Today/this week did not start well.

Morning was okay, I guess, but early afternoon I headed out to uni (having already missed a class I'd fully intended to attend until I looked at the clock and saw it had started fifteen minutes ago). Stepped out of the house, realised I'd left my umbrella behind (yes, I found it - hanging on my cupboard doorknob) and went back to fetch it, costing me thirty seconds. The thirty seconds I missed my bus by. And the umbrella had been useless because it was so windy I couldn't open it up.

So I sat at the bus stop, and went to read my book.

My book was missing.

I'd dropped it.

So I had to walk back nearly to my house to find where I'd dropped it, pick it up, and walk back to the bus stop. Got a few pages into The Mote In God's Eye and then my bus came. I boarded my bus, and rode it to the train station.

Getting off at the train station, I dropped my book. "You dropped your book!" exclaimed the sole other bus passenger.

"I noticed," I replied, being already halfway through the action of picking up my book.

"Do you know - you're probably a bit young for this, but do you know Julian from Glendalough?"

[Note for non-Perthites: Glendalough, pronounced Glen-da-low, is a suburb in Perth. Being that Perth is a city of over a million people, despite the "getting Perthed" phenomenon I don't know everyone.]

"No, I don't," I answered politely.

"No, you're, what, 25?"

"I'm 21."

"Ah, well, you look like this woman I met at a party in the early nineties... She would have been about 18 then... We talked for a few minutes, then my friend whose house it was kicked me out... She had this really big earring [he pantomimes it] in one ear, remember?"

No, you moron, I don't remember, I was probably busy finishing primary school at the time, because I'm 21.

So he goes on and on until the train arrives about how he's been asking people about this because the longer you leave it the harder it is to remember what someone looks like. As far as I can tell this guy's seen too many movies like Sleepless in Seattle and figures that if only he can find this poor girl whose friend probably rescued her from a fate worse than boredom, he's going to have his soulmate and it will all be happy. Note: He was about 45.

Anyway. I carefully made sure I was at the other end of the carriage from him when we got on the train.

It was about as the train was pulling off that I realised I'd left my umbrella behind somewhere.

I liked that umbrella. It'd even lasted nearly two years, which is something of a record for me and umbrellas. <sigh> Some people shouldn't be allowed to own umbrellas, and I am their queen.

Anyway, when I actually reached uni I ran into a woman I hadn't seen in about five years and a guy I hadn't seen in a few days, both of whom I had great chats with, and the rest of my afternoon was reasonably decent, but still, meh.

Especially since I've resolved that I am not going to swear this week, and I wasn't doing too well with that once I got to uni. I think uni is a bad influence. But at least I'm trying. [Chorus: Very trying.]

I did have it explained to me that Bro can't be my real little brother, since I don't live with him and never have and don't find him intolerably annoying. Feh on them all, he's my brother as of Saturday and that's final.