Number Twenty: Looking up things that you shouldn't

Oh the joy of the internet; so many opportunities for so much pleasure and yet so much pain*, and all in the privacy of your own home. You can look up anything, be it carrying on from Number Eighteen and photos of your ex-boyfriend's wedding (that apostrophe is soon to take a step to the right, quite scarily**), to THAT Paris Hilton video. These can lead on to repeated versions of Number Nine, or another certain work avoidance tactic that is a favourite of one of my friends that I am as yet undecided whether to publish. Either way, it forms a great link if you're looking to waste - sorry - USE your time in larger segments than is afforded by single tactics alone. Hurrah!

*Which I guess is a win/win situation if you're a masochist
** and add an s in there somewhere too - it hasn't got to the point where two of my exes are marrying eachother, yet...

Number Nineteen: Sleep

This is a subject very close to my heart now that I've finished my thesis - I couldn't get enough when I needed to get up and write at 5 in the morning, and now I'm out avoiding it until 1 or 2, margherita in hand being constantly replenished like the magic porridge pot (whilst my credit card acts in the opposite manner) only to find myself forced out again, blinking in the sunlight of the outside world to which I am still unaccustomed at half 6. You can toss and turn all night, but it always feels just so damn good about 46 seconds before your alarm goes off, just long enough for you to be conscious of what you're missing as you fight to keep your eyelids slamming shut and your head nodding in a way which - however much you may kid yourself - cannot be misinterpreted as "oh, I just really needed to see that detail up close on my screen for half a second". And now that my social life - aside from the margherita quaffing - is confined to weekends I've got that horrible realisation that I should be up to "make the most of the day". God, when I didn't think it could get any worse I find that I'm turning into my mother.


(If you're lucky enough to be working from home, then mid-afternoon kips are the best - whilst you digest your lunch and nod off in front of Doctors - and have the added bonus of turning your brain to mush for about as long as it takes to get around to watching the repeat of Neighbours. Damn, I miss those days...)

Number Eighteen: Stalking

Where do these thoughts come from? They wander into our heads, usually late at night and often with so little a preamble as to make their apprearance quite rudely imposing. What happened to that guy I used to go out with in school/the girl I used to sit next to in Maths/that actor I really fancied from that TV programme back in the eighties/etc? Friends Reunited only goes so far and, being stingy enough not to fork out the tuppence ha'penny required to contact these people legitimately (and also for the reason that they might imagine that that I take any interest in the site whatsoever, which is completely unfounded of course) It's amazing the number of sites you can use to track people, be it by photo, job, email address, phone number, skype - the possibilities are seemingly endless, although usually finite. It's quite exciting to finally get hold of your quarry, like a fish on a line, to see if you can land a reply.* you might chat for a bit, maybe meet up for drinks and talk about "the good old days"** But frequently there comes the realisation that there is a reason why you didn't keep in touch in the first place - they're dull, they're clingy, you have nothing in common, their temper's a little too prone to combustion at the smallest thing - and so you must now extracate yourself from their company with the greatest degree of politeness but also preferably abruptness as possible.

But what DID happen to that guy I used to go out with at school...?


*I realise that that is an appauling analogy. Or is that a similie. Or something.
** Neil Patrick Harris has - as yet - failed to return my calls

Number Seventeen: For what we are about to Send and Receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful...

Now fully ensconced in the world of work, I've been deprived of many of the former work avoidance tactics (although I've been busted by directors on many occasions looking at ebay - I can't quite figure out if it is a good or bad thing that it's frequently Agent Provocateur that I'm searching for on these occasions...)
However, I've been reintroduced to the addiction of the "send and receive" button on Entourage. This is, however, reserved strictly for those times when zooming in and out from whatever drawing package you are using has become so repetitive that it's beginning to bore you to tears. You know what I'm talking about, we've all been there, it's part of the training.
Despite the fact that our system is set to automatically check for any email updates every nine minutes, my inherent impatience means that I am checking every four minutes, in quiet times, which reduces to every two minutes when bored and every 3 seconds when absolutely desperate to find something else to distract me from what I'm doing. Our strictly "office only" address book has also been expanded as much as one of Douglas Adams' trilogies so as to increase my chances of receiving material to distract me, using a scatter gun technique of contacting people who I haven't even spoken to in ages. This last process however, also necessitates the use of Number Eighteen...: