Hubris.co.nz

Tuesday June 18th

Because it’s all about loot, and because you may be interested, and now I’m actually sober (last night was crazy), I will write you a list of what I got for my birthday, in the semi chronological order that I received things.

When I was just on my way out to work yesterday morning, I spotted a large parcel and poster roll sitting in the lounge that had been sent up from Wellington, and even though I knew I was running late, I took a little time to open a few of the things inside, which were:

• A poster of Antartica from Karen, with bears drawn all over it in various different styles, which was obviously a collaborative effort on the part of the good people at Unity Books in Wellington (after all, my height is measured on their door).
• One of the parcels in the big box was “Manufactoring Consent” by Chomsky from my parents
• The other thing I opened was a MUFF that Karen made from me, along with a long list of muff ettiquite. Fuck, I so can’t spell that. You know what I mean though. It’s all soft and brown and furry and has a bear face on one side. Hehehe. I like bears. She also gave me a can labeled “Batted Salmon” which on closer inspection is actually tuna. I like injokes. This is my muff:

Then I had to run away to work and I found out that Teri had broken her ass. Heh. I know I shouldn’t laugh, but she laughed at me when I told her the catching on fire story:

All day today I have been wearing my pajamas, cos I haven’t had a pj day in aaaages, and I really love my pajama top – it used to be my grandfather’s, and it just looks really good on me and it’s actually probably one of the bestly seductive items in my wardrobe. Anyways, this evening I was cooking dinner, and I leant over the stove to stir something on the back element when WHOOSH! My pajama top caught fire. I started screaming immediately, of course, and freaked out, but luckily, I had the good sense to pull it straight off and dump it in the sink. Then I stood in my slip and pj bottoms in the kitchen for ages laughing hysterically. So much for thinking it was a cotton top.

Bopha and Leo heard me screaming but they thought I was some random street person. Typical. Things could have been a lot worse, because the slip under my pj top is completely synthetic too. The way things are now, the bottom of my pj top is just charred and missing a chunk. Maybe once it dries out, I will consider whether or not it is still wearable.

Apparently Bridget was even gonna bake me a cake but she just didn’t. I did have a piece of someone else’s cake though. Actually, I haven’t had a birthday cake since my 17th birthday. Sigh. Anyways. Also at work I managed to finally finish my very first article and put it online. I’d give you the link but then you’d know where I work (because it’s SO hard to figure out right now).

Anyways, finally I managed to get home and open the rest of my presents, and this is what I got:

• ‘Chemistry’ from my parents, which is a NZ book about a drug addict with kidney stones who goes to live in Timaru. I’m presuming Karen chose it and it will therefore be good.
• A 3M ergonomic mouse, which wouldn’t run off the proper port for some reason, but luckily it works off USB as well.
• Some bodylotiony stuff which I initially suspected Neil had just got at a hotel he’d stayed in.
• A jar of Mole sauce they got me in Mexico. There’s an accent or soemthing somewhere in there, it’s not actually potted rodent. I hope.
• A weird purple pen which just perplexed me, but apparently it doubles as a screen cleaner. Mum said on the phone that she felt like she had to get me something that wasn’t on my wishlist. (And of course I’m still going to put the link in to that, it’s never too late to buy me presents!)
• A book called “The 13 and a half lives of Captain Bluebear” from Karen. There are precious few books about bears at Unity. It looks good though.

And then after that, eventually Bopha and I went to Caravan Serai to meet up with everyone else, and this is the rest of the loot that I got:

• A Virtual Fireplace video from JeremyO and Renee. I put it on today and it was strangely mesmerizing and made me feel warm.
• Bright lime sheets from KateH and Maree, and also some body glitter. I’d actually been thinking I should buy new bed linen just hte other day when I saw it advertised but I physically restrained myself.
• A pez dispenser from James. It has a lion on it, but we all initially thought it was a bear.
• A big bunch of flowers and a book called ummm hmm crap, I forget and it’s in the lounge and I’m lazy from KateM. I’ve previously seen her sobbing over it before, so I’m not sure what she’s trying to do to me, but I’m looking forward to reading it. Plus, that’s like the 5th time ever in my life anyone’s given me flowers, so that was exciting. I am so spoiled!

The best present of all, which was the guy finally listening to me yelling and finally working up the nerve to come into the women’s toilets to go and get me someone to give me a screw driver so I could get the fuck out after I got locked in the toilets by a broken lock. Apparently everyone was like “where’s Jo?” cos i’d been gone fifteen minutes but they all thought I was just talking on my cellphone. Of course, if I’d had my cellphone withme, I would have fucking called them! Grr.

Anyways, so that was last night, or the dinner part of it anywyas – I hope I didn’t forget anything. Afterwards, Bopha and I sat around being dicks at home smoking cigars and basically being looney. Today we went out for lunch at Fire&Earth and she told me that she’d kidnapped my cellphone the night before and sent out text messages to various people trying to get gossip but since no one replied I can only presume that she fucked up and nothing went out. Phew.

Oh! Exciting news! I saw Marion in the downstairs apartment when I went to ask the builder to move his car so I could get mine out and apparently, I’m getting carpet tomorrow or the day after! Wahoo! Six months later.Tonight I watched a two hour doco on Robbie Williams. I don’t want a webpage anymore, I want a documentary done on me please. It’d be great. Plus, I think my dad is smoking crack. This is the email he sent me yesterday:

Hello Joanna It’s a long time since I saw you pop out, but you’re still my little baby. All the best for the day, that’s probably pretty well past, at your end. Here I sit in Singapore, waiting to go and sell people on the idea of electronic certification. What some peole will do for a living, eh? (Call it “living”?) Anyway, better do some work. Happy birthday, in case you missed the rerefence, Yer ole man

Actually, that’s kinda cute isn’t it?

Right, maybe I should go and try to sleep now, either that or read through my IMC notes. I’m a little annoyed with myself for my lack of study, but you see the thing is that I only need 9/50 to pass the paper. Sure, yes, I could aim high, but I guess it seems to me that there’s not really any point unless I was going to get the top score out of everyone, which I’m not going to, so why put in all the extra effort? It’s like “a C is a degree” and all again. Even if I am a ‘mature student’ now. Then again, I can probably pull marketing out of my ass quite well. And I have til Thursday morning anyways. Hopefully I can get my massage after that. I’m freaked out about my wrists and hands though.

Hi! So. It’s been what, like, two and a bit weeks? Well, I’m here now. And I’d just like to start with this:

I love this girl so much

That’s Bopa Chai, the Shaolin Monk on Crack, aka my new flatmate whom we are still very much enamoured of. And while we’re speaking of photos, while she was around tonight, KateM demanded that i take some of her that don’t feature her cleavage prominently and in which she isn’t rather boozed, and so if you’re interested (and I guess I’m looking at the J-Crew here mostly, not that you probably even realise that you’re called the J-Crew now, but maybe we’ll get there in this entry) you can find them here.

Anyways, so I guess maybe you’d like an explanation as to where I’ve been for the past three weeks. Well, I’ve been right here, pretty much, but for the most part, I have been computerless. That’s right, you may recall how I kept getting electric shocks off my box? (oh ha ha ha, that one was a little too obvious) Those shocks eventually managed to fry pretty much every single inner component of my computer, and so I went a week without it, and then Peter’s workmates rebuilt it for me, at a cost, of course. This means that i lost everything on my hard drives, which SUCKS (and therefore all cd donations of mp3s will be very very gratefully accepted, thank you) but the one silver lining in the cloud was that therefore they didn’t find the folder full’o old topless photos (and yes of course i had topless photos on my computer – show me any girl with a webcam who doesn’t have one, and I’ll show you a girl who knows how to use her delete key). Oh yeah and Pete – if you did manage to extract them, you’d better have enjoyed them and not turned away in disgust, or I’ll be like, hurt and shit. Anyways. That’s why I haven’t been updating my website, and so yeah, thank you all for your letters of concern. Oh wait, hang on – like hardly anyone sent me one! You people think you can all sit here and read and not tell me about it – I’m looking at you, Kate Oliver, and you, Jane Yee, but believe me, I know. Also, Jane – apparently you said that I was really fucked up, but I heard that from a source with no credibility so that’s okay.

Of course there are people who do read my journal and tell me about it. I have hazy memories of one night recently having a big arguement with John and JeremE who were trying to tell me that this journal online isn’t the real me, but I can’t remember if they were saying one was better than the other or not. I think I was trying to argue 1. “Hey John, you’ve only just met me tonight, buddy” and 2. of course it’s me, but I don’t know if I got my points across because I just ended up quoting Tom and KateB who probably know me better than almost anyone and they say that I’m not as open as I think I am, so I kinda dug my own hole. Later, KateH and I managed to reach an agreement whereby Hubris is Ginger Spice and I’m Geri Halliwell (I mean, the physical resemblence is obvious) so that was good.

Other stuff that’s happened over the past while? I meant to write lists, but I didn’t. I’ve hung out with Bopha lots and lots and lots, and all her friends have decided that our flat has an excellent vibe, so they hang out here too. I get to watch them doing kung fu, having intelligent discussions, drinking endless cups of Jasmine tea and smoking very nice pot ever so often, which are all good things, even if the Kung Fu makes me exhausted just hearing it.

We had cigar, martini and poker night last week, which was fucking excellent. Everyone (was supposed to) dressed up 1920s/1930s gangster style, and we played and played and I smoked many many cigars. My friends don’t actually like martinis (wusses!) so we degenerated into apple martinis and cosmos instead, and then towards the end of the night everything just thrown together, but still out of martini glasses so I guess that’s okay. I don’t know who won at poker – we pushed all the chips in the middle for the last round and I think maybe Clayton won, but I can’t be sure.

My parents are in Mexico right now. Before they went away, Anji rang me up and told me Mum had gone into her work and been really spassy saying “Umm, I don’t know if we have a will or not, but you know that we have three houses right? So if anything happens to us, you can have one each”. I got email from them today saying that Neil got his wallet stolen on the first day that they were there, and that I shouldn’t try to buy anything online with their credit card number cos they canceled it. Also, apparently every time Mum goes to say something, she speaks Japanese instead of Spanish. Silly multilingual parents!

Oh yeah, I rang Mum up a week before they left, bawling my eyes out over my dead computer and the fact that my car had been broken into YET AGAIN and was generally unwarrantable and everything. That’s three fucking back windows, all for NOTHING. Grrr.

Shirley helped me break the rest of the glass out of the window and ducttaped it up for me. She’s my Manly friend. However, she’s going tomorrow for ever and ever and ever. I have to drive her to the airport and while I promised her I wouldn’t, I know I will cry and cry and cry. We had chocolate fondue and girlie night at her place on Friday, her and Maz and Morrison. I had flashback panic attacks in the car on the way home, partly about Shirley and partly about friends in general and other stuff. Other Stuff in capital letters even. When I set my mind to something, I want to do it as quickly as possible, get it over, out of the way and what have you. No drawn out trauma and thinking extremely, so later that night there were hugs and tears in my kitchen, and hours and hours of talking, excrutiating exhausting talking. I’m so conditioned to say “that’s okay, that’s alright” when someone apologises to me and I physically had to stop myself from saying it because it would have been insincere and everyone knows that. But there’s peace at least, and maybe that’ll stop the dreams.

Yesterday I drove to Pukekohe and got lost for half an hour because I came in at the other end of the town than where KateH anticipated that I would, and therefore rights were lefts and therefore wrong, which frustrated me immensely and I was burning up with fever, but finally I managed to find her and we went via Pak’n Slave to Nikki’s bach at Clark’s Beach. I think I wasn’t really expecting a good night, but it turned up to be excellent. Eight girls, two of them married, one with two children – it was an interesting cross section. They were all from Waiuku/Pukekohe though, so I was a little on the outside, but that’s okay, we bonded as girls always do over “I have Never” and I didn’t even end up sticking out like a deviant sore thumb as I have been known to do when playing the game with d-sters. It was also really nice to be out of the city, even if we could still see the sky tower in the far distance. I didn’t get much sleep though, cos it was hot, and I was sleeping on the couch in the lounge, cos the bunks were too short, the bottom bunks were too claustraphobic and I didn’t wanna sleep on a top bunk when I’m used to a mattress on the floor. But anyways. Nikki even cooked us all breakfast this morning, kickass. And then because I’m lovely, I took KateH to Waiuku so that she could see her mother for Mother’s Day. Her family are cool, except I was scared when someone was talking about the Baha Men, and so I complained about how I’d have the song in my head for the rest of the day, and Jane offered to put a different song in my head and I said okay, then EVERYONE at exactly the same time went “do do do do do do do do” in the manner of bears driving around in cars being the ballet. But Katie pumped me full’o gas and bought me chocolate too, so I love her.

And that’s it, I guess. Not very much for the past three weeks, I just can’t think. There’s been classes, of course, which I have even been to sometimes. I’m worried about tomorrow, my first friend off on her OE. Of course, there’s also KateB who’s doing so fucking brilliantly she makes me teary with pride when she calls me with news of her latest achievements (Kate – call me! Hi, I like you). OH! completely new topic now, so I should probably put in a new paragraph because it’s going to get a little dodgy.

What does the word “trans” mean to you? Do you even give it much thought? And if so, if you were told you were going to have a “transvaginal ultrasound” would you realise that it was going to be done from the inside? Well, I certainly didn’t, and believe me, I got one of the biggest shocks’o my recent life when the radiographer pulled out this huge fucking girthy 13 incher and rolled a condom over it. She told me to insert it “like a tampon” and I was like “ummmmmmmm holy fuck” Her reassurances that it didn’t all have to go in didn’t count for much. Afterwards she just left and told me to leave the door open when I’d cleaned myself up. I felt so cheap and used! But end of the story is that after extensive consultation with my doctor, I’m now on the pill again. Not evil evil femulen though; estelle35 which is what pretty much everyone with polycystic ovarian syndrome gets put on. And if I find after a couple of months I’m going psycho and losing my sex drive again, I will just stop taking it. Dr White was very amusing when she was going over it with me, asking if I’d be using it for contraceptive purposes, and I was like “yeah I doubt it eh” and she was like “well, if you DO meet Prince Charming tonight or something…”. I like her lots and lots. Also, yeah, so apparently I don’t ovulate all the time and I might very well have difficulty concieving children BUT I’m not infertile and I’m supposed to remember that and not worry and that was why my blood pressure was up a little, apparently, cos I was worried and cos I’d been running around. Normally I have excellent blood pressure. I asked Anji if she’d carry a baby for me, and she promised me an egg, and even offered to put it on ice now, so that’s okay. There’s a backup plan.

And now I think that’s probably enough eh. My back hurts – I’m sitting on the ground again. However, the rugmunching possibilities are looking good – or at least the rug part, because I’ve seen one of the flats downstairs has actually been moved out of, and they’re pulling up the carpet in there, and once they’ve laid new stuff there, they’ll be putting new stuff in here as well, adn then I can sort out my room and reassemble my desk, six months after the actual flooding.

I’m still downloading Hubris – the only links I have left to my computer past – but maybe I can rejig the order and upload this now.

Okay, so I thought I knew passion and lust before, but oh I was so so wrong. I saw “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” today, and oh my god gaaaaaaaaah I am so in love with Chang Chen. See the movie and you’ll see what I mean. He was the bandit, with the wild hair and cheekbones you could cut yourself on, eyes smouldering with passion, lean bodied, and oh the passion between him and Jen! Sorry, excuse me while I just drown in my own juices. I want him, I want him I want him I want him I want him I want him I want him.

I must go see the movie again. And you should too. Go to www.crouchingtiger.com to see tidbits of him. It was a brilliant brilliant film – amazing fights, amazing cinematography, a good storyline, and best of all the love and the passion between Jen and Lo and the parallel passion of the other two – wow.

That website lets you make your own trailers for it, so I made one, just using what I thought were the clips with Lo in them. The actual movie trailers are so so much better – and you might have already seen and drooled over them if you’ve been to the Deluxe Cinemas lately, or possibly the Rialto, but the clip I made can be seen here. And if that doesn’t work, sorry. But it was beautiful anyways. He’s a beautiful man – he can steal my comb then tie me up any day.

I wanna learn martial arts!

Yeah, so that was like, the highlight of my year I’d say. Heh. I smell like Midori now, but it’s not from drinking – it’s from Melon bubble bath that I got for Xmas. My parents are driving me a little mad, and there’s a suspicious bump on my neck (not to mention a three inch scratch from a finger nail across my belly) but that’s life innit? I was so happy to hear from Si that yes we can stay at his grandmother’s in Taupo I yelled out “Yes! Yes!” in the middle of Courtney Place.

I hope I have dreams about this movie tonight. Mmmmmmmmmmmm!

So how are we all then? I’m fantastic. I’ve had a brilliant day. My cellphone’s been beeping constantly, and I’ve just talked to all these wonderful fantastic people and it’s just been ace. Yeah. Sorry, when I get all happy sometimes I just can’t express it very well. I think I’m better at expressing sadness or longing, which is dumb. So I will try and just explain how at peace I am right now, how mellow I seem, and how secure I feel, but I can’t really. It’s kind of like waking up every day to the sun shining on a spiritual level, but that sounds too hippy.

So I got presents that made me happy (wok! toolkit! lots and lots of books! big day out ticket!), and I gave presents that made me happy because they made the receivers so happy, and that was fantastic. And then the Bentons came over, and that was ace too, because surrogate parents and all. Hayley came over for lunch, and she was sweetness and light and just lovely. I rang Olivia and told her we were having Tuna steaks for dinner, and that it made me think of her. She said “every girl should think of me when they’re eating tuna”. I talked to Kini and told her we ate eggplant which made me think of her. I talked to Leigh last night and that was choice. And there was phone calls to Kate B and Maree and texts with Shirley, and then there was an email from Justine which said she was in Wellington. Oma came over for dinner , and I got feisty with her and threatened to kick her ass if she didn’t do our dishes. But it’s never polite to beat up your grandmother, so after she went, I went and met Justine.

Hi, I’m Joanna, I’m studying Anthropology with Justine at Canterbury – I’m originally from Wellington, but my boyfriend wanted to do his masters in engineering which is why we moved down. We’ve moved around a bit, but we mostly live in Fendalton. I took her on a drive-through tour of the city, and probably bored her to tears, but hopefully i was more entertaining that family watching Notting Hill. I haven’t met anyone off the ‘net in aaaaages. The last person I met was umm well apart from that, it was the fabulous Leigh. Meeting people is easy. Now.

Karen and I just watched the end of a very odd movie staring the Pet Shop Boys. Spiceworld was much better. Meatloaf has had a very diverse range of movie roles, hasn’t he? Dances with Wolves is on now, but I’m not paying any attention – I just like the sound on to cover the ticking of the lounge clock. Tick tick tick tick tick. Does it make me paranoid that I can’t stand to hear it?

I really really wanna watch Last of the Mohicans now, cos we were playing the music from it before, but no, it’s a goddam Kevin Costner Injun movie on, innit? I didn’t get any cds for Xmas, but I really cannot complain. In fact, what I can do is be absolutely stoked with life in general and I am.

My eyes hurt, so I probably should go to bed sometime. I’m in Wellington. We have a massive looming Xmas tree and funny lights. There are big parcels for me under it which I have fondled and am still confused by. The house is all clean. It’s cool.

I had SUCH a nice drive down today, all lovely sunshine and little traffic. I sang and smiled, young, fabulous and free. I listened to Kiss FM for 2 hours whilst in the Taupo vicinity because Jarrod was dj’ing on it. Innnnnnteresting music selection going on there, Fur Patrol one minue and Meatloaf the next. Oh and speaking of Fur Patrol, how fucking cool is it that they’re the Xmas number one in NZ? So fucking cool. The Xmas number one in the UK is probably “Bob the Builder” which I heard on the simulcast of Top of the Pops somewhere in the Manawatu. Eminemem played “Stan” on Top of the Pops as well, but he was strangely cut off before the last two verses. What a suprise.

My father’s trying to tell me that Robbie Williams is gay. As if.

I got a text message today from an unknown number saying “Are your nipples errect?” . I was a little confused, but unsuprised. When I rang the number back, the answering machine said it was Kate, and later i talked to the Bentons to confirm that it was indeed Kate B. So I sent her back a message that said “yes and I’m all wet and ready for you”. She hasn’t replied.

My cat Pixie is sitting on top of the largest present for me. It’s a bigass box, but I bet it’s just a cd with a lot of newspaper around it. I love Xmas pressies. I have to go shopping tomorrow though, which will be a mare.

Simon’s not answering his phone. We still have nowhere to stay in Taupo. No room at the Inn. I guess I’ll just give birth in a manger instead. Hayley never knows who I am when I phone her. Brad rang me today to ask where the axe is. He also emailed me some addresses for home&away related sites. I like this one – http://www.alfstewart.cjb.net/. Stone the flamin’ crows, Ails, you build a website and then those bloody yahoos come in with their caps on backwards and just smash the place up.

My belly hurts too. I should go, although it’s been great having a yarn with you. Oh wait hang on, what are you getting me for Xmas? This is what I would like:

• A nokia 3210/3310
• Bed linen! Queen size duvet covers, and make sure they’re pretty
• Makeup – ‘Juliet’ coloured Poppy eyeshadow, or anything Napolean, or any kinda lip gloss at all
• Money or vouchers
• CDs: ‘Kid A’ Radiohead, ‘Pet’ Fur Patrol or ‘The Altruist’ (or is it ‘Altruism’?) DLT.
• Lamps, pillows and candles (I wanna live in a harem)
• Alcohmahol or illict substances
• Art works – not movie posters
• Handbags (cos you can never have enough)
• a digital camera
• a cd burner
• a trip to Melbourne/Sydney

Thank you. I will give you my postal address on request. Oh and one last thing – my sister Karen wrote this tonight.

Me (in bear mask)”roaaaaar!” Kara: “eeek!” Me:”Sorry, I didn’t mean to score you. I mean, scare you”

Okay, this is SUCH a bad sign, that’s it’s 3.15am on Tuesday morning and I’m still awake, unable to sleep so I’m at my computer, shivering in my slip and writing a journal entry. Arrrgh fucking aarrrgh fucking grr. Mind is very wound up right now, eh. Just a little bit. If I hadn’t left it in the lounge where Anji is sleeping, I’d be rehersing my speech right now. I mean, hey, I wrote it at 3am a couple’o nights ago anyways!

From midday until 9.45pm, I was in the computer lab, working on our broadcasting assignment. Well, that included a break for a trip to the bank (damn you Internet banking that promises to do rent transfers and then doesn’t) dinner with Andrea at Boiger King (misspelling intentional to proclaim pronounciation) and a five minute phone interview with a reporter from the Herald. Hi, I’m Joanna McLeod, and I want a job producing content for the Internet. Bob King asked me to answer the reporter’s questions, as apparently, I’m a sort of spokesperson for the course. Yay me! I was actually really proud, especially when the PR woman in Bob’s office who was doing name-badge stuff for the expo whilst listening to me told me I’d given a good interview.

Today I wrote a story about microchips in vending machines that make their products talk that went along with a video piece Trevor and Andrea did. I also did some page laying out, and wrote blurbs about the people in our group, and that kind of stuff. I was so so so proud to teach trevor how to align pictures to the left right in the middle of the text – something people who never used Frontpage Express or any other really bad WYSIWYG programs might never have learnt. And Joe and I did a layout in Fireworks that worked real nice. Wahoo. Yeah, sweet ass. Anyways, around 9.30pm I got a call from Garland and when I answered my cellie, the voice was liek “Hello stinky poo” so I realised that my family had arrived at my flat, so they agreed to come pick me up from tech. Goddamit, it’s SO cool having your parents pick you up from stuff – I think that’s what I miss most living in a flat. They were all hungry, so I took them to D72, but the kitchen was closed, so I suggested bread and hummus from foodtown, and got aggressive defending that situation, because I was just waaaaay too tired to think about another cafe. And as Mum and Neil and Anji had just driven up from welly, they were pretty tired too and took my advice.

Back at home, we ate yummy things on bread (brie! baba ganosh! smoked beef! parents’ money!) and drank (parents wine, Anji and I the last of my vodka) and watched first Clayton’s brilliant documentary on BFM, t then his sitcom. It was the third time I’ve seen the sitcom (and the doco, actually) but I think the tiredness and alcohol proved to be a winning combination, cos i kept giggling and giggling. Then I showed them the Flat Video, that covers my audition for Life On Tape – talking about kicking out Leyton, Clay’s 20th birthday dinner and Simon dancing, Brad doing spicegirl moves for my CD ROM, and our Survivor Final Episode Party. They were very very impressed, and laughed a lot. Then Mum and Neil went to their motel which is just 100 metres down the road – I worked there for all of two days – and Anji and I had another drink. We had the absolute best gossip. It was Anji who told me all the way back in 5th form that giving blow jobs was empowering, and I’m very grateful for that advice – even if I didn’t give one to my best friend’s b/f like she was suggesting at the time. Thanks Anji and Cosmo – my god, how scary is it the first time you go down on someone and you have no fucking idea what you’re doing? Until you remember Cosmo going “there’s no wrong way to give head” and you relax a little, that is. I think drinking from Pint Glasses probably wasn’t the smartest move ever, eh. What you think is a reasonable three drinks is more like six. AND I STILL CAN’T SLEEP! GRR! I hate being so intelligent and thinking so much!

I’m reading this really good book r ight now which I can’t for the life of me remember the name of – something about Johnny Thunder, and it’s about a girl falling for the wrong guy, and her lifestyle reminds me of Anji, and the writing of it’s so real I can see every scene, and if my light was on, I would tell you the name of the book so that you can read it too, but it’s all dark and stuff, cos I’ve been trying to sleep for ages, so I can’t tell you. Woah, that was a very long sentence. Sometimes I think you need a map to navigate these journal entries of mine. My eyes hurt, so I should probably crawl back into bed now. I’m so so so nervous about tomorrow -it’s the first day of the expo, and I’m making a speech and all. One of the grad dips came up to me today and said she was really glad it was me making the speech, since I’d done so well presenting our project to the class, and I just thought that was really really lovely of her. But yeah. I think I’m going to go shopping with mummy tomorrow to find something to wear – I haven’t washed my new media pants yet, and I really should have. I didn’t expect to be at tech so late. “Maybe later – I’ve got creamy goodness in my mouth right now”

Dammit, WHEN do I get a real proper sleepin? Thursday maaaaybe – if I’m lucky. I had to go into tech today to work on my broadcasting. My voice was even goner today – well, this morning anyways – luckily it’s kinda back now. Cos how would the world function without my screechings, eh?

At tech today, I wrote an article about how Michael Jackson came to our Expo, and propositioned Joe for some “back ending” work. I wrote an article about how the staff at AUT have been secretly selling our bandwidth to buy Pajeros. I wrote an article about how the notorious hacker k1w1w3b hacked the Expo site. I like writing crap, oh yes I do! So that was tech. I came back home to watch the fight with the boys and drink beer, but I fell asleep before hand briefly, and didn’t want any beer. I’ve never watched boxing before, and I can’t say I really focused on it today either. Instead I rang my mummy, and discovered that her and Neil and Anji are driving up to Auckland tomorrow, and Anji is staying three nights with me. Mum and Neil are going to stay in the motel down the road where I used to work – well, for two days anyway. Yay, this is cool. Except that I’m just choto busy. But still, I can make them waffles and stuff.

Kara is also staying with us for a week, while being homeless. She’s lovely. She cooked us dinner. I hope we don’t scare her TOO much – scaring her a little is fine. I watched The Rock tonight. I really have nothing to say. Oh, I changed my bed linen so now it’s my lovely pink set. That’s about as exciting as my life gets. We dragged sleeping bags out onto the lawn today to get a little sunshine. Clayton and Kara came back inside covered in grass. Oh to be young and frolicky again. Oh wait, I am still young. Just not frolicking. I’ve had so many good gossips to people lately, and also not just gossips, actual good serious conversations too. No wonder I lost my voice. I need my voice back before I make a speech at the Expo. Oh, and I’m cleaning up my site tonight, on account of going to maybe give industry people my url, so if there’s something you wanna see again but you can’t find, just email me for the link, k? Goodo. “Maybe later – I’ve got creamy goodness in my mouth right now”

Wednesday 17; February, 1999

This is the invitation I made for our flatwarming. Obviously, on the original, my address and phone number aren’t blanked out. The thing is this – if I wanted you to have them, you already would. So there. And yeah, it’s invites only, I do believe.

Obviously the invites are made to be cut up into little pieces. I only gave one sheet of them to Leyton – he said he’s not going to be inviting too many people. Gee, I wonder why? Drying dishes while he washed tonight, all he could talk about was that if you don’t rinse the soap off dishes, it’ll give you cancer. Jesus Wept, boy – talking to you will probably give me cancer first. Either that or I’ll die of fricking boredom.

My arms hurt a lot today. You see, I walked up to the vege shop up the road, then I carried home a big and very heavy box full of vegetables. And my arms also hurt from making Risotto, since it takes so much goddam stirring. Still, it was nice though, and healthy. Too bad if the boys are having problems with a lack of meat. Leyton ate like 2/3rd of the risotto – it was truely terrifying. Then he cooked himself a steak and it smelt awful and made me feel really really nauseous. I hid out in my bedroom cos they were watching the cricket, and got my parents to call me for a natter. I’m such a dutiful daughter. I probably should have called Karen instead, but hey – she can fucking call ME someday. I’m so not made of money.

That’s about all. I’m missing Andeee and Amy looooooots – there’s like never anyone online anymore that I really want to talk to. Oh, but Heather’s back, which is a definate YAY. And that’s all I have to report. I lay on my bed for like half an hour today, staring at my reflection in the mirror. I like my eyes a lot, I’ve decided.

Sunday 7; Febuary, 1999
I watched “Bed of Roses” tonight and I’m quite disappointed. Jo wanted Christian Slater to die, so that there could have been more tragedy, but I think that’s taking it a bit too far. I just wanted a really good weepy movie, cos that’s so what I felt like, but no! It was a big let down.

That’s okay though, cos I talked to Jo on the phone for an hour so that made everything okay. Her and I are going to win Lotto so that A) she can fly up for my flatwarming, and B) so we can both go to Oregon. Heather said we could stay with her and sleep in her twin bed. That’ll be choice. I wanna go crazy and eat in American Diners and stock up on American products.

Speaking of beds, I’ve only had about 8 people filling in my form. That’s okay though, cos they’ve been pretty good offers. I think so far the best one I’ve had is from a guy who says he’s got a Scottish accent. Mmmmmmmmmmmm. Hahahaha the things people will say to get to pretend they get to get a girl into bed.

What I really really want right now is someone stalking me with flowers. I like yellow roses and wild flowers the best, if you’re after a hot tip. Come pleaaaaaase – Valentines Day is coming up soon and everything. I think I deserve real honest to goodness admirers.

But now I’m going to bed in my new big bed. Even though it’s rickety, it’s made up with brand new manchester, so I will feel like I’m sleeping in a hotel. Instead of an flatmateless house. I talked to my parents on the phone today, because it was a $2 day, and they were grateful for the call – as they should be. I’m still a little traumatised by my father’s jokes about nuts though when i asked him about tools.

And here’s a parting question – what sort of person would turn me down when I invited them over to help me tighten nuts?