When Life Gives You Lemons...

...bend life over and stick those lemons where the sun don't shine.

[Rant Mode ON]
Yesterday, I had some rather insulting news. We had our end-of-year Faculty forum. At this function they tell us what a wonderful Faculty we've been, how awesomely we've served our students and in general they pat us all on the back. This event is also when they announce the winners of the Performance Awards. These awards are given to those staff who have shown excellent performance over the past year. This year, the head of our discipline nominated myself and my assistant for these awards. He's been most pleased with our performance this year and thought we deserved recognition. I felt pretty good when he told us this as its been a tough year and we've still managed to pull through. That was about 3 months ago.

No one finds out if they've won an award until they announce it at the end-of-year forum. Today, they flashed up the names of the winners. I wasn't amongst them. O.K., I can deal with that. My assistant's name was up there. Wait, what? We've been working together on the same projects. I've been doing longer hours and working at least as hard as, if not harder than my assistant has and she gets the award while I miss out!?! I've rearranged my home life to commit to work more, spending less time with my family and getting more stressed than I have been for the last 15 years and apparently I'M the one who is not performing while she IS!?! What the hell is up with that!?! Frankly, I find it highly insulting. I'm pretty angry about the whole thing and if I didn't need the money to support my family, I'd storm into the office on Monday and tell our Dean that he can stick my job where his sun don't shine. How can you possibly award one person for their performance at a set of tasks when their workmate who is not only working along side them but is also supervising them and taking the responsibility for those self-same tasks is not also awarded?

Here, life. Take these here lemons and stick them where your sun doth not shine. I've had it with this cr@p.
[Rant Mode OFF]

The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back...

Bleh. What a way to start December. Normally, I absolutely love this time of year. Its normally quiet at work so I get all those things that have piled up done and out of the way and with my wife's and son's birthdays as well as Christmas there's lots of celebrating to be done.

But these last few days have been a trial. Lots and lots of little things have all built up to be annoying one after the other and making me more and more agitated. Things falling over. Tripping on the boy's toys. Not leaving for work on time. The boy having a rotten night's sleep. Dropping things constantly. Then last night Alex poked himself in the eye with a paintbrush and got so upset about it that he threw up everywhere (if Alex gets really, really distressed, he vomits). Vomit all over our bed (twice), all over the bathtub. Thankfully the bathtub is easy to fix but at 9pm the last thing you want to be doing is to be changing your bedsheets and putting the foul ones in the washing machine. It took ages for Tash to calm him down (he didn't want to be anywhere near me and cried everytime he saw me).

Then this morning, I lost my wallet. My Mum and I tore apart the house looking for it but it was nowhere to be found. That was the last straw. I pretty much lost it and cracked the sh!ts. After three days of frustration, all I needed was to lose my wallet. This also made me very late for work and that just p!ssed me off even more. The wallet has been found by my long-suffering wife under the driver's seat of our car but the stress of not knowing where it was has put me off for the day. Bleh. I really, really hate losing things.

It just goes to show how very, very important it is to have a safety valve. Stress and frustration can build up ever so slowly until you blow your stack. I think I need to get myself a punching bag. Or I need to go and stand in the rain.

Toll Roads!?! I hate freakin' toll roads!

Toll roads. What the hell is up with toll roads? Brisbane has recently "celebrated" (I use the term very loosely) the opening of the Clem Jones M7 Tunnel, commonly known as the Clem7. It is apparently the longest tunnel in Australia at 6.7km (or something). It allows people to travel from one side of the Brisbane River to the other without travelling through the City/Valley areas and avoiding lots of traffic lights. Nice. It cost $4.30 per trip. WTF!?! Why the hell does it cost me to use it? Didn't my taxes pay for the freakin' thing? And now they want to charge me for using it? I helped frikkin' pay for it! But even better, they have made the tunnel free for the first 18 days, then half price for the following 5 weeks. So like a good drug dealer, your first taste is free then they'll give you cheap hits until you're hooked, then charge you like a wounded bull 'cause you can't give it up. How can anyone use this thing and think its saving them money? They claim it will save you petrol. How? If you use the thing during Peak Hour, it will cost you $8.60 per day to use it and surely this tunnel will not save people over $40 in petrol costs per week? Time? Sure but at the cost of $40 per week? Surely it won't be that much faster than the current routes? If I was on a significant salary, I'm sure I could afford the $1100+ a year it would cost me to use the thing but the average bloke like myself can't afford it for a daily commute!

We have another river crossing being made as well: the poorly named "Go-Between" Bridge (yes, they really called it that). Another new road. Yay! Another way across the river. Yay! Another freakin' toll road! WTF!?! Yet another road built with public money that they're going to charge us to use. What in the hell? They claim it is to help recoup the costs of building the road. I can handle that (roads are expensive to build) but once the cost has been regained, will the toll go away? Not bloody likely. The Gateway Motorway paid for itself 10 years ago yet they kept the toll going. They're even talking about increasing it again.

The more I look at it the more I'd like to move away from the city.