First, the backstory.

For those of you who don't know me in real life, I rock a pixie cut for my hair - and have for the last few years. We're talking the mini pixie that's about this long --

So yeah, rather short. And with less knife.

I was in the grocery store yesterday, picking out some produce, when a little girl nearby said hi. So, in the interest of seeming less child-hating than usual, I said hi back. She asked what my name was, and I replied with, "Jen." She paused for a minute and asked, "Are you a girl?"

(I told her that yes, I am, I just have very very short hair, but the story's funnier if you stop at the line above.)

I've been trying to think of what today's deep insightful thought could be, and I'm drawing a blank. What can I say? I'm not that fascinating today.

I made it to the gym this afternoon for my yoga/tai chi/pilates class, and I've shown some progress; once upon a time I had to help my legs forward when going from downward dog to lunge position -- today that was not the case. It was a definite, "yay me!" moment when I realized what I'd done.

I'm trying to get to the gym more often, which is my usual refrain. I don't like what I see in the mirror, and I want to change that. Of course, that involves more work than I want to have to do, so I'm trying to figure out how to push myself and stay motivated. I have a coworker who's helping, which is nice -- but the food habits are up to me to figure out and improve upon.

I can't believe I'll be 30 next year. Anyone know when I'll start feeling like a grownup? I just feel like I'm still playing at life, or like I'm a perpetual student.

Speaking of which, I want to go back to school. I'm thinking of applying for classes for next September, which means I have to set aside more money. Or keep adding to the debt, which is slowly going down. Anyone rich want to swoop in and solve all of my problems?

At least the mortgage rates are ridiculously low.

There's been talking about the future going on lately. No conclusions, no plans, just general talking. Feels weird to discuss, given my status as the perpetual student and so on.

I wonder sometimes if people who've known me from back in the day or who haven't seen me in awhile look at me and think, "gee, she's really chunked up." I'll confess I've had that thought about more than a few men and women I know.

I can only hope they think I've gotten prettier through the years.

I'm trying to make a commitment to update this place more regularly. I write almost all day every day for work, so sometimes the last thing I want to do when I get home is write more... or I feel as though I've run out of things to say. I want to update when I'm at work, but sometimes I just don't have the time. A blessing and a curse.

But writing about government matters day in and day out isn't the same as blathering on about my cats or thoughts or feelings. Doesn't quite have the same boring ring to it -- nor does it smack of gossip for the lot of you.

I'm finding myself more irritated with the company of others of late, and I'm not sure if it's due to the innate irritations that others present, or simply because I've been working fairly steadily with little to no break. Weekends don't quite seem to be the breaks they once where -- either I'm on call, I'm working, I have company (not usually my choice), or there's travel and/or errands. Last weekend, the first real weekend I had off -- I got sick. Joy.

So needless to say, as much as I think it would be ridiculous for us to have another election at this time, there are a few of us at my office that are praying for one -- only for the break it would present. Maybe it means I'd start liking people again if that was the case, that I had some downtime and could focus a bit more on my life outside of work, and one of the fifty bazillion hobbies I have.

Okay, so this update isn't much -- just a bunch of vague whining. Tomorrow maybe I'll complain about someone in detail and let you guess who it might be.

• 01:36 How do you go on knowing that you're right beyond a freaking doubt, but still pretend to see another's point of view? I'm right, damn it! #

The last few days, I've been unable to be heard by people when they call my cell. I can hear them, they can't hear me. Fun times. I thought about blaming the bluetooth keyboard pairing, but full resets of the phone do nothing, so doesn't seem to be the case.

Called Rogers yesterday, the guy talked me through doing another hard reset of the phone, didn't believe me that my contacts were saved on the SIM card (which they are, hah!), and then said they'd send me out a new phone, as mine's still under warranty. If the failure is due to water damage though, I'm on the hook for a new phone - no worries.

While at away from my desk, I got a missed call. No voicemail, so I googled the number: turns out it's a call centre that Rogers employs to follow up with questions on customer satisfaction after services rendered. Good idea, something I don't mind doing, only clearly they didn't realize when they issued the ticket to follow-up phone call me what it was that I had originally called about -- hardware failure rendering me unable to speak to anyone who calls me on my phone.

Well done on paying attention to the little things, Rogers.

I sit in Starbucks on a rainy Saturday afternoon, typing on an apple wireless keyboard, with my phone hidden by my side. I am.... the most pretentious girl you know.

Took three different buses with some teenage girls today; got to listen to more renditions of the word like than I can remember hearing in quite some time.

I'm getting old.

Well, I've been getting old my whole life; you'd think I'd be used to it by now. Not so much.

Getting old iis planning for the future. Realizing tht you have to take into account things like your mortality, your income level, your fertility... scary and kinda cool at the same time.

It's nice to hear someone echo reasons why you're with them.

Tee hee - just got someone asking me questions about my keyboard. Guess the phone wasn't as hidden as I thought.

Only really challenging thing abot this is that blogger doesn't have a nice smartphone/blackberry friendly version o fthe interface, so a lot of what i'm writing is hidden - so I can't go back and fix mistakes too easily. I'm malso very spoiled by my work blackberry's automatic rendition of certain shortcut s- so I'm not automatically capitalizing the letter I when it appears . I know someone is going to eventually read this and say something.

I'm always surprised when people pick up on facets of my character that i never think are particularly obvious - the example i usually go back to is when a friend told someone I never use bookmarks. Recently, I had another one of those moments: one of my colleagues was saying that he figurd my luggage would be flaming neon pink -- because I'm unusual and he could see me with someone that wasn't conventional like that. My boss, by contrast, looked at him and said, "you don't know Jen, do you know"?

I just thought it was cool that a: this colleague had picked up on the fct that I'm unconventional, and b: my boss had also picked up on that, but knew that I wasn't a girly girl, and likely wouldn't be found with hot pink.

It's similar to when people look at my ring and say, "that's very you" -- and part of what made that last dress-shopping excursion so doubly frustrating.

I'm trying to take advantage of the fact that I'm getting older, but also have a bit more free time and a bit more money than I did when I was younger -- so now I'm taking music lessons once more, and I'm giving some extra thought to going back to school. As I've said to my mom and to a coworker friend of mine -- I keep saying I want to do this I want to learn that, but never getting around to doing it. Well, sure, learning new things is scary and hard, and sure, it can be tougher when you're older -- but you only get one life to live, so why not go for it? why kep putting things off?

Dear Abby has some advice for people who want to go back to school when they're older but are intimidated by the fact tht they'll be surrounded by younger people, or will be XX old when they graduate -- as she says, you'll be XX years old when that amount of time passes anyhow, so why not use the time learning? Of coures, she says it much more elegantly than I just did, but the basics are there.

So sure, there are 7 year olds who are better than I am on the instrument, but guess what - there's always going to be someone better than me. Can't let that stop me from trying and having fun with it.

I've had this "story" of spam headlines sitting in my email account for awhile now, and I find it oddly charming.

The first reads, "The Pobble who has no toes" and the second is "And when he came to observe his feet" -- though it's quite possible they're meant to be read in reverse, so the Pobble discovered he had no toes only after he observed his feet.

But if I read them in the order I provided, ignoring the grammatical issues with it, I have to wonder -- what did the toe-less Pobble learn when he came to observe his feet?

It's a puzzle. Though I like the way the Pobble looks in my mind -- a lot like Junior Gorg.
(hotlinked and pops, so who knows how long this'll last)

I didn't even know that guy still existed in my subconcious, as Fraggle Rock was never my favourite Muppet Show -- though maybe I should just give it another watch.

Quick update (better one later): I made a word cloud of the stuff that appears on my site. Interesting that cats, feelings, and apparently my astrological signs are so large in it (so I'm guessing that it's not entirely due to frequency -- since I don't think I talk about my signs that much!):

<a href="http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/991927/Eiram" target="_blank">See it here</a> (new window).