I came home about 10.30pm last night, and the kitchen was absolutely spotless, so I immediately asked Bart to marry me. He said yes so I walked back out to my parents’ car and they gave me a cheque for three grand, and I showed it to him and he said “well, I guess we’d better get a wriggle on then”. But then I decided to pay off my credit card with the cheque instead, since he hadn’t actually caught the mouse that we apparently have in the kitchen which was the reason for his cleaning. And yes, that’s right, I’ve had a credit card for under a month and I already have over three grand on it. But I also have tickets to America figuratively in my hot little hands, so that’s okay.

And I was home that late at night because Anji and I had gone to Capitol for a bottle of wine (I <3 Capitol, the service is outstanding, and the toilets smell so good, and the bruschetta is yum), and then we'd joined up with the rest'o the family at Hazel, where much more jolly awesome wine was drunk, and mountains of tasty tasty food eaten. I am currently craving more squid rings from there, and I don't even like squid. Perhaps I am pregnant. With the second coming.

If you're wondering why I am so much more chipper in this post than I was in Tuesday's, well it appears that the one/two emotional gut punch of watching 'The Body' and 'The Gift' together paid off. Well, that and large doses of the Arcade Fire, St John's, exercise, listening to 'Kim' on repeat (geez, why are you so angry, Marshall?) and all twelve episodes of the unbelieveable hip hopera Trapped in the Closet, which is just so fucking wow that it deserves another round of Holy Fucking Crap!.

Other things of note that I have been up to lately? Hosting the work quiz last Friday. After much debate about the amount of wine we were to have, we did end up running out. My arms ached from carrying eight bottles one block, so in a way maybe it’s better we didn’t have more. The quiz went well, even though I was having initial “no one likes me!” thoughts at the number of attenders, although we ended up filling the room very well. On Saturday I went to see the Dukes of Leisure play at the Carter Observatory, and I was drinking straight vodka from a small bottle, and it was all misty with lamp posts on the way there like Narnia, and we had pillows and got to lie down, and I got to have snuggles with first Anji and then Karen and we all know that I’m a Romanian orphan starved for physical affection so that was nice, and I fell in love with the man who gave us a star tour, because I love story-tellers, and they made us popcorn in the middle, and the music was good too and oh, it was just great and I was crazy giggly, and that amused me muchly. On Sunday I went to a private screening of The Imposters which was hilarious, and found out various bits of gossip that I might reprint here if I could be bothered footnoting it but I can’t, and I just felt choice.

Tomorrow is Canadia, as I’ve mentioned before, and then The Phoenix Foundation at Indigo, and then on Sunday Luke Buda at Caberet. And now it is nearly 5.30 so I must put on lip gloss and harrass the boys downstairs until they come out for a drink with me. My feet hurt from being an escort to a group of people who came to look at the clever things that we do at work. And then one of the directors referred to me as a handmaiden. That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen…

Everybody quick, grab a can of gasoline (not petrol) and some matches and come with me, cos I’m going to burn all my bridges. Or some of them at least. Oh no wait, I already did that. I wish I still had meds to make me invincible and to cut off my thinking thinking thinking. But I don’t. So let’s move on.

I had about a thousand cocktails at Katy’s cocktail party, and when I say “about” I probably mean “maybe 20″. My feet are cold. This is very important that you know this. We’ve been listening to Ghostplane and now we are listening to the Phoenix Foundation. I was worried when Ghostplane finished and the cd player spun around because I’m not often very down with Bart’s taste in music which tends towards the yelling, but it seems that I still have background music for entertaining to in the player.

Last night at China-at-the-Country-Club I had eleven people for dinner. Everyone else ate the Chinese food that was delivered. My hexagonal table has two inserts that can be inserted into it (oh really?) to make it longer, so we did that. I only have six dining room chairs though, so we had to use a computer chair and a wicker couch and also pull up my sea-chest to it. I drank Tsing Tao beer and stuck candles in their empty bottles. Jeremy wasn’t there when we ordered the food and made disparaging remarks about vegetarians, so we didn’t know he was one and therefore all he got to eat was some brocoli and plain rice. I felt bad. We all read our chinese horrorscopes and suddenly Jessie’s metal monkey stamp made sense. Ash’s horrorscope made her out to be totally like Hitler. Both Bart and Angie are rats, with a twelve year age difference. I think I needed to sleep more last night, this is all very disjointed. Everyone shared facts about China, although Kate mostly shared facts about the Kaori Sanctuary and the fish ladder. Did you know, for example that Anji, Karen and I are all half Chinese? We must be, because Mum was born in Hong Kong. Then again, Karen and Anji were born in Japan, so their eyes must be all crazy slanty. Ahh the country club, allowing for cliches from all around the world. We had sparklers afterwards cos of the Chinese rocking the fireworks and I made fun of people coughing at the sparkler smoke and then got caught in it myself and coughed for the rest of the night. We watched Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan to round off our cultural experience, but it was disappointly mostly unporny. But it was still fantastic. The next Country Club is likely to be Canadia Eh, and we will eat chips with cheese and gravy. Without the gravy. And watch ice hockey porn. And listen to the Arcade Fire. I know I am late to the Arcade Party, but I am still madly in love with them.

Then we went to Katy’s cocktail party where I stood in the kitchen for much of the night nice and close to the blenders so that I pretty much always had a drink in my hands. The guy that I had a crush on in 2001 was staring at my boobs all night. You’re like, five years too late buddy, I don’t do drugs anymore. I was wearing a sequined shrug and it glittered all over the place. I was dazzling. It gave me an arm rash though and I felt a little bit like a human disco ball, which is possibly not the greatest thing to feel like. We put our hands on our hearts to sing that we belonged to the night, we belonged to the thunder, and people salsaed to Gloria Estefan. Lisa kept making eyes at my sister. I kept throwing goats. My group of friends is awesome. Katy’s flatmate refused to marry me. I like her kitchen despite the big hole in the roof. One of my fondest memories of New Year’s Eve was dancing around it to MIA waving a big serving spoon. As you do. Or rather, as I did.

I was going to go up to my parents’ house this weekend to say hi to Pixie and watch their big TV, but I don’t know if I can be bothered. Maybe I should. Oh I don’t know. Maybe I should just stay here and plan what I am going to cook for Jessie when she comes down next weekend. I’m very looking forward to seeing her. It’s also awesome that I have an excuse to not go out with my workmates on Friday night and be a dick and end up crying in the toilets at Boulot and then running off to Lisa’s house and sitting on her footstool and falling off because it’s just all soft again. It’s important not to do these things more than once. And then the night after that KateH will be down and we’re going to go see Dylan Moran, and I’m going to marry him and we’re going to open a bookstore together and always be drunk and rude. Hurrah!

Yes, I’m aware that it’s been a while. Here are the things I want to talk about, for my own reference as I write this over the course of the day:

1. The Amazing Race
2. The Newtown Fair
3. The building of a TV cabinet
4. The Oscars
5. Maori class, sort of
6. Political arguments with a friend that felt way too personal and made me cry on the bus
7. Installing broadband
8. Gig at Bodega
9. The reseting of my all my crushes to zero
10. The Phoenix Foundation and the goodness that is Waitangi Park

1. The Amazing Race

On Saturday 4 March, a southerly rolled into Wellington, and it was coooold. Therefore, it was of course ideal weather to run all around Wellington for Sarah’s Hens’ Party. I can’t find my camera cable, so I’m going to steal images from her flickr account, because that’s what friends do, right? Yes.

We met at 11am at Vista Cafe in Oriental Parade and had brunch.
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I was a little nervous at first because I didn’t know anyone, and they were all very pretty, and well dressed, and ordering skinny lattes, but then we had some champagne and I felt better. I felt better still when we were split into two groups and handed a large bag full of wine and snacks that we were ordered to finish before the end of the day, and given our first task. We answered ten questions about Sarah and Nick, and I felt very clever knowing who her famous second cousin is, even if I don’t really know who he is (something rugbyish, I presume). Certain letters in our answers led us to our next location – the indoor netball courts.

I handcuffed Sarah to the rubbish bin to leave her for the next team, we picked up our clue, drank a bottle of bubbly very quickly in the freezing wind cos we couldn’t drink it in the shuttle and headed out to the airport to pick up another friend with the next clue. I made friends with a girl who didn’t know many other people either, and we had another bottle at the freezing cold airport, so all was right in the world.

The next clue led us to an old flat of Sarah and Nick’s, and so we spent nearly an hour sitting on its steps trying to solve a sudoku puzzle as a group. It was okay though, because the organiser had arranged it with the new tenants (she organised all her part in the day from Dubai. That’s insane. And also very cool), and we had another bottle or two of wine to drink anyway. The other team took aaaaaaaages to show up, and we had to wait for them to retrieve Sarah, but then they solved their puzzle in like five minutes, and we all took off for The Grand, or Shooters, as I suppose it is now called.

More handcuffing awaited Sarah there.
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Apparently that’s just a New Zealand fan, not actually Hulk Hogan. Who knew? The wrestling was in town that night, as I’m sure Lisa Fur can tell you all about, and fans had booked out nearly all the accomodation in town. Anyways, we had some more bottles of wine, and some food, and played a game where every time Sarah answered a question that’d been asked to Nick wrongly, she had to put on another item. She ended up looking like this, which is just totally awesome.

I hope she doesn’t mind me putting these photos on my site. I’m not sure if she even knows of its existence, actually. If she does, holler at me and let me know, ‘kay? It’s the gentlemanly thing to do. And that goes for any other workmates reading. And as for ex-workmates – hey to my reader at Foodstuffs! You read me a LOT. I can’t believe that they’ve finally let you have internet access…

Anyways, we put together our puzzle pieces and did another sudoku on the back of it, which led us to Patel’s Superette on Oriental Parade. Me and Allison went via taxi, which I only mention because it’s going to come back in my summary of the following friday night, if I remember. Anyways, the final clue had us all digging in the sand for ages, in a manner highly reminiscent of my pirate tenth birthday party.
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We dug up a big chillybin full of wine and cheese and tasty treats and picniced on the band rotunda. When we were done, it was almost five pm, and so we decided to go back to the Orange Apartments where many of the girls were staying and chill out until dinner, which was booked for 7pm.

While we were there, I bought coffee from the Southern Cross/ex Zeebos, which was very tasty but took eeeeeeeeeeeven longer to make than the coffee at Ora, tried to take a powernap, but was unable to, because I can’t fall asleep on demand without a wank first and that would have been highly inappropriate. We also watched Top of the Pops, which was rad because it turns out that the girl who’d done the organising was the brother of the drummer in one of my very favouritist bands, and so I got to say to her “I did a phone interview with your brother once, and he was lovely, except I was shamed out because I thought he was the bassist cos I’m used to him being called Michael and the bassist being called Mike”. We also saw part of New Zealand’s Brainiest Kid and they showed a picture of some What Now presenter:
and asked who it was. The correct answer was ‘Tamiti’ and I was like ha, he looks kind of like my friend Tamiti from high school, but then I promptly forgot about it in the scramble to put on a little makeup and my shoes and all that sort of stuff.

We were walking to Kai in the City up Marjory Banks St when some guy sitting on his car yelled at me, and lo and behold, it was my friend Tamiti, who, as it turns out is actually hosting What Now now. Oooh spooooooooky, given that I haven’t seen him since 2000. He is in fact building an army, which is awesome, and when he makes it into parliament, he’s going to give me a job. It was great catching up with him, and he said he comes up from Chch every fortnight, so we ought to catch up shortly. Lovely.

Kai in the City was really choice. I was a bit skeptical when Sarah had said she wanted to go there because the owners walk around with a guitar singing, but it was so much fun. I probably wouldn’t want to do it every night, but hey, every couple of months it’s okay to break out the ‘Ten Guitars’, and ‘Tu teramai nga iwi’. Plus, the food was really yum, and the wine was really yum, and it was just good vibes. And another old workmate of mine was there, and so it was nice to catch up with her too and tell her how very lonely I am now. After that we went for a drink at the Cambridge, and then they were going to Boogie Wonderland, but it was 11pm, and so I’d been Hens’ Partying it for a solid twelve hours, and it was time to go home. But it was a fucking radass day.

The Newtown fair

Unsurprisingly, I was totally exhausted the next day, so what smarter thing to do is there than to head out somewhere to walk around for hours in masses of crowds? I picked up Karen and we drove around Newtown for ages trying to find a park because dude, public transport is for black people. That’s why the windows on buses are so big, so we can laugh at them (and there’s a little Oscar humour for you, just to tie in to later on in this entry. I am so fucking good at cohesion).

I decided that I wanted to eat everything, so I had a spring roll which was very average, and a coffee which was great and gave me a headspin, and some mini donuts, and then I bought a black bead necklace, and then there was a huge big pan of chicken with all kinds of colourful capsicums cooking outside Planet Spice and it looked so pretty I had to have some of that too, and then I got dizzy from the Indian food in my belly. I like Newtown.

The building of a television cabinet

I was still exhausted and sort of high on tastiness, but I decided to get the supermarket shopping out of the way since I had a lot of cooking and cleaning to do in order to prepare for my swanky Oscar Soiree the following night. I spied a TV cabinet that I’d seen in a mailer for $69, instead of the $100+ comparable cabinets are everywhere else, so I wrestled it into my trolley and got it home. Why did I need a tv cabinet? Cos I’m contemplating buying a 29 inch TV, so that I can put the one that’s in the lounge in my room, so that if the boys are watching crap and I need some private chill-out time (and for once, that’s not a wanking euphemism) I can watch it in there. So anyways. Mark was in the lounge when I got home, with the windows closed and the curtains not opened properly watching some crap (smelly boys) so I plonked myself down in the dining room and did some constructing. If I had an electric drill and four hands, I could have assembled the cabinet very quickly (except for maybe the doors), but I didn’t, so it took a while. Then the doors wouldn’t fit in, and they were all crooked once they did, and that took even longer, and I was dehydrated, and the floor was uncomfortable and oh oh oh the pain, but holy crap it was so satisfying and I felt so clever once it was all done. You should come over and marvel at my feat of engineering, and promise not to hold a level up to the doors. Girl power!

The Oscars

I had texted everyone I knew in Welly to invite them to my Oscar Soiree so that they could drool over Jon Stewart with me. In order to prepare for this, I made empanadas (beef with cocoa and flaked almonds and spices in savoury shortcrust pastry), pear and sour cream cupcakes, toasted turkish bread with creamcheese, sundried tomatos and fresh basil and two kinds of dipping sauces for samosas, spring rolls and dim sum that came frozen in a box – a party box, if you will. I also cleaned the house, of course, and put out bubbles in an icebucket, and glasses, and printed out lots of oscar nominee sheets for playing the ‘think will’ and ‘want to’ game on, and found some pens. When Anji and Karen arrived looking all glammed up, I decided to do the same. Also in attendence were KateB, Kartini & Mike and Ash, who gets special credit for being a person online (you will recall, of course, our “Oh, you’re that Joanna!” conversation) as well as a person from real life from the KKK crowd. Yes, that’s right, I hang out with white supremicists, not just people whose names all start or sound like K. Missing were Katy and Chrisana who piked due to the weather. Surprise surprise, it was windy in Wellington.

But yes, anyways. Everyone was very excited about the Oscars, and I was quite drunk by that stage, which is always a good thing. I laughed so hard that I nearly fell off my chair during Jon Stewart’s opening monologue (bless the wonders of the Internet that you can watch if if you missed it), especially during his address to Steven Spielberg (“I can’t wait to see what happens to our people next! Trilogy?”). And then I cried during George Clooney’s speech, cos I was very emotional, and damn he looked hot, and oh, even if it was a bit of a wanky speech, it was just so hilarious and beautiful at the same time, and I was still high thinking about the bedroom eyes he’d been giving Jon in the opening clip. And I kept on bringing out food, and everyone was witty and great and appreciative, and I just had a fantastic time, even though it did go on til 2am. Stupid Desperate Housewives rating so highly.

Maori Class, of sorts

I would MSN one of the web developers and ask him for the HTML tag for macrons, but I’m not talking to him or something today. So just believe it when I tell you that I’d like to put it in there.

Anyways, on Tuesday, I stayed home sick from work, and of course my KOL internet account had been allowed to lapse in preperation for the installation of broadband on thursday, so I couldn’t look up a map to see where Heriot Drive was in Porirua. Thus, after I had battled rush hour traffic all the way up to Kelburn to pick up Karen, I wasn’t sure exactly whereabouts we were going, but I figured we’d find it easy enough. The woman on the phone had muttered something about the roundabout near the mall. Heaven forbid that the wananga actually send me out a piece of paper confirming my enrolement and the class times and so forth, but nevermind that for now. We couldn’t find the street, so I pulled over by the covered bit of Porirua cos I saw an information stand sign, and thought there might be a map there. Instead, I saw a wananga sign, and was like “wahoo! I didn’t think that this was Heriot Drive, but nevermind…” and since we had half an hour to kill before 6pm, Karen and I went to get something to eat. We went in to the wananga office, and I tried to sign in on a list like the sign told me to, but my name wasn’t on the list (Karen wasn’t enrolled yet but i was hoping they could squeeze her in), so I was told to just add our names down the bottom. So we walked upstairs through a weird kitchen and back door and stuff, and came out into a big classroom full of new computers. We asked if this was the Maori class, and were told that was “on the campus”. Oh really? Well where the hell were we then? And where the hell was the campus? We were given some kind of weird garbled directions about how we had to head towards Bunnings, and when I said I didn’t know the area, and asked what road was Bunnings on, we were told to go to Bunnings, and turn. There was some arm waving too, but then we found ourselves out hte back of the building and had to walk in a large circle around the whole plaza to get back to my car, and so the incredibly vague directions rendered themselves pretty much useless. I thought that maybe Bunnings was in the industrial type area towards Tawa, so we headed in that direction, and, surprise surprise, ended up in Tawa. That’s when I decided that we’d go to my parents’ house instead and get Daddy to speak some te Reo to us. He, of course, was off in China, but at least we made Mum’s night.

And this week Karen and I have decided that really, five hours every Tuesday is an awfully large commitment to make for the next 36 weeks, and I’d have to drive and park my car in town every week in order to get there in time, and that’d be $10 a day, and so we’re postponing in favour of trying to find a place that does classes actually in town.

Political arguments with a friend that felt way too personal and made me cry on the bus

I met up with Anita-who-used-to-work here for a drink on Thursday at Ponderosa. She smokes, so we sat outside. Their stools are uncomfortable. When Dylan came out of work we waved him over so he could drink with us too. I was trying to tell a story about why I wasn’t particularly fond of someone using the punchline “and she votes National too!”, assuming that anyone I was friends with would just recognise that’s akin to eating puppies, but it kicked off a huge big very long argument which culminated in me getting very upset because I am very very heartily against smacking kids. Also, One Red Dog is ass and won’t serve food in their ‘bar’ area, which is pretty much exactly the same as the restaurant area. (*)

Installing broadband

On Friday night I went home straight after work and spent a while on the phone to Xtra who told me to reset our modem, and after finding a cunning comb with a parting spike in order to do so, I managed to get broadband up and running, although the cable’s a bit dodgy, given that I bought it for me and Bopha back at the Slab, and it had millions of Volcanic users trampling all over it, no doubt. Bart’s laptop is running Windows 98 and he didn’t have a network card, so he’s not so lucky. However, I did go over to my parents’ house last night to retrieve my old desktop that English Dave had reformatted so that in theory the boys can use that, but they didn’t seem too keen to go and get the monitor out of my boot, so they can suck it, queers.

The gig at Bodega

Later that night, after I had drunk a fair amount of vodka, Karen and I went to Bar Bodega for the Spiderplan/K1500/Rico Suave gig. It was loud. I mean it was LOUD. When we got there the halfway doors were shut, and we’d never seen that before so we asked the bartender what was going on, and he said it was just because of the loudness. We braved our ears (I wish I had thought to take earplugs) and went in, waved to Niall and sat at the back, where we occupied ourselves being hilarious making up sign language. In the breaks between bands, or songs, or what-have-you, I made funny jokes because I am happy and super-fun to be around, and carefree and oldskool gay(*). One of the jokes I made was so hilarious that I had to plug a reminder into my phone about it, so that I wouldn’t forget how Karen said “I see a small flaw in your plan” and I said “Is it a mezzanine?”. HAHAHAHA. Remembering that joke just makes me laugh and laugh.

The reseting of my all my crushes to zero

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but I’ve had an awful lot of crushes on an awful lot of people lately, and they’ve all turned out badly, well for me anyway. I think (hope) that 3/4 people remain ignorant of my crushes on them, with the fourth of course being that maple syrup-eating surrender monkey. Oh, and while we’re talking about a 3/4 ratio, if you ask me in conversation about my sexual orientation, I’ll usually say that I like people, and it’s about 70% boys and 30% girls, but if we look at the last four crushes, then we will make that figure 75%/25%. Not that it matters anymore, because they’re all over. Oh yes, that’s right, it’s that simple. My will shall be done. I am in control of my feelings, and the master of my own domain. And I suppose since I have now created another version of me, I am now the Master Beta. Ha ha ha.

The Phoenix Foundation and the goodness that is Waitangi Park

There is, however, no pain that liberal applications of the Phoenix Foundation cannot temporarily distract one from. Especially the Phoenix Foundation in a pretty pretty tent in the stunning Waitangi Park, preceeded by Lisa and I squeeing at sighting internet celebrities, and they played ‘Nest Egg’ and ‘Going Fishing’ sounded a little like ‘Sweet Child’o Mine’ and oh they were hilarious, and oh it was just so so rad. concert’o the year so far, although they may be topped by Bic Runga in two weeks’ time. Afterwards we wandered around in the freezing cold gazing at the insanely awesome Earth from Above outdoor exhibit, and I took off my shoes so I could run around on a world map and jump up and down on stupid Canadia, because why not? And then traffic crawled up Courtenay Place so we laughed at all the underdressed skanks (Lucifer_Sam would have been SO proud of us!) and watched Family Guy DVDs. Go see the exhibition if you’re in Welly, please. It’s like the nighttime equivilent of the pretty flags on top of this page. And of course, for more information, you should go to the very clever Wellurban for posts like this one.

I was going to write about other things, but I can’t be bothered now. I figure this will do, given that it’s taken me ALL DAY. I mean, apart from the work that I have also done. Naturally.

Two different 2amish entries

Friday

I wish I:
A. Didn’t listen to people/took more responsibility for my actions/wasn’t such a stupid little miss doubter
B. Lived alone when I come home at 1am and the front door and all the windows are wide open, and Dawn of Azazel or some such is blasting out at some kind of crazy volume, and they’re playing poker in the dining room so that I can neither watch The Gilmore Girls or go straight to sleep like I’d like to
C. Didn’t have to go to my mother’s tomorrow morning to look after the house while she has an open day
D. was married to both the boys from Boulot
E. had workmates and ex-workmates who talked about more than the things that make me yell “SO, what’s your favourite fact about monkeys?” at all and sundry in hopes of changing the channel, although I do appreciate having drinks and dinner bought for me.
F. Had the ability to time travel, but like, controlled-like, not all making me cry at 3am in the morning when I finish it Timetraveller’s Wife like.

Other than that, and my right shoulder being SO FUCKING SORE, life is pretty sweet. Oh, and my friend texted me tonight to tell me that she’s become a umm, I can’t remember the word, so I will use the word “Fuckerware Demonstrator”, so if there are any ladies in Wellington who’d like to have one, let me know.

Saturday

I don’t remember the background music in Go being like this, and I saw it a bunch of times. We even had the motherfucking Go banner in our dining room, and I know that cos I was watching the Garland video again tonight. Welcome to my saturday.

I should probably point out that this entry is brought to you by the new Placebo album, which is (in theory) so new that it still says “title TBC” and it’s all one of those official “ELISABETH EASTER, I AM WATCHING YOU, DON’T YOU DARE RIP IT” versions. But anyway, my point was, and I’m sure you’ll still buy the Pulp and read this for yourself, that the albums, in order are: Hedonism, the comedown, feeling lost, reflecting on life and now the new one is: getting on with things, admittedly with meds to get you through the day. It won’t play in my computer at work, so the first time I heard it was around 9.35am when I got into my car this morning and it made me want to cry on the way to Ngaio. I was, of course, as you would know from the top half of this entry, on my way to help my mother with her open day. When I got there, there was no one else there yet, so I had raisin toast and coffee and chocolate peppermint slice, and she said “is there anything I can do for you?” and I said “can you fix my pants?” so I took them off and she fixed them and oh, it was like magic. And then my daddy came home from Dunedin or wherever he’d been andhe talked all excitedly about this processing place, and the Chinese he was showing around, and how he showed them something and how they asked for something and he showed them something else, and I was like “wow, it’s so cool how great you are at your job and how excited you are about it” and he ignored me becaue he was only paying me attention when he said “and then they got off their plane…” and I was like “got off, heh heh” and he’d laugh, and then he’d go back to talking and I’d be like “meat packing heh heh” and he’d go on and ignore the compliments.

So I decided to leave, so I texted Karen and asked her if she wanted to go to brunch somewhere on the Southern Coast, and she said “should I bring my togs?” and despite the wind, I was like “yes!” and so we went swimming at my favourite secret beach near Scorching Bay, squealing all the way cos it was cooooooooooold, and then had lunch at Chocolate Fish (haloumi and eggplant stack on sour dough). And then we went home and hung up my washing, and put on sneakers, still all salty-like, and then Miss Lisa Fur kindly came and picked us up. We got to Waitangi Park, and it was 2.20pm. I was thinking that the Phoenix Foundation were playing at 2.30pm, but there was a chalkboard saying that the Warratahs were playing at 2pm and the PF would be at 3pm. Well, we’d made jokes about how the Warratahs were like, totally down with the kids cos that wacky rap music was playing and we could see some kids breaking, so i was like “I bet they’re breaking… their HIPS” badoom chish, so we were like aaaaaaargh omg they haven’t even started yet and we’re still feeling those hands on our hearts, holding us, so we ran away to the Paramount for the best ice creams in the Courtenay area, and I had a triple chocolate ice cream, and it was accidently chocolate dipped, so like quadrupale chocolate, and holy crap, it was like an orgy in my mouth, except without the cocks and the semen and the stretching. But it was amazing ice cream. Yeah. And we went back, and sat on the ground, and the Phoenix Foundation played, and fucking oh yeah they were awesome. They didn’t play ‘Nest Egg’ for Lisa, but for me (yes, for me) they did ‘Hitchcock’ and a very rocking ‘The Drinker’ and ‘Forty Years’ and also (of course) ‘Slightest Shift’, and Karen got the Bruce Springsteening, even though she says he has no good songs, and sitting on the ground hurts my back cos I have no core strenght, but nevermind. And then I went home for nap and shower and de-salting.

In the evening I picked Brad up and saw his new house, and we came back here for drinks, and old photos – so many AUT stories to tell each other, and then the video, and sometime after midnight we headed off to Atomic, but wow, it just felt weird and strange. When they played ‘This Charming Man’, I was like “oh ho, really? But they didn’t play ‘love will tear us apart’ first”, so I thought maybe they’d swapped, but then they played the Cure’s ‘Inbetween days’ and I was like woah, parallel dimension and THEN they played ‘Love will tear us apart’ and seriously, what the fuck’s up with that shit? Also, the crowd were weird – they were waaaaaaay more Courtenay than Cuba, and Kristen wasn’t behind the bar, and I didn’t know the crowd, except for Jimmy who is apparently still alive although you wouldn’t know that from the interweb, and he said he was working on a top secret project and if I was the type to gossip I’d say the hot girl he was with was his project, but I don’t gossip. And again, I saw no one I knew, except for that really annoying “oh let me get up on the stage and dance, because I am like so awesome in my vinyl skirt and oh I’m on Suicide girls and oh I’m a drunken goth” girl who is there all the time, not that I dislike randoms that I don’t know or anything, oh no. Anyways, when we were dancing, Brad and I had an aweeeeeesome time, and just fun fun fun, but it was HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT, and so crowded, and my tummy hurt, so some time after 2am I left, and came home, and Mark was watching Go, and that brings us back into a complete circle, and the one thing I think that I’ve forgotten to mention was teh number deleting ceremony. Awesome.

Oma’s sick again. She’s in hospital now with gall stones, but on Saturday she was still at home, so on Saturday morning Anji and I set out to visit her. However, we had to go and pick up Karen from a house that was not her own first, which was annoying but was also an endless source of amusement – at least to me and Anji, because Karen was getting more than a little sick of our jokes. I was extremely overtired, and more than a little hungover, so we did the drive-through thing, so then I was hyped up on caffiene. Ethel’s getting on a bit in years so we took her up to Ngaio to swap her for Mum’s car, which has the additional bonus of a CD player. We played Led Zepplin and I waved my arms around a lot like I was Bonzo. Eventually someone suggested to me that I only talk in rhyming couplets, and so I did (*). For like half an hour until we got to Oma’s, and then for a while then when I wasn’t talking directly to her (language and hearing miscommunications would have just made that way too hard). I suggested to my aunt that she might like to take the opportunity of us being there to go out and have some time to herself, which she did – which meant we had to stay for ages. Anji was great, talking up a storm. I was less so. When Aunt Diz got back though, she said that Oma had totally perked up and that we’d worked like a tonic on her. A tonic with gin, perhaps? It had been quite amusing to hear Oma telling us that Diz had been bullying her (much like it’s hilarious when Mum complains about Oma complaining about Mum not returning her phonecalls). Oma was also very very big with telling us old stories, which was great. I could have done without the whole “this is how much you guys are getting in my will when I die” speech though.

On the way back from Paraparaumu we made a short but scary stop in Coastlands for something to eat, and we all pretended to be Britney Spears with frappe type drinks from Muffin Break. I dazzled Anji and Karen with my amazing grasp of geography, managing to figure out a much quicker way out of the mall through the cinema. We went back up to Ngaio and Anji picked up Ethel while I absconded with the car and took Karen home. Then it was nap time, finally.

Later, Miss Lisa Fur picked me up for our hott bear-cub planning date, otherwise known as seeing The Phoenix Foundation with SJD at the Opera House. While we were waiting the long time before the show started, we played the “who knows more people here?” game. Because of the number of musicians present, we made it that you’d had to have at least talked to the person in the flesh for them to count. I only managed four – Mr and Mrs Noizy, Sam Scott and Nato. Umm, not to name drop or anything. But while I AM namedropping, I’ll say that we were sitting by the door to backstage, and sometime during the Phoenix Foundation, someone that I think was SJD came and collapsed in the seat next to me, talked to someone behind me for a while and then sat there texting away for a couple of songs before leaving again. Not cool. The light was really distracting. That said, the Phoenix Foundation was unbelievably excellent. I think I am now a huge fan of sit-down gigs, and large scale production values, and comedy lead teams and cute home movies with adorable kids and and and oh yeah so good. Yes. Fantastic. I think it’s one of my top three gigs’o the year, along with Nick Cave and the Straitjacket Fits. Ohhhhh yeah.

On Sunday, since my parents were at Toast Martinborough and the car was still at our house, I drove all the way around the Miramar peninsula, starting at the old Navy base or whatever it is, and then all the way up to Owhiro Bay and back through Brooklyn. It was really nice to be playing party mix CDs really loud and singing along, and it was sunny despite the wind, and just really great time to myself. Then I grocery-shopped, which wasn’t nearly so interesting, but had to be done. And that was the weekend, with a little laundry thrown in there as well. I am a party animal. At least I got home late on Friday night *), because I am a spaz. Today I am really tired, just for a change, although going to the gym has perked up my mood (who’da thunk it?), and tonight I am going to Serenity again with Lisa, and my mother who needs a healthy chunk of escapism right about now, I reckon.