(It's Monday again. Why do I always post on Monday? It's freakin weird.)

"I thought of Rupert Brooke saying, 'I must love every greasy button...' But I soon stopped.
'It's no good loving,' I said to the horses on the floor. 'No good comes of loving.' I rolled the orange round and round, first into one eye-socket, then into the other. 'Actually,' I thought, 'it was a bit snobbish to pick out workmen. He meant everyone - he ought to have loved everyone's buttons. Clerks' buttons, schoolmasters' buttons, the old bird in the musquash coat's buttons. If you have to remind yourself to love dirty old workmen's buttons, then you don't really.' I wondered about the types of buttons that Dickens and poor old Thomas Hardy loved. Or maybe they didn't."
- Jane Gardam, A Long Way From Verona

"Mortals are half-Chaos naturally..."
- Tamora Pierce, The Realm of the Gods

I managed to wangle a driving test date. The campaign failed. But God has a sense of humour. See, I carried my folder of air-travel/uni documents to BBDC and then the testers' office, and this PSC scholarship girl was ahead of me being thrown out with the same appeal. The guy at the counter, in his starchy white pockety shirt that made him look smarter than the whole tub of them deserve to look, scowled and went on about how I should have Planned It (how was I supposed to know that I was going to UVA, and leaving in mid-August, in January?). So I trooped downstairs, steaming, logged in at a public computer and miracle! 2nd August was available.
It is my only chance, so I have to pass the first time. Me, Crash!Ning.
We're seeing off Daniel and Syn Min next week, and they are the first of the departures. Wait. Second. We are of such a range of ages, so why is 2005 the year for flying?
I do not appreciate the delay of my pay-cheque. But now, I think so much more about money. It's terrible, you know, the way the miserly fist clenches around your heart (and pocket). Especially now, when I have to stock up on everything from instant curry to little black suits for Interviews (when my mum brought this up today, I was annoyed, more about the idea of me in a black suit then anything else, but at least I kept that to myself).
I am a huge, huge, sucker for anything fantasy (draw thin line between sci-fi and fantasy, which Hallmark seems unable to do). So I watched Earthsea. It was dreadful. Be careful.