29 April 2004 - 8:29 a.m.

it's sad when the most pressing reason to update my diary is not because i should but because i get so many hits from claire's site that i don't want to disappoint all the new people with old rubbish.

i've been really busy at work, as you can imagine, thanks to my two-week "vacation" in the u.s. lots of mini crises back at work, but it's not like they don't happen nearly every week there. people are so surprised when i mention even one of my many crises casually, as if that's the worst thing that could happen. when stressful things happen a lot, you get used to them and learn how to deal effectively. i guess this is manager training for me, whether i asked for it or not.

in case you're wondering why i'm not at work right now, the toilets are broken. we have 15 women who work in my office building and no toilets - i found this out yesterday after drinking a rather large hot chocolate and having soup for lunch. there's a daycare centre at work, and i had to use one of their kindergarten-sized toilets yesterday - an experience i do not care to repeat, thank you all the same. i am in no rush to get there, and it's a good thing i'm the boss, so i dont have to.

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the trip home to the u.s. was very good and a bit strange, but i'm really glad i went and glad to be back in melbourne. i got to see my parents, all of my siblings, sherry, sam and my grandma. i did not get to see jo-anne or san francisco, which i am still bummed about. i ate sourdough bread and taco bell and drank dr. pepper and welch's grape juice. i found out seth is married and the young hipsters (who formerly haunted the tower district) have kicked the cowboys out of all the old town clovis bars. i learned the outcomes of all of the reality shows currently screening or about to screen here and jumped ahead quite a few episodes of gilmore girls.

one of the highlights was cleaning out the barn over two weekends and dumping nearly everything in an enormous garbage bin (we filled it twice). i found everything i had remembered over the past two years and wanted to retrieve, including my university degrees, bobble-head pee-wee and my vintage overalls. i also found the CD i made of songs i really loved but didn't care for the rest of the CDs they were part of, entitled: stuff i sold at amoeba so i could make money, vol. I. that CD rocks, honestly. i'm contemplating another CD cleanout and a vol. II in my near future.

i also found a few surprises, like giant gumby and the report i wrote on australia when i was in 6th grade.

my current projects on the home front are to keep things tidy (simon did a great job of organizing while i was gone), use up all of our veggies from the market and make some dinners ahead of time, and to get rid of clothes i don't wear. i'm a busy bee.