Hubris.co.nz

I skipped work on Friday, because I was feeling like crap. When I woke up in the afernoon, I was feeling much better and able to run many errands and spend much much money on things I didn’t really need, like bottles of brandy, and new Xmas lights and wig hireage. It also made me happy when I went out for a drink with Dylan and Dave that night and there were no gaxies. I made them come to United Video with me to look for Swedish porn, and I think the man browsing in the adult room was unimpressed by Dave taking photos of us. We couldn’t find anything that looked Swedish, although we were tempted by Anal Grannies 4, except that I hear that the sequels lose the magic of the original. Then we ran into Fia on the street who said that Teanau was having his goodbye drinks at the Cambridge Arms so I popped in there after the boys had buggered off, but I only stayed for one drink and then went home on the bus in the rain. I baked a sour cream, almond and apple cake when I got home, but left it in the oven too long because Sebastian was sitting on my lap and I was enjoying our cuddle, so the sides of it are a little too tanned for my liking.

My Saturday day was also about that exciting. I spent a significant amount of it making meatballs, tidying our dining room and stringing up Xmas lights in preperation for Country Club. Oh, and I got dressed up.

If I tell you that I am wearing two mismatched stripey socks, will you know who I am?

Sweden started out really slowly, although Fia and her man showed up on the dot of 8, and we sat around drinking glog. Once again, no one from the tripleK showed up, although Katy had the courtesy to text me to tell me she had to work. I just don’t know how to make them like me and value me, it makes me feel like I’m 12 again and if only I got the right pair of shoes, maybe I’d have some friends. And I know that’s lame. Lisa and Fran came along then, which was lovely, and Dylan came by to drop off the Swedish porn he’d downloaded and burnt to DVD for me, and ended up staying for the smogasbord.

This is what the leftovers looked like in the morning

Fia said that the food tasted Swedish, so I felt really good about that. It certainly went well with the Abba/Roxette/The Hives CD that Fran and Lisa brought over, and the glog went down a treat. Then we watched the DVD, which featured a German cartoon with Norwegian subtitles, and then a couple of standard porn scenes with Swedish girls in them. We all made the standard group-watching-porn kind of jokes that you make. Porn is silly. But at least this was very vanilla stuff, and Fia translated the stunning dialogue for us (who knew that it’d be stuff like “oh yeah baby, you want to do me?”? Sparkling!).

Today I went for brunch with Karen and Mum at the Maranui Surf Cafe, and then I got mesmerized by the piles of things at Briscoes. This afternoon was spent stalking a handful of unsuitable people on the internet (you finished a novel? That is so awesome. I want to read it), and doing the mountains of dishes whilst singing along to Abba/Roxette/The Hives. Now I am watching Poltergiest II although I didn’t bother finishing the first one, and talking pseudo-dirtily to someone else entirely unsuitable. Yes, my life truly is that exciting. Oh, and Smoo cut his hair and now he looks like JD Fortune, except with his shirt done up. It’s all rocking all the time here.

So the amount I’m mangoing, calling everyone “you fucking stupid whore” (although mostly in my head), yelling at Sebastian, using up all our bandwidth downloading porn, crying at everything on TV (including Grey’s Anatomy recaps and reruns of episodes of Rockstar: Inxs – although to be fair, it was the one where Marty sings ‘Wish you were here’) and being as ravenous as the wolf suggests that it’s almost time for the red right hand, which means it’s been more than a month since I was in San Francisco and I still haven’t written up my holiday. Where the hell did the time go?

Well, I suppose I did spend a couple of weeks obsessing over the First Annual Wellingtonista Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. I tried to be as consultatative with the group as possible, but in the end I figured someone just needed to take charge and get it done – much like my New Year’s Eve plans with the tripleK whereby I searched for fucking ages to find a bach for us, found a great place in the Orongorongos, everyone said that they were totally keen and now of course, no one can commit to it so it’s off. If I was to continue on a “sometimes I really do feel like my friends let me down when I go to a fuckload of effort”, I’d mention how I was short of five votes to win the best Wellington Web Writer, and how many Hubrettes didn’t vote (not to mention most of my real life friends) but I’m not that sort of whinger am I? No indeedy.

Anyways, the awards night on Friday at Might Mighty was fabulous , even if I arrived late because I spent an eternity blow-drying my hair and waiting for my taxi to arrive.

Self portrait in the Mighty Mighty bathrooms, which are the same intense candy pink as the loos at Occam

Hadyn has handily put photos up in his flickr account if you want to bask in the blow-dried goodness, except that of course I am making a stupid and chinny face in almost every photo. But on the whole, the photos are awesome and it was very exciting having an Official Photographer with capital letters and all. Plus, I wrote out speeches for all the award presenters to read – although they were allowed to say whatever they felt like – so it was most amusing to see grown men speaking like the wannabe valley girl that I am. After quickly downing a cask red wine in an attempt to slow down my heart beat which was having palpitations from eating too many chocolate-covered coffee beans, I drank many a tasty martini made by the nice bartender with the Hitler hair, and then switched to sweeter cocktails. I chatted with people from the blogosphere (haha! I know) and decided that a slightly tipsy Martha is totally my new BFF and ever as we gossiped like mad and she ran around on secret errands for me (*).

Hadyn, Martha, Glen. Note the goats that Martha appears to be throwing. You know who else throws goats? The NAZIS.

Eventually after all my other fellow Wellingtonistas had left – and I was really stoked that they thanked me for my organising efforts and deemed it a success that we will repeat next year – I sat around making Nazi jokes with Hadyn and his friend who reminded me rather a lot of Sammy from AUT, but that might have just been the fact that they talk about sport a lot. My toe was driving me crazy with pain from my drunken “hey, you know what’s a good idea? ripping open your blisters to drain them!” surgery the night before, so I was very glad that I’d eventually accepted there was no point in even trying to wear my heels, as my maryjanes were bad enough.

Nevertheless, I made my maryjanes take me up to Ladyfest at San Frindigo to see Katy dance with the Real Hot Bitches.

The Real Hot Zombie Army

Boy bitches!

I wasn’t actually sure who was going to be there, so I was super glad that Chrisana was there playing records in between acts cos I got to talk to her lots.

Big pimpin’ up in SFB(H).

They’re putting a bar out on the balcony. Laaaaame. The balcony’s already too damn small in summer. Sigh.

They already moved the bar to the other side of the room from where it used to be when the bar was Indigo

There were all flavours of lesbian in attendence, from cowboy dykes to total girlie girls (and yes I am in fact totally making snap judgements about their sexuality, pretty much based on nothing at all, since there were plenty of some straight couples around too), but I was just too damn tired to oggle properly, given how hungover I’d been all day so eventually I just had to take myself home.

Behold the ladies!

After all, the night before, on Thursday – if, like me you’re losing track of the narration, I had attended the opening of Helen’s shop, Modern Love. The shop is at the top of the Plimmer Steps, one shop down from Madam Fancypants, and it’s bloody gorgeous, as you can see in these pics:

Modern Love at night

Horses in my frieze… Well, Helen’s frieze.

The party was also astonishingly packed, so it’s just as well most people were dirty smokers.

Inside the shop

Outside the shop

And again

We ended up sitting in the carpark across the Plimmer Steps because it was raining, and as Helen had managed to get DB to sponsor her opening (product placement: Stark the RTD is pretty damn drinkable as it is sugar free or something like that, and tastes just like flavoured carbonated water), and talked and talked. Eventually after almost all the booze was gone, we hoofed it over to Mighty Mighty, where I stared at a girl for ages before finding out she was the identical twin of a girl I went to uni with (Not Shirley’s Evelyn though), and learnt about the wonders of Castlepoint Ale – a 750ml bottle for $7.50. Nice.

Needless to say, by the time Saturday rolled around, I was fucking exhausted and was able only to go with Karen to the award-winning Maranui Surf Cafe for delicious brunch.

Surf club participants participating out the window

And then we went to sit in the sun drinking frozen daquiris at home. That’s as exciting as the rest of my weekend got. Wahoo. And now it’s Monday, and I learnt how to update our website at work todya which makes me so very very happy, and I’ve been doing our intranet too whcih means I’ve been handcoding all day and so now I think I will bid you farewell.

xojo

For some reason (I think it was the two glasses of Amaretto with dessert and as Lisa and Brad did the dishes), I kind of thought that when I turned on my computer tonight there’d be an email from you. Of course there wasn’t. Maybe it was the music. Maybe it would be that after we all joined hands and gave thanks for things (three course dinner + it having just been American Thanksgiving = me being cheesy as fuck) we talked about our years in review, and the good things and the bad things and the plain old weird & strange things that went on. And of course that was the category that you fell in to.

Of course both Lisa and Brad were driving so they sat there laughing at me as I drank more and more to cover up the oh god the pain the pain of the fact that the dinner had originally been planned for six people and I’d spent all Saturday night cooking for it, but of course my group of friends never work to the same schedule that I do (plan something waaaaaaay in advance and they’ll change their minds at the alst minute – plan it at the last minute and they’ll be busy) so consequently there are more chocolate mousses sitting in the frige waiting for me to eat them ath that’s nto a bad thing. There are also six chicken, vege and feta pies in the freezer, leftover saffron risotto in the fridge and I sent the rest of the kumara & corn chowder home with Brad. No one saw how it took me two goes to make three white chocolate spirals – the first time the bag melted. Oh the drama of it all. I love to cook big elabroate meals but I wish it was easier to get peole to come over and eat them. All I really want to do with my life is entertain people.

Lisa and I watched the Birds DVD and it made me sad as Bic Runga can do, and also discussion about the eyar in general made me a little sad because while it’s been a good year on the whole (I’m making 9k more than I used to!), I miss things like the potential of the crush I had in February, and the anticipation of my American holiday and so forth. Now Keanu Reeves is on the television so I must go find another glass of water, Scrubs DVDs and mentally prepare myself for the difficult meetings I have tomorrow. Joy!

The rest of the week will be busy. I must eat my eggplant tomorrow (that’s not a euphemism but rather a “well it fucking cost $4.95″ statement), and then on Tueday I have dinner with Katy, a drink with Karts on Wednesday, Helen’s shop opening on Thursday, and then of course the Wellingtonista Awards on Friday. Woo, vote for me! Um, if you want to.

At the Phoenix Foundation gig on Friday night, after I’d yawned my way through Cassette and found myself waiting for Magni to come on stage (yes, I’m obsessed), there were a lot of people talking. So much so, during the quiet under the ocean song, that I actually turned around to the British wanker behind me who was droning on about what a good song it was and how Kiwi it sounded and said “you know what makes this song even more awesome? Not TALKING THROUGH IT”. They gave me evil looks, but then straight after that Scott dedicated ‘Nest Egg’ to everyone who didn’t talk through it. Shout outs! Radsville. The gig made my feet hurt for a long time though and I was disgusted with myself because I found myself racially profiling taxi drivers on my way home since I didn’t know which company the skeezy guy last week worked for and I wanted to make sure I avoided him.

I felt not unlike this on Saturday. Almost everyone had a reason – although many of those reasons were “I’m too hungover/tired” but the fact that not a single person from the tripleK came to our party made me more than a little unhappy. Yes, I have too many parties, and timing was off, and they’re not responsible for my insecurities, and I’m just being a dick, but ouch. Still, mad props must go to those who did actually make it, and I had a thoroughly amusing time, most of which seemed to be spent talking about circumcision. And distributing 105 vodka jelly shots. And the house didn’t get trashed, and I didn’t punch Bart in the face again (in my defense, he apparently asked me to, and I said that I didn’t hit boys with glasses so he took them off – you can’t get more asking for it than that, except of course if you have the misfortune to be a woman), so that’s got to be good, right?

I have yet to find a job, but I have found a bach for the tripleK for New Year’s, and I have found a flatmate, so that’s 2/3 and we know how Meatloaf feels about that. And he was in the greatest movie ever made, which we may watch when we do the UK for Country Club, assuming I still keep doing Country Club, which I’m sure I will as soon as I do some cardio and shake off this funk, and so therefore it must be okay.

I am looking forward to the summer, especially the four nights that will be spent in the Orongorongos. It’s also only FIVE WEEKS til I go to the States. I think I’m going to buy a new mp3 player before I go, just a 1gb $99 one that I can give to Karen for Xmas afterwards maybe, or keep because it’s got a dictaphone built in. Assuming I’ll actually get my laptop back before I go, of course. Bah. Both the dictaphone and the laptop are essential for my New Master Plan. There’s a part of me that thinks that knowing your opinion on 101 is also important (and maybe I’ll find out in 2009), but that’s probably also the part that listens to Lukas singing “you make my head spoon” and enjoys it – ie the twelve year old inside of me. And yes, maybe I should let her free, but if it’s good enough for the Czechs then it’s good enough for me. Or was it the Austrians? I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore.

EDIT: Maree had a baby! A girl named Isla. Awwwwwwwww!p

So, if I was going to be Gwen Stefani, which I wouldn’t want to be except that maybe I wouldn’t say no to sleeping with Gavin Rossdale, and I kind of dig the Franz cover of ‘Whatchu waiting for’, plus I think that’d be a good song to add to my workout playlist, I’d say that right now, my shit is B A N A N A S.

+ Smoo said he’d pay me $50 if I took a shit in his mouth. Hahaha awesome. To be fair and contextualise it, he did say that when I warned Bart that if he told me who was going to get kicked off The Amazing Race I would come into his bedroom while he was sleeping and shit in his mouth. I warned Smoo that I have some serious lack-of-fibre issues, although that said, I think eating an avocado for dinner last night was quite a clever thing to do, and it counteracted too much dairy.

- I got a parking ticket. For $200. When I was parked outside of my own house, on my own street, in a quiet suburb. I wasn’t on the footpath, or facing the wrong way, or anything like that. I just don’t have a warrant. And the part irony of this is that Smoo’s been keeping his car in the garage cos he didn’t have a warrant either, but now he does, and yet his car was in the garage and mine was on the street, and I got the ticket. Yes, not having a warrant is badwickedevil. However, surely there are better places for parking wardens to hang out?

+ I did however, somehow apparently manage to save $750 on my laptop repairs by the guy at Bond + Bond “calling in a favour” as apparently the problem wasn’t with the power supply but rather that some liquid had got into the computer and corroded the motherboard, or some such happenstance. Of course, if they’d told me that the repair bill was going to be that much, I would have said “but I can buy a new one for a grand” and done that instead. But anyway, I very much snickered a lot at the way that guy on the phone was like “whoever is using the computer needs to keep all liquids well away from it”, all avoiding placing the blame on me, ala Fightclub’s “the dildo, not your dildo”.

-/+ My body is wacksicles. Because I have lost weight around my stomach (you probably can’t tell unless you spend as much time staring at me as I do, in which case I’m both creeped out and a little turned on) my pants are all about the falling-down-ness, but in a case of delicious deep-fried irony, they stay up by virtue of the total and utter lack of gap between my thighs. And now that I finally had a period, Mary-Kate and Ashley are deswelling, and my waist is becoming more and more prominent, and yet my under-boob rolls appear to be growing. It’s like having another set of tits, and it’s very very strange. They shouldn’t be growing. But maybe they just appear to be more prominent because my waist is getting smaller faster. But that’s okay, I can accept that I am a freakshow, and I will not drink Rum with Nate about it too much. Plus, I think I got the left hook last night, when I did a big cardio push and boxing practise at home last night. The bare feet help with the twist.

- Snakes on a plane is obviously a cultural phenomenon (and when I say “cultural” I of course mean “what some people on the interweb talk about), and yet I’m having a devil of a time trying to find homes for all the tickets that the delightful KateH sent me. It’s not that people don’t want to come, apparently, it’s just that apparently tonight is the busiest night in Wellington ever. Just to prove my point, check out this list of my friends and their diverse excuses reasons they can’t make it:

I fought off my anxiety over whether or not anyone would actually show up for America at the Country Club with the phrase “Well KateH is coming, and that’s all that matters”. But then when I went to Chrisana’s goodbye Paramount drinks on Friday night, after expensive but tasty Thai with Karen at the Oriental Thai, everyone was like “fuck yeah!” about coming, so I informed them that the official colours of the university were black and green, because that was the colour of balloons that I’d happened to buy at the supermarket the night before.

This of course meant that Saturday was spent in cleaning the house and decorating the lounge with said balloons which had been blown up by me and the boys with the aid of a balloon pump the night before while they watched the Steel Mill and I tried not to get beaten up for making derogatory remarks about metal, and green and black streamers, and rasturbated banners that said “Pledge Eta Beta Pi!!!” and “Pledge Gamma Gamma Gamma!”. The boys, meanwhile, went to Bunnings and apparently had long discussions with one of the men there and spent $38 and came home and built Liz the Funnel with valves and all. Why Liz? Because apparently all funnels are supposed to be named for whores. Bart said “Liz Phair!” and I would have growled at him except that I knew he meant L** S*** instead. Smoo was like “Liz Phair’s still a whore” and I was like “hush your mouth! She’s a boring suburbanite mom now. I miss the blowjob queen!”.

The keg was delivered in the afternoon, and we had many long discussions about where to put it – if we left it on the front doorstep, would ferals come up and steal it? But if we put it inside the dining room, would it make a mess? Eventually we compromised by closing off the kitchen door at the end of the hallway and putting it there. I dressed myself up in the university colours

This pic was actually taken at the end of the night, so imagine how fantastic I must have looked sober. And yes, I do appreciate that anyone who knows me probably has very little idea of what I actually look like sober…

and was just about to go and pick up Brad and Karen when I got a voice mail on my phone from some guy saying “I got a link to your blog from Public Address, and it sounds like you’re inviting all and sundry to your party, and I don’t know anyone in Wellington so if I ask politely, can I come?”. I was like “huh? I don’t write a blog” but since the guy had left his number twice, after he took my interogation questions in good stead (“1. Gilby or Izzy? 2. Who would win in a fight between a pirate and a ninja? 3. What word did you use wrongly in regards to talking about my website?”), despite him giving all the wrong answers I texted him my address, warning that the party would be fairly small – around 16 people or so, and that he would stand out.

It turned out that at first, the party was very split, with Bart’s Eta Beta Pi clustered in the dining room, while us Sorority sisters were in the lounge. Ash or perhaps Kristen even said when Sebastian came running in “Sebastian, what are you doing in here? You’re a boy!” and I was like, ummm, what about Brad? But we mixed it up more when people went outside to do funnels:

Bart sucks it down

LisaB takes in her own body-weight in beer, while Kristen is caught in the act of being so very 2006 with her camera-phone

Eventually, having laughed at the boys enough, Gamma Gamma Gamma were also persuaded to do keg stands.

LisaB fearlessly went first, and achieved full verticalness. She is our hero

Ash loved it so much she went twice

KateH showed up late for the party but hurried to make up for lost time

I was worried that they wouldn’t be able to hold me, but they assured me they could, and so I did a couple as well. The first time my arm slipped and hit against the keg which wasn’t fantastic, but holy crap, keg stands are my new favourite thing in the entire world ever. EVAH. Except that I am so fucking sore today, or at least I was until I took a lengthy spa at the gym in my lunchbreak instead of doing a proper workout. I am naughty. My arm also got hurt when we jumped Smoo as soon as he came home from work and forced him into a kegstand while Bart paddled his ass with a cricket bat, except that he got my wrist a lot more than Smoo’s ass, and Smoo kicked out, and knocked Kart over, but to be honest, I’m not sure if she even realised. Even Karen did a keg stand when we agreed to let her put a plastic cup of daquiri and straws down on top of the keg so she wouldn’t have to have beer.

And of course, because it was Country Club we passed around our pieces of trivia, and I made everyone hot dogs (which were fucking good) and also oatmeal cookies (I really should remember to bake more often) and assorted other snack foods. Eventually most of the people had left (*), so me and Karen and KateH and Bart and Smoo just sat around the dining room table eating apple pie and vodka jelly. Bart was falling-off-his-chair drunk, and incredibly entertaining. He decided to call up everyone in his phone who wasn’t at the party, and even though it was 3am, we let him. Yes, we are enablers. And we laughed our heads off. Then Karen left, and KateH and I decided that it was time to watch Mischa Barton die, so we did, even though the boys were dividing their time between bitching about it and falling asleep. I am so so so so glad I got an Auckland friend to attend a Wellington friend and Country Club event, and that it all went well. We only made $85 back on a $200 keg, which sucks, cos obviously not everyone who drank it chipped in, but meh, I generally spend about $100 on each Country Club anyway, by the time I add up all the costs.

In the morning KateH and I went and had coffee (She was like “I didn’t think I’d stay, but of course I did – when have I never stayed after one of your parties?” and I racked my brains trying to think of an answer), then I spent the day doing laundry and watching videos, dozing, and avoiding the large pile of dishes in the kitchen. I wonder if they’ve been done now…

September’s Country Club will be Morocco, after we realised that we have totally neglected Africa, and then there’ll be a German Octoberfest in October, strangely enough. Then when I come back from San Fran, we’ll do a Mexican Day of the Dead, and that’ll be all of North America polished off…