Hubris.co.nz

You know how maybe you’re a horse rider, and you’re pretty good at it, and you’ve ridden a lot of horses, and then one throws you, and you don’t know how the fuck you’re ever going to get back into the saddle, or if you even want to? And in fact, you kind of start to be afraid of horses? Well a good friend would tell you it’s okay to go for another a ride. A really good friend might try to help you up into another saddle. But the best kind of friend of all is the one who gets down on all fours to let you ride them instead.

Or alternatively, another kind of amazing friend is the one who tells you that they will beat up the horse that threw you, and even though you know that they never would – and you wouldn’t want them to either – it’s still very sweet.

Other good friends will buy you lap dances in unrelated incidents. I have some pretty awesome friends. I have also made new friends on the internet of a feminist bent. I like them.

What else? Kane came to stay this past weekend, and Heather’s coming tomorrow. There’s derby on the weekend and apparently there won’t be any of the slow derby bullshit, which is good. There have been  a lot of parties. Thanks to Sunday movie nights with the Lovehawks, I’ve done pretty well on the #11in’11 front. Work is busy. Social life is busy. Money is tight due to car repairs and continuing to pay off my credit card debt and just, you know, life. I like that it is turning into autumn, although I like sunshine too. Gin has become the drink of 2011, apparently, with all the G&Ts at New Year’s, and now the Gossip Ginger Gimlets and Gossip Girl Wednesdays.

Webstock was amazing but of course you already knew that. It was so great to see all the good people from out of town that I only get to see like once a year like Walter, and to learn so much and talk so much that I thought my jaw was going to fall off. Turns out, $100 trip to the dentist later, that it’s stress which makes me square my jaw. Ahh well.

I don’t really feel like I’m accomplishing a great deal, but I don’t feel like I’m not, either. I’ve dealt with all this uterus bullshit. I’ve got my work back on track after stuff that we won’t go into. My protective streak for people may cause ruckuses, but nothing that’s not fixable. I am managing to hold on to and repair relationships with people who are important to me. I am doubtless behind in my communication with people, but hopefully this post will help. Essentially, apart from the horse-riding metaphor, there isn’t really all that much to say. And that’s okay.

Right now I am looking for these things:

1. A new job. They announced my resignation at work so I get to wear the leaving beads now. The leaving beads look like Mardi Gras beads but I’m pretty sure I haven’t shown my boobs to anyone here at work in order to earn them. Unless there is actually a camera in the hole in the ceiling in the bathroom. I’m looking for writing/editing/web/communications type work, so lemme know if you hear of anything that’s going.

2. A new flatmate. Bart’s going off to find new adventures on the other side of the tunnel, so if you know of someone who’d like to live in Sunny Hataitai and pay $120 a week for a good room in a great house with Smoo and Seb and I, then please do send them in my direction. The ad is up here if you want to perve at photos of our lounge and dining room.

3. A bach to stay at over New Year’s eve. There will be six or more of us, and we want to be close-ish to Wellington and on a beach. Yes I know we left it kind of late.

4. People to party with at our ‘Meat Market vs Bart’s Goodbye’ party. It’s on Saturday, and it should be fun, and you should come, and you should bring some people we haven’t met before.

Things that I have done lately that have been of some sort of note:

1. Looked for jobs.

2. Looked for flatmates

3. LiveAid for Africa – despite its sparse attendence we raised $100 which was enough to buy two chickens, two AIDs awareness kits, some farmer training and soap for ten families. Go us. You can see some photos of the events in my flickr space, but if you are too lazy to click a link, here’s a photo:

4. The drum & the bass. At a party, and then at Indigo San Frindigo Bathhouse on Saturday night. I had forgotten how much fun it could be. I especially liked the guy who bumped me, and then went to pat my shoulder in apology but grabbed my boob instead and so we had an “it’s okay dude” hug. I was somewhat less fond of my taxi driver who seemed to mistake my slight interest in why he chose NZ instead of Norway as a refugee as interest in him, and decided to ask me out for a drink then and there. At 4am. Really really inappropriate and sleazy, and it made me feel so uncomfortable that I got him to stop a half block from my house.

5. Dinner parties. Food Baby was at my house last week, and so I went with my staple beef burgandy and mashed potatos. Last night I went to a potluck dinner for Lisa Fur‘s birthday, and I made apple crumble. Another one of her friends had made a crumble too, but mine was better. Heh.

6. Had my last boxing lesson. I want to do more, but my trainer’s having a shoulder operation (as if I didn’t already feel bad enough about punching towards a tiny little blonde girl), and I have to control my finances (sort of) until I get a new job, and then my membership is up in November, and while I will be continuing to go to the gym, my new job location might dictate somewhat the gym that I join. So it is all to be confirmed later.

7. Obsessed over Rockstar: Supernova. I don’t know what I’m going to do after Thursday when it’s all over.

Today I changed my MSN tag to ‘slowly losing the will to live’ because it feels like that. My life’s blood is trickling out of me. LITERALLY. And some fuck has taken away the box of tampons that was in the first aid kit in the kitchen. How rude. I took the morning off today to stay in bed, having spent all day at work yesterday writhing around in pain, then taking so much nerofen plus that I got dizzy but still feeling the pain. That left me pretty much unable to do anything except build up a library of RSS feeds and stalk my shiny ex cow-orker after people discussed him in our project managers’ meeting (yesterday with bonus cake!). Now I remember why it was awesome not to have periods for so long. And apparently I have four months worth of cramps to get throught right now as well. Fucking radsville. At least my boobs aren’t sore anymore.

Yes, this is what my life is like. It’s Wednesday afternoon which means that I have to avoid the internets until 8.30pm so I don’t get any Rockstar spoilers before the performance show, but I’m feeling too sick to work. I would dose up on more nerofen but that’d be the easy solution. Yesterday we had a flat dinner for which I made a tagine. It was perhaps not the most authentic tagine ever, but it was fucking tasty. I still had to abandon it to lie on the couch moaning though. It’s just as well that I’m not pregnant, because my parenting skills are pretty crap and I wouldn’t want the second coming to be unable to refrain from scratching the couch.

In another example of how lame and behind the times I am, I dreamt about Chuck Norris the other night. He had grey streaks in his hair so I suggested to him it might be better for his career if he got them dyed, and he was like “I’ve got cancer, you’re so insensitive!”. Luckily I woke up before he gave me a roundhouse kick to the face. In a better example of awesome internets, I got this fantastic email this morning:

“FW: Hubris Horse Shampoo

I was interested in purchasing some hors shampoo as recommended in Horse and Pony – have I got the right contact? ”

I wrote back going “hahaha no, you really really don’t”. It’s an easy mistake to make, I suppose, although why the fuck would anyone call their horse shampoo Hubris? Do you want your horse to fall? Hopefully now I’ll get like a thousand hits from people wanting the horse shampoo. At least they’ll be a better class of people than the many who land here looking for animal sex. Also, now I think maybe I shouldn’t have run that particular google search since I’m still at work, but oh well. I rang up Bond & Bond on Monday to ask them what the fuck was up with my laptop and they said it’d probably be done yesterday but they’d call me. They haven’t called me. They also said that it wasn’t the power supply, it was something else that was really expensive, so I’d better not have to pay for it if they didn’t contact me to let me know. Hopefully it’ll come under the guarantee. I should have tried to pay more attention, but the guy wasn’t quite the clearest English speaker ever, and it sounded like he was yelling so I was holding my cellie way away from my ear.

I think the new Pulp is out soon with my reviews. I’m never entirely sure though. Other things of note? There really aren’t any. This is totally a filler entry. But you guessed that already, right? And now can I take some more painkillers please? I can’t wait to go and have a spa at the gym after work. Perhaps I’ll even do a little exercise too, if I feel like going crazy. I have another boxing lesson tomorrow and I’m scared because I haven’t worked out how to wrap my hands properly yet. I think I’m getting pretty good at the cross, however, so that’s something. And my arms have finally stopped hurting from the keg stands so at least I can thank my incredible stomach pain for something.

There’s a $351 amount on my credit card right now from spending ten minutes on the phone this morning and a half hour researching on Monday. Why do I tell you this? Well because a 50 litre keg of Mac’s Gold will be delivered to my house on Saturday, and I need you to come and help me drink it. And pay for it. I’m a little scared that no one is going to come to this Country Club, because after all, everyone hates America. I don’t know why though, I mean, America is like, awesome. So you should come on Saturday, because there will be fraternities and sororities (you should totally pledge to Gamma Gamma Gamma), and American food, and illegal hazing, and vodka shots, and beer beer beer. And maybe Showgirls and/or The Breakfast Club. It starts at 8pm. Like, awesome!

This week I am all about being aware of my body. Partly this is because I’m about to get my first period since like, April, and I’m crampy as fuck, especially in the o moment, and my boobs are insanely sore. Stupid fucking cold weather. In better in touch with my body news, I can feel my stomach muscles! Apparently there’s muscles in there. Who knew? I mean, obviously you can’t see them, and it’s not like the blubber’s going to stop jiggling any time soon, but I can feel something working when I do my sit-ups or leg lifts or remember to lean back when I’m doing lat pull-downs. I’m astonished. It’s a good feeling. And now I will shut up about this crap after I remind myself that I’m starting boxing tomorrow and I really need to get a fucking sports bra like six months ago. Stupid small boob-to-back ratio.

Things that I have done recently included having martinis with some of the fine people from the Wellingtonista. It was terribly civilised, proper and grown up. I also traded 101 Stories with Martha for something from Babylicious which is Aotearoa-made baby clothes. It was all very civilised and grown-up, which was lovely, but when I snuck out to join my cows and ex cows at the Poon I was like “Phew, now I can say ‘vagina’ again lots”, and two ladies sitting on the balcony gave me dirty looks as they left. Hah! We then tried to have dinner at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen but it was fuuuuuuuuuull so we ended up at Boulot, you know, just for a change, prompting much discussion about how weird it was to be there before midnight. The pizza was as always still good though, but there was something weird going on with me because I stopped drinking around 10pm and was almost falling out of my chair with tiredness by midnight. Very very unlike me. As a postscript, I had lunch at Sweet Mother’s yesterday and they have fish tacos. Heh heh heh. I had beef ones though that were rather tasty, and I think the place has a lot of potential.

Saturday meant a cocktail party for my workmate’s Hens’ Party, thankfully sans stripper. It was held at the house of one of my company directors, who happens to my workmate’s mother, and everyone had to bring a bottle that was assigned to them. I stepped up to the blender and made many fantastic concoctions, including my first ever mojitos, not in the blender. Maybe I should become a bartender when I grow up. Or perhaps a mixologist.

Before I went to the cocktail party, I spent a very enjoyable day sorting through my newer CDs to decide which ones I wanted to keep (not many of them), then eating a leisurely breakfast with the paper at Coco, and then browsing Real Groovy for hours as they figured out my trades. For $2.75 out of pocket I bought Funeral new on CD for Karen (to go with Birds as her birthday present, although after I bought Birds I realised I had to keep it for myself because it had a DVD and Karen doesn’t have a TV, but luckily I was furnished with another copy, thanks doll), and then on vinyl I bought Interpol’s Turn on the Bright Lights new, and Beth Orton’s Central Reservation which is curiously spread across two records, but is nice to listen to while doing the semi daily yoga-ish stretches and it doesn’t remind me of 2000 anymore which is super good, and The Dark Side of the Moon and one of the Tour of Duty soundtracks. I <3 the trade-in, although that was like 16 CDs worth. I guess you get what you pay for. Or what you don't, in this case.

On Sunday we went to Capitol for Karen's birthday dinner. The girl serving us wasn't as fantastic as the usual staff, but the food was still all very good and I was well happy with the Jim Barry shiraz that we had after a pretty bland Mt Nelson sav. It turned out that the witloof in the chorizo, almond and witloof salad was really really bitter. I didn't see that one coming! Because apparently I am an idiot.

Last night we had flat dinner, although the idea of sitting around the dining room table was nixed in favour of sitting around the lounge table on account of that being where the heater was at. I thought the weather had got all nice and mild, but man I was wrong wrong wrong. Then the boys went and got out Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and it was just as good second time around. Movies that have their characters arguing with each other about adverbs while trying to solve crime and accidently killing people make me hot.

Today at work I am doing more phone support for this website that I now work on quite a lot, which in a “the internet is too small” twist, this young lady does as well, except from the other end. I’m also writing lists of things that I need to do but can’t really be bothered doing, and I’m trying to stay away from TWOP forums so that I don’t get any spoilers on tonight’s episode of Rockstar: Supernova. You can tell that it’s okay to be into Rockstar because Russell Brown said so. Sort of. And on that note, it’s time for me to go and get back to work. Awesome. But I will see you on Saturday, right? RIGHT?

Sunday June 23rd

Did you notice and appreciate that while I wrote a drunken entry that really didn’t say anything, it was at least legible and non-abusive? I must be getting better.

Yesterday a huge throbbing evil migraine sent me to bed around 9pm cos I was covering my ears and moaning every time Bopha talked. She woke me up later when Leo came over with panadol. Dammit, I wish I had a boyfriend to bring me drugs. The panadol didn’t do much, but the sleeping did. When I got up today, I still had a headache, but two large cups of coffee made it go away. I’m chowing down on herbal sleeping pills now cos I have a 9am exam tomorrow that I’m basically fucked over – I have no idea as to its nature or content or anything, so there wasn’t a huge point to the study that I did. But I will get an A anyways, I figure, because I like Joseph. So there.

The only other thing really of note today is that my breasts have grown since i started taking the pill. I hope they don’t keep growing – I was quite happy with the size they were before (although it would have been nice if they weren’t lopsided). Now I feel buxom (as opposed to just fat). I’m also worried that I’m going to enter a period of hugging people and smothering them in my bossoms. I guess that’s not such a bad way to die, all things considered. Sorry, I know i’m talking garbage, I’m sure you’re well used to it by now.

Okay, the pills are making my body melt into my chair and the floor now, so I should no doubt sign off and crawl into bed. One exam tomorrow, one exam Tuesday and then I’m freeeeee. Actually I have no idea how long my holidays are for. Hmmm. Did I just entirely sleep through the past six months? Possibly.

Oh, also, Tom sent me a tub of Arousal Gel for my birthday. The blurb on the packet says “Cool and Tingly, Refreshing Flavored Body Arousal Gel For Any Erogenous Zone”. I wasn’t aware that I was having problems getting aroused, but anyways, in the name of science and all that, I can tell you that it’s just like rubbing menthol chapstick on your nipples – ie, not very exciting at all. Although of course, it’s spearmint flavoured. And the weird thing is that I didn’t think that it was at all weird that he should send me such a gift. I think everyone needs friends like that, even if people don’t get it.

Friday June 14th

Work today was crap because I made mistakes and stuff, and was just generally not as clued up as I like to be, and the hours dragged on and on and when I got home I was grumpy for no reason at Bopha and Leo so I hid in my room. Leo laughed at me and said “but yesterday you were going on about how much you loved your job” and I said “yes well, i’m premenstrual” (I don’t think Bops and I have synched yet, but HAH! I’m the one taking hormones, she’s gonna have to dance to my tune!). But then I had a siesta and felt much better.

Clay Bops and I went out for a flat/pre-birthday dinner tonight since he’s gonna be in Wanganui on Monday. We went to Sitar in Mt. Eden which was nice and drank lots and lots of wine with our two vegetarian (mushrooms&spinach and vege korma) for Bopha and one chicken tikka dish. We had fun! They gave me a voucher for a one hour massage for my birthday, bless their socks. And then Clay went to Kara’s, Bopha went to Leo’s and I went home and kept my boots on cos they make me feel like a hoochie, and I was watching MTV awards so it just made sense. Laurence and Chris and Emma came over and hung out for a bit, and then they invited me to go back to their house with them, but I was feeling a little sickly, so instead I stayed at home and watched telly some more. j2 played ‘Parihaka’ and I thought that Tim Finn looked a lot like Eddie Vedder in it, so I went and found my Ten cd and lost my voice singing along because I stubbornly refused to take a breath in the “woaaaaahhhhhhhh ahah” part in ‘Black’ and I’m still coughing as a consequence. And then Bopha and Leo came back to watch the soccer, but I had to leave the room because I’m still in soccer overload mode.

Last night’s dreams involved both Laura Ingles Wilder and Milan from Pluto, so I’m looking forward to tonight’s. Also I am looking forward to a jolly good sleep in. Except I have to take Clay to the airport around 1. I hate the airport. Nevermind. I haven’t driven my car for aaaaaaaaaaages since I’ve been all good and walking lots. I’m excited about seeing my girls all on Monday. Ohhh, it’s Andee’s birthday tomorrow; I even tried calling her tonight but it was engaged so I must try to remember tomorrow. And then it’s Emma’s birthday on Tuesday. I ‘m going to see if I can split my hour massage into two half hours, since i’ve never had one before – well, a professional one anyways. And come to think of it, I’ve had pitifully few massages at all anyways. Only one boy ever gave them to me – but I think that was just his way of getting into my pants, which worked remarkably well. You suck other people (And yes, THIS is a diss of you)! And come to think of it, pretty much everyone on the Internet (oh okay, and in my social circle) has seen my breasts, yet the only breasts I’ve seen have been belonging to girls I’ve bedded. What’s up with that? Where’s teh love? I’d like to see some boobies please! It’s only fair.