Sunday, December 1. 11:56AM

As far as weeks go, this one has been quite up there in terms of activity, but nothing really significant has occurred. On Monday I worked my first shift at Academic and General, which was a bit of a laugh. Well, actually, it was quite humiliating as I screwed everything up and made quite an ass of myself, but they gave me another shift, so I guess they forgave me. My shift was meant to finish at 1:00, but actually didn't seem to end till more like 2:45, which worried me for a while, as I was meeting someone at 4:00. It all worked out in the end, however, and I even had time to get the bad taste out of my mouth (with red cordial) and massage my aching feet before I set off. I arrived late, and found said person (Anh) in debate with one of the many religious zealots that seem to occupy our central business district. I felt her argument wasn't really that good, so I gave her a little help and then we made a fairly swift exit. We fulfilled various errands (which included the posting of the non electronic invitations to the Fourth Annual Pulp Fiction Party-o-Rama - a task that has been on my list for some considerable time), and ended up at the Archibald Prize at the art gallery, which made me excited and confused.

On Tuesday I awoke with an incredible pain in my arms, and considerably reduced elbow flex action. After some contemplation, I decided that it must be because of the lifting and so on at work the day before, and the repetitive action of placing books on shelves. I was somewhat disappointed at this evidence of my own weakness (and the level of atrophy that has occurred watching TV these last weeks), but glad at the same time. With pain comes gain, as they said in the eighties, and upper body strength is something I've always sort of wanted, and never really had in any great amount.

On Wednesday the pain was still there, though not quite as bad. My major task for the day was one my father had set for me - to drive to Bendigo, pick up my grandmother and great aunt, drive them home to Camberwell, and end the trek in Ascot Vale. We were supposed to meet them at the grave of our forefathers, and eventually found it after a comprehensive tour of Bendigo's fifteen or so grave yards. It was quite a warm day, and on the way home I used my mirrors to take a glance around the car and ascertained that everyone was dozing nicely. Slowly I eased the accelerator down till it was on the floor and watched the speedo creep up to about 125. 125!?! The car is only two years old, what the hell kind of top speed is that? The speedo goes up to 220! Despite my disappointment at my car's lack of performance, I was impressed by the roads. I stayed in fifth gear pretty much all the way from Bendigo to Camberwell, which, if I know my Geography, is a fair cross section of the state.

I worked again Thursday morning, with the pain still present. My job this time was a lot more physical - carrying a pallet of unwieldy computer monitors up a set of stairs. Overly it was quite all right, really. I worked the phones for a while, and messed quite a lot of people around. Another employee asked me for help finding a book, which gave me a giddy thrill, as it'd been pretty much all the other way around before that. I later shared a moment with her in Math books when we briefly discussed the fascist regime of working more hours then we're in the shift for. Could be good for a long term chance. After that I went to my good buddy Marcus' pad, where we drank a lot of coke, ate a lot of snakes and talked about girls till 4:00AM.

On Friday the pain was greater then ever before. I watched video clips and talked about girls with Marcus till lunch time, when I went home and relaxed for a few hours before heading out to the Wesley College Class of 2001 Reunion (for those of you who know me, this is amusing in itself as I didn't actually go to Wesley College for the greater part of my education). The first set back in the evening came when I got dressed, and discovered that my neat casual clothes were all forming a back log of washing on my floor, forcing me to wear some not particularly formal, but probably too formal for the occasion, type clothes. I then got there at what I would regard as far too early, so instead of going in, I headed in the opposite direction and entertained myself for an hour or so. I was just casing the joint a second time, trying to ascertain the best entrance into the correct section when I ran into the only Wesley person I really still know - the young man who I call Ed. This gained me an entrance, and bought me enough time to hook up with some of the old comrades, and establish myself a group for the night. There were three girls at Wesley that the barely pubescent me had always held a candle too as girls that one day, in some far off reality could be the woman for me, and the investigation of these femmes was one of my principal motivations for going. Only two were there, and I only spoke to one, but I can now say that one of the candles has been blown out. For shame. Ed gave me a lift home, which came to a fairly good time (cheers Ed). The roar of his engine as he sped into the night woke up my mother.

I lay around on Saturday, ate dinner with my grandparents and then headed of to James' birthday party. It was pretty small - a lot smaller then he intended, I think, but fun nonetheless. It was quite intimate, as we all just sat around a fire finding things to burn. The highlight was our few attempts to burn ice (which surprisingly blackened before it melted), and when Adam accepted a few dollars in loose change to pour the equivalent of four candles in liquid wax over his hand.

I have decided that my tinderbox is, in fact, not a tinderbox, but instead a poorly designed version of the idea I propounded. I think that it is impossible to light it with the flint, but when lit by an independent lighter, it actually goes pretty well.

The other thing I meant to do this week was go see Will's exhibition at RMIT, which somehow got away from me. I'm somewhat disappointed, as Will's stuff is pretty cool, and this is the third chance I've missed to see it. Either way, my apologies to you, William, for the lack of respect I seem to show your artistic genius. It's not deliberate, I'm just lazy and absent minded.

For a while I've been meaning to mention this. When you search in Google for "Zeedar Teretz" you get two different sections of this site (one is the copyright on the bottom of the main page, and the other is just a reference to the site as a whole) and a prompt, asking you if you actually meant to search for "ZeedarTeretz". Intrigued, I said that I did, and got the same two references and one more - one from an entirely different site. "Well", I thought, "what could this be? Has some nefarious individual stolen the random letter combination I invented?" Well, no. It's from the link section of Ed's site. The part where he links to me. Still, you should all go now and write an application that searches Google for either one again and again, in the hope that one day we will usurp the Olsen twins in the top ten searches.

I think that's about where it's going to end. Till next time, folks.