Hubris.co.nz

Today is my birthday. My family have been awesome, as have my usual Tuesday crew (including the Quiz Master, who smells delicious, but could use some hand cream). My birthday party on Saturday night was an awful lot of fun too.

On my birthday last year I woke up in bed with a nice girl, and then Anji showed up and brought us coffee, we all went to brunch and then cleaned Karen’s apartment. The year before that, I was fucking relieved not to be having vagina surgery, and was possibly still really stoked to have been felt up by a boy who was one the best pashes evah the night before, we went to Cafe Istanbul for dinner and I saw the Real Hot Bitches for the first time ever. And I think that last link does a good job of summing up other years, but I will point out that on the day I turned 20 I dumped my boyfriend (ala, the ASSCUNT of twitter from the previous entry) because he wouldn’t make an effort to see me, and ten years ago, I had a really sucky 18th birthday in which people I cared about said nasty things about me because I drank and (shock horror!) smoked pot (one of those three people is now one of my best friends, one of them does far too many drugs now, and the other is in Australia) and it turns out that another one was sleeping with the guy I fancied at the time. Etc. So today’s not really being able to sleep until after 6am and all the voices in my head speaking in Scottish accents ala Anna from This Life, then workshops, dinner at Caffe Italiano and Quiz Night is really not that stand-out-y.

Has it become apparent to you via this post that birthdays are actually very important to me? I hope it has, because I’m living in a flat who fail to notice that,and it’s weird. Actually, this is the third birthday in a row tat I’ve had in which one of them will fail to pay it any attention. Oh, but, on a non-flatmate note, I haven’t had a birthday cake of my own on my actual birthday since I was 17 – until this year, when Anji and Bambi bought over a beautiful delicious cake for me with champagne bottle corks. I’ll put in photos at some stage. And also creepy video of karaoke. Karaoke was SO fucking awesome, it was such a good night, I love me some friends, and also Yvonne at Longxiang who dealt with me having 18 friends at dinner and that not even being close to all of them. I’m not always entirely sure why anyone likes me sometimes, but at dinner I totally got it and it was lovely.

Also random blah blah. Something about sex. Oh yes, the twitters on Saturday night. I’ll tell you, I am SO fucking horny right now. Like, there’s the usual depression thing of wanting to lose yourself under someone, having them thrust aside all thoughts in your brain even for a couple of minutes, the validation of having someone wrapped around you, and then there’s pre-period hormones, in which everything is a turn-on (see above quizmaster love from tonight, although of course that’s not a new thing because of course I fancy the rare people who appear to be smarter than I) and oh man oh man oh man sometimes all you can think about is getting a pounding.

Then there’s the decision that if 27 was the year of debauchery, which it hardly was, then maybe I wil make an attempt to make 28 year of health (starting tomorrow of course). Even my taxi driver tonight asked me if I suffered from Anxiety, which holy fuck yes I do. I should defend myself in saying that he asked because he had it, not because I appeared totally buttfuck crazy, honest. Anyways. Full circle. I hide in bed to avoid the world (read: flatmates going “oh, not at work today?) then hate onthe world (read: flatmates) for not doing anything for my birthday. Yes, that’s right, you can’t win with me at all, anyone. Haven’t I made that clear already? I should I suppose clarify here: I fucking miss Kat’n Kane, and Bopha and Brad, and Kateb and Clayton and Simon like, so much. I am deeply deeply nostalgic for flats of yesteryear when they were more than just a collection of individuals under one roof.

Except, you know, if you give me a good fucking right now. And that won’t happen because I am far too anxious. Joy! Yes, cycle, yes, I will get out of it. Man, I am looking forward to sleeping tonight.

Oh, and finally, have i mentioned lately that I think Sebastian is gay? There’s always bitemarks on the back of his neck. I wonder if the gay cat world has bears, because he is big and hairy. But he is also poised and handsome and constantly grooming. But the cats he talks to during the day look like twinks to me. I reckon that’s why he kept trying to do Sammy when we lived with Iva, even though Sammy was actually (sort of) female. Ahhh cat sex, that’s a good note to end on, right?

Some fucker stole my golden lampshade out of the garage. You’re a fucker, fucker. How did it get there in the first place? Well, that’s a good question. On Friday, I bought a chandelier for the lounge at a store called JoJo that’s on the corner of Victoria and Manners St. I could have bought the same chandelier for the same price in that little store full of shiny things in the Duke’s Arcade, but the scary woman in there scares me too much. If I had a camera, I’d take a photo of it to show you, but of course you know that I lost my camera a couple of Fridays ago.

There wasn’t really a chance for me to have lost my camera this Friday though, as it was terribly civilised. I hiked up to the Herd Street Bra after work to meet up with Tom and Che and MG and their respective partners for a drink. Karen came along and we headed off to New World for dinner supplies and to be picked up by Miss Lisa. We shredded roast chicken and tossed it with chickpeas, feta, avomacado, cashews, red capsicum, spring onions and coleslaw fixings and ate it in piles with walnut bread. And then we watched Captain Tightpants some more, woo hah. I suspect sometimes that I should find a new expression other than “woo hah”, because while it is awesome, it is definitely overused.

On Saturday, I went and had my alonetime brunch at Elements. On my drive there I noticed a filing cabinet inside the Salvation Army op shop in Kilbernie, so on my way back I stopped in and bought it for $35. There was a bit of fanangling to get it into my teeny tiny car, especially since there were still boxes of pottery lying around in it, but with the help of the young guy from the shop we got it there in the end. And I managed to drag it out of my car and into the garage at home, because I am Superwoman. I went to the Meditteranean Warehouse in Newtown to buy a bottle of Amaro for Tom, and also a can of silver spraypaint. Then I had to sand the fucker down, and scrape off old stickers. Hurrah for having turpentine in the house. I am so fucking crafty; craftly like a MONGOOSE. I ran out of silver paint on the third side of the cabinet, so I switched to gold for the handles, and then I spraypainted the round white paper lampshade that’d been hanging in the lounge until I put up the chandelier. But now some asshole’s taken that. Boourns. The cabinet is looking stunning though, with another couple of coats of paint that I raced to the store to buy today after work despite feeling sick sick sick.

Saturday night I got glammed up and hopped on a bus to Sandwiches for Tom’s birthday dinner. They had no pork belly so after Che’s discussion on veal I opted for the vege cannelloni. I sent an update to twitter that said “Last time i was here at Sandwiches i was having the best pashes of my recent years. I miss Shiny! I look even hotter tonite than then though.” Dinner and conversation was very civilised, but I did get an odd look when I suggested to someone that they could fill their attic with dead bodies instead of pink bats as insulation. Apparently that’s not the done thing. When we were leaving, someone grabbed me and hugged me, and it was Bart with Blair, so I made a split-moment decision to go with them instead of going up to the Hawthorne Lounge. We went up to Richard’s apartment on Cuba Street and read catelogues from the Danish Sex Museum and drank and talked shit, then we went to the Southern Cross and wrapped ourselves up in polar fleece blankets cos it was fucking cold outside. When that shut we went to Frindigo, but that was closing a couple of drinks later, so we ended up at Club K, where we did shots of jagermeister and I got dragged onto the dance floor by some girl. Then after Bart and Blair sang a couple of Fall Out Boy songs (haha!), I somehow found myself warbling through ‘Like a Virgin’. I think they turned the microphone off on me, I was that bad. But it was fantastic! And I got home some time after 4am, fell asleep on the couch and then woke up in my bed still wearing my clothes. Needless to say, Sunday was a write-off.

I thought I had more to say today, but I guess I don’t, so I will watch the last two episodes of Season One of Deadwood instead. Tomorrow I’m going to Eagle Vs Shark, and on Thursday is the Great Blend, hurrah! And I’m still looking for a flatmate, grrrrr.

Today I changed my MSN tag to ‘slowly losing the will to live’ because it feels like that. My life’s blood is trickling out of me. LITERALLY. And some fuck has taken away the box of tampons that was in the first aid kit in the kitchen. How rude. I took the morning off today to stay in bed, having spent all day at work yesterday writhing around in pain, then taking so much nerofen plus that I got dizzy but still feeling the pain. That left me pretty much unable to do anything except build up a library of RSS feeds and stalk my shiny ex cow-orker after people discussed him in our project managers’ meeting (yesterday with bonus cake!). Now I remember why it was awesome not to have periods for so long. And apparently I have four months worth of cramps to get throught right now as well. Fucking radsville. At least my boobs aren’t sore anymore.

Yes, this is what my life is like. It’s Wednesday afternoon which means that I have to avoid the internets until 8.30pm so I don’t get any Rockstar spoilers before the performance show, but I’m feeling too sick to work. I would dose up on more nerofen but that’d be the easy solution. Yesterday we had a flat dinner for which I made a tagine. It was perhaps not the most authentic tagine ever, but it was fucking tasty. I still had to abandon it to lie on the couch moaning though. It’s just as well that I’m not pregnant, because my parenting skills are pretty crap and I wouldn’t want the second coming to be unable to refrain from scratching the couch.

In another example of how lame and behind the times I am, I dreamt about Chuck Norris the other night. He had grey streaks in his hair so I suggested to him it might be better for his career if he got them dyed, and he was like “I’ve got cancer, you’re so insensitive!”. Luckily I woke up before he gave me a roundhouse kick to the face. In a better example of awesome internets, I got this fantastic email this morning:

“FW: Hubris Horse Shampoo

I was interested in purchasing some hors shampoo as recommended in Horse and Pony – have I got the right contact? ”

I wrote back going “hahaha no, you really really don’t”. It’s an easy mistake to make, I suppose, although why the fuck would anyone call their horse shampoo Hubris? Do you want your horse to fall? Hopefully now I’ll get like a thousand hits from people wanting the horse shampoo. At least they’ll be a better class of people than the many who land here looking for animal sex. Also, now I think maybe I shouldn’t have run that particular google search since I’m still at work, but oh well. I rang up Bond & Bond on Monday to ask them what the fuck was up with my laptop and they said it’d probably be done yesterday but they’d call me. They haven’t called me. They also said that it wasn’t the power supply, it was something else that was really expensive, so I’d better not have to pay for it if they didn’t contact me to let me know. Hopefully it’ll come under the guarantee. I should have tried to pay more attention, but the guy wasn’t quite the clearest English speaker ever, and it sounded like he was yelling so I was holding my cellie way away from my ear.

I think the new Pulp is out soon with my reviews. I’m never entirely sure though. Other things of note? There really aren’t any. This is totally a filler entry. But you guessed that already, right? And now can I take some more painkillers please? I can’t wait to go and have a spa at the gym after work. Perhaps I’ll even do a little exercise too, if I feel like going crazy. I have another boxing lesson tomorrow and I’m scared because I haven’t worked out how to wrap my hands properly yet. I think I’m getting pretty good at the cross, however, so that’s something. And my arms have finally stopped hurting from the keg stands so at least I can thank my incredible stomach pain for something.

On Friday night, it snowed in the suburbs of Wellington. It also snowed in my heart. Okay, so that’s actually total and utter bullshit, but I did have a really crappy night, because no one wanted to go out or stay out, and I was like all “oh, but this is the last time in forever that the normal group can go out” but it didn’t happen, so I ended up at the fucking Malthouse with Anji and her workfriends, and then Karen. I did manage to get away with only spending $6 on beer and a bit more on some chips though, so that was the only highlight. Oh, and I took the bus home and so was on the couch by 10.30pm. Bleh.

Part of my grump came from thinking about how grumpy the weather was and how I’d have to drive to Castlepoint the following day, and I so didn’t want to (*). But as it turned out, the weather was fucking gorgeous on Saturday. I picked up Chrisana at 11, and then went to Katy’s to get her and Puck and her flatmate Jacob. Trying to fit all them and all their things in my little bittle car was interesting. After we went to the supermarket and loaded up on SO MUCH food, we had to unpack everything and get the boys to play tetris to fit it all in. That’s what boys are for, after all.

I filled my petrol tank all the way up for the first time since I’ve owned the car and my head went boggle at the fact that it cost $56, when it used to be $35. Many jokes were made about the Hutt as we drove through it. CDs were sung along to by me, which was unfair since I’d told Katy she’d have to walk if she sang. But my car, my rules. Heh. I was imagining it’d be like an hour and a half to get there, like it sort of is to Martinborough, but oh no, it was a solid three hours, splashing through flooded roads on the way there and considering whether or not to stop the car to change a sign in the field with an explicit picture on it from ‘This is a life, not a choice’ to merely ‘this is a choice’. We eventually decided to do it on the way home instead.

I hadn’t been to Castlepoint since I was ummm 8ish, so I had no idea what to expect. As we headed out deeper and deeper into the countryside, our conversations became more and more focused on zombies, and survivalism. Castlepoint itself seemed like a tiny little place, and yet the hill we drove up to find our house reminded me of Churton Park, all new houses that seemed unoccupied. The place Katy had rented for us, Magic Thymes, was lovely though, in a very early nineties split-level kind of way. I grabbed myself a room and set off to laugh at and disobey the signs in the toilets that stated “if it’s yellow, let it mellow; if it’s brown, flush it down” and “if it’s pee, let it be, if it’s poo, flush the loo”.

Since everyone had been drinking in the car except for me, of course, since I was dridving, I quickly cracked open the cask of red, and we sat on the balcony, looking at the water tanks and the empty lot beneath us and out to the sea. Everyone decided to go for a walk, and I was tempted, but I decided to volunteer to stay behind to get eaten by the zombies first wait for Ash & the other carload to show up. There are worse places to be than on a balconey in the sun with wine, cashews, JPod and Black Holes and Revelations blasting out of the stereo down the right-of-way. After about half an hour or so I saw Ash’s car driving up the hill and going to wrong way just as we had done, so I stood up and windmilled for all I was worth, until eventually they saw me and I could give them strange pointy directions as to where they were supposed to be going. Ash drives the same kind of car as me, except hers is dark green. She parked it next to mine and we left them alone to make babies together. She thinks mine is the female car, because it’s white, but I know that hers is the female because it has a rack. Hehe, I am so hilarious.

Since I had done my duty and guided in Ash, Jo, Helen and Kartini, I was free to take my iPod, and roll up my trousers and trot up the little hill behind the house to take in this view:

Bloody gorgeous it was too. I followed a very very muddy little track around for five minutes and found a bench to sit on and listened to ‘In the backseat’ and had a wee little cry at the beauty of it all and also my remaining grr from the night before. Then I laughed at what I thought was Puck and Chrisana and Jacob scaling the top of the tallest peak because it was a long way up. It wasn’t the warmest of days ever, but I still wanted to get down to the beach. The only access looked to be a long way away though, and I wasn’t keen to scramble down the hill in the mud, strangely enough, although the two glasses of wine I’d had made for some serious giggling every time I slipped, so I went back to the house where we assembled a feast. A FEAST.

It seemed like everyone had brought along their favourite snack bits, and Katy is even more of an over-the-top entertainer than I am, so she’d bought six kinds of hummus (to be fair, she was staying two nights to our one). Platters of goodness were assembled, and Peaches CDs and various iPods were played. Have you tried peanut butter pretzels before? Holy crap they are awesome. So is wine. So is good company that just sits around talking and eating and drinking. That’s pretty much my idea of perfection right there. The boys started the fire, because that is what they needed to do to feel manly, and we drank some more. Eventually we split into four teams to play Scrabble. Katy and I won, despite the hardcoreness of some of the players. Me, I’m more along the lines of “well, if you can define it, I’ll let you make up words”. Not that I’m too easy-going or anything, honest. Puck and Ash pulled Who wants to be a millionaire? and Trivial Pursuit off their respective cellphones and we freestyled competition, although I tried to make everyone buzz in. You know who else liked their trivia under control? Yeah that’s right, the NAZIS. There was no 021 coverage at the house, so 8/9 people were cellphoneless. I don’t wear a watch, so with no need to keep my cellie around, I had no idea what the time was ever. We found Grease in the house’s collection of videos so we put that on and had a lengthy singalong.

Eventually everyone was outside smoking and looking at the thyme bushes around the door and checking up on the cars’ humping progress (they acted all coy when we were around), and I was like OMG HOLY SHIT look at the sky, and made people turn off the outside light, and it was just amazing, stars EVERYWHERE, so bright, and the Milkway arched overhead, and being (just a little bit, honest) drunk, I was like “wow, it’s like the Dukes of Leisure are playing and we’re at the star dome!” and I climbed up to look out at the back harbour again (*). More drinking was done. Gorgeous cake was eaten. Good times were had. More walks were taken in the mud, this time with handy cellphone flashlights. Good times.

In the morning, I didn’t feel quite so flash. In fact, once I finally managed to get a bathroom, I was sick for quite a while. Of course, I should have been happy that I wasn’t eaten by zombies, after a lengthy discussion had concluded that my being a virgin (ish) wasn’t going to save me. But instead I sat on the floor to put my clothes back on after my shower and considered crawling downstairs but settled for sunglasses and a duvet instead. I took my coffee and sat out on the deck and thought “wow, this looks just like an XP screen” and died a little more inside. It’s not my fault! I was raised in Tokyo, dammit! But while I lazed around on the couch drinking hot chocolate listening to Ryan Adams and Patti Smith, Ash and Jo went off to the carnie store for toilet paper and cooking oil, and most of the rest of the girls bustled around doing the dishes and cooking breakfast. Once again, the food array was dazzling, and heavily seasoned with magic thyme. We had mushrooms and potatoes and toast and avocado and bacon and kransky sausages and everyone else also had crumpets and salmon and eggs. After that I felt much much better. More lazying around was done until finally at 2.30 I was in a state to drive again, just as the second night’s shift showed up (*), so we scarped off so we wouldn’t have to do the dishes. Muhahaha. We chased Ash for a good while, until she went the wrong way, and then we got in the lead. They caught us up in Featherston when we stopped for a pee break, but since they were all about antiques and gelati, we won. And I made it home in time for The Gilmore Girls. Yay! Countryside is good. I like it a lot. I wanted to stay forever.

So apparently if I want to talk nonstop all night and all the next day, I should do what I did on Friday again, which is accept Cinta’s challenge at work to stick a berocca in my mouth and let it disolve. I don’t understand why NZ has a P problem – why aren’t all the kids just doing this shit instead? Man I can fucking babble, and talk a lot of shit, as I did all the way through Havana, and Scopa and Good Luck. I mean I know I normally talk pretty much nothing but shit, especially I’m drinking, but not usually with quite that much speed or lack of ability to stop myself even though I could hear my talking in my head. On reflection though, I know I brought up at least a couple of intelligent conversational points. I just raced through them very quickly. I’d sent out a couple of texts about gaxy and a lack of shine, and then the gaxy made me feel even older when she was like “oh, I remember listening to this song (‘Forgot about Dre’) when I was 15″ – it came out in 2000, right? And then that was compounded when she was like “so have you finished your degree yet?” But then she called another girl a whore and I realised that we weren’t so very different after all and I laughed at myself a whole bunch. I also laughed when we were at Scopa and the boys went out to smoke, and I looked up to see one of them stopping the tourists who were trying to come in and demanding to see some ID. Drunk boys are hilarious (*).

On Friday I’d ordered the weather to be sunny, so I wasn’t too surprised when I woke up on Saturday to see that the weather was glorious. I still managed to have entertainers’ stress outs though when my phone started beeping with people cancelling, or saying they’d be late, or that they’d meet us at the venue. But I went and picked up Brad, and got changed into my outfit and started peeling kumara while he said he was finishing off my birthday party. He then ahemed me and I turned into the lounge to see him standing there IN A FUCKING BEAR SUIT and when he told me to turn off my music in the kitchen, he started up a Spiderbait song and performed a dance he’d choreographed especially for me, although it had some basis in his class assignment to create something you’d want done at your funeral. He danced and he danced and i just about died from smiling and the sheer total fucking awesomeness of it. And like that I was giddy all over again and I knew that the Caribbean would be awesome – and it truly truly was.

People showed up in various states of dress, and the boys who weren’t piratey enough were made to wear headscarves. The McLeod’s Daughters, meanwhile, were tarted up to all excellence:
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We had some RUM and some other forms of GROG, which mostly consisted of PIRATE BEER, and then Katy put my boots on for me when I discovered that I couldn’t put my boots on without revealing pretty much all of Mary-Kate and Ashley, and I felt like an incapacitated drunk, instead of a tipsy giggly pirate, and now on reflection what I should have done was just taken my boots to a different room. But nevermind. We loaded ourselves into the good ship Insanity, which in a previous life had been my parents’ van, and passed around more cans of pirate beer to those who wanted them. I have photos from the van, but no laptop, so therefore no photos. But I do have photos from pirate mini golf to show you though, from my parents’ camera:

My mummy and daddy, who enjoyed themselves hearrrrtily, I think. And who are also crazy.

Myself and Brad

Two thirds of the revellers (2/3 of the KKK and the other Jo were exploring the mega centre when we got there)

Par for the course. Heh.

So, it turns out I’m as bad at minigolf when I’m drunk as I am when I’m sober. I still got a hole-in-one out of the castle, but on some I got sixes. Nevermind. It was very hard to stop saying “yarr!” so I gave up and just continued to spit out terrible pirate jokes and say inappropriate things. I found also that zipping up my hoodie kept the twins under a little more control so I got less distracted. Minigolf is awesome. You should all go.

Then we drove back home, waving our cutlasses at Ash’s car, and I started cooking my Caribbean feast of “goat” curry, blackeyed beans, candied sweet potatoes, jerk chicken and yellow rice. I am fucking awesome. We made daquiris and other rum-based concoctions, and Mike and Chrisana and Lisa arrived. People rather disturbingly started deep-throating a cutlass handle. General revelry and rumbustification was had. It was fucking awesome and radness. And due to the amount of mangos in the daquiris, and staying up late playing records, I wasn’t that hungover the next day, hurray!

Instead I spent my day laughing at Bart and Smoo who’d been on a different, shinier eyed journey the night before, and cooking a roast family dinner (yes that’s right, I roasted a whole family), and rereading Microserfs and doing dishes and laundry. Clean, dry laundry! Oh happy day!

Then this morning I got up to watch the soccer, because Dave had a $50 bet on Italy and they won, and that was yayness. Although my whole view of Italians has been shaken by the revelation that my favourite hospitality person is apparently younger than me, went to Onslow and actually went out with LisaB. I was like “what? he’s so beautiful, how could i not have seen him around before?” so I am obviously going to have to find my yearbooks and do some investigating.

Auckland in two sleeps’ time, yay!

While obviously every birthday weekend that is not spent with needles in your arms and lumps the size of testicles growing on your labia can be classed as a success, this one was particularly good. I didn’t go to a tremendous amount of effort in order to organise a party and have almost no one turn up because it was in Ngaio and I didn’t really have many friends anyway, I didn’t lose one of my closest friends because his friend told him what I’d been saying about his (now ex, yay) girlfriend, I didn’t get locked in a toilet at a Turkish restaurant, I’m not still hungover from my 21st or feeling happy for the first time in over a month either. All in all, I think I’m rather on top of things.

Last Friday I was about to get very frustrated and angry again, but some textage to Bart saw him come in as my wingman, and that was fucking awesome (*), and I ended up having a fantastic night, with $2 Speights drunk very very quickly first at the Establishment, then Red Square where I was able to prove that it wasn’t just that I was being a bitch about something, that it actually was a problem, and then to Boulot for pizza, and by that stage there were about ten of us around a table designed for six, and the boys were piling up the glasses and oh, we were just there for a long time. Then we went to The Tasting Room, and Smoo joined us, and when a couple of the boys started hitting on a taller-than-me-even blonde girl, I said, in a fit of awesome Girl Power-ness “You do realise that she’s a guy, right?” and they were like “how do you know? ” and I was like “girls just know these things. Besides, she’s totally got an Adam’s Apple”. Of course, she totally didn’t. But I felt like stirring. And naturally, I wasn’t the only one who felt things. Heh. *. But around 2am D had been kicked out for appearing to sleep on the table, and Shiny had disappeared to get food or something, and Bart and Smoo were hanging out to watch the soccer at 3am so I decided to go home so as to not be too hungover on my birthday.

On the Saturday itself, Daddy picked me up and we went for a family brunch at Capitol. I love Capitol, and so you can go and suck a fuck, Karl Du Fresne. Coffees and potato&mushroom cakes served with rocket and bacon, and bubbles and coffee and truffles and florentines = a very happy giggly stupid McLeod family. Daddy said something very obvious to me that I can now no longer recall, and I replied “Yes, nor am I an artichoke”, and that has been somewhat of a catchcry lately. I went home for nappage and bubbly, and then my old workmate Anita came over for a drink. After that Bart and I jumped on a bus to meet up with everyone at Cafe Istanbul, and by everyone I mean Lisa Fur, and Lisa B, and Katy and Kartini & Mike, and Anji and Karen. A bottle of Brown Brothers Everton, walnut bread and three kinds of meat for dinner put me in a jolly good mood. Kristen showed up, and we walked up to pick up Chrisana from her work, and then we went to Happy to see the Real Hot Bitches dance. Even though my throat was sore and coughy, I yelled myself hoarse at the awesomeness of their music and outfits and moves. I love that they’re all ages and sizes and that they prove that there is not a single person in the whole world who could ever look good in a leopard g-string leotard, and yet they all looked great. Yeah. And then there were more drinks at Good Luck, and then it was hometime.

I would put in a paragraph here about the awesome presents that I have received (Lisa gave me The Wall and Quadrophonia on vinyl, Jessie sent me the Bic Runga vinyl, Heather offered me a subscription to a healthy eating magazine, Karen gave me a POP UP PIRATE BOOK, Anji gave me an assortment of goodies including stripey socks and a knife, as did my parents), but while all of that stuff is truly awesome and well-received, I think what I appreciated most was the fact that people made efforts to be with me, or get in contact with me, and that they bought me things that they knew I’d love because they know me, and like, excuse me while I get all soppy, the fact that I got to be surrounded by the people I care about, who give me every impression that they care about me too, well that’s the best thing of all – people caring about me show that I am a person worthy of being cared about. Unless they’re all fucking stupid. But I don’t think that’s the case.

On Sunday, Mummy came and picked me up and we had coffee and planned out Daddy’s Animal Farm party which is next weekend. We bought much liquor for cocktails, and much foodage, and some more liquor and some more foodage. Good times. And then in the evening I went to a private screening of Labyrinth at the Paramount, which was grand, and was coupled with much gigglage by everyone every time the bulge was on screen. Awesome.

This week I have been coughing up first dry lungs and now wet ones. I took Monday off work, and yesterday morning and this morning. I also discovered that due to the selection of a new staff member, just like I can now say that I’ve seen a workmate naked (due to an accident at the gym), I can now say that I’ve had sex with a cow-orker. Even if I haven’t talked to him in the past two and a half years at all. If we were still friends, this would make faxing him pictures of monkeys much easier(*).

I appreciate that I haven’t written in quite a while (eleven days? sheesh!), so bear with me while I try to address the many things that I want to tell you about, okay? This may take a while because I’m watching some terrible teen horror flick about virgins getting killed in some small town. Has Brittany Murphy made a good movie ever, apart from Sin City? I don’t think she has.

So, since then, what have I done? Of course I went drinking after work on Friday, even though I wasn’t entirely sure that we would, cos of the blah blah blah, but large bottles of chang were had at the Poon, and then we went to eat at One Red Dog, even though it’s only cocks who like their pizza, and it was funny cos then we went to Boulot (I was a little hesitant, based on the blah blah blah, but it was fine) and I even saw Stephen and expressed some Farrar bashing opinions, so that was amusing to me. The waitress offered us pizza and I felt so dirty for cheating on her. Later in the week, on Thursday to be precise, Karen and I went to Scopa for dinner, and Enzo was like “you can have this discreet table over there” and I was like omg, shame. Even though that was probably just me being paranoid. Scopa is fucking excellent, by the way. The girl waitresses were a tad lax (Water glasses didn’t get filled and I had to ask for more wine), but with all the food under $20, and so so tasty, and cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese and yeah, it’s superb.

On Saturday I took a big pile of CDs in to Real Groovy and got $160 credit, and then spent $180 on old records (The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Fleetwood Mac, Split Enz, Madonna, The Mamas & The Papas), the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs on vinyl (‘Phenomenon’ is currently my play over and over song), the Punches EP on CD for Karen since I felt stink about not going to the gig with her the night before, even though she did come out drinking with us instead, and the Family Guy movie for Bart. Then I went to Dick Smith and bought a record player, wahoo. I took it home and realised it wouldn’t work with my polk audio speakers, so I went in to Noel Leemings and bought myself a new stereo as well. It’s so pretty and shiny, and also, it’s apparently a DVD player as well. Not that I have a TV in my room, but that’s beside the point.

When I got it all home, along with a new crate for my records, and tried to set it up, the record player was playing waay too quickly. Before you go accusing me of being a moron, yes, I did adjust the 33/45 switch, to no avail. Jessie offered me the helpful text advice of “stop listening to trance” when I complained it was going too fast. Later when Bart was taking a look at it for me, I realised that I’d put the rubber band on it up too high, and so we moved it down and everything played at the right speed,hurrah! Then I even taught myself how to select tracks. I’m like, pratically a DJ now.

That night, we had Bart’s Mexican themed party. Karen Lisa and I hung out in my room for ages playing records and iPods, before we emerged to share tequila shots and laugh at drunken 20 year old boys. There was much postit note abuse going on, and the room ended up buried in peanuts. The tequila wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. Bart still ended up with huge grazes on his face though.

What else? Strange things this week have been having ex workmates sign up as Hubrettes, which is nice that they let me know, but it still meant that I had to go and check up on all the things I’ve written, and that meant I found this from April 2005 in my footnotes, which is very amusing if you read this and realise that was who the shiny was. In more real life/internet collisions, I got a myspace request (yes I know, myspace sucks) from this guy whose site I’ve been reading on and off ever since I found it in the referal logs for Hubris, and it turns out that I do actually know him already in the real world as friend of a friend. Yeah it’s Wellington, I should have expected that.

In other woah moments, on Thursday or Friday at work, I found myself going “holy shit!” when I heard myself on the phone to our technical services manager, and I was talking about a problem our client was having, and I proposed a solution, and an alternative solution, and I was like, so smart, and so on to it, like I’m actually good at my job or something. I know right, crazy. And I’ve been working really hard too. Of course, soon there’ll be like no one at all to talk to left. Sigh.

On that note, we had D’s goodbye drinks on Friday, followed by Sarah’s. I’d worried all morning that I was going to be in a crappy mood at it, but then when I went to the gym, the trainer was like “hey guess what? one of the other clients told me that you’re shrinking!” and I was like “what? Huh?” and she was like “yeah, you’re shrinking and she thinks you should be member of the month” and I was like well, I suppose the twins are perkier, and so we made an appointment for me to have another assessment next week, and then I was feeling really good about that, so I worked out extra hard, and felt just fan fucking tastic. Of course, the good mood didn’t last as long as I needed it to though, and when we were at the Last Supper Club and later the Welsh Bar I did wonders for the spirit of womankind and female empowerment by deciding that the reason no one was paying me any attention was that all the women around me were whores. Witness my text messages to Heather: um actually I deleted them, but they were full of “icantstandupstraitanymoreihatethosewhorespleasekicktheirassesformeihategaxyboys” typeness. And yes, that’s right, gaxy boys. Your guess is as good as mine as to what I meant.

Yesterday was a write-off. Today I spent the day in Ngaio doing laundry and reading the paper with my daddy. And crying at the Gilmore Girls. Finally! Fuck man! Took far too long. This week I have Poseiden tomorrow (yay free (bad) movies), dinner at Anji’s on Thursday and then Japan at the Country Club on Saturday. In preperation for it, I picked up my photo albums from Japan, and I can’t believe how long my hair and legs were. I was totally cute, and I wish more people had told me that.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to go all Heather on you, although I feel it is only fair to warn you that generally these days her proposed solution to all my problems is “want me to kick their ass for you?” No, instead I’m going to talk about that whole thing when you know what each other have been up to on the weekend, but you’re just like “hey”, and have usual conversations about kebabs and Nazis, with only a “well you’re already going to hell” as an allusion to the other stuff.

Well, that’s pretty much all I’m going to say about it. I’ve been trying to reign in my gossipy nature (haha! How likely do you think it is that I’ll actually succeed?), although that said, when I showed up at Curve on Saturday night, and Katy said really loudly in front of the passively pursued boy and his new girlfriend “Hey Jo, how was your PASH?” I pledged my eternal love to her. Because I am a small petty man. Or um, large petty girl.

You’ve already read about Friday, so you can probably imagine that after getting home at 6am when I woke up at 1pm on Saturday I was like “FUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCK I’m supposed to be at the food show!” and then I rang up Karen and apologised profusely but explained that I was pretty sure that I was still drunk. Then I responded to Jessie‘s text, since she’d obviously been talking to Lisa while I was still unconscious. For the record, a shiny young boy pashed me on Friday night whilst off his head. That’s all. He’s just a hilarious associate who appeared to blush yesterday when I saw him again in passing. Part of me wanted to yell out “dude! it was a pash, and while it was lovely, and you’re cute, that’s it and is sweet as eh, so you have nothing to worry about. Pashing is just nice and I’m sure you know that I actually fancy your friend, even though I do accept the opposite of an asshat rejection speech he gave me” but given that he was surrounded by older women who were cooing over him like he was their son, I just kept my head down and tried not to feel like a child molester instead.

So back to Saturday, I spent the day feeling very very shakey. I ate pizza and drank too much coke and tried to nap but my heart rate decided to go insane and beat at like, a trillion beats per minute. I blame the caffiene, but it’s kept being a little off since then, so I wonder if being around people in small spaces who were smoking pot has made me have traces of anxiousness again. But that’s just gay, so I won’t accept that. Maybe I should just give up caffiene. HAH! Why don’t you tell me to give up drinking while you’re at it? I certainly didn’t give up drinking on Saturday night. Lisa came and picked me up and we went to her house and played records. I have decided that I need to get a record player and start collecting vinyl. I feel like i don’t value music enough these days as I get most of my CDs for free, and I just play it all in the background instead of taking the time to go through the ritual of listening to music. And if I buy vinyl, I can in theory show my appreciation for the bands I really like even if i got their CD for free (although sure, in practice I may end up buying second hand). I am all about the ritual.

Once we’d worked our way through her stack, we took a taxi up to Jimmy’s party in Brooklyn. Jimmy’s house was lovely, as is Jimmy, of course, but every time a Phoenix Foundation song came on, his flatmate would go and change it, so we decided that he was an ass hat (although I’m sure he’s actually quite lovely), and since he was wearing those slip-on Vans, I decided that they’re actually just PLIMSOLES and made fun of him for wearing them. Lisa was like “but you know who else wears them?” and I was like “that’s the point also”. And then there was a girl in unspeakably tight pants, so I made lots of Helen Keller jokes. Again, I’m a little surprised that they let someone who is as obviously 12 as me drive a car and live by herself.

Eventually we said farewell to Jimmy and shared a taxi back into town, and I went to Curve Bar where the KKK were spinning records. Well, Mike and Chrisana were anyway, under the moniker of ‘Guns’n Amo’, which is awesome, as was the music they were playing, but even though the vodkas were $5 each, I was still feeling shakey and not quite up to dancing, so I stood outside and talked to people instead cos I hadn’t seen most of them for ages and ages. Plus someone told me that there are starfish in Antartica that are forty feet across. I bet you didn’t know that. Of course, I can’t confirm it, but maybe you can google it. I had an odd moment at work today when one of the boys rang me up and started going on and on about how he couldn’t sleep the night before because he was up thinking, and I was like “omg, wtf does this have to do with me?”, and yes, I thought in abbreviations like that, honest, before he asked me if I knew what the origins of the phrase ‘Pardon my French’ were. I said I didn’t know exactly, but figured that it was because the French are all dirty and uncouth, and then googled it and found out I was right. Awesome. But back to Saturday night when I saw who the girlfriend mentioned in the second paragraph was, and went “oh! that makes sense!” and was really happy about it. Katy and I shared a cab home, and I babbled my head off to the driver the rest of the way.

On Sunday, it was time for the food show. I love the food show. I wish I could marry it. I especially love almost all of the winemakers on the very very long (60+ wines) Wairarapa stall, whom we got to at about the time that our initial wine-tastings hit us in our hilarious banter spot. I was so upset when I reached the stage that I didn’t think I even wanted to try any more wine, although all food was snapped up with much gusto. Mmmm food show. I bought two bottles of dessert wine, a Stonecutter Pinot Noir (who keeps the metric system down? I do!) and some half baked bread. I also tried whitebait for the first time ever, aaaaaaaaand ummm started to get into a fight with Karen luckily right when she had to get off the bus.

Then Lisa and I went to see the Phoenix Foundation at Chow. They were drunk, and I thought that made them all the more awesome. I like that every time I see them it’s in a different venue with a different vibe. I was sitting by a window, and would every so often see people outside in the complete freezing cold and would think “why the hell aren’t you in here seeing the awesomeness that is this?”

It was a fucking exhausting weekend. I was very very shakey on Monday, partly from the cold, no doubt. Coooooooold. Cold like now when I’m waiting up for Heather to stop having a life and come online. And there we have it, the circular come around thing. I am actually Stephen Colbert, if you hadn’t guessed by now. Or maybe I’m just high on fumes from cleaning the oven and doing the floors with large amounts of bleach. Flat inspection tomorrow. Boo.

So! Hehehe. Friday night I’m out with some boys and Lisa, and we’re getting pizza, and we’ve been drinking for a while, and having conversations along the lines of yes, I will show them my boobs if they will pash. And then the boys get ahold of some pills. I of course am crazy (like, LITERALLY!) so I can’t participate, but watching their pupils dilate is hilarious, and being the good sport that I am, I run my hands down the back of their heads, and their wrists and skin and all that sort of carry-on, which is awesome when you’re pilling. The boys start getting a bit handsy – I mean, C had already been giving me lap-dances, but now he was crawling across the floor pretending to be a cat, and pulling up my skirt (hurrah for jeans under) and kissing up my arm, and lap-dancing me some more. D meanwhile was sitting in the corner stroking Lisa’s hair going “your hair is purty – sorry, i know you don’t like being touched” and I’m laughing my head off at that, and then C started kissing my neck and I was like “aaaaaaaaargh” and he was trying to kiss me, and I think we all know that I’ve been keen on D for a long long time. But C is young, and shiny, and cute, so eventually I have to turn my head and WOAH, I’M PASHING! And then I look away, and giggle, and try to pretend that I’m not blushing.

And we stay there for a while, and there’s some more pashing and I am so conflicted cos a) it’s C I’m pashing, not D, and b) we’re in my favourite bar that we go to every week and we’re being tacky and c) I’m feeling stink on account of Lisa also, because dude, I’ve been the “oh my god, what the hell is my friend doing?” friend many many times before, and it’s not cool. So after I have a scorched orange martini I convince people that we really should leave, which at least takes care of problem b). And D declares “well since I’m going to hell anyway…” and reaches over and grabs my breast, and I’m like “awesome!” and I laugh and throw goats. Somehow we end up at Maya, and oh man, it is taaaaacky. So I suppose I deserve to be there. But the hands-i-ness continues when D and I are standing at the bar together because stroking people’s skin feels good even when you’re not high, but then he’s like “ooooooh man, we shouldn’t do this” and I’m like “well, why not?” and then it happens, the thing that I’ve been waiting a good six months or more for – he says “We shouldn’t because I don’t feel about you the way you feel about me” and I am like HOLY FUCKING SHIT, YOU ARE THE MOST AWESOME PERSON IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD, and he may have apologised, and I was like “seriously, you are the total opposite of an asshat right now”, because to be high and handsy and no doubt horny and to have it offered up and turn it down on the grounds of serious matters of respect is fucking amazing (and makes me heart him even more, but we’ll ignore that fact). So that was absolutely awesome to hear, and then plus it made me feel much better about pulling C off into more of a corner to make out with him some more. He was like “you’re one of the best kissers ever” and I was like “are you making fun of me?” cos my self esteem is radness. The other thing he said a bit was “but we’re still friends right?” and I laughed lots because dude, we’re drinking buddies, not colleagues anymore, it’s no big deal. Ahhhh young boys on E, so cute. I apologised to Lisa many many times, but didn’t stop doing what I was doing, which makes me a dick. But I was very much aware of how often this would happen again (like never) which helps with the cognitive dissonance. And so cute and shiny. Lisa eventually left, and I was left at the bar by myself for ages, so I had another glass of wine and went “what the fuck is going on?” before deciding to leave, which meant trying to find D to give him back his jacket whihc was lying at my feet. When I did find him, he was like “OMG, thank you so much for taking such good care of my jacket!” with seriousness, and I was a little overwhelmed. They decided that they wanted to dance, so I went to Sandwiches with them, but instead of dancing I think C and I pashed some more while D was buying us drinks, and I stroked his cock through his pants under the table. Ahhh feeling like you’re 21 again, it’s hilarious.

I don’t know how long we stayed at Sandwiches, but eventually we walked up the hill to D’s house to listen to Tool. He had the same bedspread as my parents, and a LOTR poster, so I was like “awesome, I’m glad you turned me down” in my head. They smoked pot, and I laid on the bed and giggled a lot. Over the course of the night when C had floated the idea of coming to my house i was thinking I would say “You can come home with me but I can’t gurantee that I’ll have sex with you” but eventually I think their pills wore off, and I was really tired, so I called a taxi although I ahd a hell of time trying to think about where the fuck I was, and i was carrying my shoes in my hands and the puddles were icey, and then I saw the clock in the taxi and it said it was 6am and I was like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH.

And yeah, it was very very amusing to me and i hope it was to you too. The part that’s making me laugh the most right now is that C’s mother is the accountant at work and I will have to try and keep a straight face when I see her tomorrow. Hurrah! Also, I want C to digitise my Garland tape for me, I hope he won’t consider that to be stalking. I have more gossip to tell you but for now I am too tired and must go to bed. So later skater xojo