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What is grape face, you ask? This is grape face:

Sir Ed gets his grape on

Oh fuck yes! For Lisa‘s 30th birthday, I got her the Red Panda experience at Wellington Zoo. This means you get to go into their enclosures, and feed the grapes and pears, stroke them and watch them tip their heads back to make sure they don’t spill any of the juice from the grapes on themselves. SO ADORABLE! I could flood this journal with pics, but perhaps you might just want to look at them in this set right here instead.

As for me, I’m doing okay. After 25 days I have finally stopped bleeding. I had a “the floor is lava” day yesterday, which really sucked, but I managed to jump from island to island long enough to repair my first fuse without having a breakdown about it, so I’m impressed with myself for that.

In 2004, I got an email from the girl who made my life a living hell at ASIJ saying sorry, she hadn’t realised how cruel she was being. I’d tried so hard to bury all those memories that hearing from her made me cry for hours, tucked away in my tiny little office up at Salient. I had a similar experience on Friday night, when someone who’d always said that there was no point in saying sorry now actually said sorry for things done many many years ago. I was completely thrown, and sort of drunk, and lonely, so naturally, I responded with smut. It’s just how I operate. But it did kind of shake me up a lot, and made me worry that they were dying or something. It still freaks me out when people demonstrate that they clearly care about me.

So yeah, clearly the Yaz is still coursing through my bloodstream and my brain, but I’m going to fight this thing, dammit! When I find the time. Oh my stars is my schedule ever busy for the next couple of months.

I can’t think of a proper way to finish this post, so here’s another picture instead!

Red Panda family chow time

The floor is lava again. I know it will pass, and I know the fact that I have been negligent in my lexapro intake is to blame, but it’s kind of like a vast conspiracy.

I had a glorious week before the lava set in. As I already said on Wednesday, Lisa Fur and I went out to the Hutt and had a marvelous drive around. On Thursday, we went to the zoo! There were otters! And meerkats! And giraffes! As my camera is at Anna Jane’s (I hope) I will pinch some pictures from Lisa’s flickr to display the otterly adoreableness of the trip:

Lisa kept calling the animals jerks every time they wouldn’t pose for photos properly or if they were just busy sleeping and we couldn’t see them, which happened a lot. I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do. However, it did keep me giggling a lot. Afterwards we went to Lyall Bay to eat chips and be sad looking at the burntpout Maranui, and then we drove up and around Maupuia and then up other hills in Miramar, questing to find a particular yellow house we’d spotted from another peak. Spending time with Lisa is lovely and easy and great. I wish we could make out and then I’d never have to hang out with anyone else ever again, if you know what I mean.

On Friday I went to meet up with my old workmates Matt and Ros for drinks at Mighty Mighty. Apparently the SSC has not completely fallen apart without me. I’m as shocked as you are. Ros reads my journal, so I must give her shoutouts. Matt does as well, apparently, although he does not wish to discuss my periods with me. I warned him that I intended to pretend to be Mark Harris the next day and heckle his talk at Word Camp about the SSC blog and yell “Show us your tits!” a lot. He said that would be  a good thing. It’s a shame  I didn’t actually make it along, but I suppose we’ll get to that soon enough.

Then Karen came along and we took a taxi up to Anna Jane’s masquerade flatwarming. Once again I’ll steal a photo from someone else, in this case from Phillip:

I painted and glittered my fan myself, in case you couldn’t tell. It had creepy dolphins on it before, which Lisa made dolphin-killing noises when I painted over them at her house on Monday night. That was not as adorable as the sound the otters made when they saw us coming over and stood up to greet us.

Anyways, the party was fun, for a while. I was feeling very uncommunicative, and drank a lot to cover that, although we couldn’t find a corkscrew for a very long time which meant we couldn’t open the prosecco for a long time and had to resort to drinking white rum. I tried to steal a mask from a canadian guy because it matched my fan. He didn’t want to swap though. There was some piling onto Anna Jane’s bed, and pretty French girls. Then at one stage I was leaning on the bathroom door frame when someone shut the door and it turned out my fingers were shut into the frame. I howled in pain, and screamed until the door was open, and then I bawled and bawled and bawled. I was so very fucking embarrassed at how much I was crying, but once I started I couldn’t stop. It felt kind of cathartic and kind of horrible at the same time. People gave me hugs and ice packs and Bad Tom forcefed me straight brandy, and I still couldn’t stop crying. Karen made me go home pretty soon after that, and I cried in the taxi on the way home, and again once I was in bed. My fingers are still kind of fucked now.

Needless to say, I did not feel very good on Saturday. I was very very hungover, yes. But also, I was just so so embarrassed. I mean, twitter assured me that crying at finger pain is completely okay, but there was an element of just losing total control, letting down my facade, ex cet er ra, ex cet er ra. I was not comfortable about it at all. So I hid in bed, constantly resetting my alarm pretending I’d go to Wordcamp later and later but then I realised I wasn’t going to go at all. Instead I made watery mac’n cheese and watched half a dozen episodes of series four Buffy because I love the recaps of it on The AV Club so much.

Today I have also hidden in bed, beset by strange dreams about dreams, cheese, weddings, Kat’n Kane and cherries the size of pumpkins. I also dreamt that I cloned myself and we had some great sex. I ran away to Elements to eat haloumi and roast beetroot and read the stupid paper. Tonight I might make rhubarb crumble and toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner, and attempt to restore some order to my room. I wish I had a job. I really want to buy that bed that I want. I finally got a call on Friday from the job I’d interviewed for last Monday, and they said that they had no feedback to give me because I’d interviewed brilliantly but the candidate they went with had more general Comms experience and I’m too specialist. Damn my speciality!

Actually, given the soreness of my fingers, and how difficult wanking was last night, I’m not sure I will be able to make crumble, dammit. Hmm. I suppose I can but try.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2627/3793683901_ab75aed967_m.jpg

Last Friday was, if you recall, the Prom. Of course, you should all have known that from coming along, but if you did, then you’re people that I don’t know who didn’t introduce yourselves. Wankers.

But nevermind that. Let’s talk about going to Spotlight at lunchtime with Kateb for netting to promify our dresses, and how I was going to get black but the call of the pink was just too strong:

Then let’s talk about how the skies opened around 4pm and I had holes in my shoes, and my car was parked a long way away and luckily I’d given Kate the spare key to it cos I got to it late, and then we had to schlep over to Newtown to decorate the hall and I was soaking wet and freezing cold and reaaaaaally not in a good mood. Plus decorating was tiring and hard, and we were running late and Brad’s friend who was helping us kept on talking and talking and oh oh oh, just the drama of it all. But when we were done, the place looked fucking rad:

Kate came over to my place to get ready, and since I knew I needed to snap out of my grump, I went to “spend a couple of minutes by myself” (read: rub one out), before showering and sorting out my hair. Of course, we ended up looking fabulous, as the above photo will prove. We spent a while having some drinks and trying to convince Bart and Del to come with us, before abandonning that idea and jumping in a taxi. The hall was pretty empty at first, so I was very worried for Brad’s sake, and I was trying to count and do maths and things, but eventually it filled up, helped along by the arrival of these two, Katy and her flatmate:

We sat and drank coruba & coke for a while, cos it was donated, and then Brad started playing ‘Get into the groove’ which is one of my favouritist songs to dance to evah, and since my friends weren’t feeling it, I went and jumped into a group of strangers including this girl Holly:

They were very very rad people and were very complimentary of my outfit, so I decided that I was ON FIRE that night, and that everybody would be my friend. When Katy and I were slowdancing the first slowdance, I spied two boys standing at the side so we grabbed them instead and they didn’t appear to mind at all. Later I fell in love with one of Brad’s tutors (although I suspect I didn’t realise who he was at the time) when he whirled me around the dancefloor and told me to stop leading. How powerful and manly! Oh how I was swooning.

At one stage, I went outside to find Kate, and found her talking to a 15 year old kid who’d wandered up to boast about how he was on his 20th beer. When he turned around and said to the Asian girl behind him “I don’t like Asians!” I decided that was enough, and it was time for him to move on, so I went and found Brad, who grabbed a very tall friend of his and politely asked the young lad if he had a ticket. He moved on then. Apparently he was also kicked in the balls by a friend of the Asian girl. Excellent.

It was just such a fucking fantastic time. I danced and danced and danced, and although I didn’t win Prom Queen, I certainly felt like it, and so I successfully vanquished all my demons from dances at ASIJ 12 years ago. Oh yes, that’s right, all my demons. I’m totally a demon-free zone now. Honest. Here’s some more photos from the prom – if you want to see them larger, go to my flickr account page, obviously. And the best part of all is that Brad made a whole grand.

When Kate and I got home, we found Mark and Bart sitting out on the front steps drinking, so we stayed and talked to them for a long time, and I did the most awesome fall-flat-on-my-face fall ever. Radical.

The next morning, strangely enough, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus, but I dutifully rolled out of bed, showered and headed off to pick up Anji and Karen, via a ten minute wait at Macdonald’s for them to serve me up a burger instead of the ick that is the Macdonald’s breakfast. Not that their burgers are much better, of course, but this was an emergency. I got Anji to drive to Waikanae, because I still felt drunk. We went to Swell Cafe for Mum’s birthday brunch, which you might remember from the news stories about its quarter mill bronze statue being stolen. Or you might not. I don’t care either way. Ha! It was really nice there, but oh boy I was feeling ill. Then we went to Oma’s house to sort out more stuff and pick up more furniture and I puked some more and sat on an outdoor step and cried. I was very very happy to get home and unload the buffet and bookshelves.

After a nap, I went to the supermarket and made awesome sandwiches of streaky bacon, camenbert, hummus and rocket. Hurray! And I tried gingerly to drink some beer, but then switched to red wine. Around 11pm, I headed off to Nial’s house for Blair’s goodbye party. Luckily it was a very mellow night, just lots of sitting around in the very cute garden. I didn’t know people at first, but I was overly tired so I was in very giggly very saying lots of stupid things mode, so it was alright. The boy who I’d originally thought was gay talked loudly at me about how gay he was, and about how he used to make his ex girlfriend wear a Hayden Christensen mask when he flipped her over, and I felt ever so slightly embarrassed but mostly I just laughed at the things I was thinking in my head (*).I did tell the hot Canadian right as he was leaving that I fancied him rotton, and he laughed at me. Well, it wasn’t quite a “ha HA, like you could ever have a chance” kind of laugh, or even a laugh of pity, it was just a laugh and a “I’m sure you’ll get your pash this year”. And yes, I told him right when he was leaving, because I am laaaaaaaaaame like that, but at least I told him. So that’s all very well and good, and I don’t feel bad about it. And it’s good that he’s gone, because while he was a very easy crush to have, I just have far too much going on in my head right now(*). Oh, and of course he’s also a stupid maple syrup-eating surrender monkey.

Having been up until 5.30 texting, Sunday was a day for lying on the couch groaning and watching season two of the OC. I think much of the week was like that, actually. Hmm. On Wednesday I saw Capote, which wasn’t the feel-good hit of the summer. Then I decided I needed to stop feeling angsty about the number of people in my house (it’s strange getting used to having two boys and one girlfriend who is still trying to find a flat around, after living with only Anji for six months, but there’s no need for me to have a bug up my ass just because oh the pain, they’re sitting on my couches watching tv when I want to lie down and watch the Gilmore Girls in quiet), so I cooked a flat dinner for them and Brad. I was going to make a pear cake too, cos our tree is loaded down with pears right now, but when I got home, Del was already making one. Great minds and all that.

On Friday after work my workmate Sarah and I escaped down to Monsoon Poon for some very good conversation and some wine. She’s getting married in less than a month, and so she keeps asking me questions about things like invitations or social graces, or accomodation and stuff, which is fine, cos I’m happy to help, but it’s making me plan my own wedding something crazy, and hello, I’m not gettign married for another five years (that’s assuming Brad’s still single then). We were joined by the boys a while later, and then by Rene who is an ex collegue. Eventually KateB showed up to and by that stage I’d consumed quite a lot of wine. Sarah left and we had a platter of food which probably wasn’t nearly enough in proportion to the amount of wine we were drinking, and we went to Ponderosa where I watched Kate pee and she did the same to me. Not like, cos we were doing it in public or anything, just that we assumed that there would be stalls but it was one big room and so we decided to have a significant bonding experience instead. I was thinking that the bathroom looked mighty familiar and then I realised yesterday that it’s tiled like the one in Veronica Mars in which she does all her business. Ha HA ‘business’, do you like what I did there? (Yes, wow, that is a poo you should be proud of).

Somehow we managed to convince Dylan to come to a uni party with us (I did mention that the last time I went to a party at Jess’s there were both nipples shown AND a person in a panda costume), and we headed up to Kelburn via the supermarket for more wine. We probably didn’t need the wine. I had a good time at the party talking to Arthur and Brad who are at drama school together, and the fabulous Jess, and also Robbie, who as it turns out isn’t Lemon Cohen at all, and most awesome of all was that there was no one else from Salient there. Then Kate was a little worse for wear, so we decided it would probably be a good idea to get her home(*). When I saw Jess yesterday in Aro, she laughed at me for being like “omg, leave my friend alone! She’s been my best friend since we were 5, don’t hurt her!” cos people had placed flowers on her head. They laugh because after delivering that speech, I delivered Kate an all-mighty slap. Sorry babe.

Yesterday morning was consequently not much fun either, but I rallied by around 4pm when Anji and I went up to Mum and Neil’s for a BBQ. Boy it was hot, so very hot. I like BBQs. Then I went and picked up Karen and we headed over to Aro Park for the Bitchcraft carnival. I bought pretty earrings and we went and got fish’n chips and settled down on the grass to watch the Dukes of Leisure play. They looked like this:

I’m aware that you probably can’t see that much, but I’m hoping that it’s just that I have a crap monitor. If you can’t make it out, that’s a tree with a string of dead dolls hanging behind them. Anyways, the Dukes were very cool. They’re kind of sonic soundscapey like HDU or Jakob, and since I was lying on my back looking up at the stars, it was perfect. The Bitchcraft fair looked awesome when all the stalls turned on their little lamps. I felt like I was in an alternative Stars Hollow, and that is a rad thing to feel.Then I went home to dance the panda dance for Brad. I contemplated going to the Bitchcraft afterparty, but it was on the other side of town and my hands were still tingly with hangover. One of these days, I’m going to cut down on the amount I drink. For serious.

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.

It’s back to the good old student tradition again whereby you have to miss all your actual lectures to stay at home and write your essays. I mean sure, there are probably more efficient ways for me to work, but i DO have to have frequent breaks. I didn’t do all that posture studying and physiotherapy for nothing, you know. Of course, the stress of the essay exagerates the pain and ache. Arrgh.

I offered Clay $5 to finish my essay for me and he just laughed at me so I offered him head and he said “now you’re speaking my language”. And yet I’m still writing my own essay. I think right now I’d probably give head for a really good arm and back and shoulder and neck massage. I’m worried that I’m going to have too many words and not enough source material for my essay. I’m also worried that amybe I haven’t completely understood the question, so I really should have been one of those typical horrible ‘mature’ students who sit at the front and ask a million fucking annoying questions until someone at the back of the lecture hisses “shut up!” because at least then I’d know that I was on the right track. But I dunno. I’m counting on the fact that my lecturer looks like the guy on the Wendys ads (the NZ Dave, not the dead one) and the fact that Wendys cures my hangovers and somehow those two facts will connect and result in me getting an A.

Eventually after I’d been working so hard I rewarded myself with a really loud orgasm cos it’s fun to be noisy sometimes and plus I thought I was home alone, but then when I went out of my room, Kara was sitting at Clayton’s desk pretending to be studying. She was embarrassed; I wasn’t. Later she asked me how I was and I said “really really excellent thanks” and smiled at her and she blushed. I was annoyed that he’d obviously left a key out for her though, or that she’d climbed in his window. It’d be nice if my house was just for me.

This evening I was watching ‘The Strip’ and feeling ill from eating too much Pad Thai with all the chilli flakes mixed in, when KateM rang my cellie. We yakked and yakked for ages and then I said “hang on, there’s someone at the door – it’s probably Kara again, grr”. So I grudgingly shifted my ass off the couch and found KateM herself standing on my doorstep, laughing her head off. I giggled a lot too. I like suprise visitors! You should all come up and see me some time. Well, assuming you know where I live, that is. And of course, just as long as you’re prepared to run the risk of me walking around the house pretending to be a Greek Goddess/beautiful movie star after a love scene.

Hmmm, when I was talking to Anji on the phone the other day she told me that her friend Gregor had been talking about me and said that he thought I was kinda strange because I’m very openly explicit in my conversation, and reading back through my journal entry today, maybe she’s right. I don’t really have any taboos, cos I figure if people don’t want me to talk about something, they shouldn’t bring it up. Anji said that she’d told him that if it intimidated him he should just tell me to shut up, but he said it was interesting. I guess I’m used to panda-ing to voyers (For example: Jason! we’re like, in the same circle but we’re not close, i find it really interesting that you’re reading me). I like pandas.

Right now I dunno if I should try and focus on my essay again, except I don’t think I’d be able to cos my arms are going numb, or try and sleep, except I drank coke today, or I could read. I wish Buffy reruns were on at 1am instead of 3am, it’d be so much better for me. I guess I have to make it in to my tutorial tomorrow cos our Com Strat is due. Jinan was supposed to be formatting it and doing it up all nice so I haven’t really got anything to worry about, except if she’s not there. I suddenly find myself full of Com Strat theory, which isn’t very helpful when it’s IMC essays that need to be done. Last night when I couldn’t sleep and I couldn’t do my essay either I drafted up a Communication Strategy Plan as a semi joke for someone based on a conversation we’d had at lunch the day before. I kick ass. Really.

KateB’s proposed outfit for me to wear as her bridesmaid: “And I’ll make you wear a high necked, long sleeved apricot coloured crushed velvet minidress with a massive lime green lace bow on the arse, and baggy flesh coloured pantyhose, with white open toed “Kumfs” and a matching white velvet scrunchie for your hair. ” KateB kicks ass too, and so I’m waiting for her to give me the spanking that I apparently deserve.