good old Dunners

I should have known, I really really should have but the weather was so GOOD at Easter, when it is usually puss, that I foolishly thought it would do the same for me again. Ha. I doubt my 3/4 pants will ever get an airing and I am still frantically hurling clothes out of my wardrobe in search of my stripy Kathmandu polyprop goodness. If this is all the weather has I might as well have stayed in the UK, at least it has central heating. But then I wouldn't be with the whanau so I guess I'll just have to cowboy up and cope. I'm sure I'll be better once the rain clears long enough for me to walk on my beach.

*grumble* *grumble* woe is me etc... ;-)

But on the bright side- I just found out that one of my friends is pregnant which is SUPERAWESOME and when I think of that I couldn't be happier.

final missive

I HEAD HOME IN TWO DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's so soon it's surreal. I'm glad I only fly out on Monday evening because it gives me the whole day to pack and clean my room etc.

Oh I can't wait.

Mum, Dad, J, see you soon. Beach here I come! Break out the jandles and the sunshine, this girl is coming home.

easy on the eyes

I have a widget that gives me a new Calvin and Hobbes comic every day. Sometimes I just have to share them.

In fact I think today shall just be a day of eye candy.


www.aoj.ca


I think this guy's drawings are amazing and I particularly like the perspective on this one. www.byroglyphics.com Look in the gallery section for more of this style of thing.


www.imphead.comI've long been a fan of fantasy art. I envy these people their imaginations.


And finally, the simple pleasure of line art should never be taken for granted. www.explodingdog.com

Möchten Sie eine Tüte damit?

I thought an entrée of Calvin and Hobbes was suitable for a Monday. There's nothing like laughing at some naked mischievous Calvin ass. Hee hee.

So this was the weekend of Berlin. Dude, if I thought Belfast was bleak, Berlin takes the cake. 'Austere' is my word for Berlin. I mean really, it shouldn't have surprised me. A lot of the city has only been rebuilt since the 90's and unification so it's a weird mix between 'new' 90's architecture and buildings that have been rebuilt in imitation of what used to be there. The whole place feels quite bleak and a bit artificial and leaves me quite cold. The other thing of architectural/arty note, at least for me, were the memorials to things from the war. They were totally different from other ones that I have seen which, once again, if my brain was working, would not have surprised me either. Usually war memorials are tributes to the soldiers who have given their lives. They've commemorative, maybe uplifting and a bit inspiring. Not the German ones- and rightfully so really. One was a large stone room, all grey concrete slabs and high ceiling and I was already weepy before I got in. I'm not really sure why, this wave of emotion just hit me. And when I got inside I was looking around this massive, bleak, grey room and was ready to bolt, it was getting a bit much. In the middle of the room was a large bronze statue of a person holding/sheltering another one half on their lap and the only light on the room was a hole in the ceiling which cast light on to the statue. It wasn't pretty and it was slightly abstract but as I made myself stand there, I could feel my distress gradually dissipating. There was a sense of peace and comfort that gradually took its place. This is not to say that peace etc radiated from it because they didn't. It just fascinated me how somehow I could stand in this grey, bleak room and gradually it felt like things weren't quite so bad. And as I came out and thought about it, it seemed totally suitable. Another one that got to me was the holocaust memorial. It's a large square of undulating ground filled with a grid of grey stone columns of varying heights. As you walk in to it, the ground drops away and the columns get higher. From the outside, it doesn't look like it takes up that much room but when you're walking through it, you're glancing down row upon row of grey columns and it seems to go on forever. It feels like a graveyard and becomes quite overwhelming, like it will never end. Again, totally appropriate. I took photos of neither because at the time, it didn't feel appropriate. These are images I will carry in my mind and feelings I will remember forever.

[On a side note, how art is used to commemorate things of war and conflict (finding this hard to articulate) fascinates me. Before coming to Europe, I was used to triumphant statues of fallen heroes and plaques with names written on them . Then I go to Belfast and they have massive murals on walls glorifying both martyrs and terrorists (sometimes the same, sometimes not) which is a totally different slant on things and now I have the sombre, almost dark, not at all glorifying memorials from Berlin. It's fascinating.]

But now for the photos, the bit people really care about:


Me in front of the Brandenburger Tor. Day one in Berlin was overcast and cold and really did nothing to create a good first impression.


The Berlin wall. This is not apparently the prettiest section, the ones in the west are better but this was the bit we got to see. The bits that aren't still standing are marked by cobblestones and you can follow the whole line of the wall, all 150km (ballpark estimate) of it.


This was taken in the most amazing chocolate shop ever. This was a huge hulking santa made of mini santas. Oh the cunning artistry.


Day 2 in Berlin was much colder, probably because it was crisp and clear. It was sunny although I still didn't find the city beautiful, it was a much better day. Lotte and I wandered around markets and had mulled wine and it was fab.


What caught my attention on this cathedral was this sign. Siehe, ich bin bei euch alle Tage bis an der Welt ende. Which I translate to be 'I will be with you all until the end of the world'. I don't know if it's a quote from something and I'm not a person for poetry and as previously demonstrated, am not religious, but I thought that in German it read very eloquently and was a very nice sentiment.


This is the ground above the bunker of Hitler where he ended his life. Apparently it's a car park because the walls of the bunker were built so thick that they couldn't be demolished and no building could be built on top of it. So it's doomed to be a carpark until the end of time in all likelihood. Part of me thought it would be nice to make it a garden but that might be falsely interpreted as a celebration or glorification of Hitler. I see it as being the complete opposite of everything he stood for. You could take it to be- here beneath us is the final resting place of one of the largest atrocities of mankind. Because of the death and destruction and intolerance (I could go on, I'll stop here) that he stood for, we choose to wipe that memory away with new growth. Come here in spring to contemplate the daffodils poking up and the buds appearing on the trees and think about new life, come here in winter and sit on a cold concrete bench and look at the bare tree branches and the grey sky and the horrible accommodation blocks that enclose the space and feel gloomy but remember that spring will be coming and soon this grey and brown patch will be green and thriving and life carries on. (Gosh, look at me being all wanky. I think those memorials had a greater impact than I thought.)

On these columns, the chipped away parts are from bullets. We're looking at history folks. Apparently there is conflict as to whether the columns should be beautified and replaced or left as they are. I say keep your history Germany, leave them where they stand.


And this is the mob who went, minus, of course, me. Because I'm taking the picture, duh.
So essentially it was a weekend of sightseeing but mainly wandering around markets and trying out my German. It’s well rusty, I haven’t spoken it in 8 years, but I still got by just fine and could translate for my friends. I felt quite a sense of achievement from that which is cool because me and German/Germany… well lets just call I a rocky relationship…

the way things work
And I'm sorry but was there something in my last entry that somehow got thrown up by Google because 55 hits? It seems a freak anomaly. But on the other hand, it's made my clustermap look a whole lot more populated so I shouldn't really complain. *slight pause* I just checked my blog for comments and it would seem that my rise in hits are in fact due to Damien. It would seem he did a massive spamming of Hi5 people and if most of them googled him or that link, they would have come across my blog (apparently) which explains my rise in hits. It's a funny world.

of puppies and ducklings and weird shit

This picture was forwarded to me by a girl at work and I don't know if it makes me a bad person but I find this bloody hilarious. Apart from teh obvious duckling-down-the-drain, there is the bewildered look of the mother in the final frame. I can just hear her going, "Wha' happen'?" Oh the slapstick of nature. It's hard to beat.

Yesterday we had a visitor to the office. One of DIVE's sales staff is now based in Manchester and when she came down this month she brought her new dog Bailey. He's even been added to the meet the team page and has his own profile. "DIVE's new advertising assistant Bailey Sturgeon joins us from the Warrington Animal Welfare rescue centre. The 18-month-old scuba dog has just started shallow water diving. His other hobbies include chasing frisbees, chewing plastic ducks, running, dribbling and playing catch in the DIVE office. 'Woof, woof!' he says." Oh we're a bunch of softies here. Being inventive, we gave him a plastic duck to play with and now poor duckie has been chewed to something almost beyond recognition. At our new offices, we are split over 2 floors and we've decided that ours is the cool floor. Bailey sure thinks so. On our floor there are toys and people who will run around with him and give him water and behave pretty much like dogs themselves. He's coming in again this afternoon and I can't wait- I was a special favourite (maybe because I was the one who sacrificed the duck in the first place...)


The weirdness of the internet
In the past month I have had a couple of Hi5 requests from people I do not know. It's a bit strange to check your email and have some random asking you to sign on to their friend list when you don't even know them. I also had no idea why these people were contacting me. I thought maybe they're blog fans? (And yes folks, it would seem that I am that egocentric) but then I realised that YEARS ago I signed up to Hi5 at the request of someone I actually knew and it turns out my profile is still on there. But has current age and location which means I did update it within the last year which is strange because I reallyREALLY don't remember doing that... Anyhue- amnesia aside, today I got my strangest Hi5-related thing yet. Apparently I had a message from a guy called Damien which read:

hey, whats up? just came across your profile at the search page and was wondering if youd wanna chat sometime?
where ya from.. things ya like to do..
if ya wanna know more about me and see more pics go to myswtpages.com/damien
hope to hear from ya
damien

It seemed innocuous enough and I'm in carpe diem mode so I checked out myswtpages.com/damien and I have only one thing to say- oh my Holy Jesus, WTF?! This is the first picture I came across so of course I had a good giggle. LOTS of buff posing shots but imagine my horror when you click on some of the pictures and get told that you have to be over 18 to access the site! OMG! You know what that means- naked pictures! Man bits on camera! Ooooo yicky. So now I am suitably repulsed and amused. Damien, if by some chance of the web you come across this, I'm sure you're a lovely guy but you're just not for me. I like to view man bits in person and not via the internet. (Although if we overcome this, I feel there may be other irreconcilable differences we will not be able to overcome. Hence "irreconcilable".) So that's my excitement for the day.

things that make you go, "BABIES!!!!!"

My latest check of what's new on with Homestar Runner brought me to this I mean oh my God how cute are these?!! A teeny tiny girl squad?!! It's just so bloody cute I'm going all gooey.





The only thing cuter than this is Josh, my friend Sam's new baby. I'm sure she'll be fine with me sharing his image with the world. I mean he's CUTE. It's always such a pleasant surprise (relief) when friends have genuinely beautiful children. I know Kitty would argue that all babies are beautiful but some just don't twinge my heart strings. But Joshy's a honey. Look at those big blue eyes.

the looming dark

It's 16:15 and it's dark already- I'm tellin' ya- that's just not right. Not one bit, not a little, not at all. The only silver lining to this nasty gloomy cloud is that I FLY HOME IN 14 DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Sorry for all those exclamation marks, they may have been slightly excessive but I am quite excited about it. Never mind the sun and the sand, I get to see my family. I get Mum hugs and Dad hugs and I get to annoy Julie by limpetting on to her at any chance I get. I just tend to sit down beside her and latch on. She may complain but I know she loves it really. Heh heh heh.

This weekend I'm heading to Berlin with 8 other females to see the sights and go to the Christmas markets. (So everyone back home be warned- it's cute but kitsch Xmas decorations from Berlin for Xmas.) Eight females. I'm sure we'll be fine.... Actually we've already decided we'll split up to do whatever we want to do during the day and the make a time to meet up for dinner. I'm quite looking forward to bundling up all nice and cozy and wandering around markets and sipping mulled wine. I have to admit that nothing feels quite as festive and 'Christmas-y' as a northern hemisphere Xmas. It's just different. Not that I'm complaining about getting to see both sunshine and daylight in 2 weeks- oh no. Bring it on. Lots of sun. Please? Pretty please? Oh go on Dunedin, I know you have it in you...

drawing the line

I can be pretty oblivious to 'signs' that are presented to me but the other morning when my iPod had died and I was walking to the bus I found myself with the theme song to Baywatch stuck in my head. Now call me crazy but I think that has to be a sure indication that I've been watching too much of it. Which is really only once in the weekend but I still think that is about twice as much as I should be. Especially because the last episode featured yet another soft porn montage with some girl walking along the beach in different skimpy outfits and lying in the sand stroking herself. HOW did they get away with having this on the prime-time tele?!

I also happened to stumble across Top 100 Facts for Chuck Norris the other day, in fact about an hour after my last blog entry which mentioned him. Freaky coincidence. (And I promise I wasn't searching for it, it just appeared. That's destiny.) The Chuck Norris facts are hilarious, and even better for anyone who remembers Walker: Texas Ranger. Some of my tops favs were:
• Chuck Norris does not hunt because the word hunting implies the probability of failure. Chuck Norris goes killing.
• Chuck Noris puts the "laughter" in "manslaughter".
• Chuck Norris sold his soul to the devil for his rugged good looks and unparalleled martial arts ability. Shortly after the transaction was finalized, Chuck roundhouse kicked the devil in the face and took his soul back. The devil, who appreciates irony, couldn't stay mad and admitted he should have seen it coming. They now play poker every second Wednesday of the month.
• Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris pajamas.

I could go on but I'll stop there.

And just when you think you've heard of it all
I did think that unicycle hockey pretty much took the cake on WTF things- and in fact I still do but somewhere is in the top10 would have to be a Corduroy Appreciation Club. Thanks to A Dress A Day for that link. The first meeting was held Nov. 11, 2005, and the second on January 11, 2006, since Jan. 11 is the date which, after Nov. 11, most nearly resembles corduroy. It is a delightful feature about someone who was asked to be a guest speaker at a meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Group. Before we parted, I asked Mr. Rohan what it was about my writing that had made him think I would be a good keynote speaker, and he mentioned one of my novels in which a character refers, early on, to a favorite corduroy jacket. “I was disappointed, though, that it didn’t come back the rest of the book,” he said. “I kept waiting.” Read it. It's a gem.

WTF?

I've got two words to say to you- unicycle hockey. (Oh yeah and by the way, that site is a bit nasty on the eyes, you have been warned.) Yep. You read me right. Unicycle hockey. Hockey whilst on a unicycle. I've been meaning to blog about this for just ages. Every Thursday night when I finish climbing, there are people playing unicycle hockey one on of the courts outside the gym. I derive a pure and simple joy from watching people tool around on one wheel with only a stick for balance as they chase a ball around the court. It has everything- suspense, action, coordination and, of course, humour.

What I want to know is WHY and HOW? I mean they have a FAQ page on the site which I checked but it has questions like: 1) What is Unicycle Hockey? 2) The History of Unicycle Hockey 3) The Rules of Unicycle Hockey etc etc but nowhere are the questions written in by the public: 1)WHY? 2)What in the name of God made someone decide to play hockey whilst pedaling around on one wheel? 3)How on earth do people find out about this? 4)Did I ask WHY?!

There is a little girl, I'm guessing belonging to one of the players, who usually wheels around while they're playing. I'm sure she can't be more than 10 years old and she does a pretty impressive show of keeping up on her pink unicycle. It is just cute.

so many excuses, so little time...

So.

I have finally started as designer on DIVE magazine so am both busy and challenged and oh so veryvery glad to be back doing design. But the process of learning new ropes whilst teaching my replacement the old ones takes up quite a bit of time. Hence no spare time. Hence no blogging. I'm sure you've all been pining (hahaha) so today I shall endeavour to fill in the gaps.

things that go bump in the night
The other weekend I house/cat-sat for a lady from work. I heartily indulged in long overdue quality kitty time. She's a needy kitty, I'm needy- it was a match made in heaven. On the Friday night I watched two episodes in the DVD of Supernatural that I had got from my online rental place and then decided I needed to go out and forage for essentials like milk before the shops closed. I had chosen this series because it has Alex from Dark Angel and Dean from Gilmore Girls and is by the makers of X-Files so if nothing else, I was interested. I can guarantee now that most of you out there would probably rather watch something else. But not be, oh no. I don't how I developed the penchant for trashy b-grade shows but it's definitely there. And cable TV just caters to this even more. There are different categories of course- there's Baywatch, which has to be the equivalent of a car crash. I mean it's awful but I really can't seem to look away. And then there's A-Team which I think I like because of nostalgia (same thing with MacGyver but that isn't showing here). Oh my God- and Walker: Texas Ranger. I mean that show is TRUELY awful but when I was first year at uni, I would come home from my Wed evening shift at the supermarket, grab dinner and sit in front of Walker- with headphones on (everyone else was asleep my this stage and there were super light sleepers in our house) with almost religious dedication. And then you get all the sci-fi stuff which really doesn't have to be very good at all to capture my interest. Buffy, Angel, Firelfy*, Tru Calling, Torchwood, Battlestar Galactica**. I could sci-fi my day away. Patsy's house has the glory of all all Sky Channels so I even got to see Vampire High on the horror channel. I was a bit perplexed by that. I would've thought that something on the horror channel would be scary but this wasn't even b-grade enough to hold my interest for a full half hour episode. Which is just sad. But I digress. Supernatural, although not the fabbest of the fab, is by the makers of the X-Files and as such, has that same slightly creepy element which isn't all-put scary, just a slightly tense. So when I went out for milk at 7pm, when it happened to be totally dark and felt a lot later, I noticed that the moon was almost full and my brain clocked that it was just 2 days after Halloween. Patsy lives near where I work so I know the general area and saw this shortcut/lane thingy which I guessed would take me down the hill and it looked wide and well lit so I headed down it. Only to find out that it went alongside a cemetery. And not some slick, modern deal, oh no, this was a pokey little dark plot of land complete with long grass and tilting headstones. I have a vivid imagination and let me tell you, you could not have paid me enough money to walk across that grass because I know some rotten skeletal hand would have punched its way out of the ground to grab my ankle. I just knew it. I could feel it in my waters.

trying something new
There have been some rather hilarious (as in OHM WTF?!) updates in my social life but due to the public nature of the internet, I'm waiting to see how they resolve themselves before I share the car-crash comic value with the rest of the world at large, in particular the person they involve. I'll limit it now to saying that I might have a date on Tuesday. I mean I'm definitely going out for a drink with someone I have never met before (and blind dating was the one thing I had vowed never to do again (I lie, there are several things I have vowed never to do again. Work in a supermarket is one of them.) even though the only blind date I ever had was really dinner with someone I'd never met but two of my friends were there as well for safety buffers so it wasn't really a proper date at all.) but I don't know if it's a 'date' as such. Murky waters. Much room for schadenfreude for you folks. I may or may not keep you posted.

in conclusions
Apart from work and fully exploring the potential glory of cable TV, all I've really been doing is climbing which, thankfully, is going well at the moment. I feel like I'm closer to consistently climbing the same level of stuff and near the start of next year, Graeme, my climbing buddy, and I, plan to do a lead climbing course which beings us one step closer to being able to climb by ourselves outdoors which is the ultimate goal.

There were so many other tales I wanted to tell but priority goes to getting something up seeing as it's been so long since I've written anything...

*notice my Joss Whedon tendency
** I am in no way calling these shows crap, by the way. I will defend Firefly and Angel to the death (probably yours) as well as others.

Long time, no blog!

Hey! Wow! I won $2.65 on a bet in the Melbourne Cup! Best result I've ever had!!

not the gumdrop buttons!

When I was at high school, I, like most girls, would cover my A3 art folder with pictures. Unlike most girls, I would not have pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio and Johnny Depp plastered across my folder. Oh no. I got my Dad to photocopy cartoons out of his Farside books and I put those on in a tidy, OCD arrangement and then protectively cover sealed them. In the last years of high school I branched out to putting some Escher images on there as well. At the start of the school year, I would sit in the car on the way to school, bookmarking the pages I wanted Dad to photocopy for me, occasionally sniggering when I came across a particularly good one. Dad would always comment that the ones that made me laugh out loud were usually the sickest ones and to be fair, he wasn't wrong. (Although it's hard to go wrong with a good lemming suicide cartoon.) Well today I stumbled across something that reminded me of a mixture between Wylie Coyote and Farside material. Bunny suicides. They range from the simple to the very complex. I've sticking in an example of each here but check them all out.

beautiful people... running

In the famous words of Homer Simpson, "Who knew so much happiness could come in a plastic coated wire?" Yep, we now have cable at home and I'm like some 8yr old child. Or Homer, take your pick. Sean looks at me in amazed horror as I sit with my eyes glued to the set. I've told him not to worry, in a week the novelty will wear off but for now I'm overwhelmed by the choice. I can watch back-to-back Simpsons and Futuramas. I can watch The A-Team. Oh the glory!

And on Sunday morning I got to watch.... Baywatch. Oh the tacky glory! Oh the plastic breasts! Oh the high cut swimsuits! Oh the speedos!! Oh the muscley bodies! Oh the badbadBAD acting and stilted delivery! I like to think that I have good* taste but part of me has a decided penchant for the trashy and tacky. And Baywtach is all that and a bottle of fake tan. The episode I got to see (hey, did you guys know that Baywatch ran for 10 years? Holy Jesus! How did they manage that?) was one where the Aussie Iron Man team came to challenge the Baywatch Iron Man team. I spent 3 minutes staring at the TV in complete, total and utter gob-smacked amazement as they did this training montage that featured all the guys running down the beach, surfing, etc in their speedos. Those are some brave, brave men. And even more hilarious was that the Aussie team had bright red speedos with their names across both the crotch and the ass. I was laughing out loud. Loudly. And of course, there was a limo that had run into the sea (?!!WTF?! How did it get so far out that they had to swim out to deep water to rescue it?) so all the lads ran off to help and all you see is strapping man running along, shedding clothing as they speed to the rescue to finally jump in to the sea and the last thing you see as they dive under the water is their names stenciled on their shiny red speedo-clad asses. How can you top that? It was just all so bad. Bad plot, badly acted, bad bad bad but like a car crash, I just couldn't look away. In fact I may be back for more this weekend.

*it’s okay to like horrible tacky stuff if you know it’s horrible and tacky. It’s when you think it’s actually beautiful that there’s a problem.

the silver lining to a shitty shitty poo poo cloud day

Today has been a bollocks day for oh so many reasons but if ever something ridiculous were to cheer me up, it would have been this. In fact it was this. Giant pumpkins converted into boats have taken to the water for an annual charity sailing regatta. There are grown men who have carved out pumpkins and strapped on outboard motors. If this is not the height of glorious whimsy, I don't know what is. This is what life should be about folks.

sniffle snuffle snot

Well it turns out that what I had thought/hoped was just hayfever due to me getting used to dust/stuff at the new flat, is in fact a cold. It ambushed me last night and overnight I moved from the it's-not-a-cold denial to full blown oh-woe-is-me-sympathy-for-poor-widdle-Aynia-kins-the-world-is-about-to-end. I went out and bought some Satsumas at lunchtime and just about inhaled the whole lot in one sitting. They're all tangy and cold and perfect and I fill with Vitamin C just looking at them. I also have lots of lemons so it's hot lemon and honey drinks for me tonight. At any other time, I'd go home and feel sorry for myself there but we have deadline on Friday so that isn't really an option. *sob* *sniff* oh woe is me, etc etc.

damn I'm good

Last night, after a solid weekend of moving, I switched my brain off, collapsed on the sofa and watched 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen'. And proceeded to get excessively annoyed- not the film, (I'd wisely switched my brain off when I collapsed) but because I knew that I knew the actor playing Tom Sawyer from somewhere, I just couldn't place it. And it was KILLING me. Eventually I had to rustle up the 3rd regiment of the Denial Brigade to convince myself that I didn't really care and that it wasn't that important. SUCH a lie. But then I woke up this morning and it just popped in to my head: ER. It seems that as I was sleeping, the 3rd regiment was busy having a good old reconnoitre and ousted the culprit. Thank God. Of course I verified it on IMDB this morning. I knew he was from a TV series, not a movie and that he had shorter hair btu I couldn't pin it down. It was just hovering out of reach and taunting me. And get this, the actor, Shane West, was born exactly a year before me. He's hot and we have the same birthday. That's destiny. ;-) I mean look at that moody little pout he has going on. That's just cute.

As for the move itself? I am shattered. There are a tonne of stairs going up to our new place and my body is physically drained plus I've had late nights and early mornings and all I want to do is sleep. The whole moving in process was not helped by the fact that the flat had not been cleaned properly (which it should have been and we were under the impression it was going to be) so we had to clean as we moved in which makes things take even longer. It's also a bit weird- I mean I'm living with Sarah, who I've lived with for 1 1/2 years now and Sean, her boyf, who I get along with really well so I'm with friends and I like the vibe of the place but with boxes still stacked up in my room (as I wait for a desk to arrive- and maybe a bookshelf) and the newness of it all, it doesn't feel like 'home' yet. I'm gonna spend the rest of the afternoon convincing myself that going to climbing is the best thing for me as opposed to going home and collapsing on my bed. (Which is now a double and my old one was a single and I can starfish once again and it's comfy and in general I am rediscovering my love of The Bed.) Cable gets installed on Thurs so I will once again have a phoneline and more TV channels and broadband. Oooh the luxury. We had to buy phones for the flat and as Sean and I procrastinated, we set them up and you can even program the phones with names. For boring people this is probably meant to be according to someone's name, if it lives in their room, or by the name of the room it lives in but such humdrum naming systems are not for me and Sean. Oh no. Our phones are Bruce and Duncan (with one withering look Sean dismissed such classy combos as 'rattle and hum','bump and grind') and they have a different dial tone for internal calls (oh yes, we can call inside the house and use them like walkie-talkies) and external ones. This gonna be one supermegaübergeek household. Sweet. Although maybe I can talk Sean around to 'Ike and Tina' or 'Sonny and Cher'.... Hmmm...... But no. I like Bruce (he's my phone). Or more to the point, I like saying his name. It has to be said with an Aussie accent, there is no choice- so when I'm looking for the phone I can say, "Gidday. Have you seen Bruce?" Oh the simple pleasures in life. You wouldn't think I'm 27, would you?

Istanbul

was Constantinople but now it's Istanbul not Constantinople so if you've got a date in Constantinople she'll be waiting in Istanbul...

Oh yes. I am currently staring down the barrel of Friday but to lighten it all, I have the delightful nonsense lyrics of 'Flood' from They Might Be Giants in my ears. I love Amazon. It's like Christmas. AND I have the latest Pratchett now as well, 'Wintersmith'. Tonight is sure gonna be a battle. I'm meant to be packing and as that is happening people will be coming through looking at my room and I'm meant to be making a banana cake. (They're (the bananas) ready plus Sarah say's it'll be nice to have it (the cake) at the new flat once we've moved in (no argument here), but last night she offered to make it and I said no. As in NO. I practically barked it out. We both looked a little surprised. Sarah cooks and bakes well but my banana cake recipe is the schizzle and hers... well… it isn't as good. Which makes me sound horrible. So I told her she could make it but I like my recipe best as it was moister. (The only time it is acceptable to use the word 'moist' is in association with cakes. Otherwise it just sounds dirty/dodgey.) And I felt stink for saying even that.) Hmm... hope you guys made it through all those parenthesis okay, it was a bit of a whitewater rapid there for a while...

So here I sit, knowing that i can procrastinate and piss away my final hour of work (if God didn't want us to procrastinate, he wouldn't have invented the internet) but there seems to be this weird phenomenon whereby the list of small and insignificant jobs that you abandon on a Friday as not of immediate importance grow exponentially over the weekend and by the time you come in on Monday it's TOO LATE *stress* *stress* *panic* *panic*. And so I'd best get on to them. As for procrastinating when I get home... well as soon as I open the Pratchett it's all over so I'll just have to dangle it like a carrot in front of me: pack up your wardrobe chapter one! pack up your chest of drawers chapter two! clear out that storage space under your bed chapter three! bonus for already clearing all the stuff off your walls this morning before work go straight to chapter four! battle with that top drawer of your desk. In fact, in penance for reading two chapters in a row, do the whole desk well that's almost everything done, read another two chapters anyway.

I think you can all see how this is going to go...

T-2 days and counting

Last night I was meant to start packing because otherwise I only have tomorrow night. I say 'meant to' because, obviously, I didn't. Sean and Sarah decided to go to the movies so I decided to join them as I haven't been in AGES. We went to see The Departed. I knew ball-park what it was about but not much and it's a film packed with a whole lot of big names: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Mark Wahlberg, Ray Winstone, and Alec Baldwin to name the big ones recognised. And I really liked this film. I've always been somewhat anti-DiCaprio and am somewhat apathetic towards Matt Damon (Team America World Police ruined him for me) but they were both good- great even. And Jack Nicholson was, as ever, a gem. It was not a happily ever after and I think that gave it even more impact for me- it's one of those movies that is staying with me for a couple of days. It's quite violent but has moments of the ridiculous and I highly recommend it to everyone except my mum because I'm pretty sure she'll hate the ending.

Kevin, my office source for cool links sent me this today. It's a YouTube vid time-lapse thing of a hot air balloon race and is sehr gut.

back to normal(ish)

I realised today that it's been a good long while since I've directed you all towards links or the weird and wonderful. I've been so caught up in The Dramas of the Life of A Noever that I've been remiss with keeping in contact with the surreal.

And I've found some doozies. :-) Unfortunately blogger doesn't seem to want to let me post images today (boo hiss) so I'll just have to direct you the old-fashioned way.

people who look like their dogs

quirky

just plain crazy

Tonight I go home and start packing. We're moving on Saturday and have to go to the agent's on Sat morn to sign our lives away and tomorrow I'm climbing which leaves me tonight and Fri night to pack. It's not like I have a lot of stuff but I know it'll turn out to be more than I thought so I guess it's best to start now. Woot.

who needs BT anyway

Sorry to hear you're getting screwed by NZtelecom hon but I'm glad that someone feels my pain. Sometimes I seriously wonder why thye makes this stuff so hard for us. Good customer service = happy customers = more customers. *sigh*

My problems (well at least the phone one) seem to be solved though. (Hoorah!) It turns out that our new flat used to have cable so we can go through the cable company and get phone and broadband and don't have to have anything at all to do with BT. Hazzah! AND- they can come in next Thurs which is a damn sight sooner. And so justice is served.