Hubris.co.nz

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).

Tomorrow, I get on a plane. Approximately 24 hours later, I will be in New York, in the centre of hipsterville. As KateH pointed out to me, Tom McRae is playing on the 25th, so I will be doing my damnedest to get to that gig. And doing all sorts of other things. And then I will get on another plane and go to San Francisco, put on my corset and take Mary-Kate and Ashley to the Full House house, singing all the way.

Speaking of the twins, I got my hair cut on Saturday but no one noticed that night at Germany because I was dressed like a German beer-hall girl (or my closest approximation anyway). On Tuesday night before I went to The Postures’ debut gig at San Frindigo, Anji and Karen came over and painted my hair in stripes of purple and blue-black. It’s unfortunate that the haircolour change has coincided with Period Skin, so I feel like it looks really crappy. I’m sure it doesn’t though.

I have yet to pack, but I have a large bag with nine kilos of Kate’s winter clothes to take with me. I also have an extensive list about what I want to take, so I figure that’s most of the battle. Unfortunately my camera seems to have vanished – I’m going to blame Smoo not wanting me to publish the photos of him and Blair playing Gay Chicken after they showed up incredibly drunk in the middle of Germany, sporting duct tape Hitler moustaches, SS armbands and babbling abotu their Brokeback bike ride that they’d just had. My camera also had pictures of the Black Forest Cherry Cake I made, which was truly an awesome thing of beauty and awe. I hope I can find it before I go away.

What else? Yesterday I caught up with an ex cow-orker who’s been in Australia making babies. Her tummy looks fake, but not as fake at Katie Holmes’s. Tonight I’m going for a couple of quiets. Today at lunch we went up to Finc, which I wasn’t impressed with. I had a steak sandwich, and it really disagreed with me – so much so that two bathroom stops were required on my way back to work strolling down the gorgeous waterfront. I <3 Wellington on a sunny day. And now I get to go and heart two new cities, the luminous Kate and the gorgeous Olivia (and s5, who is perhaps the best human on the planet ever). I am a lucky lucky girl.

I'm sure there'll be internet accessing at some stage over the next two and a half weeks, so stay in touch. And if I get eaten by a snake, or killed by OH MY GOD THE TERRORISTS ARE EVERYWHERE, well then at least I didn't live my life so ginormously fat that I couldn't even leave the house and had to wash myself with a rag on a stick.

xojo

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