Hello. I was a bridesmaid yesterday. It was very much fun. During the reception an affable but very drunk man called David (manager of the groom, looked vaguely like Jeff Goldblum) came over to talk to me at some length about why I didn't have a boyfriend. I mean, he wanted me to tell him why, because he was puzzled. (Also married. He has a very cute little son called Luis who was wearing a very small dark overcoat and his hair in spikes at the front so he looked like a chibi David Boreanaz.) I told him I didn't know either, if I did know I would have done something about it years ago. This caused me to revert to a train of thought that has long vexed me: It is a curious fact that I do not seem to be attractive to anyone except the element I am not trying to attract - the idiots, the dickheads, the creeps, the loonies, the ones who don't have anything actually WRONG with them but I just don't fancy them and never will.

Oh, and Chinese women! This was an odd phenomenon I observed while working as a checkout op at a supermarket in a neighbourhood where a lot of Chinese people lived. The first sign I got was when I served a nice little old granny who asked me 'What you are doing after work?' I was nonplussed and said 'Just going home, I think.' She said with an emphatic nod, 'If I were a young chentleman, I would meet you for dinner.' I thought that was rather sweet of her. A couple of weeks later I served a younger woman, late twenties by my guess. She stared at me when I greeted her, then got flustered because she had stared and explained 'It's just because you are so beautiful!' I went pink and said, well, thank you, and wondered about this odd trend. And a while later still I served a middle-aged mother who said loudly to her teenaged daughter, 'Look! A beauty in this supermarket!' The daughter gave me a Look all right - the oh, thank you for getting her started look.

I've never been sure why I was considered beautiful by these women. I am pretty when I take the time to do myself up in a nice outfit with a good hairstyle and some makeup, but I'm not someone whose beauty immediately strikes you - unless, evidently, you are a Chinese woman buying her groceries. I wonder whether it works on Chinese men too. I never served as many of those so I wasn't able to take a survey. But I don't get asked out by Chinese lads. I don't get asked out by anyone at all.

Look, I realise that in this modern world a lass has to take the initiative sometimes, in fact I'm glad to live in a world where a lass can do that without being considered excessively forward, but I find the lack of invitations from young chentlemen bloody insulting. I make an effort. I keep myself looking nice, I smile and take part in conversation, I'm friendly and approachable (or mean to be, it can be hard to pitch these things right for other people's perceptions) in my demeanour. I hardly ever meet anyone attractive and not gay anyway. This is simply not good enough!

Wasn't I whiny yesterday. Fortunately, I slept well last night and feel fine today, so no more of that. My only concern now is that I may have left my laundry-doin' a bit late this weekend, but this is not a crisis. Got me some good vittles at Sainsbury's. Gee, I wonder how much money I have left. Not much, I bet.

Through the wonders of Internet banking, I have just checked my balance: £272. Dadgummit.

I'm having one of those days that you don't have to have if you only have a car. I'm supposed to show up at Anne's place around 6:30-7:00 pm for dinner and DVD and drinkies, as a sort of low-grade hen night, given that the wedding day at which I will officiate as bridesmaid is this day week. I'll need to get a bus out to Cherry Hinton but this is not difficult in and of itself; those buses run every ten minutes or so.

If I want to get on one, however, I do have to make the fifteen/twenty-minute walk into town to catch it at Drummer/St Andrew's Streets, where the buses swarm. Services out to my neck of the woods, which is called New Chesterton on the map but never on people's lips, are erratic and few. The trouble really began last night, when I found myself unable to sleep, picked up my book and read for a while, and as far as I can tell didn't actually go to sleep until 3:00 am or even later. I slept until around noon and got up feeling rather unrefreshed and either hungover or jet-lagged - I didn't have the sense of dehydration that you do with a hangover but the weird bad feeling in the base of my skull and the nape of my neck didn't exactly belong to jet-lag.

Because it's such a bore to make two foot trips into and out of town, I've been in central Cambridge most of the afternoon, mooching around without spending money, trying to keep myself amused and not get cold. I forgot to bring my book, which limits my options considerably. On the upside, I read all of Road to Perdition in Borders without getting thrown out, but after that I figured I'd better not push my luck. I loved the line drawing in that book, the half-tone shading done with pen and ink to replicate a print technique.

I still feel hungover/jet-lagged. I've bought some Nytol at Boots so that I can knock myself out tonight and sleep when I choose to, not when some unhelpful sandman lets me. I am probably going to fall asleep at Anne's at this rate, though.

If only I had a car I could have relaxed at home today, read my book, maybe baked, and then driven to Anne's house without a thought of bus schedules. *sigh*

What displeases me in all this is being at the mercy of others, the bus company, the sandman, being unable to organise my day on my own terms. Of course when you think of what it's like to be, say, a woman in rural India, or a cancer patient, I'm doing pretty bloody well. That doesn't stop it getting on my nerves when I can't do what I choose when it suits me - on the weekend, for goodness' sake. It makes me feel rather helpless and forlorn and forgotten-about.

At least I have the prospect of a good feed at the end of this day.

I have upwards of sixteen pounds' worth on my Boots reward card. It might be time for some new makeup or a hair colour.

This past week at work went unusually smoothly. Maggie Supervisor said it was because the reps worked efficiently for once in their lives. There were no crises and we finished early every night. I do not believe it is a coincidence that this happened the same week I started wearing my pendant of Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, and asking for his blessing at the beginning of the working day. This doesn't mean I've converted to Hinduism - Wicca as I practise it (rather laxly) allows the individual to adopt gods from any pantheon as personal patrons, ask them for help, offer them libations, stick them in effigy on their car dashboard and chat to them during traffic jams or parking-space hunts, etcetera. The idea is for your patron god or gods to be part of your everyday life, not just someone you go see in church once a week. My two Buddy Gods are Ganesha, from India, and Bast, from Egypt. They're both animal-headed gods - an elephant and a cat - and they just have a good vibe about them for me. Now that I finally have a room where I *can* set up an altar (I plan to use the blocked-up Victorian cast-iron fireplace - it isn't really aligned right geographically but its niche shape is perfect enough to compensate for that in my book) I'll need to find or make some good representations of them to use. At the moment I just have small silver/pewter pendants that I found in a witchy-poo shop in Richmond, Virginia, owned and operated by a retired high school principal.

And in case you're wondering - you are welcome to offer my god a peanut. Just so long as you do so respectfully.

So it's Thursday, it's springtime, and I feel free and cheerful. I'd better get home and put my sheets and towels out on the line. I feel pretty good about this weekend! Let's see how I do.

Went a little wild just now. Ordered a Japanese bento (lunchbox) set. Isn't it cute? I also picked out the Puchi Onigiri Maker which is for making cute little (puchi=petite) rice-wads for your lunchbox. You'll know I've really gone off the deep end when I invest in the little device that will turn a cheerio/Vienna/cocktail sausage into a wee penguin or a tulip.

And to complete the theme, I've ordered this book from Amazon. No point having a bento box if you don't learn how to make bento food to put in it, right? This ought to keep me amused for quite a while.

Hello... it's me again, after a while. I'm undergoing a sea change in my sleeping habits, mostly because I find my morning dreams too unpleasant and cold-sweaty to want to sleep in any more. This morning I actually had bad dreams about struggling to wake up and being unable to do so. (Also about having a doll I loved and losing its shoes which made me feel awful.) Fortunately I broke through about nine past five and lost no time in getting up. My mother would laugh her head off.

The weather continues to milden (probably not a real word but who cares) but today the sky is white and overcast, blah, like having a Tupperware lid on top of the world.

I spose I'd better do some food shopping as I am quite the peckish girl and the cupboard is bareish back home. I can get light 'dry goods' today and go back for heavy things like drinks with the suitcase tomorrow. I go through drinks terribly fast.

We have a new boy at our house, he's taken Ilka's room since her employers moved her to live with some of the other hotel staff, and his name is Alex and he's put a big pot in the pot and pan cupboard which quite upsets all our standing arrangements but could be handy for spaghetti. I haven't formed an impression of his personality yet because I've only said hello to him briefly - he's not around much so far. He looks older than the rest of us, perhaps nudging thirty. I am obscurely glad since on Thursday night when I was Blu-Tacking up my drawing of a nice little sloth called Jean-Baptiste (there's something about Thursday nights at our house, we go silly) and wrote my name and age in months and years on it, Mark said ha ha you're a month and a half older than me. So at least I am not the eldest in the house any more, which made me feel awfully unsuccessful for my age.

Last night there were sloths on the National Geographic channel, which rocked my world. I love sloths. They have the best faces. And they're surprisingly good swimmers!

Now it is a pretty spring day and my cold is a lot better. Last night my cat friend Ginge joined me on the conservatory couch (I was using an unzipped sleeping bag as a blankie) and we enjoyed one another's company and an hour of Samurai Jack goodness. Happy!

I am running out of money again despite my efforts to save this month. Really my problem is that I earn enough for a place to live and food to eat but that's about it. Whenever I try for stuff like new clothes, or some interesting books, I get myself into trouble, even when I shop at moderately-priced places. At this rate I may have to get an additional part-time job (I pull down what counts as a full-time working week in three days) and lose my treasured Thursday and Friday of freedom. I will have to spend some more money tonight because my team from work are having a drinks and dinner evening at Chili's and I have to go, it's like being a Japanese salarygal, except the company expense account isn't going to kick in for any of it. So I guess I just have to resign myself to ending another month overdrawn, and consider it a success as long as I don't exceed the £200 overdraft limit.

The Allies seem to be giving the non-surrendering portion of Iraq a good kicking. I hope the fighting's over soon so the humanitarian-ing can begin. That's the only reason I'm willing to have fighting in the first place: to get rid of Saddam, Uday, Qusay and the rest of their horrid little clan so we can set up a decent democracy and help the Iraqis rebuild a successful, healthy nation with a standard of living that doesn't make you say 'P.U.' or burst into tears.

Japan and Germany say it can be done.

I have a bit of a cough.

The chick at the computer next to me is laughing while she talks on her cellphone and she has the gooniest-sounding laugh, I must say.

Pretty spring day, sheets drying on the garden clothesline for the first time all year. Sore throat, sucking orange Lemsip lozenges. Need more body lotion. Vernal Equinox tomorrow. Wonder what I'll have for dinner tonight? I'm not very verbose today, am I? Unusual. Heck, maybe I should just go home and watch 'Samurai Jack.' The internet caff Muzak is Eminem and I'm getting pretty fed up with it.

Here is my tattoo. It's a shame my waist looks so chubby in this photo.

Hello, it's me on my lunch break, eating grapes. Mm grapes. I haven't much to say really. Vernal Equinox on Friday. Tra la.