�I know,� he said. �I�m surprised myself at how much it isn�t bothering me. But really, it�s just a bike. It isn�t something I cared that much about, and it wasn�t THAT expensive.�

�But you used to ride it to work! And it was four hundred dollars!�

�Yeah� but it was a bike. It wasn�t my car, for a start, and my car was parked right next to it. They could have taken that, or broken into it and gone through it.�

I debated this one with him for a while � his car has an immobiliser and an alarm, and one of those swish beepy keychains that make the hazard lights flash so that you know that it�s locked. They could never have stolen that car.

�Yeah, but they could have damaged it, or broken into it and taken stuff from it. It was just a bike. It wasn�t my car. And it wasn�t you.�

And he gave me a little kiss and went into the kitchen to make dinner.

I suddenly felt selfish and oddly capitalist for whingeing that somebody took our bike. It cost us a few hundred dollars. That could be a year�s wages in some parts of the world, enough to support somebody�s family and feed and clothe them, and we spent it on a bike. And complained when somebody took it.

Every now and then, I think of somebody other than myself, and sometimes I even manage to realise that my life is quite easy and full of big fat Western riches compared to a lot of people around the world. It doesn�t really sound like me to say that because I think of myself as quite a selfish person on the whole. How strange that I�m not making some stupid joke to try to lighten the moment. I wish I could say I hadn�t been tempted.

If only I�d left that part until a bit later in the entry. Now I feel all inappropriate for sharing the following picture, which I took here at work yesterday.

This box has been sitting among discarded bits and pieces on a dusty shelf for a couple of years now. I�ve often wondered what�s in it, but have never felt any real compulsion to look because it�s funnier this way. For some reason the little �this way up� symbol amuses me especially.

�Oh, no! My Wang�s upside down!�
�Then take a cold shower, you filthy pervert.�

Anyway� my proofreading & editing course is going pretty well. I�m enjoying the subject matter at any rate, which was the main reason I decided to do this course in the first place. My next couple of assignments are looking pretty easy compared to the last two, and being a correspondence course I can work at my own pace. I can�t exactly say that I�m planning a big �career change� at this stage, but editing interests me so maybe I could start by just attempting a bit of freelance work and seeing how that goes.

Speaking of work, my Big Boss is pissing me off.

*** Work rant starts here ***
(This is just me venting. Skip this section if you like; I�ll provide a summary and study notes at the end of it.)

He�s a really nice guy, but he expects a lot of favours. The situation is that he owns this company, but has nothing to do with it. He moved on years ago, and the General Manager (my direct superior, as it�s a small place in terms of office staff) runs it for him. General Manager is a good friend of Big Boss�s these days so it works well. Pretty much as long as the numbers all line up and the staff are OK, Big Boss is happy. He shows up once a week to say hello, always quite cheery and happy. But the thing is, Big Boss has more money than he knows what to do with � presumably having exhausted the fun options like swimming in it, Scrooge McDuck style � and owns two adjacent waterfront properties in an expensive area of Sydney, which he wants to make look all pretty.

This is where I come in. My day-to-day job involves running a routing machine so that we can actually produce the layouts that I design.

Big Boss wants me to utilise my time making little pieces of miniature brickwork for his stupid personal project, which involves building little scale models of his houses as he would like them to look. I�ve made balusters, brick walls, garage doors, windows and various other panels over the last few months, and each time it pisses me off just that little bit more. This time I�m supposed to make a section of wall that has 20 rows of tiny bricks in it, the bricks being random lengths between 7 and 9 millimetres. I have to sit at my computer and create a nice-looking brick wall to whatever specs he�s come up with this time (takes longer than you�d think), do some calculations to make sure that the machine can cut it, export it to the routing programme � which will invariably tell me that some part or another can�t be cut � spend an hour fixing it all up, then put the job on the machine (after more calculations to align everything on the scrap of material that he�s given me to use, and fiddly changes to the material depth figures), and wait for another hour or two for the machine to cut it. I will have to be watching over it on and off for a lot of this time, because the material is uneven and I will need to stop the job and adjust the settings every ten minutes or so. I will then have to run half of it again because parts of it will not have cut deep enough. This is several hours� worth of heavily labour-intensive work, for a stupid brick wall. I don�t think he has any idea how long it takes.

Oh, and then he will be unhappy with the depth I�ve cut the bricks, but will not tell me until the next time.

If it was just a one-off thing, sure. But this is regular. I have to push other work aside to work on his personal project. I don�t like to come across as one of those �not-in-my-job-description� types, but really, it isn�t. If he wants his damn wall for his little scale-model of his house, he can come in outside of work hours and do the bloody thing himself. If I�m going to waste company time, I�ll waste it on my own personal projects.

His daughter was just the same. She used to do my job before I started here, and I replaced her when she moved on. For a few weeks there was an overlap where I was doing the job on my own but she was there too in case I had any questions. She taught me the job and was a nice person, but she had no problem with moving me off the computer to do her personal projects, or to make little designs for her sister�s wedding shot-glasses. By the time she finally went overseas, I was glad because she was really treading on my toes.

*** End work rant ***

Here�s a copy of the summary notes:

* Big Boss is rich and probably swims in his money.
* Big Boss wants me to push my work aside and make little pieces for his scale models of his houses.
* Stupid brick walls.
* I hate making brick walls.
* His smelly stupid personal projects are a waste of my time.
* Said projects take several hours, with results that don�t look like they would take that long.
* He has no idea how many hours these things take.
* Stupid waste of time.

I think that covers it.

Anyway, this brick wall is supposed to be done by this afternoon, and I have no intention of staying back after work for this, so I have to go. Believe me, I will be murmuring under my breath and devising crazy little plans for my impending conquest of Earth.

Addition: General Manager just came up to my office and we did some rusty calculus together to try to work out what depth would best suit the cutter we�re going to use for the brickwork. At least that was good for a laugh � �So � we need � sine � oh, we don�t know the hypotenuse.� �Wait wait, SOH-CAH-TOA � it should be tan60.� �But isn�t it cos30 � (*stares at the crappy drawing we�ve made*) � no, tan � wait, what?�