Or so I thought. Until I went shopping this afternoon… and was asked the fatal question: “Ben, can you work tonight?”

Quickly, my vastly powerful brain (~_^) worked on a suitable excuse… and failed, apart from the hope that I wouldn’t be able to say yes due to picking up Fernne and Andrew from school at 3.30. “What time?” I asked, and crossed my fingers.

“4.30 - 8.30.”

Shit. “Yeah, sure.”

Hence began the saga of Ben at work again. Yay. Ah well. Had an interesting shift. Kinda. Was on checkout for the first time (well, a whole shift first time) in about six months. Had a whole nostalgia vibe, with the ‘Oh yeah, I kinda like this’ for about, oh, twenty minutes. Afterwards, my thoughts more or less revolved around the phrase: “Ah yes. This is why I work on Smokeshop now.”

I spent the day (when not at work) sleeping, playing Oni (again - damn I love this game!), surfing the net for CSS tutorials (and then finding one in my inbox… bless you, Kirky ~_^) and found a rather nifty HTML & CSS editor package.

I’ve also decided that the legality of the issue is not all that relevant (heh) and have begun to download the movie “Finding Nemo.” Due to the fact that I am, of course, on dialup, it’ll take forever, and I’ll probably give up halfway through. I’ll also go and see it in cinemas, and probably will get it, either myself or by familial proxy on DVD. Ah well. May as well waste this bandwidth on something, eh? ^_^

I went shopping yesterday after Uni (read - newspaper time) and bought my brother a CD for his birthday on Saturday… and then bought myself a new book and a CD-Cassette adaptor. I wandered into Angus & Robertson and found myself slavering (almost!) at about a dozen books… I chose the newest volume of the Sword of Truth - Naked Empire, by Terry Goodkind. I also need to buy:

Elder Gods, by David and Leigh EddingsrnJimmy the Hand, by Raymond E. FeistrnMurder in LaMut, by Raymond E. FeistrnWar of the Flowers, by Tad WilliamsrnMountain of Black Glass, by Tad WilliamsrnSea of Silver Light, by Tad WilliamsrnVeil of a Thousand Tears, by Eric van Lustenbager

… and so on. When I mentioned how much money I could easily spend to the girl at the checkout, she pulled out a form for a book shopping spree at Angus and Robertson worth $1000… man, what I’d do for that prize… well, I’d definitely fill out an entry form. So I did. Here’s hoping. ^_^

Anyway, I think I’ll go to bed now… SleepTime™ and such… and besides, I’m only 500 odd pages into Naked Empire, and I’ve got about 300 to go. Considering I’ve been reading for around 3 hours, I’m making good time… not rushing at all. Must read more.. I’ll post a review when I’m done, probably tomorrow. After all, I just paid for two months of funky LiveJournalness for fun and a few options (like the journal now being online at http://andiyar.livejournal.com/ and some nifty style/embed options) so I might as well get my ($8 odd AU) money’s worth.

‘Till then.

-Andiyar