Hubris.co.nz

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

The Staten Island ferry is cold if you’re like me and sit at the top. It’s also cold up the Empire State Building, and if you’re being rowed around the lake in Central Park. It’s cold on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art if you’re drinking a frozen margarita, but it’s warm in the subway. Scratch that – it’s HOT in the subway.

Today my feet are less sore than they’ve been in a bloody long time because this morning Kate and I went and got manicures and pedicures where they shave off loose skin from your feet with razors, and a massage for $34 each plus tip. That’s insane, and where if I had more time I’d insert some kind of rant about how it makes me feel somewhat awkward that I’m pretty sure I haven’t been served by a white person once since I got here, except in bars and trendy cafes. The awkwardness comes, of course, from thinking that my idea of a stereotyped country with marginalised minority groups are being reaffirmed. I could also rant about the lack of energy efficieny here – we have to open the windows to sleep comfortably at night because there’s no way of turning down the radiator, but those are stupidass things to bitch about when you’re on holiday. And besides, the fatness here works out bloody well for me when I found a large shop full of gorgeous clothes that are sized for me me me. In fact, I probably should have bought ‘regular’ instead of ‘tall’ jeans, and maybe the grey pants instead of the black ones but that’s okay.

Tonight Kate and I are going to a halloween party with people from her school. I’m going as a butterfly, sort of. Well, I have a large and majestic pair of wings from this astonishing costume shop that her friend Stacey took me to the other night when she was babysitting – we also found a place with $3 frozen lemon margaritas, an endless supply of tortilla chips and kickass salsa, and all you can eat $9.95 Mexican mains (for the record, all I can eat was one dish) – and I’m going to wear that with my corset, of course, and some blue glitter false eyelashes. I’m hoping Kate won’t back out of wearing HER outfit because otherwise I might feel somewhat uncomfortable. But I guess it doesn’t really matter, because who are the other people to judge me? Exactly.

Tomorrow I’m off to San Francisco. I’ve made my way around New York quite a bit now, I think. The subway’s pretty easy to navigate. I’ve been to four out of five boroughs, and I’ve seen all sorts of different areas. I also saw Tom McRae. He played in a little cabaret-style room that reminded me muchly of The Classic to an audience of maybe 60 people. Only 60 people! The intimacy of seeing your favourite singer-song writer like that was pretty overwhelming, and as expected, I welled up when he started ‘You Only Disappear’ after taking crowd requests.

What else? I hope to write a longer and more descriptive narrative at some stage, but who knows if that’ll happen? But the next time you hear from me, I’ll be at Olivia’s. \m/ \m/ (Hahahah. It’s not my fault. There’s Metallica playing loudly here).

A. Dreams:

1. My second best friend from High School trying to tell me that I had COE because I had bought a birthday cake and a lasange for a party I was throwing for her but she thought I was going to eat it all by myself. We had a very vicious fight after that.

2. A bunch of people sitting around watching me and Jesus (or maybe a guy pretending to be Jesus) getting ready to have butt sex and timing it so that we’d both come at the same time as the second big guitary bit in ‘Hysteria’ by Muse. Was this dream caused by:
a) discussions about a particular NZ novel that I FUCKING HATE but everyone except for Karen seems to love
b) downloading too much gang bang porn or
c) listening to Muse too often, too loud in order to escape flood of oppressive emails and the horrible ambient bleeps and clicks music that my officemate plays (and leaves playing when he goes off to meetings),
or d) all of the above?

3. Looking in the yellow pages for strip clubs to go to with Brian from I Keep a Diary. We were looking for one in his home suburb of London, which was Glastonbury (of course). I think the Yellow Pages was kind of Harry Potter like, because the ads all had moving pictures.

One day I will be a New York Hipster too. Wait, does this mean that I have to put a picture of Carrie Bradshaw at the top of my page, and write about the perfect Louis Vuitton handbag my perfect boyfriend gave me, and about how people who buy stationary at the Warehouse are third class citizens and how those homeless people obviously deserve it because they frowned at me? You know what I’m talking about. Some websites are total car crashes – you hate them passionately but you just can’t stop reading them.

Speaking of Reow, I just saw one of my friend’s comments to someone else on their journal, and hot damn, it was excellent – but very reow. I’m sure the reow was well deserved, from the sound of things.

B. Moving:

Last night I went to Anji’s to pick up my key for our new place, and she drove a vanload of her stuff over and I helped her unpack it. We used torches cos the power wasn’t on yet. It felt ever so vaguely X-Filesy. The place wasn’t quite as big as I remembered it being, but that’s okay, it’s still more than big enough for us. I just hope Sebastian will be okay with the move. Pixie will sure be glad to have him gone though.

I’m going to take some more stuff and Jessie over to it tomorrow, hopefully, and then of course on Sunday we’re going to Oma’s to pick up my fridge and fill up the van and car with more of my stuff. I hate moving. Still at least this isn’t being done on the hottest day of summer, and I’m quite determined not to be hungover for this move. Hopefully. Although if anyone has anything that they want to invite me to tonight, please feel free.

I haven’t told my parents yet that I’m moving out. I could text them, but that’d be pretty spac. They sent me some big long text message in Dutch to pass on to Oma. Altavista reckons that they said: “Kind mam. Congratulated warmly with your anniversary. Sorry that the photograph von me on camel gestuurt cannot become on Neil’s tel. von Moroko. Have the Sahara survives. Hops that you the little girls have gezein. Many liefs. Aimee and Neil.” So there you go, if you were curious about their trip.

C. Watching:
Trading Spouses: uptight vegan vs crazy alligator rassling Cajuns. Bless this show.
The Secret Life of Us – Season Two: arrived this morning by courier, less than 24 hours after I bought it on Trademe. Hurrah! More Evan goodness,
Scrubs: goddamit, isn’t Garden State out yet?
In My Father’s Den: I bought the DVD. Now I’ll finally get to find out what that Mazzy Star song is called.
The OC: Brad’s coming over tomorrow night. Good times.