christmas

Well, what does any self respecting blogger do on christmas day? an update of course :)
In case you're wondering why there hasn't been one in a while, it's not in fact the normal slackness, but something far far worse. I've become 'slightly' addicted to a website called Flickr. Now I originally joined flickr only to make it easier to publish a few photos on here, and I've ended up involved and addicted. Yesterday I spent the whole day on the site, from getting up very early until going to bed after 12, and only spent about 4 hours away from it. It's pretty cool, you post your stuff and other people start looking at it straight away, then you look around, seeing other people's stuff, getting inspired to create more (and inspired to finally buy a decent digital camera) and start to get into the community of it. Already some people like some of my shots and my photo stream has had 480+ views, all in the last month, which is more than this blog :)

Anyway, enough about me, what do YOU think of me? :)

This last week has also seen the end of the working year at Blah House, and the arrival of the Capers Christmas Party, an event worth attending. This year it was at Melbourne Park, in the conference rooms, which I normally only see during dance parties, so it's amusing to go there for work purposes :)

The party was pretty good, caught up with some people and danced with some others and moshed a bit to Killing Heidi, although I had to stop because not everyone was into it and it can get a bit dangerous :)

The party also featured outdoor activities such as rock climbing/abseiling, which seemed more and more dangerous as the day drew on and more alcohol was consumed, and there was also the opportunity to interact with some native fauna, such as a frilled neck lizard, some very cool stick insects, a couple of pythons and a crocodile, which I held for a bit, they are very smooth I understand the whole handbag thing now :)

Later on there was some further drinking and dancing, with visits to Yak (but didn't actually go inside), Honky Tonks (some minor Absinthe damage to my brain) and The Wine Bar (met Shaz and Becs and danced until it was time to go home)

Overall a very good day, with lots of variety :)

Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division - dihydrogen monoxide info

Also saw this which made me laugh out loud, pretty good for a text link off a photo website. If you've never done any chemistry you might not laugh as much. or for that matter if you are paranoid. :)

The "Battleship" for Richard

Been involved in my latest addiction, the Flickr website and found this which I know for a fact Richard will love, especially the story attached ;)
The "Battleship" on Flickr

film

Saw a very interesting film last night called I [heart] Huckabees. Very interesting indeed. Also quite funny and weird and confusing. I liked it a lot but am troubled to recommend it, as it really depends who you are and what you like. If you like linear films that progress from one point to the other then you probably don't want to see this, and if you like films where everything seems to make sense in the end then you probably don't want to see this either.

It is a good movie, with some very good performances and some genuinely unique funny moments. I dunno. Maybe go see it. or maybe hire it when it comes out on video.

bona fide mini weekend

spent far too much time this weekend in the boredom palace for it to be considered a full weekend so it's to be considered a mini weekend, but it was fun anyway. It officially started with lunch with the greatest human beings ever to walk the earth. I know that's limiting myself somewhat, as they are also greater than many non humans/non walkers, but I'm a big fan of amoeba so I'll have to leave it there. Of course there are some other great people in the world, but most of them don't read this blog so they can get stuffed :) The fine individuals are (of course) Shazzie and Berley, pictured here enjoying their various foods on the banks of the Yarra:

The rest of the day was spent at the house of drudge, with nothing of note happening except that we've moved locations in the building so the fact that I was late shift meant I finished work later than the movers and got to unpack all my stuff. yay.

Friday night was off to 3 Degrees for a quick game of beverage catchup and to meet up with Shaz D and Julie and co as there won't be any other chance to catch up with them before Christmas rolls itself over us ;) The night ended pretty early, managing to catch the last tram home with Joe after dropping by the dirty bird (KFC) and De Biers for one drink with Clare.

Saturday morning I was awoken by the incandescent Kate who had free tickets to a movie provided I could be at the cinema in one hour. Given that she had also just woke up I think it's pretty good that we both made it there with a few minutes to spare. The movie was Kinsey, the story of Alan Kinsey's struggle to research human sexuality in the 1940s. A very good film, starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney and well worth watching.

Sunday arvo was pretty quiet, Teen's out of the house visiting the friends and family up Australia's Bush Capital (Canberra) so I was able to sprawl on the couch and watch crappy movies. Joe and Nick came over at one point to borrow a bunch of DVDs and drop off Nick's latest collection of Psy Trance music for me to 'archive'. Nick does a bit of travel around the world and is very into obscure Psy Trance, so he usually carries with him about 40-60 cds of the hardest meanest stuff around, so whenever he lands in AU we sample what he's got because we know it's going to be the cutting edge :) makes it real easy for us :)

Chairman of the bored

Another week of late shifts and therefore another week of boredom. There's only so much blogging and surfing you can do before you become completed addled.
Blah Blah Blah the end :)

The Wedding

Last weekend marked a monumental event on the social calendar that we all thought would never arrive: Mick and Steph’s wedding.

The weekend started with all the boys coming around to my place for some much needed relaxation, in the form of beer. It wasn’t a particularly huge night, as none of us were interested in having a massive hangover.

The big day itself started out pretty easy, we all woke refreshed and had our showers and watched some TV before heading up to the church to put some finishing touches on (flowers at the foot of the altar and ribbons on the ends of the pews) then back to the flat with some lunch to get ready. As we all started to get suited up Mick was starting to show some nerves, blaming it a bit on last night’s pizza, but we had an inkling it was more than that :)

The ceremony itself was fairly standard, not the full blown all-singing-all-dancing affair, but it had a few nice readings and enough pomp and pageantry to make it clear you weren’t in Las Vegas. There was an amusing point just before the ceremony when we realised that the Father was calling Mick ‘Kevin’ (it’s his middle name) and Mick had to point it out to him so he didn’t call him Kevin all the way through. The Father did a pretty good job too, because there was about 10 times he had to say Michael instead on Kevin and he managed all of them. There was a point where he got upset at the photographer for breaking his concentration, but he had in fact told Mick about not having photos during that particular section and Mick forgot to pass on the good news :) anyway, it gave us all something to smile about and you could just feel everyone in the church slowly putting their cameras away ;)

After the ceremony was the obligatory milling around outside while the congratulations were given and the photos with family taken, then it’s off to the Museum for the rest of the photos (via Dan Murphy’s to pick up a slab)

Photos for the wedding party were, as mentioned, at the Museum. Not a bad site, as it has some modern architecture, some classic and some greenery in the exhibition gardens. We knew it must have been a good spot, because there were about 6 other weddings taking their photos there. I haven’t seen so many weddings since I used to work at The University of Melbourne (lots of wedding photos on the south lawn and in front of the 1888 building)

So the photos were fun, just the wedding party and those roped in to be drivers/photographers/videographers so we were mucking around and playing up and joking amongst ourselves, as the main stress part of the day was over as soon as Mick and Steph walked out of the church.

The weather had been looking bad in the morning, raining in the morning when we went up to the church and we were just thinking that if we got a few dry parts of the day we’d probably be ok. Little did we know that the weather was in fact going to be perfect from the time Steph walked out of her front door until after everyone had staggered home to their beds that evening. In fact the only thing that had been planned for the day that looked like it was going to go wrong were the Bonbonniere. The original plan was to have little bundles of lollies placed inside commemorative stubbie holders. The issue was that the stubbie holders hadn’t shown up on time, and the courier company seemed to have lost them, as nobody knew where they were. We weren’t too concerned about it, I mean everyone wants everything to be perfect, but there’s a point where you have to accept that some things don’t work out as you plan, and you don’t let it ruin your day. Besides, the courier company lost them, so once they were found the courier company can deliver them to every guest :)

After the photos we drove off to the hotel that the reception was being held (Rydges Richmond, just a 5 minute walk from my house) to await the moment of our ‘arrival’. Of course we can’t be seen to be arriving before the guests, but not everyone shows up on time, so the process is that we arrive and get put into a little room off to the side, where we can relax, have a drink, and make sure everything is ready for our official arrival at the reception. This is the lovely little illusion used by reception places the world over to help create the magic of a wedding. Of course one might expect the illusion to suffer a little if you have to walk past the transparent marquee where the reception is being held in order to get to the bridal party room. One might even expect the illusion to shatter of the bridal party room was also only separated from the reception marquee by a clear glass wall and a few meters. :) Not that we were too concerned about that, because it also allowed us to see clearly that in fact the stubbie holders had arrived! Not only that, but the hotel staff had put them together as Bonbonniere and placed them on the tables! We were so thrilled we were laughing and pointing. Of course only about three people outside of the bridal party knew what the hell we were laughing about, so we must have looked like a pack of maniacs. Especially when Katrina went and stole our ones off the bridal table so we could start using them. I’m not sure that too many bridal parties first priority at a wedding reception was to get a stubbie holder, I suspect that it is in fact unique ;)

I suppose I should introduce the Bridal party at some stage, so now’s as good a time as any. Firstly of course we have Steph Wahren nee Foreman (designated as B), and Michael Wahren (G) then we have Therese (MH), Usha (BM1), Sandy (BM2), Katrina (BM3), Dan (BM), Joe (GM1), Scott (me) (GM2), and Ian (GM3).

Now we’re pretty much all friends from way back (except for Ian (GM4) who is Mick’s brother in law, but by this stage we’d been drinking with him on a few occasions, so that still counts) so we’ve been having a good day just hanging out and mucking around. Therese had been doing a fabulous job all day with her responsibility for ensuring Steph was always at her best, happily getting up partway through the ceremony to make sure the dress wasn’t all bunched at Steph’s feet etc, and her husband Edmund had been working all day making sure everything else was just right and doing all the video work. Whereas I spent a lot of the day just hanging around and joking with Usha (BM1) and Sandy (BM2), which I always end up doing when were together since they are so much fun to hang out with. In fact, Sandy and Usha are very good friends with the incandescent Kate and when the three of them get together it’s usually a barrel of laughs (and monkeys, of course). So anyway, it’s largely due to the efforts of Therese that Steph looked gorgeous all day (not to mention the team of hairstylists, dress designers, makeup artists, tan appliers, manicurists, etc)

The reception was also a blast, with our entry to the sound of the bagpipes played by Steph’s dad, wailing out Scotland the Brave.

The staff at Rydges seemed to have our number pretty well, and supplied us with a very nice waiter (Monique) who plied us with alcohol all night, even to the point of bringing out mini-jugs of bourbon & coke for me as I was drinking my glasses faster than they could keep up ;) The food was also very nice, although I would have liked to try both choices of each of the three courses, as they all looked pretty good :)

The night wound on, with lots of activities to fill my time, dancing with Sandy and Usha, dancing with Kate, Dancing with just about anyone, catching up with Rose and Trudes and Helen and Kate and Felicite and Dean and Bec and everyone else who was there :) In contrast to my brother’s wedding a week earlier, where I ended up a little bored because I hardly knew anyone, this wedding was action packed because I seemed to know everyone (just about) so I know I didn’t get a chance to spend time with everyone I wanted to, and I could probably have been in that crowd for 2 weeks and not have spent enough time with everyone that I anted too, although if Monique was going to keep getting me drinks for that whole time I think I’d be in hospital eventually for liver failure.

The music was pretty good and the crowd was great and nobody really wanted it to end, so after the bouquet had been caught by some relative of Steph’s and the garter had been caught be me (had to elbow Joe out of the way) and the bride and groom had spent about an hour going around the circle (always seems to take ages) then a bunch of us headed off to Hubcap for a bit more of a dance. Felicite and Dean were very upset with us for not having brought them there before, but it’s hard to explain that it’s not a club we go to often, it’s just a handy little place near home that we sometimes stop in to. :) Anyway, danced a bit more, joked around a bit more, was there until the club shut at 1am and then walked the BMs back to Rydges and staggered home myself.

Sunday was another day again, with a BBQ around Mick and Stephs and some video watching and present opening, and then it was back home to clean up and get to bed.

Funny thing is, that when I got up to go to work today, it felt like a week had passed since I was last there, as there’d been so much fun and activity.

KK @ Clitus

One of the annual Christmas events is the Kris Kringle at Clitus avenue, which was held last night. We don’t hang out as much with this crew as we should, so it was really good to catch up with everyone. It was another good night, as nights at the Clitus house usually are, and there was any number of amusing presents handed out, many with a sexual theme, such as a porn video, soap on a rope with an unusual shape, pocket Kama Sutra, etc. But the all time best ever present was the large framed photo of himself that Winston gave Joe. We’re a pretty cynical bunch sometimes, but it was a joy to see the entire group of about 20 people lost in total laughter for literally five minutes, people wiping tears from their eyes and some unable to stand up because of the sheer cheesiness of the photo and the front of Winston to give it as a gift. :) makes me laugh even now just thinking about it. So if you’re looking for that perfect Christmas gift, look no further than a personally selected and hand signed print from The Winston Collection ;)

Music, Marriage, Bogans, Bowls and Burgers

Another big weekend unveils itself, with a few drinks on Friday in a very noise and annoying Yak bar, sidestep to Bambu for a change, quick stop at Icon for Joe’s brother Nick as he was interested in some loose women, but the cupboard was bare, so we decided to try and get in to the Earthcore after party down at he Prince of Wales in St Kilda. There was a bit of a queue at the door, but I killed the time by talking to our mate Boaz who works security at the POW, and by the time the rest of the guys got to the front of the queue I’d had a nice catch-up chat and didn’t technically have to queue at all :)

The gig was really good, with Simon Posford taking a very early set that just rocked big time, and then some other guy who was also pretty good :) I didn’t stay too long as I had to get up early the next day to go to my brother’s wedding, so I left aboout 2am, but it was a pretty good three hours of dancing anyway .

Saturday was the day of my brother’s wedding, so I drove down to my parent’s house in Rosebud and did a little computer support before heading off to the wedding. Cam, his groomsmen and Dad all had the full three piece suits in black, which made for some amusement later on when they were standing around in the heat waiting for Cindy and her bridesmaids to show up. The ceremony was very nice, with Cam and Cindy almost making it through without breaking into tears. There was also a very nice moment where Cam’s daughter Courtney (currently 7) was included in the ceremony, with both Cam and Cindy saying vows to her and presenting her with a ring of her own.

The reception was pretty good, set in a barn and sort of country & western themed, but in reality, given the number of mullets, the spit roast, and the one man band belting out the oz rock hits, it was really Bogan themed (Westies, Booners or Rednecks for those of you not from Melbourne) and despite the good food and well played music, it starts to get boring when the only people you know are your mum & dad, especially since dad ran out of jokes in 1965 and has been recycling ever since ;) but apart from a little boredom at the end for me it was a very good wedding, and everyone else seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly.

Sunday afternoon was also a bit fun filled, with a trip down to the St Kilda Bowls club for a few ends and a few beers. Felicite and Dean invited us all down to have a few bowls and drink the cheap beer and a good time was had by all. It’s a very nice pastime if you haven’t tried it, lots of shade at each end, and a bit of fun with us all congratulating each other whenever we managed to actually play a good bowl. Given the amount of beer we drank (lots) and the amount of practice we’d had (none) I think we did ok, but maybe that was the beer talking :)

After bowling for a few hours, we strolled down the road and grabbed a really really good burger at the Gourmet Burger Co on Fitzroy st, which I recommend to all of you who like burgers, and went and sat down in the Catani gardens to eat our dinner and soak up the last few rays of the sun. The day ended for me at the Espy listening to a pretty good steel drum band and having a couple of beers top top off the day. I went home tired after sunset (very nice from the front room of the Espy) but the others kicked on, including Joe and Nick who even went on to Freebase at Seven nightclub.

Jules Verne and Shaun

Well, this weekend marked the annual journey to the centre of the earth, with the Earthcore carnival. Three days of music and frolics in the Victorian countryside, with some of the best local and international djs and musicians. We grabbed a couple of tents and the usual crew and headed for the hills on Saturday, for an overnight trip. Technically the festival had been going since Friday, with a lot of people having been there since Thursday, but there is such a thing as too much time dancing in the sun :) The trip up was pretty uneventful, your basic driving up the Hume with a slight detour, and we arrived about 2pm on Saturday and set up our little camp. Then we took a stroll through the stages to see what was going on and to check out where everything was. The layout was pretty much the same as last year, although the toilet block had an added trailer full of showers and also a set of trees with a mist sprinkler running all day to keep people cool (using reclaimed water)

The music was, of course, superb, although I got a bit trapped on the Hydra floor and had trouble going anywhere else. That means I missed 1200 mics and TISM, but it also means I saw GMS, Hallucinogen and Raja Ram, so that’s pretty good :) Danced my arse off as usual, spending most of the time from about 4pm Saturday until 12pm Sunday on the dance floor, with a few rest stops back at base camp. I also managed to avoid getting soaked by the water truck when it came to spray the dance floor and the dancers to keep the dust levels down. All in all a very good weekend was had by all, with about 6000 very happy earthcorers, give or take a few who went a bit too far :)

I went a little further than the normal Earthcore tradition of taking Monday off work and also took Tuesday off. So Monday night I went around to Kate’s house to watch my copy of Shaun of the Dead with Kate and her housemate Gill. I’m a big fan of that movie as I mentioned earlier and I think Kate and Gill are too now. Gill also went and got us some pizza from somewhere local, and it was pretty darn good. It was funny because when I arrived Kate asked me if I had noticed that Gill had gotten some dreadlocks, and I had to explain that I’d just come from the planet of the dreadlocks and hadn’t really noticed anything different with Gill (althouhg they do suit her I think) because I was used to every second person having dreads :)

The bulk of my Monday and Tuesday was spent playing Full Spectrum Warrior on the PC and watching a few movies, which I shan’t list here because I can’t remember what they were ;)

Happy Birthday

Just a quick note to say happy birthday to a very good friend of mine who happenned to have been born on this day of the year :)
She's one of my oldest friends, and despite the fact that I'm not always the greates guy to expect an email from, and I really appreciate having her as a friend. She's a very smart person, with a strong character and a good sense of humour, despite having to put up with my warped jokes for many many years. Anyway, I'm not going to rabbit on, but she's a wonderful person and I love her very much.
Happy Birthday 'Nor :)

Midweek follies

Well I already actually wrote this entry, but Blogger was having some issues and it decided not to save my draft :( I dunno, how can they live with themselves, here they are runnign a completely free service for thousands of users, with millions of hits a day, and they can’t even guarantee that the update pages work ;)

So far this week has been pretty busy. Did some crappy work on Sunday, then had to go in early Monday, although there is something to be said for being finished work at 3:30pm and being back at home by 4pm, it feels like a real luxury :) Tuesday night was very long, as it was an invite-only regulars party at Yak, which basically meant getting smashed on a school night, always fun. Had some good chat with Bec, and caught up with one of the old bar staff, Harris (Sparkles) and all the usual crew there. It was like a Friday night. :) at least until the next morning when I realised the error of my ways.

Wednesday night I went out to another pub, The East Brunswick Hotell to be precise, to take part in a trivia night with Kate, Kerry and Dave. It was a pretty good night, but I have to say, the cheese levels were very high. The pub itself isn’t too bad, it’s one of those pubs that hasn’t really changed, hasn’t succumbed to the desire to become ‘trendy’ so it’s managed to scrape together a little coolnes because of that. The front bar is a good mix of old codgers and local youngsters enjoying the jukebox and the pool tables, and the kitchen serves the usual pub fare and everything seems perfectly normal. Trivia was fun, we did ok (didn’t come first but didn’t come last) and we did get a few tricky ones, which is always nice. Overall a good night, despite the cheesiness :)

Thursday night was movie night of course, and we went to see Bad Santa, and believe me, that’s a bloody funny movie.

And now it's off to Earthcore for a weekend fulled with fun and dancin' yay !!!!

a good week

Pretty good week this week, lots of good movies, lots of time with friends, and some serious dancing.

Started early in the week, with the traditional sausage sizzle at the church across from work on Wednesday. Since it was warm and sunny, Clancy and I just sat outside the church chatting and enjoying our cheap eats. Although, to be honest, they aren't as cheap as they can be. I had a few snags at a scout sizzle in swan hill a few years ago for 40c, and they were raising money, so it probably cost then 20c each or something. Even accounting for city meat prices etc, I can't see it costing more than 50c to get a sausage cooked and sauced and slapped into bread. So the church charging $2.50 is a bit steep, but it's fun. I just noticed how weird that '40c' looks, I guess it's so rare that anything costs less than a dollar these days, that I'm not used to seeing it. :)
Then Wednesday night I went to see Dodgeball at the movies. Piss funny. You might have to be a Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn fan, but I am, and I loved it, laughed myself silly all the way through, really enjoyed it. A lot of people panned it (and a lot liked it) so Clang and I figured we'd need to discover for ourselves, and I'm glad we did.

Thursday was the regular movie night and there wasn't that much choice, so we went to see The Polar Express. As far as the plot goes it's not my first choice for a movie, sappy family stuff about Christmas and Santa and friendship and blah blah blah. But with that out of the way, it's a cutting edge digital animation feature and I was willing to stretch it :) Stunning animation, very lifelike, although still clearly not reality, the elements were fabulous. Kids hair blowing in the breeze as they stood on the back platform of the train. Anyway, it's pretty funny, nice and sappy, good animation, worth seeing I guess.

Friday turned out to be pretty much a perfect day. Started at work, had some laughs, did some work, blah blah. :) Then after work popped down to Yak for a few beverages, drank a bit with Clare, found out she's a huge fan of The Sweetest Thing, which made me happy, because it's a really good film :)

The trip to Yak was necessary to make sure I had consumed enough tasty drinks, to cover for the need to drink VB stubbies at the work social club function I was about to go to :) The function was ok. It was the usual boat club on the Yarra, which is ok the first time (like when I started at the firm 8 years ago), but if you go there once or twice a year, it starts to get old :) But as with all things at the firm, it's the people not the place, so we had a pretty good time, chatted to some new people, got to know the new facilities people that I hadn't really dealt with much, so that was good. After the social club thing I went and met Damien and Mikey at St Jerome's and then back to capers to get Ash and his friend before heading off to the main event of the evening, the Jeff Mills gig at The Metro.

The gig was fantastic, superb music, nice visuals (although I saw a bit of AVJ footage, stuff I have myself). The guys on before Millsy (Phunk de Sonique) were very good, and set the mood well for Jeff Mills' set, where he seriously kicked arse. The crowd was going wild and everyone seemed to be having a good time, I know I was :) At one point the audio died on the decks he was using, so they rolled out a spare table and he played on that until they had the main decks back up and running. There was a gap of about a minute when the decks first died, but the transition back to them once they were fixed was so smooth that I didn't notice until a bit later :) Millsy played for a good 3 hours and then Simon Digby came on and played for I dunno how long, but it was all good. Millsy plays his own stuff and there's a lot of raw sound that just gets into your skull and rattles around for a bit, good stuff that makes you dance big time! :)

I think I might be a bit of an alcoholic after all, because I drank a great deal through the night, starting with JD & Coke at Yak, moving to VB stubbies at the social club function, a couple of Coopers sparkling stubbies at St Jerome, then a few Tooheys Extra dry stubbies at the Metro and finally a few stubbies of Jim Beam and cola to wash it all down. I don't think the fact that I didn't drink anything for the rest of the weekend will be a good defense either, because that's still a lot of alcohol to consume :)

Got out of Metro about 7:30am and trammed it home with Joe, getting home about 8:00am. Couldn't really sleep but ended up snoozing on the couch a little, 'watching' a few movies like The Life of Brian and Team America: World Police, despite not really remembering seeing much :) I didn't even notice when Teen came out of her room and started talking to me, I just woke up feeling very non-refreshed and found she'd gone out and I'd had an hours sleep :)

Joe and I headed down to Fitzroy in the arvo to pickup our Earthcore tickets for next weekend (woo hoo!) and I couldn't remember exactly where the office was and ended up getting rock-star parking right in front of it :) We then headed into the city in search of a boost juice, and stopped at the juicery next to damien's house, just as they were closing, so we got a couple of freebies of what they had made up during the day that hadn't been collected, so that was good :) After we left the juice bar we sat outside to drink our drinks and we saw the two girls who came into the shop after us get locked in as the staff couldn't open the door again, they tried for a few minutes, even going out the back door and coming around with the keys and just couldn't manage it. I then laughed myself silly when damien just walked up and pushed the concertina door in the middle and the whole thing just slid open. so funny :)

Damien had just come back from Dubai, so he went to put on his dish-dash and invited us in to view his photos, pretty cool, lots of fabulous buildings. The funniest souvenir he brought back was an alarm clock in the shape of a mosque that sings the call to prayer for the alarm sound. very Blackhawk Down :)

Saturday night Damien, Kate and I went to se an absolutely hilarious film called Napoleon Dynamite. so funny, so tragic, such losers, it was superb. I might need to see it again. I'm a bit concerned about Kate, every time I see her lately she's looking better and better, and it's starting to get ridiculous :)

Sunday was international lazy day, with just the usual watching of DVDs and doing some work from home. Watched: THX-1138, The Hitcher, Mission to Mars, all new acquisitions :)

Brunch and the Bentleigh festival

Had lunch with Berley thios morning down the The Spotted Dog in Bentleigh. We were also hoping that Shaz would come along, but her father in law has had some health problems and so it was a long shot :(
We didn't realise at the time but the Bentleigh festival was on today, so Centre rd was blocked off for the exact section we needed to traverse, so we both had to do a big detour around the blockage.

Brunch was nice, the service was a smidge slow, but they were pretty busy, so we put up with it :) Berley and I discussed many things, including the fact that she's taken her belly ring out to avoid problems as she gets more gravid, and the appearance of her baby on the ultrasound (the spine looking like a crinkle cut chip)
Then we took a walk down to the festival to see what was going on, and it was a very strange place indeed. It seemed innocuous enough, My Whippy, sausage sizzle, a few marquees spread down the street, with banners proclaiming them as being associated local services (this is a local festival, for local people, there's nothing for you here!). However, once we got a bit closer things took a turn for the surreal :)

When you have the local law firm hand you a showbag, with brochures and lollies, you know you're in trouble, and no amount of camel rides can dig you out of it. There was also an appearance of the Frankston pipe band, as recognised by Berley, a Frankstonite from way back, but that was soon drowned out by the Police band rendition of The Black Eyed Peas' "Let's Get Retarded". Frankly, they succeeded. :)

The highlight of weirdness was when we saw a 'country' band playing. One guitarist was affecting the 'Chad Morgan' look (wide brim hat, folded up at front, big flat buck-toothed grin, with teeth missing) and one of the vocalists was going for the Larry Adler look and I'm glad to see he hasn't let Larry's death stand in his way :) The more disconcerting fact was that they were playing somewhat ribald numbers to a crowd that included some very young children. The last song we heard from them was written on honour of Kylie's famous bum ("Jason Donovan and Michael Hutchens, had it in their clutches"), and as we left they were down in the audience having a 4 year old yell out the catch phrase "kylie's arse" repeatedly. very weird :)

Who aren't you?

Last night was a big night, with Kate (incandescence noted earlier) was having her housewarming party, with a fancy dress theme of "Come as you aren't".
The first part of the night was not in fact the party but a trip to the finest pizza restaurant in Melbourne, namely: Papa Gino's
Now when I say 'finest' I'm not referring to the lavish decorations, liveried waiters or polished silverware. Because they don't have any of that shit. What they do have is a fantastic pizza. Their pasta is nice, and to be recommended, but there pizza is simply superb. Go there.

After pizza we went on to the party, with most of us not in costume and the costumes we did have being fairly simple and not that noticeable. Steph and Therese put cushions up their sleeves to be pregnant, and Joe wore a flannel shirt and toy hard-hat to be a construction worker. Mick, Bec, Lorna and I just wore normal clothes :) (I did have a costume planned but all the components proved too difficult to obtain, despite normally being common and simple, so I gave up)
There were however, a number of very good costumes there. Kate herself was a very snazzy looking cheerleader 'SynDeE', her housemates were mustachioed Mexicans, another friend was also 'pregnant' but much better at it than Steph and Therese, even had the sticking out belly button :) One girl was a bride in full wedding dress and had a accompanying bridesmaid, and there were a number of women dressed as men, but no men dressed as women :)

Later in the night there was the quaffing of the tequila shots and the smashing of the Piñata, not as easy as it looks and an activity full of the promise of accidental damage :) No tequila for me as I was driving :)

Overall a good night was had by all and much fun ensued.

separation

This friday night was spent at yet another bar, this time it was a place called 3 degrees, in the QV building.
Now, There have been comments to the effect that I'm drunk too often, because I spend so much time in bars, but I think this is not the case. I do write a lot about going to bars, but that's only because I told myself I wouldn't blog about work, and as such that just leaves socialising and hanging out. Now since I do a lot of socialising in bars and pubs, they are going to show up a lot. However this weekend is a good point in case, because while I spent last night in a bar, I only had 3 drinks. :)
Anyway, last night was something of a reunion of a whole lot of ex-work friends, and current work friends, so it was pretty much jam packed with people I like to hang out with. At the top of the list are people like Narelle and Lisa, Lee, Les, Shaz and Julie, with surprise appearances by Tracey and Rossco, and of course all the current crew (Joe, Bec, Darren and 3 Matts). It was a pretty good night, especially as I hadn't seen most of those guys in a while and even the regulars I hadn't seen in a few weeks. It was really good to hang out with Millsy and Lisa again, and Lisa and I had some of the craziest conversations possible. I can't even remember what the hell we talked about most of the night, but it was definitely funny because we were giggling like inmates at an insane asylum. At one point I was having a pretty good time, with one arm around Shaz and another around Lee while they both argued with each other about how much they miss me :) pretty good stuff ;) It's often fun to be sober at a night like that and have everyone around you become slowly more drunk, deteriorating more with each hour into a great sloppy mass of buffoonery. it cracks me up :)
3 Degrees was pretty good, nice bar, decent prices, good beer on tap and not too crowded. They even had this new vanilla flavoured vodka that made Matt W's Vodka & Squash taste just like a Splice ice cream. Very dangerous indeed :)

After the bar I had to go back to work for a bit (about 1:3am) and ended up having to walk the distance in the pouring rain, getting completely soaked to the skin. By the time I was leaving work and looking for a taxi it was about 2:30 and the rain had let up a little, but it still took nearly 45 minutes to get one, after having a few conversations with drivers who were 'going off shift' and not interested in taking a fare. Interesting how they decided not to switch off their dome light. :)

wagon wheel

I had a wagon wheel today and it was yummy. I've been drawn in by the advertising campaign, where they show the memories of people's first wagon wheel, dressing them up in cheesy kids clothes and making their toys and their wagon wheel gigantic so they look the same size they were then. they crack me up and make me want to eat a wagon wheel. the perfect ad campaign, especially since it specifically regains customers lost for decades. They don't really need to advertise to kids: chocolate, biscuit, marshmallow, jam. What's not to like for kids? and they're a constructed item that you can dismantle to eat, which kids like (I do, and have since I was a kid, so I assume kids still do)

Teen and I have been discussing the wagon wheel craving these ads gave us for a few weeks whenever we see the ad so I figured I'd better email her and tell her. I think I am officially a loser ;)

Spoke to Berley today, which is nice, and clarified something that her and Shaz had misunderstood about the Joe story below:

The girl Joe met was NOT an employee of the club, she was a normal
customer, there with her friend to give moral support to another friend starting
work there.

just to be clear :) Don't want anyone getting the wrong idea about her, not that it would be a problem if she did work there, but she doesn't. :)

Found a good site today, IWOOT, got lots of cool fun stuff, like ThinkGeek and Mr Gadget (although his are actual useful items). Check out the Room Defender :)

Killing your colleagues and washing part 2

Did the Uber-geek trip tonight at capers tonight, with network computer games. Kathryn and myself got into a bit of grudge work and managed to kill each other quite a bit, although driving a big off road vehicle into her and mashing her up against the concrete wall was my favourite :) (Halo, Warthogs).

The old saying that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree applies, as the geek doesn't fall far from the IT staff, believe me. :)

Now, to other news, there has been some comment about my need for a clothes dryer. Look, I know you're only trying to help, but to imply that there's some mythical 'magical' machine that can dry your clothes is just beyond the pale. I'm trying to eek out a clean clothes existence in this harsh world and you come along and throw mud in my face. Which, consequently, ends up dripping onto my tie. And you know how hard they are to wash. Actually, they're pretty easy to wash, just whack them in the garment bag, put the machine on gentle, and away they go. Obviously, you aren't meant to wash ties in the machine. You can't even dry clean them with guaranteed success, but the way I figure it, if they are so dirty you aren't going to wear them anyway, why not just wash them. worse case you have to throw them out, but you weren't wearing them anyway.
Luckily, 5 of the 6 ties make it through to the final round, with one eliminated due to disintegration (the stain didn't come out anyway) and another about to be eliminated as it also seems to be stained beyond my control :) it was my gold one too, oh well.

There was a time in my life when i swore I'd never cut my hair short and never wear a tie, and now I clipper myself to a Number 1 every few weeks and worry about how to wash my favourite ties properly. :) maybe it's this maturity I hear so much about?

washing

does anyone else hate hanging out washing and having to bring it back in again? I know my flatmate Teen does, because we talk about it quite a bit, but how about anyone else? I don't mind doing the actual washing, as that's pretty easy (although I still laugh when I see my light blue socks that used to be white and the light blue towel that used to be light pink, obviously I also own a dark blue towel and before you say it: yes, I understand what happened, but there's no need to dwell on it)

But what we're here to discuss is the physical act of hanging out and taking in the washing. I really don't enjoy it. If I thought I could trade it with Teen for having to clean the toilet every time, I'd probably go for it. Of course she hates it too, so that's obviously not going to work out. I think I may have been traumatized in my youth when my chore after school was to bring in the washing every day. Also, clearly, I am very lazy. One chore? and it scarred me for life?

Nonetheless, it adds a great deal of dislike to the washing chore and the result is we always have washing up in our flat unless we have special company coming over, as we both wait until the absolute last minute to take in the washing: when we want the clothes or have another load to hang out :)

if there were some way for the washing machine to turn the clothes into dry clothes and hang them back up in the wardrobe, that would be very useful to me.

obviously if you have such a device/washing machine, then I would appreciate it if you let me know and/or just bring it over and install it for me. thanks.

for shaz

Here you go Shaz, just for you:
Wired for sound


:)

Another Buck

Well, another weekend, another bucks party. This time it's Dave's bucks (ravey davey gravy) and it followed a more traditional theme.
We started out at The Elephant and Wheelbarrow in the city, with a few drinks funded by Dave's old man, with time spent catching up with everyone and getting back to drunk again (it's easier to get drunk again if you were really drunk the night before). So we spent about 4 hours there then headed off via a very noisy tram ride (20 drunken guys) down to King st for the traditional bucks party venue: a strip club.
The club du jour was Bar 20, which seemed to be hosting about 6 or 7 bucks nights that night, just going by the specialist t-shirts and the one guy with the ball and chain. I heard a few other guys say it was their mates bucks night oo, but I think that was mainly to try and get something extra from the dancers ;)
I don't know how much time you've spent in those places, but they are kind of strange. Obviously, it's not every club that has scantily clad women gyrating on stage (not since The Swagman burnt down anyway), but it's also just the very one-sided nature of it. You don't really notice it initially (there's near naked women to look at first), but eventually you realize that most of the men in there seem to believe that the women are some form of two dimensional plastic people, who don't require or deserve any respect, and therefore can be groped and manhandled at will. The amount of times I saw the girls being grabbed on the ass or boobs as they walked across the room was nasty. Some of them took it in their stride and just put on a wooden smile and kept walking, but some of them clearly couldn't handle it that well and looked like they were keen to punch someone. I dunno what's worse to be honest. I wouldn't want one of my friends working in a job where they were harassed so often they 'got used to it'.
I would also prefer the sex industry to not be one of the highest paid jobs a woman can get. I'm not saying they get paid too much, just that it's a bit hypocritical to have well paid business executives down King street at lunchtime paying money to the only girls in the same wage range as them so they'll take their clothes off.

ok ok, rant mode: off
sleazy guy mode: on

So we're out at Bar 20 for Dave's Bucks night, and there's a lot of extremely hot women getting naked and shaking their bits at us. We had two great girl-girl shows for Dave (ie: for us) and then we roamed about the club for about 6 hours drinking heavily and tying not to spend money on the stunningly beautiful and delightfully cheeky women who would saunter up to us and ask if we were interested in a personal dance. It was a pretty good night, but then something happened that was kind of unusual, although, in hindsight, completely typical :)

Joe picked up.

One of the dancers that Joe kept talking to finally convinced him to shell out some cash on a private dance, which made it easier for her friend to convince me to shell out some cash too, and while we're off in one of the little side rooms, another dancer comes in with a rather cute girl in tow who was clearly not a dancer (ie: fully clothed). So Joe does a very Joey thing and suggests to the cute girl that it would be best if she kisses him before the private dances continue. Which she seems to think is a good idea :)

So, enter Kate (or sometimes Katherine) and her friend Shauna, students out here from California (Napa Valley and Orange County respectively) and consequently our new friends :)
Shauna is out here studying to be a PE/Fitness teacher at Deakin and Kate seemed to be out here studying Joe, to the point where they got told off by one of the security guard because you can't have a girl sitting on your lap in the public area for too long :)

Does anyone want to calculate the odds of meeting someone at a strip club? I'm thinking they're pretty long, and they just got longer as it's already happened once this century.

Friday at De Biers

Ok, to be clear, we don't normally go to De Biers. We go there from time to time, as some very good friends of ours (Clare, Peta & Nikki) are very fond of it, and if we want to hang out with them on a Friday night, it means the occasional trip down there.
However, last night was an exception, as it was Nikki's 23rd birthday drinks, so we started out at De Biers. I arrived first, when only Clare, Nikki and Nikki's two sisters were there, so I grabbed a drink and we started to chat away while some guy did a fairly decent acoustic set, belting out the U2 and Dire Straits numbers :) Soon afterwards our mate Winston shows up, which is very good news, as we haven't seen Winnie in a very long time and he's good people. Then Joe showed up after work with Kathryn and Jasmine in tow, so obviously I apologize for having brought them to such a crappy place. :)
We pay out on De Biers a lot, but in actual fact it's not too bad a place. We don't like the music that much, as the usual early DJ is pretty crappy and plays mainly Top 40 with the occasional sexy house track, but only if it's popular, and the later DJ is much better, with the same playlist. Sometimes the SAME playlist, as in the same tracks the first DJ played, in the same order (but mixed much better)
So, it's good to see Winston again, so we chat a bit, Kathryn is happy to see me again as she had nobody to ask tricky tech question of all week, so she's standing very close with he arm around me, enough for Winnie to think we're going out (had to laugh), Nikki is happy to have all her friends and family there, Clare is happy to meet Winston, happy enough to crack on to him, Jasmine is happy to be out and chatting to some more people in Melbourne, especially Kathryn as she's from Brisbane and Jas worked there for a year and loved it, Winston is happy to have Clare keen on him, and also happy when Joe goes home drunk as he has a quick attempt to cut Joe's lunch with Jasmine, very unsuccessfully (disinclined to have any guys in her life at the moment), Jas and I have a bit of a dance to some good/crap/good/crap music :) Jas and I leave together, unable to find Winston to say goodnight (Kathryn had already left earlier, just before Joe), and I get to see something very amusing. Jas and I go back to work so she can get her stuff, and she disappears into the wardrobe at reception and reappears a minute later in a complete change of clothing, very amusing and unexpected, although I am easily amused. :)
Jas is amazed that we live near each other, despite telling her three times, so we share a cab and she offers to pay! hooray! :)


note: the above was typed in a state of drunkenness, but has been left untouched to ensure a true record is available for prosperity. :)

another day, another movie

Watched a few movies this week, some very good and some fairly average. As many of you (of the thousands who are reading) that I generally go to the movies every Thursday with Georgie and today was no excpetion. Tonight we saw Anchorman with Will Ferrell, and to be honest, it wasn't that good. It had a few good laughs, and I could happily watch Christina Applegate all day (old Married With Children memories from the late eighties) but overall, not that fabulous a movie, probably something to wait for video. Yesterday I went to see Resident Evil:Apocalypse and at first I was worried as it seemed not to flow very well at the start (and had a lot of superfluous plotlines) but once you just let the violence and mindless zombie killing wash over you, it's a fun movie :) Milla, of course, kicks ass :)

While I was watching Resident Evil I started thinking of a number of zombie movies and realised that I must actually be a fan of them. I loved the first Resident Evil, thoroughly enjoyed Shaun of the Dead, and still rate 28 days later at the top of my list.

Apart from life in the cinema, i've also watched a bit of DVD this week, such as The Lord of the rings trilogy (extended, extended, original), Starsky & Hutch, Dazed and Confused (followed the song "Sweet Emotion"), Kill Bill 1 & 2 with the incandescent Kate at her place, Happy Texas (been waiting a while for this one, damn funny stuff) Uncle Buck (so funny, so very funny) Sleepless in Seattle (wanted the same sappy feeling as UB) and Sneakers (recent purchase) and now I'm thinking I might need to watch The Sweetest Thing, for some more Christina Applegate :)

Only one more day of freedom, then back to a nromal weekend and back to work. I have to try not to sleep in until 12 now, don't know if I can handle it :)

Sorry for the link laden post, but I don't want to assume everyone knows what movies I'm talking about.

Holiday

"We're all going on a summer holiday, No more working for a week or two, Fun and laughter on a summer holiday, No more worries for me and you, For a week or two."

I'm off work for a week, just bumming around the house watching movies and sleeping on the couch. :)

I love holidays :)

The Buck and The Hen

Well, this weekend say the great festivities of Mick's Bucks party and Steph's Hens party. Obviously I can only speak in detail about the Bucks as I was not at the hens, but I do know some of the gossip :)

The Bucks started with a beer at Mick's place at 12pm, although Mick and Lambie had been drinking since 11. Then we headed off via tram to The Prince Alfred in port melbourne to begin the days celebration. The crew consisted of about 20, starting off with an even dozen then growing as the day wore on. The pub itself was pretty good, although our attempts to conceal the fact that we were on a bucks turn were quashed when the barman spotted it literally in about 30 seconds. The pub was cool thoguh and were happy to have us, especially since we weren't that rowdy and put nearly $700 over the bar through the day, plus another $300 in food.
It was a good day, got caught up with everyone and managed to finally meet Mick's dad and brothers in law. Funny thing about Mick's dad is that when he was young his best mate was a guy named Arthur Griffin, who I also knew quite well as a kid. When I was growing up my family was involved in the South Morang football and cricket clubs, and we spent a lot of time up there. Among their best friends were Arthur and Marcia griffin, so my brother and I spent a lot of time playing with Craig, Glenn and Jamie Griffin. When Arthur passed away it was very sad for my whole family, and it was really nice to meet someone who had also known him.
For the day we had used Mick's licence photos to make a T-Shirt, an old one on the front from when he had hair, and we used the photo off his new one to cover the back with photos of him in various hairstyles, mainly cheesy ones. We also all wore ID badges made from the "Mick with Hair" collection. :)
The pub was pretty good, and we'll probably head back there again. The Bar staff were cool, willing to put up with us and when it came time for Mick to get thrown out they were very understanding :)

So we drank heavily, mick sang with the band, various members of the team chatted up various members of other teams and then we made a move on to the next pub. The next two pubs were crap, so we grabbed a greasy supper pizza/souvlaki/etc and went back to The Prince Alfred again.

By this stage there was a very cool band playing called The Nudists, a three piece band playing electronic music on analogue instruments. tracks from Groove Armada, basement Jaxx and the like, very cool.

Then we started to head back to Chez Mick then got the call that the girls from Steph's Hens night were at Hubcap, so a slight detour had us arrive there, to do a little dancing, a little more drinking, and a little laughing at how drunk they were. (Not us of course, we were a picture of sobriety)

Steph decided it would be a good idea to get up on the tabel for one of the numbers, and Mick decided that it was his opportinuty for a little striptease. Luckily peer group pressure stopped im in time :)

Anyway, here are a few photos:
One of Mick's challenges was to sing karaoke, but since there wasn't any available he ended up singing a number with the first band that was up. These guys were pretty good and did most of the pub classics and a few newies. They were so good that nobody left when Mick started caterwauling :)

Obviously, you drink all day, you get drunk. I mean it's no big surprise. By the time we met up with the Hens night, we were all pretty hamered and in need of a bit of a boogie.

Of course the girls had been drinking all day too, so it really didn't take much for Steph to get up on the table, followed by Mick. Although to her credit, she was sober enough to stop him taking his pants off. It's possible he was just bluffing but that's a risk none of us wanted to take :)

Another Friday

Another fine friday, drinking down at Yak. In the usual process of a Friday, my 4:30 finish turned into a 6:00pm finish and a strong desire to have a drink. I wasn't drinking to forget, but to remember that I have all of next week off work :)

So a few beverages at Yak, discussing the merits of the weird Asahi beer tap setup that's been temporarily fitted to the bar. As Yak doesn't have any beers on tap it's a bit unusual, and Mark (the owner) is interested to see if it's worth keeping or if the initial high sales are merely due to the novelty factor.

As we were leaving Yak later on, we ran across a group of people looking at some visual art (an alley near work has a piece up where they're projecting video at the end of the alley) and the two girls enticed us to join them, to the chagrin of the two guys trying to pick them up :) Joe continued on with them to Honky Tonks and proceeded to try his best to cut the lunch of the other guys, but Damien and I departed for Subway and our various directions home. It was funny to watch the expressions on the two guys as we agreed to join them, they obviously didn't realise that if the girls they were with were asking other guys to join them, then they weren't interested in the guys they had already :) Joe failed in his lunch cutting endeavors, but it was still funny to have tried :)

I arrived home to find our guests had arrived, Katrina's Cousin Sally, brother Ger (Gerard) and his girlfriend Marnie and their friends Blackie (Adam) and Michelle. Seven People in a two bedroom flat: we all had somewhere to sleep at night, but nowhere to sit during the day :)

Delightful Irony

I just heard that 'You Are My Sunshine' song on TV and it made me smile, as it always does. I find that song very ironic, as it is used heavily to symbolise happines and joy, and it's actually about sadness and loss.


Here's a copy of the lyrics, there are multiple versions, but the full versions all follow this theme:

You Are My Sunshine
Norman Blake

The other night dear, as I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you in my arms
But when I awoke, dear, I was mistaken
And So I hung my head and I cried.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

I'll always love you and make you happy,
If you will only say the same.
But if you leave me and love another,
You'll regret it all some day:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

You told me once, dear, you really loved me
And no one else could come between.
But not you've left me to love another;
You have shattered all of my dreams:

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

In all my dreams, dear, you seem to leave me
When I awake my poor heart pains.
So when you come back and make me happy
I'll forgive you dear, I'll take all the blame.

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine
You make me happy when skies are gray
You'll never know dear, how much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

As you can see, it's filled with negative imagery and somewhat creepy thoughts. I first came into contact with the actual lyrics of this song back in the late eighties and since then I've been highly amused whenever I see it used in such a positive context. I think that perhaps the Executive Board of Golden Circle might not have heard the full version, that's for sure :)

Music

Forgot to say: Buy the new CD from Infusion
It's very good, and they are very good, and if you buy it you'll be very good, and if you don't then you are a small-minded, petty fool, and you should expect to see you soul shrivel up in the pits of hell (assuming they exist) (assuming the soul exists)
No Pressure :)

Actually, they are a very cool Australian group producing dance music that fits well in anyone's collection that includes Groove Armada or Basement Jaxx, and I would like to see them doing well, so if everyone who reads this buys a copy of the CD then that's at least 4 more CDs they'll sell :)

television inspired thoughts

I love watching those americans and their electoral system. I think it's really important to follow new technology, I mean you can't stay living in the past when you could have punch cards, mechanical tally devices, touch screen polling booths, lever activated polling booths, little curtains to guarantee their privacy, vast advertising campaigns to register to vote, since the percentage of registration is so low. I'm just a bit concerned about the most powerful democracy on the planet, fighting to bring the right to vote to the oppressed nations of the world and yet they seem to have a lot of trouble with one of the relatively minor aspects of the process: COUNTING THE VOTES.

I know you always feel loyal to your own country and stuff, but we just have cardboard booths, cardboard crowd control devices, paper ballots, pencils taped to string, and yet, somehow, through all this antiquated technology, we somehow manage to actually count the actual votes that people make. I know. It's crazy. We must be doing something wrong I'm sure. I hope the free trade agreement lets us buy some new fangled vote-calculator-trope to bring us out of the dark ages ;)

Also, I just had the TV tell me that ballroom dancing was in a revival, because there is a TV show (two actually, but I guess the ABC doesn't count) and a movie with J-Lo, and that the revival started with Strictly Ballroom in 1992. I'm not 100% convinced that a revival we're going through right now can be linked by a cluster of events twelve years after their 'initial' event. Is it just me?

And at the moment the Banks aren't the ones making the beautiful 'embrace life' adverts anymore, now it's beer. Anyone seen the new Crown Lager ad? makes me want to go out and buy insurance or something. ;)

Birthday Bonanza

Two birthday functions last night, both full of friends I hadn't seen in a while and both birthday boys got hammerred. a job well done I say :)

Started at PAs for Mick's birthday, where the Pot, Parma and Perve well all in good order, and everyone seemed to have a very good time chewing the fat and catching up, Managed to catch up with people like Rose, Bec and Shaz D whom I haven't seen in a while. Mick got totaled fairly early and had to be taken home at 10:30 as he seemed to have trouble standing, he did have a big smile on his face all night though, so I think he had a good time :)

Then from PAs we whisked off to Room680 for Paul Meeuwsen's birthday bash. They'd set up in the house room, and only Paul's guests were allowed in, even still it was packed out, which bodes well for young Dutchie.
The night went right off, caught up with Ali, Vlad & Michelle and Boaz, then got down to dancing big time, first to a little hard stuff from Paul's brother then out in the main room for some residents and a special appearance by Nick Warren, which was absolutely tip top!

Of course some sleep would have been nice too, but you can't have everything.

Then popped out with Joe to the Camberwell Geek Fest (Computer Swap Meet) and bought a cool adslmodem/firewall/switch/wireless router combo thingy so that it's easier to connect other machines to the net and especially easy to surf from bed with a laptop from work :)

Now I'm watching Series 2 of The Young Ones, still very very funny after nearly 20 years :)

Yak

Yet another friday mired in Yak bar. I dunno what it is, we just have a hard time leaving the place. I was on call so I couldn't drink too much, which I obviously said too many times because even Baz behind the bar started asking me if I wanted a drink or if I was still on call :) The answer of course was "both" :)

Spent time with some of the people from work we don't normally drink with, Kathryn, Karen and Elise from the Service Desk. I don't know why we don't spend more time drinking with them, I mean they are good people, I had a great night, lots of good conversation and laughs aplenty. I think it just doesn't work out that we're out with them, just one of those things.

Copped a bit of flack from Kathryn as she wants to borrow Wallace&Gromit and I keep forgetting to bring it in (it's only been a few months) and some flack from Karen as she wants a tour of the computer room and I keep forgetting (a few months too) oh well.

Feed

Just for you Richard, I've syndicated, ok? just check the XML icon, RSS and Atom compatible, blah blah blah

Shaun

Went to see Shaun of The Dead tonight, damn good movie. Especially funny for anyone who is a fan of Spaced like me, just laughed myself silly all the way through.
There's something very enjoyable about watching Simon Pegg and his mate Nick Frost smacking Zombies in the head with a cricket bat and shovel.

Anyway, that's all, just go see it before it's too late ;)

Beautiful one day, pissing down the next

So yesterday, great day, very warm, very nice. Spent the evening sitting in Time Out at Fed Square, drinking beer, watching the world go by and listening to the 'Singing in the Square' which was basically Karaoke for large crowds.

Imagine trying to enjoy your conversation and beer when there's a guy on stage 100m from you leading a few hundred people in a round of Advance Australia Fair or INXS' Original Sin and you can imagine our evening :) It was pretty funny actually, listening to individuals singled out for a solo trying to sing well, and not really being able to. I know I can't sing well, so I save my Karaoke for late in the evening when you know everyone is very drunk :)

A very good night indeed, mainly just Joe and I sitting there and surreptitiously perving on all the attractive women walking past :) Not to mention a few sitting nearby ;)
I'm not sure if you know, but it turns out that there are a LOT of really attractive women in Melbourne, and they all like to come out on a warm evening. :) It's good, it's very good.

Then today we had a Melbourne classic, a very wet and rainy day to follow a hot day. Just to cool everything down and let everyone know that it's not time for the 'summer configuration' outfits yet, no shorts and dollar-ninety-eights, although the $1.98's seemed prevalent during winter anyways :) What's the fascination with the old thong? where are the studies showing how bad they are for your posture? I remember being told as a kid that I couldn't wear my thongs all summer because they are bad for you, nobody's telling the fashionistas this, that's for sure.

Although I'm glad to see that the $1.98's are in fact available for $1.98, assuming you're willing to go all the way to Coles and not just walk next door to the surf shop and buy their cheapest $15's, like Mick in Echuca. I mean really, a surf shop in Echuca, you know something's not quite right :) (yes I know it's surf wake and ski, and sells waterskiing gear and surfwear, but it's funnier my way, believe me)

Translation

Ever played the Translation Game?
Take a simple sentence and translate it back and forth and see what you get.
For example, how do you get from:

Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of language translation. remember to check back from time to time to ensure your phrasing hasn't changed.

to:

Hello and welcomes to the wonderful world of language translation do not remember you to examine occasionally back to guarantee your expressing have changed.

or to:

Hello and reception to the wonderful world of the translation of the language remembers to verify behind as of time at the time of assuring his to express has not changed.

Just go Engligh to German to English, or English to Spanish to English. But my favourites are the multiples:

Hallo and the reception in the world admirable remembers to the translation you of the time to the hour of reexamines the return, not to guarantee its to express moved.

(English-German-French-English-Portugese-English)

I know it's an old trick, but it still makes me laugh :)

Democracy, Personality testing

Had some interesting conversations on the weekend about the whole electoral process, and it came to my attention the not everyone knew how the two part preferred system worked (mainly because I explained it to about 200 people (ok, maybe 4))
It makes me wonder about what percentage of people actually understand the system that governs them, and therefore what sort of choices are they making? I learnt all that stuff in school, and I understand a couple of my friends who are recent citizens, but I guess I assume too much when I assume that all schools taught the electoral process.


Checked out a friends blog (you post too much Richard, it's incessant, nobody can write two-three lines a day, you're living in a fantasy world) :) and he had this, check it out, it's cool :)

I am Pacman. I am an aggressive sort of personality, out to get what I can, when I can. I prefer to avoid confrontation, but sometimes when it's called for, I can be a powerful character. I tend to be afflicted with munchies constantly. What Video Game Character Are You?

I'm a bit concerned that I'm PacMan, I don't really like PacMan. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure he's a nice guy, he even had a girlfriend (Ms PacMan, she had the same job, I bet their conversations were boring) But I didn't really enjoy playing it. I played my fair share, having grown up in an era where video games were few and far between, you played Space Invaders (Spacies), Asteroid, PacMan, DigDug, Summer Games, Donkey Kong, etc. but some games you liked more than others (Exed Exes, Discs of Tron, Rastan Saga, Spy Hunter, Defender) and you tended to spend your 20c on those rather than the others, so while I'm happy to be PacMan, I wouldn't like to spend time with myself because of it.
I'm also willing to accept the PacMan label because of the saying: If Pacman had affected us as kids we'd be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive music.

Accents and Elections

Friday was pretty normal, out drinking to excess then eat greasy junk food before going home to bed :)
It started at Velour bar for Kylie's birthday drinks, which was quite enjoyable despite the lack of people in the bar. Normally that place is very busy on Fridays but this time it was pretty dead, with almost every person there being a friend of Kylie's. Had an interesting discussion with some people about accents and behaviours. Diane whose family is originally from Sicily started talking about how people from different areas of Sicily might have dialects so different that they couldn't really understand each other. Then we go on to how the same sort of process goes on everywhere, and even here in Melbourne, there are the beginnings of it. Where similar things have slightly different names, such as children's games, what we called 'Chasey' growing up in Greensborough they called 'Tiggy' in Coburg, and what we called 'Kiss Chasey' was referred to in Canberra as 'Catch and Kiss'. It's a fairly minor thing, but it happens across the language, and if it keeps happening for a few hundred years you would eventually have a completely separate dialect.

Then of course Saturday as the big election day. We all exercised our suffrage and made our choices for the next few years. Also went over to Sean's new place for a bit of a housewarming and managed to catch up with a few key people in my life, which was pretty good. Also got to play with a couple of dogs which was a lot of fun, despite the inevitable dog slobber problem when you're throwing the ball or stick :)

Saturday night was at The Elgin, sitting up on the couches by the fire and having a few friendly beers with a couple of friends, then the rest of our crew showed up after having been at the races all day and we had a few more beers. At one point the 9 of us were getting annoyed by the only two other people in the entire bistro that had turned up the TV very loud to hear the speeches from the politicians. I tried asking if we could turn it right down of turn it off, but they stated very clearly that they wished to view it, despite the fact that they were disturbing 9 other people, they wished to hear the speeches. Not entirely sure who decides to come down to a pub to watch the election and then sits almost all the way across the room and has the TV turned up very loud, but they did seem to be very unwilling to hear the voice of the common man (me). They did state their political preferences, but I won't 'out' them here, suffice it to say they were pompous and annoying, living in hawthorn, and very happy with the results ;)

More stuff

Well, since I've been getting flack from about 50% of my readership to get an update in place (ie.: two people) so here it is :)

Echuca

We've just spent the weekend in Echuca and I have to say it was very relaxing. We'd been up there last year about the same time and had decided that a return visit was essential. Drove up friday afternoon in Steph's new Statesman and spent a very funny friday in a couple of the pubs, namely the Echuca (where we were staying, excellent meals) and the yank (The American, not as good as last year, but a nice loud pub nonetheless).

The drive up and back was scatterred with Utes on the way to and from the annual Deniliquin World Record Ute Muster as well as the inaugural World Record Blue Singlet Muster. You've never seen more Bundy rum and Buffalo Horn stickers in your life. Judging by the amount of utes on the road I suspect they made their 3000 utes to beat their last world record.

It also seems that this weekend was the Footy Trip/Netball Trip weekend of choice, so the city was full of drubken groups of people on matching T-Shirts with humourous nicknames on them. :)

Nonetheless, we had a pretty good time. I'd happily recommend anyone eating a pub meal in Echuca to go to the Echuca hotel on High street, and anyone seeking accommodation that was quite, clean, modern and comfortable to avoid staying over the pub like we did :) Oh, and the beer's pretty good too :)

Anyway, it was a very good weekend, great weather, good food, good beer, and good fun laughing at Ye Olde Pisse Weak World (The Historic Port of Echuca)

Delays

Obviously it's been some time since my last post :) I guess I've been doing nothing recently.

Actually I have been doing quite a lot, and just haven't posted anything.

Went to the KPMG ball a couple of weeks ago, that was pretty good. The theme was Illumination, and the floor shows consisted of some synchronised dancing, circus performers spinning around up near the ceiling, dancers throwing their partners through the air, tap dancers doing routines in shiny costumes, and the letters for the word 'illumination' seeming to dance around on the side stage. Lighting was very 'rave party' based, dark with lasers and glow-sticks aplenty.

The band was a very good 80s cover band with go-go dancers for some sets and the DJ played some fairly mainstream current dance anthems, so the dance floor was pretty much packed from the first song to the last, which was pretty good. Food was excellent and the usual 'endless glass' ensure everyone got rather drunk, although there are no horror-stories that came out of it about who got up to what with who and who saw it, so it can't have been that bad :)

Last weekend I went skiing with Mick and the Lambs, which was a pretty good weekend away, although my skiing was atrocious, just no stamina or strength in my legs at all, which was very annoying. I only ended up skiing for half a day, despite it being a beautiful sunny spring day. Oh well.

Also I have been having some fun watching DVDs, including watching series 4 of Coupling with the incandescent Kate, One Perfect Day with Joe and 'tine and starting to watch Star Wars on DVD.

We've also started thinking about our plans to go to Echuca sometime later this year, but there's nothing fixed yet.

That's it, just a quick update so you know I'm still alive. :)

Impressions

Went to see The Impressionists at NGV with Kate yesterday. Very good, recommend it to anyone. It's quite a feeling to see so much talent and vision packed into one set of rooms, works created by some of the greatest, some of them simply breathtaking. When you stand across the room from a painting so life-like and yet not anywhere near as detailed as a photograph, and you eye and perception fills in all the details you need to the point where you are transported to the location and time of the piece, it's really something special. And then whan you consider the artist created it sititng a dozen inches from the canvas, by daubing little pieces of paint on there seemingly at random, or so it appears when you stand that close to it, it's very humbling.
And of course Kate (the Incandescent Kate) is one of the better people to go to something like that, which is especially handy sicne she got the free tickets, not me :)
I am very happy that I am friends with Kate, and yesterday was a very good example of why :)
We also went to see a very cool film called Before Sunset, the sequel to Before Sunrise that I haven't seen, also Kate's suggestion, and also free.
That Kate's pretty good, I tell you ;)

Friends

Be warned: I'm shitty at keeping in touch with my friends :)
In the last week I've had two people concerned that I didn't exist anymore, and that's not the first time.
I have a tendency to be very passive in keeping in contact with my friends, usually being so lazy that I wait for them to make contact with me. I know it's terrible, and I try not to do it, but I keep falling back into the same behavious pattern again and again.
Which means I spend a lot of time explaining to my friends that I still care about them and that they haven't done anything wrong and that, as cliched as it is, it's not them it's me.
So be warned, that as a friend I am very likely to be bad at keeping in touch with you, but also be aware, that when you do contact me, I'll be as supportive as I can be, regardless of having spoken to you yesterday or 3 years ago. :)

that's all for now

Late Shift

Well, I'm back at work, and this week it's the Late Shift, finishing up at 8pm. Nothing worse than the late shift, I arrive and everyone pounces on me to get something done, which I only have half a day to do for them, and then the last half is often wreathed in boredom :)

Boy I'm glad t be back ;)

Last Day

Last day on the slopes, so we all march out to do our duty ;)
Weird day, very cloudy and windy at the top of the slope when you get off the chairlift, but nice and open underneath, so you start the run with limited visibility but then it opens up to real nice skiing.

Spent most of the day on Ruined castle with a little jaunt on the summit before lunch. As we came upon the gully chair, having skied from the summit all the way to the bottom of the jar, we noticed a little rain, which turned unto snow as we went up the 50 meters altitude covered by the lift.

During lunch time the weather got worse, to the point where it was really bucketing down later in the afternoon, switching from rain to sleet to snow flurries then back again as the temperature wavered slightly, very weird :) Needless to say I didn't ski in that garbage as I'd already had a great morning and didn't want to spoil it by getting cold and wet ;)

Dinner was pasta and everything else left in the kitchen :) lasagna was great again

White

White is the colour I expected to see on the ground, and occasionally in the sky, but when you see it everywhere in every direction, you know it's not going to be a good day :)

Woke up and visibility was about 10-30 meters, with a real loss of definition of the snow on the ground. Loss of definition means that you can't easily tell what the ground looks like, the snow all looks a slightly blurry white (or blue, without glasses or goggles) and you can't see if it's ice, snow, powder, groomed, even, bumpy, slushy, etc. So you essentially ski by feel, adjusting your skiing style for the terrain based on when your skis hit it. When you're skiing down an access trail at 5km/h is relatively easy, but skiing down a 60 degree slope at 40km/h is very tricky indeed :)

So discretion being the better part of valour, I stayed in the lodge. Nobody else agreed, but when visibility dropped to about 2 meters later on, the clatter of people returning to the lodge seemed to validate my decision :)

Their tales of disorientation and almost being lost and nearly going off the edge of the trails, filled me with the self-righteous joy I deserved ;)

This brings me on to Scooter's Snow Rant number 1: Clothing and colour choice.
Why on earth would you choose to wear a white or cream coloured clothing in an environment where getting lost can kill you and where people travel at high speed with sharpened edges. I guarantee that more people will die or be injured in white and cream then in blue, yellow, red and brown. Although, the one thing better than that was the trend a few years ago for snowboarders to wear Arctic Tundra camouflage jackets. A disruptive pattern material especially designed to make it hard to see you in a snow covered tree/bush landscape. I remember standing at the bottom of Slalom Gully at Hotham, in a light snow fall, and these guys were literally slipping in and out of visibility at a range of 20 meters, while the people around them were completely visible. This was the same year that some snowboarders died after wandering off the patrolled area, and I remember distinctly thinking that they were probably wearing the latest fashion trend and it would have helped kill them.
This of course brings us to my favourite concept: Evolution in action - stupid people die early. And it would be perfect if they didn't keep taking smarted people with them :)

Anyway, that's the rant for today ;)

Light cloud, roast, guests, drinks

Light cloud in the morning, so out we go again to ski some more :)
Skied all over the Summit and Ruined Castle, making the most out of the good snow and good visibility, with real improvement seen in my style, especially down Cabbage Patch, where I was skiing like a CHAMPION!

(if I do say so myself) :)

Tonight's meal was supposed to be a night out in the village, but we decided that there was no need, as we had more than enough food (hence the leftovers the previous night). So tonight turned into Roast and drinkies night.
Chris C found that he had met a few people he knew from Perth on the slopes, so they came to the lodge for pre-dinner drinks, then Chris S had invited some friends to dinner and post-dinner drinks, so it was a full lodge that night :) Three roasts were cooked on the new Barbecue (with roasting hood) and everyone going up the chairlift in the afternoon was yelling out comments about how they wanted to come for dinner :)

The friends Chris S had invited were Craig and Cindi who worked on the mountain and were involved in running the resort, so we had a good chat about the marketing opportunities in the mountain and how they needs to improve things :) I think we gave them a bit of a grilling :) but then we got on to stories about falling on the slopes and broke the ice a bit, no pun intended. It was interesting to hear about the Freestyle MotorX jumping that they had a few nights earlier. We had wondered why they had painted a big combined Target roundell and World Industries devil-boy logo on the snow (10 meters across), but it turns out that World Industries, who were sponsoring the MotorX action, had just done a huge launch through Target and Craig was keen to show them how this sort of event could be turned into a revenue. Pretty interesting stuff actually. We also got the skinny on the plans to replace the playground and Lakeside Pomas with a chair, which is welcome news for me :) I hate the damn pomas :)

More Sunshine

Yet another glorious sunny day, skiing hard on the summit in the morning and then the afternoon over at Towers.
A good long hard day of skiing, crystal clear blue skies, right up until the beautiful whisps of orange in the sunset. Skied until my legs told me I was due to stop, then limped home on the village trail, snowplowing like a beginner :) (and grinning like an idiot)

Skied a lot of the mountain:
Summit -The Knolls, Exhibition, Cabbage Patch, The Slot, Chainsaw
Ruined Castle -St Elmo's, Ruined Castle, Father Fosters, Big Dipper
Scott -Scotty's, Sundown, Shadow Ridge
Towers -Main Street, Rapunzel's, Highway 83

Dinner was leftover Curry, Leftover Mexican, a spare Lasagna and whatever else we could squeeze in. All still good after being reheated, the Lasagna being especially good, and a preview of the Pasta night to come :)

Sunshine and the Summit

Awoke to the sound of kids playing noisily outside the bedroom door, tried to get back to sleep until I heard one mention that they couldn't see any clouds! Got up quick smart to discover that it was a gorgeous clear day, sun shining brightly and only a few wisps of cloud. A good day to be out there skiing :)
Brekky of scrambled eggs on toast, bacon and eggs cooking on the barbecue on the balcony,
Adrian getting lots of comments from people going past, mainly envious ;)

Then it’s off to school for the kids and the adults hit the Summit runs just outside our door.Fabulous steep runs, groomed fresh, hardly anyone else on them, we ski all across the hill, each time meeting up at the chairlift with huge grins on our faces. The best skiing available, deep packed cover on steep groomed runs, a quick chair, no crowds and crystal clear skies. Did some of the best skiing I’ve ever done, turning well, spending a lot of time with my torso and skis pointed down the hill, just using the edges in the turns. Skied until lunchtime when the legs were starting to give out. Definitely need to improve fitness for next year, but then I said that last year too ;)

Quick lunch of some sandwiches and then its out again over to do a few runs on Scott’s and Ruined Castle. Went a little adventuring between the two, since normally there isn’t snow between them except at the bottom. Visibility had dropped as clouds rolled in, cutting down the definition so it became hard to spot exactly what you were skiing on, you can’t see the loose snow, ice, bumps, etc, so you just ski into it and work it out as you go along. It’s a bit harder on the knees as you have to do the whole shock absorber thing :)

Dinner consisted of barbecue, with heaps of fresh bread and everyone sitting around the table laughing at the stories of the day, seems like everyone had a fabulous day, the sort of thing you are always looking for, nobody can have a bad day with weather like today’s :)

First Runs

Up bright and early, as we’re all keen and the kids need to be mobilized to get them all to ski school by 9:45am. I ski alone for a large part of the morning, heading over to Ruined Castle and doing about 6 runs before I have to queue for the chairlift. Spend a lot of time on Father Foster’s listening to Prodigy and Red Hot Chilli Peppers and bouncing down the hill working on my short turn technique. A fabulous morning over at the castle, where I was later joined by Adrian and Rodney. We skied all over the castle and then zapped over to the Summit where my knees started to cramp really badly, so I went back to the lodge for lunch :)
After lunch was back at the castle for a few more runs and then stopped early due to the return of the bad knees :)
Monday night also saw a moto cross trick jump exhibition, the first time on snow in the southern hemisphere, situated right outside the lodge, so all we had to do was walk out on to the heater alcony and get a great view of the 4 riders doing flying supermen, kickers, and even a backflip. One of the guys tried his first backflip in the snow and didn’t quite make it, so he left the bike while it was still upside down and slammed it down into the big snow ramp, scary for him, but highly entertaining for us :)

On The Road

7am in Rowville. Not a pleasant concept at all, awake at 5am after a good solid 3 hours sleep, and cruising out to the Hillier’s place where we were all meeting up. A large mountain of food and stuff, spread across three cars, one of them a crew-cab triton ute, so it had the lion’s share :) On the trip are: Sharon and Adrian Hillier, with kids Zack, Cassie and Jade. Rodney and Jim brother and friend of Adrian’s, Chris and Danielle Cawood and daughter Tamara (pronounced ta-MAR-a). Chris and Tamara (pronounced TAM-ra) Stilwell and their children Caylie and Colin.
Pretty good drive, stopped at McDonalds Glenrowan for fuel and breakfast and then stopped at Mt Beauty for chains. Beautiful view of the mountains on the drive up the Alpine Highway, beautiful clear skies made it possible to see the entire mountain range covered in snow, the best I’ve ever seen, absolutely stunning. Also, a real bonus, we didn’t miss the turn off to Mt Beauty this time :)
Arrived on the Mountain about 1pm, just in time to meet Chris and Danielle, who came up via bus as they now live in Perth and had flown in to Albury and gotten a lift to Mt Beauty with Chris’ parents.
The Oversnow transport at Falls Creek is really cool, big tracked vans, like those use in the Arctic and Antarctica. So we load up all the stuff and grind up the mountain to the lodge.
Every year we stay in the same lodge, Cummings no 7, which is located at the top of the village bowl, just near the Eagle chair to the main areas and also just near the Summit chair to the advanced area around summit and international. Right in the centre of everything, easily able to ski in and out. :) I resume my role as king of the kids, performing both as court jester, punching bag, adventure playground and chief source of shoulder rides :) I think they sense that I never really grew up ;)

Chance favors the prepared mind

Today was all about preparing for the ski trip tomorrow. In theory. In actuality it involved sitting around watching movies and surfing the net and only doing preparation for the ski trip at the last possible moment, finishing at 2am instead of the preferred 9pm :)

Lamb Feddish

Well, what else does a Friday bring but drinking :)

Started with two work groups getting together at Feddish bar, coincidentally ending up right next to each other, stealing some space that had been booked to another group from our work (but not our area) but we didn't feel too guilty, they had space for about 30 people and only 5 showed up :) It was pretty good, hanging out with Clare, Peta,Nicki, Bec, Raylene, Sharon D, Joe, Damien, Mick, Steph, Lee, Matt, Kylie, Jamie, Amber, Belinda, Lochie, Amelia. Turned into an amusing night watching Joe try to survive being in a group of some many women that he had snogged (or more) and still trying to make his move on another :)

So much fun was had by all on the banks of the Yarra, consuming alcohol with great abandon until happy hour ran out, and then still drinking fairly quickly :)

Then it was off to The Lambs Go Barr in Fitzroy with Mick and Steph to meet up with Kate and her crew. That was pretty nice, had a few more drinks and had some nice long conversation with the Katemeister, even managed to meet her friend Kerry from Canberra that she has been hanging out with a bit.I must say that I very much enjoy Kate's company. I don't think I've ever been bored in her presence and could converse with her for hours. Her friend Kerry is very cool too, she has that Canberra intellectual thing going, so she's very articulate and seems able to converse seriously on silly topics without batting an eye :)

Cushions

Ok, so now we're washing the cushions off the couch, which we don't own but it belongs to my flatmate's sister :) the covers say Professional Wash Only, but we figure we'll give it a go in the washing machine and see what happens. I mean they're cream coloured covers, getting yellower every month, so something needs to be done :)

so, they're in the wash, and it will either work or not, time will tell.

Weekend update, about three days late

:) Well, what fun is a weekend update on the weekend?
Friday: work end of project dinner, pretty good, sat at the boring end for a bit and then it ended up being the good end when more exciting people showed up. Including a couple of work people that I don't normally speak to that much, so it was good to finally have a social conversation :) Then out to Camberwell to see He Jam, Rose, Trudes, Erin, Damien and Joe. The Palace, normally a shit bar, held true, but at least it was fun lauching at the cheesy dancers, especially when Erin got up and danced in a cheesy way too :)
Saturday: Nothing, bought Cool Hand Luke, Butterfly Effect and Proof, and no man can eat 50 eggs, let me tell you that!
Sunday: nothing, work, boring :)

That's it!

Skiing

While I was changing the tire I noticed a legacy from the day trip Georgie and I took to the snow the other weekend. And since it was such a re-letter day, I figured I'd post the whole skitrip story here :)

So, Winter is upon us and Georgie and I figured we should get in some time up at the snow, so the scene is set, the plans made. We decide to take my car, as George needs new rear tires, and his car is a big V8 statesman, so any loss of traction on the rear would be disastrous, as the car is heavy end powerful and would slip out of control very easily. Also, every time we've gone to the snow in recorded history, we've taken his car, so it was my turn. My car is overdue for a service, but not really hurting from it, it's in need of a new battery, but an overnight charge every 12 months covers it nicely, I also need new tires, as there's some uneven wear on the front due to a need for a wheel alignment, but there's still enough tread, and it's a small 4 cylinder front-wheel-drive, so even if it loses traction a little, it's easier to get it back under control.

The day starts as usual, very early :) The drive up is uneventful, the usual stop at Mansfield for chain hire and something to eat. Then the fun begins. Usually most of the places in Mansfield have ladder chains for hire, except a RUD shop, which had diamond chains for a good price. Now there's no RUD shop, and the main shop only had ladders. No biggie, you rarely have to fit chains at Buller on a Saturday.

As we enter the mountain we are informed that we'll need to fit chains.

This is always a bummer, especially when you discover that one of the chains is too large and doesn't fit right. But being a ladder chain, it fits ok. Except I forget about the trick to take up the slack at the end of the chain, and now I have scratches around the front quarter panel ;)

We get on the mountain, have a few runs around Horse Hill and then start to head over the other side. We ski down the the bottom of Grimmus, only to discover it's closed, due to high wind. Now our only solution is the very crowded T-Bar. As you may already know, Georgie and I are big guys, and two big guys going up a steep hill on a T-Bar are apt to joke about it breaking. This is all pretty funny, up until the point where it actually breaks. That's when it became insanely funny. We're lying in the snow either side of the T-Bar track pissing ourselves with laughter, Georgie with a T-Bar in his hand. Everyone coming up the T behind us started laughing as soon as they saw us. It was a lot of fun :) Then some ski patrollers coming up the T offered to take the broken T up for us, and we realized afterwards we'd made a mistake. From then on all the people coming up the T weren't laughing with us, they were laughing at us, assuming we'd fell off the T, rather than the T falling off on us :)
The day was a serious blizzard, visibility <5 meters, horizontal snow and sleet, hands freezing to the ski poles on the T-Bar. We have to herringbone up the hill, into the wind, through the snowmaking (wiping sleet off your goggles every few seconds) and down the gentle beginners slope, visibility so bad at times that we're skiing down by feel, knowing if you're on ice, snow or in a drift only when your skis hit it.

We stop for lunch and have some very bad food, my phone decides to reset itself, clearing all the data, leaving nothng in the memory, no phone numbers, no calendar, no extra game software. Not a big problem as I had it synched with my work machine, but It was very annoying at the time.

As we're taking the trail back to the sheltered side I have to spend 5 minutes staning in the blizzard in the middle of the trail, with nobody else in sight, that he is on the wrong trail to the village, but that he should follow it anyway, instead of heading out across the top of the hill. The trail markers are bright orand and about 10 meters apart, so you can only see the next one after you pass one, not before, and this bozo wants to strike out across country, looking for a trail he won't recognize, on a mountain he doesn't know, marked by poles he may not see, alone. I try to make it clear that he will probably die, that I wouldn't risk it myself, as I'd probably get lost and I knew what direction it was and had used the trail many times. So I think I convinced him, but got to the point where I didn't care. If you tell someone they will probably die if they do something dificult and be in no danger if they take the easy way, and they decide not to take your advice, it's not my problem anymore :)

The rest of the afternoon we spent in the sheltered side of the hill, skiing until I couldn't ski anymore due to lack of fitness :)

So we get the chair about 3:30pm and get to the ski-hire place in time to hear they just closed the mountain due to blizzard :) good timing on our part.

We go back to the car and I fix the chains a bit and we drive back down. Partway down we notice nobody else has their chains on anymore, so we stop and take them off. Not such a good idea as it turns out, and a few corners later I turn the wheel and the car doesn't turn :) we're only doing about 20 and there's a large bank of snow on the side, so it's not like we're going off the cliff, but we're still sliding into a large area of slush and snow about 20cm deep. Luckily we were going slow enough that I had enough time to get past the moment of panic and think about it. I stop trying to slow down, because if I stop in the sludge we will be bogged until someone can come and help us out, so turn the wheel hard to the side and as we enter the sludge I feed in a bit more accellerator and the car keeps it's momentum and we make the turn in the sludge ok and get back on the road. :) Georgie and I laugh a bit and we keep on going. :) What could go wrong? :)

That's about it, we return the chains, get home earlier than we thought and all is well, but bad chains, closed lifts, broken T's, blizzards, snowmaking, morons, exhaustion, and running off the road, certainly add up to a very funny day out :)