Hubris.co.nz

Last week was totally exhausting. Actually, the week before that was exhausting as well. But I can say quite definitely that it also contained one of my top career highlights so far, so that’s pretty awesome, right? Should we mix it up and go topically, or go chronologically like usual-ish? I guess if we go chronologically, I will remember more about my time in Sydney, so let’s start there, shall we? And if you don’t like that, then perhaps you could leave me a comment to register your discontent. Rad.

Sydney and FullCodePress

So, as you will no doubt recall, I tried out for Full Code Press, and didn’t make the team, so the lovely Tash suggested that I come along anyway as volunteer. It meant a flight at some ridiculous time in the morning, but also my first Koru Club experience in 15 years or so. I love Air NZ’s newish inscreen entertainment screens, especially since a flight to Sydney involves stupidly long amounts of time on the tarmac. I got to meet all the Code Blacks people that I hadn’t already met, and it made me chuckle how we all had webstock satchels.

My hotel wouldn’t let me check in early, so I went and had a walk around Darling Harbour, having breakfast, reading the (tabloidy) paper, drinking average coffee and enjoying it being t shirt weather. I went back up to the hotel and they still didn’t have a room ready, so I sat sulking in the lobby for a bit before I rode the monorail and went and got a very nice pedicure inside the mall. And then, finally, I could check in. This was my room:

The bedroom looked out into the super huge giant atrium, and the living room had these awesome nighttime views:

I like views of the city at night. I also like getting to finally have naps, and wake up and have Kate B be there, and I like going swimming with her, and then drinking wine with her and looking through her portfolio. I like that her web work is pretty much the opposite of mine, it being all advertising, all flash, whereas I am all advocating for accessibility, in theory if not quite so much in practice.

Anyways, so Kate and I sorted out our hair and jumped in a taxi to go and meet up with her friend Rob and The Mayor of Newtown, at a pub called Cooper’s that was not dissimilar to the Southern Cross with its outdoor terrace. There we compared handwriting, broke glasses and spent a very long time trying to decide where to have dinner. The Mayor’s initial suggestion of a place across the seat was vetoed by Kate on account of the bad lighting, and my criteria was that it needed to have wine. Eventually we set off for a different Vietnamese place, but it was closed, so we went to find a different one. King Street is almost exactly like K’Road, in terms of architecture and people and shops and eateries. We found a Vietnamese restaurant that may have been called Viet Maison, which had a Tiki-Bar although I didn’t see that initially, and OH MY GOD, we ate the most fantastic food – soft shell crab with garlic butter, salt & pepper eggplant, crispy pork hot pot, duck pancakes, lemongrass tofu, coconut rice, oh my god oh my god oh my god. It was so fresh and amazing. I want to eat there every day. Can’t we swap half Wellington’s Malaysian restaurants for some more Vietnamese places? Please? Kate broke another glass, and so we went to another bar called Zanzibar. The Mayor bumped into a friend of his who was in a band and owned his own tiki shack. I’d had enough wine that I was struggling to not imply that the friend was in INXS. It was 1am before I knew it. It was very much fun.

The next day was FULLCODEPRESS so I found my way down to the Conference Centre, and then into the Exhibition Centre, which is the largest building I have ever seen. It’s like, a kilometre long, at least. The FCP stuff was taking place in the middle of all the shiny technology exhibits, so it looked like this:

I hung around for a bit while they were just getting started, and was given access to the official FCP blog, and then I went and met my cousin Jacinta for lunch. She took me to a really lovely Thai place past Chinatown, and I shamed myself by being unable to finish my chili and basil tofu because it was too hot. Laaaaamer.

Another swim and a nap later, I was ready for the FCP lock-in. My role was to blog and twitter about it using the #fcp09, to talk to the nice judges, and to try and sniff out mysterious smells in the media room. It was lots of fun. I also enjoyed making Clint from Rainbow Youth dance for me. Okay, so I wasn’t really helping anyone very much at all, except in my capacity as entertainer. I still felt good about being involved. But not so good that when 2am rolled around and people started sleeping that I didn’t feel stupid for being there when I had a nice hotel across and up the road waiting for me, so I found a security guard to let me out and had a heart-pounding but brightly lit walk back.

I had wanted to get back to FCP by 11am in time for the finish, but that zopiclone, she is a hard task mistress, and it was not to be. Instead I went and ate barramundi in the sunshine. That was lovely – trying to find the FCP annoucements was not so much fun. In fact, I felt somewhat like I was in The Twelve Tasks of Asterix when he needs to get a piece of paper signed. Not a single “information” desk in all of the kilometres of building actually had the information. In fact, a couple of them gave me unformation, and sent me miles off in the wrong direction. Luckily I eventually found some of the judges, but not before I had discovered a conference called “What causes happiness?” (apparently, cupcakes for afternoon tea causes happiness) which would be a nice counterpoint to the conference I’d see the next day at the Powerhouse Museum called “Depression in older people”. Anyways. I got there just in time to hear the judging, which was really really interesting to find out what makes a site good, according to the experts. And The CodeBlacks won! Hurray us! And hurray charity, as I wrote about in my work blog. Etc. So really what I should write about now was the cat-herding required to get everyone to the Pump House for drinks, and then off to the Spanish area for dinner, but everywhere was full so we ended up in a really old Greek restaurant where the lamb was tasty but I suspect that the vegetables had been cooking probably since it opened in the olden days. People appeared to be flagging so I taxied back to my hotel, but they actually stayed up drinking until 2am. Good for them!

The next day was a nice sleep in, a leisurely checkout, then freshly squeezed juice to treat my swineflu/airconditioning flu, and i set off to the Powerhouse Museum. More walking. I was determined to get there because I’ve always been impressed with Seb Chan’s work, and I really enjoyed it, although the ghost figures it used were spooky, and there were a lot of school children loitering about. Who are they to enjoy the culture? Pah! I was hungry and their cafe was uninspiring so I walked down to the madness that is Paddy’s Market, purchased a light shade and two Chinese cigarette posters (in case we ever start an opium den in the tiki shack), and kept looking because I didn’t feel like foodcourt Asian. In fact, I walked all the way back to Darling Harbour and made my way down all the cafes, looking for a plate of fish’n chips that would be under $30. In the end, I came to a place with an adequate bbq, and beers that I guzzled down, but because I had so much time left and I didn’t want to walk anymore, i plonked my fat ass down at the Lindt Chocolate Cafe to eat a degustation plate by myself. Mmmmm. I left with a sea of brown floating around in my eyes, it was so intense. Back to my hotel to collect my bags and be collected by the shuttle driver, and into Sydney Airport. I made my way directly to the MAC counter as soon as I spotted it, where with the lady’s help I purchased a Russian Red red lipstick, but she lacked a matching liner and advised me to look at other brands. I also bought a compact of colours from their special collection that no doubt I did not need but I dearly wanted. I pulled up a seat at the bar, and strangely enough, the other NZers found me there. I watched In Bruges on the plane, and thoroughly enjoyed it, along with the pie I got. I also thoroughly enjoyed getting home to my own bed.

Cupcakes and Mini Webstock

Now I’m not sure if you remember, but after Webstock earlier this year, I made cupcakes for Tash and Ben and Mike and Deb to say thank you so much for their hard work. Well, it turned out that they liked them so much that they hired me to make 100 cupcakes for their third birthday party. Here’s a photo of how some of that looked:

Because I am slightly insane, i decided to make six flavours – vanilla w chocolate frosting, mocha, lemon & cream cheese, mixed berry & white chocolate, gluten-free chocolate and almond, and vegan pina colada. I ended up pretty much drowning in batter and my stomach hurts just thinking about the leftover icing in the fridge!

The Webstock Mini night made it all worthwhile though. It was a lovely chance to get really dressed up, hang out with my besties, try to corrupt Alan, and heckle people drunkenly via Twitter. Even if i did end up drink at the Malt House – at least they had signs up saying they were renovating the male bathrooms and were hopefully removing their incredibly misogynistic urinals.

#GOVIS09 and twicking up

That was the Tuesday. On the Wednesday I was at work until after 11pm, duvet and all, struggling to sumarise 18 months of work into one 34 minute slide presentation. According to the Twitter feedback, I did quite well (scroll down) – or here or ,here – the problems of multiple identities! Once I managed to get some proper cafenet access and had a chance to read all that, well, I was just completely blown away and may have had a little cry. I definitely had a hugely swollen head and cut’n paste the praise into an email I sent to my whole family. It was just so amazingly nice to be acknowledged for the work I do – even though, or especially because there’s like 40 days left of me working there. It’s a tiny bit of a “oh, are you sure you’re doing the right thing, SSC?” and also a “I know that I am smart and talented and can be employable”. There were drinks, and I met a stalker who brought me wine then there was dinner at Roxy. It was tasty and entertaining, even if I had to talk to Australians for ages. Oh god the pain of it all!

The next day at the conference, I felt much much more secure and safe and smug, and more people wanted to talk to me. I even started calling myself a ‘social media expert’ but you must believe that I was saying it as if I was saying “I’m Rick James, Bitch!” Nat’s closing speech was of course my favourite of them all since I missed Matt’s but his was very highly regarded too. It was fun. I learnt things.

And then there were drinks. And more drinks. And a lot of fish on sticks, and hot roast beef sandwiches, and homemade pistachio ice cream, and more drinks, And then I ended up going to Hummingbird for the Tweet Up, and then I went to China Delight for dinner with the Toms and some new friends, and then we went to Hummingbird for a drink or two more. Alisa left my old work to manage the bar there so it was nice to catch up with her.

My weekend and the future

There has been a lot of sleeping and trying to stay warm. There has been feasts at Siem Reap. There’s been a lot of twitter time. There’s been a lot of duveting. That’s really about it. Tomorrow I go for an eye example, since glasses are still subsidised at work. Then on Tuesday I’m going to EAP to plan for the future. After that, well, who knows? I could use some quiet times but I’m not seeing a whole lot of that happening any time soon. I am more confident about being hireable based on GOVIS though. Career highlights are nice.

Sleeping and so forth

It is odd to have bedded two people in such a short space of time, (although my record is still 3 in two weeks in 2003) because of the contrast between the old and the new. It’s also redonkulous that I’ve bitched and moaned about wanting to be able to actually have sleepovers, but when it comes down to it, I had to leave a warm bed and go out into the cold cold night because of how I am physically incapable of sleeping without taking zopiclone. Doing a line-by-line comparison would be amusing for me but also totally totally inappropriate, so I will just leave the public exposure of private things to the contrast between my necklaces clacking together as my head moved back and forth, and the moment of having a lover gently unclasp my necklace, which seems to be even more of an intimate act.

Because we didn’t want Mum to have to stress out about Xmas preperations the day after her mother died, on Friday 23 December, Karen and I decided we’d shop for all the food. If you were in Wellington, you might also remember that as the day that the skies decided to bust open and leak bucketfuls of water all over the place, along with some spectacular thunder and some average lightning. It did this especially in the time that it took me to walk to the bus stop. Then at the bus stop I had to wait a good half hour at least (where I felt stupid cos people were talking about why the buses weren’t coming, and I was like “maybe the rain interferes with the trolleys” and a guy said that it didn’t, and I was like well whatever buddy, it always does, and then ten minutes later I looked up and saw that he was wearing a stagecoach uniform), so I should have left the house later and not got so wet. As it was, I left my very soaked hoodie at Karen’s house, after I’d squeezed it out a little over the sink, and when we came back from Moore Wilson’s, it had puddled all over the floor like a puppy.

Have you ever been to Moore Wilson’s two days before Xmas? We went to the dry good section first, and it was when we were just queuing up with our trolley that they announced that eftpos was down. We waited and waited for a while, and it just didn’t seem like it was going to get back up again, so Karen went home for her chequebook. Then we went to Fresh, and the queue for the checkouts started at the door, so I stood with a trolley and nibbled the tasty things that the clever staff were bringing around to pacify customers, and Karen loaded us up with goodies. It was a surprisingly good atmosphere, despite the rain, and the waiting, and the crowdedness.

I can’t remember what I did on Xmas Eve, except for watch parts of National Lampoon’s Xmas Vacation for nostalgic value. It was every bit as terrible as I rememberd it being. Perhaps I hung out with Lisa Fur some more? Oh no, wait, that’s right, I was doing the supermarket shopping and loading up on liquor and snacks for Anji’s birthday, and I ran into Cousin Jacinta so I took her home with me, fed her beer in the sun and made her Pad Thai.

When we’d started to discuss Xmas, and what we’d planned to do on it, I’d suggested we have it either here or at Karen’s house, so that Anji could make an easier escape if she felt the need, and so we were going to have it at Karen’s, but when she started to be all “Oh I don’t know if I even want to come to Xmas” I said “well fuck that, let’s just have it at Mum and Neil’s cos that’s where I want to go, since you’re not commiting to it”. She came along anyway, and had been extensively consulted over our plan to just eat tapas all day long. Then our aunt showed up and stayed for three hours bitching away. Yes, her mother had just died. I can understand why she’d want to hang out with Mum, I really can. But she was just so so so nasty that I eventually stood up and yelled “HEY KAREN, LET’s GO OVER HERE AND DO SOMETHIGN ELSE!” and also “HEY, YOU KNOW WHAT’s COOL? MONKEYS”. Eventually we all cornered my dad in the kitchen and asked him to say something to Mum, who did get my aunt to leave. Nevertheless, it was too late, and Anji was already in a sulk about how we weren’t having a “proper meal” so she left, and the atmosphere got a lot lighter. We took turns reading The Pirates! And the adventure with whaling aloud, and ate chocolate fondue. The taxi took a long cold hour to show up, and I spent lots of money texting everyone like crazy after midnight. Well, Murray anyways.

The next day was Anji’s birthday so I got up to eat crossaints with her, but not to learn how to spell them, and gave her the birthday present that I’d really spent far too much money on – a big fake leather box filled with margarita glasses and rimming salt (heh), and Havana Club Blanco, and Jose Cuervo Gold, and canned stawberries and coconut cream and chocolate-covered coffee beans, and fortune cookies, and Scholl’s party feet, and and and umm that was possibly it. A couple of her friends came over and we had a drink or two in the very hot sun, and then she took all the food and liquor up to Richard’s house, and Lisa Fur came over.

On December 27, we had the funeral, which my mother had argued my aunt down about the need for it to be in Paraparaumu where Oma had lived for the last twenty plus years and where my Opa had his funeral. Mum’d asked us at the hospital if one of us would mind saying a few words, and since neither Karen or Anji wanted to, I said I’d be happy to, just like I had at Opa’s seven years ago, only this time I wasn’t going to be wearing an old suit of his. Much like at Opa’s, I hadn’t really prepared for what I was going to say. I knew that I wanted to talk about Oma’s legendary hospitality, and about how dedicated to her grandkids she was, without trying to raise the hackles of either my mother or my aunt, and about the chilli jam she tried to foist onto anyone who ever came to her house. The celebrant spoke about how Oma’s father had taught her to use her pencil box as a way of defending herself when she was young because she was so little, and so later another ex diplomat’s wife got up and said “Dee was the only one of us who used to play the pros at tennis in the Phillipines, and now I know why!”. It was lovely all the people who got up and shared small memories of her. Most of them also included stories about the food she would cook. I started crying when my aunt spoke of how Oma always used to order a speckook (I cannot spell that to save my life, but it’s a Dutch/Indonesian type layer cake, and when I say layer, I mean each layer is crepe thin, and it’s a mix of batter and then spiced batter so it’s all stripey. It’s quite rich so you eat it in thin slices) for all the people she knew back in Holland every Xmas, and how every single one of the people that Diz and Mum contacted to say that Oma had died mentioned that they’d just had their speckook delivered, and also that when they got to Oma’s house to start sorting out her things, they’d found that someone had sent Oma one, and so that was served afterwards. People kept coming up to me to talk about Oma, which was cool, but also it was strange, because they were people I hadn’t met before, and I had to do a lot of smiling and nodding. One woman, who was dressed in a tie-dyed outfit with dolphins on, said that I seemed to be the strongest one, and I was like “huuuuuuuuuuuuh?” and when she left she told us grandkids that there was strength in the circle, and I smiled and nodded. Because I’d ever so cleverly not had breakfast, I was starving by that stage, and the savouries were really not doing it for me. I jumped in the car with KateB’s parents to guide them to Oma’s house, and there we all waited in clumps with Aunt Leonie and Uncle Graeme who are on my dad’s side for someone with a key to show up, and we finally got to have some decent food. Then we were told to go through the house and pick out what we wanted, and jewellery was dolled out and oh my god it was just horribly painful. Not because of the emotion, although there was that too, but it just seemed like my aunt was taking out her rage about her children living far away from her out on me and Anji and Karen. Bleh. And it took sooooooooooooooooooooooooo long, and it was so hot, and fuck, it was just a horrible afternoon. It was nice to celebrate Oma’s life at the funeral service, but did we have to go and pick over the bones so soon?

We took Mum’s car so that we could leave, and headed straight for Burger King. When I got home it was after 7pm, and I knew that both Heather and Jessie were in town, so it was time to go out and have many many MANY drinks.

To be continued. Again.

So, while I’m drunk enough and also happy enough, I might give you a brief heads up. I’m really tempted to not to though, because oh for fucks sake, can people misunderstand me just a little bit more? Am I really that obtuse? I’m considering shutting down Hubris once and for all. I thought I was clearer and easier to understand on paper, but apparently not. It just really fucking bugs me, eh.

BUT! Here’s another list:

 <!-- and she's even more annoying in person in real life. the next two months are gonna be HELL -->

Thursday June 6th

Bed gets harder and harder to get out of in the mornings as it gets colder and colder. Bopa and I had breakfast in Grafton together, excellently cheap donuts and Atomic coffee before I went to work, a little bit late, but the big boy Bridget wasn’t there anyways, so it didn’t matter. Hmm, I just typed ‘boy’ but I meant boss. I’m a dick. Also, do you know who else is a dick? HORRIBLE MOOCHER GIRL. Grrr. I’m getting veeeeeeeeeery annoyed with our houseguest. Last night I missed a top secret but very important meeting because she had gone out and parked me in, and then I thought she’d come back any minute now, but of course she didn’t. I really need to say something to Bopha about it, but the thing is Clay wants her gone just as much as me, and I really don’t see why I should always have to be the fucking bad guy. Clay should get a fucking spine. Hmm, I was actually in a really good mood until just now too. But maaaaaargh – I mean, it’s fair enough to be pissed off after someone’s been in your house for four weeks without any indication of when they’re going to leave, right? I mean, this is a pretty small apartment.

But anyways, brighter happier notes. Trying to get gossip out of Justin about yourself is like trying to squeeze juice from a nonjuiceable thing, which is funny given how much he’ll tell you about everyone else not pertaining to you. I have things on my mind, semi guilty conscience and stuff, but not really – I feel bad for not being as sweet to someone as he was to me, but according to Justin, it’s all cool, so that’s cool, and yeah, end of story.

My wrists have been really really really clicky lately. I’m sure I heard Natural Ange recommend something for that – Silica maybe? or Zinc? I dunno, but that’s what I should be taking. Also, less wanking would probably help too. And plenty of other things. I should try and find the other poi that Jacinta made me, but I fear it has gone the way of my sneakers and vanished into thin air somewhere in limbo between Auckland and Wellington. Hmm, i keep going to hit tilda funny key cos I use a mac at work, but that doesn’t work here. Anyways. Okay, it’s becoming pretty obvious that i don’t have much to say, so I should talk about my birthday instead.

Hi, I’m turning 22 on the 17th of June. You can find my birthday wishlist here. You should send me stuff – if you email me I will give you my address; who knows, it could be the start of a beautiful friendship (I can give you references on that one). I’m going out for dinner to somewhere cheap and BYO for dinner on my actual birthday – and the best bit is that since Clay will be away then, I don’t have to invite Kara – muhahahah, so it’s just going to be my closest nearest and dearest, cos massive dinner parties are a little scary, and then having a (not hyped) party on the 29th, after exams, to which you’re all invited, assuming that either A) I know you, or B) you know my address and aren’t intimidated by my friends. Cool. My friends aren’t really that scary, even if they are a little protective. Maree came around this evening, and it was lovely to see her, even though she didn’t share her meat (I’ve eaten too much bread today and I’m craving proteins. This could also be related to me being midcycle, I think (and a quick check of the old pillarooni packet confirms it (I hope my previously good blood pressure hasn’t gone up drastically over hte past couple’o weeks))).

You know, if that last sentence had been a maths equation, it would have been fucking hard. Oh and one other thing – I fixed the links on all the pages to my photo directory – it should have always been /cam not /photos.

Tuesday the 228th of December – Xmas 2000

Oh my goodness. I thought I saw my trailer’s

I have no idea what I was sayign then.

hehehe tom’s drunk and incoherant. He sucks. I crawled behind the xmas tree but managed to back out again in one piece. I won trivial pursuit. We wrote down some quotes. I think it was somethign about lesbians.

“I hope that fate understands the complexity of my dilema”

“do you have graceland? I hope that you do”

Why is this guy playing with my stereo?

“that’s cool, I like random quotes from me”

“you are sick on so many levels”

Well, so many quotes I may have admittimed above, i am workig tonight to tonighnt convince tonight of from Joanna of this: Paul Simon rawks. Paul Simon: Hi, I rock and stuff. What can ya do?

Tom sucks. I am playing Kate Bush now. Please understand that there is only my parents’ cd collection at risk here. You were engaged? Really? Golly! tehehehe. Heh.

Justine was very cool. She texted me today saying she loved me to pieces, which makes me feel so proud it gets a mention. I have to go to Unity and trade Shirley’s xmas pressie to me in for a book on Yoga. My legs hurt from pulling them above my head (party trick).

Heh. hehehe. Heh.

My cousin Jacinta is currently laughing at me and saying dumb things, but she gets away with it, becxause she is cool. I heart cousin jaacinta.

“Ooooooh I just know that something good is going to happen – I don’t know what it is” – Kate Bush, “Cloudbursting”. I’m inclined to break into a jig.

I like swinney org. I dislike the bump on my neck. “I’m not coming onto you, but feel it”. It’s so cancer. Ahh well, I’ve lived a good life. Our Xmas lights are on random now. I feel like jiggign, but I’d just thunder all over the place. I’m cloudbursting Daddy. Your sun’s coming out.

You told me last night you were a sun now, wiht your very own devoted satelite. Happy for you and I am sure that I hate you.

It’s funny quotign when I don’t have emotions either way anymore. clay rang today asking me to pick him up from Palmy on the way to Taupo and I told him it’d increase my journey to 8 hours and he felt all bad before i laughed and told him the truth. I rang Brad to rant when Home and Away wasn’t; on, then watched “Stars in Their Eyes”. Tonifgt, matthew, I’m going to be drunk Joanna.

Matthew Holloway, I tried emailing you today but it got returned to me. What’s your email addyt?

filler. That’s all.

Ahh well. I suspect Tom’s passed out somewhere. If I was a better person, I’d go see. hehehe I love emails telling me to go to bed. Thanks mum. Well, it wasn’t mum. But still. Kate bush is cool. “Uh OH” is loud. There’s a volume knob on this kmeyboard, hwewre’s that?

I heard breathign coming out of the toilet. Breathing = still alive, right? Sorry Mum & Dad.

I just had to sweep up cat biscuits in the kitchen. Sorry Pixie!

Drunk bys are so so silly. Man, I gotta find someone that has as good a drinking capacity as me. He’s drinking out of a cocoa container right now, because my parents have a shortage of plastic vessels, but I haven’t got the heart to tell him.

Muhahaha. Hehehehe. Heh.

Wednesday the 23nd of December

Another 8am waking. This is evil. Why does working have to be done at that hoour of the day? Anyways, I was quite busy all day – people came in waves. I didn’t sell a single piece of jewellery though, which is good, because people who want it are always fucking indescisive, and I have to stand there while they hem and haw, since I would have had to open the cabinet for them. People picking over pottery can usually help themselves, apart from asking if the stuff is dishwasher/microwave/candle/being dropped off a tall building proof. In case you’re wondering, it’s all of the above. But I’ll just tell you now – if you drop pottery off a tall building, it’ll shatter. Use those shards to enrich your garden.

Fuck I’m an awesome saleschick. I sold about $1500 worth today, which is HEAPS. More than half of it was Paul Winspear’s stuff. He minded the shop while I went to grab some lunch and say hi to Jo (“Boxing Day!”). I got back to find him selling a $390 piece of his, only he charged them $3.90, because him and the eftpos machine don’t get on too well. Luckily a) the people were going to collect the piece the next day and b) they were honest and came back once they saw the mistake. So I rang up that sale correctly. Shit, did I just say ‘rang up that sale” ? How American can I be? I love zapping cards throughth the eftpos machine. Changing the roll in it wasn’t so much fun though.

Momma came into the shop in the afternoon and minded it while she sent me off to get Cousin Jacinta an Xmas pressie. I also got Karen a silver and green bead necklace from the lovely Jo at Narnia. Weren’t those books the BEST? Except once I realised how Christian they were. That sort of killed their rosy glow. But I digress.

In the evening, Amy and I went to see ‘Stella Does Tricks”, only it had finished its season, so we saw “Love and Death on Long Island” instead. It was quite good, I thought – Jason Priestly taking the piss out of himself. It was really nice to spend quality time with Amy too. She lost a ten dollar note somewhere between the ticket counter, and the table we sat at, three metres away. Truely truely bizzare stuff. It just vanished into thin air. I tried to pretend like she was just going crazy, but no! Apparently we both are. Sigh. I’m senile at 18. Then again, maybe there’s a black hole operating around me. I lost three eftpos reciepts today, and I haven’t got the faintest idea how, since I always put them straight into the cash box. I lost my wallet at the Rialto in sixth form too – maybe the two events are connected.

Afterwards, since all we’d eaten for our evening meal had been a large box of scrumptious popcorn, we went to Axolotl and had not one, but two plates of nachoes – the kitchen fucked up and cooked them twice. Yay. It’s so good, knowing the people I know. We had a really really good long chat too, which is Yay (good england!). I’m going to Midnight Mass with her tomorrow – but ONLY because she asked, and because we’ll go with her (scary) parents who know the owners of the Big Sleazy so we can get free drinks. I’m such a whore for alcohol. OOoooooooh scary thing happned today – I whored myself out for POTTERY of all things. Paul had this gorgeous purpley pinky plattery bowl in the shop today, and I fell instantly in love with it. It was priced at $90 – I knew he’d let me have it for less, but it’d still be expensive, so I asked him if I could do his next duty (on the 29th) for him in exchange. He was thrilled at that idea, so I get the platter. Now I’m worried, cos I normally hate and despise pottery. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Oh yeah, it’s for the good of the flat. That’s right. I’m sacrificing myself for group benefit. Besides, it’s not like I’ll have much else to do on the 29th – and I bet the shop will be deserted anyways.

I went to Midnight Mass last year too. I hate carols. I hate organised religion. Why am I doing this???

Oh, weird thing that happened, just before I go – I got an authorization request from this chick on ICQ saying she’d seen my page and she wanted to talk to me about it. Intrigued, I authorized her, and added her to my list too. This was a couple of days ago. I’ve been to her website and she’s a 15 year old American girl. We live in different time zones, and she hasn’t left me any messages. How bizzare. I sign people’s guestbooks, or if they really turn me on (like, not sexually), I’ll email them. Never ICQ. That’s just weird. That said, if you wanna ICQ me, by all means, go ahead!