with “good luck in the future buddy. Nice knowing you (a touch tongue in cheek perhaps?) and the people I got along well with all had a go, calling me girls names, making sarcastic comments as expected.

I had to hold it together to make sure the emo waterworks wouldn’t pour out and remain as diplomatic as possible. That moment will come I am sure, however, after 6-10 shots later this evening.

All in all quite touching, slightly awkward and completely unexpected.

Just a few hours remain…….

Doesn’t matter how you say it, I wont be coming back to this office on Monday. So I have already spent the majority of my morning marking out those special moments like “the last time I walk down that street”, “the last time I open the office door”,”the last time I blog at work.” Sigh, memories.

The part I look forward to the least however, is the emo goodbyes. This process began even before I had completely walked in the office; with a random staff member holding the door open for me, shaking my hand and wishing me a fond farewell as I was entering the building.

This sort of gesture makes me hopeful I will receive the sort of send off I have always dreamed about when leaving a job.

At 5pm I would slowly stand up, take in a deep breath and walk in slow motion (for effect) towards the door as people chant my name the same way they chanted “Maximus, Maximus!” for Russel Crowe in Gladiator.

That would be awesome.

I guess I will be blogging again later in the day since, lets face it, I wont really be doing much work hey.

Well, yesterday in the office I was sitting at my desk working furiously (as I always do) when my nose caught a whiff of pungent, headache inducing smell. Gazing around the office trying to determine its source I noticed that it was one of the new staff members (a lady) polishing her nails with what smelled like turpentine.

This reached 6/10 for me on the annoying scale, as along with anything nose related (picking, blowing, wiping), it rates very highly as something which “people should not do in the presence of others”. As the end of the day finally arrived my irritation slowly dissipated, I went home to my loving family, we sat around the dinner table talking about our day and the world was good again.

The next day began pretty well, with yours truly securing a window seat on the train to work; which means no moving out of the way for fat people, no one shoving their ass in my face as they clumsily move through the aisle and every opportunity for me to catch up on some solid z’s.

About 3 stations from my stop my ears prick up to the unmistakable sound of a nail clipper. A mini nail clipper to be precise. I heard this above Simon and Garfunkel blaring away (if you can call it that) on my iPhone as well mind you. Hearing this eliminated any enjoyment I had previously gained from my trip, and made the remaining few minutes some sort of Chinese water torture for me. To make matters worse, I walked past the offending lady, with my disapproving scowl at the ready, only to have my face morphed into one of disgust; when I witnessed her not only cutting her nails, but eating them after.

After my gag reflex had subsided I tried to remind myself that there were considerate people in the world as I made the last leg of my journey to work.

As if things could not get any worse a few minutes past 9am the compulsive nail biter I sit next to began his daily ritual of stripping all the cuticles away from each and every digit, and then picking his nose with his newly nail-less finger.

It is going to be a long day.

Anyway the first few times I was asked this I was terribly confused and called for a swift “please explain” from the check out merchant. After the standard “this is the way the world is now” explanation I sheepishly exclaimed that I did not remember my PIN, or even knew I had one. Lucky for me the old John Hancock is still seen as an acceptable form of identification. When asked, however, I would always chuckle “ahh I didnt even know I had a PIN for my credit card, looks that is yet another number I need to remember!”

As I continued to use my credit card to purchase items I actually found this to be a decent conversation starter, at least initially. This turned out to be quite handy, especially when confronted with an attractive young brunette behind the counter. Usually I would stumble over my words worse than a last placed Olympic hurdler, but this ice breaker got the “awww cute” response a few times.

Thinking this to be my new awesome pick up line from now until forever I continued to use it (on women) every time I purchased something. Well, it seems that like most things even this has an expiry date, as i noticed it to be less and less effective over time. Maybe I was using it too much?

Well I think we have seen the death of this phrase, as yesterday I was out at JB HiFi purchasing the new Ben Kweller album when I dropped this charmer on a gorgeous blonde behind the counter.

“Yeah well I guess you can’t always rely on your signature, times are changing.”

Cut down!!! Needless to say, I didn’t get coffee/lunch/dinner with her……

I am still trying to find my bearings however, as all the things that tied me to my former home out west are gone for the most part. It will be a challenge for me to find new points of reference that make me think “this is home now.” Speaking of home, it really feels like the house we have moved into is turning into a home rather than just a place to sleep at night surrounded by boxes. There is still a fair way to go, but for now the tears have dried and I am settling in to my new life on the “other” side of the bridge.

Well nothing more for me to say, enjoy the following pictures of our new home!

I get the feeling that these sort of posts will be the norm for the next few weeks, as I frantically photograph and video as many things as I can around the house before we pull up stumps and leave for good.

There is no sound, and you don’t actually see me at all in the video as I had several false starts, so in the end had to settle with observing from a distance rather than getting hands on and feeding them.

Believe me, I tried to make it work (feeding out of my hand) but that particular pair are so used to our family that they know we will eventually cave and just leave seed out for them anyway. Why work for something you can just get for free?

I hope you enjoy, it will be one of the last times I am able to do this………….

To accomplish all of this I am going to employ the famous Seinfeld method of habit forming, where you take a calendar and mark off every day you accomplished your goal behaviour and do this for 30 days. If you miss a day, you start again. The idea is that ruthless method of repetition will encourage you to repeat your behaviour for fear of having to start right at the beginning again. So here we go – in no particular order, here are my bad habits and how I am going to combat them.

Bad Habits to Terminate

Ultimate Procrastinator

I plan and plan and plan and then plan to plan but never actually get things done. I am going to definitely make sure that the next time I intend to do something I do it. Maybe tomorrow.

Bad listener

Sometimes when people talk to me I just cannot care enough to pay attention, and their ramblings descend into the realm of white noise. This is particularly embarrassing when it comes time to respond. So my solution is to implement more “listening” techniques, even if I’m not actually listening, to avoid those awkward moments entirely. You know what I mean, the tactfully placed grunts and “mmm hmm’s” as well as the handy “i know what you are saying” should do the trick. I may have to practice in front of a mirror first.

My meh face is too similar to my concentration face

For those of you who are not aware of what a “meh” face is try visualising the most boring activity you can think of. Good, now imagine having to repeat that activity again and again and again. Pretty painful hey. Now, quickly run to a mirror and have a look at your face while holding on to that feeling. That is the meh face. Also useful for avoiding buskers in train stations and sales/charity people who set up a booth in shopping centres and try to sell you something.

Well anyway it turns out that I am such a fan of the meh face that often I use it for situations I probably shouldnt. Like job interviews and pick up attempts at bars.

This probably explains many of the accusations of not listening to conversations I get from various folk as well.

I suppose the thing to do would be to attempt a smile once in a while, but really I just see that as devaluing smiles in general. Like when people drop “love” in every conversation, effectively stripping all meaning from the term.

Hmmm rambling much…….

Leaving the nest as it were. Packing up my collective junk and relocating somewhere less west of the city and theoretically closer to happiness. If happiness is a place you can move to.

My travel time to work will be shortened considerably in my new digs, so that will be slightly less irritation for me. Well unless i get a new job in Penrith or something. Then effectively I will be moving even further away from work. Hmm, didn’t think of that.

The first thing I noticed about the moving process is the sickening amount of crap I have accumulated over the years. I am not a hoarder by nature, so I wasn’t terribly cut up about liberating this junk from my possession, however I am quite sentimental about things. I couldn’t hold back the daytime soap style flash backs every time I picked up an object of significant historical meaning for me. This is of course the natural enemy of efficiency in such tasks, and would explain why it took me 30 mins to “go through” my old birthday and Christmas cards (keeping all of them of course) and only 10 mins going through all my old University reports (purging them all of course).

The stuff we don’t take with us or throw out will be up for sale in the first ever Smith family (not the charity) garage sale. This is something I am not looking forward to in the slightest, as the thought of some grubby little toddler touching my once prized possessions and then coaxing his/her parents to pay some ridiculously low price for it disturbs me. I plan to sabotage all of my garage sale items in some way to make me feel better.

All in all this is a good move. Its a new year and I am hoping that it will be full of new beginnings for me, in many aspects of my life.

In one months time things will be very different for me, and not just with the move.

More to come…….

I was on the train traveling home from work the other day, when I found myself in the most awkward of battles for supremacy you could encounter on a train.

The train was particularly full that day due to an earlier delay and I was packed in like a sardine. A sardine in a “No Name” brand tin to boot. Like the veteran public transport whore that I am I immediately maneuvered myself into a position that allows excellent grippage access to the pole in the middle of the carriage. Like a swimmer desperate to stretch that extra inch at the wall but missing out on the gold medal by a fraction of a second, a significantly taller man grabbed at the bar – his hand positioned slightly above mine. Despite his bulky frame being a little too close for comfort, this did not bother me, as I mentioned the train was packed and like an inmate stripping down for his first shower in jail, I had already mentally prepared myself for 45 mins of being physically violated.

What I did not account for, however, was this males particularly liberal hand movements on the pole. (Please people, this is not meant to be dirty). Every time his hand moved too close to mine I waited the obligatory 5 secs in order for him to realise what was going on and that I had already staked my claim on that particular piece of pole real estate and move accordingly. Not only did this not occur, but by not moving my own hand I somehow gave the signal that I was “easy meat” and that I could be treated however he liked. It got to the point where the bottom fingers of his hand were overlapping slightly with my thumb and index finger. Eventually I caved in, and moved my hand, feigning a quick song change on my iPhone so it did not appear that I was actually attempting to escape the sweaty man hand on the pole. (Out of the gutter guys).

I tactically placed my hand a good 3 cm underneath his hand and gleefully went back to listening to my music and staring at the girls in the carriage. No less than 5 mins later I feel a slight tickle on my wrist and move to brush it away, assuming it is a spider or small insect. To my horror I see that the offending hand has repositioned itself slightly, feeling that the extra 3cm was distance I generously gave to him out of the kindness of my heart. The tickling sensation turned out to be particularly long hand hairs from this gentleman, reacting with my own hand hair in one of the most “ewwwwww” moments I have experienced in recent times.

By this point I was well and truly sick of it, and was formulating both polite and impolite methods to reclaim what was rightfully mine.

Unfortunately I never got my chance as moments later the train slowed on approach to the station, my adversary quickly adjusted his bag and the hand was gone.

Feeling a tremendous sense of injustice I looked around for a potential foe but came up with nothing, as the carriage had emptied significantly at that last station. This left me depressed.

The story does have a happy ending however. A few stations later I eyeballed an empty seat and make a break for it, beating an old lady to the punch.

I had won the day.

Ok, I think I need to clarify a few points. First of all, I did not grow my awesome beard for movember. No, that idea was born out of weeks of neglect well before the month of November. Secondly, I would not have qualified for movember anyway, as the look I am currently sporting is much more than a mo could ever achieve.

For all you haters out there, read this list of beard benefits and weap.

1) I save 4 mins preparation time in the morning
2) I no longer get checked for ID in clubs
3) My “stay the fuck away” look has improved considerably
4) I can say I am in a band and have people believe me
5) All of a sudden I have groupies for the band I say I’m in

Peace out