I wrote the following two paragraphs in the train on my way home from work on Saturday, before I got aggravated by how much the train was vibrating and making it thusly difficult to write in the Palm. Anyway:

So this has been my amended morning routine these past two days: I wake up, put on the coffee (because Terz is on holiday and doesn't wake up before me, for a change), take a shower, log on while drinking coffee, load the local newspaper's webpage, poke around for education-related articles --- and promptly see something that makes me go "Oh, crap," and suddenly, dawdling over coffee and e-mail isn't an option anymore.

Not that rushing into work accomplishes anything, necessarily, since this is the civil service after all, but my job is just to report on what's in the news.

And then I gave up writing. And when I got home, I slept. And when I got up, we went to dinner. And when we got home, I got lazy to write. And today I spent the entire morning and the better part of the afternoon roleplaying, so you know I didn't write. And then we went out to dinner at our friends' the Bs'. And now I'm home, and actually just tidying up e-mail and stuff, but then I thought I'd better write or I'd have journal guilt.

See, I spend all this time everyday reading other people's journals, I feel guilty if I don't contribute something in return. Also, I don't want to leave a false impression that I'm too busy to write (unless I really am, which I'm not, to which my many "slacker" comments in the past week's journal can attest). So in the interest of maintaining a fairly accurate picture of how my life really goes, here's the (fairly) regular Sunday night entry.

From what I wrote yesterday, you can see that it's been a hectic couple of mornings. Fortunately, those are only the mornings. The funny thing about my job is that if we panic, the people making decisions generally don't, but if we're blase, the people making decisions turn on us and ask us why we're not panicking. Catch-22, you say? Perhaps, perhaps. I let most of it slide off me --- just call me Teflon Gal --- but I can see how the temperamental shortcomings of my job might aggravate others. Terz wouldn't last a week, I don't think.

But enough about work. Friday night was awesome 'cause I came home, and Terz was winding up another Battletech game with his boys, and after he got them out of the house, he made green curry with chicken (okay, we used a canned sauce, which was only so-so) and cabbage with sambal and dried prawns. Quite the meal, for a Friday night. He should get week-long holidays more often. He made so much food that we have leftovers still, which we'll probably eat tomorrow.

Survivor on Friday night was not awesome. Maraamu voted out Hunter. The only reason I have left to watch the show is to watch the other tribe totally cream Maraamu when it comes to the merge (and probably before then). The Amazing Race on Thursday night was much better. We got to see two back-to-back episodes, because AXN was catching up so that it would be in sync from next week on, and it was nice to see so much of Rio de Janeiro.

But enough about TV. Today we had dinner at the Bs'. Mr B made steak *-- and when I say steak, I mean that he slapped a whopping 850g steak on Terz's dinner plate. Terz ate about 2/3 of it before giving up. Mr B himself had maybe a 500g cut and ate about half of it. Mrs B and I had far more normal-sized servings, and I'm pleased to say I'm the only person at the dinner table who finished all her food. I can't decide if it's because the amount I was given was just right (plus we'd skipped lunch today in anticipation of the steak dinner awaiting us, though we hadn't realized there would be 850g for Terz alone) or because I've been drilled by my mom since I was about eight to "think of the starving Ethiopians" and not waste food. Which reminds me of that joke about the Ethiopian and the Rolex watch, but it's in really bad taste and I won't repeat it here.

After dinner, the three of them played loads of games on the Bs' XBox and PlayStation2. I don't play such games well nor do I particularly like them, so I sat by and watched and flipped through Mrs B's photography books and magazines. While watching, it occurs to me that with all the toys the Bs have, they're like grown-up kids who can afford the latest cool toy on the block. And I don't mean that derisively at all, because if Terz and I had more money, we'd be doing that too. Which just goes to show that we (human beings) never outgrow the need for toys.

Terz's staying up to watch a football game, even though he has to go back to school tomorrow. I, on the other hand, am ready to call it a night. Just call us an Old Married Couple and be done with it. :)