movie madness and sexy becsie

Movie Watch: went to see Hotel Rwanda with Kate and her mum. Pretty good movie. Obviously it's a bit of a tear jerker, but not as many scenes of horrendous violent as I thought it might have. It was quite interesting to see how the main subject was treated, most of the message was carried by the reaction of the main characters, rather than simply showing what they were scared of. It was a very effective technique that also allowed them to show more fear and less gore. Kate's mum is cool, but then so is Kate, so that's to be expected :)

Also saw The Pacifier with Vin Diesel. Not too bad. A bit predictable in some ways, but still managed to draw a few laughs. Not quite in the same league as Hotel Rwanda, but it was never meant to be.
Recent DVD Viewing includes Donnie Darko, Twin Town, Pushing Tin, Broadcast News, Even Cowgirls get the Blues, and I'm currently watching Judge Dredd on TV. I know it's a bad movie, but it's a pretty good bad movie ;)

I think I'll always be a big movie fan. I can happily go see two movies a week and watch a few DVDs and still miss out on some good stuff. There are so many good movies out there it's just not possible to see everything that's worth seeing.

I'm having the same problem with Flickr at the moment, too many really really good photographers and I'me having trouble doing justice to their streams. My preference is to view each photo in its full page, stepping through each in turn, commenting as required. It's taking up a lot of my time and making me spend a lot of time looking at great photos and talking to friends. oh wait. that's a good thing! :)

pretty good weekend so far, started on Friday with a trip out to Point Cook for a friends Bucks turn. Photos will probably not be posted on Flickr ;) I'm sure you understand, and to be honest, I don't know if you want to see them. Point Cook is a funny place. It's one of those housing estates, but not for entry level housing, for the people who have enough to buy a small house closer to the city, but want something larger to raise a family in. As such there's a lot of really nice houses and heaps of families, just not much else in the way of social life.

Saturday night was spent around at Bec's place for her birthday party. Pretty good party, but then Bec is a pretty cool chic, so that's kind of to be expected. There were a few 'gate crashers' who were actually friends of a friend of Bec's flatmate, but it was still funny because they were a little paranoid about being there uninvited, but they were a good bunch of people, full of interesting conversations, so they were very welcome :) The party continued on a bit later at a nearby club, but I had to go home about 1am as I was very tired from the night before.

Reports of my death have been mildly exaggerated.

Blah blah blah, insert self deprecating quip about being a slacker, blah blah blah :)

So, what's being going on? The usual :)

These days I find myself walking around with my head on a swivel, constantly on the look out for a good image, the next perfect photo opportunity. I try to carry my camera with me everywhere, just in case something interesting takes my eye, and on the very rare occasions when I don't have it with me, I see such bizarre and noteworthy sights that it makes me cry on the inside for not having captured them.

In the process I've discovered a lot of very interesting images nestled in amongst the everyday stuff, and it's pretty cool to spot these little things, even if you don't capture the image perfectly, it's still a buzz to notice it :)

Another benefit of being turned into an internet broadcast node for flickr/blogger is that I have made a number of friends in all sorts of weird places. It's kind of weird to think that taking photos is a way to make friends, but it works really well. All you do is share your photos, and take the time to looko at the photos other people have shared. Comment nicely on the ones you like, and especially on the ones that make you laugh, don't forget to be specific if you can, and you'll end up having them comment on yours. You'll end up taking photos to show to them, and they'll take photos because they want you to see them, and it all ends up in abig mess of friends and it's great :)

Photo opportunities:
Airshow - pretty good airshow, the usual collection of boys toys being perused by the usual collection of mullet wielding petrol heads :)
Moomba - didn't get any shots of waterskiing but I did get some great fireworks and night-carnival stuff.
Light and movement - spent a bit of time trying to capture images from moving vehicles, and managed to score a few good ones :)
Dilo - a flickr favourite, capturing a Day In the Life Of flickrites, photographers from around the world, all capturing what they were doing during the day of 21 March 2005.

Dancing opportunities:
Two tribes - A great piece of fun, lots of good music, many great friends, and some spectacular dancing. Had some very very funny moments, especially when a new friend of ours (lilsarah) was getting ravers to show us their spinning around trick where they spin their hat the opposite way so that the hat seems to stay still while they spin underneath it. So funny to watch her work these guys. We laughed for hours :)
Jan Johnson - Went to Room for Kathryn's birthday and saw Jan Johnson perform. She was awesome, singing the vocals to heaps of really good tracks, really a top night. And good to be out and about with Joe, Kathryn and Clare. :)
Belfast - Popped in to the Prince of Wales for the Belfast gig. A great night, some good music and not too crowded.

Social opportunities:
Whitehorse Closure - The Whitehorse Inn on Burwood Rd closed this month. The pub is one of the ones we used to frquent as it's just across the road from Mick & Steph's, and just down the road from me and Katrina, and they have acceptable beer. The pub closed because of an insurmountable increase in their state property taxes. In 1998 Property tax for the Whitehorse was $1400, and this year it was $40000. I challenge any small business to come up with a spare $40000 per year just by snapping their fingers. It's a pretty nasty situation all round, with businesses all over the state being forced to close their doors. The land the Whitehorse is on will be redeveloped and turned into an office block. Great.

a quick woo-hoo

flickr gets mentioned in Focus magazine (2/2)
Originally uploaded by mac steve.

Just a quick entry to blog the fact that technically I have been published in a german magazine called Focus. In an article on Flickr, they published two of my squared circles photos (the I [Heart] Huckabees button and the green Coopers cap). :) Hey I'm famous ;)

usual haunts

Last night was a trip to the usual haunts, yakbar and de biers.
I think our attitude to De Biers has changed a bit since "the incident" (Venue 28) and while it's still basically crap, we now have a much larger scale of crap to rate it on, so it's gone from an 8 to a 2 ;)

So we started at a very busy Yakbar, with Nicole, Joe Leah, Kathryn and some general IT crew. Clare, Erin and Clare's brother Ben and his friend Mel joined us later on and stayed for a bit before heading down to De Biers.

We stayed for a while at Yak, and I had a flickr friend of mine buy me a drink even though he wasn't there :) Two weeks ago I accidentally ran into Stuart from Flickr, as he's good friends with Pete, the DJ that works at Yak, so he'd come down to see Pete and listen to him spin. I was somewhat surprised to see him there, and we had a bit of a chat, and he took a dodgy photo of me, and I took a dodgy photo of him (mine was too crappy to post). So as I was leaving I secretly bought him a drink via Baz, so he didn't get it until I had left :) So he'd had Pete keep an eye out for me and buy me a beer next time he saw me, which he did :)

The funny part is, that I don't normally drink Coopers, and I already had a Jack Daniels and coke going, but didn't want the beer to get warm, so I started alternating sips, and that's where the trouble started. You see, unbeknownst to me, it turns out that beer and bourbon go exceedingly well together. Or specifically, drinking a wheaty beer like Coopers sparkling ale, and then drinking a nice bourbie, like Jack Daniels and Coke, work extremely well together, each making the other taste significantly better. So you end up drinking a mouthful of beer, then taking a sip of bourbon that tastes almost orgasmic. Seriously, a couple of times I even lost concentration on the conversation around me and just stood there savouring the taste. Then I'd take a few more mouthfuls of beer, the first being superb and finally getting back to the normal beer taste, at which point it was time for another taste of bourbie heaven :) Then again, drinking two drinks at once has even your barman looking at you funny. Oh well, I was a borderline alcoholic anyway…

Then we popped down to De Biers and caught back up with Clare and Erin and the crew there. We were a bit confused at first because where we normally sit was all roped off for a 21st birthday party, and we couldn't see the guys anywhere else. Then Joe spotted Erin over behind the roped off section. They'd talked their way into the party because Clare wanted to watch the footy on the big screen :) Typical Clare chutzpah :)
We hung out with the girls 'behind the velvet rope' and had a pretty good time. Took a bunch of photos of Erin because she's such a crack up (and she loves the camera) and she's such a cutie :)

We kept it pretty low key and left about 11:30, plenty of time for a few slices of pizza and a tram trip home :)

Slacker

Ok, so clearly I'm having trouble keeping up even a weekly blog, and now almost the entire month of February has gone past without a post :)
I take some solace in the fact that at least February is a short month :)

So, what's been going on? Mainly drinking and Flickring :)

Events of note are:

Trader Bar (Friday, 11 February 2004)
We went to this bar because Kathryn had read an article about it in the paper and wanted to check it out. It's not too bad as bars go. It has the obligatory unmarked alleyway entrance, so only people who actually know it's there are going to go :) The concept of the bar is that most drink prices are on a shifting scale, based on demand, so the more people buy of one type of drink the more expensive it becomes, and the things that nobody buys are relatively cheap. Every now and then there's a market crash and everything goes down to base pricing. I think it's all rigged though, becase there was a price crash fro 15 minutes while I was watching and then drinks went straight back to what they were on. Anyway, it's all in fun, and it encourages you to buy a whole lot of different drinks (which we didn't) or you'll spend too much (which we did) :)
Kathryn's sister Danyelle was visiting from Bris-vegas and she managed to fit into our little group rather easily, making fast friends, especially when we met up with Clare and Peta down at De Biers later on.

The Sexy Party (Saturday, 12 February 2004)
Saturday brought a much anticipated event, the Sexy Party!
Kate's friend Kerry and her housemates have this party every year, where the dress is fancy and the theme is sexy. This particular one was special because it's the last one after 5 years of tradition, as they are all moving out into new digs. In fact they were moving house the day after the party, due to circumstances beyond their control, and felt they would have the party anyway as a last hurrah.
The party was a riotous affair, with a large proportion of people dressed up in costume, and sexy-ful activities such as Whip Cracking cowgirls, Classified Personal ads on the wall of the kitchen, Dexter the Love Computer and their Infamous Kissing booth (a friend of ours got dragged in with 4 other people and ended up snogging two people she'd never met before :)
For my costume I went as Abraham Lincoln, just so that when people asked why I could say "what do you mean?" implying that it's obvious to everyone just how sexy Honest Abe is :) Of course that meant I had to spend three hours making a hat, but it came out looking pretty good and I got a lot of compliments, so that was worth the effort :)
Overall it was a very good night, lots of fun, talked to heaps of people and generally had a fun time. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves (some a little TOO much) but you expect that at a party don't you ;)

Felicite and Dean's wedding (Saturday, 19 February 2004)
The other wedding of the century in our group :)
The wedding and reception were held in at Red Hill Estate, in front of a small group of about 60 friends and family, with a backdrop of a beautiful view of the winery and out to westernport bay. The weather was a little grey, but the rain stayed clear and it wasn't completely freezing :)
The ceremony was very nice, with some unique touches. At the start of the ceremony, as the bride arrived the groom met her and they walked down the aisle together. Then they each presented a single rose to their mothers, prior to the main ceremony commencing. While the celebrant was speaking and they were saying their vows the wedding rings has been tied together with silk and were being passed around the audience, for everyone to hold them and make a little wish for the happiness of the couple. Felicite's mother and Dean's mother and sister all had a little speech as part of the ceremony, and we all had to vow to keep supporting them in their relationship. At the end we pronounced them husband and wife, rather than the celebrant. Overall it was a very sweet little ceremony, full of little touches and niceties.
Felicite looked very beautiful, of course, and the bridesmaids Bec and Clair were also looking lovely. The guys looked very spiffy too, but then it's usually easier for guys ;)
The reception was a lot of fun. Heaps of food in a Tuscan style, so it was all laid out on platters in the middle of the table, so you could grab as much of anything that took your fancy, so we all ate too much :)
The speeches were touching and funny, and there was a lot of dancing and talking and general good times.

Bec's last day at KPMG (Friday, 25 February 2005)
This day saw Bec's last day at KPMG, she's secured a position running the project office for a big SAP implementation down at Medibank Private, very similar to a role she had in our SAP implementations, so she should do very well indeed.
So we all gathered at Misty and had a few drinks to celebrate her good fortune and to commiserate ourselves for not having her around the office anymore. It was a pretty good night, got to chat to a lot of people, met a new person from work, Leah, who is pretty cool and will probably be joining us again for the Friday funnies.

Heroes in Tyrol (Saturday, 26 February 2004)
Kate came around on Saturday and her, Joe, Steph and I watched a movie she has called Heroes in Tyrol, an austrian musical that is so funny it's unbelievable. Just a quick note to say that if you ever get the chance, watch it.

Venue 28 and beyond...(Saturday, 26 February 2004)
Ok, so if anyone ever asks you to go to an over 28's night, because it will be fun, your answer should always be in the form of: NO.
Any variation is allowed, and certainly any emphasis, such as "Hell No", "No chance", "No fucking way you psycho!"
So, here we are, sitting around watching a very funny movie, and Steph says "So are we going to an over 28's or not?" this was our chance, the one opportunity to redeem ourselves, to remain pure of spirit, to not be corrupted. We chose not to take that opportunity, and believe me, that was a mistake.
Off to the shoppingtown hotel we go, the location of Venue 28.
I guess we were expecting a slightly older crowd, maybe people in their mid-thirties, and a few older and a few younger, a few people to secretly make fun of and only a few 'cool' people like us to share conspirational winks with. What we saw in fact was a large group of people, a few in their thirties, a lot in their forties and fifties and sixties, and ALL of them with a predatory gleam in their eyes that started to make you feel a bit dirty after a few minutes. Watching them circle each other like a school of hammerhead sharks was bad enough, but watching the dance-floor was even worse. Some of the sharks liked to dance and were just out there having a good time, but some of the sharks wanted to attract a few bites themselves, so they were out there flaunting what they had and hoping to star in a feeding frenzy. If you can't imagine it clearly, start thinking about all of your mum and dad's friends out at a dingy club, sleazing and groping all over each other, dressed to the nines in their best open chested shirts and shiny slacks, chatting up each other and generally angling for a quickie in the parking lot.
Anyway, needless to say, we won't be going back there again on pain of death, it was quite unpleasant and we were not enjoying ourselves, so we had a few drinks and left.
We came back into the city, breathing a sigh of relief as we left suburbia behind and entered the glitzy world of our own sleazy dives :)
We started back at Alia in Fitzroy, but nobody was dancing and we were having trouble re-adjusting to society where what you see across the room is ACTUALLY what you se up close, and the trendythons were too jarring after what we'd been too, and there was no dancing to lose ourselves in until we readjusted.
So off we traipsed to The Builder's Arms up the road, which we knew for a fact would have dancing going on, and which would be sufficiently pink-polo-shirt free also :)
The night ended well and we were all happy to be back to normality (at least our version)

Tropfest (Sunday, 27 February 2004)
Sunday I went with the incandescent Kate and her friend Kerry to watch the finalists for Tropfest, which was also an excuse to lounge around Alexandra gardens and have a picnic etc. The films themselves were pretty good, and Kerry's friends seemed pretty cool, although I mostly spoke with Kate and Kerry, as we were all sprawled out across a few rugs and it was harder to get up and move around with 50,000 other people sprawled out in the same area :)

Long time no blog

Well, where can I start?

Two weekends ago was a pretty big series of events, with Friday taken up with my official birthday celebrations at Yak. Lots and lots of people came, and a good time was had by all (well, mainly by me, the rest of you can look after yourselves… :) )
Almost everyone who was invited showed up for a bit of a catch up, some could only make it for a little while and some managed to stay the whole evening, which was great. Managed to see so many people that it wasn't funny, so I'm not going to name them all here, but if you're reading this and were there then thanks for coming, and if you weren't there, then I understand :)
The evening marched onwards, with me getting progressively drunker and drunker. I managed to get quite drunk, without getting as hammered as last year, which was my goals (because that was pretty hammered). Took a few photos (of course) and gave 'Teen the camera for a bit to take some more, which means I actually ended up in a few of them too, which was nice for a change :) Photos can be found here:

Saturday saw a late start to the day due to a large queasy hangover :) Followed by a bout of watching DVDs and lounging around, and some shopping in the city where I bought myself the complete set of Astro Boy on DVD, which I'm sure makes all of you very jealous :) Saturday night was multiple event night, with a stop around Shaz's house for her birthday celebrations "Shazzanats" a bogan festival which was well attended and downright scary :)

Later on that evening Joe and I went and picked up Bec and we went to Room 680 in Hawthorn to see Carl Cox. Already on the scene was Daimo, Cammers and Newey, and we even saw Paul Meeuwsen there as well, which made me smile :) Carl Cox, dubbed by us all "The Big Black Cox" was awesome, a fantastic set that really made us dance like nobody's business, despite the presence of many pretentious people that Room 680 is prone to attract :)

Sunday, being the day of my actual birthday, was actually mostly spent lounging on the couch recovering and fielding phone calls from friends and family wishing me a happy birthday :) I actually got an invite from Vlad at about 11am to go to Big Day Out as he'd bought a ticket for Michelle and she couldn't go as she was too pregnant :) I had to turn him down because I was completely worn out. If I'd have know I probably would have left Room at about 5am instead of 7am :)

It's a good thing I did turn him down actually (although I thought long and hard, and nearly called him back half an hour later) because I ended up having a pretty bad back most of the next week, and spent three days at home trying to recover. So Monday was at work, Tuesday and Wednesday at home, Thursday at work, and Friday at home. But after all that and some help from certain medical practicioners, I was on the mend.

Friday night I met up with Joe and Pommie John down at The London, where they had a couple of beers and I had a couple of soft drinks, being On Call again, and we spent an hour or two perving on the lovely women that frequent that pub :) Thenit was off to the Dover to meet Mick and Steph, which didn't work very well because they were at the Elgin, but these things happen. While we were at the London John told us this story of a friend of his who drinks at the Dover and had once taken his sattelite dish down to the pub, mounted in a cement filled bucket, to be able to watch the cricket while at his favourite pub. We laughed ourselves silly and lo and behold, when we got to the Dover, there is was again:

Saturday was spent with the usual lazy morning, punctuated by a little On Call work. In the afternoon I caught up with Kate and we went to see the movie Closer, which is a very good film indeed, well worth going to see. All four of the lead actors gave great performances (Natalie Portman, Jude Law, Julia Roberts and Clive Owen) and the story was really good, very involving and very realistic.

Saturday evening was spent on a party boat cruising around the harbour for Shazzie D's birthday. All of her crew were there and it was a pretty good night. The food was quite nice (surprisingly) but the DJ was atrocious :) The Cruise itself was pretty cool, especially when we tooled around the docks at night and under the Westgate and Bolte bridges, sicne I have a bridge fetish anyway :) Shaz seemed to have a pretty good time, and was squealing and dancing all night. The cruise was just a *little* bit too long, it started at 7:30pm and finished at 11:00pm and probably could have been half an hour shorter I think, because we were starting to get a bit 'over it' by then. But it was definitely worth doing, even if it wasn't a friends birthday, but you definitely need to have the right bunch of friends around you, because if you're planning to rely on the boat's crew for entertainment you are in trouble :) Also, try to pick a warm night so you can spend more time on the upper deck and foredeck, rather than out the back out of the wind where we stayed :)

Sunday afternoon a bunch of us met up in Fitzroy gardens for some Latin music and some Salsa dancing lessons. Pretty funky music and some interesting dance moves, but it's quite tiring to be up there dancing away to these very specific, and very active moves, with twirls and such, when you could be up on the picninc blanket lounging around and eating Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Just a few words about Krispy Kreme. This is a brand of doughnut that I had heard about for years in american movies and didn't really pay much attention, but it turns out there is now a store in Sydney near the airport (it even has a drive-thru window, which really makes sense for doughnuts) and Mick brought some back with him from his trip during the week. These are really really really good doughnuts. Even the plain glazed rings, are really really good. If you get the chance, try them. :)

Adventures in Scootieland

So what's been happening? Just the usual collection of shenanigans
Not much amateur alcoholism this weekend as I'm on call, so I had to limit my intake to that of a normal person - very difficult ;)
The week itself went fairly smoothly, nothing much of note except that work provided my birthday cake a week early, so I had to explain to everyone that it's next week, not this week, but It's not worth complaining that you got cake when you shouldn't had, nobody's going to listen to that sort of seditious talk.
Friday night was spent with a little time at Yak with Joe and Daimo. One of the things I like about Yak is that you can sit by the big window on Russell st and watch the world pass by, it's very relaxing :)

Then Joe and I headed off home, only to be sidetracked to The London in Richmond to meet Pommie John, Mick and Steph. The London is a pretty good pub, normal prices, pretty good location for us (short walk to our tram lines) and on any given night, full to the brim with extremely attractive women. :) So we had a few drinks with Pommie John and then went and found Mick and Steph, who were entertaining some Canberra friends, and had a few drinks with them. They seemed a pretty interesting crew, and I even got a bit more of the low down on the KPMG Canberra flooding that happened a few weeks ago. There was a funny moment where Mick brought out his new HP PDA/Phone that he's been talking up for a while, to check a phone number. I think he was planning for us all to go 'ooh and aah' when we saw his new cool phone, but I just quickly pulled out the new XDA I'm carrying for work and started to tease him that his was so big it must be a bit old now :) just some good natured geek fun, to which his reaction was to tell me to go and do something which I won't repeat here :) I don't normally go for the one-upmanship of hi tech, but I just couldn't resist, because he was so proud :) Of course his device he had to pay for himself, and the reports form the people at work who evaluated them say that they are in fact better than what we're currently using, both in features and battery life, but I couldn't a dig because our new devices just happen to be a bit smaller :) We left the pub pretty early, with almost everyone mostly smashed by about 11:30pm (except me [on call] and Steph [driving]), Mick deciding to interrupt a nice photo of the pub with a distinct pose:

Saturday saw the arrival of Kim's "Life of Berley" birthday party, to celebrate the fact that she's the same age as Jesus (and Brian from Life of Brian), with the idea being to dress as your favourite character from Life of Brian. I ended up running very late because I had gotten almost all the way before realising I hadn't remembered my copy of Life of Brian which we were planning to watch, so I had to go all the way home again and get it and come back again :) But apart from that things went well, I arrived in time to have a bit of a chat with everyone and watch Berley blow out the candles on her cake. I also was able to witness the torment of Troy, dressed as King Herod, at the hands of Berley, Rik and Shaz. Very amusing to watch, and of course even more amusing to catch on film:

(I suggest you follow the link then check the next few photos by clicking on the thumbnails to the right of this shot)

I'm assuming that Troy was King Herod, because he was wearing a crown with a big H made out of stars. Of course, King Herod wasn't alive at the time Jesus was crucified, having died some 28 years before Jesus (or Brian). But it kind of works out ok, because Berley was dressed as the Round Yon Virgin (including internal Baby Jesus) and Herod was King of Judea when Mary was preggers, so it all kind of makes sense. Kind of.

After Berley's party I headed into the office to do a photo shoot that I had been thinking about for a while, the computer room. I think there are some nice shots there, and I got to practice a few techniques such as macro shooting and light painting. Saturday night was spent at home with 'teen as she had no money until next pay (a fairly common occurrence these days for both of us).

Sunday was spent wandering around the city playing the tourist game and trying to take some nice shots of Melbourne, but I really only ended up with a few 'blah' shots and a mild sunburn :)

The last week has been pretty good in Scootie land.

Spent a lot of time in flickr of course, but also spent a lot of time shooting photos, which is even better. :)
The weekend was pretty good, Friday at Yak with a big crew of people I hadn't seen in a while, as well as a bunch I had seen a lot of.
Some fun was had by all and I managed to step back into the Friday drinks groove very easily ;)

Saturday was spent hungover :)
Although 'Teen did get me out of the house fairly early to go to a lollie shop in Glenferrie road that Cathy had told us about during the week. She was keen to try and get some Minstrels, which are like gigantic smarties, and this shop supposedly had all sorts of imported lollies and chocolates.

So we met up with Mick and Steph and Tanya and sought out the shop, only to be told by the sign on the door that they'd be back in 5 minutes. We opted to wait and spent the time looking in the window. The shop duly opened a few minutes later and we filed in, searching around for the UK section. Lots of nasty US candies with cherry, cinnamon and peanut butter in them. I don't know what their fascination with Peanut Butter is, I think it's a bit weird myself, but it takes all kinds I guess. :)

We found the UK section and located the Minstrels, and were disappointed to find they only had the very small 42g packets, which equate to about 10 minstrels a pack, instead of the 250g or 400g packets they were hoping for :) So I bought a Double Decker Bar, Terry's Chocolate Orange and some Coconut Ice and we left. No sooner were we out of the shop (standing outside eating our sweets) than they closed for another 5 minutes so the shop girl could go down the street. Not a busy day in the lollie shop I think :)

Saturday night Joe, Nick and I went over to Daimo's house to have a few drinks, as it was his 30th birthday. We spent the night drinking and hanging out and listening to music. A bunch of his friends showed up and they're all a pretty good crew. We stayed there until about 5am, and were in a very sorry state, especially Nick who lost track of the fact that it was early in the morning and that Daimo's sister was asleep upstairs so he kept wanting to turn the music up too loud :)

Sunday morning was spent hungover again, but it was such a nice day that I decided to spend the afternoon walking around Fitzroy taking photos. Managed to take a lot of really good shots and then duly uploaded them on Flickr :) I also went up to Gertrude street and visited the restaurant UME, where Narelle's brother Mikey had made a new sign for them. Narelle had told me the other week that the sign had gone up and I hadn't had a chance to go see it. The sign is pretty cool, so I grabbed some shots for my photo stream :) But the best photo I think was this very blue wall that I found near Wellington st, so I'll link that below instead :)

Dental hygeine

Went to the dentist for a few fillings today, down at the art deco opulence that is Kia's new premises. Now, I go to the dentist fairly regulary, and due to my super-el-crappo teeth, I have more filling that tooth in my mouth (the rest of my head is also mostly filling, but that's another story) so I'm pretty used to having the old numb lip for a while, and have even perfected the art of drinking without dribbling and talking without sounding like Buckwheat. However, today my lovely and mostly painless dentist Madeline needs to fill teeth on both sides of my upper jaw, which means two injections and two numb lips, which throws all my well cultivated 'numb-lip' skills into disarray, and I ended up dribbling and blubbering like a 12 year old with his first root canal. ;)

how about you, you, you

Zoo Day today.

Went to Werribee Open Plains Zoo for Matthew Annable's third birthday, to try and convince him that he does have an Uncle Scooter, and that I am not, in fact, imaginary. Needless to say my presence in his life has been somewhat scant, having only been to his 0th and 1st birthdays prior to this. I was planning to buy him a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, but couldn't find it, so instead got him a couple of zoo related books (including a musical one for his dad to enjoy). Luckily I couldn't get the Sendak, because he's already got it, which I probably should have assumed given that his mum's a teacher (and cool enough to like Sendak).

A good day was had by all, we spent a bit of it sitting around and we all went off on the bus tour that's included in the admission price. On the tour I was on we were lucky enough to see two Zebras fighting and also to see the new baby Rhino, so pretty good stuff.

Matt is very social, and was chatting to everyone about his presents and what he was doing and what he'd seen so far and just about anything that ran through his head :) a lot of fun to watch, scary how big and how smart he is, but that's what you get for not showing up at family functions for two years :o

long time now blog

Well obviously it's been some time since my last update :) what with my new found addiction to Flickr and everything, my time has become full, plus of course there's the basic fact that I am a slacker!

So in the time between posts many things have occurred, including a few 'major' occasions such as Christmas and new years. :)

This year's Christmas was spent like most recent years, down at the family home in Rosebud, conversing with the parental units and waiting for my brother, his wife and my niece to show up and open presents. We've finally gotten to the point where we don't really do presents for the adults (except Mum, of course) so we really just concentrate on Courtney, as the only family member who still believes in fat guys in red suits. There was an amusing moment over dinner when we tried to remember the names of the reindeer and could only manage about 5 (full answer: Rudolph, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Blitzen, Donner & Cupid - Although not the original lineup). Courtney enjoyed her presents, which seemed to be entirely made up of Bratz and Saddle Club merchandise, including a remote control horse that walks across the floor like it has polio as the rear legs don't lift up, but she loved it anyway :) The drive down was cool because Steph loaned me her Statesman so I got to cruise in style ;)

Boxing day saw me, Mick and Steph in the car on the way to Canberra for a few days of fun in Australia's Bush Capital :) The real occasion was for the combined Steph/Ush birthday party. I was lucky enough to get the spare bed at Therese and Edmond's place, while Mick & Steph were on the sofa-bed at her parent's place :) The party was pretty good, started out at the King-o (Kingston Hotel) and ended up at the Durham, with the girls all smoking a cigar :) Not a good idea, especially for Steph and Sandy who both ended up driving the porcelain bus a little later :)

The remainder of the Canberra trip was fairly standard, hanging out with the various people we knew, having dinner with Steph's pop and family, which was a bit of fun, as they're all smart arses too :) We drove back on the 29th, stopping off in Albury for some lunch and some shopping in their mini-Myer :)

Which after a few miscellaneous hours spent consuming Flickr like it's high grade crack, brings us to New Year's Eve. :)

Now the original plan was just to hang out for a bit somewhere quiet, not get too hammered and not go out too late, because we had Summadayze the next day. Obviously, like many plans, this one was not put into action.

What Actually happened was that Damien informed us that he had two free passes to the Belfast dance party at QBH so we went there instead :) We stopped by Damien K's place first to catch up with him, Helen and Rose, then swung by Mick & Steph's place to catch up with them, Dan, Cath, Ger, Blackie, Marnie and Michelle, then headed off into the city for some old school techno action :)

The city itself was full of people, with large parts of the city streets near the river blocked off for pedestrians, and a large number of people walking around drunk :) it was pretty interesting :)

Hadn't been to a Belfast before, but it was pretty good. The music was not exactly all 'brand new' but then that's the whole idea, some old school hits to get everyone going, then Oliver Lieb got up and did a set that was really superb :)

After that we decided we probably should head for home about 3am, wading through the detritus of a NYE in the city, rubbish, streamers, and lots of heavily drunk people :) It was funny watching people trying to catch a taxi when some of them were having problems standing up :) (we caught the tram home)

The next day was, of course, Summadayze. The day started pretty good, I met Joe on the tram and we headed into the city for some breakfast then hit the bowl.
The gig was fantastic, lots of really good music and even ran into a few old friends. The best part was that I wasn't still wrecked from the previous night and so we were able to keep going until it finished up at 11 ;)

Otherwise the rest of my holiday time has been spent on Flickr and watching movies. :)

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 :)