I don't think I've quite developed a longing for human flesh yet, but the blank gaze and absent mental functions are part of my day-to-day life at the moment. It's been a while since I last made an emo post, so here's one to add a little variety to the site.

The past... three months now (!?) have been pretty hellish. This all started around the middle of November last year when management changes at work resulted in a huge amount of (largely unnecessary) work for the lower minions. That spilled into December, and with the arrival of the festive period, time lost to work evolved into time lost to family. Somehow January was even worse, with both family and work vying for any free time I had left.

There was a brief period earlier this month when I felt things were easing up a little, but that didn't seem to last long. As soon as I had caught up and begun to feel on top of things, the chaos began again. This coming weekend will hopefully be another respite from the storm (which I'm going to have to write off for catching up on sleep), after which I think I'll have two more "family weekends". And then, perhaps, I will win my freedom.

I really am beyond tired at the moment and so fed up with all that's going on. I want it all to be over, to have a nice quiet life back with time to myself and time for friends. I feel very guilty about not having spent more of my time with friends lately. I also have a huge pile of things I want to do that grows every day. It's all immensely frustrating.

Other things have happened this month to make things harder. Some nice things too, which I'll write about in due course, but sometimes it can be easy to forget about them in the midst of despair. I don't think I can live like this for much longer before something snaps.

Armed with a quarter of a loaf of bread that was past its best, SoZ's Mobile Avian Catering Services set off again this morning in search of hungry ducks (and their friends). Despite the freezing weather, turnout was much better than last time. Two Canada Geese, two swans and a score of ducks came to enjoy the feast today. There were also a few dozen gulls that swooped down noisily to grab the first handful of bread, but they vanished as quickly as they arrived.

I liked the fearless Canada Geese the most. They boldly walked up to me and began pecking at my bag of bread while I was feeding the other hungry mouths.

I'm currently sitting on one of the new, high speed trains running on the HS1 line through Kent. Normally there's an extra charge for this service, but due to some train shuffling this weekend, I was allowed to use it for part of my journey.

It's quite smart inside, as you would expect for a train that's only been running for about 6 months. The best thing about it is that it cuts a good 20 minutes off my journey today.

The icy weather doesn't seem to be letting up. The BBC released an interesting satellite photo of Britain showing the extent of the current freeze. Brrrr.

Sadly I had to venture outside today as my food supplies were getting a bit low due to not going past Tesco much over the past week. I took the opportunity to snap a few photos of snowy Maidstone.
 

My new work PC arrived in the office today. /o/ It is new and fast and shiny. I feel sad for people who do not have new PCs. I wonder how they cope, surviving on inferior technology?