Holy Crap I can't believe I'm actually doing this.

Right.
Here we go.
Ciavarro, in a rare fit of entrepreneurship, and inspired by the lovely Krista, has taken it upon himself to whore out his fellow bloggers I mean find a means to support his pathetic arse I mean grab the spirit of capitalism and make something.

He claims to be making a calender of the "smokin' hott babes" of blogland.
I, of course, will be featuring in the month of May, provided that my photo are top notch.

OK, so none of these remotely qualify as "top notch" but hell, I came home from an extremely long day at school and instead of doing my reading for tomorrow's class I thought I'd lie on the floor and take photos of myself.

































And finally SCARY NUMBER SEVEN!!!!!
AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!










And please photoshop out my pimples.
Thanks.






Edit: OK they lasted for nearly 24 hours and thats a lot longer than I thought they would.
Baby steps.....

YES I AM A WIMP LAUGH IT UP!!!!

The outlook for Thursday, your guess is good as mine...

This is the view from my front porch two days ago.
Cold, snowing, and negative 16 degrees. Lovely.
I got up horrendously early yesterday to go to the dentist for some more pain in the cold and it was excruciating.
So, I email my dad. Hey Daddy-o, whats up, how you doing, check out how the shitty weather is.
Hey Claire, not doing much today, might spend time in the garden later.
Check out the weather here.

And he sends me this.
The view from the end of his drive. 30 degrees, a beautiful clear Christchurch summer day.

THANKS A FUCKING LOT DAD I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME YOU'RE NOT MEANT TO TORTURE YOUR CHILDREN WITH PHOTOS OF THE BEAUTIFUL DAY THEY'RE MISSING OUT ON BECAUSE THEY'RE AT SCHOOL IN AMERICA!!!

HOOOOLLLLLLLEEEEEEE FUUUUUCCCCKKKKKKK

The most AWESOME catch in cricket EVER!!!!

Nathan Astle, You Da Man.

Thanks Ben for the link.
That is all.

Sunday Funday

I just sent a "fuck you" email to someone and damn it feels good.
Men, aye?

Ah, who am I kidding.
Note to self: do not EVER date anyone under thirty again.

I'm practising your name, so I can say it to your face it doesn't seem right, to look you in the eye, and let all the things you mean to me, come tumbling out my mouth indeed its time

2.54am and I'm awake. Wide fucking awake. Hmmm.
My day hasn't been particularly productive, I talked to Hesty on google chat, set myself up with MSN (finally!) my user name is claire-amelia in case you fall down and hit your head and decide you need to talk to me also I went to the gym and was sitting on my bed doing work on a Saturday night because right here its party town population me, anyway I fell asleep cos I'm an old nana, and awoke to 2.45am.
And here we are.

So I trolled about on the internerds for a bit.

Zach Braff is getting married. Mandy Moore is cute.

Lucy Lawless has signed on as a permanent cast member of the greatest show currently not on my television because I don't have a functioning television let alone the SciFi Channel
Xena is a cylon. I always knew it.
Then I called my mum its Sunday evening in NZ and she's all sleepy and going to bed I said WELL ITS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND IM WIDE FUCKING AWAKE she said Don't swear Claire I said Ok sorry Mum. I also talked to my brother in law who kicked arse in his cycle race the other day because he's awesome.
The other day I was at the bookshop buying some magazines for my sister and I came across the latest Esquire starring none other than my future husband. So I did the dance of joy, purchased said magazine and finally put Viggo in his rightful place.
Tucked up in my bed.
Also sent mags to my sister, cos thats the kind of girl I am.

And then....
A whole lot of Not Too Fucking Much.
I have a ridiculous amount of work to do before Spring Break. And I don't even think I'll be going away over Spring Break because I'm skinty-poos but my friend Marie-Lou said we could take day trips out of town to some mountains and lakes and go for big walks because I miss being around mountains and SO FAR FROM THE OCEAN but a lake will do. One of the best things (amongst about a gazillion awesome things) about NZ is that no matter where you are, you're only at most a couple of hours from the beach. Ok, if you're in Taupo it might be a wee trek, and perhaps getting from Queenstown to the ocean through all those mountains would require a fair bit of effort, but in both those cases you've got a big fuck-off lake to get jiggy with.

I think thats one thing I miss the most: proximity to water. I guess I am an Islander, at the end of the day.
Somedays its hard being in America. Only 78 sleeps until I go home though, for three glorious months of being on the greatest island in the world THE SOUTH ISLAND OF NEW ZEALAND!!!

I am the resurrection and I am the light, I couldn't ever bring myself to hate you as I'd like

I have been in a most strange mood for the last day or so perhaps its something to do with these new drugs I got I took them for the first time last night after two glasses of red wine and watching Finding Neverland and the subsequent half hour of crying mostly about the movie but sometimes its good to have a cry.

Anyway. I get these hella headaches, the ones I was on about a few weeks ago, where the only thing that helps is a glass of wine and a hot water bottle on the back of my neck but sometimes you can't do that so I said Hey doc, whats up I think I need a chiropractor she said hey try these pills I said Ummm, I'll say I will but I probably won't take them. Anyway, they're muscle relaxants, because I have a tendency to get GREAT BIG FUCK OFF muscle knots in my back and neck because I worry about EVERYTHING hence the headaches etc.
So I took half of one last night just as I was turning the light out, and I slept for nearly 12 hours and felt all dopey today and got all sad not depressed thats a different feeling like kind of melancholic. I didn't hate my life or the usual depressed feeling, I was just really sad. Which is to be expected occasionally, but it doesn't happen to me much because I have practically ZERO to be sad about I was born under the luckiest of lucky stars and the Good Lord has been ridiculously good to me ever since which makes me think that perhaps my initial skepticism about taking the pills was well-founded and maybe I'll throw the little fuckers out because its better to worry about shit than to poison your body she says sitting here with a glass of feijoa vodka and orange next to her.

But I think worry is good, if we weren't worried about stuff we wouldn't do anything about it, if I wasn't worried about 3rd world debt I wouldn't write papers about how Sub-Saharan Africa spends US$30 million a day on debt servicing while all her children die of diseases it would cost a few cents to immunise them against, if I wasn't worried about civil war I wouldn't have written my thesis on how the World Bank has insane amounts of potential to act as a preventative measure and how they are recently coming to terms with the fact that loan conditionality doesn't work, if I wasn't worried about the environment I wouldn't yell at my flatmates about putting the tins in the blue bin not the rubbish, if I wasn't worried about never finding true love I wouldn't cry my eyes out at romantic movies, if I wasn't worried about my health and fitness I wouldn't worry about my fat tummy and my cheese addiction.

I think what I need to work on it not the worry I have, but perhaps on directing that worry in the right direction and having it at the right time.

OK, where was I going with this......

Right. I was thinking about giving up drinking for Lent, but then I thought it would be kind of hypocritical, and probably dead insulting actually, because I take issue with the idea of organised religion as it has manifested itself in my life (and no thats not incompatible with the above acknowledgement of all the things the Good Lord has given me). And then I thought the reason I would have done it was because of this weight loss thing I've been working on (actually doing a pretty shite job in the last few days but hey. Nobody's perfect). So, perhaps I'll just quit drinking during the week or something.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, I refuse to become one of these women who labels food a sin, who deprives themselves of all the good things in the world purely so they can conform to some artificial idea of beauty which reeks of unhealthiness because fuck that life's too short. However, in less than three months its my thirtieth birthday and when I'm an old lady I want to look back on photos of me looking fit and slim and healthy.
So I'm thinking I may have to cut down significantly on the booze, on the pasta, on the cheesey toppings. Not cut them out completely, but cut down. Currently I'm at the top end of the healthy category on the body mass index scale. If my will remains strong, I will be smack bang in the middle of the healthy category by the 18th of May.

Here's my goal. By my birthday, I will post a picture. Including even some exposed stomach that will not look AT ALL like it does now.

Ah, now I've done it. ALL THE PRESSURE SOMEONE PASS ME A GLASS OF WINE PLEASE!!!

ps I posted this so now its out in the open and I have incentive to stick to it because otherwise I'd talk myself out of it because I'm gifted like that. Amongst other gifts....
pps don't get me wrong I'm not looking for reassurance that I'm not a big fat cow cos I ain't, I am just looking for a little improvement dammit you try staring down the barrel of thirty and tell me it doesn't make you re-evaluate some things!!

I found her on a night of fire and noise, wild bells rang in a wild sky...

Having three conversations at once on google talk is both fun and confusing. It also makes posting 1) entries on one's class web page about hegemonic stability theory and 2) entries on one's blog quite difficult.
It also makes completing the readings on the above topic near impossible, but perhaps that is more to do with one's motivational deficit than anything. Its not like they held me down and made me chat!!

One of the things we were discussing is the rather modern phenomenon of the Blog Crush. Its perhaps INCREDIBLY GEEKY to fancy someone you met digitally, but I think that we have evolved beyond the stage where only the undateable find dates via the digital medium. I mean, we have real life friends, and go to parties with them, and have relatively normal lives. Its not like we have only this medium through which to meet people. It just adds another dimension to one's social life. Plus, you can spend hours at your computer and pretend to be working while actually chatting to your friends.
But the Blog Crush.
Its just as fun as having a real-life crush, with the added advantage of being able to delve into the archives of your crush's brain. If they pay attention to their site-meter they will figure out sooner or later you are stalking them and get all creeped out, but that will take a while.
And in the mean time, hours of fun!

I was going to post something all serious but then I had a very silly conversation so consequently am not feeling particularly serious, being two months and 20 days away from thirty I am entitled to my last few weeks of silliness.
Ah, who am I kidding. I'll be silly in my seventies. When Grace and Sunshine and Gwen and I are sitting on rocking chairs on the front porch in purple cardies with our 1000 adopted cats and drinking gin before midday.
I think I'll have the NY branch of my birthday on the 5th of May. Write that in your diaries, people within a days travel radius. Unless, of course, I don't like you, then you can fuck off.

Also, we are about to initiate the "LA Blogstock Campaign".
Friday, May 12th 2006, somewhere in LA, we need to have a blog party. The planning committee took a vote and decided that the primary recipient of the campaign should be one Tony Pierce.
If we can get LA's most famous blogger on our side, it will be a hit, the committee assures me.
Am going to email him now.

Claire out.

Giant ants are eating my head!!!

I just called my sister cos I wanted to talk to her and the kids and they're all out HOW RUDE IS THAT. In reality I wanted to do anything but read this book I have to read for class tomorrow because its REALLY BORING and look who the caps lock whore is today. Its about the military and democracy in Latin America which I'm sure is completely fascinating for anyone who's interested in civil military relations in Latin America unfortunately I am not one of those people, neither do I care about what some retired general in Ecuador has to say about the prospects of further military intervention or the role of Sendero Luminoso in Peru. However, being a lowly first year in the PhD programme I must do the course work requirement before I am let loose on the world to write my KICK ARSE dissertation which is going to RULE THE WORLD and get me an awesome job ending hunger, cancelling all third world debt, immunising every child on the planet, and distributing puppies to everyone.
For tomorrow's class I am supposed to read pages 36-213, its currently a couple of minutes shy of 11pm and I'm up to page 107. That also doesn't count the 35 odd pages in the other book I must read too. Oops. Bad Claire.
I am motivationally challenged.

Also, sitting here at my highly addictive 'pooter listening to Interpol and drinking a glass of wine (gotta get back on the horse....) and going through the archives of bloggers I met on Friday probably doesn't help.


Still, looking at pictures of hot bloggers is never a waste of an evening.

Today I bought a humidifier. This is an odd concept for me, because where I come from we have to buy dehumidifiers because we live in a maritime climate thats what you get when you live on the coast of some island in the South Pacific.
The thing is, because its facking cold here we have to have the heating cranked most of the time and the air is really dry and it messes up your mucous membranes ie makes your nose bleed. SO PRETTY!!!!

Now I have the humidifier sitting next to the heating vent and ones blowing hot dry air and ones blowing cool-ish wet air and balance has been restored to the force.

There's one particular song by Interpol called "The New" and goddam its sexy theres one bit in particular where it kind of recedes a little and then theres this huge fat wall of guitar that comes and does dirty things to you but dirty in a really good way and its a bit Flying Nun Dunedin-ish and I can imagine how it would sound live and I think if I saw them live and they played this song and it sounded as good as I think it would I would probably keel over dead with pure music-y guitar wall joyousness. Although I kind of did hear them live because the night before I left NZ Tim was in Wellington seeing Interpol and he called me and held the phone up so I could hear because he's not nearly as bad as he makes out he is.

Ah, fuckit. I have to read a bunch more and NOT WATCH THE X FILES DVD I HAVE IN MY COMPUTER RIGHT NOW AS WE SPEAK BECAUSE WORK = GOOD AND ANYTHING ELSE = BAD

Where did King Richard keep his armies?

UP HIS SLEEVIES!!!!!

Me so funny.
Work now.

Blogstock '06

I survived! Yay!
Admittedly it was touch and go for a bit there, especially on my "I must buy a snowglobe for Holly" mission the next day, but thanks to the patience of Mr Grimshaw and Mr Allbright snowglobes were procured, as were some other souvenir type thingys for my friends and for me and for my sister. But mostly for me.

Why is the little speech bubble for my google chat account flashing at me? Stop it! You're freaking me out!!

OK I was really freaking sick the next day, and getting on a bus all the way back to Syracuse the next day was about as much fun as genocide and cancer COMBINED. With a side order of herpes.

It was not, however, the worst hangover I've ever had, the honour of that title goes to the time I had a twelve hour stopover in Denpasar Bali in May 2001 on my way to Europe and a bunch of us got off our chops and then had to fly to Bangkok and get off the plane for 45 minutes and then get back on the plane for 12 hours to London and about the time we were above Delhi I was ready to open the plane doors and jump out.
Strangely enough, they wouldn't let me.

Actually yesterday was pretty damn funny.
I was having breakfast with Grimshaw at some cafe and I had to keep running downstairs to the loo to have a puke.
I've just realised that the last post I made was all about puking and the one before that was all about snot.
I'M TOO SEXY FOR THIS BLOG!!!!
What's next? The poo post?
No, I think I'll spare you that.

So, meeting bloggers in real life is fun.
Some are taller, some are cuter, all were drunker, a fair few said "Planet what? I don't think I've read that" to which I replied "Oh, you're the one! hahaha look how funny I am"
at which point they had a tendency to mumble something about needing to phone their mum and running away.

And my stupid phone doesn't work in Toronto, because it unfortunately has the suck knob
cranked up to 11. Which is a big smelly turd because I wanted to call Gwen and make everyone talk to her cos it was a real knickers-ripper that she couldn't make it but hey life's like that.
Of course, I could have liberated someone else's phone and called her, but I think by that point I was busy talking to ralph on the big white phone.

One of the first things Jeremy asked me was if the carpet matched the drapes, that was of course after he said "Oh, you look much older in real life" hahadefreaking har.
I believe the carpet/drapes thing is perhaps the Canadian version of enquiring whether the cuffs match the collar.

I have many more photos so I'm going to stop talking now and post them, but look at Chad trying to sneak a snog.
Cheeky bugger.


Oh, I almost forgot.
All you lovely Blogstock '06 attendees at Andy's pool hall are hereby ALL INVITED TO MY BIRTHDAY PARTY Its in May and I'm actually having two, one in Syracuse, New York and one in Christchurch, New Zealand so whichever one you'll be closest to please come along. The one in NZ is likely to be a bit more posh and you'll probably have to brush your hair and put your flash gears on, but hey.
Come and help me farewell my twenties. Or, alternatively, watch me cry into my chardonnay as I mourn the loss of my youth.

Toronto 1, Claire 0

Right so I went to Toronto and got drunk and ended up in the bathroom worshipping at the porcelain altar aka yakking and Raymi had to come and rescue me because she is a star and I think the people at the bar were all "hey that foreign chick is yakking in our bathroom please get rid of her" so I went back to the hotel and went beddy byes and woke up this morning to the worst hangover EVER except for about a thousand others.
Turns out that drinking disgusting amounts of scotch and beer after eating three spring rolls for dinner five hours sleep a night for the last three days and a head cold are not the best combination. I have some interesting photos of me talking to people I have no recollection of talking to but the evidence is there in my camera and the evidence never lies!
Mike Grimshaw is all that and a packet of crisps because today him and Ben were very patient while I puked my way around the various bathrooms in Toronto on a mission to buy some souvenirs for my friends. Yay for boys.
Too hungover to post pictures but they will be there eventually right now I'm going to cook myself some fucking eggs and climb into bed and watch the X Files.

blah blah clever things blah blah

I have so much snot it is just incredible. I am a snot factory. One would never have thought that the average human being could produce so much snot, but yet again, I manage to prove just how completely un-average I truly am.

I was sitting here before and all my hankies were in the wash and I had to blow my not inconsiderable nose on toilet paper and it was all ouchie.

Also, when one's head is full of snot and cold germs and all sorts of similarly attractive things it makes explaining the absence of a coup during Suharto's regime in Indonesia quite a challenge.
There are all these words written out in front of me, and I know I know what they mean, but I'm bollocksed if I can get them to make sense. Fack.

But its ok because once I've written this I can have my dinner and watch CSI Warrick Brown and wax my eyebrows and pack my bag and have a sleep and get up and hand in my paper and get on a bus and go to Toronto (its in Canada, see) and drink booze with bloggers just like it says in the picture.
I'm going to be a rebel and not wear red because even when I'm not wearing red I'm still wearing red cos I'm a big ginge.
GINGERGINGERGINGERGINGER!!!!!!
Yep, thats me. Ginger McGinge, of 114 Ginger St, Gingeville.

HOLY CAPS LOCK BATMAN I HAVE SO MUCH SNOT AND I HAVE A PAPER TO WRITE AND I WANT TO GO GET STUCK IN TO THE BOTTLE OF RATHER AVERAGE CHARDONNAY THATS SITTING IN MY FRIDGE AND THEN GO TO BED AND DREAM SWEET THINGS ABOUT CSI WARRICK BROWN AND POSSIBLY SAWYER AS WELL.

But because I am a good little mouse I will write my paper and ground it in theory and historical context and not do it while drinking. Ok, maybe just one wee glass....

Edit: the definition of compromise: A mug of hot lemon, honey and ginger in one hand, a glass of chardonnay in the other. My paper is getting better by the sip.

See I've already waited too long, and all my hope is gone...

Today, Christopher Lance Cairns plays his final match for New Zealand.
It is truly a sad day for New Zealand, indeed, world cricket.
Ah, Chris.
One of my earliest objects of affection, I remember the days when you were a tall skinny lad playing for Canterbury. Before anyone had ever heard of Vettori, Styris, Fleming, the Marshall twins. Back in the day when the name Jeremy Coney still meant something, when Martin and Jeff Crowe were more famous than their idiot cousin, when Ian Botham was still in the news for being a mulleted drunken twat, and when the great Imran Khan reigned supreme.
How we cheered when you made the New Zealand team, how we giggled when we heard all the gossip about you and certain members of the women's cricket team because let's face it Chris, Christchurch is a small town.
We put on a brave face when you played the English summer for Nottinghamshire, but really we were a little hurt. How we cried with you when your sister died, and how we applauded you for dedicating a kick-arse season to her memory on the Friday night sports show with Clint Brown c1993.
Ah, Chris. The day you got married, a thousand hearts across Aotearoa broke a little bit, and then a year later they were repaired when you got divorced.
We cheered with you when your babies were born, and bought up the delicious fudge you and your father the legendary Excalibur created.
We will always love how you can make Shane Warne your bitch.
We will miss how you smack seven shades of shit out of that wee leather ball, send it out of the park and make lesser men scratch their heads in wonder.
We will always love how you do it with such style and grace, and make us proud.
And most of all, we will never forget how you participated with such gusto, in the valiant campaign to Bring Back the Beige.
You had some big shoes to fill, and you did us proud.

Three cheers.

How you turned my world you precious thing.....

Things that suck:
- R-bizzle isn't coming to Toronto with me
- I am getting a cold and feel shitty about ten different ways
- The walk to school this morning made me all dizzy so I really can't go to the gym

Things that don't suck
- I am still going to Toronto
- My hair is cool
- The delicious fishboy texted me a valentines day snog
- Grace
- Spongeback Mountain (see previous post)
- talking to Ben for over two hours on google chat while he was supposed to be working.
- My Gryffindor scarf

Yes, it appears the balance lies in favour of things that don't suck.
All is well with the universe.

Proof that nothing is sacred, not even Spongebob

Click here and watch and be amused

C/o- clever Tark

Too low to find my way, too high to wonder why

Allright, stop with the harrassing. I'm going to Toronto, ok?
Geez.
Gonna go to Toronto, gonna get drunk, gonna fall over, gonna have fun, gonna get a hangover....
Then I'm gonna get on a bus for the five hours back to this snowy town. Fun.
Hangover + bus = agony.
Perhaps I'll stash a bottle of scotch in my bag so I don't sober up until I get home.

Ooooh!!!!

I went to the gym AGAIN today because I am a freaking STAR and I ran again and I rowed again (15 seconds faster) and I did some weighty exercisey thing with some weighty machiney thing and some other abdom abdem adbo stomach exercise thing and holy lactic acid buildup I am going to be one sore little kitten tomorrow.
But then in three months and six days when I'm thirty I'll be so damn fit and gorgeous people will not believe it. I will take so many photos and post them up and then my email inbox will be filled with offers of diamond rings and roses and chocolates and porsches and I'll say sorry boys, you had your chance, Viggo honey lets go.

Also, here's whats really nice after the gym (why do the tellys in the gym always play a thousand commercials for food?) is a honey nut muesli bar and a hot shower then a plate of Claire's special recipe risotto with extra peanut sauce and some feta crumbled over the top and an aloo paratha. Oooooh, my life is the freaking business.

However before I go bussing off for some Canadian shenanigans I have to write an interview assignment on the G8's decision on debt relief last year and a paper on coup and military rule in Indonesia.

My friend R-bizzle has never seen a single Ali G episode. That makes me sad. So sad in fact that I have put Ali G on the top of my netflix so I can edumacate her on the awesomeness of the Staines massive.
Booya.

Stop and stare what the fuck you don't know me

Legs = ouch.
I went to the gym and I ran on the treadmill for 2.5kms which is also 1.6 miles which isn't very much but its a hell of a lot more than what I ran the day before which was precisely no kms which is no miles.
Then I rowed for 2kms in ten minutes on the rowing machine (well it's not like I rowed on the stairmaster is it dumb-arse) and did it in ten minutes and I'm going to go faster and longer every week and very soon there'll be no puku only a nice wee tummy and toned arms and general healthiness etc.
So, then I went out and got drunk.

I'm considering going to this geeky blogger fest in Toronto next weekend, but I'll only go if Apoc is going. Also, if I can finish my paper in time. And can magic some money out of thin air.
But I'm considering it.

Speaking of money, I'm still awaiting donations to the Claire TV fund.
Perhaps I should set up a Paypal account, that way all my millions of readers can each donate $10 and I can buy loads of tellys.

In other news, arguing on the internet is still very much like running in the Special Olympics.

Woof.

Today!!!!!

I am going to the gym.
So that in three months one week and one day when I turn thirty I will look less like this







And more like this


Booya.

Holy PHWOAR Batman!!!!

Warning: potential Lost spoilers for all those not fortunate enough to have just finished watching this weeks Sawyer-fest I mean episode.
Now Tony Pierce has the decency to wait a good day and a half to go posting about Lost so all his dedicated readers have enough time to watch the episode they recorded because they were out having fabulous lives of glamour and excitement, but quite frankly if I'm not out having glamour and excitement then I don't want to go making concessions for any of you bastards who are. (tried to put links there to the busblog and a Lost post of same but blogger having emotional problems)
And of course those who live in my fine home country of Aotearoa New Zealand will go looking for episode gossip on the internets anyway.

So, tonight's Lost. Subtitled: When Good Hobbits Go Bad (and when Sawyer looks fit).
Did not see that coming.
I must confess, if I had in fact been standing up when Sawyer said "theres a new sherrif in town" I am convinced my knees would have in fact buckled under me. There were little tingles in places that haven't been tingled nearly enough recently.
But Kate was right, he needs everyone to hate him so that he can live with himself, because he really did love that woman although she was the long con but he was just retreating into his tried and true identity as a conning cunning hottie. And Sawyer was right in observing that "you don't hate me Freckles" because how can you hate something that fit.
Once upon a time I was having a conversation with an Assimilated Negro about the fine balance between hotness and bastardness in a man and I said something along the lines of "I don't care what CSI Warrick Brown is like as a person quite frankly I don't give a flying fuck because if you look like that nobody cares what you're like well I sure as shit don't".
Ah, television. It is your friend.
Actually, television is your friend when it works, not so much in my case because the television has gone boom, but without the fun of going boom ie its crapped out completely and I'm too skint to buy another one, and so I get to watch telly from Tuesdays until Fridays because that when Sadaf is away and I can watch the telly in her room all the other times I'm confined to watching dvds on my pooter its a good thing I've got Netflix isn't it?
Please send me money so I can buy a telly.

And while I'd like to say that I must away so I can do significant amounts of work for my IPE class in the morning, I will more than likely recharge my glass of wine and watch an episode of one of the tv programmes I have from netflix. Being so exhausted as I am from my afternoon nap and doing about two hours of work before cooking a most delicious chicken salad and watching Lost.

Graduate school: should probably involve more work than this. Oops.

And I don't want the world to see me, cos I don't think that they'd understand, when everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am

I:
- got inspired to do another one of these cos fil did one and cos its been a while
- am currently drinking a rather average glass of Australian cabernet sauvignon and loving it
- have just been talking to G-wizzle on google talk
- am unapologetically a feminist
- am in love with the idea of someone rather than an actual person
- have a broken television
- can tie a knot in a cherry stalk with my tongue
- go home in 98 sleeps
- had a lovely Waitangi Day, thanks for asking
- have invited some friends in Australia to go to NZ for my birthday party in May
- really hope they can make it
- am going to the dentist again tomorrow for another round of fillings
- drink an insane amount of water
- think the water in the fine state of New York is complete arse
- would like to go to Canada
- want a puppy
- have two piercings that are not on my ears
- have more freckles than anyone in the world ever
- am so completely shit with money its beyond funny
- am in dire need of a chiropractor
- have 3 months 1 week and 5 days left of my twenties
- sometimes forget just how good I've got it
- will tell people that I don't have any grandparents even though my father's mother is still alive
- have broken my nose, two ribs, two fingers and a tiny wee bone in my foot
- have moved beyond hypochondria to pure alarmism: if I sneeze its not the flu, its ebola
- have on/in my bed two pillows red sheets a red tartan duvet a teddy bear a tiger called Raji and a blue and yellow cushion shaped like a flower
- am probably too old to have stuffed toys in my bed
- am jealous of people in relationships
- would do most of it exactly the same again if I had the chance. Most of it.
- want to be beautiful
- could probably kick your arse
- have a wee fat tummy
- have a tendancy to judge people on a single action although I know thats an inaccurate way of ascertaining a person's character and would not want to be judged on a single action of my own
- wish I could believe in something
- never get sick of hearing Tori Amos sing "Crucify"
- usually have a small number of real life friends
- missed my best friend's 30th the other day because I was here and she was there
- think David Duchovny is hot hot hot
- once had a cat called Special Agent Dana Scully
- once shared a cat with my best friend that was called Indiana Jones
- secretly laughed every time Chad called him "Junior" in the manner of Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
- should probably be in bed right now
- think that Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds' record "Let Love In" is fantastic shagging music
- have really long legs
- miss my sister's kids so much sometimes it physically hurts
- have one of those exercise balls I really don't use enough
- sometimes think I'm mildly retarded
- see music in colour
- once stayed out so late after work my mum called the police because I forgot to call home and say where I was and still feel bad about it because my mum and my sister were so worried they thought I was dead or worse
- was a bridesmaid once in 2000 and no longer see the bride because I have major reservations about her character and not just from one incident from many over time and sometimes I feel bad about that because I heard that she had a baby that died and I think perhaps a better person than me would have called her even though it doesn't change the things about her character I objected to
- think perhaps I have gone on too long
- am suspicious that the university are going to figure me out and take back the money they give me and my scholarship because it was all a terrible mistake and there is someone far more deserving out there who went to Harvard or Yale or something and has a gazillion degrees with a GPA of 4.0 since the day before they were born and not little old me who got a mere Merit for my MA not even a Distinction and has a GPA that would make grown men cry
- wish that Netflix would get season 2 of Black Books
- can't figure out how to change the default email on my laptop to gmail
- am happy its snowing
- bid you goodnight

Grrrrr

Haloscan is being a dick. I have been trying to fix the comment notification thing, and every time I go in to change it, it says settings saved but nothing. I've tried republishing my whole blog as well, and forcing updates through haloscan but still nothing.
Now I am all angry because it was funny before because it was a classic Ab Fab joke and now its dumb.
More like suckoscan I think.

In other news....the world is extremely bizarre.

That is all.

I wanted freedom, bound and restricted, I tried to give you up, but I'm addicted

Claire vs. knife.
The bandaid on my finger has made it all fat and it keeps hitting the wrong key. Lots of spelling fixing going on in the background.

None of that sort of drama in academia, I'm afraid.
No drama at all, in fact in the last couple of days there's been no work either. I am so slack and my 3.778 GPA will be tumbling south to that of lesser mortals unless I give myself a stern talking to and cut down on the internerds and naps and dvds and general fannying about I seem to be filling my days with. Right now I should be finishing the reading on the Russian army and starting the reading on the Chinese army and then reading my IPE book and coming up with questions to ask in class and researching my paper on Indonesia and preparing my paper for the review thats due tomorrow and also there is a couple of emails I should really write and my room is a little messy and I still haven't transferred all my music from media player to itunes cos i'm a retard and my socks have a hole in them so I could be darning them but no. I'm blogging and singing along to Everything But The Girl and now Interpol. Also my cup of tea has gone cold. Urgh.
One thing I have discovered in my rather limited travels around the world is the immense difficulty of finding a decent cup of tea outside the Commonwealth.

I got tagged by the fishboy so here we go.

Four jobs I've had
Chef
Waitroid
University Lecturer
gardener

Four movies I can watch over and over
The English Patient (Almasy! Katharine! Mr Darcy!)
Independence Day (best watched while horizontal on a sofa extremely hungover armed with a large bottle of the dark master and a BK value meal)
Labyrinth (everything I know that is true about the world I learned from that movie)
Wings of Desire (because I want to believe it's a true story)

Four places I've lived
Christchurch, New Zealand
Adelaide, Australia
Kalithias, Rodos, Greece
Syracuse, New York, USA

Four TV shows I love
M*A*S*H
House
Fawlty Towers
ER

Four places I've vacationed (thats American for "been on holiday")
Wanaka, New Zealand (at every available opportunity)
Santorini, Greece
London, England
Manhattan, New York

Four of my favorite dishes
Chicken salad, preferably made by me
Palak paneer
Thai style green curry
Marmite on toast (could you BE more of a Kiwi?!?!)

Four sites I visit daily
Planet Claire (to see if anyone has left me comments, and therefore loves me)
Stuff.co.nz (I am so parochial its beyond funny)
Go Fug Yourself (cos I am a nasty bitch and love it!!)
BBC World (cos I miss the news at night)

Four places I would rather be right now
In the spa pool on the front porch of our house in Wanaka overlooking the lake and the mountains.
At the pub.
Snuggled up in bed with a hot boy
At my sister's house drinking wine with her and playing with the kids

Five bloggers I am tagging (haha rules get bollocksed!!)
Chad
Gwen
Sunshine
Apoc
Miche

In your endless summer night I'll be on the other side, when you're beautiful and dying, all the world that you've denied....

Just quickly....
Firstly: I am considering signing up to one of those things where you pay about $4 to get some software and can then download episodes of tv programmes for free and watch them at your leisure which works wonderfully for me given the rather temperamental nature of our telly (works maybe one time out of ten) and the fact that while there is a second telly in Sadaf's room occasionally she wants to watch it herself and not have me sitting there drinking wine and telling CSI Warrick Brown just how fit he really is and also the fact that we are poor graduate students who don't have cable and therefore miss out on stuff that the cable-folk have and I hate missing out on things especially when I can watch them online and I've got this speedy flash shiny internet connection so lets use it ok? anyway.....
There are a few versions of the tv episode download thing I could possibly sign up for. Anybody got any idea what is the best one?

Secondly: Not a single person commented on the significant cuteness of the kitten in the previous post. Am sorely disappointed in you all.

Thirdly: I have rearranged my links and added some new ones. Just wanted to share that. The fact that I did that instead of editing my piece for the internal academic review journal thats due next week is probably more significant to me than anybody else, but hey.

Fourthly: its only 102 sleeps until I go home. Look out NZ.

Not at all like rain on your wedding day

I have had a headache for about two weeks now, and in the last couple of days its got really bad. I'm pretty sure its just a combination of needing new glasses and needing a trip to the chiropractor, its nothing major I know because the old "close eyes and put hot water bottle on the back of the head" trick seems to work fine for easing the pain.

As does booze.

And therein lies the irony. Those who know me in the real world of live action people will know a) my love of booze and b) my ability to drink a lot of it and c) my horrific toilet-hugging head pounding please-god-kill-me-now hangovers.

Drinking booze = headache, amongst other things.

However, the only thing that seems to be completely succeeding in easing the pain of this fucking cunty bastard of a headache, given the fact I am unable to rest my poor sore head on a hot water bottle because I have to finish reading this book before class tomorrow morning and post some comments on it on our class webpage and do my washing and cook and eat dinner and some other things I'm sure I haven't thought of yet, is booze.
I have nearly finished my second Corona and strangely enough, headache nearly gone!

Oh, the irony.

Also, ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife is not irony. Its a simple lack of forward planning.