Clouds of Darkness

I think pretty much everyone has had one of those days where things go really wrong. It might not be something specific to you, but the day is full of disaster - and it descends on you like a thick cloud of blackness. Today is one of those days for me. This morning, I found out the following:

• My boss's dad (who I know personally, due to him working with us on occasion) is dying of cancer. We've known for a week or two, but they've been praying he could have one final Christmas with his family. This morning they announced that he's taken a turn for the worse. They don't think he's going to make it that far.
• An old friend's brother was killed in a motorcycle accident on the weekend. This in itself would be somewhat disturbing, but to add to it I'd only recently stumbled across his personal webpage and was happy to learn he was married. (EDIT: This paragraph previously claimed he also had children, but I found out I had confused him with another friend.)
• We'd been trying to buy a particular house, and this morning we learned that someone had made a higher offer on it over the weekend. We were already at our limit, so we're stuffed. This would be OK, except that the market is really quite thin, and we really want a house, and this one would have been great.
• People are being generally difficult at work. It's the last week of term, and people seem to be under a lot of stress. They are then asking stupid questions and making ridiculous assumptions. When those assumptions turn out to be false, they call me and irately ask me why it won't work the way they want it to. Personally, I'm tempted to forward our office phones to each other so that no one can get through.

OK - enough for now. Lets just say I'm not real happy today. Thought I'd share.

The true evils of the Fitball Squat

Some of you may recall the name "Gerti" from this post not so long ago, and also the associated "fit ball squat" debarcle described within. Well, this morning I felt much better about the whole incident, and here's why:

As I was leaving the gym this morning, our young Gerti was against the wall with a fitball, looking just about as awkward as anyone doing a fitball squat does. She'd mistakenly chosen to wear something that was just a little unflattering, and I think was feeling incredibly self-conscious about the fact that I (not to mention everyone else in the gym) was there, which is awesome because that's exactly how I was feeling when I was the one with the squatting and the fitball and stuff. It was kind of like karma, but in a more selfish, vindictive sense.

However, what happened next actually transformed my glee into a small amount of remorse. My good friend who I go to the gym with was walking with me as I was leaving, and just as we left the gym, but still well within earshot of young Gerti, he delivered a blow that would be incredibly devastating to any girl at the gym, especially to one in the middle of doing fitball squats:

See! I told you she was podgy.

UnReal Estate

So I went to an auction today. I've never been to an auction before, and to be honest I didn't think there'd be any chance we could win it. However, the agent for the property we were looking at said, and I quote:

"The property will be sold on auction day."

Now, the interesting thing about this phrase, is that we believed it meant exactly what it sounds like - that there'd be an auction, and at the end of it someone who wasn't the vendor would walk away owning a brand new property, regardless of how attractive the bids were to the vendor. So we made some financial decisions based on this advice, which included purchasing a deposit bond so that we could pay for a property if we won. See, the property was a bit beyond our purchasing power, but if it was definatley going to sell then there was a chance that we might win. People mightn't turn up, and the market is pretty flat...
So, we went to the auction. There were three properties from the same vendor, and we'd decided we were going to bid on two of them - if we missed the first, we'd bid on the second. The property we wanted most was the first, which was convenient for us.
So they opened the bidding, and Rachel (who was handling the bidding, while I handled keeping our little boy happy) put in a bid of $180,000. People seemed rather shocked, but once the real estate types settled down their overemphasised disbelief, the auctioneer began asking for increases. There were none. Not-a-one. Going once, going twice... and... The auctioneer placed a bid on behalf of the vendor of $270,000.
Well, we were a bit stunned, but not overly worried. Rachel offered to raise our bid to $220,000 which wasn't quite the correct thing to do, but I think it was probably the best option at that point. Anyway, we got to the "going once, going twice" bit again, and then the property was passed-in for negotiation at $270,000. We went out and spoke to the real estate agent who spoke to the vendor on our behalf (I think I should mention at this point, it just so happened the vendor was the manager of the real estate agency running the auctions...). As it turns out, he wouldn't sell it to us at $220,000. He said that $220,000 wouldn't buy a property in that suburb. Apparently, he didn't intend to sell on auction day. He intended to sell if he got enough money - which to me seems no different from any other auction, and as such shouldn't be misrepresented, as it was, as a guarenteed sale on the day.

Now, I have to say, I feel rather misled. We knew we couldn't afford to buy these properties outright with the current expectations of the average seller in the current market. At the moment, there's a reasonable gap between what buyers are prepared/able to pay and what sellers are expecting to get. They still want the inflated prices they could get 12-24 months ago. We know this. However, I figured that based on the "properties will sell on auction day" line we kept on getting fed, that we might actually have a real chance. Well - I was lied to. We were told categorically that these properties would be sold - and yet they only actually sold one of the three properties. Actually, of all 5 properties that went to auction today, they only sold one of them AND they sold it below the vendor's bid. This tells me something - that sellers are expecting too much for their properties. But I already knew that really. The problem I have is not that we didn't walk away with a house. It's that we made the highest non-vendor bid on a property that we were told was a guarenteed sale on auction day - and yet the property wasn't sold to us.
So what do we do? Start looking again. I feel somewhat bitter, but there's nothing to be done. We just have to start over I guess... I think the most important thing I've learned is that the next time a real estate agent tells me a piece of information that I'm going to base my decisions on, my line will be:

"Really? Can I have that in writing?"

No Use For A Title

Have I mentioned I hate being sick? I believe I may have once or twice. Don't expect this course of events to change, by the way. I will get sick, and I will tell you about it.

{later that day...}

So I'm driving home this afternoon, and I'm in a bit of a rush. My wife had told me that she'd had a hard day with our son, and she was keen for me to get home. I stopped by the Games Wizards (my game/anime shop of choice) to pick up some DVDs, and was now on my way home. Between the shop and my home, there is a reasonably long stretch of road that is fairly straight, and has an 80Km/hr speed limit. My intent, was to travel along this stretch at perhaps a velocity slightly above that limit, as wanted to get home as soon as possible. That intention was foiled when I got caught behind a car travelling at 20Km/hr under the perscribed speed limit. The irony of this, is that the car was....

... A RED PORSCHE CONVERTABLE.

Now, hopefully you can see why this would be frustrating. I'm driving a 96 model Toyota Corolla (which is a great car, mind you) and I'm caught behind a car worth many times as much as mine is. A car which is expensive BECAUSE IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE FAST, DAMMIT!! The driver looks to be in his mid-thirties to early forties, and yet is driving slower then the average geriatric.
Now, let me not advocate speeding - because this isn't what this is about. It's about people driving at, or at least close to, the speed limit. I would have been fine if he'd been doing 80km/h, but it seems to me that the logical conclusion one should draw from this whole incident is that this guy and me should swap cars. I mean - he wants to go slow: my car will do that just fine. I want to go fast: his car is built to go fast. We should swap. It should be compulsorary for him. His car's image implies speed - speed which he doesn't want to use. So he should replace it with a car that doesn't imply speed; that being mine. After all, he was holding me up: it's only fair.
Needless to say, that I failed to mention this to him when I pulled up beside him at the lights. I hear* those things have GPS-enabled panic buttons in them these days that instantly send SWAT-like teams to your location to beat up anyone in your vacinity. (*Note: I didn't actually hear that - it's just a convenient falsehood to support my cowardice.)
The moral of this story is, that if you're going to spend a mint on a car that sells itself as being fast, at least drive at a speed that doesn't make you look like you're out to buy some Depends undergarments. I'm happy to sit behind someone driving at a cautious 5-10km/hr under the limit, but any more then that is just arrogent - you're holding other people up because you feel that they should conform to your desired slowness.
Shame on you, Mr. Porsche driver. No soup for you!

A short addition on the nature of time

SBS had another program on tonight dealing with Einstein's theories - in particular, his unfinished "theory of everything". It reminded me of a thought I had when writing this post, but didn't include.

If time is relative to the speed you are moving, then is it perhaps possible that we only experience time as we do due to the sum of our movement within the universe? For example, the world is turning at a prescribed speed + the earth is moving around the sun + the solar system is moving around the central point of our galaxy. Assume also that our galaxy is part of a cluster of galaxies that are also moving at a prescribed speed. Could it also be possible that at least one element of this sum of momentum is decelerating, which is what gives us the perception that time speeds up as we get older (ie: it's not an alteration of perception due to age, but rather an actual time-space phenomenon)? With the original thought, would that then mean if you could stand truly still (at "absolute zero momentum" so to speak) that time would cease completely? Or perhaps momentum is ultimately circular - so that standing "absolutely" still and traveling at the speed of light are ultimately the same. That would be a weird one - not that I have any basis for that last suggestion. Just completely random thought.

OK, I'm done. Bed time. Just some musings I wanted to jot down.