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Steve's spaceToday's towering tree is just yesterday's nut that held its ground! February 05 Rosier IndeedA couple of days ago I mentioned that the future might be looking a little rosier, and indeed at this juncture it certainly seems that way! M has been swapping emails and texts and the tone has improved markedly. Needless to say, I feel much better about life all-together.
I've been asked by my priest to get involved with the running of the Alpha course, with a view to taking over the leadership along with another lady (Bev) who is also quite deeply involved in the church. I agreed although I feel quite apprehensive about it because my strengths are not administrative! Anyway, I've decided to give it a go and try my best to help further God's kingdom.
The leadership of our church are heading out for a retreat this weekend, and I'm in charge of the music. So far I've got exactly nowhere in choosing the songs, and I just know I'm going to blink a few times and discover that it's Friday! I bet the weekend will be a high point for me, but I can't say I enjoy the preparation. I find it somewhat ironic that God seems to enjoy pushing me in directions which make me uncomfortable, but I suppose I was moaning that I didn't know where my life was going last year, so I shouldn't complain when God starts using me! February 02 So dark, and no tea!What it is to live in Africa ...
If you live somewhere other than Africa, you've probably not experienced much in the way of power outages. South Africa is currently suffering from a combination of reasonably rapid economic growth, coupled with bad planning at high levels of government. Our new (well new-ish by now) government was so eager to get rid of white faces in para-statals that they chased away most of the experienced engineers - especially in one particular company known as Eskom. Eskom is our one and only power utility, and they have an absolute monopoly.
With the influx of new blood during the ousting of the old guard, empires were on the make, and the main focus was cost containment with a view to garnering fat bonuses for the top executives. Most of this cost saving was achieved by cutting capital expenditure - in english: "These fools haven't built a new power station since 1994!"
So here we are in 2008 with an economy which has grown at around 5% per year, and yes, power usage has escalated at the same pace! But that's not all ... there has been a massive drive to bring electricty to all previously disadvantaged households as well. This is all beautiful except that the reserves present for peak load periods and scheduled maintenance which were present in 1994, have now all been used in general supply!
Why am I going on about all this? Well - I'm sitting in the dark hoping my laptop's battery will last until I finish ths blog! I'm connected to the internet through the wonder of my cellular phone's modem capability, because at least the cellphone companies had the foresight to cater for power outages in their cell towers. But that's it, outside it is as black as the country side, and I'm in the middle of a city!
Oh, and one more thing: As if brown-outs weren't enough, the African criminal community have taken to using the switch-offs as golden opportunity for stealing the copper cables used to convey our electricty! This means that often when the supply is restored, we still don't have power until new cables are installed. What a mess :-(
Anyway, that said I am still proud to be a South African. All my country needs now is strong leadership, someone like Britain's Maggie Thatcher to take on the lazy, and the corrupt and set things straight. I think we have the right people, they just need to "step up." If you're a believer, pray for South Africa's leadership every day. Prayer led us to a peaceful transition from "Aparteid," and God can bring us good leaders too.
Enough about my country.
I promised more about my romantic life, and here it is: M broke it off mostly because her ex husband had been giving her a hard time about hooking up with someone so soon after her divorce. He maintained that it was "not proper" and he was making her life miserable as a result. She couldn't just walk away because they share a son! Last weekend she stopped by his place to make sure her son had enough clothing to last the weekend, and was stopped in the passage by her ex because he had someone there! Evidently the "proper" rule only operates in one direction.
My take on all this is that it changes everything between her and I. With her ex involved with someone, he can't very well be insisting that she stay single, and this seems to be coming out in her communication with me. She has sent many more messages in the last few days, and the tone has definitely softened considerably! I'm very pleased :-)
I'm not counting my chickens just yet, but the future just might look a little rosier...
January 31 Soft foods for meI went
to visit my dentist yesterday. He did a filling about eight months
ago which "caved in" after a couple of months. I kept meaning to go back,
but you know how it is: There's always something else more important, and
visiting any health-care practitioner involves taking time off work.
Anyway, he decided to make use of the opportunity to take a complete set of
x-rays and do something called a "scale and polish" (I think) - can't
remember the exact term he used. The filling turned out to be quite a
major job because he needed to make it thicker and take a little off the top
molar to try and reduce the heaviness of my bite. He did a lot of stuff in
there and whilst I couldn't feel anything, I just knew it was going to ache
later!
Sure enough, my jaw
had a throbbing ache later that evening, and I was glad that I didn't have to go
out anywhere! The most irriating thing about it all is that I have to
avoid pressure on the amalgam for 48 hours to ensure it sets properly, and after
having to have it redone so soon, I decided not to take any chances. I had
a liquid supper, oats for breakfast and a liquid lunch, but now I am really
hungry. There are still another 24 hours to go :-(
News on the
romantic front is interesting. M (I'm going to call her that for now)
seems undecided about how things should run from here on out. I sent her
an email on Tuesday asking how she was doing, and I received what seemed to me a
rather indifferent reply. Yesterday I was feeling quite rotten (some
strange virus I think because it's gone today,) and in exchanging emails
she mentioned that she was having coffee with a friend nearby, and perhaps I
would like to pop in and say hi ...
What a
question! Of course I wanted to, and I duly made an appearance.
Thing is I was feeling dizzy and faint (just like when my blood-sugar drops) and
I can't have been at my best. I managed some kind
of conversation, or so I remember, and shortly thereafter she was ready to
leave. The leaving was a bit awkward because it's hard to know what is
acceptable to someone who's told you: "It's over." It ended up in the
hallway with her trying to pay the bill and me wondering where to stand. I
decided on a quick exit, gave her shoulder a squeeze and mumbled some kind of a
goodbye.
After that I went
home and got myself into bed for a rest - bearing in mind, of course, that I had
to be up for the dentist later. The rest actually helped a lot, and during
that time she sent a text asking how I was doing and saying it had been good to
see me. Yeah well I feel pretty much the same but I'm still not sure where
this is or isn't going. Anyway, I guess the best thing to do is just to
let her work out for herself what she wants. I'm all for
"drawing lines in the sand," but there's a time for that and I
believe this isn't it.
There's more to
this story but I've run out of blogging time, so watch this space for
another mostly boring episode of "a day in the life of
Steve."
:-)
P
please don't print
this e-mail unless you really need to.
January 28 What to thinkI had a pretty dark
weekend, mostly because I was missing a certain lady terribly, but also because
I was pretty tired. (Events last week contrived to rob me of some
much-needed sleep.) Anyway, on Saturday I finally made it out of bed
around 9:30, and then took until about eleven to get out and about.
Feeling like doing nothing at all, but needing to get out of the house I headed
over to my folks' place and spent a few hours with them. My mother is an
angel, and she smeared on the sympathy nice and thick - just the way I need it
:-)
Still, even the
ministrations of my dear-sweet mother were not enough to keep the blues away for
more than a few hours. I finished Saturday curled up on my bed with two
"chick flicks," hoping to ease my own pain with someone else's. It worked
to a degree and I felt quite a lot better on Sunday. There was decent
cricket on the TV so I settled down to a day of being a couch pototoe!
True to form though, sitting still for the whole weekend was getting too much
for me, and I headed out in the afternoon for a hard ride on my
bicycle.
I came back feeling
tired but good - the endorphin rush of hard exercise always improves my
mood! That's when it happened (the crux of this entry:) I received a
sms from said lady, asking how it was going with me and if I was ok. My
reply was simple: "Hey u :-) I still think about you all the time and miss
you like crazy!" A few minutes later she sent another detailing how she
almost phoned to come over the previous evening!
I must admit that I
was hoping that something like this might happen. This is why I decided
not to pester her or "try to be friends" right after a break-up. I was
hoping that a clean break might get her thinking about the good times, and what
she is now doing without. Perhaps it's a little early to tell, but it
seems that what I was hoping for is happening. I can only hope - I
really like this girl!
January 23 Seems like a MondaySome days start
badly and get worse. Today was such a day. It started when I
attempted to gain access to a laptop I've been fixing up for a friend who needs
one. After trying various options I decided that I was going to have to
reinstall windows, so I settled down to the long task. That's when the
laptop decided that it had had enough of life, and gave up the ghost! One
minute it was doing its thing, the next it was dead. Stone
dead.
From there things
just got worse. The users decided that today they would spend the day
submitting tasks for us programmers to complete. I would not be much
surprised if that's all they did today, because the list of tasks has grown to
an alarming degree. Of course completing the actual tasks became more
difficult today as well, because things that normally work out relatively simply
decided that today they were going to "dig their heals in."
Mind you, it's
probably not as bad as it seems: Much of this is probably due to the fact
that the laptop's dying irritated me a great deal, so my thoughts were not the
calm, cool-headed thoughts that they usually are. I had another go with
the laptop this evening - I completely dismantled it and then reassembled it in
the hope that "something loose" would become "something tight," but to no
avail. It still refuses to show signs of life.
So there it is: A
day I will be glad to shut my eyes on!
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