Hubris.co.nz

Yes, I’m aware that it’s been a while. Here are the things I want to talk about, for my own reference as I write this over the course of the day:

1. The Amazing Race
2. The Newtown Fair
3. The building of a TV cabinet
4. The Oscars
5. Maori class, sort of
6. Political arguments with a friend that felt way too personal and made me cry on the bus
7. Installing broadband
8. Gig at Bodega
9. The reseting of my all my crushes to zero
10. The Phoenix Foundation and the goodness that is Waitangi Park

1. The Amazing Race

On Saturday 4 March, a southerly rolled into Wellington, and it was coooold. Therefore, it was of course ideal weather to run all around Wellington for Sarah’s Hens’ Party. I can’t find my camera cable, so I’m going to steal images from her flickr account, because that’s what friends do, right? Yes.

We met at 11am at Vista Cafe in Oriental Parade and had brunch.
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I was a little nervous at first because I didn’t know anyone, and they were all very pretty, and well dressed, and ordering skinny lattes, but then we had some champagne and I felt better. I felt better still when we were split into two groups and handed a large bag full of wine and snacks that we were ordered to finish before the end of the day, and given our first task. We answered ten questions about Sarah and Nick, and I felt very clever knowing who her famous second cousin is, even if I don’t really know who he is (something rugbyish, I presume). Certain letters in our answers led us to our next location – the indoor netball courts.

I handcuffed Sarah to the rubbish bin to leave her for the next team, we picked up our clue, drank a bottle of bubbly very quickly in the freezing wind cos we couldn’t drink it in the shuttle and headed out to the airport to pick up another friend with the next clue. I made friends with a girl who didn’t know many other people either, and we had another bottle at the freezing cold airport, so all was right in the world.

The next clue led us to an old flat of Sarah and Nick’s, and so we spent nearly an hour sitting on its steps trying to solve a sudoku puzzle as a group. It was okay though, because the organiser had arranged it with the new tenants (she organised all her part in the day from Dubai. That’s insane. And also very cool), and we had another bottle or two of wine to drink anyway. The other team took aaaaaaaages to show up, and we had to wait for them to retrieve Sarah, but then they solved their puzzle in like five minutes, and we all took off for The Grand, or Shooters, as I suppose it is now called.

More handcuffing awaited Sarah there.
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Apparently that’s just a New Zealand fan, not actually Hulk Hogan. Who knew? The wrestling was in town that night, as I’m sure Lisa Fur can tell you all about, and fans had booked out nearly all the accomodation in town. Anyways, we had some more bottles of wine, and some food, and played a game where every time Sarah answered a question that’d been asked to Nick wrongly, she had to put on another item. She ended up looking like this, which is just totally awesome.

I hope she doesn’t mind me putting these photos on my site. I’m not sure if she even knows of its existence, actually. If she does, holler at me and let me know, ‘kay? It’s the gentlemanly thing to do. And that goes for any other workmates reading. And as for ex-workmates – hey to my reader at Foodstuffs! You read me a LOT. I can’t believe that they’ve finally let you have internet access…

Anyways, we put together our puzzle pieces and did another sudoku on the back of it, which led us to Patel’s Superette on Oriental Parade. Me and Allison went via taxi, which I only mention because it’s going to come back in my summary of the following friday night, if I remember. Anyways, the final clue had us all digging in the sand for ages, in a manner highly reminiscent of my pirate tenth birthday party.
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We dug up a big chillybin full of wine and cheese and tasty treats and picniced on the band rotunda. When we were done, it was almost five pm, and so we decided to go back to the Orange Apartments where many of the girls were staying and chill out until dinner, which was booked for 7pm.

While we were there, I bought coffee from the Southern Cross/ex Zeebos, which was very tasty but took eeeeeeeeeeeven longer to make than the coffee at Ora, tried to take a powernap, but was unable to, because I can’t fall asleep on demand without a wank first and that would have been highly inappropriate. We also watched Top of the Pops, which was rad because it turns out that the girl who’d done the organising was the brother of the drummer in one of my very favouritist bands, and so I got to say to her “I did a phone interview with your brother once, and he was lovely, except I was shamed out because I thought he was the bassist cos I’m used to him being called Michael and the bassist being called Mike”. We also saw part of New Zealand’s Brainiest Kid and they showed a picture of some What Now presenter:
and asked who it was. The correct answer was ‘Tamiti’ and I was like ha, he looks kind of like my friend Tamiti from high school, but then I promptly forgot about it in the scramble to put on a little makeup and my shoes and all that sort of stuff.

We were walking to Kai in the City up Marjory Banks St when some guy sitting on his car yelled at me, and lo and behold, it was my friend Tamiti, who, as it turns out is actually hosting What Now now. Oooh spooooooooky, given that I haven’t seen him since 2000. He is in fact building an army, which is awesome, and when he makes it into parliament, he’s going to give me a job. It was great catching up with him, and he said he comes up from Chch every fortnight, so we ought to catch up shortly. Lovely.

Kai in the City was really choice. I was a bit skeptical when Sarah had said she wanted to go there because the owners walk around with a guitar singing, but it was so much fun. I probably wouldn’t want to do it every night, but hey, every couple of months it’s okay to break out the ‘Ten Guitars’, and ‘Tu teramai nga iwi’. Plus, the food was really yum, and the wine was really yum, and it was just good vibes. And another old workmate of mine was there, and so it was nice to catch up with her too and tell her how very lonely I am now. After that we went for a drink at the Cambridge, and then they were going to Boogie Wonderland, but it was 11pm, and so I’d been Hens’ Partying it for a solid twelve hours, and it was time to go home. But it was a fucking radass day.

The Newtown fair

Unsurprisingly, I was totally exhausted the next day, so what smarter thing to do is there than to head out somewhere to walk around for hours in masses of crowds? I picked up Karen and we drove around Newtown for ages trying to find a park because dude, public transport is for black people. That’s why the windows on buses are so big, so we can laugh at them (and there’s a little Oscar humour for you, just to tie in to later on in this entry. I am so fucking good at cohesion).

I decided that I wanted to eat everything, so I had a spring roll which was very average, and a coffee which was great and gave me a headspin, and some mini donuts, and then I bought a black bead necklace, and then there was a huge big pan of chicken with all kinds of colourful capsicums cooking outside Planet Spice and it looked so pretty I had to have some of that too, and then I got dizzy from the Indian food in my belly. I like Newtown.

The building of a television cabinet

I was still exhausted and sort of high on tastiness, but I decided to get the supermarket shopping out of the way since I had a lot of cooking and cleaning to do in order to prepare for my swanky Oscar Soiree the following night. I spied a TV cabinet that I’d seen in a mailer for $69, instead of the $100+ comparable cabinets are everywhere else, so I wrestled it into my trolley and got it home. Why did I need a tv cabinet? Cos I’m contemplating buying a 29 inch TV, so that I can put the one that’s in the lounge in my room, so that if the boys are watching crap and I need some private chill-out time (and for once, that’s not a wanking euphemism) I can watch it in there. So anyways. Mark was in the lounge when I got home, with the windows closed and the curtains not opened properly watching some crap (smelly boys) so I plonked myself down in the dining room and did some constructing. If I had an electric drill and four hands, I could have assembled the cabinet very quickly (except for maybe the doors), but I didn’t, so it took a while. Then the doors wouldn’t fit in, and they were all crooked once they did, and that took even longer, and I was dehydrated, and the floor was uncomfortable and oh oh oh the pain, but holy crap it was so satisfying and I felt so clever once it was all done. You should come over and marvel at my feat of engineering, and promise not to hold a level up to the doors. Girl power!

The Oscars

I had texted everyone I knew in Welly to invite them to my Oscar Soiree so that they could drool over Jon Stewart with me. In order to prepare for this, I made empanadas (beef with cocoa and flaked almonds and spices in savoury shortcrust pastry), pear and sour cream cupcakes, toasted turkish bread with creamcheese, sundried tomatos and fresh basil and two kinds of dipping sauces for samosas, spring rolls and dim sum that came frozen in a box – a party box, if you will. I also cleaned the house, of course, and put out bubbles in an icebucket, and glasses, and printed out lots of oscar nominee sheets for playing the ‘think will’ and ‘want to’ game on, and found some pens. When Anji and Karen arrived looking all glammed up, I decided to do the same. Also in attendence were KateB, Kartini & Mike and Ash, who gets special credit for being a person online (you will recall, of course, our “Oh, you’re that Joanna!” conversation) as well as a person from real life from the KKK crowd. Yes, that’s right, I hang out with white supremicists, not just people whose names all start or sound like K. Missing were Katy and Chrisana who piked due to the weather. Surprise surprise, it was windy in Wellington.

But yes, anyways. Everyone was very excited about the Oscars, and I was quite drunk by that stage, which is always a good thing. I laughed so hard that I nearly fell off my chair during Jon Stewart’s opening monologue (bless the wonders of the Internet that you can watch if if you missed it), especially during his address to Steven Spielberg (“I can’t wait to see what happens to our people next! Trilogy?”). And then I cried during George Clooney’s speech, cos I was very emotional, and damn he looked hot, and oh, even if it was a bit of a wanky speech, it was just so hilarious and beautiful at the same time, and I was still high thinking about the bedroom eyes he’d been giving Jon in the opening clip. And I kept on bringing out food, and everyone was witty and great and appreciative, and I just had a fantastic time, even though it did go on til 2am. Stupid Desperate Housewives rating so highly.

Maori Class, of sorts

I would MSN one of the web developers and ask him for the HTML tag for macrons, but I’m not talking to him or something today. So just believe it when I tell you that I’d like to put it in there.

Anyways, on Tuesday, I stayed home sick from work, and of course my KOL internet account had been allowed to lapse in preperation for the installation of broadband on thursday, so I couldn’t look up a map to see where Heriot Drive was in Porirua. Thus, after I had battled rush hour traffic all the way up to Kelburn to pick up Karen, I wasn’t sure exactly whereabouts we were going, but I figured we’d find it easy enough. The woman on the phone had muttered something about the roundabout near the mall. Heaven forbid that the wananga actually send me out a piece of paper confirming my enrolement and the class times and so forth, but nevermind that for now. We couldn’t find the street, so I pulled over by the covered bit of Porirua cos I saw an information stand sign, and thought there might be a map there. Instead, I saw a wananga sign, and was like “wahoo! I didn’t think that this was Heriot Drive, but nevermind…” and since we had half an hour to kill before 6pm, Karen and I went to get something to eat. We went in to the wananga office, and I tried to sign in on a list like the sign told me to, but my name wasn’t on the list (Karen wasn’t enrolled yet but i was hoping they could squeeze her in), so I was told to just add our names down the bottom. So we walked upstairs through a weird kitchen and back door and stuff, and came out into a big classroom full of new computers. We asked if this was the Maori class, and were told that was “on the campus”. Oh really? Well where the hell were we then? And where the hell was the campus? We were given some kind of weird garbled directions about how we had to head towards Bunnings, and when I said I didn’t know the area, and asked what road was Bunnings on, we were told to go to Bunnings, and turn. There was some arm waving too, but then we found ourselves out hte back of the building and had to walk in a large circle around the whole plaza to get back to my car, and so the incredibly vague directions rendered themselves pretty much useless. I thought that maybe Bunnings was in the industrial type area towards Tawa, so we headed in that direction, and, surprise surprise, ended up in Tawa. That’s when I decided that we’d go to my parents’ house instead and get Daddy to speak some te Reo to us. He, of course, was off in China, but at least we made Mum’s night.

And this week Karen and I have decided that really, five hours every Tuesday is an awfully large commitment to make for the next 36 weeks, and I’d have to drive and park my car in town every week in order to get there in time, and that’d be $10 a day, and so we’re postponing in favour of trying to find a place that does classes actually in town.

Political arguments with a friend that felt way too personal and made me cry on the bus

I met up with Anita-who-used-to-work here for a drink on Thursday at Ponderosa. She smokes, so we sat outside. Their stools are uncomfortable. When Dylan came out of work we waved him over so he could drink with us too. I was trying to tell a story about why I wasn’t particularly fond of someone using the punchline “and she votes National too!”, assuming that anyone I was friends with would just recognise that’s akin to eating puppies, but it kicked off a huge big very long argument which culminated in me getting very upset because I am very very heartily against smacking kids. Also, One Red Dog is ass and won’t serve food in their ‘bar’ area, which is pretty much exactly the same as the restaurant area. (*)

Installing broadband

On Friday night I went home straight after work and spent a while on the phone to Xtra who told me to reset our modem, and after finding a cunning comb with a parting spike in order to do so, I managed to get broadband up and running, although the cable’s a bit dodgy, given that I bought it for me and Bopha back at the Slab, and it had millions of Volcanic users trampling all over it, no doubt. Bart’s laptop is running Windows 98 and he didn’t have a network card, so he’s not so lucky. However, I did go over to my parents’ house last night to retrieve my old desktop that English Dave had reformatted so that in theory the boys can use that, but they didn’t seem too keen to go and get the monitor out of my boot, so they can suck it, queers.

The gig at Bodega

Later that night, after I had drunk a fair amount of vodka, Karen and I went to Bar Bodega for the Spiderplan/K1500/Rico Suave gig. It was loud. I mean it was LOUD. When we got there the halfway doors were shut, and we’d never seen that before so we asked the bartender what was going on, and he said it was just because of the loudness. We braved our ears (I wish I had thought to take earplugs) and went in, waved to Niall and sat at the back, where we occupied ourselves being hilarious making up sign language. In the breaks between bands, or songs, or what-have-you, I made funny jokes because I am happy and super-fun to be around, and carefree and oldskool gay(*). One of the jokes I made was so hilarious that I had to plug a reminder into my phone about it, so that I wouldn’t forget how Karen said “I see a small flaw in your plan” and I said “Is it a mezzanine?”. HAHAHAHA. Remembering that joke just makes me laugh and laugh.

The reseting of my all my crushes to zero

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but I’ve had an awful lot of crushes on an awful lot of people lately, and they’ve all turned out badly, well for me anyway. I think (hope) that 3/4 people remain ignorant of my crushes on them, with the fourth of course being that maple syrup-eating surrender monkey. Oh, and while we’re talking about a 3/4 ratio, if you ask me in conversation about my sexual orientation, I’ll usually say that I like people, and it’s about 70% boys and 30% girls, but if we look at the last four crushes, then we will make that figure 75%/25%. Not that it matters anymore, because they’re all over. Oh yes, that’s right, it’s that simple. My will shall be done. I am in control of my feelings, and the master of my own domain. And I suppose since I have now created another version of me, I am now the Master Beta. Ha ha ha.

The Phoenix Foundation and the goodness that is Waitangi Park

There is, however, no pain that liberal applications of the Phoenix Foundation cannot temporarily distract one from. Especially the Phoenix Foundation in a pretty pretty tent in the stunning Waitangi Park, preceeded by Lisa and I squeeing at sighting internet celebrities, and they played ‘Nest Egg’ and ‘Going Fishing’ sounded a little like ‘Sweet Child’o Mine’ and oh they were hilarious, and oh it was just so so rad. concert’o the year so far, although they may be topped by Bic Runga in two weeks’ time. Afterwards we wandered around in the freezing cold gazing at the insanely awesome Earth from Above outdoor exhibit, and I took off my shoes so I could run around on a world map and jump up and down on stupid Canadia, because why not? And then traffic crawled up Courtenay Place so we laughed at all the underdressed skanks (Lucifer_Sam would have been SO proud of us!) and watched Family Guy DVDs. Go see the exhibition if you’re in Welly, please. It’s like the nighttime equivilent of the pretty flags on top of this page. And of course, for more information, you should go to the very clever Wellurban for posts like this one.

I was going to write about other things, but I can’t be bothered now. I figure this will do, given that it’s taken me ALL DAY. I mean, apart from the work that I have also done. Naturally.

Last Friday was, if you recall, the Prom. Of course, you should all have known that from coming along, but if you did, then you’re people that I don’t know who didn’t introduce yourselves. Wankers.

But nevermind that. Let’s talk about going to Spotlight at lunchtime with Kateb for netting to promify our dresses, and how I was going to get black but the call of the pink was just too strong:

Then let’s talk about how the skies opened around 4pm and I had holes in my shoes, and my car was parked a long way away and luckily I’d given Kate the spare key to it cos I got to it late, and then we had to schlep over to Newtown to decorate the hall and I was soaking wet and freezing cold and reaaaaaally not in a good mood. Plus decorating was tiring and hard, and we were running late and Brad’s friend who was helping us kept on talking and talking and oh oh oh, just the drama of it all. But when we were done, the place looked fucking rad:

Kate came over to my place to get ready, and since I knew I needed to snap out of my grump, I went to “spend a couple of minutes by myself” (read: rub one out), before showering and sorting out my hair. Of course, we ended up looking fabulous, as the above photo will prove. We spent a while having some drinks and trying to convince Bart and Del to come with us, before abandonning that idea and jumping in a taxi. The hall was pretty empty at first, so I was very worried for Brad’s sake, and I was trying to count and do maths and things, but eventually it filled up, helped along by the arrival of these two, Katy and her flatmate:

We sat and drank coruba & coke for a while, cos it was donated, and then Brad started playing ‘Get into the groove’ which is one of my favouritist songs to dance to evah, and since my friends weren’t feeling it, I went and jumped into a group of strangers including this girl Holly:

They were very very rad people and were very complimentary of my outfit, so I decided that I was ON FIRE that night, and that everybody would be my friend. When Katy and I were slowdancing the first slowdance, I spied two boys standing at the side so we grabbed them instead and they didn’t appear to mind at all. Later I fell in love with one of Brad’s tutors (although I suspect I didn’t realise who he was at the time) when he whirled me around the dancefloor and told me to stop leading. How powerful and manly! Oh how I was swooning.

At one stage, I went outside to find Kate, and found her talking to a 15 year old kid who’d wandered up to boast about how he was on his 20th beer. When he turned around and said to the Asian girl behind him “I don’t like Asians!” I decided that was enough, and it was time for him to move on, so I went and found Brad, who grabbed a very tall friend of his and politely asked the young lad if he had a ticket. He moved on then. Apparently he was also kicked in the balls by a friend of the Asian girl. Excellent.

It was just such a fucking fantastic time. I danced and danced and danced, and although I didn’t win Prom Queen, I certainly felt like it, and so I successfully vanquished all my demons from dances at ASIJ 12 years ago. Oh yes, that’s right, all my demons. I’m totally a demon-free zone now. Honest. Here’s some more photos from the prom – if you want to see them larger, go to my flickr account page, obviously. And the best part of all is that Brad made a whole grand.

When Kate and I got home, we found Mark and Bart sitting out on the front steps drinking, so we stayed and talked to them for a long time, and I did the most awesome fall-flat-on-my-face fall ever. Radical.

The next morning, strangely enough, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, but I dutifully rolled out of bed, showered and headed off to pick up Anji and Karen, via a ten minute wait at Macdonald’s for them to serve me up a burger instead of the ick that is the Macdonald’s breakfast. Not that their burgers are much better, of course, but this was an emergency. I got Anji to drive to Waikanae, because I still felt drunk. We went to Swell Cafe for Mum’s birthday brunch, which you might remember from the news stories about its quarter mill bronze statue being stolen. Or you might not. I don’t care either way. Ha! It was really nice there, but oh boy I was feeling ill. Then we went to Oma’s house to sort out more stuff and pick up more furniture and I puked some more and sat on an outdoor step and cried. I was very very happy to get home and unload the buffet and bookshelves.

After a nap, I went to the supermarket and made awesome sandwiches of streaky bacon, camenbert, hummus and rocket. Hurray! And I tried gingerly to drink some beer, but then switched to red wine. Around 11pm, I headed off to Nial’s house for Blair’s goodbye party. Luckily it was a very mellow night, just lots of sitting around in the very cute garden. I didn’t know people at first, but I was overly tired so I was in very giggly very saying lots of stupid things mode, so it was alright. The boy who I’d originally thought was gay talked loudly at me about how gay he was, and about how he used to make his ex girlfriend wear a Hayden Christensen mask when he flipped her over, and I felt ever so slightly embarrassed but mostly I just laughed at the things I was thinking in my head (*).I did tell the hot Canadian right as he was leaving that I fancied him rotton, and he laughed at me. Well, it wasn’t quite a “ha HA, like you could ever have a chance” kind of laugh, or even a laugh of pity, it was just a laugh and a “I’m sure you’ll get your pash this year”. And yes, I told him right when he was leaving, because I am laaaaaaaaaame like that, but at least I told him. So that’s all very well and good, and I don’t feel bad about it. And it’s good that he’s gone, because while he was a very easy crush to have, I just have far too much going on in my head right now(*). Oh, and of course he’s also a stupid maple syrup-eating surrender monkey.

Having been up until 5.30 texting, Sunday was a day for lying on the couch groaning and watching season two of the OC. I think much of the week was like that, actually. Hmm. On Wednesday I saw Capote, which wasn’t the feel-good hit of the summer. Then I decided I needed to stop feeling angsty about the number of people in my house (it’s strange getting used to having two boys and one girlfriend who is still trying to find a flat around, after living with only Anji for six months, but there’s no need for me to have a bug up my ass just because oh the pain, they’re sitting on my couches watching tv when I want to lie down and watch the Gilmore Girls in quiet), so I cooked a flat dinner for them and Brad. I was going to make a pear cake too, cos our tree is loaded down with pears right now, but when I got home, Del was already making one. Great minds and all that.

On Friday after work my workmate Sarah and I escaped down to Monsoon Poon for some very good conversation and some wine. She’s getting married in less than a month, and so she keeps asking me questions about things like invitations or social graces, or accomodation and stuff, which is fine, cos I’m happy to help, but it’s making me plan my own wedding something crazy, and hello, I’m not gettign married for another five years (that’s assuming Brad’s still single then). We were joined by the boys a while later, and then by Rene who is an ex collegue. Eventually KateB showed up to and by that stage I’d consumed quite a lot of wine. Sarah left and we had a platter of food which probably wasn’t nearly enough in proportion to the amount of wine we were drinking, and we went to Ponderosa where I watched Kate pee and she did the same to me. Not like, cos we were doing it in public or anything, just that we assumed that there would be stalls but it was one big room and so we decided to have a significant bonding experience instead. I was thinking that the bathroom looked mighty familiar and then I realised yesterday that it’s tiled like the one in Veronica Mars in which she does all her business. Ha HA ‘business’, do you like what I did there? (Yes, wow, that is a poo you should be proud of).

Somehow we managed to convince Dylan to come to a uni party with us (I did mention that the last time I went to a party at Jess’s there were both nipples shown AND a person in a panda costume), and we headed up to Kelburn via the supermarket for more wine. We probably didn’t need the wine. I had a good time at the party talking to Arthur and Brad who are at drama school together, and the fabulous Jess, and also Robbie, who as it turns out isn’t Lemon Cohen at all, and most awesome of all was that there was no one else from Salient there. Then Kate was a little worse for wear, so we decided it would probably be a good idea to get her home(*). When I saw Jess yesterday in Aro, she laughed at me for being like “omg, leave my friend alone! She’s been my best friend since we were 5, don’t hurt her!” cos people had placed flowers on her head. They laugh because after delivering that speech, I delivered Kate an all-mighty slap. Sorry babe.

Yesterday morning was consequently not much fun either, but I rallied by around 4pm when Anji and I went up to Mum and Neil’s for a BBQ. Boy it was hot, so very hot. I like BBQs. Then I went and picked up Karen and we headed over to Aro Park for the Bitchcraft carnival. I bought pretty earrings and we went and got fish’n chips and settled down on the grass to watch the Dukes of Leisure play. They looked like this:

I’m aware that you probably can’t see that much, but I’m hoping that it’s just that I have a crap monitor. If you can’t make it out, that’s a tree with a string of dead dolls hanging behind them. Anyways, the Dukes were very cool. They’re kind of sonic soundscapey like HDU or Jakob, and since I was lying on my back looking up at the stars, it was perfect. The Bitchcraft fair looked awesome when all the stalls turned on their little lamps. I felt like I was in an alternative Stars Hollow, and that is a rad thing to feel.Then I went home to dance the panda dance for Brad. I contemplated going to the Bitchcraft afterparty, but it was on the other side of town and my hands were still tingly with hangover. One of these days, I’m going to cut down on the amount I drink. For serious.

I’m kind of very very swamped by girl angst right now. It doesn’t help that I’m due for my period sometime hopefully very soon so that the stomach cramps will go away, or that everyone at work is leaving. But let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about my lovelife instead.

Okay, so let’s slip back to New Year’s Eve, and I’m all “ooh I hope I get to see the Hot Candadian”, and I do, and he’s drunk and hilarious, and then much time passes that night, and it’s some time after 3am and he’s disappeared and so I leave Bodega with this girl who I’ve known for a while and maybe some other people, but it appears that I’m pretty much only noticing her. We go up to Indigo to see a friend who works there, and decide we should do tequila shots. Shortly after that, it seems like something happens, and she says “I didn’t think you even liked me” to me, and I have to pee, and in the bathroom I find myself blushing and going HOLY SHIT, I’M GOING TO GET SOME and feeling quite strange about it. As it happens, I don’t get some, but I do find myself sitting there going “i just think you’re really choice” or words to that effect (probably those exact words) and we sit out on the balcony for hours and hours and hours and I’m totally starstruck and it came out of nowhere, and we make plans to get married because she liked the trifle I made, and she tells me to go to staff movie night and stuff.

Of course, that’s New Year’s Eve, people drink a lot, but I’d never ever thought of her in that way until then. Normally I can tell when it’s just me crushing (ie: all of the time) but it really felt like there was something there. The thing is of course that she’s a girl. And that makes things so much more complicated. It’s not MY sexuality that I have a problem with, it’s everyone else’s. I don’t have gaydar. And girls that I’ve fancied have generally ended up causing me no end of strife. So how do I tell if she a) ever likes girls and b) likes me?

Well, analyzing it to death sure doesn’t help. I’ve been doing that with the boy from work that I fancied – oh he said this, he said that, he tried to walk me home and I said no, what does that all mean? What it means is that I’m crazy. Boys aren’t that complex. But girls are. Or maybe they’re not. Aaaaaaaargh.

Imagine how I felt when a week later I was sitting at a bar with her and the Hot Canadian. Did her eyes light up a little extra when she saw me? Did mine? We were agreeing on everything so much to the point that the Hot Canadian Boy actually said “You guys are obviously in love, why don’t you get married?” to which I blushed and giggled, and she reminded me that we were already scheduled to get married. And then I left with them and shared a taxi with them – oh my stars, what a porno it would have made if in fact it wasn’t all so chaste (although I do think that the number of times that Hot Canadian kisses me on my forehead is only adding to “I AM ABOUT TO EXPLODE” factorness of me).

Since we’d talked about trifle, and The Dirt, and I actually happened to have some trifle sitting in the fridge, I decided to take some and the book in to her work. The note that I wrote her “ever so casually” on the back of a business card in case she wasn’t there took two drafts, and all it said was her name (I think). I only wrote one draft when I left a note at my workmate’s house over the holidays, as a way of comparing. Or as a way of demonstrating how much my craziness has escalated. She appeared to be really stoked and gave me a big hug. I tried not to blush or put my hands anywhere ungentlemanly. I also mentioned the prom to her and she said that sounded very cool.

The next day my sister wanted to go and see a movie, and I agreed since it was on at a particular theatre. She was working again and she told me that the trifle was really good, gave me my ticket for free, and then brought us out an ashtray when we were sitting outside even though she said she didn’t think I smoked. Who me, obsess about details? Yes me.

And then I didn’t see her for a while. When I got to my friend’s drinks on Monday night, I heard the friend mention that the girl wouldn’t be there til late cos she was working so I was like “right, I won’t be going home early then”. When she did show up I was stuck talking to this incredibly stupid guy. Well, he wasn’t stupid, but he was incredibly full of himself, as if he’d just completed a Tony Robbins course, and oh man, I just wanted to be like “shut the fuck up! I want to talk to the hot girl! How else can I win her over with my winning witty banter?” Eventually when Tony Robbins shut his mouth for a while, I got to ask her how she liked The Dirt and she sat up in glee and said it was great and that all her friends wanted to borrow it. I passed out invitations to the prom and she said it sounded great and hoped she wasn’t working. I got invited to the Hot Canadian’s goodbye party. People talked about going swimming. It was after midnight and I knew that they’d be at the bar for about another hour, and then they’d walk to their house, and then to the beach and oh, it would just take forever, so I decided that I really had to leave because I had work the next day, and also because I am a self-sabotaging git. She was like “oh, are you leaving?” and I interpreted her look as being really sad. Then she said “when are we getting married?” and I confessed to her that I’ve been planning weddings cos my workmate keeps talking about hers. Then our friend offered to civil unionise us, but we agreed we wanted an actual marriage. Then I went home and couldn’t get to sleep because it was too hot.

The hot Canadian’s goodbye party is on the 11th, the day after the prom. I probably won’t get to see him before then, which means I’ll never get to tell him how how I find him, cos I can’t tell him at his goodbye party cos duh, how damn tacky and cliched is that? And I can never tell the girl how hot I think she is, cos I just have no idea. Oh I am confuzzled. And also determined to stop fancying the boy at work. I’ve been upping my cold shoulderingness and my “I am like, totally a lesbian” to him, since he didn’t come over for a beer like the note suggested, and then had the cheek to say that was because he didn’t want to hang out with workmates during the holidays but look, he put my number in his phone because HE IS LYING cos he went out with other workmates for New Year’s Eve.

Ahaha oh what a loser I am.

Karen rang me on Friday and said “You know what I’ve been thinking about all week?” and I said “Chummeez?” and she said “yes” and so we made plans to have dinner there. I think we did really badly with our ordering. Some words of advice? Unless you like things that are squishy, avoid the stirfried tofu and vegetables dish. The tofu is icky squishy wobbly like it shouldn’t be, and the dish has the most revoltingly textured mushrooms in the entire whole wide universe in it. They’re like jellyfish with cellulite and a bad case of ebola. Blaaaaaaaaaargh. And the kung pao chicken was very average and the sizzling fish with Singapore sauce was very cornfloury. It might have been an off night for the kitchen, cos the waitstaff were still very friendly and lovely and all, so I will continue to recommend the place – if you don’t order the above dishes. Cool.

I took the bus into town with her, after I’d finished faffing over what I was going to wear and had brought the twins out (that’s Mary-Kate and Ashley to you, sir – and believe me, Mary-Kate seems to have been totally cannibalising Ashley). She told me that what was actually Pirie St was Elizabeth St, so I got all confused except for the fact that I’m not that dumb, but it is damn hard to read street signs in the dark without your glasses, so I was worried about getting lost, but I found my way there in the end – passing by the flat that I’d wanted to move into, and also those people on the street, but I didn’t greet them in case they thought I was stalking them… which uhh of course I wasn’t.

Eventually I got to Katy’s, and sat down and had a bottle of wine with her and Puck. Kristen and Kartini were already at Mike’s party, but we were in no hurry. At least, I thought we weren’t, until Puck started a series of toasts which very quickly finished our glasses, which was of course his clever plan all along. Genius! I’m going to try that one some time. So yeah, it was off to Mike’s place for the party then. He apologised to me for being rude at Karen’s house, and I was like, well, apparently she slapped you, so you obviously deserved it, so let’s call it even. I may have downplayed the fact that I don’t even remember him being at Karen’s, since I was throwing up in the shower at the time, but that’s beside the point.

The party was fun! I got to talk to Lisa about high school (she was two years behind me, but voted for me in the student rep elections cos I put an L7 line on one of my campaign posters – “wake up and smell the coffee, or just say no to individuality”, so she rocks) and she was like “you’re so cool, I should
totally hang out with you more often!” so I was like awwww. Kristen was waxing lyrical about Interpol so much that I feel the need to buy their album even though I’ve only heard it in the background. We also talked about knee-melting lines from songs like “I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life…” and “you’re my forever” and so forth. I had a big argument with someone about the magazine that I work for, because he is paranoid and thinks we’re out to get him (as opposed to actually just reporting the facts). He did no good for his own character. I wonder if he knows that he makes himself into a caricature? Nevermind. Another guy was openly starring at my Mary-Kate&Ashleys all night, and after muttering something about being afraid i was going to have a wardrobe malfunction said that yes, they really are very nice breasts. That was kinda hott – I think being that open is somehow much less sleazy than being ‘discreetly’ sleazy. Plus, he reminded me of Justin, so it was pretty amusing. Brad showed up unexpectedly cos I’d texted him the address, feeling very much like a North Shore person whilst doing so, since he was walking home and was actually in the neighbourhood at the time, so it was, as usual, lovely to see him. Polls were done on whether or people would rather go out with a ninja or a pirate, and as hypothesized, girls said pirates and boys said ninjas, with the exception of the caricature boy, who declared he’d rather be with a pirate “because they have ‘p’”, and then when I asked if he was worried about scurvy he said that he’d get all his greens from his pipe. And he thinks it’s the magazine that makes him look ridiculous? Righto.

Anyways, eventually around 3.30 or 4 or something, we decided we’d head on down to Sandwiches cos Ayna was supposed to be djing. Katy said that she wished she was a lesbian but she was put off by the thought of girls tasting like fish. I pointed out that if she’d ever kissed a guy after he’d gone down on her then she’d know that wasn’t true, and she concurred and we honked each other’s boobs. I was very tired at that stage, so shortly after we got to Sandwiches I decided to call it a night, knowing that I was supposed to be meeting Matthew Holloway for coffee at midday the next day, or in eight hours time, or however you choose to view time, and that i would also have to go and see my parents in the afternoon to pick up the rest of my crap, and I didn’t particularly want to be completely dead when I did that. As it happens when I woke up at 11am (after having got up at six am still staggerly drunk to feed Sebastian) I was far too ill to think about getting up, so I had to postpone coffee, but I was doing okay by the time Mum and Neil came to pick me up at two.

The pickup of my stuff was remarkably easy and drama-free. Carrying the boxes and all the drawers up the steep staircase in my flat wasn’t so easy, but hey, that’s life. They also told me that KateB was in town, so I texted her and she came around to watch DVDs, which meant that I missed going to see The Brunettes, but them’s the breaks.

Sunday I spent sitting in the sun devouring The House of Leaves which was fine, until I continued reading it when it got dark and my skin was crawling in terror and I was debating never leaving my bedroom again incase the hole in the roof of the bathroom swallowed me. I still haven’t finished it cos I’m waiting til I can read it in the daylight again. Scary scary book. It’s currently stuffed in my sock drawer, but it still makes all the doors in my house more creaky and it still keeps me awake.