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 :)