wish list 2006

2006 wish listFor the last four year instead of New Years Resolutions (which nobody ever keeps anyway) I make a wish list for the year ahead, asking the universe to provide those things I want to accomplish during the year. I then stick it on my fridge so the universe can see it.... well, the universe and any nosy visitors...

I've also learned to be fairly specific with the list... the first year I asked it to provide me with a "relationship with a warm, funny, caring, sexy guy"... I found the perfect guy... only he wasn't interested back... the universe has an evil sense of humour... suffice to say, that got spelled out more specifically the following year!

Mostly I just refine the list year after year, look at where I'm at, where the previous year's list was aiming, and alter accordingly.

This year I've decided that in addition to the universe checking out the list on my fridge, that it may pay more attention if the list gets a wider audience... so...

Wish List 2006
  • To continue making peace with being alone
  • To engage only in sex that I find physically and emotionally fulfilling
  • To continue to make peace with myself inside and out
  • To continue my walking routine, including drinking water and eating cutoff
  • To find a permanent job that challenges and interest me
  • To be financially independent again
  • To be more positive and spend time only with positive people
  • To return to growing and developing my photography
  • To regularly do things that scare and/or challenge me
  • To return to paying my accounts on time and with ease
  • To return to being calmer and less angry and frustrated
It's actually not that different from last years list... a few changes in wordings, and the walking one is new, obviously...

Current Mood: hopeful

i *heart* the dark side

If you only knew the power of the dark side.
Postatem obscuri lateris nescitis
(You don't know the power of the dark side)

Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Found via jedimastermuggins

Current Mood: overheated

random pornstar hotness

[Warning: Naked Man Alert for some of these links]

Back to our regular Random Hotness this week.... And today's effort is another photographer related Hotness... this time, it's ubertalented "porn" photographer, Greg Thompson. I put the porn in quotes because while he does a lot of work for adult video companies, and photographs a lot of porn stars (including my current PornCrush™ Hunter James and his boyfriend Damon DeMarco), he really is a talented photographer who obviously knows what he's doing and is definately an artist.

I have no idea who these two hotties are, I just like the photos.

photo by greg thompson for rascal videophoto by greg thompson for rascal video

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness

post christmas sales

shiny new knives 2005Urgh...

While I'm a fan of the Post Christmas Sales in principle, the reality is something else.

Ma and I did the Target thing early this morning... looking, as always, through their cut priced Xmas decorations, wrapping paper, gift tags, and the occasional food item. Of course our haul this year was NOTHING compared with the three trips we took (one each individually and one together) last year, where we netted about a ton of stuff. This year we stuck mostly to wrapping paper, gift boxes and very, very, very high end Christmas crackers, all at half the price they'd been a week ago. Oh, and one of the Disney Hallmark ornaments... my favourite fairy, Tinkerbell... possibly coming soon to a blogtheme near you...

I was kinda pissy because Target didn't have the cowboy hat I'd kind of been fond of before Christmas (suddenly they had about six different, very similar hats... but not the one I liked... but I'm not really a hat person, so it's probably all for the best) and unexplicably they had no men's sunglasses (I just can't do expensive sunglasses... not with the way I treat mine)... so we thought a trip into the city might be in order.

Unfortunately the same kind of traffic catastrophe I encountered before Christmas was waiting for us, so we settled on West Lakes Westfield instead... it wasn't too bad there... a large number of pretty boys, some different shops from where we usually go...

I scored a pair of sunglasses, from Kmart of all places... we picked up some more DVDs (I had already grabbed 28 Days Later when we were in Target earlier, then Another Country and X-Men 2 from EzyDVD)... and after a fairly pointless excursion around David Jones' denuded half price Christmas department, I scored a set (well, not really a set, they were loose) of Maxwell & Williams cutlery... half price at House & Garden... SCORE!

But all that extra wandering around, especially because I was wearing my new wooden thongs (as seen in my Christmas present photo), was pretty tiring... it kinda felt like I was walking around with two tiny chunks of hardwood flooring strapped to my feet... very weird...

Oh, and thus far, the plumber who was supposed to turn up today to fix my cold shower problem is a no show... not happy!

Current Mood: tired

movies: the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe

the chronicles of narnia: the lion, the witch and the wardrobe - evil has reigned for 100 years...When Ethan reviewed The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe recently I thought that maybe he had succumbed to an big ol' attack of hyperbole...

But then I saw it today...

In a word.... wow!

It definitely claims a place beside all those other big fantasy movies that I love... or any movie that I love really.

The casting, especially of the children, was just spot on... although never before have I had impure thoughts about Mr Tumnus the faun... even with the ears and horns... or maybe because of them... Not to mention the blonde, amazingly jaw-lined and very fortunately 18yo, William Moseley as Peter.

As always I was a little, well, distracted isn't quite the right word, but it threw me a couple of times with the host of famous British stars providing the voices for the animated animals... Mr Beaver, Mrs Beaver, Fox and especially Aslan. Initially I wasn't sure Aslan had the right voice, but it grew on me over the course of the movie.

Tilda Swinton was at her scenery chewing best as the White Witch, although a special mention does have to be given to both her costumer and her hair designer, both of whom added so much to her character.

I haven't read the book in years (but will definitely have to dig it out and reread it now), but the story seemed to stay pretty faithful to what I do remember... at least the major plot points were there.... and some of the minor ones, including Edmund's love for Turkish Delight, which might go some way to explaining my liking for it.

The battle at the end is very impressive, even if there was a couple of moments I expected to see Legolas and Gimli pop up from behind a rock... if it's not the same exact location in New Zealand that parts of the Riddermark were filmed in, it's at least the same part of the country. But beautiful and impressive none-the-less.

And yes, I can see why comparisons are being made between those scenes and Lord of the Rings, especially given that it's the same production house that did both movies... the attention to detail in the armour and weapons give that away if nothing else.

The only thing I would recommend is that you DON'T see it with a cinema full of under 10's... the little tyke that ended up sitting next to me fell asleep (and snored) towards the end.... and it was only 3:00pm.

Definitely one for the DVD collection though!

yani's rating: 4 Sons of Adam out of 5

second christmas

The "second Christmas" I mentioned was pretty much like poking yourself in the eye... somehow it seems like a good idea at the time, but its much better when you stop.

I suppose it's closer to the Christmas everyone else seems to talk about... hanging around with a bunch of people you have not a single damn thing in common with (although in this case I'm only related to one, by a former marriage, the aforementioned first ex-husband of Ma's sister... so technically, not at all), and don't especially like all that much (the older they get and, I suppose, the older I get, the more boring and irritating they get and the less I can be bothered with them), getting fairly useless gifts (martini glasses... for me... who doesn't really drink... yeah... good... stylish yes, practical no... thank god I've trained the people I'm not really related to to give me cash), while wishing I was somewhere else (anywhere else), and passing the time ogling the very straight, but sweet 28 year old guy who is always by a country mile the most attractive person there (his younger brother isn't bad, but also isn't anywhere near as cute... stockier, hairier, less cute). And having him (unwittingly) flash the back waistband of his blue, possibly silk, boxers at me while he was preparing to leave was both nice, and frustrating...

Then having had two Coopers and two shots of Baileys, and sitting out in the (deceptively warm) sun all afternoon, I now have a post alcohol headache (I'm a cheap drunk... what can I say!), and am slightly cranky...

*sigh*

Current Mood: headachey and cranky

post christmas musings 2005

oh christmas tree... 2005Well, it's pretty much all over for another year...

Presents opened, turkey consumed, season greetings exchanged, the whole nine yards...

Although technically Ma and I have another "Christmas" to go to today... Ma's sister's first ex-husband and his wife... don't ask...

Anyway, let's recap on the events of yesterday, shall we...

I was awake by around 6:30 am, finally forced myself to get in the cold, cold, cold shower, was dressed and loading the car up with Ma's presents and other assorted stuff by around 7am, and was on the road shortly thereafter... There is no other experience quite like driving at 7am on Christmas morning... I think I saw a grand total of about 8 cars, and it's about a 30-40 minute drive...

On the way down I kept looking at the big grey clouds thinking, "It's going to rain... it's going to rain on Christmas... far out"... it never did though.

Got to Ma's around 7:30ish and after she dashed out to wish me a perky Merry Christmas, complete in her traditional red Christmas t-shirt (it has an embroidered Christmas tree on it... it's kinda tacky, but kinda cute), and schlepping all the stuff out of the car into her house, we did our traditional Christmas breakfast.... croissants... it's quick, it's easy, it doesn't fill you up given the food orgy that usually follows...

Normally either before or just after breakfast we would trundle down to my cousin's place to throw presents at her rugrats and wish them all appropriate season whatnots (I like doing it early because it avoids other members of the family I'd rather not see, and it gets it out of the way early, and we always have the excuse that we have to go back to get the turkey on), but this year she had other plans, so guess it will be another 12 months before I see them...

Anyway, after we finished breakfast we traded a couple of presents (my new (Versace) eyeglasses for me, and a big box of Terry's Chocolate Orange Segments for her), got the Weber Kettle BBQ ready (the one and only time we use it during the year, but it saves the kitchen being hot all day), and came back inside to open a couple more presents.

Originally we had planned to space them out a little more... maybe open a few, do something else, open some more, etc... but it never works out that way...

We did end up stopping eventually... to put the turkey in the barbeque... but then we finished the last of the presents...

presents!!! 2005And I said it was going to be a DVD Christmas... well, technically, The Other Andrew said it, but I totally agreed with him... not only did Ma get the big pile of DVD's I bought her, but she'd also bought herself some "from Santa"...

But because we'd basically been putting DVD's away for Christmas since about October, I had the motherload...

Seventeen titles in all, although Futurama is a three case set, Golden Girls is a four disc set, and a few of the others were double disc special editions. So, basically, lotsa discs...

I also got a big ol' pile of books... the sixth Harry Potter, three Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, Ark Angel by Anthony Horowitz, Caught Between Two Worlds by Scott Russell Hill and Matthew Reilly's Hover Car Racer. There was also a food hamper full of cool stuff like Oreos, Mrs Fields Cookies and Lindt Chocolates (as well as a more prosaic bag of food with Cheerios and orange juice)... as well as my Boys Will Be Boys Calendar (I haven't decided what I'm doing with the For The Boys one, since Amazon sent me an email to say they'd sent me two by accident, and that I didn't have to return it... but I haven't gotten the second one yet).

And yes, I did get socks for Christmas... at my request actually... all my walking has kind of eaten holes in all the socks I used to have, so I really needed some more.

mmmm turkey 2005After the orgy of giving was over, Ma and I just kind of hung out watching Golden Girls until the turkey was ready. I had forgotten how much I loved that show! A big thanks to Jevyeddy, because he'd mentioned buying the DVD a while back, which brought it to my attention... now I need to get the rest of the seasons when they come out.

Eventually the turkey was ready (we had some trouble, for the first time in all recorded memory, one side of the coals actually went out, so it was only getting about half the heat it should have been), and I set the table and whathave you while Ma did the veg and carved the turkey... it was a whole system we had down...

christmas lunch table 2005With the turkey, the sausage meat (as I mentioned before, a big favourite of mine) and the bacon (as well as the ham in my breakfast croissant), I think I possibly consumed more meat products yesterday than I would normally consume in a week...

Oh, and we all know that Christmas teevee is bad, right? Well, I think I found either a new all time high, or low, depending on your viewpoint... SBS was screening 1964's Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.... and yes, it was about as bad as it sounds...

After lunch we watched Call Me Claus, one of the DVD's Ma got me... luckily she got it as a joke, because... well... a made-for-teevee movie starring Whoopi Goldberg (who I love) and Nigel Hawthorne (who I also love, the big homo) where Nigel, who's Santa, has to convince Whoopi, doing her best Scrooge impression, that she's going to be Santa for the next two hundred years... so, yeah...

While not quite as bad as the Martian trainwreck, it proved once again that Whoopi makes some crappy career choices...

Then there was more Golden Girls (love ya Dorothy "Pussycat" Zbornak!)... followed by the ritual "picking at the leftovers" for dinner...

I finally dragged my ass home at about 9:30pm, sorted out my presents, hung up my new clothes, and was about to crash when I came back into the bedroom only to see a cockroach the size of a small housecat climbing up the wardrobe.... URGH YUCKY! I sprayed it with about a quarter of a can of spray, then got the bright idea to throw it in the toilet... which I think just washed the spray off it... I had to flush about four times, AND empty the last of my bottle of bleach on it before it finally disappeared down the S bend.

It goes without saying that I left the toilet lid down all night...

But all in all it was a good Christmas... it's only ever Ma and me, so it's never really a bad Christmas, but yesterday was pretty good.

Hope everyone else had as good a day...

Current Mood: merry... but glad it's all over...

big gay santa

Top 10 Reasons Why We Know Santa is a Gay Man
  1. big gay santaDid you ever know a straight man named Nicholas? (Oh, straight society has tried to butch up his image by calling him St. Nick, but we know better.)
  2. Yes, there is a Mrs. Claus. But, despite being married for eons, and Santa home with her 364 nights a year, have you ever heard anyone speak of any children? She's portrayed as fat and contented. Can you say "fag hag"?
  3. Chooses graceful and beautiful reindeer as his means of transportation, rather than a masculine animal such as horses or oxen. (And those names he gave the reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen?? Get real!)
  4. That long over-night flight around the world taps into the flight attendant gene.
  5. Ho-Ho / Homo. A little too similar if you ask me.
  6. Preoccupied with toys, toys, TOYS!
  7. Gay men have long been using stockings to hide their candy.
  8. Physically he's a wet dream for the Girth and Mirth club and the perfect poster model for Bear Poster Child!
  9. Red velvet, fur collar, black engineer boots. Think, people!
  10. Look at the size of the bag he packs for a one-night trip!
Current Mood: impatient and excited

photo friday: giant rundle santa

big santa 2005Taken last Saturday when I had my hair done...

"The 13m (42ft) Santa, weighing in at a hefty three tonnes, will arrive in six pieces on four semi-trailers to be hauled into place on David Jones’ Rundle Mall store with the help of two cranes. The fibreglass Santa model has been a city regular for around 50 years and was fixed to the former John Martin’s building until its purchase by David Jones."
from Hansen Yuncken media release - 6 Nov 2004

Current Mood: photographically festive

party hardy reindeer

I don't know that this is especially accurate, but...

You Are Blitzen

Always in good spirits, you're the reindeer who loves to party down with Santa.

Why You're Naughty: You're always blitzed on Christmas Eve, while flying!

Why You're Nice: You mix up a mean eggnog martini.


Current Mood: vaguely festive

what a christmas present...

he's much happier than i was this morningColour me a very unhappy camper...

After my walk this morning, I did my usual thing, fired up the computer, turned the shower on, wandered about aimlessly for a bit, then jumped in the shower...

The water was a little cold, but as I said last week the hot water has been playing up, so I figured I'd just turned the cold water on a little high... turned it down... nothing... turned it down more... still cold.... turned it off....

Cold, cold, cold, cold, cold. Oh WONDERFUL!

As a general rule I can't do totally cold water for bathing... I need to cut it with just a little hot water to bring it closer to body temperature. Having a cold shower... a REALLY cold shower... is not my idea of a fun time.

But I managed... mostly I stood outside the shower spray and threw water at myself.

At least I was actually cool when I got out, which, given that it's supposed to be 38°C today, is always a plan.

I went and complained at my landlord's office... again... and asked the nice, if somewhat docile, girl who works there to please try and get a plumber out here today if she could.

No deal... no plumber before about Wednesday next week... oh joy, oh rapture... five days of cold showers.... fricken Christmas holidays....

Current Mood: very very very cranky

random santa hotness

Since it's nearly Christmas, I figured that a slightly more random Random Hotness than usual was in order... and something with a Christmas theme, obviously...

So these Santa Hat Hotties are all from here and there in my archives...

dance santabrian santa
package santapair of santas

Current Mood: mmmmmm Christmas hotness

ma's presents 2005

ma's presents 2005With four days to go until Christmas (plus the fact I won't be seeing Ma again until the big day), I figured today was as good a time as any to wrap Ma's presents (basically before the weather turns stinking hot again and I don't feel like doing anything)...

I like presents. I like the wrapping, I like the ribbons and tissue paper... I like the whole nine yards... but when I'm wrapping stuff myself, well, it's bag and box city. It's quick, it's painless, there's no sticky tape to mess with, there's no trying to get the thing to sit right while you wrap it... none of that... it's just tissue paper and go... and I like for there to be a grand tower of tissue paper sticking out the top of the bag... it looks festive I think (it's a little hard to tell, but most of the white tissue paper in the shot actually has gold writing on it... Merry Christmas, Seasons Greetings, Joyous Noel... that kind of thing). Plus I wrap everything individually... I could have stuck all the DVD's in a couple of bags, but where's the fun in that... they must all be wrapped up separately...

Anyway, Ma's presents this year are:
....and (its actually missing in the before shot) an IOU for the Pirates of Penzance DVD I mentioned the other day.

As The Other Andrew said recently... it's going to be a very DVD Christmas...

It's a shame I wasn't blogging last Christmas, because she made out like a bandit last year... every time she mentioned liking something or wanting something or thinking of something I pretty much went out and got it... plus a bunch of other stuff I know she likes or wanted... but there's only so much you can do when you're not working...

Current Mood: it's beginning to feel a lot like christmas...

rocky road for christmas

rocky road ingredientsI mentioned the other day that I'd picked up the ingredients to make homemade Rocky Road, and this morning (since it a lot cooler than it was yesterday, or will be the next couple of days) I figured I'd make it... Ma isn't making her usual vast array for sweet nibbly treats, so I figured I should step up to the plate and at least make Rocky Road...

I started off with:
  • 740 grams of Turkish Delight (there's a second container under the one in the picture)
  • 500 grams of marshmallows (I get the vanilla and raspberry (ie white and pink) ones for variation)
  • 250 grams of raw pistachio nuts (not the salted kind)
  • 750 grams of milk chocolate melts
  • 375 grams of dark chocolate melts
You could just use three packets of the milk (or dark), but I thought I'd try something different... plus Ma loves dark chocolate and I love milk chocolate... so this way we're both happy.

Cut the marshmallows into halves with a pair of (kitchen) scissors.

Chop the turkish delight roughly, I usually chop the individual pieces into quarters, but just go with what looks right to you.

Combine marshmallows, turkish delight and pistachios in a bowl and mix.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler (aka a bowl over a pan of water).

Pour melted chocolate over the dry ingredients and mix.

rocky road doneLine a shallow baking tray with foil and pour rocky road mixture into it, spreading it out the cover.

Refrigerate until set, then cut into appropriate sized squares.

Enjoy!

If you wanted to get really festive, you could spoon the mix into individual paper cases (the ones you use for muffins) and can then be given as gifts.

Current Mood: culinarily successful

movies: king kong

king kong - the eighth wonder of the worldSometimes lots of money and special effects and hype make a movie good.... and then there are the other times...

King Kong, sadly, pretty much falls in the latter category...

I've been looking forward to this movie for a while, I enjoyed all three Lord of the Rings movies, so I wasn't too worried Jackson turning Kong into a turkey...

And while it wasn't a turkey... it certainly had it's flaws...

To start with, the three hour running time was a little daunting... as I said before we saw it... "How do they make 'Go to island, find giant ape, ape fights dinosaurs, men capture ape, ape escapes in New York, ape climbs Empire State Building, ape fights biplanes, ape dies' last three hours?"... And I'm still kind of wondering... there was at least 20-30 minutes that could have been carved out of the movie without it loosing anything...

All in all, it starts pretty well... the build up to setting out for the island is good... and basically, up until Kong arrives on screen, it wasn't that bad... then the effects kind of take over.

I didn't buy into a lot of the special effects, but then I have the unfortunate talent of being able to see a lot of special effects where other people say they can't... in Kong's case, the dinosaurs all looked really, really CG (and don't even get me started on the herd of brontsauruses rolling down a hill), and after seeing Jurassic Park about a week ago, Kong's attempt at CG dinosaurs, particularly the raptors, paled in comparison to the effects in a movie that is twelve years old. Yes, I hear some of you cry, but Jackson was trying to do an homage to the original... homage is one thing... bad CGI is something else entirely.

The other thing that grated on my nerves during the first hour was the use of shaky camera moves and film ramping effects for no real reason at all... it's not like it was a film-wide stylistic choice, it only really happened at the gate, before they go into the jungle, so it was just irritating. And yes... I know it was supposed to create mood... but again... just irritating.

One of the other things that kept pulling me out of the moment was the really bad lighting on most of Naomi Watt's close-ups in the jungle... every time it would cut to a close-up, I was like... "Well, she's still on a soundstage... flatly lit"... a fact which was made worse by the fairly good CG lighting on Kong. And it's not like effective CG lighting is that hard... other, much lower budget movies have done brilliant jobs at it.

Yes, the close-ups on Kong's face were brilliantly detailed, every wrinkle, every hair, and big glossy brown eyes... but some of the full body shots didn't work as well, although the shots of him climbing the Empire State Building were quite well done.

And then there was the story... or lack of same... or more specifically, character development... why exactly does Watt's character "fall in love" with Kong? I know he saves her life and everything... and she's supposedly got really crap taste in men... but come on! Or is she just channelling Dian Fossey? She's gotta know it's never going to work out... he's a 25 foot tall gorilla for pete's sake... although, male gorillas do have tiny genitals for their body size... so I'll let you all do the math on that one...

Then there was the number of times most of the cast ended up in situations where every single one of them should have been dead within the first minute, yet, amazingly, all but a couple (those characters without names or lines to start with) survive... did we really need to do that over and over and over... it got to the stage where I was rolling my eyes... not to mention the fact that Watt's character should have had a broken back, or, at least, neck, the way Kong kept throwing her around at the beginning.

There were a couple of the performances that I quite enjoyed... the very understated Jack Black, who I don't normally like, playing the worst kind of snake oil salesman... and Jamie Bell... but mostly because he's growing up kinda cute.

In short... Kong, too long, too much fluff...

yani's rating: 0 rampaging gorillas out of 5

five random facts meme

just for the holidaysI got tagged by my favourite Christmas elf, Jevyeddy, for a second meme in a week, so here we go...

Here's what you need to do:

Write 5 random facts about yourself, and then list the names of 5 people whom you in turn infect. So, here we go!

I'm going with a vaugely Christmas theme so I can use one of my Christmas images.... mmmm hot naked Santa butt...

Facts about me:
  1. When I was about seven, we had to write our lists to Santa one day in school... my entire list was "A Kitten"... I never got one, mostly due to my grandmother's allergies and dislike of cats.
  2. I was raised by my mother and grandmother (which explains the allergies thing above), until the latter died when I was 16.
  3. Every year (for the last four or five at least) Ma and I have croissants for breakfast on Christmas Day. We've managed to "overcook" them on more than one occasion.
  4. I'm addicted to green, seedless grapes all through summer.
  5. I don't send Christmas cards.
On second thoughts... I choose not to infect anyone else... but if you want to do the meme, go right ahead...

Current Mood: a little warm, but okay

thoughts on lownee

thoughts on lowneeSomething a little different today... another combined Monday Musing and Monday Montage... but not a montage I've taken myself... this one is kind of a "tone poem"....

From the top... Reece Witherspoon's pigtails, a howling wolf, Nintendo's Link, the books of Charles de Lint, Ensign Harry Kim, tortellini, swinging our legs, Elfquest's Nightfall, Tank Girl, Sagittarius, Buffy's Willow, little jelly dinosaurs, Will & Grace, Chris Jericho's manflesh, Bridget Jones' Diary and a cafe on Rundle Street...
I feel like some part of me will always be waiting for you. Like, if I'm old and blue-haired and I turn the corner in Istanbul and there you are, I won't be surprised. Because... you're with me... you know? - Willow

This is a post I've kind of been dreading writing... for a number of reasons... I'm sure it's going to go on too long, and I could get a little emotional before the end, we'll have to see...

Today is my bestest girly friend, Lownee's (not her real name... but close) 33rd birthday...

And why is this not a happy day, and why it is accompanied by that quote from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Willow and the rather esoteric montage? Because in July 2002, Lownee disappeared from my life... she didn't die, we didn't have a falling out, she just chose, on that day, to absent herself from my life.

It was all to do with the buttmonkey she ended up being engaged to, my former best friend and housemate, Ludo (also not his real name)... who, rather than face up to his responsibilities and problems will simply run away and cut off all contact with people... this time dragging Lownee with him.

Lownee is the one I mentioned right at the end of my post about my old gym journals... the "strangely familiar" woman who became my best friend.

And it all started over pasta... kind of.

I'd been having lunch with one of the (female) circuit class instructors for a couple of weeks, and I think she just said to me one day that she had accidentally double booked herself for lunch and was it okay if someone else came along. I figured it would be okay, and if not I could just leave as soon as was polite...

Turns out that person was Lownee, and we hit it off pretty much right away. A week or two later the instructor girl said she was booked in to have a leg wax or something, and she would meet the two of us after she was finished. Lownee and I went to Cafe Buongiorno and split a bowl of Tortellini Ala Pana (one bowl, two forks), which pretty much cemented our friendship (and our love for eating together) right there...

Later, because I wasn't working and she only worked until lunchtime on Tuesdays, I would go into the gym earlier, do a session, then meet her there and we would go for lunch and a gossip up and down Rundle Street. This also lead to an infamous couple of weeks where we dragged each other into various clothing stores and commanded that the other try on clothes... it's the only time I've ever contemplated leather pants, and led to Lownee trying on what was referred to from then on as "The Purple Dress", because all other dresses that happened to be purple paled before it... they also paled before it's price tag, but that's another story.

I kind of fell a little in love with her for a while, and there was a slightly odd incident when I'd walked her to her busstop and was saying goodbye, and looked down at her and just thought about kissing her, but couldn't work out why, or what to do, so I took the safe option and kissed her on the forehead...

Some weirdness followed for a while, but we got over it. If she had been a gay guy, well, I possibly would have been set for life and we would have lived happily ever after... or something...

She became my best friend, my noshing companion, my confidant (sometimes getting more information than she needed), my cheer squad when I needed it, a sounding board, and just the best galpal a gay boy could ask for... and I was all those things for her.
Is OK, cos my bestest bud girlfriend is really Yani, and even if he's not right THERE in the geographical sense, he's still my bestest girlfriend. - Lownee

Then she started dating Ludo on and off...

And Ludo and I moved from our very gorgeous apartment in North Adelaide to a very nice house in Golden Grove... the problem being that it was, well, Golden Grove, which is the Legoland of the North... all plastic and mass produced and miles from anywhere... and my relationship with Ludo was continuing to go steadily downhill, until I would come home from work, go to my room, maybe come out and get some dinner, go back to my room, go to bed, get up and go to work.

In the end Ludo decided, without consulting me, that it would be better if Lownee and I swapped apartments and she went and lived with him (supposedly platonically at that stage)... I didn't take to that suggestion terribly well, but fast forward ten years, and I'm still in the same apartment, so it might have been the best option really.

Because Ludo was an anal retentive control freak, he didn't like either me or another mutual male friend seeing Lownee when he wasn't around... a rule we broke as often as we could get away with (basically whenever Ludo was interstate for work)... the three of us plus a woman who worked with Lownee went out for a night of Mexican food and gay clubbing... the three of us had dinner and teevee nights... I went over one Saturday and Lownee and I hung out and wandered down along the beach... I didn't see her as often as I would have liked, but I still saw her...

Then she and Ludo moved to Canberra, for his work, and so I saw them much less often, but Lownee and I still emailed back and forth all the time, a practice we'd started when she was still here, and I think it kept us both sane... we wrote about what was going on in our lives, we wrote when we needed a distraction from the insanity of our respective workplaces... we wrote weekly with our reviews and predictions and comments about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

They did some other moving back and forth, but I can't remember it all... I do remember getting an email saying that they were "disappearing" off to Canberra and she would have to email me clandestinely from various libraries and such.

And then I got the email saying that they had to really disappear, and that I couldn't blame it on Ludo (like hell, said I!)... and two killer lines... one of which was "you can pretty much assume if you don't hear anything that we are both well and happy and looking after each other".... ummm, yeah, right.... not really a way to make me wish for their future happiness...
There are people in our lives, and it doesn't matter how long we know when for, or how much they screw with our psyches, or how far away they are, or who they end up with, or how long its been since you've seen them. And it doesn't matter what you're doing or who you're with. They will always have the power to make you stop and think and reassess your feelings about a whole lot of things.... - Lownee

Which is where the quote back at the beginning comes in... in my heart of heart of hearts (yeah, that deep), I KNOW that Lownee and my journey isn't finished, if only because I haven't had proper closure... and if I'm old and blue-haired and I turn the corner in Istanbul and there Lownee stands, I WON'T be surprised... because I do carry her with me everywhere... it's less acute now than it used to be, but certain movies, certain phrases, certain situations, or just Reese Witherspoon wearing her hair in braids in Cruel Intentions... they're all enough to make me think of her.

And if we don't manage it in this lifetime, well, I'm putting in a special request to The Powers That Be for another shot at it in our next lifetimes...

Oh, and the other killer line from her final email?

Back when Ludo and I shared the apartment, Lownee introduced me to the comic book/graphic novel/call it what you will... Elfquest... but before I'd really read any of it, she, Ludo and I took a stab at playing the roleplaying game based on the comic. We did one session of it, enough to come up with characters, and a tribe, and start a storyline and play a couple of scenarios... and then we kind of lost interest in playing it as an RPG. But once I have my creative hooks into something, I'm not one to let it go. I wrote a story about my character's background, and how he and his male partner came to be the fathers (yes, fathers, plural) of a child. Then, between the two of us, we fleshed out the rest of the tribe, and I wrote another couple of stories. And I kept bugging Lownee to come up with parents for her character, and some backstory. Finally, she gave me a fully completed story, longer than anything I'd written to that point, all about her character, just to shut me up.

That was when we started writing stories back and forth. I wrote about the loss of their home and their journey to find a new one. She wrote about finding a temporary home and discovering what happened to their old one. I wrote about our pregnant character giving birth. She wrote about deciding to look for new elves. I wrote about the hunt for those elves. She wrote about finding them.

And then she left.

We had a bunch of other stories in the pipeline, babies to be born, relationships to discover, a new elf tribe to integrate with... and because she was in the midst of writing a follow up to her discovery story, I don't know what happens next.

But the line in her final email that killed me... "Kill off the chieftess. It'll make you feel better". The tribe's chieftess was her character, more than that, it was her, just as my healer character was me in that world... and they'd developed the kind of relationship that Lownee and I would have had, had it not been for Ludo and his insecurities.

So, to kill her off... that meant that Lownee didn't plan on ever coming back into my life... and that just cut to the core.
And because even if you and I are miles and miles and miles and miles apart, somewhere, on a world with two moons, a raven haired Chieftess and a blue eyed Healer are sitting on the edge of a cliff somewhere, swinging their legs, watching the sunset and just enjoying the Now. - yani

Two and a half years ago, I got tired of not having any closure about the whole deal and I wrote her a very pointed, very heartfelt letter, saying everything I needed to say to her, telling her what I thought about her stunt of disappearing, and about a billion other things that I wanted off my mind.

I sent it to her parent's place here, with a cover letter asking them to forward it on if they could. I didn't get a reply to either that letter or the one to Lownee, so I assume they forwarded it, but whether she got it or not, I don't know.

I still miss her, and it still hurts on days like this, her birthday, but it's now a kind of dull ache as opposed to the sharp pain it used to be.

So Happy 33rd Birthday Lownee! Wherever you happen to be in the world, I hope the day finds you healthy, happy and enjoying yourself. I love you and I miss you.

Dammit... I was so sure I was going to get through this without getting emotional or crying... but writing that last line pretty much did me in... dammit dammit double dammit...

Where's the chocolate....

Current Mood:

return of the holiday sodas

The Jones Soda Company and their questionable soda flavours are back... this time as a Blogthings quiz...

You Are Pecan Pie Soda

Sweet, but totally nuts


Current Mood: sweet but nutty

my new crush

mmmmm josh pyke... watch the starsI'm so embarrassed...

I just heard the opening notes to a song on Video Hits (which is on in the living room, while I'm at the computer in the bedroom) and squealed like a 15yo girl before running in there...

The song that made me squeal?

Middle of the Hill by Josh Pyke...

I've been hearing this song by the 27-year-old Sydneysider for a while now on Triple J during my daily walk, and it always makes me walk just the little bit faster, singing along as I go... it's a catchy little song, and it reminds me of when I was a kid (that's the general idea really I guess)....

When I was a kid I grew up in a house on a hill, not the top, not the bottom but the middle.
And I still remember where I cracked my head, in the vacant lot, there's a row of tiny houses there now.
And we used to light fires in the gutters,
and I could cool my head on the concrete steps.

Not that I did anything like that (except maybe the concrete steps bit), but it's just a feeling that the song invokes...

And the clip is so cute... and Josh... DAMN! He's very cute... vaguely alternaboy, but definately cute... I just wish I could get a screen capture from the clip, he looks so much better in that (never mind that he's toned blue for the whole thing) than in the few pics I could find online... although I do like the position of the stars coming off the tree in this picture...

Now that it's been on Video Hits, it means that the single should be that much easier to find in record stores too... yaaaaay!

Current Mood: mmmm... crush

more hair adventures

Woohoo... new hair for Christmas!

Course, if I could get a photo I was happy with, you all could SEE my new hair... but I can't... so you'll just have to take my word for the fact that it's cute again...

My appointment was 9:15am, but since I didn't sleep too well last night, I was up at 6:30am, so got to potter around for a couple of hours (and be driven nuts by Blogroller and various blogs around the place that seemed to have lost several days worth of updates... not sure what all that's about... but if you've found that too, lemme know... EDIT: Jared at Completely Naked filled me, and all his other readers, in on that one... looks like all the Typepad blogs got pushed back to Dec 9th... just another reason the Typepad format annoys me then...).

Anyway, I left the house around 8:30am, thinking I would have time to grab a carpark, grab some breakfast in town, and then make it to my appointment on time.

I was on my way up to the carpark at Myer (the same one that was full on Thursday), and realised that the side road that leads up to it was full of empty spaces, so I figured I could park there and it would probably be cheaper, especially since I was having a colour done, and I knew that would take ages.

So I park, get out of the car, and go to the ticket machine thing. Skimming the instructions, I see that it's $4.80 for three hours, which, for a city parking spot, isn't too bad. I put a dollar coin in and the machine flashed up "Overpayment", so I'm thinking, great, the machine doesn't kick in until 9am, I'm screwed... then I kept reading the instructions on the machine. Monday to Friday, $4.80 for three hours... Saturday and Sunday, 20c for three hours... I had to read it about three times. Twenty cents... for three hours... twenty cents... three hours... are you serious?

Of course, I didn't have anything smaller than $1 on me, so I kind of stood there on the pavement, feeling like a bit of a tool, then realised that a car had pulled up next to me, and there were two women in it. Surely one of them would have change for a dollar. Eventually the passenger got out, and I did my best "Sorry to bother you, but..." explaining about the ticket machine, etc. Her reaction was much the same as mine... "Twenty cents?". I went over and showed her the machine, and asked if she had change (she actually had a handful of change). She popped one 20c piece in, and took a ticket for herself, then put another one in for me. I offered her my dollar afterwards, but she just waved it away.

BARGIN! Not only was the carpark only 20c, but I didn't even have to pay it. Thank you, Random Lady! You rock!

Then when I was going back to my car, the other woman (Random Lady's daughter, I think) went to offer me 20c... awwww... so nice! Granted, I probably would have done the same thing in her position (at least I like to think I would have).

Anyway... grabbed some breakfast and an Iced Coffee (I can't help it... it's a total weakness, and also the best Iced Coffee on the planet!) before going off to lurk around outside my hairdressers, waiting for it to open at 9am, looking vaguely shifty... okay, maybe not.

Fortunately my hairgirly, Tink, was the one to open up (complete with new Tinkerbell-eske short blonde pixie hair), so I was the first one through the door. Tink said she'd been thinking about what we should do as my colour since I was last in, and she had a plan (I love that she'd been thinking about it).... and since I knew that she knew what I wanted, I was happy to let her go for it... it ended up being half 9A half 510, half 6% and half 9%... which I know adds up to four halves, but that's what she wrote down for me (so I could put it in my "diary" hehehe).

Its nowhere near as brassy as the last colour I had, but it's nice and light, and we actually did some "reverse streaks" in it, just to add some texture in the colour... basically, ten minutes in, Tink stripped the colour stuff off a bunch of areas, meaning it stopped lightening. Not sure how well it worked, but it seems to have some variation through it. I like it, anyway.

After I was done, I called Ma, because we were going shopping... again... the last time before Christmas... and while we didn't succeed in getting too many things, we DID get the ingredients for me to make homemade Rocky Road for Christmas.

Over 700 grams of Turkish Delight, two packets of marshmallows, two packets of raw pistachios, two packets of milk chocolate melts and one packet of dark chocolate melts... in theory that's going to be one hell of a lot of Rocky Road... and it probably would have been easier to just buy it, but I enjoyed making it last time, so, what the hell. Plus we'll be able to give some away, since Ma isn't going to be making her usual barrage of Christmas goodies this year.

When I do make it, I'll post my (fairly basic and made up) recipe.... which, of course, you can make with less quantities...

Looking back at what I just wrote, I realised that I am just physically unable to tell the short version of a story... oh well... at least it's never boring... at least I hope not...

Current Mood: haircutty goodness

photo friday: candy

candy 2003After yesterday's megapost... I thought something visual would make a nice change... so I dipped in to the yaniboy photo archives and found this... M&M Mixups (Original, Peanut and Crispy, all in the same bag)... the depth of field is a bit wonky, but I like the colours...

Current Mood: could be better

testing and shopping and driving, oh my

So, as I mentioned earlier, I went in to do my registration thing at the agency this afternoon... I left a little earlier than I thought I needed to, since I wanted to go and pick up my new glasses and see if I could pick up a copy of Pirates of Penzance on DVD for Ma (since it's her favourite thing in the whole wide world, and I'm sure she has to be close to wearing a hole in the VHS copy I bought her a few years ago). So I figured I could do those couple of jobs, go do my testing, and be on my way home by 3:30pm...

*ba-dum*

Sorry, but no...

I left my place just after 1:30pm, drove into town, thinking I would grab a carpark at Myer, then I could go through Myer to the ABC Shop, then down to OPSM, then on to the agency. When I got to the traffic lights before the carpark I realised that instead of saying "Open", the sign was on "Full"... so, muttering to myself, I turned the corner instead and decided to go to the carpark at Target... got there eventually, no thanks to the 108,000 idiots on the very short drive between the carparks, drove up the ramp, and the car in front of me was just sitting there... turns out the carpark was so full, the ticket machine was only letting a new person in when somebody left. Luckily there were two cars lined up to leave, so I got in pretty easily. Then I went around and around and around and around and around (thinking all the while about Jevyeddy's post about people and parking while I was doing it, as well as muttering about it only being Christmas and all of them needing to bugger off back to the suburbs where they belonged)... and eventually stalking a couple back to their car so I could park.

Then I had to leg it up the Mall, and up a side street to the agency, only getting there just after 2:00pm.

And then there was all the paperwork to fill out, all of which I've filled out in various forms and permutations about 100 times before... then off to do the testing... I really hate the computerised Word and Excel training programs... they only ever let you have two goes at anything, and then they just mark it wrong and move on. Give me an extra couple of tries and I could get it right every time... stoopid programs. You have 30 minutes to complete each test, I finished the Excel in 14 minutes and the Word in 9 minutes... and I knew that I'd pulled pretty good scores on both... turns out Excel was 95% and Word was 90%... so I wasn't far wrong.

Next was the vaguely depressing typing test... not because of my score, but because of the text they have you copy while you're doing it... something about people's jobs not being secure, and moving around a lot... nice... just what I didn't need to hear.

Anyway, turns out my typing speed is around 54 words per minute (that's copying from something, I'm sure "freestyle typing" like this, I'm actually a lot quicker) with only 1% of errors.

I so rock... *grin*

Then I had to sit and click through this really, really, really dull presentation on OHS&W, which is all stuff I've seen, read, heard, known about forever...

And then I was left to sit in a fairly uncomfortable chair in a teeny tiny little room with one apple green wall to wait for my consultant wench...

While I was sitting there waiting all the lights on the floor flickered off, then flickered back on again a few seconds later... followed a couple of seconds later by a rumble of thunder. I didn't discover until I got home that it wasn't just that building, it must have been the whole city grid, because my PC had rebooted itself and the microwave clock was blinking at me... all my other devices have more brain than the microwave, so they remember what time it is for a little while when the power goes out.

Anyway... eventually my consultant girly got to me, apologised profusely for being late and we got down to business. She was possibly one of the coolest agency girlies I'd dealt with in a long time, if not ever... turns out she is only 6 days younger than me... very cool. Plus I promised to hold her hand if the lights went out again. When we started the interview thing, she pulled out my test score sheet and said "Normally I talk about the test scores later... but you know how good you are, right?" To which I replied, "Pretty much, yeah."

We had a great little chat, she seems really, really nice, and from both my test scores and the chat we had it sounds like she will be able to find me something, if only something temporary for the time being, but work is mostly work.

Once we were all done having our little chat, we shook hands, and I don't know if it's just because she's in that kind of job where you would have to press the flesh with people, or what, but she had a very firm handshake... a lot of women AND a lot of gayboys don't know how to give good hand (shakes... get your mind out of the gutter)... its sometimes like shaking a dead fish... never good. But she had a nice firm handshake, and since I had to train myself to give a firm shake, I appreciate it in others.

Anyway, I came out of the building to find it was raining kittens and puppies, and there was me without my umbrella... So I headed down the street, ducking and dodging to avoid the rain where necessary, off to OPSM to get my glasses...

Yaaaay... Versace glasses... and they made some little adjustments and fitted them to my face for me... who knew, one of my ears is higher than the other, so they had to tweak one of the arms to compensate. My glasses, being Versace (I did mention that, right, that my new eyeglasses, they're Versace? *grin*), come not only in a Versace box with the Medusa head on it, but in a leather case with the head embossed in it (which is possibly going to last about 12 seconds before I really scuff it up, the woman at OPSM scratched one of them as she was getting them ready for me, and I just put a little scratch in it's replacement when I got it out of the box), as well as a Versace lens cleaning cloth AND a little envelope, containing a certificate of authenticity, to prove they are really Versace... *rolls eyes*

After that I went up to the ABC shop to see the interchangeable gay boys that work in there, but no luck on the Pirates DVD... they sent me to Myer... where I got appalling service... before they sent me to either EzyDVD or JBHifi... remembering what Jevyeddy had said about JB recently in one of his comments, I decided to go there...

Now, I love alternaboys and alternagirls as much as the next guy... but I'm sorry... neither of the slightly docile girls I was served by even seemed to have heard of Pirates of Penzance... *sigh*... I suppose if you're looking for Musical Theatre, go straight to the fagolas... and there was a cute one helping somebody else... all big hair and red sneakers and little tight body... *ahem*

In the end I went back to EzyDVD (through the pouring rain and around all the really stupid people trying to stay out of it) and ended up buying a couple of DVDs for myself, which will go away for Christmas, and ordering Pirates for Ma.

Then all the way down the other end of the Mall to get the car, swinging through Target to buy some socks (which I actually needed) so I could get a cheaper carpark...

By this time it was 5:00pm... and raining... and ten days before Christmas... visualise all that for a moment... then think about what the traffic was like... urgh! Every stupid moron was trying to leave town the same way as me. I nearly had a little red piece of crap run right into the side of my car because the driver decided to merge into my lane without indicating, or even looking... I leant on the horn for about 30 seconds to show my displeasure... I ended up stopping at the supermarket on the way home because I was cranky and couldn't be bothered cooking, so I bought one of those oven pizza thingies (the nice McCain woodfire style ones... they're square)... and Vanilla Coke... and chocolate...

Well, I said I was cranky...

Luckily I had new Nate on Oprah to watch when I got home (and there may be an Oprah inspired post coming, so be warned), so that helped cheer me up. Well, that, and pizza and chocolate...

Current Mood: full and content

tagged by jevyeddy

Okay, I'm 50% flattered by this (it's the first time I've been officially tagged by anyone) and 50% annoyed (it's kinda a crappy meme)...

But Jevyeddy tagged me, so off I jolly well go...

The rules for this particular meme are as follows:

Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so:

1. vince
2. scott
3. nathan
4. eddy
5. yaniboy

Then you get to select five people to pass the love on to so they can do this meme, like so:

1. Greer
2. Xanadu
3. Larry
4. Joseph
5. LargeTony

Here we go...

What were you doing 10 years ago?
*does the math* Getting ready for my first Christmas out of home, with my first boyfriend...

What were you doing 1 year ago?
Working...

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Maltesers
2. Rocky Road (the good stuff, not the el cheapo crap)
3. Starburst Babies
4. Haighs Chocolate Frogs
5. Pringles

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. If - Janet Jackson
2. Again - Janet Jackson
3. Pretty much the whole Once More With Feeling album by the Buffy cast
4. I Quit - Hepburn
5. Brick - Ben Folds Five

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
This one I've been giving a LOT of thought to recently... so... we'll assume it's several million dollars, and not just one million...
1. Travel to London, America, Paris and Italy (and do all the things on my 7 Things meme)
2. Build an apartment or gut and refit a warehouse and get Nate to decorate it
3. Buy all the toys I've ever wanted (laptop, iPod, digital SLR camera, big flatscreen teevees)
4. Invest about half
5. Get a personal trainer and/or a home gym

Five bad habits:
1. I'm crap at returning phonecalls or emails
2. I hold a grudge
3. Muttering about stupid people
4. If I don't particularly care about what you're telling me, I might not pay attention
5. Sniffing instead of blowing my nose

Five things you like doing:
1. Blogging
2. Taking photos
3. Cooking
4. Going to the movies
5. Reading

Five things you would never wear again:
1. Waistcoats... that ship has sailed baby...
2. Shorts
3. Hawaiian shirts
4. Patterned underwear (well, except maybe GinchGonch)
5. Pastel pants... don't ask...

Five favorite toys:
1. Digital camera (I like the one I have but I also want a digital SLR)
2. iPod (I wanna!)
3. My DVD player
4. Photoshop
5. My mobile

Current Mood: flattered and annoyed