2007-09-18 - 8:08 p.m.

It's been a little while since I last wrote. Wednesday 5th September was the first morning of a cycle, and that's when I found out that I did in fact get the Acting Lab Manager position, which I was obviously very...relieved about. I was going to say "happy about", but by that stage it really did seem like a foregone conclusion and I was just getting anxious, so it was good to know for sure. To celebrate (well, not really, I would have done it anyway), I went to trivia that night. The next day after work I stopped in at Miranda Fair and wandered aimlessly trying to find a present for my sister, before settling for a Sanity Voucher (I felt like it was a boring present but there were heaps of CDs she wanted so I guess it was okay after all). Dropped in on Nathan on the way home. Next day after work I drove all the way to my sister's new place in Hornsby (when I say "new", it's a rental- her boyfriend moved there a couple of months ago and she moved in when her lease was up). It was her birthday- you might have put two and two together from he whole present buying thing. I didn't stay for long (and at some point it started pouring rain), and was back home by about 6pm. After whipping up a Jambalaya for myself and Lucy, we had Mark and Phoebe around for cards, Trivial Pursuit and alcohol. I won Trivial Pursuit- I think I may have lost both games of 500. At about 2am when Mark and Phoebe decided it was time to go, Lucy and I decided to share the cab back to Newtown with them and go to the Townie. We didn't see anyone we knew there, and only really noticed when we got there that we were both tired and ready to call it a night, so we did after one drink.

My 3 nights at work, I don't really remember what they were like. But I did go to Yum Cha with Kellee and Claire in Hurstville before work on Sunday (9/9).

Tuesday (September 11- 6 years on) was one of my two days off. I decided I should start my training on what should have been my last day off, and take a weekend day off somewhere down the track. I slept in, did very little, grabbed a pork roll from down the road and later went for a run with Nathan. For dinner we went to the very bizarre "Goat Meat Restaurant". Aside from the fact that a Restaurant that specialised is bound to fail eventually, it was just...weird. We were told that the two mains we wanted weren't good with rice, were really only to be an accompaniment to drinking, and couldn't be filling, and- well okay that was the main weird thing. There was no way we weren't going to get the raw goat meat with lemon juice though, so we just changed our second choice to something that "went with rice", and got some rice. The raw goat meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender but I don't think we'll be back.

Wednesday I had a productive day. Mopped and rearranged the balcony, did some other house cleaning (I think), wrote in my pen-and-paper diary, did some grocery shopping, got my watch band replaced, had a terrible yakitori chicken stick for lunch (as well as a much less terrible sushi roll), cooked a disappointing lasagne for dinner (much too dry), and then went to trivia.

Thursday I went to work to start learning the new job, and I feel like I've been there ever since. Wait- I have. Tomorrow will be my seventh straight day- I worked two days of 8am til about 5pm, two days of 6am until almost 4pm, and tomorrow will make 3 more days of 8ish to 5ish. The two shift days on the weekend were a good opportunity to observe the guy who will be doing my job while I'm doing this job, and it felt like some sort of "the circle closes" moments since the day after I was learning the Manager role, I was doing the sort of thing I did before I became a Supervisor, so that the other guy could get some more exposure before I went off shift.

As for the Lab Manager training- it's overwhelming just thinking about it. There are so many things to keep track of. And all the while you need to be looking at continuous improvement, and half of your time is taken up with meetings. It's going to be a big change- when my boss actually leaves. Regardless of whether I get the job permanently or not, I'm going to have a crazy few months at work.

The plus side of all this intensive training is that before I know it, Jo will be here and it will be time for my party. I'm not freaking out about turning 30- it's not "the portentous menacing road of a new decade" (I think I've known ever since I started this diary that I was going to use that quote at some point about turning 30- it's from "The Great Gatsby", when amongst all the shit hitting the fan between Tom, Gatsby and Daisy, Nick Carraway remembers it's his birthday and he's 30). I've got to places in my job that I never even thought I'd want to, let alone thought was possible to do at this age- I'm with the person I want to spend forever with (that's as romantic as I'm going to get in here ;), we own an apartment in a cool part of town (or at least we own about 1/15th of it), and I'm going to celebrate turning 30 with friends I've made virtually every step of the way. Somewhere along the way in the last 5 years I stopped overanalysing and dwelling on the past ('"Can't repeat the past!" he cried incredulously. "Why, of course you can!"') and started looking towards the future. It's a good feeling.

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