Cec and Bug, ranting on

Nostalgia

2009-02-16T16:12:00.000+11:00

Well here I was, chronically bored at uni. I had exhausted all the usual options - facebook, email, ninemsn news, my bank account (no, it did not manage to multiply overnight) - then I thought 'hmm, I wonder if Cec and Bug, ranting on' is still there . . . AND IT IS! Good ol' yet rather disturbing cyberspace, where things just permanently sit there, tracking you for all time (insert creepy Twilight zone music). I got all nostalgic ('sniff-sniff', 'eyewipe') reading about the preparations for my trip away, having a nose-job, dressing up like a French maid (which I think I've now done three times . . or is it four?). I had to laugh to see we've been flagged as having 'objectionable content'. Yeah well, I suppose that's to be expected with a discourse on cock-rings. Although if the person who objected to cockrings tried one out, especially the his and hers dual pleasure one we'd been discussing, perhaps they wouldn't object any more ;)

Ahh, blogger - how could I forsake you for so long?

I'm baa-aaaaack

2007-07-26T12:59:00.000+10:00

Greetings anyone left out there in the blogging world who recalls that yes, this once was an operating, hopefully slightly intestering but at the very least a distraction more interesting than working, blog. I, Cecilia, am returned from the land of leprechauns and cider with blackcurrent syrup, more walls than Berlin ever had that are still being expanded to this very day but with lovely locals, grumpy public transport operators and damn rude sales assistants but fantastic history, lake monsters and steep hills, where the most beautiful people in the world ride bicycles (in suits and/or high heels), arrogant locals and muggings but things you just have to see, best street performers anywhere, where they turn the waterfalls off for the night (no, not really, but some of the girls on my tour believed that when the tour leader told them that) and sheep have bells, gelati is available in the flavours of 'ferrerro rochare' and 'bounty' and you can see an entire city that was preserved under ash for thousands of years, extensive cave systems and the largest percentage of forested land for any country, beautiful clear water that's damn hard to swim in due to awful rocky 'beaches' covered in sea urchins, underground absinthe bars filled with an American college football team, a place of beautiful mountains where I went paragliding (and there was nothing else to do as it was a public holiday), where 'The Hoff' is an icon and parts of the wall still stand, there are shops selling magic mushroom and shops selling pot and my tour of all girls with one boy drank the cruiseboat dry of beer and they had to stop and pick up another barrel, a place with a very troubled history but a beautiful city, somewhere where our tour bus was 'fined' within metres of getting over the border and 'fined' again later on and where there aren't quite as many multicoloured onion-domed churches as travel shows would have you believe, a place that's damn similar in title to the last but a different colour, and somewhere with the best damn potato dish in the Europe.

Good luck to anyone who can actually work out where the hell I've been! I've probably forgotten countries too.

Oooh, diamontes!

2007-03-29T13:38:00.000+10:00

So, I was just looking up beauty therapists in Edinburgh as by the time I make it there I'll have been travelling for a month and in urgent need of some tinting/perming/shaping/waxing before I head off on my European tours. This is what I found:

TIFFANY BIKINI WAX This is a whole hollywood wax with diamontes artistically placed for that special date! Prices on quotation from £40

Anyone who isn't familiar with a hollywood wax, just think: Brittany Spears and the whole no-underwear-with-microdress-whilst-drunk-and-getting-out-of-taxi incident. Well, actually I don't know whether she was sporting the hollywood wax, but if you're going to go out without any knickers on in a microdress and get wasted I would assume you would have any hair removed first.

Now, who would like to debate over how these diamontes could be artistically placed? Standard butterflies or flowers? Perhaps a shooting star? A giant arrow? How about his favourite football team? Would you like to have 'Leeds' emblazoned across your, hm, you know, girls?

I bet those beauty therapists who do this artistic placement have some good stories to tell!

An imminent departure

2007-03-27T14:51:00.000+10:00

Whoo-hoo!! I'm so very very happy!! No, not because I'm leaving for a 3.5 month overseas trip in 10 sleeps but because the little toolbar with my text options has appeared again in blogger! YA-HOO! I can now change my font, the colour of the text, put pics in and the BEST thing, JUSTIFY my text!!! I HATE having text left aligned - it MUST be justified!

I am in two minds about my imminent departure. It has been very very stressful getting everything sorted out and I feel like I need a week lying in a country cabin with some truly magnificent chick-lit and many many mini chocolate easter eggs before I am ready to tackle a collossal always-on-the-go back to back touring trip where I will have to be permanently postive, ready to party and sit most firmly on my oh-so-awful temper. However, I am desperately trying to do uni stuff. I still have to complete data analysis and turn this into a most insightful article ready of acceptance into a scientific journal with a high impact factor and then convert this paper into an attention-grabbing and readily understood giant laminated poster.

To be honest, I have zero excitement. Zilch. Nada. This is most worrying. How can I not be excited? Golly, if I can't muster any enthusiasm before I actually depart then how on earth am I going to manage shepharding my charges around Europe?? Well, maybe that is the problem. I feel like I have been herding most obstinant chickens, not planning a fun-filled trip to Europe with some damn good friends. I have just been so angry with them all, barring Felicity. They all have squillions of dollars squirrelled away and refuse to part with it. We went out for dinner last week to celebrate the March birthdays of Felicity (22), Frieda (23) and Katie (23) and Rose didn't order any food. She ate at the boarding house where she is a boarding mistress and gets free food before we met for dinner. And then, instead of ordering a nice cocktail she orders a port. A PORT! Who the hell orders port instead of food? When I inquired as to why she wasn't having a delectable cocktail, she said that port is much more alcoholic than cocktails and she could have two for the same price as a cocktail and be drunker. Rose has a fulltime job in a government dept where she greedily grasps any overtime, no living expenses, doesn't even have her own car any more as she's driving her parent's old one, and works about 15-20 hours, usually weekend penalty rates with us as a waitress. She has a big share portfolio as she's been channelling all of her fulltime wage into shares this past year, and when she's ready to buy a house her parents will give her $40,000 towards it. But she won't eat out at dinner because she's saving money.

And Katie, don't even get me started! She actually tried to get out of the tour we had all booked and paid for without telling any of us. The travel agent told me. The travel agent Maria told me how awful she felt refusing to give Katie back her money for the tour but it just wasn't possible, and how very distraught Katie was, in tears and all that. I was totally bamboozled and had no idea what Maria was talking about. I thought it might have something to do with Katie's parents coming to Europe once our tour was over. "Don't worry about it, Maria, Katie has arranged to meet her parents the day the tour ends in Paris," I said. "Oh, but I felt awful. If it was my daughter who had committed to a tour and then found that she couldn't afford it and needed her money back I'd want the travel agent to do everything possible to help her out." I was so shocked. Katie is from a very wealthy family, they have a few rental properties, an old almost-mansion in a tree-lined street, and her dad has some high-powered job in Melbourne where he commutes to each week. Plus Katie is a workaholic and we have calculated must have at least $100,000 saved from 6 constant years of work including modelling promotional work and a refusal to spend a dollar. She only ever eats either brucetta or garlic or herb bread for dinner when we go out. She hasn't had her hair cut at a hairdresser for I think 8 years, she cuts it herself. Oh, plus her parents have put together a share portfolio for her. And she tried to get out of our tour, made our travel agent feel awful, and didn't tell any of us. Felicity's theory is that once Katie's parents decided to go to Europe Katie didn't want to go on the tour with us anymore when she could stay with her parents and have them pay for everything. I think that might be right on the money.

So this is perhaps why I'm not excited. Also contributing a little is that I have worked so very hard with bootcamp and the gym and stuff to get as strong and fit as I currently am and now that it all going to disappear and I will be back to baby weights and humiliating beep-test scores in bootcamp. I know, woe is me with huge overseas holiday looming!

Monkey and Dancingfairy, if you want to meet up when I am in jolly old England you can email me on ceciliamaybrown@hotmail.com Let me know soon though please so I can work it into my itinerary. Yes, I have an itinerary. I am pedantic. I know it.

At a bit of a loss

2007-03-03T23:56:00.000+11:00

So once again it's coming up to my birthday... ok, it's two months away, but two months is nothing! The first two months of the year flew past, didn't they?? So it's almost here, really. And I was thinking the other day, "I'm about to be 24, how groovy" until I realised that at 24, my mother had been married for two years and was pregnant with me

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And it's not that I want to be married and pregnant (that's a great big HELL NO on the pregnancy, thank YOU!), but by 24 my mother's life was settled

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Of course, as it turns out, her life wouldn't go exactly to plan: she and Daddy have spent the last 8 years having the world's second most unamicable break-up (Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin... cripes) and the last 2 or 3 coping with my increasingly unwell grossmutter, but since she got engaged at 21 (an age where she was starting to consider herself as having been "left on the shelf") she's essentially known what was up

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But me? Lately (ok, for months now) I've been trying to work out what to do with myself: should I stay where I'm currently working or try for a better paid job (although I asked for a pay rise yesterday and was told by my manager that she'd already put me forward for one, which is nice); should I keep boarding with Daddy, playing the daughter role (infuriating but comfortable) and saving to buy a place of my own; should I treat myself and buy the convertible I've always wanted; should I sell everything I own and travel... the list is endless. And the more I look, the more units I inspect or overseas cities I research or employment agencies I sign up with, the more confused and torn I get

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It's not that I'm exactly a glass-half-empty person, I think I'm more I-wonder-what-the-other-half-tastes-like? But after what's happened in the last year, with Deo and his friends' video and a couple of other things that hit me for six, I've not been able to rest easily with myself. It's not that I'm depressed exactly, it's more that I can't sit comfortably in my own skin now. I've spent a year despising myself for how those guys treated me and almost as long wishing I'd been able to protect someone I love from something terrible that happened to them. Wishing I could've been a stronger person, I suppose

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And with no-one to talk to about it all, everything has built up until I'm quite aware I've been dwelling on things best put down to naïveté and generally shitty human nature, but it's all still there and I feel the need to shake things up, move on from the hesitant, pathetic half-person I've become

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Put simply, I don't know what to do with my life, how to make it - and me - better

‘Boot Camp Update’ or ‘Yes It’s Been Confirmed – I’m Insane’

2007-02-22T12:35:00.001+11:00

My fears were confirmed this morning – I am extremely aerobically unfit. I only managed a 5.2 on the beep test which is absolutely bloody abysmal. I was the first person in my group to opt out (ie collapse outside in a panting, sweating, red-faced heap). Luckily there was another group to run after me, and one girl only got 4.2 (she is very overweight with asthma though, so that would be for her a very good score and even more embarrassing for sickeningly healthy me) and another girl was out at the same time as me. I think that one of them will be my partner. Probably the second girl, because I do go well with strength stuff (except darn sit-ups). I don’t understand how I only managed 5.2 – I go hard at spin cycle multiple times a week and still remain totally and utterly unfit.

Then we had 10 minutes (God, was it only 10 minutes???) of running up a slippery (it was drizzling) grassy near perpendicular hill, doing ten jump tucks, coming back down, doing 20 squat jumps then doing it all again. Oh, and as two girls stopped moving we had to do 20 burpees (weird name, ‘instrument of torture’ would be more appropriate. It’s where you squat down, throw your legs back so you’re in push-up position then jump back up and reach for the sky. In one movement. Try doing that 20 times) and as another couple (one of whom was one of the girls who stopped, so she earned us all TWO punishments) were 8 minutes late we had to do 80 push-ups. I’m glad to say they don’t worry me. I felt a little chuffed the girl in the ultimate micro bikeshorts who managed 8.something in the beep test struggled with the push-ups and kept stopping. He he he. I may be totally slow and unfit but at least I have something going for me!

After all of this (I still cannot believe it was only 10 minutes. I think the trainer only says that) we then went up to an oval to do some sit-ups and hovers which was actually a nice break. This proves how hard the other stuff was, as anyone who has had to do hovers would know. We finished the session soaking wet and totally and utterly covered in grass clippings. The oval had been mowed the day before and stuck to us because of the rain. I even had grass in my undies, somehow.

I am now officially dreading Saturday morning. I have an entire hour of what we only did for a supposed 15 minutes. I am very nervous that I just won’t be able to complete it and will stop, therefore causing more pain to my group as they do burpees yelling my name with each one.

'The Camp of the Boot' or 'I must be certifiably insane'

2007-02-20T14:13:00.000+11:00

Oh. My. God.

What Have You Gotten Yourself Into This Time Cecilia???!!

I have joined a boot camp. In case you aren't familiar with the term 'boot camp' or you are like my officemate and I have somehow given you the impression that I belong to army in the time you have known me, boot camp is basically an old-school fitness regime, based on the drills and hell-on-earth army recruits get subjected to.

Today was the 'easy' day with just testing to see how fit we are. And we were 'lucky' in that the instructor's cd of the beep test was broken and we didn't have to do the
tests plus the beep test. I'm sure everyone had to do the beep test at school at some stage. It's where there are two lines a set distance from each other, and by the time a beep sounds you have to have reached the other one or sit out. The catch is the beeps get faster and faster the longer you stay in the test. I think I managed 5.6 back when I was 15 and in the prime of my rowing fitness, so goodness knows how I'm going to go now. My oldest brother, incidently, set a new record for his school with 14.something.

Bootcamp operates in partners, and you get paired with the person closest to you in fitness. I know that there is know way I'm going to be paired with my friend (her idea of a challenge is running a 42 km marathon, and for recreation she runs 20 km a day), but I am very worried that I'm going to be paired with the one 'mature' lady. The class consists of about 30 people, probably half male and half female, 95% of whom look amazingly fit, and for whom this is their second bootcamp, some of whom are competitive athlethes. And then there is one mum. She totally is your typical forty-something mother - short hair with a couple of comfortable rolls about her middle,
not hugely fat, just a bit podgy. You have to admire her for doing the bootcamp with basically people who could be younger than her children.

I am living in fear that I will be paired with the mum. That I have the fitness of a 48 year old woman who has done no exercise since 'before the kids'. I was the worst in the group at situps, even the mum beat me (5 to my 4, which she had to come and
gloat about!!) but I was good at pushups and tricep dips and okay at squat jumps. Maybe me calling myself 'good' at pushups and tricep dips is a bit of a lie - some of the girls got over 100. But I beat my friend the marathon runner (so what if she can run 42 km in Qld heat?) which is something.

So all I have to do now is hold out long enough in the beep test so that I'm not paired with the mum. Oh shit, have just had the worst thought ever - what if I drop out BEFORE the mum???!!!!! Oh, the total and utter
humiliation. I could never face all the girls wearing micro bike shorts again!

I am eating chocolate biscuits. Why am I doing that? What is the POINT CECILIA of going to boot camp if you are going to eat chocolate biscuits at 9.12 am??!

Then I arrive at uni, shower and head up to the office, thinking smugly 'yay, at least here's ONE day I'll be here before my officemate' and then, low and behold, our office door is open and at 8.15 am she is here
typing away. She nearly fainted away at shock at beholding me before 10 am, let alone before the official working day has even begun. She was forced to comment on my earliness to which I replied 'I know, don't get used to it!' which she had a little laugh at and then wanted to know if there was any reason I was so early, to which I had to say "Oh, I'm doing
a boot camp" and then try and explain to her what a boot camp was. I failed miserably at this, as demonstrated by the fact that a minute after our conversation ended she asked me 'so how long have you been in the
army?' Me, the army! Ha! To which I explained hopefully much more clearly that it was run by an aerobics instructor, based on military training. Her rather expressive face demonstrated yet again how very far
we are apart in our way of thinking and our choice of recreational activities, because she looked at me as if to say 'who needs to do that?' which is kind of understandable, given that she rides her bike everywhere and takes multiple day hikes with all equipment strapped to her back through the wilderness for fun.

So I was totally out of breath and actually had a STITCH just from our warm-up today, which was running around a gym. Lots. Just for 'warm-up'. Then we had to see how many push-ups (feet touching the floor, my usual legs crossed and in the air was prohibited), sit-ups (arms behind head, come all the way up and elbows go behind knees), triceps dips (off a damn high bench) and squat-jumps we could do in 2 minutes. So here are my results. I had better post them so I don't doctor them at the end of a month to pretend I'm much fitter than I am. When bootcamp is over in one month I will post my new results and hopefully there will be improvement. At least in my sit-ups! My abysmal sit-ups!

Pushups: 52
Situps: 4 (oh the shame)
Triceps dips: 87
Squat jumps: 60

Now, everyone out there, take on the challenge and see how you do. Make sure you run around your backyard for about 10 minutes FAST first though.

Here is some of the correspondance the bootcamp instructor has sent us, just to demonstrate how deeply over my head I have gotten myself:

1. BE EARLY
For every minute you are late, the whole team does pushups. Saying your name with every pushup. RING me if something terrible has happened and you are going to be late so that I know. This is critical as we have two groups and are running on a very tight time budget

2. KEEP MOVING
If anyone stops moving at any stage once the session has started: 10 burpees. “Keep moving” means jogging on the spot.

3. SHOW UP
Boot Camp works provided you show up. You MUST come. You have committed and I am going to hold you to it. You will be paired with a partner after the beep test; someone as fit as you. If you do not show up, your partner will have no partner. This will make their session of boot camp next to impossible. Don’t let them down. I will not pair you up with someone else if your partner is absent and unaccounted for. Get each other’s mobiles. You’ll feel pretty bad lying in bed being lazy knowing your partner is out there trying to do the drills on their own. You will fill out a form for me with the dates you will be away. If I know you will be away, no worries, I will partner your partner with someone else. If you wake up one morning and you are sick as a dog – and I mean SICK as a dog not just a little bit tired you MUST RING ME BEFORE 6am or 7am for the later group. You must. DO NOT PASS A MESSAGE ON THROUGH YOUR FLAT MATE/GIRLFRIEND/BEST FRIEND: YOU CALL ME. No excuses. You miss a session and I don’t know why, the very next session you will be punished in front of everybody, and I will pick on you the whole session for being unbelievably soft, lazy, uncommitted and uncool while everyone else had the guts to show up.

So think of me, 7-8am Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings for the next month!

Nip/Tuck

2007-02-01T08:49:00.000+11:00

Ok. Melbourne. Well, the first thing you need to know is that Cec is very, very pretty: five foot nothing of chestnutty hair and blue eyes and pale freckly skin and straight white teeth. She’s gorgeous. My male friends LURVE her
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BUT, probably since puberty, Ceci has hated her nose. For someone so little and quite delicately boned, she’s always had a reasonably big nose. In my opinion this isn’t a bad thing (I quite like big noses, I think they’re a strong look) but she has HATED it with a passion for at least the last ten years. AND, since the woman has more money than things to spend it on, we went to Melbourne (translation: FAR away from disapproving parents and friends) so she could get rhinoplasty
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As far as I can tell, the surgeon has thinned the bridge, re-shaped the tip (which has gone from being a hook to a ski-jump) and corrected her deviated septum (which was the only bit of her nose job I could actually understand. It wasn’t horrendous, but it WAS crooked)
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And I wasn’t keen on Ceci having this surgery (more especially as she’s about to flit off to Europe for some time and could have spent the money on buying a Russian husband for me!) as she’s so pretty she didn’t need it and I’m positive she’s the only person who could see the faults she hated so much but her new nose, even still quite swollen as it is, is AWFULLY cute. She looks absolutely great! She’s gone from dreadfully cute to really quite smack-you-in-the-face adorable
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She, of course, will have to tell you more about what went on at the clinic so please beg her for details (I’d like to know it all too!), and maybe to let you be emailed the before and after photos, because they’re groovy (I also have one of her bruised, bandaged and feeling very sorry for herself)
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Honestly, her surgery was so trauma-free (as far as she’s told me! And if you discount the fact that someone died on that operating table last week) that it has me thinking again about getting MY cosmetic surgery done...

Sorry, Cec, sorry!

2007-01-26T21:08:00.000+11:00

I will post about our trip to Melbourne, I promise! But I'll have to do it after the long weekend (being Australia Day today) as I started to write the post at work this week but didn't finish AND didn't send it to my home email to finish (stupid cow that I am). Monday, definitely!
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Oh! And can I please please please put a picture on? The story would be MUCH better if I could put one of those pictures on!

Either the best thing or the stupidest thing I've ever done

2007-01-21T11:01:00.000+11:00

Bug must fill you all in. I am beginning to have doubts that it was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done (my smile is definately much worse than before). I am being charged a simply ridiculous amount at an internet cafe for a few measly minutes, and have requested (no, ORDERED) Bug to break her blogging drought and fill you all in on my stupidity. Or my best thing. I really don't know yet!!! Oh dear!!!

Cock rings and the like

2007-01-12T14:07:00.000+11:00

I hope I successfully grabbed your attention with that title. After all, cock rings and the like would be, I believe, of interest to those mere mortals who have either rather mundane or rather more adventurous lives.

I have returned today from three nights away on the gorgeous west coast of Tasmania. I had to go to do some fieldwork for uni, so I decided to make a bit of a holiday of it as I've never been to the west coast of my own state before (which is pretty atrocious as I've been overseas, but not to a major part of the state I've lived in my entire life), and do some suitably touristy things such as cruising down the Gordon River and visiting Sara Island (once the harshest penal settlement in the British empire), and going on the 100 year old steam train through the wilderness. My friend Sammy came with me to be my companion and volunteer field-assistant. Sammy went to uni with me, but did a combined science/law degree, and is now a very well-dressed lawyer. She is very tall, very thin, and I think very attractive, with long smooth hair. And very well spoken of course, seeing as she went to the most exclusive girls school our fair state has to offer. As well as having all of these positive attributes, she also has the gift of being able to chat easily and graciously to pretty much anyone in her very polished voice.

To look and speak to Sammy you would not think she was a regular visitor to the adult products store. Whilst walking along the lovely Strahan waterfront one evening, we were chatting about a mutual friend of ours, and I was telling Sammy how I was planning on throwing the dirtiest hens night possible for our mutual friend, and how I was counting on Sammy herself for assistance in this endeavour. I also told her how our mutual friend had said how sex with her boyfriend is over quite quickly as he's not very controlled. Sammy, as a very liberated woman in charge of her sexual destiny, was APPALLED that our friend had been putting up with this. She launched into relaying to me how she had purchased a cock ring for her own boyfriend, who had been rather surprised at the gift. But it wasn't just a cock ring, it was a cock ring complete with a small vibrator on the top for Sammy's increased enjoyment. She then went on about how enjoyable it was, and how her boyfriend enjoyed wearing it not just for his own benefit, but also because he liked how much enjoyment she got out of it. She then regaled with tales of the women who own the adult shop, how that adult shop was better than the other adult shop in our town, and the best type of vibrator to purchase for our friend as a gift on her hen's night. When we returned to the hotel room she was reading my cosmo or cleo magazine which had a section on aquatic sexual activies (depicting some highly unlikely positions that involved inflatable water doughnuts and lilos), and then was saying in a very serious voice 'Yes, but the problem with aquatic sex is that it washes away all of the natural lubrication. Of course, you could use lube, but that would be difficult to apply in the water and would wash away too . . ' and deciding which positions were possible. When she got to the bit in the article about purchasing a silicon-based lube for such aquatic adventures, she then talked on about how she'd never seen a silicon-based lube before when she'd been shopping in adult stores.

And to be perfectly honest, while I'm glad Sammy feels that she can be so open with me, I felt a little awkward with all this adult-shop talk, due to my lack of adult-shop experience. And I could definately have done without knowing she bought a cock ring with added vibrator for her boyfriend, who at that stage I'd never met, and how he feels when he's using it. When she introduced me to him today I had the wicked thought of asking him how the cock ring was going, but for the sake of peaceful relations and making a favourable first impression I restrained myself. Although I suppose I could have made a memorable first impression at least!

So, for anyone who wants their intimate antics spiced up a little, why not try the cock ring with vibrator for even more join his and her pleasure, as recommended by Sammy!

I am a 158 cm eating machine

2006-12-27T13:30:00.000+11:00

So, who else has had to surreptitiously release their belt at the dinner table in a futile effort to make their expanding girth more comfortable, as you persevere to eat those last few tantilising mouthfuls of Christmas pudding (which, as you well know, you only get once a year)? Actually, it wasn't even done surreptitiously around our Christmas dinner table. And it hasn't just been on that one day - the entire week-long lead up to Christmas, which began with my birthday, has been a gigantic binge-eating session for me. Which is still continuing today. I have been on, and am still pillaging my way through, a sugar-filled carniverous rampage. I mean, when else but Christmas would I have thick, tender slices of pink pig on toast for breakfast? Followed by leftover succulent turkey, seasoning and roast potato sandwiches for lunch, interspersed with a few rafaellos, ferrerro rochares and belgium seashell chocolates (yay for the practice of giving your primary class teacher, for 27 lucky little souls, my mother, Christmas gifts, usually of the luxury chocolate variety), a standard sized dinner, then followed by my choice of leftover cake - my white chocolate birthday cake, or 'Brethren' chocolate layer cake (my mother had a boy in her class who belongs to the 'Exclusive Brethren' sect - ie no tv or eating with and in front of people not of your sect - who baked her a huge and truly mouth-watering cake) with some home-grown raspberries on the side. Then a nice cup of hot chocolate made with 'luxury' hot chocolate powder, with a few more chocolate seashells for good measure.

And there has been no gym at all for at least two weeks. I mean, could you imagine exercising and shaking around all that food??!!

Oh, and it's not going to end! In fact, it will get worse! I am off to the Falls Festival this Friday for New Years (this will be my first New Years without working in 6 years!) where I will eat absolute rubbish washed down with far too much alcohol!

So may you to be merry, festive and full of good food! Go the Christmas Season!!

The Trip and Katie Update

2006-11-28T11:52:00.000+11:00

I am still somewhat annoyed, but my annoyance has been tempered by the fact that Katie is in India and I can't get my hands around her throat. Not that I could anyway (without a step-stool) - she's almost a foot taller than me.

At the end of the last post I was very frustrated and somewhat at a loss of what to do, given that Katie didn't want to pay her deposit but wanted to wait a month until she got back from India and had a chance to 'look over' everything, with an appointment with the travel agent the next morning who was pretty confident that if we left booking for much longer the five of us wouldn't get on the same trip. I was also on my way to our Monday night trip-planning meeting, where Felicity, Rose and Frieda would be, but no Katie.

At the Monday night meeting, I explained to Frieda and Rose about Katie (Felicity already knew ) and repeated what the travel agent had said about the very real possibility that the five of us wouldn't get on the tour together if we waited, and said to them "I have no idea what to do - tell me what to do."

Led mainly by Rose (who was absolutely flabbergasted when I pointed out that we were leaving in four months, and realised that as she's aiming on leaving in January, that it's only two months until she has to leave) the consensus was "Stuff Katie, book the four of us on tomorrow, and at least we're assured of being together." I did come in for a bit of grief from Felicity and Frieda, who said that they can see Katie's point, that nothing happened for ages (BECAUSE WE WERE WAITING FOR THE DATES PEOPLE) and then I was rushing them (BECAUSE KATIE IS GOING TO FREAKING INDIA UNTIL CHRISTMAS).

Rose rang up Katie (who was having a romantic dinner with her boyfriend) as I had flatly refused to (I was too angry to talk to her), and told her that we were going ahead and booking for the rest of us tomorrow, and that it was fine and she could book when she got back from India, but she'd lose the group booking discount of $100, oh, and she may not be on the same tour as us. Rose said that Katie was a bit short with her, but said 'ok'.

At 10 am the next morning I get a message from Katie, reading something like 'Am I sitll able to book with you today and get the group discount and pay my deposit later? Let me know it's urgent." I phoned her up and informed her that yes, I could still book her on the tour today with the rest of us, but she would have to pay her deposit and show her id within five days, and there was only two days until she left for India, so she'd have to do it tomorrow. Frieda had agreed to drop a brochure over at her house for her to read that day, so she could 'look through' everything before paying her deposit.

So I go to the travel agent and book all five of us on the tour. What a relief. Phone Rose and tell her Katie changed her mind at the last minute. She says "HA! I KNEW losing the group discount would get her!" Katie is notoriously tight with money. I text Katie and tell her she can pay her deposit to anyone at the travel agent, not just the lady I booked with.

Thursday I go to work. Katie has gone to India. At work Felicity tells me that Katie didn't pay her deposit after all. She went in on Wednesday to pay it but Maria, our travel agent, wasn't in, so she didn't pay it after all. "But I told her she could pay it with any travel agent," I tell Felicity. "Well, she wanted to ask Maria some questions before she paid, and she was out of the office." "Why didn't she ask another travel agent then?" I say, highly, highly annoyed. "She said she did but they didn't know, and they wouldn't give her Maria's mobile number so she could phone her and ask so she didn't pay."

So, after all that stress, then relief that we were all booked on, Katie didn't pay after all. I find it hard to believe that the other travel agents couldn't answer her questions though. And why the hell didn't she phone me and ask me these all-important questions? There's a good chance I would have known. And I can't imagine there being a question that wasn't covered by the brochure, if she'd read it properly. It is a very comprehensive, easy to read document.

I am so angry I cannot put it into words with Katie. Not just that she stressed me out big time with her refusal to pay, then her last minute change of mind, then her not-paying after all, but the fact that she didn't have the decency to contact me, the one who has gone to so much trouble for her, let me know she didn't pay after all. She must have realised that because she didn't pay, I'd have the travel agent chasing me for the missing deposit. Which is exactly what happened. Maria the travel agent rang my office on Friday and left a message for me to phone her, and when I did on Monday I was told that Katie hadn't paid her deposit. Which, if Katie hadn't told Felicity, who then told me, would have been news to me.

Felicity suggested to Katie, who jumped at the idea, that 'one of us' go in to the travel agent five days before Katie returns from India and book her on the tour again with us, so that when she gets back she can go straight in and ask Maria her questions, then pay. 'One of us' means me, naturally. I told Felicity that there was no way I was doing it. She got pretty annoyed with me, and said 'why not, I thought it's a good idea'. "Because I've done all I can for Katie, and I'm not involving myself anymore. If Katie wants someone to do that than you can. I'll give you the travel agent's details." Felicity was quite put out at this, and muttered something about how she didn't want to go in, and I should, which I just ignored.

And not one of these girls has thanked me for all I have done, besides Rose. Not that I'm after gushing praise, but a little 'gee, thanks Cec for all you've organised,' wouldn't have gone astray. Instead I get criticised.

A rant, rave and complain post

2006-11-20T16:47:00.000+11:00

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so frustrated.

No, not sexually, any dirty-minded people.

I am frustrated with trip-planning.

It is getting a bit ridiculous. We are leaving in four months. We have no tour booked, no airfares, no accommodation, no definate tour-route plans, no dates.

I like to plan. I am a planner. This is possibly why I am a relatively organised (re: pedantic) person. Why I am doing my PhD, where you must plan 3 years ahead.

We have been waiting on the release of the new tour brochure, which has the dates. Last week after hassling both Topdeck (the tour company) directly and then the travel agent, I got definate dates, prices and then, wah-lah! a brochure. Three brochures, in fact, so we could pass them around and look. According to the travel agent, these tours fill up very quickly, given that it's not like contiki where one leaves pretty much every day. Only four leave a month, and we are going on the most popular tour. So, last Tuesday I made an appointment to meet with the travel agent and book all five of us in on this tour next Tuesday (as it was then. It is now tomorrow). We get an extra $100 discount each, as there's so many of us going.

Last Tuesday night, all of us had to work. We discussed the trip, worked out times to have a trip-planning meeting. I showed Katie and Rose the brochures whilst we were on break. Offered to let them take them home to look at, which they did not do. The tour is however on the Topdeck Tour website, where it has been all year. I told everyone that we had to be organised by next Tuesday, when I have this meeting. Everyone knew that that was why it was imperitive that we have a meeting over the weekend. I have to listen to Katie telling me how much she wants to get everything booked and how stupid she's felt telling people from uni that she's going overseas next year when they ask what she's doing, and when they say "well have you booked yet" she says, "Um, no" and they look all knowing like she's not really going and she feels stupid and pathetic.

Many meeting dates were put forward and then declined. Finally we settled on Sunday at 1pm. Then Katie got a ticket to go to this free concert (free, but you still needed to get a ticket to enter), so the meeting was changed to 5pm Sunday. I tell everyone that to book us on the trip I need a photocopy of their passport or license as id, plus $200 deposit so please bring it with them. 5pm Sunday I arrive at Rose's and discover that it is only the two of us plus Felicity at the meeting. Katie and Frieda can't make it. Frieda has a cold and is too sick to make it(despite the fact she managed to make it out for dinner with us and then out to a pub the night before) and Katie's concert doesn't finish until 8 pm.

Annoyed, but the three of us carry on and just chat away about possible plans and dates and just usual excited stuff like Rose asking: "Can you catch a train to Loch Ness?" and "How did you get across that massive river in Edinburgh?" and Felicity commenting: "Yeah, I've heard of Stonehenge". Felicity decides that as we can't set anything definate without the other two then we need to have a meeting Monday night with them there. Plus I still need photocopies of their licenses and their deposits.

Katie contacts Felicity and says she can't make the meeting as she's going to Launceston with her boyfriend for his birthday (city two hours away) on Monday. I message her and say "I need a copy of your licence plus your deposit before 11am Tuesday, you'll have to find a way to get it to me."

I have no reply.

Today, after driving for 6 hours and wandering around the bush (just because I happened to be doing this for my research, this is in no way connected to our trip), I get a message from Felicity. It says "Hey just spoke to Katie and don't think she's happy giving a deposit before she's had a chance to look over everything. She gets back from India on Dec 14".

Yes, Katie is going to India this weekend. All expenses-paid trip with her parents and brother. She actually doesn't want to go. Honestly, rich people piss me off. She didn't want to go on the cruise around the Phillipines either. It's not like she dosn't get on with her brother, either. He's only a couple of years younger than her and they're quite good friends.

So, despite the fact that we've known we were going to do this particular tour for oh, about five months, despite the fact that Katie has been desperate to book airfares/tour so she doesn't feel stupid in front of her law-degree friends, to the point of saying "well if we don't make dates soon I'm going to book without you," she feels like she can't pay the $200 deposit and book with us tomorrow because she hasn't looked everything over properly.

I am furious.

I spoke to Felicity on the phone after receiving her message and Katie had rung her and said "I'd prefer it that Cecilia is mad with me in the short-term rather than I pay out money and get overseas and not like it and be mad with Cecilia in the long-term". She also said that she didn't want to pay out so much money when she doesn't know what she's getting.

We have planned to do this tour for months. She has known all week that I have the new brochures, she even glanced at them herself, and that we were doing the booking this Tuesday. I am also pissed off that she couldn't call me or message me and let me know herself.

Aren't you being just a teensy bit unreasonable Cecilia? I hear you ask. Well, honestly, I don't think I am. If we wait until after Katie gets back from India, has a chance to 'look over' everything, and then book in to the travel agent and make our tour booking, there is a very real chance that we would have missed out on the date we want to leave on, if not all three of the dates it leaves in the month of May.

I have done everything for the girl. I have gotten brochures, quotes for car hire, hassled Topdeck about when are they finally releasing the brochure so we can book, hassled the travel agent, gotten the best deal possible with her for the tour, and then, with one week's notice, let everyone know that we need to pay the deposit and give me id photocopies for Tuesday. And now, THE F*****G DAY BEFORE Katie feels that she hasn't 'looked everything' over. She could have gotten a brochure off me to 'look over' on the two-hour drive to Launnie with her boyfriend.

I have no idea what to do now. Cancel my appointment tomorrow, I guess. What I really want to do is book the other four of us in and let Katie take her chances for when she gets back from India. The others are more charitable than I am, however, and won't do that. But then, they haven't been the one doing all the organising.

The Night of the Maid

2006-11-06T16:45:00.000+11:00

Seeing as dancingfairy was wondering what happened the night I went out dressed as a maid, I think I'd better finally oblige and fill her (and anyone else who was wondering) in.

I think I look good in that particular maid's outfit. Bug, what do you think? You just can't go wrong with micronet tights and lace, in my opinion. If only I looked so good in my usual uniform of servitude I might get a few more tips at work. We had a very enjoyable punch/dinner party at Rose's abode. I went easy on the punch given what has happened on previous punch parties. This could have been a mistake as I then had to go 'out' dressed as a maid still in full control of my senses. We went to a nightclub, with only Rose, Zoe, another girl called Heidi and I still in costume. The rest had gotten changed, the wusses. Rose was dressed as a girl guide. However, this girl guide uniform had belonged to her friend pre-puberty and Rose just wore the sleeveless tunic (no shirt underneath), sheer stockings and high heels. Zoe (another friend from work I don't think I've mentioned) was wearing my denim cut-off shorts that I last wore when I was 13 (because that was the last time I could fit into them) and a shirt tied up at the waist - she was a builder. Heidi was a surgeon in scrubs. I made sure I stuck close to at least one of these three so it was obvious I'd been to a costume party, I just hadn't decided to put on a maid's outfit to go out.

Once at the club I downed three tequila shots in quick succession and suddenly I didn't care at all that I was out dressed rather oddly. The feather duster did appear, I am sad to relate. Rose bent over and I dusted her bottom on the dancefloor. I have no idea why. Maybe to entertain the boys watching us.

The reason I haven't posted about this night out is that I was rather miffed after it. My pride took a severe denting. After we'd been at the club a couple of hours this tall, good-looking guy approached me on the dancefloor and asked if he could buy me a drink. I told him no, I was dancing. "Please?" he says again. "No." I replied again. I got occupied saying goodbye to Zoe, and whilst I was doing this potential drink-buyer had cornered Rose and was telling her that I was gorgeous, and did I have a boyfriend? Rose decided that he was nice, and promptly threw me into him. Literally shoved me into him, telling me that he was nice and hot and go and dance! So I did (it was her birthday, after all). And he WAS very nice and tall and appeared to be rather hot. I was wary of wearing the punch and tequila goggles but all the other girls have assured me that he was hot. So we did the whole dance-and-pash thing, which is something I never thought I'd do in plain view of the work girls (damn tequila, and chatted by yelling into each others ears. I actually couldn't hear him say his name so he took out his license and showed me it so I could read his name. And then we were typing messages into our mobile phones and giving it to the other to read (whilst dancing, that is). And he was showering me with compliments, which I was rather wary of. And the feather duster may have appeared, I must admit.

We went to sit down and had a proper chat filled with all the usual stuff, where he assured me he hadn't been attracted by the uniform, but drawn to my face (I was highly suspicious of this), and could tell on the dancefloor that I wasn't just gorgeous but intelligent too (I have no idea why and I think this was just a line, given what I was wearing. Unless wearing cute costumes is a sign of intelligence). And then he asked me out for dinner next week, and wanted me to set a date. I wouldn't set a date (couldn't remember when i was working plus didn't want to see him again in a lengthy dinner situation in case there was nothing to discuss whilst waiting for the food), so he was asking whether I'm free on weekends, or would a weekday be better, etc, and then could he please have my number. So I gave it to him, then said goodbye and that I'd better go back to my friends given that it was Rose's birthday, and he disappeared. I think he left immediately. His friends had already gone home to their girlfriends, he'd told me. The work girls were all very excited on my behalf and said how nice and hot he was.

AND THEN HE NEVER CALLED!!!!

Men are bastards. Now I know why I didn't bother with them for so long.

But I must say I was rubbing my hands together in glee that I'd 'picked up' (ew what an awful term) and Heidi hadn't. Heidi (friend of Frieda's who seems a bit psychotic in that she has been stalking her ex boyfriend and is now always desperate to 'pick up') had been DESPERATE to 'pick up' that night, as had been Rose. They had been prowling around the club all night. When she didn't succeed after two hours, Heidi wanted to move clubs. And Rose is so much prettier than I am. But they didn't succeed. Whereas I, who wasn't trying and wasn't out for that reason, did. He he he.

A spot of dusting

2006-10-10T16:04:00.000+11:00

I am going out this saturday night dressed as a french maid who speaks italian (as I don't speak french). I am debating whether or not to take my feather duster out on the town (pluses, I could go up to hot guys and say 'ahh, you are verry verrry dirty. Let me clean you, you dirrrty dirrrty boy). Will probably depend on how drunk I get at the dinner party. Which is a 'uniform' costume party. I am not randomly dressing up as a french italian-speaking maid for my Saturday night.

Rose is having this uniform dinner party for her 24th birthday. The other girls and I were discussing what to wear and Katie says "I have no idea what to wear. Who the hell has a uniform costume in their wardrobe?" While the others were agreeing with her I piped up in a small voice saying 'Umm, I do. I have a French maid costume.' This of course prompted 'Cecilia, that's a bit kinky. Is there something you're not telling us?'

So, to dust or not to dust, this is the question.

Ellaborating on the 'quick' update

2006-10-03T14:41:00.000+11:00

As going to a gym class (couldn't go to the 30 minute spin as all the bikes were booked so went to the hour long step class at the uni gym for the first time where I had to do stupid things like 'dancey move' and 'shoulder shimmy' instead of the more hardcore things the gym instructor at the YMCA where I usually go make you do and I wasn't even absolutely bloody exhausted the way I usually am) has made me so very hungry I am just finishing off a very delicious, slightly mushy snickers bar (mmmm, just the right squishiness), mushy because it's such a gorgeous warm spring day here, beaming sun and blue sky with a few token fluffy white clouds. Do you perhaps see WHY I need to go to the gym quite so often? I'm just using the gym-has-made-me-hungry as justification. If it wasn't that excuse, I would have probably used need-brain-energy-for-session-with-supervisor-at-3pm.

Bug was feeling sick yesterday (I couldn't have infected her with my germs as I hadn't seen her in at least 10 days before I started vomiting) so I hope she's feeling better by tomorrow - it's supposed to be 26 degrees and she luuuuuurrrrrves hot weather.

Back to the night of the law ball - I am beginning to realise how much living and growing up in the Northern Suburbs, working at the local fruit market where the other girls used to ask me when I was going to have a baby (as 22 is pretty old not to have started, to them), and going to the local Catholic school (it wasn't a state-run school, it's a private school in that my parents had to pay a couple of thousand a year for me to go there, but it still attracted a hell-bogan crowd in high school where they didn't just take mainly Catholic kids the way they used to in primary school, they take anyone) has influenced my behaviour and the way I think. I like to think that I'm not a bogan. No, I KNOW I'm not. Quite well-spoken (now I don't work at the fruitmarket, where I used to adopt the local accent on purpose to fit in), don't swear badly except when under extreme provocation, think that everyone should stay at school until they're 18 unless they get an actual job, and that these bogans need to stop living off the dole and child welfare payments and stop having so many damn kids so damn young.

But I do things and think that they are perfectly acceptable that the work girls don't. Except Felicity, who went to a state school. For example, when that undercover police car almost crashed into the side of us last month I was the only one whose automatic reaction was to give them 'the finger'. Because that to me is the only/best reaction to show your extreme displeasure at a very reckless driver who has almost caused a serious accident.

And when we left the fancy hotel where the law ball was held, there were no taxis. My friends and I had raced out, and as there were no taxis I called for one on my mobile. In the meantime, other people had come out and stood waiting as well. One taxi arrived and instead of driving right up to the entrance, it stopped by the first group of people it saw who had come out another entrance and were waiting 20 metres away, and these people got in and drove off. That to me is very bad manners. We had all been at the same function, and those people knew that they hadn't been waiting first. I was quite annoyed. I called the taxi company again and told them to send lots of taxis. It had now started to rain, and it was quite windy. A group of people who'd come out the front just after us walked down to the roadside and waited for a taxi down there, one arrived and it took them. That was okay, they'd only been out the front about 10 seconds after us. Then my friends and I went and stood at the end of the covered walkway that leads up to the hotel, by the roadside. Another taxi approached, and a group of people came running down to the road and waved it down and got in it about 30 metres up the road from us. I was furious. As they started to get in I ran up to the taxi, screeching like a mad woman about how rude they were and lacking in manners, and how I would've expected more from law students, and god I have no idea what else and I dread to think. We got the next taxi. I most fortitiously had packed my umbrella in my handbag (so don't ask) and planted myself on the footpath in the rain and wind, with my bright yellow umbrella while my friends huddled under the covered walkway, and we got the next one. But noone else had hurled abuse directly into taxi windows. It was me, the girl from the northern suburbs.

Then we were waiting in a very long line in the rain in our little evening dressers at the new nightclub. Again everyone was very thankful I had packed the umbrella as five of us managed to huddle under it. Carmen and two of her other friends we had attended the ball with were standing in the line at least 35 people ahead of us, having got into a taxi before the function actually ended (in order to be sure of getting one). After waiting 20 minutes with very little progress, Carmen came running (as well as you can in high heels in the rain on a slope) down to the rest of us, saying 'Nova was just punched in the face. This girl just turned around and punched her in the face. For no reason. She's got a fat lip.' Carmen went back up to Nova and her other friend Sam, and in a few minutes they all came back to us, Nova smiling bravely with a tearstained face and waterey eyes, and a fat lip. Some bogan girl had turned around and punched her in the face and then run off down the road. She still doesn't know why. We all left the club in disgust. The bouncers hadn't even let Nova into the club, offered her an icepack, or a drink of water. In fact they hadn't given a stuff. I don't care if they are the hot new club in town, a little bit of customer care would be nice.

I was relaying this story to my eldest brother (he's 16) and a couple of his friends and his first reaction was 'did you smack her one?' (the girl who smacked Nova, that is) and when I said 'no', he wanted to know why and thought it was pretty poor that I hadn't. When I explained that it was all over and done with before I even knew about it, the bogan Nova-basher gone, he still thought it was a weak excuse for not sticking up for my friend. This got me thinking. If I had been there, what would my first reaction have been? And I know without a doubt that I would have taken a swing back at the girl, pushed her into the wall, anything really. It's an automatic reaction drilled into me due to my upbringing. You stick up for your friends and yourself physically if you have to. My dad has taught us this well. To the point of my younger brother (he's 15, was 14 when this happened) breaking his hand and having to have surgery on it earlier this year for wading into a fight with some totally random bogans who started attacking his friend. Of course, my automatic 'bash the crap out of the other girl' may not be the wisest move, being that I'm only 5'2 and was on the night wearing damn high heels. But I would have expected every other girl there with me to wade into the fight, and as there was 8 of us, I'm pretty sure we would have bested the other girl, and whoever the else she was with. But then, out of the 8 of us, I think only Felicity would be there with me, pulling hair and bitch-slapping.

I am actually shocked that Carmen (at least 5'9, size 14) let some girl smack her very good friend Nova in the face and stood by and did nothing. And her friend Sam, who is a damn tall, not fat in the least but a sporty, powerful looking girl, did bugger all either. Am I totally betraying my humble northern-suburbs outlook on life here, or is anyone else shocked that Carmen and Sam stood by and did nothing? Is that the right thing to do? What 'nice, well-bought-up girls do? Nothing? Am I in actual fact a total and utter bogan in disguise?

A quick life update

2006-10-03T12:06:00.000+11:00

I should probably change that title right now! Since when have I ever managed to do a 'quick' or a 'short' post?

Since my last post my big life issues have been:

- my car being broken into, smashed window, stolen CD player (with new Lily Allen CD in it!), stolen speakers and STOLEN PARCEL SHELF (the speakers were mounted on this) and broken rear windowwiper cover (they attempted to steal the rear window windscreen wiper motor, why, I have no idea) - while I was asleep in my comfy bed about 1 and a half metres from my car (obviously, bed is inside house, the car is parked right up under our house, the living room upstairs is over it, and my bedroom is beside my car)

- dressing up and going to the law student society ball at Hobart's other fancy hotel (I work at the other one) and then a girl I was with being punched in the mouth in the line for a new nightclub.

- being constantly sick with a cold (which I think I've passed onto Mia, as she hasn't been in the office for two days, and there's a big used hanky on her desk) and then the sickest I've ever been in my life with stomach flu (lost 6 kilos and am down to 51 kilos though but I suspect I'll have them all back on by the end of the week) and then there's the not-to-be-talked-about but I will anyway ever present thrush which I am unable to totally get rid of. It just settles down to a faint itch and then WHAM is back to itchy as all hell. And no, it's not in my mouth if you catch my drift. I have been researching thrush and apparantly some women can never get rid of it and some have even committed suicide due to it! That would be so typical, I never get it once in 23 years and then am unable to get rid of it forever.

I have to go I am going down to a half-hour spin cycle class in the uni gym. I am quite nervous because this is my first gym class since I've been really sick and have lost all my strength, plus I find spin cycle awful anyway. But I am inspired by the commencement last night of the American Biggest Loser - if they can spin cycle I damn well can!

Be wary when awarding 'the finger'!

2006-09-11T16:34:00.000+10:00

So, back onto a totally frivolous line of thought that is more typical to me than musing over theology versus evolution: my brush with undercover police now two weekends ago.

I went to the Eskimo Joe concert two Fridays ago with the work girls Rose, Frieda, Felicity, Katie and Carmen, plus Julian, the ridiculously rich South African who I also work with, who is dating Frieda. Carmen had a little get-together at her house first, as it was her birthday, and made us and her other friends all cosmopolitans (she’s a huge sex in the city fan). Katie, Rose and Felicity were all not drinking, and had brought their cars. Carmen was going to the concert with one of her other, non-work friends, and after some discussion Katie, Rose and Felicity decided that only Rose would drive, as there was no point taking three cars when there probably wouldn’t be much parking. The only problem was that there was five of us, plus the driver, and only four passenger seats in the cars. I was the only one who thought this was a problem. I know, I am totally conservative! But this concert was in my home suburb and I was pretty confident that it would be crawling with police. My concerns were brushed aside, and in we piled to Rose’s old ford. There were three of us in the back, Julian sitting in the passenger seat, with Frieda sitting between his legs on the floor.

We made it to the concert with no problems, and after the concert we zipped around to my house so we could all go to the loo (there was a distinct lack of toilet facilities at the concert, at least, toilet facilities that were not awash with urine and I hate to think what else). We then went to a takeaway shop for a few potato cakes, and then were backtracking back to Carmen’s house so that Felicity could pick up her car and take us into a new nightclub, as Rose had had enough and wanted to go home. Frieda had tired of sitting between Julian’s legs, and had piled into the back with Katie, Felicity and I. I was the one without a seat, though, being swashed on the edge of the backseat behind Rose, the driver. I was supposed to be lying down hiding the tell-tale fourth head in the backseat, but I had to keep popping up to give Rose directions as I was the only one from the Northern Suburbs in the car and therefore the only one with any idea of where she was going. Rose missed three potential turn-offs to Carmen’s house, and ended up having to do a u-turn and go back. As we were driving up Carmen’s street, a car up ahead of us went straight ahead through an upcoming roundabout. As we started to go through the roundabout, another car came charging up on our left side and started to go through, then saw us and braked, leaving their bonnet protruding all the way over the give-way line. Luckily, Rose wasn’t driving very fast, so she was able to narrowly avoid crashing into the front of this car who had failed to give way. We were all going ‘Oh My God!’ and I (betraying my Northern Suburbs origins horribly) did the natural thing and gave this car that had so narrowly missed ploughing into us ‘the finger’.

The car then turned behind us and flicked on these little blue and red lights that were in the front grill. “Shit! They’re police!” I yelled over everyone’s continued chat and laughter over our near miss. “What?!” “They just flicked on their lights!!!”

Rose pulled over, later relaying that all that was going through her head was ‘here goes my license, here goes my license.’ I laid down on Felicity’s lap, but no attempt was made to cover me as Rose had said ‘they know, don’t attempt to hide it.’ Given that I had been sitting up the entire time through the whole near miss, I had then proceeded to give ‘the finger’ and I was even the one to be looking out the rear window and see that they were undercover cops this seemed a fair assumption. I was pretending to be unconscious however, as we had planned at the start of our journey that if caught I was to be unconsciously drunk and Rose simply had to get me home.

Rose gets out of the car, positions herself over the back window effectively screening me from the policeman, and then does an award-winning acting performance. Honestly, the girl should be on the big screen. Or work for the secret service.
“You scared me so much!” she says to this young male plain-clothes police officer. The female driver stayed in the car.
“Sorry about that, but we were chasing a car.”
They chat a bit more, but I can’t hear what’s going on as Felicity has now covered my head with my jacket. I know he’s checking Rose’s license. Everyone still in the car suddenly realises that as well has having an extra person in the car, not one of them is wearing a seatbelt, and put these on as surreptitiously as possible.
Then Rose opens up the back door, leaving my backside poking out for all to see. I was kind of crouched down behind Rose’s seat, turning to my left lying most uncomfortably on Felicity’s knees, which were also crammed in behind Rose’s seat. Rose puts her hand on my back and kind of leans over me, hiding my huge bum, saying loudly ‘Everyone give me your ids. He wants to check your ids.’ And then hissing quietly ‘he doesn’t know you’re there Cec, cover her up, throw jackets, bags, anything on her.’
Rose gets out holding the ids, slams the door and positions herself back over the window. “My friends think you’re hot.” she announces, “they want to know if you’re single.” Honestly, the girl is a bloody marvel. “Just tell them I’m taken,” the cop says. Meanwhile, there’s a massive flurry in the car to cover me with anything they can find, and throw a handbag on top. I am crouched down, doubled over behind the car seat in an even smaller amount of space than I had previously, my head pressed up against Felicity’s knees, as Frieda, Katie and Felicity have shuffled over on the back seat to make it look more normal. “Oh no!” Katie exclaims. “He’s going to find out that I have a court summons!” Katie was caught driving with an expired license.
Rose gets back in the car, and starts up the car. “Get smaller Cecilia,” ‘He’ll look through the window when he brings the ids back,” she mutters. Regretting eating that potato cake, I am scrunched into the most uncomfortable position of my life, one ankle doubled back underneath me causing an amazing amount of pain. “Why did he want the ids?” someone asks. “He said it’s to see who’s ‘out and about’ on a Friday night, and the info will be destroyed at the end of the night.”
He comes back and passes the ids through the window Rose, and saying ‘thanks, have a good night.’ Rose drives off, with no idea where she’s going, as I’m unable to give her directions. She just drives, and drives with everyone laughing from sheer relief, except me, who has three coats and a couple of handbags on my head, and is slowly suffocating/passing out with pain from my ankle. I had to yell so loudly ‘CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TAKE THESE COATS OFF MY HEAD??!!’ before Felicity remembered me, and did so.

So, that was our brush with possibly the stupidest undercover cop ever. There we were, no seatbelts, extra person in the car, and he didn’t even look in the window. He didn’t even check for open alcohol, the way cops always do if they see a car full of young people. And I had given them ‘the finger.’ He had no idea that we were doing anything wrong. And then I got extremely annoyed, because he had had the audacity to almost crash into the side of our car, then pull US over and check the ids of everyone in the car (sorry, the ids of everyone visible in the car).

Thank goodness, as Katie and Frieda joked, we hadn’t given him five ids when Rose had come in to get them!

* * * *

Quick update on the Jess situation: she’s contacted me since, in tears because she can’t do a job application for a teacher’s aide position. And I mean REALLY in tears. Damn that dratted depression. I was most hard-hearted, and refused to do it for her, the way I’ve been doing all of her other job applications for the past three years, and re-doing her resume at least twice a year. I even did a job app and resume for her mum earlier this year. Despite her sobbing about how stupid she is, and what a bad mother she is, not spending ‘quality time’ with Maddy, and how she just can’t do it I maintained that she had to have a go at it herself first, then I would check it over and ‘fix’ it (i.e. rewrite the entire thing). I hate to admit it, but I was influenced by how annoyed and disturbed I am still about her whole ‘earth is only 60,000 years old’ bizzo, and I think that by insisting that she have a go at doing this job app herself, it’s the beginning of me beginning to cut the ties between us. I offered to print out the previous job applications that I’ve done for her, for her to use as a guide (she’s lost them all plus her resume), but I refused to take them to her house like she wanted me to, saying most firmly ‘I’ll leave them sitting here for you, and you can drop by any time you like to pick them up as it’s school holidays so everyone is at home barring me.’

But, realistically, I’m not going to be in Hobart forever. I have two more years at uni and then 2009 will most likely see me employed on ‘mainland’ Australia, due to a total lack of fulltime permanent jobs in my area down here. It’s better that she learns to do these things for herself now, while I’m still here to ‘check’ them.

Losing to God

2006-09-03T22:53:00.000+10:00

I've just been upstairs having a jolly good old cry to my parents, mum in particular. I'm just so upset and disturbed. Still crying now, actually. I've just lost a best friend to God. Not Buggy darling, but my other very dear, very close friend. I've probably referred to her in the past, goodness knows by what name, so lets just call her Jess. I have stood by Jess since we first met in year 7, when we were 12, and she by me. After being under her 'spell' for the first year of our friendship, I got sick of her calling the shots and from then on told her when she was acting like a bitch, or I didn't agree with her actions, and I didn't hang about with her at school any more, but we were still very best friends, maybe because I was one of the few people who didn't pander to her. And remained very best friends, until this very evening. I stayed by her through her pregnancy, my family pretty much adopted her as another daughter, and I've supported her through her severe depression, that last year had me at my wits end as she rang me up endlessly crying because she wanted to kill herself and didn't want to live anymore.

Last year she found God. She joined a Christian church, and became a born again Christian, bible-study groups and all. She was even baptised there this year. I went along, and I cried because I was just so happy for her and I saw it as a whole new phase of her life, with her overcoming her depression (to some degree) and being happy again. God now speaks to her directly sometimes in church, and they have 'healing' sessions when they get people up on stage individually and pray for them and heal them, oh, and sometimes people faint because they are filled with the holy spirit, and some talk in tongues.

Absolutely fine with me. No worries. Anything that makes her happy and gives her life some direction and meaning, although I did get a bit annoyed with her constantly referring to 'Catholics' as being bad and following the wrong path and 'Christians' being right, and constantly told her that 'Catholics ARE Christians, it's just all Christians aren't Catholics! Catholisism is just one way of following Christianity!' Being a Catholic, nominally at least, I got sick of being told I wasn't a Christian.

I am a woman of science (very grandiose statement, that one!). Do I believe that God created all the animals and people in one arvo? No. Sorry, but the fossil evidence and the geological record provides evidence that it's just not possible. Darwin's theory of evolution, folks. Did God create life though? Well, very possibly. I'm quite happy to believe that he did create those single-celled organisms in the primordial swamp that started to produce nitrogen and then change the atmosphere to be favourable to other forms of life, and that he has something to do with our souls and personalities.

Tonight on the telephone after a fantastic hour and a half conversation with Jess where she told me everything that's been happening in her life and we reminisced and joked (I'd found this story I'd written in year 11 about year 10 with all of these things that happened we'd totally forgotten about) I concluded with:

'So, did Maddy (her 4 year old daughter) watch the dinosaur show tonight?'

'Oh, she watched it last week', Jess replied. 'But it's so hard, because they kept saying things like "millions of years ago when the dinosaurs were alive, and they weren't."

'What?' I said.

'Well, the earth is only 60,000 years old, so the dinosaurs can't have been alive millions of years ago.'

'The earth only 60,000 years old?' I repied in bewilderment. 'It's millions of millions of years old.' 3.4 billion, to be more exact, if I can remember correctly from first year uni, but I didn't say that.

"But the bible tells us that it's only 60,000 years old, and that's what I believe because I believe in God."

'What?' I said, still totally dumbfounded.

"The earth is only 60,000 years old. There's evidence to support that. This man found this rock from a volcano that all the experts said had taken thousands of years to form and he said it had been formed in one afternoon and eventually he was proved right. One day everyone will realise that they're wrong and the bible is right."

"But some rocks are only formed in one afternoon following volcanic eruptions." I said most logically, I thought (having studied university Geology for a year I do know the basics about rocks).

"Yes but everyone said this man was wrong and he was proved right. The chapter in the bible that says 'and Moses lived 900 years and his son lived 600 years . .' is just in there to allow us to calculate the age of the earth. People have worked out from that that the earth is between 60,000 to 65,000 years old. It's going to be so hard when Maddy goes to school, because she's going to be learning things that are against the bible and I'm going to have to tell her that what she's learning is wrong and what we believe is right."

"But there's scientific evidence from the fossil record to support the age of the earth, and rock formation."

"And it's wrong. It's okay, I accept that you have different beliefs to me and that's okay. Have a pleasant night's sleep."

Our conversation ended rather abruptly at that point, with me saying goodnight very chillingly.

I was, and am, just so shocked. What's so bad about taking the bible so literally, I have no idea, but I'm just so disturbed by it all. She is now totally and utterly immune to reason (oh, she's already told me previously that I'm a sinner, and I wasn't really worried by that, because I personally believe that God doesn't mind if I get drunk, go out dancing, kiss boys, or even girls if I am that way inclined, because he loves everyone and I'm sure he was young once too). And I'm just so DISTURBED by the fact that she is teaching her 4 year old that the bible is utterly and totally the truth, and science is basically a pack of lies thought up by sinners. What's going to happen to Maddy? And as I am a woman of science, where the hell does that leave me? Wasting my entire life? How can she reasonably reject fossil evidence? The bible says nothing at all about dinosaurs roaming the earth at the time of Abraham, or even Moses, and they weren't mentioned in Genesis "and Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden and thrown to the dinosaurs", so did they therefore never exist? Man wasn't around at the time of dinosaurs, and they weren't around from the time of Adam and Eve, so HOW THE HELL DO YOU EXPLAIN DINOSAURS YOU BRAINWASHING CHRISTIAN CULT???!!!

I was so upset that I went upstairs sobbing to my parents. They were quite shocked by her too, and said that she's been brainwashed, and there's no reasoning with people like that. Mum said that she's a very vulnerable person and she's just clung onto this. Yeah, I knew and accepted that that was what she was doing with this church, and I was happy that it has given her life meaning again and she's no longer suicidal. I'm still thankful that she's now not suicidal, and I hate to say it, that she's not so reliant on me now. But I'm just soooooooo upset by it all. I have lost a very good friend to God. And her God is not my nice, loving, forgiving god who accepts dogs and cats into heaven so they can be with their humans forever, her God is one who gave directions for the bible and the bible is right and that's it. How can she raise her daughter that the dinosaurs did not live millions of years ago?

And still my tears keep on a-rollin! What a sook I've become!

Drunken Recollections

2006-08-29T17:00:00.000+10:00

These are the messages I sent Bug in the early hours of Sunday morning, while I was at the 'ball' (read: drunken party in marquee with haybails and pre-mixed spirits and soft-drink in huge plastic containers with those little taps attached) for one of the residential colleges here at uni, complete with spelling mistakes. I however didn't feel that the mixed vodka and lift was strong enough so I headed out to Rose's car where I had left some tequila, salt and sliced lemon (I think I was a boy-scout leader in a previous life) and proceeded to do shots with another couple of girls (who were gone by 3.30, the weaklings!).

SO DRUNK CANT WALK BAD GEY? 3.41 am

I need u 2 mind me, these others used 2 me being straipht one & im so drunk 3.44 am

I luu u bug & lets b friends 4 eva cos i luv u & luv u & h cant walk 3.48 am

& wheres agg? I wamjed 2 dance with her. Teqila bad girl 3.54 am

(Agg is Bug's younger sister, whose name is not agg.)

Eyelashes and London ... continued!

2006-08-24T22:29:00.000+10:00

Rightio, so where was I? I honestly can't remember. Oh, the eyelashes look simply fabo though, thanks for asking. Definately worth the $55! Oh. My. God. I just spent $55 on my eyelashes! $40 perm and $15 tint. Plus there was that extra $34 for the eyelash conditioner (which has no expiry date and will last me so long 'they'll bury it with you, darl', according to my beautician) which was totally necessary if I didn't want my now-brittle eyelashes to crumple up and snap off. That's 4.7 hours at work. Oh well, it's only money! And I do have truly magnifique eyelashes now!

Okay, so the trip planning. So, moving on from when we want to go, we then had to decide how to get around. Again, I found myself on the outer, speaking against buying a van and driving ourselves around Europe. It sounds great, in theory, and they were all so excited. They seemed to think it would be like driving around Hobart. This massive adventure, with the six of us in an old combi, driving ourselves where ever we fancied going. And it does sound marvellous, on the surface. If you haven't been to Rome, or Paris and seen for yourselves how crazy the streets are. I had never even heard of 'bump parking' until I saw it in action. And if you don't think about what happens if the van breaks down, gets stolen, who's name it's going to be in, who will be insured to drive it, how the hell do you get car insurance for Aussies who have no fixed address in London, and then can you even get insurance just for a couple of months, what about registering it and changing over all the papers . . . then there's the stress and hassle of working out every single day where you're going and how to get there, where can you park, what about cheap accommodation (will you need to book ahead), and oh yeah, what the hell was there to see here again anyway?

So again I came off as the massive bitch as I firmly said "I don't think it's a good idea to drive around all of Europe" and after I'd stuck my neck out Rose, the only other one to have been to Europe before, then supported me and said she refused to drive on mainland Europe too. So we compromised and now we're driving around the UK for about 20 days. But they still want to buy a van. For 20 days. Instead of hiring. Hiring a van is damn expensive, I'll admit it. It'll cost us each about $800 for 20 days, not counting petrol, because we have to pay an extra surcharge for being under 25, and then registering more than one driver. Oh hang on, I didn't count Carmen when I did my calculations, because I didn't know she'd be coming. $670 each then, plus petrol. But I still don't think that Carmen will be able to come, realistically, if she's only just started her full-time goverment deparment job. That equals 1,613 pounds. Can you buy a good quality late 1990s van that seats 6 adults plus a huge amount of luggage for 1,613 pounds in London, English readers? Because these other girls think that we'll be able to, but I'm somehow doubting it greatly. Please, direct me to London used-car pages (do you have a standard newspaper that has a second-hand car-buying guide in it that I can look up online?) so I can prove to them that it is still better to hire rather than buy, even if hiring is just throwing money away.

So now we have established that we're leaving somewhere between February-April, we're hiring/buying a van to tour the UK, and then it was onto travelling around Europe after only 1 and a half hours of meeting. Italy, France and Switzerland were on the top of all lists except mine and Rose's, because we've already been to the 'normal' first-time-to-Europe places. I don't mind going there again, though, because I only spent one or two days in each place and like you can do Paris or Rome in just that short space of time. Top of my things to see list is Prague, and I'd love to go back to Berlin. Rose and I want to go to Eastern Europe, though, because it's cheaper and has some really gorgeous places. I think it's a bit safer and more touristy now than it has been (or is that my imagination?), and I'm dying to see Dubrovnik, Croatia. The others all had to leave then, leaving Rose, Katie and I. Rose (who I think could see how very little we had accomplished in this meeting) typed up what we had discussed and what we needed to discuss ("otherwise we'll spend all our time gossiping like normal"). I had tentatively floated the idea of doing a Topdeck tour (just go to www.topdecktours.co.uk and it's the one called the Grand European- I tried to put in the link but for some reason it won't work) of Europe - 28 days, all accommodation, transport, breakfasts, and 16 lunches and dinners for $3500 (1,410 pounds). No hassles or stresses, it includes all the places the others want to go, plus some Eastern Europe for Rose and I, and Prague for me and been shouted down earlier in the evening. Too expensive (I seriously think we'd be pushed to do Europe for a month for cheaper than that, and see everything everyone wants to see in the time frame), I don't want to be on a bus for so long (Felicity, who obviously has no idea that if we're on our own charted coach taking us directly where we want to go, it would actually be quicker than when we're catching buses around Europe ourselves that stop to pick up and drop of people at cities along the way), and 'what if we don't like it?' (Frieda, who wasn't placated when I suggested that you would have to be a pretty damn miserable person to not enjoy a whirlwind tour of Europe). When I broached the topic again to Rose and Katie, they were much more receptive. Rose in particular, once she saw the price, what it incorporated, and did her sums. She's very money savvy. Must be that commerce degree with four majors. And as Katie said "if this tour goes everywhere we want to go, it would be a good idea to do it". Finally. Voices of reason in the madness. Now all I have to do is pray that they stick by their tour desires (Katie especially is indecisive and non-commital about such small things like meeting up for lunch), and convince Felicity (that's going to be damn hard), who thinks that doing a tour will be like when we were dragged about on school excusions and we will be stuck on a bus permanently, Frieda, who has extremely limited funds and is worried that we'll pay all the money and hate it, and Carmen (who is probably the most anti-tour but what is the f****** point when she obviously isn't going to be able to go!!!!).

So that is where my life is at right now. Planning this trip is exciting, yet it is so totally exasperating, time-consuming, worrying and stressful already, and we've only just begun. I'm sure I've annoyed everyone already in just the one two hour meeting, by arguing against everything everyone else wanted to do. It doesn't bode well for two months of travelling!

I'M GETTING MY EYELASHES PERMED!!! Oh, and I'm coming to London!!!

2006-08-24T13:40:00.000+10:00

I'M SO EXCITED!!!!! I'm getting my eyelashes permed in one hour. So very, very excited. In actual fact, I may be a little bit too excited for the activity, even though I have never had my eyelashes permed before so it's naturally an exciting occasion. It could have something to do with the fact that it was confirmed beyond all doubt last night that next London spring will see me there for a little overseas jaunt.

So, I'm sure you want to hear all about it. Well, I didn't really know anything about eyelash perming until my friend Rose showed up at work with it done, and it looked great, so then I asked my own beautician . . oh, hang on, the COMING TO LONDON is actually far more interesting and exciting in fact, so anyway:

The travelling companions: all girls from work

Rose: worked with me for a couple of years, went off to be a flight attendant for some middle-eastern airline, then came back to us last year.

Frieda: nicest girl in the entire world, raised by her grandparents, cruely treated by ex-boyfriend and now with former south-african (been in Australia 4 years) law student/waiter with ridiculously rich family who worships the ground she walks on. Terrible at making decisions.

Felicity: fun but very much a 'group' person, young for her 21 years, also bad with the decision making.

Katie: tightest person with money I have EVER met - has a $90,000 inheritance, plus works two jobs and lives at home whilst studying, and unlike me who also did this for years, never spends any money. She hasn't had a haircut in like, 8 years, never visits the beautician, buys clothes once a year when she goes to Melbourne before Christmas to spend the money her mum gives her to buy her own pressies, and (this is the one that REALLY shits me) always eats BEFORE she goes out to dinner so all she'll have is some garlic bread, or bruchetta. Felicity and I have calculated that she simply must have at least $200,000, with her inheritance and 5 years of working nonstop and doing/buying nothing significant, not even a car). But essentially nice, just very, very tight with money.

Carmen: nice too, but one of those glass-half-empty people.

So anyway, Rose, Frieda and I had been talking about going over to Europe together 'next year' all year, but it was kind of all just talk, like, nothing definate, just nice daydreams as we set tables, took skirting off tables, that kind of thing. Felicity was planning on going to London this year for a few weeks by herself to visit a friend. As she can only stay with this friend for one week, and would then have to go live in a hostel, she heard us talking about our totally hypothetical trip and then decided that if we're going next year, then she'll wait for us to go because she doesn't want to stay in a hostel alone. Katie has always been going to go and live in London for a year, and work, and she's now decided that she'll go when we go, tour about with us then get a job, and Carmen is planning on having a full-time job in London for all of next year (she's already applied for a job at a place linked with her current place of work).

Last week Frieda said to me "when are we having a meeting to plan our trip? We'll have to start planning soon." I stared at her in astonishment and happiness. I had thought that all our talk would come to nothing, like so many of our talks had before. We decided to meet last night. I actually had no idea Carmen was going to come until she showed up at the meeting last night. I don't understand how she can get a fulltime job in this London department, work for three months and then nick off on tour for two months, then go back to work, but that's what she seems to be planning on doing.

We got hardly anything established last night, yet our 'hardly anything' was much more than I thought we would, given that there is SIX of us all with differing ideas and wants, and they are collectively the most indecisive group of people (barring Rose, she's a do-er like me), especially Felicity and Frieda. Planning going out for a casual dinner is usually a major undertaking for us.

We all want to go at different times. Rose in January, Katie in February/March, Felicity in March, Frieda doesn't know but whenever will be fine, and me in April. In vain, did I point out to them how miserably cold and dark it is in the UK during winter. Given that I have actually been there for winter before, and it was miserable enough in December when I was there at the beginnig of winter, you would think my words would have some weight, but apparantly not. I can't leave uni until March is over, so I just can't go any earlier. And it's not like they have to be in London in a specific month. They have just decided that April is too long to wait to go. I am rather annoyed because how much difference would it really make to them to leave three weeks later at the start of April rather than a week into March?

So we didn't resolve the issue of when to go. They all said 'well, we can go and you can catch up to us wherever we are,' which rather annoyed me because they think I'm just being obstinant and selfish about not going in March, and they can't see that I'm just not going to get permission to nick off to Europe during Summer, my fieldwork season when my buttongrass isn't underwater.

TO BE CONTINUED . . I'M GOING TO GET MY EYELASHES PERMED!!!

The Naturopath strikes and Mia strikes again!

2006-08-17T13:20:00.000+10:00

Greetings world. I am currently sitting at my desk enjoying a chocolate-coated teddy (this would be a very tasty biscuit, I am not attempting to shag a teddy with fur the colour of chocolate) with the heater on and the window open. I know, I know, for an environmentalist I have a) a very crap diet, and b) absolutely no regard for energy conservation. There is a reason for my disregard of the energy budget, and that is because my office smells very strongly like rotting apples. My officemate Mia has been away (yay, yay, yay) all month (alas, she is set to return today I think) in America. I only know this because I saw a flight itinerary on her desk when I deposited the cupcakes on it and with total disregard for her privacy and the unwritten laws of office-sharing I read it. You would think, wouldn't you, that something as big in your life as a trip to America where I guess she is presenting at a conference, because her conference posters have been removed from the walls of our office, would merit an excited mention to your officemate, but no, apparantly not. Anyway, enough bitching, the point of the story is that Mia has gone and left two dried out apple cores on her desk, and a wrinkly apple (there are also many prune pips, put there after she removed them from her mouth). Given that we have a little airless box of an office, the apple has been filling the air with apple-fumes which are quite strong when you first enter the room. They're quite bearable once you've been sitting in the office with it for a while (especially to someone such as myself who used to deal regularly for seven years with apples in such extreme states of decay they had actually liquified), but just in case I have any visitors I though I'd better open the window and air the place out a little. But it is cold so I have to have the heater on to compensate for the cold wind. Why not just remove the offending apple, I hear you ask. Well, that too would be a serious breech of the officemate's code, one from which I don't think we'd ever return, given our very tenuous forced pleasantries each day.

At the suggestion of my mother, who has a very srong belief in the healing powers of herbs (she swears by an infusion of thyme rinsed through the hair three times each week to stop grey hairs, and as she only has a few and she's 48 she might be right), I visited a naturopath yesterday in an attempt to find some natural remedy to rid myself of my continual ill-health which is seriously cramping my usually most full and entertaining life. My ill health began with pharengytis about 6 weeks ago, then some lovely thrush bought about by the antibiotics that cured the pharengytis, then some seriously painfull constant headaches and really bad pains in my neck and behind my ears, especially when I angled my head down in any way (sinuses maybe?). A visit to the doctor then confirmed I had the flu (flu vaccination therefore a total waste of time). Two days later another trip to the doctor confirmed flu, an ear infection, pharengytis and 'fluid buildup in my sinuses' or something to that effect. I then retired to bed for an entire week, and now almost a week after emerging I still have severe headaches and a runny nose, and now I'm beginning to get pains in my neck/behind my ears again when I tilt my head forward and am rather dreading this whole flu-thing beginning all over again. So, anyway, I took my catalogue of illnesses to the naturopath, who was a lovely woman probably not much older than me. She provided me with some vitamin C powder (side-effect is diahorrea, oh goody) and a personalised liquid herbal mixture, with many interesting things in it, including the stock-standard eccinatia and to my surprise oregano.

This herbal mixture has to be taken twice a day. It's a browny-greeny sludgy colour with an unpleasant smell, and you mix it in about 5 cm of water and down it goes. THEORETICALLY. Unfortunately, it tastes so absolutely terrible that I actually gag as I drink it. It takes all my courage to continue on after the first swallow, given that I have to drink it at the sink as I retch over the sink, coming extremely close to actually vomiting, streaming eyes and all. I have only taken it twice, and I don't know how I'm going to continue to take it for two weeks. I know, I know, I don't HAVE to take it. But I'm not getting any better and I'm sick of beig sick, and I can't afford any more time off uni, plus (priorities, priorities) I have a 13 hour party to attend next saturday night after working a really demanding function (11 pm - 12 noon, 3 bands, 2 DJs, $1 spirits and formal attire, what more could a girl want?) AND this concoction of satan cost me $33! So by God, I'm going to drink it! Although I am very, very scared and not sure I will physically be able to down it sometimes!

Wish me luck on my quest to vanquish the evil germs and overcome the noxious potion!

Cec :)

Don't you just love Dads?

2006-07-27T15:48:00.000+10:00

Bit of a mixed-bag post this time around. I'm heading off to try and buy the newly-released album by Lily Allen which has the most marvellous songs on it. That girl truly does rock. It's a little weird, too, to think that this London girl who has her own MySpace site www.myspace.com/lilymusic managed to get her song 'LDN' picked up by Triple J, the national Australian kind of 'alternative' radio station (alternative in that they do NOT play pop music, instead they play lots of Australian bands, and bands like Wolfmother, The Streets, Youth Group, get the picture now?) when the only place it was available was her myspace site (I think), and now her album which has only just been released, like, last Saturday (or maybe it's this saturday coming) is 'feature album' on Triple J and receiving heaps of airplay.

I attempted to build bridges with my officemate Mia this week. We still don't talk all day long, beyond, 'morning, how are you?' Then, on Monday morning, when I asked Mia how she was she said 'Oh, okay.' 'Only okay?' I inquire. 'You're usually good!'. 'Oh, I broke up with Dave last week.' 'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that,' I responded, then we sat in silence for the rest of the day.

I know, what a pathetic response I gave her! But I honestly didn't know what to say! I don't know her very well at all, despite the fact that we sit in a room probably 4 x 4 m² together every day, and have done all year. We just don't talk. It was like we took an instant dislike to each other. I blame our past lives. We must have been bitter enemies. And what could I say, in the obvious face of her heartbreak, given that I have no idea who did the breaking up, and that they seemed to be absolutely devoted to each other and almost too soppily in love. They would talk on the office phone at least once a day, always concluding with declarations of how much they loved each other, they lived together and spent all their free time together, oh, and they had a pash-fest here in the office once with me sitting at my desk (walked out in disgust during that one). And he must have loved her heaps, because she doesn't shave under her arms (I have such great logic).

So, Monday night I sacrificed Desperate Housewives, Greys Anatomy and my sleep and whipped up two batches of cupcakes, one plain and one chocolate, and iced them in many different lurid shades topped up with coloured sprinkles, got up Tuesday and drove them into uni at 7.30am, left them on her desk with a note saying 'Nothing cheers a girl up like cupcakes, especially with lurid sprinkles) then drove the 30 mins back to my home suburb, dropped my car at the mechanics and walked home. Wednesday I arrived in our office and Mia thanked me and said how nice it was and how thoughful. And . . . then we went back to our same old sitting in silence. I guess some people just aren't meant to be friends.

Yesterday I had to drop my dad in at the hospital in Hobart. I hate driving with dad anywhere because he a) always criticises my driving - even if he doesn't say anything I can see him thinking bad things, and b) I have to talk to him. He has me captured, unable to escape. Good old Dad sparked up with telling me about some happenings at my old school, which my younger brothers still attend, which have resulted in my youngest brother and other members of his class having to give police statements (God, it was bad enough when I was there, but it's deteriorated so much since then - nothing like a good ol' private Catholic school). He then moved onto something which I had previously banned him from talking about, after one evening when we had a massive fight over it with lots of yelling and tears (on my behalf). Obviously he forgot about the ban. He opens with "I'm glad you started doing all this gym stuff. You were getting a bit lumpy."
Great. My own father tells me I was 'getting a bit lumpy'. I just adore being described as 'lumpy'.
'You've toned up around the hips and bum. You may have gained weight, but you've toned up. Can you notice?'
I have bemoaned on numerous occasions that since doing gym classes all year I've gained 5 kilos and weigh the most I've ever weighed in my life. I know that muscle weighs more than fat but having to admit to 60 kilos is darn difficult for me to do (I'm only 160 cm, just under 5'2).
'Great. Thanks dad. Just don't say anymore.'
'What? I'm paying you a compliment. Oh, you were never fat, none of you have ever been fat (referring to me and my brothers) or had any problem with your weight.'
'You just said I was lumpy!'
'Yeah, but you aren't anymore.'

And Dad still seriously thinks he was just 'pumping my tyres', as he puts it. Paying me a compliment about looking good and inspiring me to continue on at the gym. He relayed this conversation to mum, as he couldn't see why I was annoyed. She said it's a 'backhanded compliment'. But he's been banned again from commenting on my weight and my figure.

The 'let's just be friends' line

2006-07-03T15:17:00.000+10:00

Hi All. I delivered the 'let's just be friends' line to Rob yesterday. It turns out that we didn't have quite so much in common once I was sober. Actually, given that he'd just told me all about his scary furious temper, I nervously said 'Rob, you don't mind if we're just friends do you?'. Luckily, Rob did not mind if we are just friends. Or so he said. He actually said 'I kind of thought it was heading that way' to which I replied 'I make a terrible girlfriend' which I'm pretty sure would be true. He then went on to say that I didn't really know him yet (hell yes, I know enough to know that he annoys the shit out of me, is always right and likes to embark on lectures about environmental impacts to me, the qualified environmentalist and the stockmarket, and that he has bad smoker/coffee breath), and then goes and contradicts himself and says 'I could tell once I got to know you better that certain things in your personality would make us not get along' or words to that effect. So, how come he knows me well enough to make that call, and I 'don't know him yet', especially given that he talks ALL the time? Like, ALL the time. Oh well, it's all over now. It is nice to be admired, but oh, I don't like the fall-out at all and the uncertainly of meeting up again once sober.

You must all be thinking that we've dropped off the face of the earth . . .

2006-06-30T12:30:00.000+10:00

but I can assure you all that I, at least, still firmly have my feet planted in lovely little Hobart. Bug too, so far as I know, given that I got a message from her last night (and I would like to point out, Bug, that you have subjected your sibling to far worse - need I remind you of the time you crawled naked and drunk into a certain bed and proceeded to pass out - and it is about time some revenge occurred). I have been out and about in the wilderness last week, which I was dreading with as much dread as possible, given that it is now the depths of winter here and in the South West of the State it's usually pouring with rain/snowing/sleeting/foggy/blowing with winds that freeze your blood at this time of year, not to mention that the drive there is on very twisty roads covered with black ice. So, I was kind of worried that I would slide off the road down the cliff side and die, not to mention destroying the uni ute.

But I can assure everyone that 1) I did not die; 2) I didn't even crash the ute; 3) leeches did not attach themselves inside my ears (my secret fear) or indeed on any body part, although they did like my waders and equipment; 4) I was not mauled by a ravenous quoll or angry possum, although was growled at VERY threateningly; 5) I did not get frostbite; and 6) IT DIDN'T EVEN RAIN!!!!!!

In fact, I had some of the most amazingly nice winter weather possible. It got to at least 9 degrees during the day, I would say. It was bitterly cold at night (I was wearing a long-sleeved thermal, a flannellette shirt, and two very thick polarfleeces from an outdoors store [plus some long pants, of course!] and sitting three metres from a roaring log fire and still shaking with cold), but the days were so nice.

I have been at home all of this week with a delightful case of pharyngitis. In case you're like me, and have never heard of this disease, it's just like tonsilitis but all over your throat. It has been most painful, and could not have come at a worse time. I am missing out on our 'deadly concoction punch night' tonight with my work girls, which as the name may suggests, is going to involve everyone bringing along an alcoholic ingredient and adding it into a punch bowl. This follows on from our punch night last friday night, which involved a girl Robyn (this girl is a drinker from way back - she lived in a residential college whilst at uni, the breeding ground of hardened drinkers) making some punch which tasted very nice at the time, but which caused us all to hate her enormously the next day (her punch consisted of 'fruity elexier' cask wine and the cheapest sparkling wine available 'passion pop') when we were all working a 5 course dinner for 620 people, fighting not to throw up all over the people's crab cakes and roasted venison (ew at the best of times) and she was laughing it up at a buffet function over the other side of the building for 180 drunken (is there any other type?) footballers.

I also embarked on a little dalliance with a friend of Robyn's from her residential college days, Rob, on last Friday's punch night. I was supposed to see him again this Tuesday but as I was too sick (plus contagious) I had to postpone. We have lots in common, he's quite nice looking, he even has a science degree and was a devoted follower of Buffy and Angel and he seemed to like me a ridiculous amount given that we'd only just met (the words 'you're my dream girl' were used) and I wasn't very nice to him at first but I think he's going to annoy me. Plus I don't like his laugh (I know, I know, I'm too fussy, and very far from perfect myself). But still, if it were not for this pharyngitis I would have been dallying away all week. As it is, I still don't know whether we'll like each other once we're totally sober.

Hmm. Is it working?

2006-06-13T13:22:00.000+10:00

Hey there to anyone who still reads this!
*
I'm playing with our template since our other one carked it some time ago. It's all topsy-turvy at the moment but we'll be the most regular, angelic posters after it's all done. Promise!
*
Love Bec

The 'I' Tag

2006-05-30T11:25:00.000+10:00

I am a twenty-three year old female Australian PhD student/waitress.
I want my dog to be alive again. However, that isn't going to happen (unless I find a witch who can really resurrect the dead the way Willow resurrected Buffy on the tv show Buffy), so I'll settle for being able to fit into my old clothes again. Oh, and to have as my boyfriend that nice tall science man I met last Friday night and was too drunk to remember his name or what we talked about.
I wish I had talked to the nice tall science man for longer and not been dragged away from him by a well-meaning co-worker who was trying to set me up with his 19 year old friend.
I love chocolate and BBQ samboy chips. And wasting time here at uni when I should be working.
I fear my grandparents dying. It's going to happen one day, if not this year than sometime in the not-to-distant future and I hate to see them getting older, more wrinkly and more feeble.
I hear the hum of the computer and silence from my office-mates corner (yay!) as she just gathered up her keys and left the room.
I wonder what's going to happen in my life once I leave uni finally.
I regret - see 'I wish' about the nice tall science man.
I dance when drunk and shoulder dance in the car all the time. I also wish I could just break out and dance sometimes at work when there's a good band playing at our dinner functions.
I cry all the time during sad tv shows. I am unable to watch anything to do with animals such as 'Animal Hospital' because I just cry too much. My last major cry was during the episode of 'Prison Break' when I seriously thought Lincon was going to be executed (luckily he was saved with 30 seconds to spare at the beginning of the next episode, but I thought he was definately dead for a whole week).
I confuse myself all the time. Especially when I'm trying to make the computer do something like statistical analysis. Or when Endnote just WON'T do what I need it to do!
I tag Bug! Bug, here's a nice easy way to ease yourself back into posting!

Jog Jog Jog

2006-05-26T15:18:00.000+10:00

Jogging has really taken off as a form of exercise in this fair city. There have always been a lot of joggers in the suburb that the uni is in, probably because it's a nice place to jog along as you can jog from the beach down the main road, which is beside the waters edge. Very pleasant. And there are a lot of health-conscious (more likely figure-conscious) students living in the area. But now jogging has taken off in suburbs all over the city. At all times of the day, as well, not just in the early morning. For example, as I drove along one road on my way to uni today at midday (yes, I know, midday is NOT the time I should be starting my working day. But I have come to realise that I can do a hell of a lot more in four hours at uni when I am not falling asleep whilst reading/thinking up things to write/attempting difficult plant identifications over a microscope and it is therefore better for me to sleep in than attempt a whole day at uni whilst fighting to keep my eyes open) there were three women out jogging. Yes, three! In just one street! And not one had a dog. Jogging with a dog is much more justifiable.

I have tried jogging with our dog. This is somewhat of a problem as our dog does not like leaving our nice safe house. My dad can get her to walk with him, but she now won't walk with me at all in one direction. I think this is because for three nights in a row I walked her down our street then up a very steep hill. On the fourth night she just sat down and refused point blank to turn down our street. She's more than happy to turn up our street, which is flat and runs out of street and turns into scary bushland near where a woman walking her dog was murdered. Obviously she doesn't know about the woman being murdered, or else she'd prefer to walk up the hill. I ended up carrying the dog all the way to the top of the hill, then she was happy to walk all the way home again.

So, back to my jogging with the dog attempt. At Easter, during which I was consuming vast amounts of nutella and the gym was closed, I decided to go jogging. With the dog. So, I don my trackpants with pink stripe, borrow my brother's ipod, and harness up the dog. Said dog is more than happy to go for a walk. Acts very excited, in fact. This all changed once we got to the end of the driveway. I start to jog down the end of our section of the street, and go to cross the road. She sits down. I pick her up and carry her for a few metres, then put her down. She turns firmly in the direction of our house. I try carrying her down a different street, instead of continuing down our street. No luck. She is on to my crafty tricks and turns back for home. I finally get her to walk up a street behind our house. I start to jog. She stops firmly and runs between my legs, nearly causing me to perform a fatal somersault. There is a girl on the phone in the front window of the house we are passing, and she's scared. I have to carry her past that house. This pattern continues as my dog is scared of pretty much everything. Loud cars, loud tvs in houses, little boys playing cricket, other dogs behind their fences and, my all-time favourite, a tasteless garden statue of a brown deer. And when she isn't stopping and running between my legs, she's trying to turn for home.

So, I didn't actually get much jogging done. And I have not attempted to go jogging since. I'd feel a bit stupid if I was out jogging purely for my own fitness/bum shape, whereas if I'm out with a dog I can be out jogging purely for my own dog's wellbeing.

Oh, our dog is from the dog's home where she was seized as a puppy from a house where she was being mistreated. She has a cigarette burn on her tummy and a scar across her nose from her puppy days. So it's not her fault she's a gigantic scardy-cat. Actually, our cat is an intrepid adventurer, who I wish would be a bit more scared of cars and the road and the big dog next door.

Maybe I can get Bug to come jogging. That could be fun. Bug, how would you like to jog up those stairs behind uni?

Points from my day-trip to 'The Mainland'.

2006-05-09T12:32:00.000+10:00

1) My taxi was following a woman who was READING THE PAPER whilst driving in peak-hour traffic through the city of Melbourne. Obviously it just isn't enough to have a mobile phone clamped to your ear like the majority of other drivers, she had to take it a step further by having the daily newspaper open across her steering wheel. I hope she was reading her stars "You will be involved in a serious car accident, if not today then soon."

2) I brought Bug a very interesting birthday gift (it's tomorrow, folks, remember!). Sorry Bug it is not an argyle vest featuring red. It is however utterly impractical and a very unique gift. I can safely say that you do not have one of these.

3) The airline I flew with has implemented a new self check-in policy at the airport. I like it. You type in your flight booking number, and then it tells you where you are sitting. If you don't like this than you can look at where there are free seats on the plane and change. I managed to get a row to myself on the way back home.

4) I was highly disturbed on the flight home (and not by the spookily similar air hostesses, either). In the row opposite me there was a woman breastfeeding. Not a big issue, but the child was WALKING AND TALKING! It could hold a reasonable conversation in baby-voice. I judged it to be about two. It was also being fed dry rice cake and apple. If your child can eat an uncooked apple, than it's generally time to wean it off the breast, I would imagine. There was something most unnerving about watching a child slide off its seat, perch kneeling on its mother's lap, lift up the mother's tee shirt then clamp a little hand either side of the breast, like a little child supports a bottle and latch on sucking. I felt like some kind of pervert as I snuck looks over - "Oh my God, she IS breastfeeding. Yes, the child is kneeling, yes, look, it's stopping to talk to her."

Busy, but not a lot happening really.

2006-05-06T14:03:00.000+10:00

Hello folks! Sorry for the lack of life updates on this site, but really, what's the point of updating if not a lot has been happening? Actually, I have been really busy but not with interesting things. Just a lot of waitressing work, and uni stuff, oh, and now I have school sores all over my face so I'm not going anywhere. I am seriously annoyed about the school sores. If you are not familiar with school sores, they commonly afflict dirty little school children who spread them about as they're highly contagious (hence the name) and they look like large red lumps, then get a large yellow top like a blister, except instead of being filled with fluid (like a blister) or pus (like pimples) the yellow stuff is solid. Then it forms a nice, yellowish crusty scab. I caught them from my friend's daughter, who I saw ONCE, as they were first coming out and her mum didn't know what they were, and who kissed me on the cheek (she usually kisses on the lips which I do NOT like unless you are related to the child, like, mother/daughter, but she had a cold so went for the cheek). Nine days later my first school sore surfaces. Her mother, who has been sharing the same towels, pillows and being showered in little girl kisses and hugs, has NOT contracted the embarrassingly horrid-looking sores. I had booked in for a nice waxing appointment on Friday (bikini, eyebrow and lip) which I had to cancel because they didn't want to touch highly contagious me. They wouldn't even do my bikini line and that's nowhere near my face! I have been dying to get my eyebrows shaped and waxed, but I was waiting until Friday so they'd look nice for Monday, when I'm going to Melbourne for the day to have my first appointment with the plastic surgery clinic. I wanted to look nice and sophisticated and like I am wealthy and pop in and out plastic surgery clinics all the time, and I have a fashionable yet suitably grown-up outfit all picked out. Unfortuntely, instead now I will have massive eyebrows (my beauty therapist has banned me from waxing or plucking them myself as she is trying to get them into a perfect shape, and as she is an absolute genius at eyebrows I will abide by her ban) and multiple large scabs around my face.
Oh well, maybe it will just reinforce to the plastic surgery people what a desperate case I am!
Of course, in the scheme of life, I am remarkably well off, and I really shouldn't complain about a few yellow scabs.

It is fast approaching Bug's 23rd birthday. It's on 10th May, so this Wednesday. Please, everyone, join with me in wishing her a happy year! We are planning on getting well drunk next Saturday night and having a bit of a dance, and I'm planning on vomiting on that weak pathetic fruit boy (who stars in a video with Bug and has been ignoring her in person yet emailing her) for being so pathetic and not standing up to his drop-kick friends. And if they want to be that damn traditionally Greek, go back to bloody Greece. We're a lot more liberal in Australia, and can quite frankly do without their outdated views on women. Hmm, that sounded quite intellectual. I might rant that at fruit boy and his friends before I vomit on him.

As Monkey has never heard of school sores (actually known as impetigo) I thought I'd include a disgusting picture (trust me, this is a good case. If you do a google image search for impetigo there are such disgusting pictures. Some of it covering entire faces and limbs) and some little facts about impetigo just for Monkey. I only had four little impetigos around my face, and one larger one, about the size of a pound coin. But you can now see why I was hugely annoyed about getting this disease, can't you?

"Impetigo, a contagious skin infection that usually produces blisters or sores on the face and hands, is one of the most common skin infections among kids. When impetigo is caused by group A streptococcus, it begins as tiny blisters. These blisters eventually burst and leave small wet patches of red skin that may weep fluid. Gradually, a tan or yellowish-brown crust covers the affected area, making it look like it has been coated with honey or brown sugar."

"Impetigo is contagious and can spread to anyone who comes into contact with infected skin or other items, such as clothing, towels, and bed linens, that have been touched by infected skin." - SUCH AS PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN KISSED ON THE CHECK BY OVER-AFFECTIONATE FRIEND'S DAUGHTERS!

From: http://kidshealth.org/parent/infections/bacterial_viral/impetigo.html

'What a crappy night' or 'Cecilia is feeling sorry for herself again' or 'HAPPY EASTER FOLKS!'

2006-04-16T01:30:00.000+10:00

Good morning and happy Easter people of the blogging world. It is 1.29 am and I have just arrived home from work. I am wearing a yellow chicken in my hair (was truly annoyed that I forgot to take my bunny ears to work - now how often do you get to legitimately wear bunny ears to work?) and making myself feel sick by eating Nutella out of the jar. It's like my hand is linked to my mouth via the spoon in the Nutella jar route, and the part of my brain that connects the sick feelings in my stomach to my hand-spoon-nutella-mouth combination has malfunctioned. Perhaps it's gone away for Easter. I do blame Leonie for making me buy the Nutella in the first place. She said last week I think on her blog how very enjoyable Nutella is, making me realise that I haven't eaten Nutella since I was in Europe well over a year ago now and forcing me to give into Nutella cravings and go and buy a jar and eat said jar.

Pause to insert nutella spoon into mouth, sucking on said spoon until there is not even a smidge of nutella left on spoon. Feel sicker.

I was already having a rather shitty shift at work tonight. I was working a function under the (ahem, cough) supervision (choke on the word) of the young crewleader at work, John of the atrocious treatment of women (the one who told his current sex buddy whom he worked with about his sex life with the nicest girl in the world Frieda) and the kisser of Sharlie (who fell in the river). He never does any work and never has any idea what he's doing (he was a barman who was promoted by two of our previous male supervisors who liked him - never 'worked the floor' on a function in his life, or even spent much time in the kitchen), and relies on the older staff (like me) to basically run his functions for him. Which is fine, because usually I don't have tables in particular to look after, but can run around helping everyone and making sure that things such as coffee are being brewed. Tonight John gave me tables and his little buddy Sharlie (the laziest girl on the face of the planet, I swear) got to be the 'float', which involved her following John around, talking and play fighting with him, having two breaks while most staff had had none, and eating cake while we had run out of coffee and cups and saucers and had 200 people lined up wanting coffee and cups and saucers. I have no problem having tables (it's definately easier than being a float most of the time), it's just that John expected me to do float things too. Like, he and Sharlie hadn't even noticed that we'd run out of cups and coffee (she was eating cake at the time), and when I said "John, you need to get some cups out here" he wanted to know why I couldn't do it. Try: I have 35 people with plates that need clearing and would like some more drinks all in the next 10 minutes, before they have their tables pushed to the side of the room to make a bigger dancefloor. I told him to have Sharlie do it, and walked off. She is so lazy, she just put out the cups and walked off, leaving the next poor busy waitress who passed to go in search of more coffee for the thirsty clients (and it was an AA dinner tonight, so they hit the coffee hard). Stuff like this had gone on ALL NIGHT, with her doing nothing while another couple of experienced staff and I tried to look after our own people and the 'greater good' of the function as a whole.

But this isn't the reason I am eating nutella at now 1.59 am on Easter morning.

Eat some more nutella, licking the end of the spoon where it had fallen into the jar and gotten all sticky with nutella.

Katie (remember her, the girl whose parents sold her car without telling her, and didn't even give her the money?), Frieda (nicest girl in the world, cruelly treated by John) and I were down in the staff canteen on a well-earned break. We were sitting at one end of a long table. Luke, the very ocker barman enters the canteen. Luke is 35 and acts like he's still a 25 year old surfer stud with girls swooning at his feet and his life ahead of him, rather than a 35 year old sexist surfing bloke with greying hair whose black work vest hides an expanding potbelly, while the only job he can get is that of a casual barman. Quite a few of the other girls hate Luke, for his sexist outlook on life and his extreme violent rages he flies into sometimes (possibly caused by a few too many blows to the head by his surfboard and a few too many beers over the years). I have always gotten on quite well with him. He just reminds me of some of my dad's old blokey-bloke mates, those of the 'old school' of Aussie males. Although I was ready to kill him last week when I was trapped all night with him in a small bar, with him blaming me for every mistake he made (it must have been me, as I am the girl who doesn't work in the bar very often, not him, who is near computer-illiterate to the point of not understanding the computerised bar till).

Dip spoon into nutella jar, stick spoon into mouth and suck.

So, Frieda, Katie and I are in the canteen. Luke enters, and stands at the end of the table. Frieda and Katie were sitting opposite each other, closest to Luke's end of the table. I am on the other side of Katie. Placing his hands on the table and leaning down to us, Luke grins like a loon and stands there. We all look at him.
"Now, I don't know what to do. Two attractive girls for me choose between - who will I sit with." We stare at him. Frieda says, "What about Cecilia?"
Luke walks down to our end of the table and squats down. I am closest to him at the end of the table, with an empty seat opposite me, and Katie beside me, and Frieda opposite her. "Now, Cecilia and I have a different relationship to that I have with you two" Luke says to Frieda and Katie. "She's intelligent, and we have a relationship where she talks and I listen." Katie, Frieda and I all look at each other. "So you're calling Frieda and I stupid?" Katie says. "And me ugly?" I say. Luke ignores me (I am after all the ugly one), and speaks to Katie and Frieda. "You two are the kind of women blokes find intimidating, attractive and intelligent." That was all I basically heard. He burbled on some more about how gorgeous Katie and Frieda were, and how Frieda would be not just gorgeous, but sexy if she had long hair, and not just sexy, but the best kind of sexy, 'classy sexy'. I said to Katie and Frieda "I can't handle this", and got up and walked off, chatted to one of the set-up stewards (the guys who set up and dismantle the function rooms for us), then went to the loo, fighting tears on the way. I just couldn't believe that Luke, who I thought I'd always gotten along reasonably well with, thinks of me as just an ugly girl (although a smart one), and dismisses me as basically not as worthy as Katie and Frieda, who are attractive. When I spoke about it later with Katie and Frieda, Katie said "but he didn't call you ugly." 'No, not outright," I said. 'He just said that while you two are attractive and intelligent, I'm intelligent.' And she had nothing to say to that. They didn't even say the usual friend platitudes, like "you are attractive, he's just an idiot". If they had I probably would have cried from the sympathy, but still, they didn't, which makes me think they knew there was no point because I'd see straight through the lie.

And I really hate the use of the word 'attractive'. It's like he's saying no guy will ever find me attractive and I'm doomed to being a lonely old women.

And Bug, if you point out that Mark finds me attractive and would date me at the drop of a hat I will THROTTLE you. I think his liking just grew over the four years we spent in pretty close contact at uni, until during that fourth year when I was the only female friend he was still in regular contact with.

So this has not been a great start to my Easter. I am sad, and I should be eagerly anticipating my Easter breakfast of chocolate softened before the fire.

But still, may everyone else eat themselves sick over this festive time and just enjoy having four consecutive days off work!

WHEN will it END???

2006-04-06T21:42:00.000+10:00

We have a new boy in my team at work, Ken (we have a new girl as well, but she's irrelevant to this little tale). Ken seems reasonably harmless, nice enough in a try-hard jock kind of way (although he does have long nose hair. At 22 this worries me). Ken is on Deo and Georgio's soccer team, ie. the team who have heard all about/seen the footage of Deo and I from his birthday

I was standing at the printer today, waiting for the SCREEDS of work I'd done to print out, when Ken came up to wait for his work to print too. We were making idle chit chat and I asked if he was working late tonight too (I worked from 8am till 7.50pm. I am TIRED). He said "No, I'm training with Deo tonight". I kind of looked at him but said nothing and after getting my work, went back to my desk

About an hour later I went up to get another load of work and Ken was getting his too. Out of nowhere, he gave me an unwavering look and came out with "So, did you have a good time at Deo's 25th?". Not thinking, I said "How'd you know I was... Oh. Of course you know" and he nodded and replied "Yeah, those boys love to talk. I just tie my shoelaces and listen"

I didn't know what to do, what to say. I said that I'd had an alright time but couldn't really remember as I'd been so drunk (a fib. I was drunk but not blind, and I remember the whole night) and went back to my desk, avoiding him for the rest of the day. But when Deo comes down to visit Ken, which he's done every day so far, he doesn't talk to me, look at me or acknowledge that we've ever met, and that must be OBVIOUS to Ken, knowing what he knows

And while I've come to the conclusion that I'm obviously fair game where fuckheads are concerned, and may as well just enjoy myself without worrying about the consequences, I'm sick of this whole thing. For the first time since I started, I don't look forward to work, work is not an enjoyable place for me anymore. It's really unpleasant when Deo comes downstairs, not only because of the whole birthday incident and how he ignores me, but also because I still really want him and that annoys me

And the question I really want to know the answer to is, just HOW many people know about this? Also, how do I make it go away? How do I make it LESS important to all these people who KEEP fixating on it, even more so that I am?

"Friday" or "The Night My Liver Cried"

2006-04-06T13:12:00.000+10:00

* my friend Aston is moving to Melbourne today (oh GOD, toDAY!) to live with his girlfriend so his farewell was on Friday night

* work had friday night Social Club drinks which I went to straight after work (despite my seriously queasy tummy and aching head - I am stoic in the pursuit of alcohol). I had 3 drinks

* went to Sal's, a bar I'm not parTICularly into but which some of the workies love, and had a Bloody Mary and a White Cosmo straight after each other

* Louise, my favourite workie, got really narky with me over the football team I go for, saying that I need to use my imagination and not just follow the crowd (I have barracked for my team forEVER, I don't follow the crowd. The crowd doesn't like my team). I didn't feel like listening to crap so I told the workies I'd meet up with them later and went to Aston's farewell

* at Aston's I found SHEDLOADS of people I'd gone to school with but not seen for years and years and I drank shots and lots of wine and got a little, actually a lot, drunk

* I went to Syrup to find the workies but instead found Deo's best mate Georgio, one of the under-the-door cretins. Under the influence of the wine and the unhappiness I've had for weeks about this whole thing, I burst into tears and cried and cried and cried and told him that I wanted the video deleted. He was sympathetic and rubbed my back and looked after me, but he flat-out refused to do anything about the video

* ran into Andrew, an extremely good-looking guy from work, who was as under the influence as I was. We proceeded to dance for the next 2 hours till he decided he was so drunk he needed to go home. He asked me to go with him. I declined (stupid girl!)

* back in Syrup, noticed that Louise and Fran (our 2IC, who's actually basically our age) were dancing with Deo and Georgio. I did NOT want to join in so I went off by myself...

... and that's the last thing I remember until I decided it was time to go home and I put myself in a taxi...

... which is the last thing I remember until the taxi driver SHOOK me awake at the bottom of my street. I paid him, walked up the street, stopping to throw up in the gutter (oh I know)...

... and then I woke up at 11am, fully clothed (but in bed, at least), with the heater BLARING and my stomach churning and my head pounding

No. More. Big. Nights. Out.

For at least a fortnight, anyway

My First Ever Tag! How Exciting!

2006-04-03T16:20:00.000+10:00

What were you doing 10 years ago?

I was 13, and in Year 8 at high school. I was just developing what I though were REALLY BAD pimples. They probably weren’t all that bad, looking back on it. But very few other girls in my year had pimples, so I thought they were disastrous. And I’d realised that I wasn’t going to ‘grow into’ my nose after all. It was probably my worst year of high school, actually. I was betrayed by two friends (they broke into my homeroom at school on a weekend and then wrote graffiti all over the room and my desk about what a slut I was – considering I hadn’t even kissed a boy that was a bit harsh, I think), and then had to for group counselling with the school counsellor (Father Bob) for being mean to them (one of them was stupid enough to tell two other girls at school that it was them that had done the graffiti and the breaking and entering, then was stupid enough to not understand why no-one then wanted to be her friend). Plus my friends were doing quite a lot of marijuana that year, and I felt a bit out of it because I wasn’t.

What were you doing 5 years ago?

This was my first year of uni. I was feeling quite stupid, as I’d gone from topping most of my classes in high school to being one average smart student in classes of 150 very smart students. Plus I wasn’t really enjoying my subjects that much as I had to do the four basic ecological science subjects of Botany, Zoology, Geology and Geography and couldn’t really understand how chopping up starfish and cockroaches could possibly benefit me in the future.

What were you doing 1 year ago?

This time last year I was highly confused. I’d returned from two months in Japan and Europe on Christmas Eve, then had to return to my casual jobs as a waitress and in a filthy fresh produce store (that one I really didn’t want to return to) in order to pay off my credit card. I’d finished uni, but there were basically no job prospects in Tasmania for me (I know people I graduated with who are STILL looking for jobs using their degree), and I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to do a PhD. All I knew was that I didn’t want to leave Hobart just yet. I was being driven crazy by people asking me “what are you going to do now?”

5 Snacks I enjoy:

- Basically any form of chocolate, preferably Cadburys (except Turkish Delight) or Nestle. I’ve recently rediscovered dark chocolate bountys.
- Samboys BBQ chips, the best chips (crisps to those Brittishers) in the world.
- Twisties or Cheezels.
- Chocolate roundabout biscuits (biscuit base, then a little dab of jam, then marshmellow, all covered in chocolate
- Camembert or Brie on watercracker biscuits (I get this at work sometimes).

5 Songs (you think) you know by heart:

- Many, many Christmas carols.
- Mr Big ‘To be with you’ – my wedding waltz song, should I ever recant my vow of never getting married.
- ‘Buttercup’ – have no idea who it’s by but it’s my favourite song. The most popular Hobart cover band (that plays all the old favs) that’s always playing at functions where I work always play it.
- Quite a few Beach Boys songs, including ‘I Get Around,’ ‘Little Deuce Coupe’ and ‘Surfing Safari’.
- Phantom Planet, ‘California’. How could I not know it? It’s the theme song for The OC!

5 things you would do with a LOT of money:

1) Pay off my HECS debt and buy my parents a new house (which Dad wouldn’t want, because he loves our current house, but mum would), buy them new cars and give them money to have nice things.
2) Go traveling, and take my Mum overseas wherever she wants to go (she’s never been) and take my Nan to France on a cargo boat that takes passengers (for some reason this is how she wants to get to France).
3) Give lots of money to The Dogs Home and The Cats Home (the Cats Home has a section full of cats ‘reduced to clear’ – they’re the older cats that no one wants! It’s so sad).
4) Buy a very funky heritage cottage (3 bedrooms) in a quite street (so my cats wouldn’t get hit by cars) somewhere about Hobart.
5) I really don’t know. Oh, yes I do. Open our (my work girls and I) fantasy nightclub. This is our favorite pastime at work for the past couple of months (alternating with ‘what would you have done if you were offered an Extreme Makeover). I’m the Operational Manager because I’m the most controlling and organised!

Bug and I have a lot of similarities - maybe that's why we are friends!

5 Things you would never wear

Dreadlocks
Skants (pants with a skirt attached. Such a stupid fashion).
A Wu-Tang or Dadda puffa jacket or other sundry Bogan fashions.
Any tee-shirt bearing such slogans as ‘Brunettes do it better’ or ‘Thank your boyfriend for me’.
Hair extensions.

5 Things you should have never worn:

- Those ugly sneakers I wore for my first two years of uni and thought were cute.
- My slut clothing, notably that red skimpy top.
- Those shiny black pants I used to wear out, coupled with red skimpy top.
- When I was 14-15 I had two tops I used to wear that only just came down to the end of my ribcage, leaving copious amounts of stomach exposed (it was flat then – ‘sigh’). One of these tops was also extremely low cut.

6 Things I enjoy doing

Reading and eating chocolate, especially when it’s cold and rainy outside and I’m all cosy inside.
Going to Body Pump. It’s bordering on an obsession now.
Going to Aqua Aerobics. Yep, getting obsessive now too.
Doing fun things with friends
Wasting time on the Internet. Am very good at that one.
Daydreaming about and researching future holidays.

5 Bad Habits

Eating too much
Eating lots of chocolate
Wasting time on the Internet
Hating my looks/body (this one seriously annoys Bug at times)
Being too controlling and bossy

People I would like to do this

Well, everyone seems to have done it except for Monkey.

Reminiscing... in the name of a tag

2006-04-02T09:46:00.000+10:00

What were you doing 10 years ago?

10 years ago I was in Grade 8 (8 Yellow, in fact) and I was hanging out with a Bad Influence (since Cec and I had a window of about 18 months where we weren't friends). In four weeks 10 years ago, the Port Arthur massacre would happen and then a month after that the Bad Influence would get me busted for shoplifting. God I'm glad high school's over!

What were you doing 5 years ago?

I was working at Habitat (a local chain of high-end housewares) and secretly seeing one of the guys I worked with. At the end of that year I got my job at the real estate agency and moved into a villa with Boo

What were you doing 1 year ago?

Almost exactly one year ago to the day, I was newly unemployed, having quit my job without another one to go to. Most of my days were spent sleeping in, reading a bit and going to the bar where my crush at the time, Winnie, worked (actually he'd still be a crush if he worked there - cute as a button); nights were spent going for drives or swimming at the beach

5 Snacks I enjoy

* cheese and tomato on toast

* rice cakes or rice crackers (that's not some annoying girl-on-a-diet snack, I do just actually like them)

* minestrone soup

* choc malt NutriGrain bars

* tuna, cucumber and carrot sushi

5 Songs (you think) you know by heart

Almost every song I know, I know by heart but what are five non-standard ones? Hmm:

* One Misty Moisty Morning - Steeleye Span

* The Ballad of the Shape of Things - Blossom Dearie

* The Philosopher's Song - Monty Python (my teacher and I actually performed this song to my Grade 12 religion class, oh dear...)

* Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - The Beatles

* Don't Stand So Close To Me - The Police (or anything by The Police, really)

5 things you would do with a LOT of money

* get rid of all debts for me and mine and buy my brother and my sister one big present each of their choosing

* buy a solid, well-built but old-fashioned 2-3 bedroom cottage in West Hobart or Battery Point that I could do up and make my own

* give screeds of money to the Hobart Cat Centre, the RSPCA, the Hobart Dog's Home and various breast cancer charities

* spend a couple of months in the Greek Islands

* hire a personal trainer

5 things you would never wear

* calf-length leggings under skirts

* baker boy caps

* a mini-skirt

* short skirts and calf-length boots

* stovepipe jeans

(I would like to point out that Ashlee Simpson has worn ALL those things - further proof, if proof should be needed, that she is the Antichrist)

5 things you should have never worn

* my Grade 9 netball skirt (nope, didn't play netball!) which JUST covered my arse, with a great big fluffy (very comfy and warm) Balance windcheater and my goth boots. A completely schizophrenic outfit

* my brand new, never worn (therefore never washed) green jeans to the ice skating rink. I fell over... and left a big green V on the ice

* the t-shirt that proclaimed "they're real and they're spectactular" (although in my defence it WAS a present)

* a low-cut, tight singlet top to work (but I confess I do this ALL the time. Must stop)

* boy-leg bathers to school swimming. Helloooo fat thighs!

5 things I enjoy doing

* lying in bed when it's raining and windy outside

* reading, reading, reading

* watching old musicals (especially Marilyn Monroe ones)

* singing along to CDs, the radio, tapes, videos, anything

* writing. Back in the day I was even published but 7 years of writers block (no idea why) has kind of destroyed that

5 bad habits

* over-analysing EVERYthing

* drinking. I know and everyone I know knows that I drink too much but oh well, it's something to do

* laughing loudly (not really a habit, I know, but I have a loud laugh and it kind of draws attention. It's not deliberate though!)

* also not exactly a habit but I have a mental block on dusting and vaccuuming. All the other chores I do, but never ever those two

* falling headlong for a new crush, with no emotional protection. Almost every time I end up wounded because I haven't closed myself off a bit but I don't really repress emotions so if I feel something, I let myself feel it and inevitably get a bit (or a lot) trampled

People I would like to do this

I want Cecilia to do this, of course, and I want the Monkey Girl to fill it out as well

Temporary postponement of the fulfillment of Doug's tag

2006-03-29T22:41:00.000+11:00

Boo came online today while I was at work and said that she had run into Stefanos, who is both her local corner store guy and going out with a girl we were friends with at school
*

Stefanos has been offering for ages to set Boo up with a "nice Greek boy" and she jokingly agreed to it today and then asked if he knew Deo, my sometimes occasional undefined boy. Being Hobart and them being the same age and Greek, of course he did, in fact they used to kick around together until a few years ago

Oh, and he'd been invited to Deo's birthday but had been at work so hadn't been there. Then he wanted to know how Boo knew him and when she mentioned that Deo and I were a sometimes occasional undefined thing he wanted to know whether I'd been at the party. When she said that yes, I had been, he sort of nodded and said "ah, I know who she is then" or some such

Yeah, turns out that the fuckwit perverts who'd watched Deo and I fooling around at his birthday - when it was NONE of their GODDAMN FUCKING BUSINESS, the pathetic losers - had also fucking FILMED IT and it's on one of the cretins' camera phone, able to be forwarded anywhere and watched by anyone

Imagine you're me. How are you feeling at this point in time?

Hobart waterfront that Sharlie fell in

2006-03-27T16:07:00.000+11:00

(photo from www.cdesign.com.au)

Water immersion

2006-03-27T15:10:00.000+11:00

A little bit of water dunking has been occuring in my life over this weekend. Not directly to me, but to those around me. Last night I went to my friend's baptism. Actually, her second baptism. After being baptised a Catholic as a baby, she has recently joined the Christian City Church (called the CCC, which I think bears an unhealthy KKK connotation) and was baptised a born again christian yesterday. She was baptised in a total body water baptism, which involved her sitting into a deep, long, rectangular metal bathtub and being pulled backwards until she was totally under the water by two of the chuch people by each arm, after she accepted that 'God sent his son Jesus to die for our sins.' Then one of the women spoke for ages (well, it felt like ages to me, but was probably only about 7 minutes or so) about what a great person my friend is and what a difference her being baptised is going to make in her life.

I must admit I got a bit emotional and shed a few tears. I blame the fact that I'd had no sleep at all Saturday night or Sunday and was still revved up from the redbull I'd consumed during my night Out on Saturday. Plus I was proud of her for getting her life back together somewhat, and was hoping that what the lady with the microphone was saying was true, that her being baptised a 'born again' will make a big change for the better in her life. My friend has severe depression, and sometimes I just can't handle it. In the past year she has sent me messages saying that she's having a bad time and she wants to die, or rings me up and tells me she wants to die, or that she's locked herself in the toilet with the telephone so she doesn't 'hurt herself' (probably one of the worst moments of my life) and that her daughter would be better off without her. I have felt so helpless as there is absolutely nothing I can do to help (she refused to go to any of the help/support groups I found for her, after she went to one and found it full of 'crazy old people') and to make her feel better and stop her crying for days on end. She's been improved recently (no more suicidal messages, at least), to the point where she's got a job again, and a lot of that I attribute to her newfound religion (even if they do teach about how bad the catholic faith is during their 'bible study' classes, and I get sick to death of telling her that Catholics are Christians too) and her church 'family'.

So, off the topic of depression and born again Christians, and on to the nice enjoyable topic of a Saturday night out 'on the town'. It was one of my work girls birthdays, and she was having a joint 21st birthday party with one of her friends in the function room of a highly popular Hobart pub. After some enjoyable pre-party drinks at one of the girls houses, we cruised on down to the party, a mere 2 and a half hours after the official starting time. At about 10 pm, three of our other work friends arrived. This was Carey and Jim (dating) and Sharnie, who have just all moved in together. These three are known to indulge in a bit of recreational drug use, 'popping a few eees' on occasion. And after the entrance Jim made (he entered the room dancing and then stood dancing whereever he was - he literally couldn't keep still) and the strutting in of Sharnie (who becomes even more enamoured with herself and convinced of her sex appeal when under the influence) within 10 seconds of them entering all those who knew them were pretty sure they were on a high. Plus Sharnie was unable to operate her mobile phone, or even keep it in her hand. Oh, and she fell on us when she stood up. After only half an hour, Sharnie departed the party. Didn't think too much about it - everyone was wandering between the function room and the actual pub. About 45 minutes later Carey comes and asks us where she is. We didn't know, so she and Jim leave the party, I guess to find Sharnie. A couple of hours later, as the party was finishing and we were leaving the function room, Jim and Carey return. Sharnie had fallen into the river. Now, this is not a nice little blue river weaving its way about the pub. Hobart is a port city, and the 'party district', where the popular pubs and clubs are, is on the Wharf front. She'd fallen off the wharf (sheer concrete wall rising from the river with no easy way out if you happened to fall off the side) into the highly polluted and not exactly shallow river. In her inebriated state, potentially a death sentence. Carey said that Sharlie had been throwing up in the river and then fallen in (ew, she fell in her vomit!). Later, John told a different story, that Sharlie had been twirling round a pole then fallen in. I don't know which one is true. Luckily, she'd been fished out by some gallent young gentlemen. Rather than going home (which is about 10 minutes fast walk from the wharf) she'd gone back to John's house which is even further away (remember John, that horrible male specimen who dumped the sweetest girl in the world then told his current shag, who also worked with us, all about their sex life together?), to 'dry out'. As they've had a bit of chemistry simmering for ages, we kind of thought that they'd finally have a bit of a shag or whatever. Although given Sharlie's state, there was a bit of contention over whether or not Carey had 'done the right thing' as her best friend in allowing her to go to John's house. This was brought up by Carey herself, who had had second thoughts about John and Sharlie alone at John's house, with Sharlie presumably naked but for a towel. My personal view was the Sharlie has been flirting outrageously with John for about two years (even when he was dating the nicest girl in the world), and if she wanted to go back to his house, how the hell was Carey (off her head as well) supposed to stop her?

Anyway, the party is over, my work girls and I move on to a nightclub. Carey and Jim head off in another direction, possibly to John's house to get Sharlie. A couple of hours later, as we're heading up the stairs of the nightclub who should come shooting down them but Sharlie (still completely off her nut). Apparently she'd dried her clothes out in front of the heater at John's house (must be a bloody good heater seeing as she'd had a full body bath in the river), put them back on and headed out again. Carey was there too, and as her speech was now incoherent maybe a little bit more pill popping had occured in the interium.

While everyone else was pretty disgusted that Sharlie had been so out of it she'd fallen in the stinky and very polluted river, dried her clothes out and put them back on and then gone back Out, I was rather impressed. What dedication to partying that displays! Although, surely the smartest idea would have been to go back to her own house (located conveniently close to the wharf, like, 15 minutes walk if you were strolling along admiring the pretty streets), have a shower and put on fresh clothes and then go back out?

Anyway, all in all, must say Saturday was a grand night Out. I didn't return home until 4 am, which is amazing because whenever I've gone Out in the past few months (oh, about 3 times!) I've been incapable of staying out so long. My work girls and I were simply amazed at how many people are Out on Saturday nights! Don't these people have to work like we do?!

This made me giggle

2006-03-21T11:39:00.000+11:00

This is an email I received regarding the printer in our resource centre. It made me giggle quite a bit.

Printer is apparently hibernating/on strike/on holiday/dead as a
doornail (choose any) - I don't know when it will be fixed. Cheers, Anne.

Focused on higher things

2006-03-16T15:06:00.000+11:00

Signs have appeared in the School of Maths and Physics building. These signs inform you of highly important things. The one I just read said "You are on Level 2. Level 3 is one level up." Such illuminating signs are on the stair-landings of all the levels, and by the lift as well. Now, if you are intelligent enough to have to attend lectures/classes in the Maths & Physics building, you would think you are intelligent enough to work out that if you are on level 2 you have to go up a flight of stairs to get to the third floor! Maybe the students are all so highly intelligent they don't bother wasting any of their thinking power on the little things in life, like working out how many flights of stairs you must go up to get to your desired level.

No title can describe it

2006-03-12T22:33:00.000+11:00

Madre? If you happen to come across this?

GO AWAY NOW!!! DO NOT READ!

So the new potential guy? The cute one from work? The one I was snogging a bit a few weeks back? Yeah, it was his birthday yesterday (actually it's not till the 16th but he had his party last night) and I was invited so Louise (my closest workie) and I went (after getting a bit lubricated first - turning up to a party's scary!)

(damn that's a lot of parentheses)

At first I didn't talk much to him but then we passed each other in the corridor and he pulled me into a stairwell and started kissing me and then we ended up outside (hidden from sight). I'm not going to be too descriptive cos I don't think you want that but while I didn't sleep with him, we were fooling around

After a while I looked down and realised that we were both covered in blood. There was a LOT of blood. I have NO idea why, although we did work out that it was his blood, not mine

We ran to an outside tap and washed a bit of it off but we had to sneak back inside and dash to the loos to clean ourselves up properly, which involved sneaking past the party. I went into the ladies' and washed my face and then he came in too (why could he not go to the mens'??) and then we heard the outer door open so we ducked into a cubicle and shut the door and tried to be really quiet. But being on a bit of a merry plateau, we ended up snogging again and then a bit more until we realised that we'd better go back to the party, since we'd been gone for a bit under an hour at this stage

As he walked out the door, I heard applause and cheering so mortified, I stayed in the loo for a couple of minutes, made sure I was clean (although my top had blood on it, goddamn, covered that up with my jacket) and then went back to the party too

And then his best friend, who also works with us, came up to me and said something asinine like "thanks for putting on a show for us" and when I asked him what he meant, he told me that there had been about six guys there who had snuck into the loos and took turns looking under the cubicle door. When I asked him how much he'd seen, he said "well your skirt was down and his pants were up so I didn't get to see much", the jerk

Beyond mortified now, I grabbed my bag and went to tell Lou that I was leaving, only to find her snogging the DJ, who also happened to be my boy's older brother. I asked another girl to say goodbye for me and went outside, all set to go home

But I was sitting downstairs having a smoke (I was STRESSED!) and I could hear the music and I didn't really WANT to go, I just couldn't bear to stay, if that makes sense. And then Lou sent me a message asking if I was ok and when I said no she came and gave me a huge hug and a kiss and told me that it'd be alright and took me back upstairs and the DJ brother let me sit in the booth with him for the rest of the night (he was even going to put on New Kids on the Block for me but he couldn't find it) until people left and I could show my face again

By the time we were kicked out at 5am, it just Lou, the brothers and I left. Lou and the brother started snogging outside so to give them some privacy, my boy and I went and sat in his brother's car and talked. Then we started kissing and then we moved on a bit (or a lot). I remember my boy putting his jacket around my shoulders cos I was cold and me lying down next to him (as much as you can in the backseat of a Lancer) and then it was 7am and we were woken up by Lou and the brother getting in the car

I got dropped home and passed out from exhaustion but only slept for about 2 hours (it was STICKY today, who can sleep when it's hot and muggy?) and when I woke up, I realised that the clothes I'd been wearing were really bloody, much more so than they'd been earlier in the night (or morning)

I put them in to soak and they'll probably be ok but I'm just so... why is it ME this sort of shit happens to? This is a guy I really like, who appears not to hate me, and it all seemed to be coming together and then... BLOOD! Not the sort of memory anyone would REALLY want for their 25th birthday, and not the sort of memory that anyone could really DISassociate from the person who kind of (I assume) caused it

Am I always going to be "the girl who accidentally and mysteriously made me bleed"?

And what the HELL kind of reply is it, when I message this morning to say "hope everything's all better, how scary was that, blah blah blah" and he replies "going to have nightmares from the blood memory. One to forget. Was good to catch up with the guys at soccer today for story-telling"

At first I was worried that it was the pervy cubicle-peekers who'd be saying shit about me at work, but it looks like the boy may be just as bad! And I have a gossipy work, sex lives are CONSTANTLY discussed

Oh god, when am I going to get something right? I'm so ashamed

Whaaaaaat??

2006-03-06T23:14:00.000+11:00

THIS girl just won "Australia's Next Top Model". She's from my city, a capital city, but the second smallest in Australia. I think she looks vaguely terrifying! TELL me there's a chance she didn't REALLY deserve all that crap...

...skinny cow. I like my men and women upholstered. I really, really don't get it

Ouch, my ovaries!

2006-03-05T22:29:00.000+11:00

So I was at EΣTIA today (the Greek festival that we have once a year here) and I was with my madre and my brother and we were watching everyone going mad and dancing, ouzo being splashed EVERYwhere, and I started to suffer ethnic envy. I love my family, they're weird and semi-alcoholic and perpetual drunken singers and they're fun, but your bog-standard Irish/English white Australian just doesn't have the same interesting background as a Greek or an Italian or a Pole or whatever. It would be SO great to come from a background with hundreds of years of tradition and culture and a strong identity, don't you think?

But my biggest pang of the day came when we were leaving and I ran into the new guy, the cute-but-arrogant-but-oh-so-cute guy who I've not really talked to in a fortnight (who, being a fulltime member of the Greek Club - which the street party today was held in front of - had been one of the organisers), and he was holding his toddler nephew's hand and carrying his toddler niece, having just gone on the jumping castle (well, inflatable donkey, really) with them

I swear on my love of all things fizzy and alcoholic, I've NEVER been a maternal sort, never had a desire for kids. I like them well enough, have lots of younger cousins who I love playing with and hanging out with, I've just never wanted kids of my own. But seeing him being so... SWEET with his nephew and niece (and especially carrying his tiny little niece around), I wanted his babies. I've been pretty good (well, ok-ish) about suppressing my crush but goddamn, that brought it back in full force

It was just so LOVELY!

In defense of Strathgordon

2006-03-01T13:24:00.000+11:00

I was bush for two days. Two very beautiful days of breathtaking scenery, huge craggy mountains and lots of pretty water. Every time I thought 'gosh this is boring' I'd just stop and look around at where I was working and think 'at least you're bored in a gorgeous place. You could be bored on a slope of mine tailings.' On my first day of field work I turned off the main highway (main highway as in there were about 6 cars on it in four hours. And no, this is not an exaggeration) down a dirt road to get to my first study site of the day, and what should be on the road before me but a very bold wallaby. So I decided to whip out the camera because such opportunities to photograph wallabies standing stock still in front of your ute don't happen every day. I took my photo, and then drove forward a few more metres, took another photo. I was seriously only about 15 metres away when this photo (look down below folks) was taken. I don't know why the wallaby is so small. So, here are some pictures.

This one is a pretty view from one of my sites

And here's a cool liverwort I found. I think it looks like worms.

I stopped at the Lake Pedder lookout (or as diehards like me like to call it 'Lake Pedder DAM lookout as that the eighth wonder of the world, the REAL Lake Pedder lives on beneath this fake one created by two dam walls and then flooding the valley, the real lake and quite a long way up the mountains) at 3 pm for a bit of lunch. Given that I'd seen hardly any cars driving past on the highway all day, I was anticipating a quiet bite to eat while looking at spectacular scenery (even if it is the fake Lake Pedder). This was not to be the case. I'd no sooner unwrapped my roll when a campervan pulls up, and an older man gets out, complete with socks pulled up to his knees and boat shoes. His wife stayed in the van. He has a bit of a look at the information boards telling of the fight to save the real Lake Pedder, and then the creation of the dam, then turns to me "Have you been here before?" he asks in a highly aggressive manner. "Yes, many times." I answer. "Really?" "Yes." I say, somewhat aggravated. I am driving a very new huge duel-cab ute with about four uni logos on it and wearing obviously hiking clothes. I have the look of a seasoned outdoor professional.
"Why would anyone stay at Strathgordon?" he bellows at me "There's NOT EVEN A SHOP!!!"
Now, Strathgordon is this little town just before the Lake Pedder Dam. It consists of a 'Lake Pedder Chalet' for tourists and hikers to stay in and that's about it. I was highly annoyed by this very rude tourist. I had not told him to visit Strathgordon, let alone try and do some shopping there.
"For hiking," I tell him. "And for those who want to come and look at the Lake Pedder." I didn't add anything about fake and real lake pedders. He was obviously irritated enough without listening to a 'damn Greenie' like me prattle on. I decide to carry on and defend poor little Strathgordon. After all, it was once a bustling town with hundreds of people. It deserves a little respect.
"Of course, Strathgordon was the base town for the hydro workers when they built the dam. There's no reason for anyone to live there now."
"WHAT DAM?" he yells, highly suspicious and belligerant.
"The dam we're looking at right now." I tell him, waving my arm at the huge expanse of water before us and feeling somewhat bewildered.
"Show me on the map," he orders me, moving over to the information boards where there's a map of the area and the dams. It's beyond my comprehension. There's a giant lake/dam before us, the result of the building of two concrete dam walls across valleys and he can't seem to see it. So I show him on the map, and also the location of the two actual dam walls, and move away.
Honestly, what did poor little Strathgordon ever do to him? It's not its fault that once the dams were built there was no reason for anyone to stay so they didn't, the town was pulled down and the bush grew over the sites of the houses. It's in the middle of nowhere, for heaven's sake!

Things have really hit the bottom of the barrel with Mia, my officemate. We now say 'morning' and leave it at that. I don't even try to make conversation anymore. I have no idea why it's so bad. Maybe she found this blog, worked out it's me (anyone in the department who stumbled over this could work out who I am in about three seconds) and read the bad things I've said about her. Like that she's unfriendly and doesn't shave her underarms. Not that not shaving is a bad thing - I respect that it's her choice and she's happy and accepting of her body the way it is. But today she smelled bad. Quite bad indeed. The office door was closed and when I walked it it was like 'PHOOOF!' with the smell hitting me. After ten minutes I'd gotten used to it and it wasn't so bad. Present, but bearable.

I was catching up on blogs today and I stumbled across this on Léonie's blog with a comment from Doug saying 'what would Bug and Cec say?"

From Léonie's blog: Other people who DO NOT UNDERSTAND (often Australians) always complain about 'tube faces': the sullen refusal to make eye contact or forge any interaction with strangers. Well, that is just how it works.

I simply HAD to respond to this. Léonie, don't you realise how ABSOLUTELY AMAZING it is to ride in the tube? It's SO MUCH FUN, and SIMPLY THRILLING. You Londoners have lost your wonder at the truly awesome thing you get to do each day (if that's how you get to work every day, that is). Perfectly understandable, given that you're now risking death every time you ride on the tube. But if you forget about the possibility of terrorists, and pretend that you've never ridden on the tube in your life before and have heard and read about it your entire life, I'm sure that you will get so excited that you can forget about tube faces and just want to grin like a loon at everyone. Like I may have, when I first rode on the tube. Well, may have, for the first WEEK I rode on the tube. Then it wears off, and it's tube faces all round. But then, I am the girl who was so happy she cried when she walked on Tower Bridge for the first time, so I may not be the best judge of how exciting the tube is.

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiive!

2006-02-28T22:13:00.000+11:00

The craving deep inside me for soup, that is

For some reason, over the last few weeks, I've NOT been able to stop buying chicken noodle soup, beef noodle soup, minestone soup, three cheese tagliatelle soup, etc. WHY?? Today is the last day of summer (noooooooooo!), maybe my body's preparing for the cold season

The New Guy? Complete malaka. Actually a nice guy, I think, and heaven knows he's cute (and ALWAYS dances when we're out - how many guys do that??) and I fancy him like arse, but he's SO ARROGANT. There's a fine line between confident and cocky (which I REQUIRE in a crush) and completely arrogant. He was the former at first and the latter lately. I'm hoping he comes around and becomes good value again, but for now, I'm busy throwing filthy looks and snide comments when we're together

Ending with this pearl, discovered while reading a SHIT romance novel (no I don't read them normally. I don't know why I was):

her kiss left his brain as scrambled as a fragmented hard drive. He needed time to defrag

That's supposedly roMANtic?????

So where is Bug?

2006-02-19T12:30:00.000+11:00

Sorry folks, it's Cecilia again. I know that all of the most recent posts have been from boring old me, but if you want some from Bug you will have to harass her for her life update. I think she must be very busy with her job (which she actually enjoys, which is both unbelievable and amazing), her workies, and her highly exciting and varied social life involving boys named for fuzz-less peaches. I've been posting a lot (for me) the past couple of weeks because I haven't been at work and I haven't been going bush due to burned foot injury, meaning I have been highly bored and going to uni EVERY day. Although, I haven't really been doing much at uni. As per usual. So, in an effort to turn my uni life around, I have come in and am typing away diligently at my desk on a Sunday (who cares if I'm blogging - I'm still typing diligently). I'm yet to actually do any uni work, but still, I'm here. Listening to my favourite CD at the moment, 'One Way Ticket To Hell' by The Darkness. They are amazing. Kind of like Kiss and Queen with lots of harmonies. I especially like the song 'Dinner Lady Arms' because not many bands write songs about loving 'dinner lady arms' with the corus going "so put your aaaaaaaarrrrrms around me, your dinner lady arms."

Thanks for your views on nose jobs. In order to make a decision I asked myself a simple question: 'do I want to have this nose forever'? And my answer is 'no, definately not.' I'm applying for a top-up scholarship shortly worth another $9,000 each year, so if I get that, plastic surgery here I come.

And I will still make it to America. American summer 2007, whether I have to go alone or not. And I will totally be going to check out Doug's home town (if you don't mind, Doug). It would be rather strange, yet good, I think, to meet someone whose life you know so much about and who knows so much about you, just from reading posts over the internet.

Logical Steps

2006-02-14T13:09:00.000+11:00

I spent a couple of hours lying on the trampoline in our backyard on a gloriously hot day (periodically running under the sprinkler) reading the Contiki travel brochure for America and Canada last month. Looking at young adults having terrific amounts of fun in the pictures of this brochure, and reading about all the fun things they were doing while touring around America, and I could potentially do to, made me REALLY REALLY want to go. I voiced my desire to go overseas at work, and another girl (the lovely girl who was raised by her grandparents and treated horribly by that f*** face male from previous posts) told me that she was DESPERATE to go travelling to. She didn't care where, she just wanted to go. I started talking about touring America, and she was very keen. Thought it would be great fun and amazing, like I do. She was keen to go this year, but I said I wasn't sure if I could take time off uni this year, and it may have to be 2007. Coincidently, there was a travel expo about to be on at my work, and pallet loads of travel brochures sitting in our storage area, so I cracked open the box marked 'contiki' and we drooled over some up-to-date brochures of America and Europe.

The more I read these brochures, the more excited I got about visiting America. I even did more in-depth research on the internet (www.contiki.com - I'd like to do a 'Grand Northern', or maybe a 'Grand Southern'). I'm ahead in my uni work (goodness knows how, because I never seem to do any), and I began to think that maybe it was possible after all to head off in June, just five short months away. When I mentioned it to the other girl, she was very non-committal. Which is strange, because while she's terrible at making decisions (like, what to have for lunch can be a big thing) she's usually reliable. Meanwhile, I'm wildly excited about travelling again. It's all I think about. I have an appointment with my uni supervisor later that week, and I plan to ask her if I could take a month 'or so' off around June. My work girls and I are out at dinner, and I turn to the potential travel partner (who was so keen to go this year) and say "Look, did you want to go this year? If you do, I'll ask for some time off this week." "No, not this year," she says. "Maybe next year." So, just those few words had shattered my excitement and my dreams of overseas travel this year. I simply don't want to go alone, even though I'd like to do a tour with other 'like minded' people. I get on a bit of a downer, because there kind of seems like nothing to look forward to this year, just endless uni. Okay, I know that pretty much everyone has a year's worth of drudgery at work to look forward to, but having got so excited over going travelling, not going after all was a hard hit.

So, I began to think about rhinoplasty instead. Yes, I know. Logical step. Can't go travelling (well, can, but has nobody to travel with) so will get a nose job instead. Getting a nose job has always been something I've meant to do, but in the future. But there's nothing stopping me getting one right now. Except what other people would say. I know it would upset my parents hugely, so I think that I'd just go to Melbourne supposedly for an extended shopping trip and come home with a new nose. BUT what if my new nose looked even worse than my current one? What if I hated it? What if it looked obviously fake? And there's always that 'what if I died by some strange surgical complication?'

So, thoughts on nose jobs everyone! To cut or not to cut, please answer my question!

Workplace Safe

2006-02-11T14:29:00.000+11:00

There has been a massive government campaign for the past couple of years on 'Workplace Safe' (which is simply appalling grammer, but I think those bright little thinkers in the government advertising department decided it was more catchy than 'workplace safety', which would in fact make much more sense). Obviously I need to pay more attention, because on Thursday morning at work I moved a massive urn full of boiling hot water, placed it down on the ledge where we usually place them, then moved an empty urn into the now-vacated urn spot, and, oh dear, the massive urn full of boiling water has fallen on the floor, filling my shoes with boiling water and burning the top of my foot quite badly. I have no idea why only one foot was burnt, when both my feet were covered in boiling water and both hurt to an equal degree. All at 7 am in the morning. So, one trip to accident and emergeny later and I'm off work (waitressing, not uni) for 16 days. Which is an absolute bugger, because it's very busy at work at the moment and I had some nice long shifts on Saturday ($24 an hour, at least 12 hours) and PUBLIC HOLIDAY Monday at the Hobart Cup (my work has a VIP tent out at the racecourse - $36 an hour, for at least 10 hours). I still get workers compensation, but it sucks in comparison. OH, and the thoughtful people in OH&S decided that while my medical certificate says 'complete rest' and 'unfit for work until 25th February', I can do a little job for them and produce a booklet on workers compensation and the rehabilitation processes of the company, and go back to the doctor and get my medical certificate changed to 'fit for office work'. AND while I do this little booklet, I do it on those days I was rostered on for an ordinary waitressing shift, on workers compensation pay, which is a fraction of my normal pay.

I know NOTHING about workers compensation policies and rehabilitation practices. Okay, I got a very hasty introduction when I cut my finger badly last year, and refamiliarised myself with the workers compensation forms yesterday for my burn, but not enough to write a booklet on it. And they've given me examples of booklets from other places (like Adelaide uni - because that's relevant to a hotel-casino-function centre-lots of internal office staff place of work).

But WHY would those people up in OH&S decide that me, a lowly food and beverage attendant from functions would be knowledgeble enough to write a booklet on workers comp and rehabilitation? They seemed to assume that because I go to uni and know how to operate a computer I will naturally be able to author a book on company policies of workers compensation and rehabilitation. I have this feeling that whatever I produce won't be what OH&S were after, or just won't be good enough, so all the time I KNOW I'm going to spend researching workers compensation and writing and formatting this darn booklet will just be wasted.

I'm grumpy because I can't go to aqua aerobics and I really enjoy it, and because I can't go to 'fatblasta' (ew, that is such a gross name) ordinary aerobics and blast some fat. I still went to body pump though, and an annoying old man (NOT the instructor) came over to me to correct my technique of squatting in a loud voice in front of the class.

So, I'm just grumpy in general, with a sore foot and with no new books to read. I was planning on stocking up at the library yesterday but it was closed due to a fire, and won't be reopening until Tuesday (which is I suppose lucky, because the whole library could have burnt down). And I've already wasted two hours today working on the stupid, waste of time booklet. Oh yes, I'm in a massive grump.

Oh, and whenever I press the forward-slash key this - buying d hally 300k----ownage--- - happens. My brothers have done something extremely odd to the computer. I know that this buying d hally 300k----ownage--- is some kind of instruction from the online game Runescape that now defines their lives. Must say it gave me a surprise though. buying d hally 300k----ownage--- buying d hally 300k----ownage---

On tinia, body pump and The Horny Time.

2006-02-07T12:51:00.000+11:00

On Tinia
So, for the first time in my life I have tinia. To all those who aren't familiar with this very common (so the pharmacist assured me), highly contagious and VERY VERY ITCHY disease, it is a charming fungal virus that lingers on hard surfaces, such as pools, jumping on your nice healthy feet as you walk the five paces from the edge of the pool to your thongs (Americans among us, please replace 'thongs' with 'flip-flops'. I had a bit of a freak-out last night - it went like this "Oh my GOD! I have FUNGUS! It's crawling all over my feet, DEVOURING my skin! Ew Fungus EW fungus EW EW Oh my God FUNGUS!!!! (SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH RUB-RUB SCRATCH)

On Body Pump
So, I've conquered my fears of going to gym classes and have, for the past two weeks, been going to body pump. With my mother, who is extremely unfit and has very weak muscles. For anyone who isn't familiar with body pump, it involves doing lots of squats holding a long weighted barbell across your shoulders, then some clean and jerks with squats, and then you drop to the mat and do 'bicep and tricep work' with your barbell. Oh, and throw in quite a few pushups and situps and the worst exercise thing in the world, something-beginning-with-e squats, which is where one leg goes behind the other, like you've just taken a big stride, and you go up and down LOTS. After the first time my thighs were so sore and I was in lots of pain going up and down steps. I had to lean heavily on the railing, going up very slowly holding my knees stiff, and down on my toes, again with stiff knees, to minimise the pain of putting weight on my thighs as you push up steps. As my office at uni is on the fifth floor I have to go up four flights of stairs, so I would linger in the corridor until there was no-one around to watch me doing my strange stairclimbing.

Despite being tired out with shaking legs and arms (and only halfway through the class) I just can't stop smiling. I know, crazy. Not because I'm happy to be there being tortured, but because it's just so damn funny, all these 'reasonable adults', who crowd into a room and squat away to music, pushing themselves to their limits and having 'encouragement' yelled at them by a 'motivating' instructor ("Aaaand SQUEEZE up" You can do it - "SQUEEZE"!!).

I'm a bit embarrassed though. Every other person in the class has a minimum of five kilos on their bars, and most have a minimum of seven or ten. And they're not young people. It's pretty much all women, all over the age of thirty. Most over the age of forty. And for particular tracks the instructor says 'lock and load' and they all load more onto their bar from the pile of weights beside them. And I just stick with my baby weights of two kilos the whole time.

On The Horny Time
So, all of this exercise (I'm going to aqua aerobics twice a week - very fun despite the tinia, body pump once a week, and normal aerobics one a week) is having some side effects. I know exercise is supposed to produce endorphines and make you feel happy, but instead it's released pheromones(I have no idea if that's the right word here) that have me lusting after pretty much every male between the ages of about 18 to 30. And it's not even The Horny Time. Oh God, what will I be like during The Horny Time?? The Horny Time has already had me lusting after Tufty, a young man at the gym, nicknamed 'Tufty' by Bug and I due to the large tufts of underarm hair that protrude out from under his arms in every direction (trust me, he's not the kind of guy you would be lusting after during normal circumstances). To those people (mainly males I would say) who aren't familiar with The Horny Time, there's a certain time during a woman's menstrual (gosh I hate that word) cycle that lasts for a few days when she goes a little, ummm, horny, randy, lustful. It happens to be the most fertile time of the month for a woman, so some inner prehistoric urge is telling us to procreate and go and get some sperm.
So, if I'm already lusting after random not-usually-lustworthy males, what on earth will happen during The Horny Time? I will have to stay inside, away from members of the opposite sex. Or perhaps I'll go bush, and separate myself from society.

Oh dear... the shame

2006-02-04T23:14:00.000+11:00

Being a Friday night, I went out last night (with one of the workies, who have just become friends now - very cool) and I MAY have had a bit much to drink. I mean, I was definitely drunk but I wasn't pissed, if that makes sense

I met up with the New Guy and we went up to Syrup (the only club in Hobart I'll go to. The rest of them are UNLOVELY) and we were dancing for ages and there was a bit of kissing (quite a bit) and it was all very fun

About 15 minutes before we decided to call it a night, I bought myself a tequila and Red Bull, which I usually get one of if I'm dancing, LOTS of energy! But instead of my normal José Cuervo it was a dark tequila and it tasted foul but I thought I'd drink it anyway because, you know, $8 drink and may as well! But it was gross

The NG said he was headed home and as he was driving (and lives in the same suburb as me), would I like a lift? Of course I said yes (who wants to pay $15 for the 'pleasure' of making uncomfortable small talk with an elderly taxi driver??) and we were walking to his car (hand in hand, nice!) when the disgusting tequila hit my stomach

Now, I drink a lot. I know it's not good and my poor liver and pancreas will probably shut down any day now but my family are all drinkers (none alcoholic though. That I know of) and it's always just been something I've done. And because I drink a lot and often, my tolerance is pretty high. I rarely get hungover and it takes about 20 standard drinks to get me drunk (honestly). But that tequila? On an empty stomach? (I've had 2-3 meals over 4 days. No I don't know why) Blecch

I said to the NG "I think I'm going to be sick", which he thought was funny but he wanted to know if I needed help (what help could he have given me, I'd like to know!) but I said no and went and threw up behind a tree. Charming huh? I mean, at LEAST there was a tree there so I was kind of blocked from view but FOR GOD'S SAKE!!! How enticing must that have been for him?? When I was done, he asked if I was ok (and called me 'babes'. I love affectionate names) and let me into his car and then even stopped at a servo so I could buy some tissues and lemonade but OH MY LORD

I was just mortified. And even more so this morning! I messaged him and told him how sorry I was and thanked him for putting up with me and he replied with "Not a problem. We've all been there. But no more tequila for you" so at least he's not too revolted to talk to me but ack!

It's just not possible for me to be cool though, is it??

(he's tall and dark and has hard thighs [I only know this from dancing with him!] and is Greek and plays tennis and soccer and uses words like 'lethargic' in text messages and is so cute and just... groovy. Just so you know)

And kissing's fun :)

For a change

2006-01-31T23:01:00.000+11:00

There's a New Guy on the horizon. The married man, while still lurking around in my brain (and in the office, which is hard) is being FIRMLY ignored and pushed aside. SO a New Guy is a pleasant distraction
*
Actually, he's not new as such. He's the cute boy from work who I was buying drinks for a few weeks back. I went out with one of my workie girls on Friday (as opposed to the standard 5 girls who go out) and we went on a river cruise (paid for by work, with alcohol included) with a great wad of the workie boys and during the course of the night, the New Guy kissed me, in front of EVERYONE from work

And then we danced all night and kissed some more (to the point of being told to "tone it down" by the manager of the club we were in) and then he went home withOUT pressuring me for sex (it makes a nice change) and still messaged me most of Saturday

There's a big pub crawl åplanned for this Friday after work so maybe things will progress. I don't know. It's nice NOT knowing, actually

Y ¯ –

Points on Australia Day, spanish and body hair

2006-01-25T09:48:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow is Australia Day (26th January). It's only in recent years that I've gotten into celebrating Australia Day. It MUST be celebrated with a BBQ and the beach. Two things heavily associated with Australian culture. The radio MUST be on, set to Triple J, as they count down the 100 hottest songs in Australia for 2005, as voted by us, the Australian Triple J listening public (this doesn't include Bug, as she enjoys sappy boy-band songs and songs by teen idols such as Hilary Duff - he, he, he, she's going to bash me now. I don't mind though - so long as she still comes to the beach with me tomorrow).

My officemate Mia can speak fluent spanish. I discovered this when David, my new officemate (who replaced the surly male who finished his PhD in December and went to work in Hawaii) returned to Hobart from Peru (where his study sites are located and he's spent the past year living) with his Peruvian fiance, who can't speak any English. My office erupted into a cacophany Spanish and laughter as Mia greeted David, who it turns out she's good friends with, and his beautiful fiance. I am wildly envious that Mia can speak another language fluently, something I've always wanted to be able to do. I'm also envious that she can chat away to David's fiance (whose name I simply cannot remember) who seemed like a lovely person and I felt very sorry for, seeing as she's here in Australia and can't actually speak to very many people (except Mia of course).

Today Mia did a big stretch in front of me in a tank top, and I discovered that she doesn't shave her underarms. Or wax, or pluck, or hair removal cream, or epilate, or anything, and she hasn't done for some time, because there's a hell of a bush under there. This just highlighted what opposites we are (me who has had her underarm hair permanently removed at great cost and pain), and what a funny old world it is that has me and Mia sharing an office at uni.

sweating profusely (but attractively!)

2006-01-23T00:01:00.000+11:00

It was 41 degrees today (106-ish if you're one of those strange farenheit-y types). I am HOT and SWEATING and SUNBURNT and HOW will I sleep in my overheated room tonight??

On the upside, I have holidays and can ENJOY the beautiful weather that the weather bureau's organised for me! I just LOVE being Australian sometimes!

Pieces

2006-01-21T02:33:00.000+11:00

I feel all topsy turvy. I'm not entirely sure why but I know I'm not happy. Not UNhappy, but not happy. Please, bloggies, what will make me feel more human?

Clueless

2006-01-18T23:08:00.000+11:00

How do you know when you're in love with someone?

What is the difference between a crush, or infatuation, or the real thing?

If you suspect it's something more than just a lustful physical-type thing, how do you STOP it from progressing?

With the SOE, I knew it was love from the second time I saw him. The first time, it was instant, ridiculous crush; the second time, I didn't even need to think about it. Not for one second did I question how deeply I felt, I just felt it in my bones

With my first ever (vaguely obsessive) boyfriend, I knew that much as I adored and loved him, I wasn't IN love with him

But with the Married Man, who is yes, far and away beYOND limits, I just don't know. If he comes near me I pause, waiting to see where he'll walk. If he talks, everyone else in the room goes silent so I can hear his voice. If he laughs, I feel my face go red as I try not to laugh along with him, just cos he's so cute. When he stretches, I want to run my fingertips along his forearms

I don't know what to do. I don't KNOW if I'm in love (and I suspect the not knowing means I'm not which GOOD, MARRIED! SO wrong!) but I'm definitely besotted, which isn't a great deal better, more so because I work for nine hours on the same floor as him 5 days a week

Unfairly, I can't turn off my feelings here and I LOATHE that. I'm very used to being in control and being independent and I'm not sure what to do with myself when I'm feeling pretty ashamed of myself for even the fancying thing and kind of disgusted for the kissing and whatever

I'm a fucking mess, really. And a confused fucking mess at that

It may be an addiction

2006-01-17T20:33:00.000+11:00

Ok, so I've just come back from seeing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire again. Yes, that makes three times in a month. Yes, I'm addicted. But it's so GOOD!!!

Besides, there's the hotness of Stanislav Ianevski:

Although, Robert Pattinson's not dreadful to look at either:
*

*
Hang on, I need another look:
*
*
Nope, much more babely. Grr, I love that movie

Sitting rather smugly

2006-01-13T11:22:00.001+11:00

I am sitting rather smugly at my desk this morning. When I arrived at the shockingly late time of 10.30 am this morning, Mia greeted my customary 'good morning' with actual speech in the form of a sentence, not just the standard 'morning'. Our conversation went like this:
Me: 'Good morning!"
Mia: 'Morning. You sent me a text yesterday.' - note, this was not a question, it was a statement of fact. You may all remember that yes, I did send her a text telling her not to bother coming in to uni until later because the server was down.
Me: 'Yeah, I did.'
Mia: 'That was nice of you.'- in a very small little voice I had to strain to hear.
Me: 'No worries. It didn't matter anyway because you had all your stuff on disk.'
Mia: 'It wasn't a disk, it was the D drive.'

Note the end of our conversation - SHE HAD ALL HER STUFF ON DISK. Remember Mia yesterday implied that I was a complete imbecile who couldn't work a computer as her computer was functioning fine. Well, when I returned from the library yesterday, she admitted to me that the server wasn't working on her computer either, she'd saved all her stuff not to either of the two network spaces allocated to her, but instead to her computer hard-drive, which is the D drive (and D doesn't stand for Disk, like I thought). I've learnt something new, though. We can save things to the D drive of our personal computers, even though they're hooked up to the school network. Could be a bit risky though - if this one computer breaks, or catches a virus, you can't access your work at all.

So, I'm feeling rather like a big fat smug bullfrog this morning, who has just eaten a simply massive dragonfly. Mia and I had conversation, she THANKED me for being nice (and I have been trying in that department), and she was wrong all along.

The girl must have the constitution of an ox, though. I have had a cold now for two weeks. A very snotty, sneezy cold involving lots of tissues. I have had a great hacking cough for six weeks, very chesty where you can simply hear the flem rattling on my chest (now that's a gross vivid word picture). She is still not sick, despite sitting only two metres away from me (with a short bookcase between us).

But still, I am smug.

I'm just not THAT big of a flake

2006-01-12T10:59:00.000+11:00

So, the fact that my ernest officemate thinks me a great big ditz was reinforced about an hour ago. I, in my new years resolution to get to uni earlier, showed up at uni at 8 am this morning. No, I lie. I must be honest with you all. I had to be here by 8 am to return the uni ute which I have had for the past two days doing my fieldwork. So, anyway, I was here bright and early, full of good intentions of not wasting time blogging, and just writing away at my paper all morning, until my appointment with my supervisor at noon. I go up to my office, log into my computer. Up comes a message to me, informing me that there is no server. Now, servers are very important things, I have learnt. If the internet doesn't work, it is usually because 'the server is down'. This morning, it was a very important server that had disappeared. This server supplied not only the internet, but all the 'drives' within my school where everyones files are stored. Thinking it may just be my office computer, I tried computers in two different computer labs, then went and conferred with the postgrad coordinator (the only person I could find at 8.15am in the morning), who said that yes, the server was down everywhere, and we'd just have to wait for it to come back on.

So, basically here I was, bright and early at uni, with nothing to do. Well, I read a couple of journal articles, but that was it. I thought I'd be nice and build bridges with my officemate (who I think hates me as she shows disdain and exasperation every time she has to talk with me) so I sent her a nice friendly message telling her to have a late one this morning because the server was down at uni and there's nothing to do, signing it 'Cec in the office', in case she knows other Cecs and also in case she'd forgotten my name. At 9.30 I wandered down to my supervisor with my list of questions (I see her once a week so I save up questions to ask her), two and a half hours before our appointment, because I truly do have nothing else to do and figure she must be at a loose end too. Half an hour later, I head on back up to the office and find Mia sitting at her desk, working away on her computer. She has the window open that has all the network files in it. Mine had come up blank. Thinking the server is now 'up' again, I try my computer again. Nothing. Turning to Mia, I ask her if she was using files from the network (she may have saved everything on a back-up CD). "Yes" she says, as if to say 'what other kind would I be using'. "The network has been down in the whole school", I tell her. "I wonder why is yours working?" "Maybe you didn't log on properly" she says, like I'm a child. "Dd you try a few times?" "I tried up here, and in the computer lab. And there were other postgrads who'd migrated into the computer lab to try there as well, and no one could get it to work." I inform her, "It's down in the entire building, except your computer." "Have you tried your computer recently?" she asks me in this highly patronising tone. "Maybe it's working now" . "Yes", I tell her, highly annoyed, "Just then, and it's not working, Your computer is the only one in the whole building to work - how bizarre! Oh, maybe it's because you don't log out of a night, you just leave it on" "I've just logged in twice this morning" she tells me smugly.

So, in the typing of ths story I've realised two things. 1) that it is quite a dull story, and 2) that Mia doesn't come out looking like a bitch who hates me. Her responses sound quite reasonable. But it's all in her manner, how she was implying that the server wasn't down at all, I was making it up and the reason I couldn't get the computer to go is because I wasn't logging in correctly (probably because I was stuffing up my password). HER computer was going, so obviously there was nothing wrong. I immediately went down and hassled the computer technician, telling him that Mia's computer was going fine. He had no answers to that, but said he was working on the problem. SO cop that Mia - I wasn't imagining a problem. I'm just not that big of a flake.

I'm writing this in the library, where the internet is working fine. It's time now to head back down to my office and see if the school network is up and running again. And go sit closeted in a little room with Mia. Oh yay. I still have a doozy of a cold though, with lots of nose-blowing and hacking coughing, so instead of going to the toilet every half hour for an almightly nose-blowing session, and trying to muffle my coughs with lots of sips of water, I think I'm just going to let rip in the office and Mia can just deal with it or go out. It's my office now too! Just because she's been there two years, and I've only been there four months doesn't mean I have any less right to be there with my germs!

When good Catholic girls lose the plot...

2006-01-11T22:29:00.000+11:00

The mammoth post is just too long. Convoluted and rant-y and most of it just me trying to justify the fact that I've fallen for a married man
*
I'm not deluded; I have no expectation that he's going to leave his wife for me and I had to giggle when I thought of (hypothetically) he and I going to one of my family dinners and me hanging out with my cousins listening to 311 and The Offspring and the soundtrack from Les Miserables (yes, we have eclectic taste in my family) and the married man sitting upstairs talking with the adults. I know that nothing will come of it and that I'm a fool to even be interested but the gist of the story is this:
*
When I started at my work (my oh so wonderful work that I love more and more each day. I am such a nerd), I fancied him. Nothing serious but I thought he was good-looking and more than that, he was just a fun guy. I had fun just listening to him talk. THEN I found out he was married and while I was (quite) disappointed, I just dismissed him from my mind because hello, married! When his wife gave birth to their second child a few months back, I had a pang but ignored it. Then he hit on me a couple of weeks before Christmas (he was drunk, he's not a sleaze) and I was a bit crestfallen. I'd always thought he was such a great guy and I couldn't reconcile a cheat with a guy I admired
*
But after a week or so, I realised that I'd not quite put him out of my mind like I'd thought. Nothing happened but we started having lunch together, chatting about football and past relationships and he read me my horoscope every day and told me that he thinks I'm gorgeous. It was all above board though, other people would come and talk with us – we were just hanging out
*
Until. Until we went out one night with our workies and, in the middle of a crowded pub, he kissed me… and I kissed him back. I tore myself up about it later but it did happen. And since then it's all been strange. We've NOT started a raging affair and there's NOT been any suggestion of it but we just became closer and it's been weird, it's like we're seeing each other, but we're not
*
I don't know how to explain it without sounding like a complete floozy and believe me, I am VEHEMENTLY anti-cheating. I've always maintained that if you want to cheat (not just looking but SERIOUSLY are thinking about cheating), your current relationship is not working. If I was hearing from someone else about me, I'd think I was a horrible tart. I'd probably call myself a skanky bitch. At the very least, a slut
*
But the fact remains that it's not possible to choose who you fall for. You can absolutely choose what you do about your feelings if they exist, and I'm disappointed in myself for not taking the high moral ground with this man, really bitterly disappointed, but I didn't choose (and certainly didn't want) to feel the way I do
*
I think whatever brief thing we've had has ended though. He's been having problems with his wife (hello there, explanation on his part!) but he told me the other day that despite their fighting, they're trying to work things out. And he's had a different lunch break than me for the last three days. We've not chatted at the photocopier like usual
*
I'm not proud of myself. I remember how I felt when the SOE slept with some of my friends (and tried it on with my sister) and there was no "until death do us part" (or children) with the two of us. I don't think I did the acceptable thing; in fact, I know I did the WRONG thing by not saying absolutely definitely not. And crossing that line? Kissing, hugging, holding hands and talking for hours? Whatever else we did after that line was crossed was just wrong in every respect
*
But I adore the man. I miss our lunches and our talks and our in-jokes and I want… I don't even know what I want. I definitely want not to feel the way I do. I'm conscious that of the (few) friends who know about this, almost all look down on me for it. I'd be the same in their shoes
*
There's no punch line with this post. It's not remotely funny. I'm in over my amoral head here and I know it

Still writing my mammoth post...

2006-01-08T22:07:00.000+11:00

... but I would love the amateur dream interpreters out there to translate the dream I had last night:
*
One of my workies, Joe, broke up with his girlfriend (who is long term and who is great) to be with me. We had a fantastic time, holding hands and snogging and hugging and laughing and being generally heart-burstingly lovey dovey
*
(note: I'm not interested in Joe. He's good looking and a great guy and we get along but I'm not interested in him at all)
*
Then myself and four of my workies were kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists (noooo idea) and taken to a secluded place while ransoms were sought and such. During this, the four girls and I were sitting at my old science desks listening to a lecture by one of the terrorists. I was sitting at the back of the room with my friend Alex (who is a workie) and the other three were sitting in front of us. Alex got up to go to the bathroom and when she came back, she squeezed in with the other girls, leaving me by myself, dribbling (like basketball dribbling, not saliva-y drooling) a FitBall
*
Then I looked out the window and saw that Will, a guy at work I'm seeing (the mammoth post is coming...) had turned up in the secluded place with a couple of policemen to help negotiate our release. When I managed to sneak out of the room and talk to Will for a second and I asked him how hard it had been to be able to come to see us, he said he'd had to pay $4000 to be able to. Then he looked at me coldly and walked back to the police
*
And then I woke up. And I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!! Someone, please find SOME meaning in that dream for me!!!

Life's never just UNCOMPLICATED, is it??

2006-01-08T00:26:00.000+11:00

God, I don't know where to begin! There's been so MUCH been going on, a great deal of which I can't really talk about... although I WANT to... but I can't. Not tonight, anyway

I don't know. I'm feeling philosophical tonight and I don't want to subject anyone to that side of me cos you'll happily chew your fingertips off rather than finish the post and how, I ask you HOW, would you be able to type your own posts without fingertips, huh?

So. I'm going to go and find something crappy and fun to watch, like Grease. Or The Sound of Music, maybe. I'll have some champagne. And then I'll sit down tomorrow when I have a spare hour or two to write a FULL update

And I'll leave you with the TOTALLY important realisation I just had (having come from watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for the second time) that it's quite possible that I'm in love with Viktor Krum. Although Robert Pattinson is un-ugly as well. And Draco Malfoy is a definite lay-by

*sigh* I like boys

Just a bit of a life update

2006-01-03T10:37:00.000+11:00

SO I was NOT out with a boy as Bug thought I was, last Wednesday. I was out with some girlfriends. The said boy and I are FRIENDS, so even if we were out together, it would be in a friendly way. I am still deeply disturbed about the way Bug came to think we (the boy and I) were out together though. A mutual male friend bumped into Bug at the Big Food Festival and told her that "Cec and Mark are finally out together" or something along those lines. This disturbed me because I hadn't realised that it was such common knowledge amongst the friend group members that Mark 'fancies' me. In fact, I'd rather hoped that Mark had stopped 'liking' me by now. Oh well, he's off to Antarctia via South America in a few weeks - hopefully he'll fall in love with a beautiful, passionate Chilean girl and bring her back to Hobart.
I'm currently having lunch. It may only be 10.43 am, but I'm hungry now.
I just got my first draft of my article back from my supervisor (I'm currently writing an article about my plants and fire, soil health and vascular plant seed success I'm intending to have published in a scientific journal). I was dreading this event, because usually my first drafts are covered in so much red pen I can barely make out what I had originally written. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover whole pages without any red pen, just a tick at the bottom of the page, and a message at the end saying that she's impressed!
My supervisor's message has made me feel very happy, and I think I'm going to forgive her for making me go bush at 6 am tomorrow morning with her, meaning I have to get up at 4.15 am. * Important note to self: buy some diet coke so you don't fall asleep while driving the three hours to your study sites and back again on highly dangerous windy roads.
My officemate is still not back from her Christmas holidays. This is a good thing, because I'm in a pretty disgusting state, with lots of sniffing, nose blowing, and hacking coughing. I'm also a bit worried about how she'll take my cleaning. She may see it as me muddling in areas outside my own domain (ie my own office and shelves). OH MY GOD SHE JUST WALKED IN! Polite chit-chat all round. She hasn't commented on my cleaning. Oh, I forgot to tell you all, I cleaned the inch of dust off the surfaces in our office, and had a big chuckout of all the rubbish littering said surfaces (except her desk and bookshelves, of course).
My officemate is something of a grot, and that's pretty rich, coming from me, Miss Messy. For example, would you like to know what happens if you leave a half drunk mug of tea on your desk for 15 days? I can tell you, from looking at the example that is still on her desk. On day one, it was just a congealed lumpy brown mess. By day 15 however, an amazing metamorphosis has taken place. All the liquid has evaporated, leaving a dried teabag that appeared to be stuck to the bottom and side of the mug. Large spots of furry blue mould have blossomed on the teabag, and around the bottom of the mug. Smaller spots of greeny-white mould surround the larger blue circles.
I had a very enjoyable New Year. Probably my best yet. This was my fifth New Year's Eve at work. We finished work at 2.45 am on New Year's Day, then sat around drinking at work until 4.10am. Then a group of the original 'girls' went to one of the girl's houses, where we found her boyfriend and a group of his friends still quietly celebrating. We continued on drinking until about 7.30am, rested for a couple of hours, then went out for breakfast. It was so busy it took us an hour to get a glass of juice, so breakfast went on until lunch time. Not a big new year, by any means, but it was very pleasant having drunken philosophical discussions at 6am, and breakfasting without having had any sleep at all, and still being wired on Red Bull.

Oh BUG! You fucking FOOL!

2005-12-28T23:52:00.000+11:00

There's this guy I ADORE (in a celebrity kind of way) called Nick Duigan. That's him there on the left. He hosts a fishing show on TV here (don't scoff, it's the FUNNIEST show!) and he has a fanTAStic voice and a cheeky smile and I KNOW he's roughly the same age as my Daddy but he's gorgeous and I worship him and just GAH!!!

And so I was at this big food festival that Hobart has every year and was out the back talking to some people and realise that I was standing LESS THAN A METRE from Nick Duigan and I just went GAH and I looked at Boo and said "GAH!" and pointed and she said "GAH!" and I realised that I had my camera in my pocket but I was TOO SHY to ask him for a photo so I guzzled my wine and procrastinated and procrastinated and procrastinated (yes, it's a good old word) and then asked Boo if she'd ask him to have a photo with me (because yes, I am a 16-year-old meeting Justin Timberlake) and she said yes but when it came to the crunch SHE was too shy as well so I was RIGHT NEAR this YUMMY guy who is a quasi-celebrity I LOVE who has GREAT legs and I DIDN'T GET A PICTURE with him!!!

I am a fucking FOOL!

*sigh*

p.s. Cec is out with a BOY tonight. Oooooh!

May your yuletime be gay!

2005-12-27T15:15:00.000+11:00

Greetings everyone! I hope you have and are still having a very enjoyable Christmas, and are continuing to gorge yourself on leftover turkey. If you're like me, and despite having been given lots of lovely pressies (and I get a double lot at Christmas, because it's my birthday just before the greatest day of the year) are about to go and hit the post-Christmas sales, may you find lots of bargains! I have embraced Christmas even more than previous years (I know, who would have thought that possible?) - covering my house and garden with pretty lights (then buying another 10 or so boxes yesterday when they went half price in those fantastic after Christmas sales - and I am a dedicated shopper, waiting outside for the shop to open at 8 am on Boxing Day with those other desperate bargain hunters), and even my own person. I wrapped two strings of flashing lights around my head and pinned them to my german braids (when you wrap your braids around your head) on Christmas day at work.

My oldest brother, who is fifteen and a half, and has in the past few months hit puberty with a vengance (monster eyebrow, pimples, cracking voice and ATTITUDE all in one previously quite decent younger brother) and I have actually united this holiday season - we've only had one fight for the whole of December! He has been replying when I talk to him instead of just ignoring me (wonders will never cease), and hasn't been speaking to everyone in snarls or with jeers like we're morons - and he was the only person to help me with the house lights. He even came post-Christmas light shopping with me yesterday, and went shopping with me to find a present for mum before Christmas, and then with Dad, to find presents for everyone. I think he's been infected with the Christmas spirit. I wonder how long it will last? Hopefully at least until new year!

I hope everyone has a thoroughly amazing New Years Eve, and can't remember anything about it except it was amazing!

Cec.

Oh BUG! On the steps of a CHURCH??

2005-12-24T23:54:00.000+11:00

Oh Crikey. FOUR work Christmas parties in three weeks?? Awesome! I LOVE my work

And more than that, how COOL is it that there were 60-odd people at our champagne breakfast yesterday (out of 300-ish in our building) and for that, 15 litres of champagne and 3 cases of premium beer were bought, which was ALL drunk in an hour?? I LOVE my work

And THEN we all knocked off at work at 3 and went to the wharf and joined the big street party that was going on and I had SEVEN drinks bought for me. I LOVE MY WORK

I was hit on by THREE guys I know. One is married, one is engaged and one just broke off his engagement. Boys are weird

My cousin is here from London and she looks beautiful and seems to have acquired an English accent. Strange

Buon natale, all!!!

Just random

2005-12-22T23:32:00.001+11:00

It's wrong and potentially just messy to be a bit infatuated with a married man, isn't it? I mean I KNOW it is, but I actually can't help it (can YOU turn off how you feel??) and it's not like I'm going to do anything about it but it's THERE and it's driving me bonkers

On the upside, I have my third work Christmas piss-up in three weeks tomorrow. Actually, we've got a champagne breakfast and then we're having the piss-up after work. I LOVE MY WORK!

I have a sneaking suspicion I just dyed my face red. Again *sigh*

My legs are fake tanned and the rest of me's not. It looks like my legs have been lounging in Vanuatu while my arms have been hiking in Alaska!

My cat just went out the cat door ON HIS OWN. Why did I not put him on Prozac a YEAR ago??

Christ on a bike! It's 11.30pm and I have to be at work at 7.30am. And I have to rinse my hair dye out and sleep and then shower and make up and choose an outfit before then! Stop distracting me, internet!!

The bullet points of the terminally lazy:

2005-12-19T22:42:00.000+11:00

* I realised today that it's 3 years to the day since I had a one night stand with my first (puppy) love. You know the person you were just infatuated with in high school? They were gorgeous and popular and well out of your league? Well, after being thoroughly head over for this guy for at least 7 years, we met up after not seeing each other for a few years and he came back to my house. Although we've tried to meet up since, it's not happened and we only had the one night (and the next morning, I suppose) but it was just so... lovely. Gorgeous guy. Good memory

* Cec turns 23 tomorrow (the 20th). We had a fanTABulous dinner tonight, had a big catch up (having not seen each other for a few weeks) and wandered around the wharf with ice cream after, which was lovely. Happy birthday, babygirl!!

* I saw the SOE yesterday for the first time in, god, at LEAST six months. Christ on a bike. I forgot how GORGEOUS that boy is. I mean, I know he's evil and, you know, EVIL, but he's just SO great looking. Don't get me wrong, I'm over the whole thing, but it was like being punched in the stomach just looking at him. So much zing

* my workies said that as far as they know, I didn't do anything embarrassing the other night. Thank CHRIST!

* do you know how hard it is to find a one bedroom rental that'll let me have a neurotic, chemically-sedated cat? Hard

But irrespective of all the above, I STILL don't know what to buy my dear papa for Christmas. The latest Enya CD, maybe (since he's got all the others). Don't be like that, it's good background music, and she has a better voice than you or I will EVER have. Besides that? NO IDEA

Oh crap. On a stick

2005-12-18T12:01:00.000+11:00

Must, MUST, stop flirting with the cute boy at work. He's a MANAGER and he's POPULAR and he's COOL and one of my friends said he's a playboy but she tends to think that about most guys so I don't know, although another one of my workie girls said he's been with lots of girls but that he's shy and lovely and I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK ABOUT HIM but yes. Must stop flirting

Also must stop buying him drinks. Am broke

And must never again drink so much that I throw up in an alley. In my defence I'd not eaten for 24 hours so I only threw up alcohol (not mysterious carrots). But still. Yuck

I survived - this time!

2005-12-14T08:37:00.000+11:00

Greetings world, I have returned from the bog. Actually had quite a good trip (besides the work) and saw and heard plenty of impressive things. There is one particular stretch of road that is simply awesome. It's this windy road (oh, so very windy and life-threatening) but just breathtaking. Not just for the natural beauty, but for the construction work man has done (and I say 'man', because there would have been no women construction workers when this was built). Our state gets the majority of its energy from water (hydro power), and most of that water comes from this area, the Central Highlands. There's this power station on this twisty road, in absolutely the middle of nowhere, in extremely thick, wet sclerophyll forest (damp eucalypt forest with an understorey of rainforest plants). This power station is in the V of many mountains, and going up this very, very, VERY steep mountain are four immense pipes, that pipe the water down to the power station. There are pipes then going back up another hill, to another powerstation, and then two other pipes continue on throught the wilderness. For one of the first times in my life I was struck by the power of people, and the difficulties they would have had. These pipelines were built between the early 1930s to the late 1960s, through the Great Depression and WWII. Before really modern technology. I wonder how many men died, as they cleared great swathes through total and utter impenetrable wilderness, laying massive pipes up almost vertical mountainsides. And how many women and children died, as they followed their men and lived in the remote and isolated villages built for the workers and their families.

I was lying in my bed at a hostel (it used to be the infirmary of an old hydro village, actually) on Monday night when suddenly, completely out of the blue, there was this almightly crack of thunder that went on and on, and the whole building, including my bed, just shook. It was how I imagine an earthquake to feel, and it was like a giant with a massive hammer was pounding on the roof. So I got to marvel at not just man's power on my trip away, but at nature's power also. I have never been in a storm like it. But then, in the Southwest of Tasmania the elements are always exaggerated. Still, I wasn't expecting such a ferocious storm. Definately a great experience.

Well, that's my deep and meaningful post over. Next time I'm sure I'll be back to my frivolous old self again! Christmas is nearly upon us, so Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas folks!

And... some randomness:

2005-12-12T22:09:00.000+11:00

* did you have Mr Whippie vans growing up? Some suspect guy with fluffy hair driving around in a rundown van playing plinky plonky music and prowling through child-infested streets selling dodgy ice creams for roughly the same price as a new tv? I was processing a benefit payment (oh don't ask) today for a... Mr Whippy. I laughed my ARSE off! No-one else seemed to think it was that funny though *sigh*

* I really and truly adore my workie people. We all got SOZZLED on Friday (having knocked off work at 1 for our Christmas lunch/dinner, we started drinking at 1.30pm and when I left the last club at 3.00am, most people were STILL drinking) and gossiped and danced and generally had a BALL. I LITERALLY danced so much I destroyed my shoes! The heels are peeling like a banana, it's very cool. You know how you go out with your friends all the time and most of the time it's fine, if not all that exciting, but sometimes it's just great? It's ALWAYS great with the workies - they're excellent

* one of the cute boys at work and I were playing drink tag. He'd surprise me with a drink and I'd do the same for him. He IS quite a bit higher up than me so I probably shouldn't flirt but he's also cute and the workie girls say he's fantastic and that he NEVER buys anyone drinks so that's kind of cool :)

* I had a run in with a guy I work with, too. He's married, with kids, and while lovely and quite good looking, he's MARRIED. With KIDS. Which means that he shouldn't have pulled me behind a building and put his hands down my pants and kissed my neck and taken my phone OUT OF MY HAND so he could put it IN HIS POCKET. I really like this guy, he's good fun to work with and I think, basically, a nice guy, but when I got home I spent about half an hour on the phone crying to my mum because I'd felt so out of control. However, he was alright and quite sheepish today so hopefully he woke up ashamed on himself on Saturday

* my cat has been prescribed Prozac. Is that not MOST EXCELLENT??

*
*

"look! I am cute and small but also neurotic and on psychotropic drugs because I am scared of a sensor light! Can I have a cuddle? Look, Cec is gazing at me adoringly - SHE'D cuddle me, why won't you??"

* I bought, read and actually enjoyed... Nicole Richie's 'novel'. I actually kind of like Nicole Richie. She's had some skanks-from-hell friends in the past but she's done all right for herself, I think (besides the whole getting dumped by her fiancé thing - fiancée?). And the book? Wasn't bad. And I say 'novel' cos some of those characters are SO Hollywood starlets by another name

* my hair has been restyled and is now really curly and dyed dark purple with about 8 pinky-red streaks coming through (thank you, Monkey, I was inspired!). I LOVE it. And I'm going back to get different coloured streaks in a few weeks

* have you ever seen an edgy, punk-looking boy rap dance to "We Built This City"? If not, you've never REALLY laughed

* less than two weeks to go and I've not bought a SINGLE Chrissie present yet. SLACK AS

And now, much as I love you all (if anyone's reading - hellooooo!), I have a litre of champagne (no seriously!) in the fridge and a silly book to read. See you round like a rissole!

p.s. I saw Hilary Duff on a breakfast tv show this morning. I love Hilary Duff. She's so NICE. And prettier than I will EVER be and going out with a hot punky boy so I should hate her but she's just so NICE

p.p.s. what should I buy my daddy for Christmas? HELP!

Farewell, dear friends, as I head into the bog again . .

2005-12-11T21:29:00.000+11:00

I don't really have anything to write, I just wanted to kick my brothers off the internet as revenge for not taping the DOUBLE EPISODE of Gilmore Girls last night. I know, I am a tragic person (and yes, I too want to take the ridiculously immature Loralei Gilmore and tell her that no woman in her thirties would act like that while banging her head into a wall), but I love my trashy tv. Definate escapism. And I need some of that given that I'm heading off for two days of bog tomorrow morning. I have to confess that I'm rather scared of getting lost again. Even though I didn't die (well, like, dah!) and came through ridiculously unscathed as everyone persists in pointing out I could have. And would have, if it had been earlier in the week, when it had been below 0. I had a little bubble of panic rise up into my throat earlier this week when I was out bogging alone and couldn't see the ute (I was facing the wrong direction - I know, I shouldn't be allowed out alone!). And tomorrow I have to go about a kilometre into the bush from the road on unmarked tracks. I will of course be taking all precautions - GPS reading of the ute's position, I'm taking a CDMA phone with me, and I'm planning on flagging every fifth tree with bright blue flagging tape. But just the thought of the humiliation I'll have to face if I have to ring up the Ranger Station or Emergency and say "Hi, I'm just out lost in the buttongrass." I'd have to drop out of uni. I couldn't face the scorn and incredulation of the department (WHAT! She got lost again?!). Plus I wouldn't be able to complete the field work component of my project as I'd never be let out of Hobart again, which therefore means no project and no degree.

I'm also terrified of totalling the department ute. The department 4WD dual cab ute, actually. And it's a three hour drive on VERY windy roads up to Lake St Clair. I heaved a colossal sigh of relief when I finished my honours project without any ute mishaps. It is impossible for me to survive three more years without any incidents. So long as I don't have an actual accident - I can handle a bit of bogging. Lots of people have been bogged - the man who allocates the utes in my department has several photos on his wall of uni 4WDs bogged up to the roof. And I know that there's still a ute out from Geology pretty well buried in sand on the coast somewhere for the past 10 years.

So, wish me luck as I venture forth into the bog again. Thanks for being so supportive Bug, even if you don't really understand my desire to stick around for another three years of uni. And I don't know about out-earning everyone - I'd be happy to have a real, full-time job. Most of the vegetation people I meet in Hobart are all on short-term contracts for the Government, or are freelance contractors, hiring themselves out. Way to chancy for sensible me!

Oh, we had a trifector at work last night! Three Saturday nights in a row we've had an ambulance come and collect someone from our function! We had police, too, last night. Yay! Unfortunately it wasn't the hot paramedic. Oh well, maybe next week!

Wow, considering I had nothing to write, this is very long!

Those pictures

2005-12-09T14:08:00.000+11:00

You can just see a stream here in this right corner. But trust me, they're around pretty much every grass tussock. Pretty lonely place, isn't it? I ended up singing 'Yellow Submarine' to myself. Tragic, I know.
I lost my leg down that hole near my measuring tape.
This one is of the Lake St Clair area in general.

'Why? Oh Why?' Lament from a disillusioned student

2005-12-09T11:33:00.000+11:00

Where have I been? Very good question. It is nearly Christmas, which means that soon I will be even older. I am trying to avoid turning 23, but I don't think it will happen. Anyway, as it is nearly Christmas I have been very busy at work. Lots of Christmas dinners and school leaver's dinners. Actually, one very large company who has their Christmas dinner at my work was unable to call their Christmas dinner their Christmas dinner this year. In the spirit of being an equal-opportunity employer, as they have some muslim employees they had to call it an 'end-of-year' dinner and they weren't allowed to have any of the usual Christmas embellishments we decorate the tables with, like party hats with tinsel on them or Christmas bon-bons. They did eat turkey and pudding, though. So, for the past two Saturday nights there's been an ambulance at my work, taking guests attending our functions away. There's nothing like an inclusive-drinks package to promote the spirit of Christmas. Two weeks ago we had one woman taken away with suspected alcohol poisoning (and she wasn't a small lady, so she must have drunk a hell of a lot) - we found her passed out in the foyer near the dessert buffet. There had already been a couple of people vomiting on the carpet that night, but it culminated with one man vomiting all over the table he was seated at (good thing they'd already had dessert). Last Saturday some of the guests showed up already drunk for their Christmas party (this time it was allowed to be called by this title). We had vomiting before dessert, this time. The ambos were back again (oh, that men-in-uniform fettish popped up again - an absolutely gorgeously handsome young paramedic walked through our kitchen. All the female staff stopped polishing their glassware or cutlery and just drooled), this time for a woman who'd slipped over on dance floor and was then lying in a pool of her own vomit. Accusations were flying that it was our fault because she'd supposedly slipped on some candle wax. Let me point out though, that it was some of the highly intelligent other guests who'd decided to take the candles off their tables and wave them about the dance floor. Why, I have no idea. The band was playing dance music, not Christmas carols or kumbaya. Plus generally falling over doesn't make you vomit unless you've had copious amounts of alcohol anyway. It turned out that her partner had thrown her up in the air, then accidently dropped her on her head causing concussion and the vomiting and her lack of movement. He was so upset that he was crying. All at his own Christmas party. God, imagine going to work on Monday.

So, besides all the antics at work and trying to do Christmas things (it took me about 10 hours to hang the Christmas lights on my house, with assistance from my brothers), I've been trying to go to uni. I go all year round, no nice two and a half month vacation for this girl. And I've just started my fieldwork. Yesterday I was lamenting 'WHY? OH WHY? WHY DID YOU THINK THAT THIS WOULD BE A FANTASTIC TOPIC? YOU HATE BEING WET, DIRTY AND COLD? YOU HAVE A SEVERE PHOBIA OF LEECHES, YET HERE YOU ARE, LITERALLY CRAWLING WITH THEM? WHY DIDN'T YOU GET A NICE OFFICE JOB? YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE MORON! OH GOD!!!!! YOU HAVE TWO WHOLE SUMMERS FILLED WITH THIS!!!!! THIS IS ONLY THE VERY BEGINNING!!!!!!' Yesterday and Wednesday I was up around Lake St Clair (beautiful place though), standing in the middle of buttongrass moorland, collecting plants. It was about 8 degrees all day, with a ferocious wind and continual rain. In case you're not familiar with buttongrass moorland, it's a bitch of a vegetation type that is made up of these big tussocks of buttongrass, around which streams are formed. It's extremely boggy. While walking through it you continually lose half your leg down these boggy streams. It's also infested with leeches. They are constantly all over you. As I was totally covered in waterproof clothing, they attached to my hands. One of the people I was working with got one on her lip. One devious little bloodsucker managed to penetrate my knee-high socks, gumboots and two pairs of pants (one waterproof) to attach itself to my leg. I found it when I undressed that night. They are constantly crawling up my pants and jacket. And they move so quickly! Some even attached to my little gardening fork, causing me to set fire to the spawn of evil. They are truly the most unnecessary creatures on the face of the planet. At least spiders kill flies. What the hell are leeches good for? And DON'T tell me that leeches are useful for alternative therapies. Anyone who voluntarily allows leeches to be stuck to their body is crazy.

So, I'm not looking forward to the rest of my fieldwork. And I'm going out again for two days on monday and tuesday. And then two days a week until May. Now I know why no one in the world has ever studied what I'm studying before - it's just too hard and unpleasant!

Here's some pictures of buttongrass moorland for you. Note those wet patches - they can be so deep they come up to my knees. That one by my measuring tape certainly was. All through the first picture, those tussocks of grass are surrounded by streams. They're like grass islands.

Well, I tried to give you some pics. I have uploaded them and hit 'done' six times now. I have even consulted the blogger help, who tells me to do exactly what I've been doing. Maybe next time!

Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes! Oh YES!!

2005-11-25T13:58:00.000+11:00

Life is good <- click for news that should brighten your day

Winning a Logie

2005-11-24T14:46:00.001+11:00

So here I am at uni, playing at being a Serious Research Student. My computer in my office is finally hooked up to the school network, so I am able to access my files and, more importantly, the internet, from my very own desk. So, I‘m sitting in my office, in the presence of my two Very Serious Research Student officemates, typing away diligently for the very first time at my desk since I commenced this degree three and a half months ago. I think I’m giving a very credible performance of putting in some Serious Effort at my Serious Degree. My keyboard is going clicking clack, pause, click, click, backspace, backspace, clickity-clack clack. And for fifteen entire minutes it was clicking away at Actual Work, before deciding that it was impossible to sustain such consistent clicking and clacking at Actual Work, and if I want to continue the farce that I’m a Serious Research Student, I’d better switch to something I can clack about for a while, that being me! The fact that both my Dedicated, Hardworking, Highly Intelligent and Motivated officemates sprung me working as a waitress (oops, I keep forgetting, I’m a food and beverage attendant) when they attended a conference at my place of work this week, rather than being at uni, working diligently and tirelessly in the pursuit of environmental enlightenment, has prompted my need to appear as Serious and Dedicated as they themselves are. And if I can make them believe that, then I deserve the Golden Logie. Hell, I deserve an Oscar. Weeellll, to be honest, they already have known from the first day I set put in this office that I did not belong in their hallowed room of Effort and Learning, and have treated me accordingly. My spasmodic presence at uni has fuelled their first impression, so even if I can pull off the Serious Research Student act for this one afternoon, I don’t think It’ll put much of a dent in their impression of me as an imposter, masquerading as a PhD student. And as I’m planning on leaving at 3.15 today (my quest for a smaller bum is much more important than my uni degree necessitating gym attendance this afternoon), not staying till the minimum expected time of 5 pm, I don’t think I’ll be winning any acting awards in my depiction of a Serious Research Student.

Cow Pat-pitations

2005-11-20T03:23:00.000+11:00

Tonight was the first night I've been out with Boo for AGES. I mean, we've met up for drinks and had some after midnighters, but this is this first night we've been OUT for months. She works in hospitality and almost always works Saturday or Sunday or both, and on her off days she's usually with Bumpkin but he was working and she had an early shift Saturday and a late shift Sunday, so she could afford a late girly night

Anyway, I was out with our friend, DJ MC, most of today and he and I met up with Boo about 4 when she finished work. We went for a bit of a drive and then went to one of our pubs for "a drink or two". Of course, it turned into about 7 (I was on lemon, lime and bitters. I WISH I had my full licence!) and then DJ realised he'd been invited to his friend Patrick's house cooling (you have a house warming when you move in and a house cooling when you move out, duh!)

So I dropped DJ at Patrick's house and he insisted that Boo and I should come in, even though it was ALL Pat's rellies (and how scary can THAT be??), and let's just say I didn't really argue

Let's clarify for a second here: DJ and Pat have been REALLY tight for about 6 years but for various reasons (mostly geographic), I've never actually met him. Boo snogged him once at a Grade 11 party (as you do in Grade 11) and I knew WHO he was and had seen him around, but I'd never actually talked to him. But a few days ago I met up with the two boys and we went for a drink, and then Boo met us and we had a really excellent night, talking about music and sharing a cheese platter and drinking wine and cocktails (I know, it sounds all boring and middle-aged to me as I'm writing this but it was GREAT fun) and I ended up really liking Patrick who, it turns out, is LOVELY and CUTE and a little bit self-deprecating (which I love) and smart and listened when I talked and was smiley and just... nice. And not in that annoying NICE way, just nice

So yeah. Crush. Kinda big crush (before you tut tut and shake your head like "here we go again", I'm not a serial crusher. I FANCY lots of boys, but I don't CRUSH on the same amount of boys. Thinking a guy is downright bonkable is different from thinking he'd fit in well at dinner with my family - who are a force to be reckoned with, just so you know - and there aren't very many guys who would. I wrote off my friend Alex's brother as utterly unattainable and no-point-trying-he's-totally-out-of-my-league a while back and William, my friend, has progressed to just a so-glad-I-know-him friend, so I have been crushless for a bit). In fact, Patrick's the kind of crush where I've been daydreaming and staring out the window thinking about him and wishing I was thinner and prettier and more his type. Grr

Anyway. We went in and Pat was fine, happy to see us and happy to have us there (and introduced Boo and I to his Nanna as his friends, which was lovely considering we didn't meet him all that long ago) and we were hanging out quite happily till Boo and I discovered that there was a girl asleep in his room. Now, I don't know the story of why she was there, exactly. I'm not sure what exactly, if anything, she and Pat had done. But she was there. And I was unthrilled about it. Especially when she woke up and came out and was sitting there while we were talking. So I convinced Boo to leave and we left DJ at Pat's house (DJ's off to Indonesia for a month tomorrow - BRAVE LAD! - so he and Pat had a bit of a farewell) and we arranged to meet them later

She and I went to T42, our favourite pub (well, it's a bar, really) and chilled there for a couple of hours, while Boo fizzed up in raptures about the doorman, who is a long standing adore-from-afar of hers (although not tonight! She talked OODLES to him tonight, I was SO proud!) and about Rob, the only guy she's ever been serious about (and who she FULL ON GROPED tonight - it was a good night for my Boo! Go you good thing!!) and we met up with one of her workmates (who EVERYone seems to be trying to hook me up with. STOP PIMPING ME OUT, DUDES! I'm not the easy - ha! - option for guys who want a random shag!) then headed over to Irish, where DJ and Pat and their mates were

DJ was off talking to his random friends (and OH they're random!) while she and I talked to Pat and her workmate and some other sifters. Oh, and did I mention the asleep-in-his-room girl was there? Yeah, she was there. And I went over to the corner for a smoke (I know! It's disgusting and unhealthy and so not the done thing but I was feeling stressed out and fat and blah so fuck it, I wanted one) and was talking to Boo's workmate (who is quite personable, but NO, I will not be sleeping with him like everyone wants me to) when I looked over and thought I saw Patrick snogging the random bedroom chick. I went over and (subtley, don't worry) asked Boo if that's what'd gone on and she said yeah, she'd tried to break it up but sorry, kiss kiss

After that, I wasn't really in a going out mood, so I made sure she was ok and happy to stay out with them and drove to the bottle shop (mango, passionfruit and ginseng, not sick of this wine yet!) and came home to get a cuddle from my cat, since HE loves me

I just... I get really sick of it. I'm fairly violently independent. I HATE people laying claim to me and I INSIST on my life being my own and not being dictated by other people but sometimes, I just want someone to kiss and watch daggy movies with on the couch. Couples who live in each other's pockets, and I know a few, freak me out in a big time hardcore way but I'd like to find someone who gives me a fizzy feeling in my tummy AND is just gnarly to hang out with but I've been single for a hundred thousand years, give or take a year or two. It's not like I don't know who I am if I don't have a boyfriend, but it would be SO NICE to meet a guy who both liked me and DIDN'T think I'd be a random fun shag, you know? Oh come on, you know what I mean

What does everyone else have? Why is it harder for me? And honestly, it is. A girl I went to school with, who is not pretty (not that it should matter but, come on, you know it does) and is very overweight and is really quite stupid and not even a cool chick to make up for it, she has boyfriends. A nasty bogan in the bus mall has a boyfriend (although spray on black jeans don't really do it for me). Why is it that much harder for me? Why am I the one night stand girl? Why do the guys I fall for always have a type that is the OPPOSITE of me? Don't get me wrong, I almost always end up good FRIENDS with the guy, but it's not the same by a long shot, is it?

I have some really good friends, some good, some great and some out-of-this-world-fantastic, but why don't I have someone to cuddle up with? I'm not even particularly LOOKING for that person! But why, in the long run, has that person not appeared? Or even someone willing to give it a shot?

You know?

Update

To clarify, Boo was talking about how the doorman-from-afar gave her "palpitations", I heard it as "cow pats" (and yes, I was sober) and the boys at the table next to us made it "cow pat-pitations". I suspect you had to be there but OH it was funny

A hen's night and a wedding

2005-11-15T14:55:00.000+11:00

So, seeing as I'm at uni and doing no work, I may as well use my time productively and tell you all about My First Ever Hen's Night and My First Ever Wedding. Well, not my own first hen's night and wedding (given that I'm a confirmed 'spinster of this parish'), but the very first ones I've ever been too. As a guest, that is. I've been to at least 40 wedding receptions as a waitress!

The saturday before last was the hen's night. I must admit that I was dreading it somewhat. The 'hen' is an old schoolfriend of mine. I wasn't even sure that I'd be invited to the wedding. I only see her a few times a year, and then always at group social functions like Australia Day BBQs or housewarming parties and things like that. We always get on well enough though, and have had great fun in the past plotting birthday jokes to play on a mutual friend. Some of the people I was expecting to go to the hen's night aren't really friends of mine - I know them from school and say 'hi' to them if I bump into them on the street - I think they're a bit boring and we have nothing in common. Nice enough though. And then I was expecting to see my travelling companion from last year. I have never shared with you all the details of my trip away, but to put it shortly, my companion cried every day, often twice a day, for her home, parents and most notably boyfriend. She put me down continuously (apparantly it's a crime to shave your legs, pluck your eyebrows and trust me, don't reach for the mascara) and was just so negative all the time. Plus she hates shopping (yes, I'm pretty sure she's female. Well, at least 90% sure), museums (and we were in London and Europe) and isn't that keen on too much history (yes, we were running out of activities). Our trip away culminated in her coming home two weeks early (thank F***) but this left me alone in Edinburgh for my birthday (a bit lonely, I don't mind admitting).

I've only seen her a few times this year, again at group social events, and have been scandalised to hear her tell people what a fantastic time she had overseas. I've wanted to rip out her lying little throat, actually. Plus then she told BLATANT LIES to Bug about something I'd supposedly said about Bug to her (not nice things, either), and I haven't seen her since then.

So, wasn't really looking forward to the hen's night. It ended up being okay, though. Just drank lots of tequila and was able to participate in the activities few activities there were with enthusiasm (like pin the cucumber on the 'hunk'. And yes, it was an actual blow-up cucumber. I'm not being polite). It was a bit of a fizzer, though. Only about 10 of her friends showed up (and they'd booked a function room set for 25 people), and a few rellies including her mother, future mother-in-law and futher grandmother-in-law. Considering she'd invited 130 people to the wedding, a few more could have turned out for the hen's night. The wildest the night got was the hen wearing a singlet top with lifesavers lightly stiched on for men to eat off when we went out afterwards. I had to pick my jaw back up from the ground though when travelling companion introduced me to her workmates (whom we saw out) as her 'best mate'. I've only seen her about 5 times this year! And she alluded to when I'd be her bridesmaid and be throwing her a hen's night (oh, you just WAIT!).

And then the wedding. I had been alternating between excitement at my very first wedding, and fear at what was to come (namely seeing the bloke who used to be my best male friend this time last year and now I dread seeing, avoided all week - he lives in another state and was down for the wedding - and when we now speak it's so awkward because he 'came onto me' and I freaked out and pretty much threw him out of my house with some very bad lies about being busy, oh, and slow dances where I have to go sit out like a loser because I have no partner, and weddings are very partner-orientated events, usually).

The ceremony was nice and short and took place in the botanical gardens. The only drawback was they had it at the gazebo which is in the gardens near a pretty main road, so a couple of times you couldn't hear what was going on because of loud trucks. I found it to be a really surreal experience. Here's someone I've know for the past 10 years, seen grow up, and is my friend, now dedicating her life to someone. It just seems so grown-up! I'm that old now my contemporaries are getting married!! Mind you, several of them already have children, and have bought houses and been with their partners for literally years and years, but still, marriage! It was like, there's a bride over there and she's my friend!

The bride looked excellent, though. I know, I know, all brides are supposed to look radiant and beautiful, but hey, if you haven't got it, you haven't got it. You may look good for you, but not good by that awful thing, society's general view on what is attractive. But this bride looked really good. [All uninterested male readers tune out for a dress description now] She's borrowed a dress, and it was made of really heavy white satin and the bodice was embroidered with red flowers. It was strapless, and kind of flowed down into a full skirt from midway down her ribcage, hiding a curvaceous stomach and strong thighs. Perfect for her figure. And she had the sweetest blonde ringlets too.

So, I actually enjoyed myself immensly at the reception. Another old friend of mine who's single (and was back from another state for the wedding) and I were put on a 'couples table'. There were two tables full of single people, and then us on a couples table. We just called ourselves the lesbian couple in order to fit in with our table (all the couples were old friends too though). For the wedding waltz, that starts off with the bride and groom, then the bridesmaid and groomsman, then all other couples, my female friend and I took to the floor (well, we must have been a couple to get on that table), then realised that we were the only girls dancing together and ran off to get some males. I got another old friend out on the floor, and my 'girlfriend' took my ex-best-male-friend as her partner. He threw me 'looks' over her shoulder. I may have given my old friend the wrong impression, though. Honestly, you have to be so careful! I just wanted a bloke to dance with and this poor fellow always sits out slow songs so I dragged him up (willingly!) for a dance. Since Saturday night though he's sent me a text message and an email (we have never emailed and texted before), inviting me to two different social outings.

It was just like a massive reunion, and I danced pretty much every single song except for one slow one at the end. I had heaps of fun, and it was great! Nothing to be scared of! Except for my ex-best-male-friend only dancing about two songs and spending the rest of his time staring broodingly and, well, just darkly at me dancing while he had another swig from his beer.

I think I may even post some photos of me and the bride. Or maybe not. If I did that, any one of those 'old friends' who stumbled over this blog would know who I am, even if I blanked out my face! Yes, I know, I'm a scaredy cat! But so much personal stuff is here that I definately want to be anonymous!

A little reminiscing

2005-11-15T14:31:00.000+11:00

Do you ever think about what you were doing this time last year? I've been doing it every single day since the 10th November, when I suddenly realised 'Shit! This time last year I was in Japan!' Since then, I've been thinking about what I was doing every day this time last year. On this day last year I was in London. Hello to all you Londoners! London is very, very fun and interesting (to put it extremely mildly). I think that today one year ago I was in Hampton Court, deliriously happy and in I think a state of shock that I was walking in the very corridor where Katherine Howard ran down to beg King Henry VIII for her life, and treading in the very hall where my all time favourite royal, Queen Elizabeth I, used to dance. Even though I was seriously considering pushing my travelling companion off a battlement or onto some traintracks, I still had some amazingly happy moments in London. You know, the moments when you are filled with such absolute rapture and wonder and joy that it's beyond description.

(Absolutely massive sigh)

And now I'm here in a dreary little computer lab at uni doing no work yet with oodles of work to do, with no hope of going overseas again for at least three more years, because I only get 2 weeks off a year and I'm not paying $2000 to get to Europe only to spend 2 weeks there.

(Even more humungous sigh)

At least it's sunny. And we're having spaghetti bolognaise for dinner. Okay, so it's not on the same level as walking over Tower Bridge, but at least it's something!

"You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you"

2005-11-14T14:05:00.000+11:00

I don't know what's going on! What is WRONG with me this last week? I've cut myself 974,211 times (give or take a couple), fallen some wet stairs on Tuesday and on Friday my stiletto slipped off the edge of one of the steps on the work fire escape and I fell. At this point in time I would like to point out that my work fire escape consists of at least 20 concrete stairs. How am I not dead??

On top of that, I've started half panicking about things that had never occurred to me before. I've never been someone who'd stay away from things like amusement park rides because there's an infinitesimal chance that something MIGHT break. I'm more from the camp that says you can't NOT do something because something MIGHT happen - chances are they won't so why limit yourself?

But lately, I have this permanent sense of impending doom about EVERYthing. As in, I'll be driving down from the 10th floor of the car park and I'll get sudden images of the structure collapsing and crushing me and Teddy (my car) into nothing. Or I'll be driving behind an enormous truck with a bit of machinery on the back and I'll be SURE that it's about to slam on its brakes so that I'll go careening into the back of it and be decapitated. I was at the beach a week ago and started to hyperventilate about a shark sneaking up behind me (and despite the fact that I live in Australia, with all the scary motherfucker sharks everywhere, that's never been a fear of mine). Even at home, it's there - I was in the bathroom the other day and thought, out of nowhere, "what if the house is on fire??"

It's not as though I've stopped doing anything because of these feelings, but I'm a bit baffled by the fact that they're there. My madré thinks it's because I religiously watch the world news (which is pretty depressing and gory just now) and have become overly sensitive to the nastiness of being alive

Whatever the reason, it's annoying!!

Hot cops!

2005-11-08T21:43:00.000+11:00

Saw two VERY hot young policemen on the way home today. Just thought you all should know. Thank YOU Tasmanian Police Service. You really do serve the community in so many ways. There's just something about men in uniform . . . especially ones who are buff, blond and ruggedly handsome!

I think I may be subconsciously suicidal

2005-11-08T13:32:00.000+11:00

Within the last 31 hours, I have given myself a papercut RIGHT on my fingertip (strategically placed to hurt EVERY SINGLE TIME I type something), accidentally sliced my thumb with a pair of scissors, scratched my neck nastily with a jagged fingernail, fallen down the (tile and concrete - ouch) stairs at work and cut down to the fat of my finger with a serrated knife (necessitating a huge wad of Band-Aids and a little splint)

Doing well, I think

Cecilia: Fraudulent Serious Research Student

2005-11-08T13:01:00.000+11:00

I have two things I want to rant about today, but only the time to rant about one. I shall have to save the other for tomorrow. After a lot of soul-searching, I have decided to rave on about the thing that is at the front of my mind today: My Three Month Review.

Today my lovely supervisor and I have my Three Month Review with the head of postgraduate research in my department to discuss my progress to date in beginning the three year marathon that is a PhD, and to go through my Preliminary Research Plan, an eight page document that is a basic rundown on background information to my project, what I’m planning on doing, my timetable (have you ever tried to plan the next three years of your life month by month?), my proposed project budget (oh, it's only going to cost at least $5,000), occupational health and safety issues for my project (given my track record, this will be of paramount importance I should think [tell you another time folks]), and what skills I expect to gain. I’m severely worried that in this meeting it will be revealed:

1) What an absolute fraud I am as a Serious Research Student. Yes, this definitely does need capital letters. Everyone here is a Serious Research Student with the distinct exception (I think) of me. I am Frivolous. I wear dangly earrings on a daily basis and am making a point of never wearing any garment made of polarfleece. I am devoted to Grey’s Anatomy, The OC, and British detective shows (especially 55 degrees North. That night detective’s rear end is in a class all of its own).

2) I spend far too much time at my waitressing job. According to the rules of my scholarship, I’m only allowed to do eight hours of paid employment in the hours of 9 to 5 during the working week (because I’m supposed to be at uni during this time). I have to do three shifts a week there in order to keep my job, and while these usually happen on a Friday and Saturday night, one usually occurs during the week. For example, yesterday I worked all day from 6.30 am until 7.30 pm. For obvious reasons this did not leave me time to go to uni. Well, if I was a Serious Research Student I would have gone to uni and worked through the night after work. But as I am not, I went home and watched Supernanny and Grey’s Anatomy.

3) That I simply don’t do enough work. I feel tremendously guilty because my lovely supervisor keeps praising me and saying how very organised I am to me and to other people. I know that that isn’t the case. Hell, I only do about three hours of decent work a day on my project. My office mate who is a Very Extremely Ultra Serious Research Student has taken to making little comments (in the two sentences of conversation we exchange each day – she’s too busy working to chat plus I don’t think we have much in common [oh, wicked thought just entered my head prompting me to imagine her facial expression if I asked her who she thought was hotter on The OC – Seth, Ryan, Sandy or Ryan’s bad brother) such as ‘You haven’t been in much recently,’ and, when I show up at lunch time to begin my working day ‘So . . . what have you been doing this morning?’

So, have some nerves about this very fast approaching meeting – oh gosh, its only half an hour away! Have this nasty visual picture running through my head of the postgrad research coordinator standing up, pointing at her door and shouting ‘OUT! Out of my office! Out of these hallowed halls of learning! You are a fraud and a trickster! How on earth you ever managed to get a scholarship is something beyond my extreme and highly developed intellect! I'm revoking your scholarship and you're going to have to pay back what you've already been given! You have to waitress for the Rest Of Your Life!’ Meanwhile, my lovely supervisor looks on with disgust and disappointment, shaking her head and repeating ‘I thought she was so motivated, so dedicated. How could I have been so wrong?!!!’ Oh gosh! Half an hour until the truth is revealed. Wish me luck folks!

What pleasant weather

2005-11-02T14:48:00.000+11:00

I'm going to come across all polite conversation with strangers and distant relatives and have a little chat about the weather today.

The most pleasant weather has been happening down here in my part of the world. 'Pleasant' is a much underrated word, I think. This weather is very pleasant, in that it's nice and enjoyable and makes you feel all happy and summery and like skipping down the street singing Beach Boys songs. This kind of weather is one notch up from the 15 - 16 degrees that was the norm in October, yet not the nasty sun crashing down like it wants to kill you manner. I haven't seen the weather report for the past week, but I would say (in my oh-so-weather-wise manner) that it's been about 22 - 25 degrees each day. Hot enough to get a tan if you lie directly in the sun for about half an hour, yet not so hot that you get burnt the moment you poke your newly-exposed trouserless legs in their winter coating of white in the direction of a sunbeam. Today it was 28 degrees by 10am, which usually feels a bit hot for comfort for me, yet it was a little cloudy taking the edge off the sun's heat. At 1.45 pm I decided to go off in search of some lunch, and strolled off down the corridor of my uni building, stopping first to visit the ladies. (Not the nice office ladies, or the reading room lady, I'm trying to refer in polite terms to the loo so as not to offend any American readers, who I have been informed shudder in horror at any direct mention of the toilet and consider it the height of rudeness to call the loo the loo). While washing my hands and happily contemplating my wander across campus to the ref (short for reflectory, what we call the cafeteria for some unknown reason) in the joy-filling sun, I realised that the view from the window was dark, and that noise I could hear wasn't a heavy truck rolling past outside, it was a torrential downpour. This downpour lasted for only 45 minutes, and while it did make my feet all squelchy in their summer footwear of slides, luckily I had my umbrella in my bag and was able to acquire my much anticipated vegetarian quiche from the ref. I thoroughly enjoyed my quiche, main ingredient eggs. Yum, chicken ovulation! Given that I have no problem eating the actual bodies of chickens, I don't think I can object to eating their periods (check out Léonie's page if you are completely befuddled by this talk of chicken periods and ovulation and don't see how I can jump from talk of pleasant weather to quiche to ovulation).

Anyway, the downpour is over and at least two types of birds are making happy little chirpy noises and celebrating this. I have returned to the computer lab and am attempting and failing dismally to do some work that I need to have done by tomorrow. All this pleasant weather is distracting. It makes me want to lie outside with the very good book I have just started. Bring back the frost, I say! Who cares about the uplift in mood the sun creates? In the interests of a productive working environment, it needs to be about 10 degrees and overcast. Or maybe I'm just using nice weather as an excuse to do no work, rather than just accepting that I generally do no work regardless of the weather. No, it's definately the weather. Shut up, stupid happy birds! Oh good, it's started to rain again. Maybe now that I have no excuse to want to be outside enjoying myself and will do some work. Yes, I know, not likely. But I can only hope!

Perfectly Reasonable Young Women

2005-10-25T13:38:00.000+11:00

On Sunday Bug and I went shopping. We went up to Boo's place of work to collect her when she finished at 3pm, so she too could join in the shopping activities. Boo discovered some items of interest on the backseat of my car. These were two fluffy halos, one in vivid pink and one in vivid purple (mounted on headbands for easy wearing), and a set of devils horns. Boo promptly put on one of the halos, and handed the other one to Bug to put on. I donned my oh-to-familiar pair of horns (I'd had to wear them all night earlier that week while working at a dinner where the theme was 'angels and devils'), and so we drove through our beautiful city of Hobart and over the bridge to a shopping centre on the eastern shore all so attired.

What was odd was not the fact that we were wearing bright halos and horns while driving about, it was the fact that none of us really thought it was particularly odd. There was none of the accompanying laughing and joking that you would expect to accompany the donning of such headdresses. We just all put them on and carried on talking about perfectly normal stuff, like an elaborate plot to get Bug closer to her (most current!) bartender crush. We just continued to behave like what we are, Perfectly Reasonable Young Women, who were just wearing either a very bright pink halo, a bright purple one, or some horns.

Notes from my travels

2005-10-22T02:17:00.000+11:00

Since my brain, having been SO long deprived of a proper holiday (if you don't count those 3 months where I was, you know, UNEMPLOYED) has atrophied, I'm going with bullets rather than coherent sentences:
*
* I love my job. I really, really love my job. I was called into a meeting 2 days ago for a 'performance appraisal' which ended up being (as Boo said) a 'performance PRAISE-al', where for 45 minutes my boss and 2IC told my how great they think I am. It was fabulous
*
* mango, passionfruit and ginseng wine is LOVELY. As is Absolut Vanilia (especially with apple juice)
*
* I've fallen for a friend of mine (don't get me wrong, I still have a mad thing for my friend Alex's brother, but he's moving to Queensland in 3 months and I'm not so that puts a dampner on the whole chatting up thing). My friend, William, is my OLD type (that is, blond haired, blue eyed, short and cuddly - SO the opposite of my current tall, dark and punky type) and he's also both a complete man-whore and currently has a girlfriend. He also is into the "Barbie" types. And I am so not a Barbie. I really fancy Alex's brother, he's both gorgeous AND seems to be a really nice guy, but I just seem to be head over for Will. I'm trying to suppress it though since, for one, he's a WRONG kind of guy and two, he's a friend and that's just BAD
*
* I've gotten back into the oldies: Etta James, Frank Sinatra, Michael Bublé (I know he's not old, but you know what I mean), The Police, Dave Brubeck, all that sort of stuff. It's so great to have on in the background while I'm lounging on the couch with a good book. Although I've never really NOT listened to The Police, so that's kind of irrelevant
*
* it looks like my sister might be on the outs with her corruptive boyfriend (who I actually like, but who I indirectly hold responsible for she and I falling out). Dang
*
* why in the name of all that is windswept and tropical would ANYone live in Florida when it is CONSTANTY flattened by hurricanes??? Dude, I know it's warm, but please, MOVE TO CALIFORNIA! Earthquakes aren't going to DROWN you and flood your HOUSE!!
*
* tzatziki is fabulous AND low fat. The perfect dip with rice crackers or wafers. Also? Jalapeno and cheese bagels with cream cheese are TO. DIE. FOR
*
* finding a gnarly rental property that also allows pets is HARD
*
I think, on that OH so poignant note, that I should got to bed. I'm supposed to be going shopping mid-morning but sorry Cec! Ain't happenin'!
*
Nighty-night, my lovelies xo

Yet more on human scum

2005-10-19T18:00:00.000+11:00

In my extremely lengthy last post (that came to a little over 3000 words, longer than most of the essays and scientific reports I had to produce as an undergrad at uni) I forgot to mention something else confirming what an absolute rotten-to-the-core human being John is. I get very excited about my birthday. Well, I’m dreading my birthday this year because 23 isn’t exactly a good age to be turning. It’s just getting on the wrong side of youth, especially when people your own age all around you are having children (please no!), buying houses (now who has that kind of money? Don’t they want to travel before they get a mortgage?) and getting engaged or even, heaven forbid, married (a boyfriend would be nice, though)! But in the past, it’s just so nice, to have a day entirely about you, even if you still have to go to work. I usually start a countdown to Christmas/my birthday at about 140 days. I used to work out how many more days to go then before each lecture began head up my notepaper with a nice big header like ‘138 days until Christmas’. I wasn’t even just limited to my own notepaper, either. My friends who shared my lectures could look back through their own Botany notes while studying for exams and see my Christmas/birthday countdown, often illustrated with tinsel and Christmas trees (depending on the boringness of the lecture). This is all getting a bit off-track though, although it serves to illustrate my birthday obsession.

Two years ago, I was excitedly telling people at work that it was only 10 more sleeps until my birthday (and therefore 16 more sleeps until Christmas). While waiting in the queue for service at the bar, I was chatting to John (he was still just a barman back then), saying ‘only 10 more sleeps until the best day of the year – the 19th of December!’ John replied with ‘I hate the 19th of December – it’s the worst day of the year!’ I thought he was just stirring me (surely he must already know that that date is my birthday, given that I’ve been harping on about it for at least three months already), and said in a mock-hurt tone, ‘why? Because I was born then?’ ‘Oh, is that your birthday, I didn’t know,’ he tells me. ‘I hate that day because that was the date my brother died.’

Well, there’s not a lot you can say to such a statement, except the standard ‘I’m sorry.’ I have been very careful since then not to mention my birthday to him since then. I’ve thought about it from time to time over the past couple of years. It’s sad that my happy day is such a sad one for him. EXCEPT IT ISN’T, I RECENTLY FOUND OUT! There was a bit of annoyance at work that John was having two weekends off in a row, weekends being our busiest times and you have to fight hard to get them off, and book in for weeks ahead, sometimes. John was having one Saturday night off to celebrate his birthday, then the next weekend he was having Friday night off, it actually being his birthday and he wasn’t working on his birthday, and then Saturday night as well, to do a little more celebrating. The first Saturday night of his celebrations I asked another staff member why John was celebrating his birthday a week before his birthday. She told me ‘oh, that’s because his brother died one day before his own birthday so he likes to celebrate his own a week earlier so it’s not clouded by thoughts of his brother’s death.’
‘His brother died on the 19th of December,’ I said.
‘No, he told me and quite a few other people that he died the day before his birthday.’ She responded. And so he had, I checked. But he definitely told me that his brother died on my own birthday, it’s something that I’ve always remembered as being simply awful, and I’ve thought about it on my actual birthday especially ever since.
So, his lies are just getting deeper and deeper. Although, I don’t know what is to be gained by telling me two years ago that his brother died on my own birthday. And did he even die the day before John’s birthday? But either way, he’s lied about his own brother’s death for no reason that I can see, and I find that most distasteful.

The Most Despicable Piece of Human Filth

2005-10-17T18:14:00.000+11:00

Warning: to anyone who is considering reading this, be aware that this is one long posting, and the author recommends taking any planned bathroom breaks you have been postponing, fetching any sustenance you may be requiring in the near future, and making sure you have a nice comfortable chair.

SO, I was in the recent past (as in Saturday night and the early hours of Sunday morning) absolutely incensed with rage in a manner which I haven’t been for a very long time. I was so angry I lost the ability to form coherent sentences and was only able to spurt out derogatory swear words spasmodically. The reason for my rage was (and still is, although I am much calmer now and am only simmering with a suppressed desire to twist off his testicles and force feed them to him) a most despicable human being going by the name of John*.

Now, it is necessary to give you a bit of background information about John. John is 24, and a crew leader at my work. Admittedly, he’s a very junior one, and he’s still only a casual like the rest of us little worker ants. He only rose to the rank of crew leader from being a barman because my previous two bosses (one of whom left for being a whistleblower, taking the general manager and another manager with him) loved him and basically made a job for him. So he now runs functions, despite the fact that he’d never worked on what we call ‘the floor’ in his life. He’d never actually waited on people and didn’t know what we, the waiting staff, actually do. He relies so heavily on the more experienced staff members that it makes us (the ones he exploits) very, very angry. It’s difficult to take orders off someone who doesn’t actually know what he’s doing. He also does no work himself now, something he’s quite open about. Other crewleaders will give direction from the kitchen, where they’re sorting and polishing the endless cutlery that arises from a dinner. He doesn’t. He just wanders about, stuffing about with his favourite little waitresses, or busies himself with meaningless paper shuffling. He learnt very, very well from our two previous bosses who made the purposeful walk while doing nothing into an art form. He doesn’t even know how to sort the cutlery (something again he is quite open about and also seems to take some sort of perverse pride in). I find it near impossible to take orders off him. He just makes me so angry! He relies on me, or a few other staff members, to give the other less experienced staff direction, and see to it that the cutlery and glasses and things are kept up to date, while he wastes time. And yet, at any time, he can just come in and send the staff you’ve allocated tasks to off to do other things because he is still the boss.

John began dating Frieda* last year. Frieda is the sweetest, kindest and most gentle girl I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. She was raised by her grandparents, and still lives with them. I know she doesn’t have a dad, but I’ve never inquired as to why, or what happened to her mum. The best way to describe her is as a ‘real little lady’. She truly is. She went to the most exclusive girl’s school in this city (not that that really counts for much – another friend of mine went to this school and used to keep a long fingernail for doing coke with). She’s thin (size 6) with wispy blonde hair, very rarely swears and is so graceful! She always thinks of others. I can’t think of any more virtues, but she’s definitely got them. Such a paragon of virtue may get on your nerves, I can hear you thinking. But she’s just so good you have to love her, and want to protect her from all the nasty things out there.

So, John and Frieda are dating. Frieda is madly in love with John, her first boyfriend for a couple of years (she’s a little shy). John also enjoys smoking pot every opportunity he gets, and is frustrated with Frieda not wanting to sit in his living room with him and his stoner flatmates as he partakes in this activity. He also wants more sex more often, and I heard him on a few occasions pressing her to go back to his house after work when she didn’t want to. He’s too lazy to get his license, and she chauffers him about, driving from the other side of the river where she lives over to collect him and take him about of a weekend. He knows how to drive, and has his own car (rustbucket that it is), yet rejects her offer of letting him drive to get some more experience behind the wheel.

John and Frieda have been together, gosh, it has to be at least a year, when John dumps her. He says he doesn’t love her and it isn’t fair to keep on dating her if he doesn’t. Well, fair enough, I can hear you say. Yep, I agreed. Admittedly, he’s a bloody moron for letting such an amazing girl go, but if he doesn’t feel as deeply for her as she does for him, it’s probably kinder to break up sooner rather than later. So he breaks up with her, yet neglects to tell her why (he told another staff member this reason some time later). And then he won’t speak to her at all at work. Which is very difficult if you work in the same department as someone. Frieda cries pretty much constantly when she’s at home, and gives up eating because she’s so sad. Not a good idea if you’re already a size six (although I could do with being that lovelorn myself). She never smiles or laughs anymore. All the banquets girls who are particular friends with Frieda hate John accordingly, myself included. Yet you can’t say anything bad about him to Frieda (like you can do so much better, and do you really want a druggy for a boyfriend?), who still loves him. This goes on for a couple of months, until Frieda heads off with a friend for a great trip away for a couple of months to Broome (Western Australia), comes back blonder, browner and much happier. She’s also gained a little weight, and is eating normally again. The only thing wrong is that John still won’t speak to her, and that she wrote him a letter basically putting her heart on the line and I think asking why he had to break up with her and why he wouldn’t talk to her and posted it to him the day she left for Broome. He hadn’t responded at all to her letter.

Enter onto the scene an influx of new staff, including one Kelly*. Kelly is 24, short, pretty in a lot of make-up and perfect lipstick way, and seems too nice to be true. She also has broken up with her husband, and has two sons. We all like her enough to work with her, if you know what I mean. Like, we’re not inviting her to join our gang of girls who are friends socially as well as at work, but we don’t mind her. Kelly has the hots for John. John has a birthday, and invites everyone at work to head over to his favourite watering hole (and gosh it is a hole of a place) on a Saturday night a week before his birthday. Kelly and some other girls go, including Sheila. Later that night when the girls have left John at his pub and gone on elsewhere John sends Sheila a message, saying Kelly is gorgeous and is she attached? Sheila responds that no, she’s not attached. She does tell Kelly about Frieda and John’s previous relationship, though, and warns her not to say anything to Frieda because it would just upset her. Four days later, John, Kelly, Frieda, myself and a couple of other staff are working a dinner. John goes home early (being a slack shithead), and Kelly runs to Frieda and says “John has asked me to go out with him on Saturday night! Do you mind? Why did you two break up? Do you still have feelings for him?” and other really thoughtful stuff like that. Why she did this when she’d been warned about how upset Frieda had been over her break-up with John I can only speculate about (like she’s a troublemaking little drama queen). Frieda is devastated all over again, despite pretending to Kelly that of course she didn’t mind if they dated. Okay, so she knows that John is going to date again, but why did he have to choose someone she has to work with? She is not just upset to the point of shaking, but she’s damn angry. I call him all the names I can think of, and we send messages into the night once we get home about what a lowdown insensitive cad of a bounder he is. Frieda doesn’t want to work in banquets anymore, and says she’ll have to leave, that she can’t stay if Kelly and John are going to date.

On Friday, I go into work to work a massive lunch. I speak to Louise, my crewleader (although more senior than John) who does the roster about not rostering John and Frieda on the same shifts for a while, and why. Louise is absolutely furious with John, because as well as adoring Frieda for the sweetheart that she is, she’s also her cousin somehow (yep, this is a damn small place). Next thing Maureen who’s friends with Louise, adores Frieda like the rest of us, and one tough lady gets John on his own, saying that he’s insensitive and why did he have to ask Kelly out but not quite in those terms, if you get my meaning. I’d gone back to uni by this stage, but John denies ever asking Kelly out, and Louise apologises. Later that night I went back to work to work a dinner. I had the pleasure of working with Kelly, who spent the whole night angsting over whether or not to go out with John, to me and another staff member, and to the barman. My advice was ‘if you want to go out with him than just do it.’ I was so sick of her going on about it. Then she starts whining about ‘but if I go out with him Frieda will hate me and everyone else will hate me in banquets’. I just said ‘Frieda doesn’t hate you, and the rest of us won’t think any less of you for it. It just reinforces what we all think about John.’ So she begins to cry, about all of us potentially hating her. For God’s sake, she’s only been there a month and already she’s crying at work.

So, I don’t know whether they went out on that Saturday night, but things I heard on Saturday night let me think that they did. But here’s the thing – who was lying? One of them obviously was. John denies ever asking her out, and four hours later Kelly is debating the pros and cons of going on a date with him tomorrow. Joan, another senior crew leader of mine, put another spin on it. As a supervisor, John should not really be asking out members of staff. After the performance Kelly gave, I tended to think that she had been lying about John asking her out. She was just so damn melodramatic. And she’s so sickly sweet it’s just not right.

So, on Saturday night at about 11.30pm me and a few of my particular girlfriends were having a 15 minute break down in the canteen. Belinda (you may remember her as the girl whose birthday dinner I attended a few weeks ago) shares a particular interesting piece of news that Kelly had told her. Kelly had been dating John, they’d slept together three times. She dumped him because he was too boring and all he ever wanted to do was lay about his house. Kelly is now back with her husband, incidentally. So I guess that answers the question of who was lying, something that we’d all been wondering for a while. It was John.

Being a devoted follower of gossip myself, I pass this news onto my two crewleaders Joan and Louise as we do the cutlery. They’re just as disgusted with John as I am. Not that I had much respect for him to begin with, but I now have no respect for him at all. Belinda comes back over to me, and says ‘oh, I forgot to tell you this earlier. You are just going to love this one.’ John had told Kelly the girls in banquets that he thought liked him. He said that ‘Ruth definitely liked him, and he thought that Cecilia did too. It was the way that Cecilia was a little bit mean to him that made him think that.’ I was gobsmacked. Absolutely gumswizzled. Has this never occurred to him: THE REASON I’M A LITTLE BIT MEAN TO HIM IS BECAUSE I DON’T LIKE HIM? I CANNOT stand the SIGHT of him. I can’t even stand TALKING to him. Obviously, because we work together I have to talk to him on occasion, but I keep it very brief. We never talk unless it’s work related. And then I think I usually have a look of slight distaste on my face, like I can smell something nasty. When I ranted all of this to Joan and Louise, Louise even said ‘you know, that’s true. You never talk to him voluntarily’. Louise stirred me accordingly though. She has vowed that she’s going to go to John and tell him that I’ve requested to be rostered on with him and how does he feel about that? And say that when girls like a boy they sometimes treat them meanly and has he noticed how I treat him. She’s also going to tell Maureen who is the world’s biggest stirrer and has absolutely no idea of how to keep silent on anything at all, and who will most likely be scrawling love notes to John on our kitchen whiteboards and signing them ‘Cecilia’.

I was just shocked at the humungous-ness of John’s head. How can he fit thought doors? Oh, I nearly forgot this little gem as well. On that Saturday night when the girls met him for his birthday, he told Kelly that Sheila tried to kiss him and was dragged off him by an angry Ruth (because Ruth fancies him as well, you remember). Sheila and Ruth both deny that any such thing ever occurred, and never will.

I’m not going to be able to ever speak to John again without thinking about all of this fantasy he has concocted in his head, and will probably blush every time I see him, which will reinforce his belief that I have the hots for him. What makes it even worse is that two years ago, I did like him. I know, I was an idiot back then. But that was before he was promoted and became such a layabout and treated a girl who deserves to be treated like a princess like a piece of fluff. Plus, that was when I was still an undergrad, and my ideas have changed a lot since those days.

BUT all of this rubbish he has spouted is STILL not the reason he is the most despicable piece of human filth I have ever had the displeasure of encountering. Later that night (by now about 2.45am on Sunday) I dropped Belinda off at her house. On the way there we were most naturally discussing all of these fantasies of John’s, and how he’d been shagging Kelly, and generally what an absolute tool he is. Belinda then reveals something else Kelly (melodramatic, putridly syrupy troublemaking trollop that she is) had told her. John had told Kelly things about his and Frieda’s sex life. Belinda didn’t go into details, and I didn’t want to know. But Belinda said that the things he’d told Kelly were extremely intimate personal details about Frieda and the bedroom that no girl would ever want revealed about her, ever. I was disgusted beyond disgust. I felt physically ill that he could do this, and to sweet Frieda. If she knew, she would be absolutely devastated. She’d leave banquets, and she would most likely leave Tasmania. Which would be hard, because she adores her grandparents, and as she’s said before, they’re parents to her. But it must be hard to have parents that you know are most likely going to die while you’re still relatively young, just because they’re so much older than parents. You’d want to spend a lot of time with them.

I’m going to keep John talking about Frieda’s sex life to myself. I definitely don’t want her to go anywhere – she’s such a good influence on me! Plus it would hurt her so much. I have no problem gossiping about Kelly and John doing the deed and even about his fantasies regarding me, Ruth and Sheila. But John breaking the unwritten chivalrous code of not reporting in detail what you did or didn’t do with your girlfriend or exgirlfriend is not gossip material. Although I don’t know how I can possibly work with him knowing what I now know. And if Kelly told Belinda in detail what John had said about Frieda, and Kelly and Belinda aren’t good friends, they’re just people who work together, what has she told her particular friends in the department?

Moral of this story: people who do too much pot are losers and:
Only repulsive slimy odorous pond-scum break the unwritten chivalrous code.

Doors and windows

2005-10-11T13:15:00.000+11:00

Last week was a weird week. On the one hand, Wednesday saw me saying goodbye to my dear adored friend Adrian at the airport on his way to Dubai (he's off to work for Emirates for at least 6 months, but more likely to be 3 years or so). But on the other hand, on Thursday I caught up with another friend, Charlie, for the first time in almost a year, since he's just back from Tokyo

To tell you the truth, I didn't know WHAT to feel last week! Comings and goings, to-ings and fro-ings...

Low pants and high underwear

2005-10-07T12:06:00.000+11:00

I am currently rather sick of the trend of hipster jeans and pants for girls, and baggy below-the-hips jeans for boys. Well, it's not so much this trend itself that annoys me as the apparant inability of people following this fashion to couple the low-rise pants with suitably low-rise underpants

About fifteen minutes ago, there was a bloke going into a lecture room here at uni wearing baggy dark denim jeans and a charming pair of blue-checked boxer shorts. I knew all about his undergarment because they were poking up at least two inches over the top of his jeans

At the hell-on-earth that I attend periodically (otherwise known as a gym) I am contemplating a few well-chosen words into the ear of the ridiculously skinny and toned girl who consistently wears a high-rise g-string (black lace is her favourite) and tight, hip-hugging exercise pants and hunches up over an exercise bike, pedelling furiously for prolonged periods of time, thereby exposing her back and black lace g-string, because of course she also wears a short, tight exercise top that has no chance of ever meeting with the back of her exercise pants. Or stuff the well-chosen words, I'd just like to grab hold of that g-string and, while giving her an even bigger wedgie than she is currently enjoying, shout at her 'I don't WANT to look at your underwear while I'm exercising.' Or doing what for me passes as exercising. And no, I'm not deliberately staring at her g-string, it's just that the exercise bikes are in front of the treadmills and elliptical trainer, and short of turning my head to the side and gazing at the people either side of me, or shutting my eyes (which makes me fall over - I've tried it) I have to gaze at her back, and therefore at her g-string

Now, I too have hipster jeans. I am not a fashion-hating frump. With these jeans I wear two all important, readily available items:

1) A belt. These can be in themselves fashionable items.

2) Low-rise hipster undies. Yes, there is such a thing, and they are readily available at all stores now. You can even get low-rise g-strings if you so desire. Personally, I favour cute little hipster undies as sold by Target, with disney characters on them. In fact, I only brought some new ones yesterday, with Tinkerbell, Mickey Mouse and the witch from Snow White on them. Target is having a sale this week in their underwear department. I might just tell g-string girl...

A potentially tricky situation

2005-10-05T13:41:00.000+11:00

As I said, I have a new crush, which is great because I LOVE having crushes and I haven't had one for a while. I love the giddy feelings and the silly smiles and the racing heart, even the fluttering stomach (which, incidentally, makes me hungry. I know, definitely one of the weirder side effects of a crush)

So anyway, the newbie is tall-ish, dark (although he dyes random bits of his hair all the time - currently purple) and very buff (which is usually not all that much of a turn on for me but on him, all good). He's also a bartender (of course), 22 years old, has a gorgeous smile and is supposed to be kind of shy. He's single, studying commerce at uni and lives in a house that apparently smells like feet (I have no idea) with three other guys

But you know how I know all this? Because his sister Alex is a friend and workmate of mine. I mean, obviously I know what he looks like independently of her and I actually fancied him before I even knew her, but she talks about him all the time, he being her adored big brother

It just seems that there's SO much potential for it to go pear-shaped. I mean, not that I'm expecting anything to happen with him, however much I'd like it to. But what if he and I did get together and it went badly - would that ruin Alex's and my friendship? What if she and I were out one night and I saw him with some other girl and was mopey about it - would she then feel obliged to do the friend thing and be shitty with him?

You know? It just seems like a bad idea to fancy a friend's brother. I know it always seems to happen in American movies and books (as well as two dating teenagers finding out their parents are dating too - why do they do that?? It's gross, not a cute plot twist) but for my whole life, my friends have almost all been the eldest in their families so I've never really MET a friend's older brother before

But on the upside? He's so CUTE and he seems NICE (in a non-"you're a nice guy, but..." way) and he's a BARTENDER and I LIKE him!

I SOOOO do no work

2005-10-01T19:34:00.000+10:00

My workmates and I were doing STACKS of work yesterday, reading a random catalogue (aimed at old people) that ended up on our floor. This was one item, described as a "personal massager":

"Ease tension and reduce stress with your own personal massager. Soothing vibrations penetrates deep to help stimulate circulation and relax tired, aching muscles. Takes 2 C-batteries (not included)"

* *
Oh yes, that's a personal massager, alright! We laughed our ARSES off!!!

Hmm, ponderous

2005-09-30T13:16:00.000+10:00

For the first time in a really long time, I have absolutely no plans for the weekend. How nice is THAT???

I think I might do some painting, something I've not done for a really, REALLY long time either

*And clean my car. That'd DEFINITELY be a good idea

*sigh* How boring is my life?? :)

Cec's and Bug's AFL Grand Final Saturday Night, From Cec's Point of View

2005-09-25T13:48:00.000+10:00

1. Doing the fun girly make-up getting-ready-to-go-out thing at Bug's house.

2. Choking on a shot of tequila and burning my throat out (very amusing from Bug and Boo's point of view I'm sure).

3. Learning a new drinking technique from Boo in order to assist me down the much-hated but sorely needed Redbull (focus on a poster or something on the wall and think everything you can about it in order to take your mind off the disgusting drink).

4. Being tipsy after 1 1/2 shots of tequila (again, Bug and Boo found this amusing).

5. Seeing this bloke called Mark that we went to school with at Irish the pub and I hadn't seen in about five years. He was soooo out of it on something and the daft grin on his face as his out-of-focus highly-diluted pupils slowly focused on me with dawning recognition was hilarious.

6. Mark being nowhere near as tall as I remember. I swear he's shrunk, because I sure as hell haven't grown in height.

7. Mark is dating a girl I work with, Zara. She (and quite a few other girls in the Hobart area) think he's very sexy. Well, I suppose he is a bit, in a rugged dark-haired way. I realised (and Bug supported me) in horror that HE LOOKS LIKE MY DAD!! Well, a younger version, anyway. In 25 years Mark will look just like my dad does now, only he has acne scars and dad never got pimples (now why didn't he pass those genes on to me?).

8. Being chatted up by gross shearers from Victoria, who repeatedly asked 'where are you from?' Avoiding gross shearers after this.

10. Dancing on the jam-packed dancefloor at Irish to Ethel the Frog beside this couple who needed to GET A ROOM! Or even a bit of space in a darkened corner of the Wharf. ANYWHERE other than a crowded dancefloor. Serious make-out session with lots of lurching about crashing into people.

11. NEARLY GETTING INTO A REAL, HONEST TO GOD BITCH-FIGHT!!! I have never physically had a 'scrag fight' with other female. An exciting moment for me! And I was ready and raring for a bit of hair-pulling. Mark and Zara were dancing beside Boo and I (Bug was visiting the ladies). I think Zara bumped into this ugly dark-haired girl who resembled a bull-dog, knocking bull-dog girl's drink on the floor and onto her. Bulldog went crazy, and was yelling at Zara (not that you could hear on a packed dance floor with a very loud live band about 4 metres away), while her weak-looking friends muttered loudly. Mark was such a gentleman and put himself between bulldog and her five female mates and just kept dancing on, his back to them facing Zara, but bulldog started pushing him, so he turned around, still dancing and Zara was behind him, kind of looking on in disbelief as I was. Bulldog was still yelling, and reaching over Mark's shoulder to push Zara several times, who I had my arm about while I attempted to look very butch and tough and menacing. But then for some reason Bulldog just backed off. Must have been my menacing expression. I so could have taken at least two. I had visions of getting in a real-honest-to-god girl-rumble and being pulled apart by bouncers and thrown out only to continue fighting outside until the police intervened.

Moral of this story: Obviously, don't take a drink onto a crowded dancefloor and complain when it's knocked out of the glass. Oh, and Redbull does 'give you wings'.

12. Going to the toilet at Irish and while waiting in line having a girl's head emerge under the toilet door like something from The Exorcist then disappearing again.

13. Having a very nice drink at another bar called Barcelona that Bug recommended that tasted like lychees. This was because it was made from lychees, Bug informed me.

14. Having to leave Barcelona because it was closing. New experience for me.

15. Going to Isobar the bar and heading onto the dancefloor to dance to another live band and then realising that the couple frantically pashing while bumping into everyone else were the same couple from Irish!!

16. Being chatted up at the bar by a footballer from Geelong (in Victoria) with nice blonde dreadlocks (I have a 'thing' for professionally done, well-kept dreadlocks that aren't too long). Then freaking out when he attempted (very gauchely may I add) to buy me a drink, telling the bartender that I would get my own drink, then taking my drink and running while leaving dreadlocks boy at the bar paying for his own drink. I am so out of my depth with the whole bar scene.

17. Going upstairs to Isobar the club and seeing people that Bug has been talking about for ages but I'd never met. They looked nothing like I had pictured them.

18. Going to Syrup (a nightclub) where I was flattered ridiculously by a bald bouncer (I swear at least half the bouncers in Hobart are bald) to which I had no idea how to act.

19. Bypassing the line thanks to Bug's bouncer connections and entering Syrup for the first time ever. Seemed like fun but very claustrophobic due to the massive amount of people. It was near impossible to force yourself through on the first floor. Can see how people get trampled to death. Realising that I have to do a whole lot more gym work and give up all foods that aren't green before I can dance happily on the second floor, the 'trance' floor. Acknowledge that this will never happen and sadly give up on any notions of returning and dancing here.

20. Bug very kindly agreeing to go home at about 3.30 with me despite her not wanting too.

21. Shaking non-stop in Bug's brother's bed (no he was not in it people! He's like an adoptive brother to me!) despite having already added a massive doubled-over furry blanket. Getting up, raiding the linin cupboard and adding another doubled-over blanket, and some socks, and pulling the covers over my head. Still shake, and cannot sleep.

22. Creep out of Bug's house to drive to my own house, while praying that there are no over-enthusiastic cops about doing random breath-tests early on Sunday morning, it being the day after the Australian Football League Grand Final, and a massive day of partying.

23. Continue to shake while trying to sleep in my own bed, despite having the electric blanket up as high as it will go and putting the furry little hot-bodied cat in bed with me. Decide that I am 'coming down' from Redbull, as I cannot possibly be cold, and I shook after the last two times I went out and drank it.

24. Give up on all thoughts of sleep for at least three days until the Redbull has worked its way out of my system. Decide to tell the whole world about our fun night out!

With a bit of an add-on from Bug

* The bald bouncer, who is very nice, if a little moody sometimes, TOTALLY fancied Cec (understandably, since she's cute as pie). It was groovy

* I have a DREADFUL crush. He's SO sexy and he's a bartender (of course, being me) and he's my friend's brother which seems like a NOT good situation to me. Besides the fact that I have LOST my ability to FLIRT so I'm utterly USELESS around a crush-worthy, babely type!

* I suspect that Cec is being too kind and that I sighed and acted put out when she wanted to go home. I hope I didn't but if I did? Sorry, my love

* It MUST have been the Red Bull making Cecilia shake and not sleep since it was HOT in my house last night (well, this morning, really!)

* Mark recognising Cec was VERY funny. He was FRIED! Moral of THIS story: don't do drugs. They're stupid

* Cec will be going back to Syrup. I'll be making sure of that

* Lastly, and most importantly, ETHEL THE FROG ROCK!!!!!

Instant boss, maybe?

2005-09-22T13:37:00.000+10:00

So my team shares our office with another team and the OTHER team is losing staff like no-one's business. They've had 4 people quit in just under 3 months. Pretty sucky, if you ask me

Anyway, they have this new girl who started 3 days ago and today, on her 4th day in a brand new job, she's wearing jeans and a turtleneck. And it's not like it's a black turtleneck and dark jeans (which could JUST about pass for casual office wear). It's a beige and blue striped turtleneck and baggy grey jeans. Yes, that's right, GREY jeans. Gross

She's also sitting at her desk chewing gum

Maybe I'm being mean and judgemental and picky, but shouldn't you wait at LEAST a week into a new job before wearing boggy clothes and munching away on Hubba Bubba??

There's cool and there's not cool

2005-09-18T18:16:00.000+10:00

Not cool

Having a friend who's in a perpetual bad mood just now take it out on you for absolutely no reason and with absolutely no apology

Cool

New friends. Particularly ones who seem to usually hang out with me when I'm drunk, so tolerant ones!

Not cool

Having random and perplexing vague symptoms of SOMETHING and a constantly aching tooth

Cool

The fact that I just do not get pimples. I love it

Not cool

Grilled oysters in chilli and lime marinade. I TRIED to like them, I really did!

Cool

That the time is coming when I'll be eating summer salads every single day - YUM!

Neither cool nor not cool but just a thought

Coloured contact lenses are FUCKING HARD to put in! For GOD's sake - STICK TO MY EYEBALL, STUPID THING!!!

Cec and Bug, ranting on

Nostalgia

I'm baa-aaaaack

Oooh, diamontes!

An imminent departure

At a bit of a loss

‘Boot Camp Update’ or ‘Yes It’s Been Confirmed – I’m Insane’

'The Camp of the Boot' or 'I must be certifiably insane'

Nip/Tuck

Sorry, Cec, sorry!

Either the best thing or the stupidest thing I've ever done

Cock rings and the like

I am a 158 cm eating machine

The Trip and Katie Update

A rant, rave and complain post

The Night of the Maid

A spot of dusting

Ellaborating on the 'quick' update

A quick life update

Be wary when awarding 'the finger'!

Losing to God

Drunken Recollections

Eyelashes and London ... continued!

I'M GETTING MY EYELASHES PERMED!!! Oh, and I'm coming to London!!!

The Naturopath strikes and Mia strikes again!

Don't you just love Dads?

The 'let's just be friends' line

You must all be thinking that we've dropped off the face of the earth . . .

Hmm. Is it working?

The 'I' Tag

Jog Jog Jog

Points from my day-trip to 'The Mainland'.

Busy, but not a lot happening really.

'What a crappy night' or 'Cecilia is feeling sorry for herself again' or 'HAPPY EASTER FOLKS!'

WHEN will it END???

"Friday" or "The Night My Liver Cried"

My First Ever Tag! How Exciting!

Reminiscing... in the name of a tag

Temporary postponement of the fulfillment of Doug's tag

Hobart waterfront that Sharlie fell in

Water immersion

This made me giggle

Focused on higher things

No title can describe it

Whaaaaaat??

Ouch, my ovaries!

In defense of Strathgordon

It's aliiiiiiiiiiiive!

So where is Bug?

Logical Steps

Workplace Safe

On tinia, body pump and The Horny Time.

Oh dear... the shame

For a change

Points on Australia Day, spanish and body hair

*sweating profusely* (but attractively!)

Pieces

Clueless

It may be an addiction

Sitting rather smugly

I'm just not THAT big of a flake

When good Catholic girls lose the plot...

Still writing my mammoth post...

Life's never just UNCOMPLICATED, is it??

Just a bit of a life update

Oh BUG! You fucking FOOL!

May your yuletime be gay!

Oh BUG! On the steps of a CHURCH??

Just random

The bullet points of the terminally lazy:

Oh crap. On a stick

I survived - this time!

And... some randomness:

Farewell, dear friends, as I head into the bog again . .

Those pictures

'Why? Oh Why?' Lament from a disillusioned student

Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes! Oh YES!!

Winning a Logie

Cow Pat-pitations

A hen's night and a wedding

sweating profusely (but attractively!)