Hubris.co.nz

Right now I am getting my photo taken. Yes, RIGHT NOW. Actually that’s a lie.Technically speaking, right now they are roaming my house trying to decide where the best place to shoot me is. I’m sitting on my bed right now, but they’re worried that since I’m sitting down they lose all the things that makes my room unique to me. When I say “they” I mean Nicola Edmonds and her friend/assistant Adrian. So yes, it’s somewhat more than a snapshot, but there’s no makeup or racks of clothes or catering or records playing or interviewer from Q or Jane tagging along or any of the things that I will no doubt have one day. But I am having my photo taken by professionals for an article on blogging (yes, i know), which is quite nice. And also funny, because THIS IS NOT REAL! The Arch Hill poster in the background does not actually live there on my wall! And normally I have Xmas lights rolled around my bedhead, pretending like there could actually be an occasion in which I would need to light up my bed. And it’s funny because oooh, they have one of those big shiny silver things which is bouncing the light or something. I dunno. I will pretend for the next ten minutes that I am a Spice Girl. I think the martini that I had before they got here will help with that. Who knew that vermouth actually freezes? Not I. But it was like shaved ice in my gin. I made up for it with an exra olive.

I like that they are trying to get an essence of who I am in the photo (oooh, essence of Joanna, they should sell that in bottles. And then people could make cocktails with it and a lot of vodka. Although there would already be a lot of vodka in my essence, no doubt. Or apparently today gin). After overhearing debate in the dining room about whether or not the Xmas lights would be applicable if the photos come out in March (I should have pointed out that they’re somewhat of a permanent fixture, but nevermind) and perhaps a discussion about the interior of my house being somewhat younger than the magazine’s demographic – but I might have misheard – I ended up standing in my room in front of my Bic posters in most of the photos, carrying my laptop under my arm, one hand leaning on the cabinet that usually houses my record-player but today was historically unaccurately cleared of clutter and dust, and the other with my thumb hooked into the pocket of my dress. I have taken some self portraits before they arrived, so here you can see an approximation of what I looked like:

I’m hoping of course that her photos will actually have proper light in them, or it will turn out that the shiny silver disc was all for nothing! They were kind and said that I was pretty much the only person all year to actually want to have my photo taken, and when they said I was photogenic I said “well that’s why I don’t mind having my photo taken” instead of just saying “thank you” and blushing. Thanks Martini! Perhaps it will be a new New Year’s Resolutions to take compliments and run with them. Or perhaps I should pass a resolution to not come across as so hubristic to people I’ve just met who might not know that I am making fun of myself. But I’m not sure I’ve got the votes to get that through congress, let alone the senate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oooh look at me, I’ve finally got my journal kind of current. Except for filling in my RAGE about Dana being eliminated instead of Jill. Or Zayra, naturally. But let’s not talk about that (or the boards that I have been reading, or the tears that have sprung to my eyes today watching clips of Marty and Jordis…). Let’s talk about me instead!

Firstly, what I left out of my Auckland recap was that while I was at Annabel’s, she pulled out her copy of Boys Boys Boys Boys Boys as I emailed her a copy of 101 Stories, and it was soooooo weird reading it again. Did I really write that? Did I really live that way? Strange. No wonder people have mentioned what a progression 101 is. But I would still really love someone to send me back a copy of Boys because I haven’t got one. Please? Someone? I know they’re mostly pretty bad photocopies anyway, but maybe someone has one of the A4 versions that they could send me? Thanking you in advance.

Other things that are good in my life right now is meeting up with the rest of the Wellingtonista crew tonight for martinis (except for me because I am under 30), and then a cocktail party tomorrow night for Cinta’s hens’ night. Then on Sunday dinner for Karen’s birthday. On a much healthier for me note, I signed up to do personal training boxing sessions today. I’ll get to hit stuff! Yay! I think that will be fucking awesome stress release, and also I’m trying to mix up my exercising, because I don’t want to get bored and I really need to step things up for the sake of my wrist and also not dying on the flight to America.

I am so looking forward to America, like woah. The time is creeping closer and closer. In fact, America at the Country Club is next Saturday August 12. We’re having a kegger Frat/Sorority party with John Hughes and Showgirls. And a pillow fight. And junk food. And initiation ceremonies and hazing. You should come along. In real America news, I rang Kate at some ungodly hour last Friday night when I got home. I was aiming for her birthday but kind of missed, and also I was drunk and lonely, and I miss her! All the same, I’m really not looking forward to the phonebill.

This afternoon I am sniggering at the Peaches CD I’m listening to and trying to postpone doing more phone calls, but since there are a hundred people on my list (almost literally – once I finish assembling my list there will be anyway), I suppose I shouldn’t put that off for much longer. Work is interesting right now in terms of RFPs, and black holes, and also new projects that I am working on, and the fact that I went on some weird trip on Tuesday and cleared out about four things I’d been sitting on for months. Go me. And now I must go and pee. It’s important that I tell you this, honest.

Finally, just some links to things I’ve been up to lately – TV Squee / Rockstar Obsession / Pirate and Auckland photos. That’s about all. OH! And I have an RSS feed that works now, which I would add in to the bottom of the page, except that without a laptop I can’t FTP in, but you can find it at http://hubris.co.nz/rss apparently, according t the wise Heather. That’s it now. Ask me some questions about what you would like me to tell you about.

Despite the $50 bar tab hangover that I have (I got Daddy to come to quiz night last night so we came second), today is fucking rad. The sun is shining, ‘Float On’ bubbled through my earphones (apparently today my iPod battery has decided to work) and I ate fish’n chips in Waitangi Park with Noizy and Tom. I found out that I got the pay rise that I asked for (which is twice as much as I actually wanted), and I have exciting plans for the weekend (party in Aro on Saturday and the first meeting of The Country Club on Sunday at my house – we’re wearing togas, drinking wine and watching Caligula – you’re invited as long as you refrain from pointing out that ‘Rome’ isn’t actually a country), I have a new old mattress and I vacuumed under my bed. Life is pretty sweet right now. Did I mention that Bic Runga offered to buy me a drink? Cos she did. And that’s RAD.

Last weekend was very very choice. On Friday night I went with two cow-orkers and three ex cow-orkers to Tupelo, which freaked me out a little with its redness. I left at 8.30pm when Kate picked me up, and they apparently stayed out until 4am, so it is just as well that I left when I did, especially since Kate and I went home with quadruple chocolate ice cream and Hairspray. Now we both want to learn how to do the mashed potato and other assorted dances. Hairspray is total radsicles (and radsicles is the new awesome – it’s like popsicles but cooler. Hehe). In the morning I made Kate pancakes and used my good china, even going to the extreme lengths of putting lemon juice in the little sake pot. Suck on that, Martha Stewart. Later I put on my pretty new dress that very few people have complimented me on (what’s up with that?) and met up with Lisa Fur and Brad to go to Bic Runga at the Michael Fowler Centre.

*Insert wide-eyed awe and aural orgasms and much spine-tinglingness here.*

She was playing with the whole band who played on Birds and played the whole album, so I might just pop up my review of that from Pulp now and then times that by a thousand and add in the goodness that is Neils Finn’s stage banter, and the amazing hotness of her base player who had his bass at exactly the right height – two inches lower and he would have been a nu-metal wanker, and five inches higher and he would be a geek – for maximum sexiness, and the total adoreableness of Annika Moa and the wonderfulness of our seats right by the sound desk, and the incredible aura and Strong Pixieness of Bic and and and wow. Just wow. I was dazzled. Simon Sweetman, you can suck a fuck, because of course it was polished. They’re the top fucking musicians in the country – how could it be anything but? I do wish that she’d played a couple more tracks off Beautiful Collison like the title track or ‘Election Night’ but that’s okay. It was still wow. I was moved pretty much to tears.

And then of course Jessie was there, and so the lobby was a lovefest of everyone I know – Jimmy and Esther and Ash (who Lisa ran away from when I was like “she’s from the internet” and it made me laugh a lot) and and Amelia, Jess Clayton and um some other people maybe? So I invited everyone to Rome, and was responded to enthusiastically. Me and Lisa and Brad headed down to Good Luck via Lisa’s car to drop off posters, to await Jessie. A couple of drinks later, she texted to say she was at Motel with the band, so Lisa and I went there. The bar was insanely full, and I was intimidated by the beautiful people, and while yes, I have occasionally entertained thoughts of being pressed up again Shayne Carter, it was always in more intimate settings, so I paniced when I finally fought my way to the front to get a drink and didn’t want to ask for a menu but I knew that I wanted a drink that would last a long time, so I remembered Wellurban and ordered a dry martini. I forgot that I haven’t drunk martinis regularly for quite a while. It was definitely a strong drink. It was the right thing to order though, because after that I saw it was what Bic herself was drinking. She came and sat at our table and I squeed, and Jessie told her that I really liked Jessie’s haircut, and I said that yeah, if that whole singing thing didn’t work out for her, she could have a career as a hairdresser, and then encouraged by her laugh, I said that that concert was amazing, and that two years ago when she played the cathedral she’d asked the audience if we liked her tights, and I did like them. And then I realised that despite having said earlier that I didn’t, holy crapping fuck, I was talking to Bic Runga, and she was just so nice that I genuinely did like her tights. And now I will stop using italic tags and just reflect on how stupidly starstruck I felt, but how much I basked in her glow. And of course, it was very very rad to see Jessie again, and her hair is so cute it’s ridiculous. Everything was so wonderful, I was just walking on air.

On Sunday I played Domestic Goddess and shopped and cleaned and cooked dinner for my whole family, which they’re still telling me was great, even though it was just the exact same food that I served my dinner party that one time. It was a very pleasant night though. On Wednesday Anji, Karen and I had dinner at The Last Supper Club, and while the food was tasty (although I asked for my fillet steak to be medium rare and it came out blue), the waiter was smarmy (sample line: “there are three mints for you on that plate” – oh really? Is THAT what they are? Cunt.) and we really didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as last time. Then we went to V for Vendetta which was awesome and left me dreaming of nuclear warfare and being all alone when the bombs started falling and crying cos I’d left Sebastian outside.

Yesterday Mummy took me to lunch at Captiol to thank me for doing some design work for her. I had bruscetta and pasta with zuchini and ricotta and a French wine that was a combination of reisling and pinot gris and very tasty it was too. The waiter asked me if I was Joanna, and I said I was and he pointed out that he went to high school with me, and I laughed and said oh yeah, and pretended to not know what he’d been up to for the past couple of years. It makes me happy though that so many of the beautiful people from high school are still working in hospitality. I am so shallow. Last night we went to the quiz at the Realm, and I had too many beers and sucked at pool so I went home and then Del let herself in and her friend in knee high white boots trimmed with oversized laces and fur accosted me asking for hugs and snuggles. Maybe I shouldn’t have judged her so harshly based solely on her boots, because she said some slightly intelligent things about the Gilmore Girls that I was trying to watch, but she was very very drunk and loud. It was like Courtney Love coming to stay. I sent Bart a text going “come home NOW”. He was very apologetic.

Today there is the goodness that I have already described, and in an hour I’m going to go and have a drink with Sarah, and then maybe stare at all my workmates as they have their netball team dinner, but I should really go home and chargrill the kilo of red peppers that I bought for $1.95 at A-Mart instead. See you tomorrow night or at Rome.

Oh, and also, something I forgot to mention was how great it was to finish something creative that I’ve been working on for ages, and the end product of that is 101 Stories That I Want to Tell You, which you should get, if you want it.

Wednesday July 31

Lending your cellphone to people so that they can use it as an alarm clock is generally unfortunate when it means that they’ll be waking you up at 7am to return it and you’ll be feeling sick as a dog with the first decent hangover you’ve had in ages. I spent $5.80 to get drunk last night. This was made possible by being with four other people at Quiz Night at the AUT pub, two of whom thought that they’d be driving home (well, one did, and the other Bo convinced to stay the night) who nevertheless feel like they should contribute to the camradarie by also buying their rounds. Thanks largely to me, we came third and won a $20 bar tab. Wahoo! So we’ll go back next week to spend it, and so the Quiz host guy can give me more shit. But I dunno if I’ll go with Clay-bo BradC and JeremyO again, because to be perfectly honest, I probably annoyed them by answering too quickly. Oh I’m so smart, I’m so cool, everyone fucking worship me.

But anyways, it was a lot of fun and I bumped into Jonno again, which makes it twice in two days, and I was able to confirm for KateB that actually yes, he does well and truly have a mullet now. After the quiz, and foozeball <!– which actually, i didn’t play, cos I was engrossed in conversation and knees and shoulders touching–>, Jezza went back to his house, and the rest’o us went back to theslab (which is also our team name) to drink so many martinis that we not only ran out of Skky but also Absolut (can I drop in a few more vodka labels in here? there was a question in the Quiz about what kinda liquor Finlandia was. I laughed. That’s my housebrand right there, presuming that I was actually a bar instead of just spending all my parents’ money in them). I also made everyone my special roast potatoes with garlic and peppercorn feta, which I’ve developed a mad fetaish for. Get it? Ha HA. Hehehee I love Bo so much when we’re both on a mad buzz, which is pretty much every evening – we ran around for like half an hour saying “you’d feta not fuck with me”. It was hilarious. Really. And we played Agitation which got nasty and then Leo showed up and was rarking me up which was cool cos normally he doesn’t say much but last night he was all “sheesh, get two drinks in Joanna and she’s all over the show with the abuse”. Leo and I bonded lots over the past weekend smoking spots together and feeling ill at ease when Bo had friends over who were very much not at all like her. Eventually pretty much everyone went to bed and BradC made me a cup of tea like a good gentleman and we hung out for a bit, and then I managed to pour myself into bed.

Hence the hangover this morning, which was more than a little unprofessional, since I was meeting my client for the first time at 10am today. But I needn’t have worried, because she was seriously one of the coolest people i’ve ever met, and now I’m re-energised and excited about my course. Also, it’s been fun talking ethics and trying not to get in fights with people in my classes and stuff like that. I followed Kant, you went Utilitarian, and I guess you won. And I think I learnt some other things too maybe this week, but I could be wrong.

After Haley and I met our client, I went and got Wendys for the hangover and ate it while reading “Fast Food Nation” which I gotta do a book review on for Corporate Communication. It’s the new No Logo, don’t you know? And then I had to skeedaddle to get to work to sit and look pretty and make jokes about Yogi. That lasted til five, but was made much more interesting with emailed gossip flying back and forth, and then passed on to Teri, who just laughed at me. Oh, and I also drew a stunning picture of a stick panda dancing in a bamboo forest and faxed it to KateM. I’m clever and talented. I did actually do some work too, you know.

As soon as I got home from work, i put my pajamas on, cos I was still a little dressed up (ie – wearing my black dress, that none’o you woulda seen cos it’s Posh and none of youse guys are. Actually wait, I distinctly remember wearing it OH MY GOD it would have been exactly today when I had lunch with KateH right after I cleaned out my desk at Foodstuffs ten minutes after I said I wanted to resign on this day last year. YAY! that’s worth another drink. Tomorrow.) and there would have been no point changing into slumier clothes when all I was gonna do was lie on the couch and pretend to not be hungover any more and make more bad jokes about feta to Bo and have her say “oh Jo, you’re so Punny” to me, and feel like we were on our way to becoming Brad&Justin – ie going straight to hell. Are my sentences running away with me? I suspect that they are, eh. Nevermind. (Another interlude while I go to Bo’s room to say “hey, next time we wanna make a pun, we should just growl bearlike at each other” all intervention styles, and then we got talking about Leo and how he was mocking me last night and also how he was worried when I was psuedoyelling at BradC for kicking me out of my own lounge) My point was that when KateM rang me in Shortland Street, I had to put clothes on before agreeing to meet her at Hugo’s Frog Bar for dinner.

(another interuption while I go tell Bo’o the current scandals and gossip. She’s excited that she hopefully will get to put faces to many of the names and stuff on Friday night, but then again, she probably won’t. Also, I picked up a film I’d had sitting in my camera for ages, thinking it’d be photos of my 21st, but no, it’s from Graduation. Excellent.)

Anyways, driving in to meet Kate, I couldn’t find a park anywhere so I went into a dreaded parking building (which ended up costing six dollars, good lord). I had to sit in my car for ages though, cos bFM were playing a new Pluto song, you know, the really rock one that they do in concert lots and Milan’s all glam rockstar screaming at the end and everyone’s panties melt. We chatted lots and stuff, and she said my hair made me look like a punk chick. That’s not really what I was aiming for, but hey, that’s okay. Oh yeah, did I mention that I got my hair done last friday? I might not have. You can go look at the “red” jpgs in my cam dir if you’re interested. After dinner, I was lovely and went back to her office with her to read magazines while she finished her work. I am so rent-a-crowd. She paid me in zinc defender lozenges and gave me a fax that she’d meant to send me, depicting a fat panda with bamboo in its stomach. The fax also said “what does ‘macking on’ mean anyway?” on it, in reference to the contents of the fax I’d sent her. You do the math.

Now I’m at home again, typing away furiously in fingerless gloves but (as evidenced by this journal entry) getting up constantly to tell Bo more things. Bo bo bo. Fuck she’s cool. This isn’t like the honeymoon period either, cos she’s been here since April. We’ve grown into each other. Okay, I gotta go sleep now, so much so that I think I will load this up tomorrow night, cos my net has fucked up cos she was trying to check for phone messages from Leo, but he’s just here now anyways.

Saturday, July 20th 2002

In which Joanna tries to right all the wrongs in the world

So, this afternoon, Bops and I went to Newmarket. We were looking for a Sony/Aiwa/Pioneer microsystem under $400 with a cd player, cassette and RCA ports looking good for me, and a computer under $2000 for her. I found a Phillips one which the guy in Bond&Bond woulda dropped to $420 for me, so I figured the guy in Noel Lemming since they’re owned by the same company woulda done for me on an Aiwa woulda done for me for the same price, but it was kinda mintgreen tinged, so I’m not sure if I liked it. But we did find Bops a computer for $1700, and managed to talk the shop guy into being able to put less than a 20% deposit on it. I scrapped up $170 outta my account and she had $60 cash. We felt like we was scrounging for coins under the sofa. T has agreed to set us up a network, so I’mma do my best to not piss him off til he’s done that. Hi T, don’t get shirty with me for writign this. Lately I have been having mad flashbacks about all sorts of things, and I have this image of you in my head of you jumping on my bed and hitting your head on my dusty chandelier. That’s all.

Oh, okay, so where were we? Okay, KateH on the phone at 7.40pm, saying let’s meet soemwhere BYO at 8pm, and so we go through the yellow pages togehter and agree to meet at Sri Panang on K’Road so I don’t have to walk down the hill, but once I’ve finally got my shit together, i finally realise I’m on the wrong side’o the road, and when she calls I dunno where she is, so we decide to meet at Saigon instead. So yeah, super yummy Vietnamese for dinner, and then we go home for Martinis. Emma showed up with some crazyass friends, so that was amusing for a while, especially cos she called me really fucking beautiful and you know I pretty much fall for anyone that calls me beautiful – or maybe that’ sjust everyone I’ve fallen for has also called me beautiful.<!– cos you know I always thought Emma was HOT –> Chicken -> egg -> chicken etc. Katie read my list’o memories from Garland (or from the bathroom, laundry, hallway and kitchen, cos that’s only as far as I’ve ever got with those lists) while I got changed and reapplied makeup. She was impressed that I had “There’s a glass of water out here for you Jo” as a memory, cos that’s what she remembered from the bathroom too. That’s all I wrote down, cos what else can you say about a month of throwing up constantly and stressing out all the people that you care about? Especially since she was just “Justin’s Girlfriend” then (sweetei I love you and I don’t even need to say how much more you are now).

Anyways, where was I before I started talking about things that let’s so not go there right now. Oh yeah, Martinis at home, then we went to a party of her friends’, who are also my friends at tech who apparently actually really like me, so I’m so not a Grand Dick, and that’s yay. They were just down Symonds Street, and their party was on the roof of their building. I spent most of the time talking to the editor of Craccum from 2000, and we had astonishingly similar taste in music, and laughed about teh same things, and he was so cool and I was really surprised that apparently he wasn’t gay. It was choice to see where Kelly and Rowena lived as well. And then, we went to a party at Khuja, which was in the private back room so that was excellent, and I had long indepth conversations with assorted people, mostly to accomodate Katie chatting up boys. The boy I was talking to was talking close and whispering in my ear, and I had to whisper in his since the music was really loud, and I was mocking his partial English accent, and I dunno, I just had a real urge to kiss him behind his ears, and the last boy that I felt that for ended up kissing me, but this boy didn’t cos we left to go do sonmethoing else. What did we do? it’/s hard to remember. Drinks at The Supper Club maybe? And then Oporto, and I rang Justin to see where he was at, and he was like “hey, if you wanna hang out, you should call me before 2.46am” which made me laugh lots cos I ahd no idea what the time was cos Katie had had my cellie in her bag all night.

Then we talked about it, as we had been talking about it all night, and had had a big debate before we went into Oporto, but we went into Starks to have a very loud discussion in front of this FUCKING DICK who has done bad things to someone cool and you so don’t do that on our watch without us having to say something, and yeah, so loud obnoxious indignant conversation til we got the “You ladies would be more comfortable in the Civic Lounge” line, and fuck Katie, when i started this evening, I had $75 in my pocket, and now I have $6 for laundry and like $4 in scrapnel. What DID we get up to? Love you SO much baby xojo.

Thursday, July 18th 2002

In which Joanna ponders her ovaries in some detail

Yesterday I’d half written this excellent disection breaking down the stereotypes in the Breakfast Club which I’d watched that afternoon on two glasses of wine and some codeiene cos I was bored, and I wrote how I could easily match up the nerd, the weirdo and the stupid jock to people that I’ve shagged, and also probably the badass but I was having trouble matching the Molly Ringwald princess character until Tom told me exactly who it corrolated with because of major Princess Complex going on with that particular person and he was so right, but anyways, I lost that whole entry because I had to go and take a drunken phonecall from Anji, and spent over an hour only saying “Yep”, “ahuh” and “yeah”. I could have been a character on the West Wing, if I’d said it with that funny abbreviated swallowing their words kinda way that they all do (Incidentally, I can’t remember who it was that said it, but someone suggested that there’s only one character on the West Wing and I sometimes think that they’re right. CJ is still fabulous though.)

But anyways, that was yesterday, along with Maree phoning to say thank you for the faxes I sent her the other day, so I invited her around to eat vege lasange with me (it was the fucking best lasange ever, with leeks and onions and mushrooms and bromocoli and kidney beans for protein and pumpkin and tomato and everything). That was probably the highlight’o my day, seeing her. No wait! The other highlight yesterday was a suprise coffee in the courtyard of Strawberry Alarm Clock with KateH who is my sunshine although she shoulda been working. Was that yesterday? Or the day before? I can never remember. Wait, I think I wrote about that already, so maybe that was Tuesday. Who knows?

Blah blah blah. Work today. Right now Clay and BradC are at Pluto and Gomez, the bastards. I asked them to bring me back Milan, but I doubt that they’ll remember to, since it took BradC exactly one month to bring me my birthday present. And I still maintain that a cinnamon donut really ain’t any kinda present. They were drinking Soju and also Cider before, so I laughed at them over the top of my dry martini with a twist and the olives on the side. Then BradC got under my duvet cos he was cold and Clay gave me looks, which is ridiculous cos he already gave me full permission to pursue him if I want to, but I don’t think I do. I need to learn to make myself happy without having to disengage my brain all the time, etc. Plus, I’ve done enough pursuing for the year.

Also, I have had the dull distant ache of a soft headache all day, so I know it’s the goddam pill, and I’m going to have to do some serious thinking. If I skip the sugar pills, there’s a risk that I’ll have PMS all month, and I don’t think anyone would be able to deal with that. If I don’t, then I might always have this ache when I’m on the sugar pills, and while it’s not the fullscale migraine’o last time, I do realise that i’m going to have to make sure that I have full oxygen going to my brain at all times in order to keep it from getting to that evil “I think I’m going to die because something has exploded in my skull feeling”. And you know what maintaining proper breathing means that I can’t do. Grrr. So I guess I could go off the pill. I’m not using it as birth control, cos ha, do you ever see anyone actually fancying me enough to have a dedicated relationship with me where I trusted them enough to stop using condoms? I doubt it (side note – I am 22 years old and only one person has ever told me that they loved me). But in theory, the pill is regulating my ovaries – and also apparently clearing up my skin and making me less hairy. My skin isn’t really that bad though, is it? And yeah, I have horrible hairy hobbit feet, but that hasn’t seemed to have changed over the past two months. However, yeah, I do want to get my ovaries in line. Hmmm. Maybe I will wait til I’m next sick and needing to see my doctor and then I’ll discuss it with her. Dammit, if this was two months ago, I could still go see her for free cos of the whole U22 free sexual health visits.

Blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah. I think I had more to talk about but maybe I don’t. Bopha is coming back tomorrow – oh how I have missed my little girl! And I get to see KateH again too, and that kicks ass. If I had been good and gone to watch them all playing indoor netball, I coulda seen her and Maree and JeremyO today, but Maz said that they weren’t going to be wearing short skirts, so really, what would the point have been?

I really wanted to go to Gomez, but it was $60, and I’ve been increasingly crowdfreakouted, so I dunno if it woulda delivered $60 worth’o satisfaction to me. But fuck, Pluto are great live. Oh well, I’m sure they’ll play an individual gig sometime soonish, and at least this way I wasn’t subjected to Chris Knox.

NEWSFLASH! Clay and BradC just got back, and apparently they met a friend of Jarrod’s from Wellington, and OH MY GOD it was the first boy I ever kissed who I was madly in love with for a very long time afterwards. Now I’m really bummed that I didn’t go.

Friday June 7th

Morning is a mad dash to the supermarket with Bopha to get there and back in time for me to get changed and go to work,and I end up being ten minutes late, but it’s not like they’re really keeping time anyways, or so it seems. There’s a lamington waiting on my desk when I get there, sprinkled with baby m&ms and with a chopstick stuck in it, and as soon as I walk in, Skew and Terri are like “Happy birthday” and I’m like “thanks, who’s birthday is it?” and they’re like “yours” and I’m like “no” but it was really sweet anywyas, and apparently we’re gonna have a drinkathon on my birthday. That kicks ass! I can’t imagine any other workplace doing that. Oh yeah, at Foodstuffs, they laid on morning tea – biscuits and buttered muffins when they all knew I was vegan. Choice. But anyways, work is fun, and at three pm, Terri and I go for a 10 minute walk to the graphic designer’s office (the people I work for have buildings ALL OVER town – we 0wn Auckland) and that was fun too. She’s choice, I like her, and I will miss her when she is gone. Also she said today to someone else that I’m being groomed for her role, so that could be interesting.

Afternoon/evening is meant to be going down to Deschlers to meet up with the lovely Annabel but Bopa made me smoke a spliff with her so I couldn’t actually leave the house, so instead Annabel and later Arch came here. They were cool, and I invited them to my birthday party and she was like “oooh maybe the HJT could play” and I was like !!!! and then I giggled lots cos I have silly rock star crushes. Fuck, was I supposed to be writing present tense? I think it’s like, 5am or something, so fuck you and your grammar rules. Anyways, so there’s martinis martinis martinis and Bopha’s friends are over and they’re loud and shit so I go to my room, and KateM comes over and we drink and gossip and giggle, as girls do, for ages and ages and ages. Eventually we go down to Deschlers where we find Andy all by himself so we chat to him for quillions of years before Nigel & Jarrod show up. Razza is behind the bar, so that’s flashback to auldskool days, and the thousands of hours and cocktails and thighgropings consumed at Deschlers. Eventually we manage to grab ourselves a booth, and KateM holds me down and covers my mouth so I can’t scream when they get Andy to start smoking. And then there’s text messages and cellphone calls, and suddenly, I have Other Things To Do, with lots and lots of capital letters and a fair amount of injokeness, and I’m trekking up to K’Road by myself and by golly it’s cold. But it’s okay, because it’s wonderful and lovely, and yeah, but now I’m home again, cos you know what I’m like. But cool.