Take my love, take my land

Today was a classic example of me. I was stood in the pub after work with my colleagues when one guy -- whom I like, and think he's cool -- asked me if I was interested in football. I was beginning to tell him no, not really, and would have steered the conversation round to ice hockey, when my well-meaning colleague Rhiannydd told him "He supports Derby County!". This is generally what I tell people to avoid talking about football, they're a Championship League team -- which means their games aren't big or ever really on television, and they're not even very good. I only say I support them because I still feel like Derby is sort of home. Steve apparently knows more about football then most people because he then turns to me and says "You're doing very well, I hear! Aren't you top of the division?". All I could say was, "I don't know, are we?" which made me look more than a little silly. My idea of supporting a team and every other football fan in the world's definition are obviously quite different. But I also wear my Coyotes jersey to the hockey every week, and couldn't even tell you who they have played recently. I guess I'm just never really going to be a "sport" person.

We were all sat around a short while later and another of my colleagues turns to me and asks me what my interests are, outside of work, since he said he didn't know anything about me. I'm generally a very quiet person, in a lot of social situations I'm happy to sit back and observe and listen, then force myself to the front or talk about myself. But I know that I am an interesting person, with several facets to who I am and some varied interests -- so I was secretly pleased to have an opportunity to talk a little bit about it. I didn't get very far, you never do in these sorts of situations, because someone will score a goal on the television or something and the moment will be gone and the conversation will take another turn. But it's only when someone asks me about myself that I ever really think about who I am. Don't fear, though, this isn't another post about feeling ordinary. In fact, that's sort of where that train of thought ends -- I've been over the same ground over and over before, about not knowing if there is part of us that makes us who we 'are'.

Work continues to be just...work. It's less interesting than working in PR, but better paid (in that I'm being paid at all) and less stressful, since there isn't much for me to screw up. It still bugs me when customers are mean, and I still don't enjoy declining a lot of claims. The job isn't what I want to be doing, but for now it's enough to keep my head above water and there isn't really anything else in the pipeline.

If I'm going to make this a general, rambling post I should probably mention girls. Except that's kind of all there is to mention. It was Fiona's birthday yesterday, and I sent her a card -- somewhere along the lines with her, over the years, I've got into a tradition of buying ordinary cards and then trying to write something funny about them. Rather than just buying a card that's supposed to be "funny". This year I bought her a card with a National Geographic picture of a couple of cheetahs. I didn't really think there would be much to say about it that would be amusing, but the caption I provided went something along the lines of "the cheetah on the left is saying to the one on the right 'if you tell me that joke about the two lions eating a clown one more time, I swear I will bite you'". Make of it what you will, but Fi said she liked it. I've no idea what, if anything she did to celebrate her birthday this year. Amusingly, I had a dream the other night she was dating a floppy-fringed emo boy called Ross. I've no idea where that came from, since her boyfriend is none of those things. On the other hand, there's San and there again is not a lot to say -- she leaves to go teach in Japan sometime in March. I think there's more with San than is spoken out loud -- a couple of weeks back when I saw her, apparently her Mum had later said to her "You still like him, don't you?". San tried to be all casual like "Of course I like him, he's my friend" but knew what she meant.

When San told me about it, I said to her that it didn't really matter any more -- because sometimes just liking someone isn't enough, when you've tried that relationship over and over again, and every time it fails. You can still like someone but know you are just terrible together.

In a wholly unrelated conversation the other day, I told her how I was watching Firefly for the first time and I liked it. She'd told me before that her boyfriend had made her watch it, and she didn't like it -- not because she didn't like it, but because he'd gone on about it so much, she was sick of it and didn't want to like it. She replied to my message that she did like it too, really, she just pretends not to.
"You pretend too much" I told her.

What else? There are...others on my mind. But I'm going to refrain from writing about them, for now, until things are a little clearer.

That about ticks all the boxes, right? Girls, work, random pop culture references and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning.