The Good, The Bad, and The Undateable

Good things:

• Charlotte has finally made it home out of hospital. Hurrah Little Fish.
• Nic loaned me the good version of Persuasion.
• The Evil League of Evil Application: The Embezzler. Congrats to everyone involved esp Morgue and Tec. If Joss doesn't pick this one, I don't know what is wrong with him (not that I'm biased or anything).
• A friend has announced she's pregnant. Woo! Especially so since she was starting to get a touch paranoid (*grin*)
• I'm going to visit the city of the future (Tron) tomorrow. This trip I've managed to get time with Miss T and will catch up with a friend that I haven't seen since Form 1. V. exciting.
• I finished my first strategy document ever. And apparently it was good.
• I finished writing my first RFP document ever. And apparently that was good too.
• Work paid for some trips to Wellington which meant I got to see a few people unexpectedly.
• I found some friends through work to play Munchkin and Apples to Apples with.
• "My" girls come to visit next weekend! I'm very excited.
• The Phantom has started at the Civic. Also v. exciting. And I get to go!
• Judge comes to visit soon!
• Xmas is only weeks away and I'm on holiday in Wellington for 2 whole weeks.
• The tax rebates. Took long enough and might actually have some benefit on my savings.

Bad Things:

• Charlotte was in hospital :(
• Babylon AD. Don't do it to yourself.
• The neighbours got burgled, which has made me slightly paranoid about locking things.
• I've been lacking hugs. I'm starting to go into serious withdrawl.
• I've put on weight again and current exercise levels are not balancing it. And I don't want to spend bundles on joining a gym cause I have yet to find one I like.
• I haven't been to dancing in ages cause I've been so busy that I'm finding it hard to actually get to classes.
• I haven't talked to my brother in ages. I'm feeling like a very bad sister.

The Undateable:

After considering my pathetic lack of love life, I decided to give the virtual dating world another whirl. I don't consider myself to be a supermodel in any way/shape/form (unless you count the generous cleavage), but I'm not some huckery-mole either.

So after putting myself out there, I managed to talk to some bloke and arrange for coffee. The obvious next step when you are spending considerable time chatting to each other. Not a problem!, I hear you say. It's just coffee! LIARS, all of you. I got STOOD UP. Luckily it was at the coffee place in Borders so I made myself feel better by buying a new book.

So following all of this I have continued my search for someone who I might make friends with, with a potential to date, with a remarkable lack of success. I swear that I must have some kind of glow in the dark sign on my forehead that says "DON'T DATE ME". Obviously this means that my very stylishly modern uber-pessimism superhero overundies (with hi-beam anti-dating labelling) have particularly successful. I'm glad to see Not-Kate is having more success than I am, cause someone has to be.

Poor Baby Whale

(I've finally figured out how to change my timezone! Hurrah!)

I've been avidly avoiding the stories about the baby whale on TV, on the various websites that I view, and in the newspapers (even though I don't see a whole lot of those). But this morning I saw on the NZ Herald site that vets are going to euthanise the poor little blighter because he's starving, and my pathetic girly hormones kicked in and I started to tear up.

In my logical brain, I have a voice saying it's for the best, cause you don't want a starving baby to suffer.

In my illogical, girly brain, there is a big storm of pathetic sobbing saying don't kill the baby whale, get a whole lot of milk and get a really big baby bottle and just attach it to the bottom of a yacht.

This is why I don't watch animal movies. I worry too much about the animals and just can't cope with all the drama.

Edit Note: It's 3.45pm and I've just been told that they put poor baby whale Colin down. More tearing up. :(

Amusement

1. There is a man that rides a bike around the streets near work. He's put a lawnmower motor on his bike and rides around pulling wheelies all the time. I'm guessing the wheelies are so that he doesn't accidentally apply the breaks to the wrong wheel.
2. The end of my student loan is in sight. Mwah ha haha. My last statement suggests that I should be free and clear leading into the beginning of the next tax year. There is a lot of happy happy joy joy about this and anticipation of the future freeing up of more funds.

Life is like a Tui ad.

I've come to the semi-conclusion that Life is sometimes like a Tui ad. Something will catch your attention and all of a sudden Life will pop up and tap you on the shoulder and shout "YEAH RIGHT" in your face, while turning you upside down and shaking all the change out of your pockets.

But anyway....

Following the last post, I made a bit of a mad overnight dash to Wellington to attend the funeral of the now-deceased person. I'd forgotten how much I truely dislike funerals. I always get a bit creeped out by having a dead body in the room, especially since I know the general stuff that goes on inside a dead body when things don't work any more and the whole embalming process..... I think that some of that is from the number of different "accidentally burying the live person" permutations that come out in all the horror movies that I've watched in my life. On the other hand, it was nice to see some of the people that I knew back then and see that they were kind-of-okay.

I spent a weekend in Torbay (the last suburb before you get to Rodney District!) with a friend of mine. It was the weekend of the big and nasty storm, so I drove down to the beach and spent some time watching the ginormous waves break right up over the dunes at the top of the beach. It was very cool to watch although the stupid idea Deb and I had of getting out of the car to have a closer look was just that - stupid. It was cold, and windy, and I had a better view from the car without all the sand and water blowing in my eyes.
So we headed back to Deb's place to watch DVD's and sit and stuff our faces in front of the fire. This was a brilliant plan until the power went out - for 7 hours. Deb and I sat at the table doing her 1000 piece puzzle (Toni joined in when she arrived just after the power died) and Deb's partner sat there counting down the time until the first Bledisloe match was due to start. I would like to say that I seriously admire everyone who existed before electricity. You wouldn't believe just how hard it is to finish a 1000 piece puzzle by candlelight.
The power kicked in about 5 minutes before kickoff, and by the time MySky loaded up, the TV kicked in just as they put the boot to the ball (not that it would have mattered if we missed it cause we LOST).

I've been working alot, and I mean alot. Over the past 2 weeks I've pulled one 11 hour day, two 10 hour days, one day where I have no idea how long I actually worked but I put it in the vicinity of 12 hours, and the rest were 9 hour days. This is NOT conducive to actually doing anything. It also means that I have not been to dancing in over a month. BAD.

Yesterday (today according to the post date?), it was 8 years since my dad died. It's quite an odd feeling realising that. Only 2 years to go and it's a decade. Sometimes when I'm feeling out of sorts stuff like this makes me wonder where my life has gone, cause a third of it has shot by. I think this may be part of the Tui ad that I'm feeling. *sigh* Life is like a box of chocolates......

I've finally gotten round to seeing The Dark Knight. I couldn't find an Imax session so I went to a regular session on Saturday afternoon. Heath Ledger is a legend in that movie. Movie psychos will take a lesson from this movie I'm sure. I'm not sure if it's worthy of an Oscar, but then I've never really got exactly how they manage to pick some of the awful crap that they've nominated in the past.

And on to the regularly featured Oscar acceptance speech of this blog:
Big ups to 2Trees & Laura. Hope everything goes well for the weekend.
Hugs to Judge. You are such a dude, and see you soon.
Hugs to Chell. Thanks for the sanity check
and super special thanks to Nic for the lend of the clunker.

&$*%&#(%@#(&#)@

I don't know if you all remember my semi-rant about bad surprises.

Well, the bad surprise has delivered it's punchline (almost literally) and the afflicted person died this morning.

Apart from the godawful experience that I know is happening to a loved one in Wellington, I'm feeling particularly crap about the whole thing and to be honest wanting to go home and sit on my deck with a really really really big glass of wine (you know one of those ones that take almost an entire bottle at a time).

I'd feel much better if I could have one of those huge bear hugs where someone you loves wraps you up and you just disappear into a nice comfortable cocoon of arms, but that ain't on the cards today.

So *virtual hugs* to the person that is in Wellywood going through all this without me, and more *virtual hugs* to me cause I feel like them.

Happy Dancing

Rach just told me Nina arrived pretty much on time, and no complications like being induced. There is happy Woodstock and Snoopy dancing going on in my head.

*virtual hugs* because I can.

Out & About

So it's been a while. Again. Who would have thought that I am so easily distracted!! (and no funny comments from the cheap seats thanks!)

It's been a bit of a busy month and a bit so we shall start with the week of the entertainment extravaganza!


5 June. A Thursday. Most of the girls from the office buggered off to the opening day 7pm screening of Sex and the City. If you actually want to be precise, our boss was convinced by Anita that it would be a good bonding thing for the girls so he sprung for cosmopolitans at a bar and movie tickets for us all. Go Anita!!! And they were good cosmos too (bonus!).

I will admit I was a little apprehensive walking into the movie. Although the series was very good, I was just not quite sure that they could really pull off a large screen version.
We got to the theatre and realised it really was a girls session - there was a lot of chatter through the previews and there was a single XY in the audience.

Honestly, I'm not going to complain about the movie. I rated the clothes and shoes (Vivienne Westwood, YSL, Donna Karan, Prada, Louis Vuitton, Jimmy Choo), was fascinated by Samantha's French next-door-naked-neighbour (OMG, that gratuitious shot lasted much too long and was... er.... rather large on the screen!), and then there was the staring at Big. I do alot of that. Whoever Carrie went out with before I don't care (even though I rate John Corbett/Aiden a whole bunch) because Big is definitely my preference. *grrrr ruff*

**I don't care that I'm mixing my pop culture references cause he's way grrrr ruff.**

As a result of the movie, I'm seriously contemplating rewatching the entire series and seeing the movie again. I'm sure this is particularly pathetic but I don't care.


7 June. A Saturday. Judge and K came up for the night and we scooted out to see Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical on stage. To be honest there is no way I can top Judge's description of Priscilla, so I won't. Go read his review here.

I will however comment on the moronity of the useless ushers. On the presentation of our tickets to a series of 3 ushers while going up the stairs, we were directed to the centre aisle of the seating. So we tromped up the stairs to find our row, closely followed by a bunch of other noisy people attempting to locate their seats. Once we had launched ourselves into the row and disturbed and apologised a large number of people, we found out that our tickets were AT THE OTHER END OF THE ROW!!!!!!!!!!
This was slightly offset by the fact that the people next to us suffered the same issue, but was still painful and exacerbated by the fact that this guy kept babbling on about it in the most moronic way.

I will also note that for about 2 seconds I thought maybe I should have been a drag queen so that I could wear some of those costumes cause they were SO COOL.


19-21 June. A weekend. My birthday. I went to Wellington and had dinner with lots of people. Then we went out dancing for a while. I had a wonderful time. I also got very stressed out trying to organise catching up with loads of people while getting confused about when my flights were and still didn't manage to see everyone.

But I got pretty earrings and books and dvds and vouchers. Good haul really.


2 July. Wednesday. Auckland Philharmonia Happy Hour. Yes, you heard me, I went to get some culture. Our group of 16 was whittled down to 8 after pathetic excuses for non-attendance. It was Beethoven, and they did bits of an aria (Deidemia & Achilles) and the 4th Symphony which I knew the tunes for and one of the piano conchertos which I didn't know at all. Was very relaxing but I'm not sure if that was the 2 seabreezes I had on an empty stomach or the Beethoven. I think an hour of Beethoven highlights is a good idea. If they played the whole thing I'd need more seabreezes.

Somewhere between 7 and 19 June I went to a "goth" mini-concert at a bar. It wasn't really cause it was full of old(ish) people with not a single goth bone in their bodies. Toni however did quite a good goth imitation although she didn't quite get the whole brooding thing down. At the time of leaving the house I wasn't actually aware that it was "goth" but was quite pleased that I had atleast managed to dress completely in black.
It was an okay mini-concert cause they played stuff I could sing along to, and I got a little dribbly over a bass player. We had KFC afterwards - it was good.

So apart from having the most awful cold in the world over the weekend just gone (and Monday and Tuesday), it's been fairly regularly busy which is nice.

Sorry girls, no living vicariously through this single friend. Apart from the minor dribbleage there is nothing to report on the action front.

Kisses to everyone cause I'm feeling super generous today.