Hubris.co.nz

Since the last entry was short and boring, I figured I would use some pics to help tell better stories about what I’ve been up to for the past month or so. Most of these pictures are from my cellphone, which doesn’t take very good or big pictures, so just grin and bear it, okay?

Mouse Rat have a song about sex hair. I have the real thing.

In fact, if you really want to see the proper damage from that one, then you need to see it from behind (lollerskates!):

As Kat said, "So, clearly he's right-handed then". Yes. And kinda pushy.

So after Xmas Party shenanigans, it was time for actual Xmas.

Instead of an Xmas tree, I put lights into the lime tree I was giving Anji

On Xmas Day, Karen and Tom came over for an international sandwich degustation. Spellcheck suggests that word should be “devastation” instead which is close to accurate.

The first sandwich course was German Hot dogs

The Framingham UNSTABLE ROSE was a perfect colour with my dress. Not that you can tell in this pic.

We finally got around to drinking the expensive champagne I gave Tom for his birthday, with ginger coconut ice cream sandwiches

BAMJI came over and gave me can of MORTAL TERROR amongst many other presents

They bought it at the Ministry of Stories, because I’d tweeted about it right when they happened to be going to Hoxton!

There was an awful lot of debris leftover after Xmas!

Thanks to fuckyeahmeangirls.tumblr.com I finally found a mantra to write on my chalkboard that I bought at Wanda Harland

Then I went away to Waiterere for five nights over New Year’s. I forgot to take my camera, so these are the only two snaps I have.

We got really dressed up on New Year's Eve.

I prepared a lot of food that the boys cooked on the bbq

And I’ll just steal one photo from Kim’s magic ones on Facebook to sum up our holiday, which was THE BEST TIME EVER:

Group shot with bonus tackle on the back lawn.

Oh wait, there’s an ANIMATED GIF! Watch my boobs bounce around as I smile and unsmile! Thanks Jason!

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

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

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

This morning I have Joy Division turned up loud while I spend an hour deleting all this horrible spam. You know who else got spammed by the Germans? THE NAZIS.

Last night I went to meet one of my ex clients at her hotel, so I parked it in her garage real good. Of course we went out for drinks, so I taxied home, and promptly forgot that the car was in town, which meant when I woke up this morning very tiredly, I had to run down to the train station in the rain, and then bus&run up to Ghuznee St to pick up the car and high tail it in to work. Bleh. And then there’s the spam. Aaaaaaaargh.

The weekend was good. Did I mention that? I doubt that I did, since on Friday I was all busy writing my first entry for Wellingtonist and raving about Nick Cave so much that I didn’t even mention the work function that I went to beforehand (and I still won’t, except to say that why is it that the times when there’s free liquor are the same times that you shouldn’t drink too much (and I didn’t)?)

On Friday night Anji came around to watch Next Top Model and The O.C with me, and I gave her my TV and video player, but of course not my cables because that would be too logical. Instead I gave them to her on Sunday night when we had ludicrously cheap and good Thai food at umm Arayana’s House? It’s the place next to the Rialto, anyways,

On Saturday Karen and I went to The Food Show and hot damn that was a clever idea of mine. It was $15 to get in, and we were drunk less than an hour after arriving, pretty much, because of SO MANY FREE SAMPLES. We didn’t even try like, half the wine stalls, and we didn’t try all of the wines at any of the places. And there was so much chocolate, and so many cheeses, and processed meats. Yum. I was stupid and kept buying bottles and then having to carry them. We’d been walking for two hours and eating and drinking everything in sight before we stopped to look at a map and realised that we were only a quarter of the way around. Boy howdy good times were had. But then we had to walk back across that looooooooooooooooooooong wide exposed raised pathway back to the station, which is pretty much like the platform from the trainstation to Tokyo Disneyland (yes that’s right, you can walk from Wellington Station to Tokyo – if you know where to look. Suckers!), and my feet were so sore I was just about to crawl. I did take my shoes off, although it wasn’t especially warm. We took the train home so I could soak my feet, feed the cats and get changed, and then we cabbed it into town because I expected to meet up with screeds of my friends. Of course, one by one all said friends piked, although I guess they didn’t have much notice to begin with. That’s fine, because Karen and I went and had food on sticks and then had drinks at her house where we were joined by Anji.

In an attempt to show us when she’d had her hair dyed, Karen busted out her old scrapbooks. Now, my family (well, Mum and Anji and Karen anyway – I don’t have the patience for it. Plus I have a website) keep the most amazing scrapbooks – lots of photos, scraps of programmes, cards from restaurants, birthday cards and everything all in chronological order, all beautifully laid out. Mum kept one (well when I say one, I mean a dozen or more) for me until I moved to Auckland and then she said it was too hard to keep up. There were photos of me from sixth and seventh form, and I’d always thought I was just this total scruffy nightmare, but looking back, there’s a couple of photos that I look Totally Sassy in, despite – or maybe because of the baggy tshirt/long skirt / no inch of flesh except for my forearms showing. I had reaaaaaaaaaaaaally long hair, and Jackie O sunglasses – plus I was a lot skinnier. Not skinny in any way, of course, but _er_. There’s a photo I love which must have been from around March ’97, and it’s of me sitting on my couch at Bands in the Square, and I just have a big grin on my face, and I know that would have been because I was doing something that I loved, and attracting the good kind of attention for having a couch, and revelling in it. I really like that Joanna.

This Joanna’s sometimes okay, but she’s very slow and tired today because last night, as she mentioned, she went out for drinks with an old advertising client, and there was much much much gossiping about that whole little world, which was fascinating, and really good crackling in one of those great snugs at JJ Murphy’s, and FUCKING HUGE pints of Hefe at Bodega, and then two bottles of bubbly for $28 at Good Luck. Then there was dreaming that I’d been to Fiji with Kateb as planned, but it was like I went to sleep and when I woke up we’d already been and all I could remember of it was that I’d slept with one of her arch nemisises from high school (eww). It wasn’t all bad though because apparently I’d also won an iPod Shuffle and had given it to a cute boy that I’d met in real life recently, and he gave me a pash for it. Wahoo, rock the $200 pash!