While I'm busy sharpening my knives in preparation for The Gay American's return, I've had a friend staying with me; his previous flatmates seemed to have been experiencing some sort of folie a deux, and accused him of being a spy sent from another country. While he is, in fact, from another country, it seems unlikely that his government would select two ordinary (albeit substance abusing) individuals for such intense scrutiny. However, this accusation was enough to send him in my direction, and here we are now.

It's nice having him around. He's a good person, and doesn't criticise my house or my taste in clothing, unlike some people, whom I most certainly do not care about and will not bring up now. He works as a translator, and as a result our lounge room is scattered with all these exciting and expensive magazines (you know, the type with the "Special Import" sticker on the front of them at the newsagent that I would never actually buy because they cost a squillion dollars*, but love to read) that I CAN’T read, and can’t even guess at because they’re in a language so far removed from English I’m not able to fall back on my two years of high school Latin ("Caecilius est pater" doesn't cut it when you're dealing with what my friend tells me is an in-depth look at the female G-spot). Still, the pictures of people dressed in what is presumably haute couture and spraying one another with champagne/holding hairless dogs/wrapped in razor-wire always make for entertainment.

This one time, he used up all the milk, which sort of pissed me off a bit when I was in the mood for a bowl of after-work muesli. However, he used the milk to make a carrot cake, so it was hard for me to be too cranky once I found out. It wasn't terribly good carrot cake, but when it comes to cake I firmly believe that it’s the thought that counts. Because he's on holidays at the moment, he's doing a lot of reading, and I've been lending him some books along the way. He has a distressing tendency to bend the cover of the book all the way behind its back when he's reading it, and I swear I can hear it scream as he snaps its spine. This is because I too am screaming on the inside; books do not deserve that kind of torture. Still, if this is the worst thing about him, then I really shouldn’t be complaining at all, should I? Fine.

He leaves Australia FOREVER on the eighth of February, which is sad. Sometimes I seriously wonder if I have such deep and unresolved abandonment issues that I have no choice but to develop relationships with people destined to flee the country as soon as we start getting close. Let's save that for some other time.

* I've bought one of those fancy magazines ONCE before, mainly because it had Justin Timberlake in a sleeveless top on the front. Shut up. No, you are.

Two weeks into real work and I have:

- Travelled to places within the Sydney...well, within the New South Wales region, where I saw numerous fields of goats. Goats!

- Neglected to be told about Casual Friday and turned up in unbreathing black shirt and stripy tie I had agonised over for a good 20 minutes that morning in 35 degree weather;

- Had a big shouty phone conversation with a recalcitrant client, which then spilled over into shouty conversations with his employer and then the employer's wife (the power of the personality disorder);

- Got my first complaint! How totally efficient am I?

- Initially freaked out about said complaint, before everyone else assured me that said complainant was a heinous bitch and revealed that most of them had received complaints for nothing;

- Had drinks on Australia Day Eve;

- Had too many drinks on Australia Day Eve, and drank too much red wine, which I hate;

- Ended up vomiting all over my work pants, and rolling around feeling sorry for myself most of Australia Day. I'm not usually like that, I swear.

So far, being a grown up seems okay.

I was going to say that the other thing that I didn't mention about The Gay American that so irritates me, because I forgot, was that in addition to taking MY television upstairs, he put HIS completely ridiculously-sized and dangerously heavy television downstairs, which, when placed in my tiny loungeroom, makes me feel like I'm in the front row of the cinema every time I turn the damn thing on, because all the dots that make up the screen are the size of golfballs and I don't know where to look. But then I realised I said it about two posts ago, so perhaps I won't bother. Can you tell it bugs me though?

It's sad that so much of my time recently has been spent tying up all the loose ends at my casual jobs, in particular V's. Because her friends obviously have her confused for someone else (or don't know her very well at all), they told her over Christmas dinner that she doesn't delegate tasks nearly enough; she took this comment to heart and proceeded to assign me the task of searching for a new admin assistant, all the while telling me exactly what to put in the job ad, questions to ask them over the phone, and what to look for in a person (can-do attitude, enthusiastic approach to life, non-smoker, GSOH etc.).

This had been done over the last couple of weeks, whereby I read what felt like thousands of pretty much identical CVs (I mean, seriously. You want to hire a uni student, what sort of skills and experience do you expect, apart from one year of waitressing and moderate proficiency in Microsoft Poweroint?), deleted scores of email applications with titles that (I swear to god) weren't any more eloquent than "I want job," interviewed several people who all seemed to be a little anxious at the thought of working in a centre for those with Issues ("so...um, what sort of...people do you see here?"), before finally settling on a guy with at least some sort of passing interest in psychology and an eager-to-please disposition. I passed him on to V, who seemed satisfied, and training began in earnest on Friday. V turned up in the afternoon after he had left for the day, and I asked her what she thought of him.

"I think he's a borderline" was her response.

That's right, everyone. Put me in charge of personnel and I end up hiring a bunny-boiling weirdo. Boy, it's a good thing I'm not working in Human Resources, right? I don't fully buy her diagnosis, but of course once you hear something like that it's hard not to think back upon the day's events with that in mind. You know, like that time when he bought me a coffee when we were up the road. Or when he patted me on the shoulder as I was lamenting how little we'd done. OR when I caught him carving my name into his arm with a dried-up Bic. I thought he was being sweet! And good-natured! But no, according to V, this all constitutes "seductive, manipulative and obsessive" behaviour. Whatevs.

Of course, if I hear that V's business burns down mysteriously then I'll suspect she may be right.

I start Real Work tomorrow. OMG.