Umm, yeah, sooo............

I think I might have recovered from the wrecking, although 3 hours sleep on Sunday night didn't help. I have no explanation. I was tired, I went to bed, and lay awake for hours. Boooring!!!!!

Its party central here, last night it was lights out at 8.20pm. Rock on, Jimmy.

Because people have asked, and because I am kind of proud of it, here is the wedding cake I made. For my sister. For her wedding.

Srsly, if one person did, 20 people came up to me and said "OMFG girl! That cake was teh awsum!!"*
5 cakes (although I actually made 7, which didn't last much longer than the 5 I used) of chocolate and chocolate-vanilla marbled, it stood about 40cm high and the bottom layer was about 35cm diameter.
The penguins were on the Chilean wedding cake as well, I made Carlos bring them over for my cake. Continuity, they call that.
This is the topper I bought and put on the practice ensure-that-the-bride-and-groom-actually-like-it cake I made a couple of days previously.
Emma wanted that on the real cake, but Dad wasn't entirely sold on the idea, if you get my drift.

And now I shall return to despairing of the state of this country's education system as reflected in the writing abilities of its first year university students. Head, meet desk. *THUNK*

*it is entirely possible that I somewhat elaborated on the language.

How to completely wreck yourself in 10 easy steps

1- Spend your last night in your home country sitting up late with your bff drinking wine. Continue the last 12 days trend of waking up at 7 am.

2- Arrive at airport at 1.30 to check in for international flights. Wait in airport for 1 & 1/2 hours.

3- Fly to Auckland at 3pm. Wait in Auckland airport for 3 & 1/2 hours. Drink 2 pints of Speights.

4- Fly to LA. Manage approximately 4 hours sleep. Read Ramsay's autobiography from cover to cover and watch 2 & 1/2 episodes of Top Gear.

5- Due to poor planning on ticket-booker's part, miss connecting flight from LA to Chicago. Wait in LAX for 10 hours. During that time, attempt sleep. Due to screaming children and stupid airport security announcements, manage about 1 & 1/2 hours sleep.

6- Fly from LA to Chicago at 11pm. Manage zero hours of sleep.

7- Wait in Chicago airport for 1 & 1/2 hours. Achieve zero sleep.

8- Fly from Chicago to Syracuse. Manage 1 hour's sleep. Arrive in Syracuse 9am.

9- Arrive at house in time to have cup of tea with Tyra, shower, and find half clean clothes.

10- Go to school, teach 2 classes.

Total travel time: nearly 40 hours
Total sleep: 6 & 1/2 hours
Total distance covered: approximately 15,ooo kms
Total wrecked-ness: unprecedented.

Home Home Home

I'm home.
It's awesome.

Doing some sightseeing with the Chilean in-laws today, meeting a couple of my boys for a Ginger Tom, drinks at my sister's place, dinner at Dad's, then off to Mount Cook tomorrow with parents and the bride and groom and The Peanut. Wanaka the next day, then worky work for a few days to get all ready for the nuptials.
I am making a wee speech, in English and Spanish. Note: I don't speak Spanish.

Updates likely erratic.

In conclusion: being here is the shizzle.
Ok bye.

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go......

I'm off tomorrow.
Off home for 12 whole days (which is 12 days NZ time, even though I'm gone for a fortnight....so confusing)

Blogging may be erratic, but I'm sure you'll cope. Its not like you'll miss much!!!
For those of you so inclined you may rest assured that I shall be making plans to secure arrangements for your inevitable immigration.

In 41 hours I can hug my favourite people in the whole world.
That makes me happier than a whole room full of puppies.

Also, I just watched the first episode of season 4 of Doctor Who...... I tell you, I DID NOT see that coming!!!

I've had my fun and now its time to send my conscience overseas

I am sensing a pattern here.
A couple of days before I go home, I have weird moods and am indescribably tired.

About half an hour ago I was in the shower and nearly burst into tears (and no I'm not PMSing, that was my first thought) and I don't really cry that much. Then I found myself singing.
(I'm not so much a crier, more a furniture thrower and glass smasher)

This afternoon I came home and landed face down on my bed and was a hair's breadth away from abandoning the idea of dinner and work and just climbing into my bed and starting again tomorrow.

And then earlier still a couple of things went really right, and I had one of those moments where you believe that there may yet be a day in the foreseeable future where you *aren't* focusing on just getting through this one day so you can get through the next.
In those moments you realise the volume of things that make it better and that perhaps the universe possesses slightly *more* joy than a sucking chest wound, and you get a glimpse of a future where its all ok and you realise that this too shall pass.

And of course for the previous several weeks I have been my usual grouchy unsympathetic impatient self, civil only to tyratae, members of the Smith Family and about 1 in 10 of my students.

Perhaps its the imminent reprieve, because one can never underestimate the sheer exhaustion that comes from being a stranger in a strange land on one's own.
It doesn't really matter what it is, because its nearly over.
I don't understand how people can do this permanently.

Thank the gods for $7.99 bottles of wine, aye?

You damn dirty apes

Ok, is it wrong that I don't feel any sadness at the passing of Charlton Heston?
Yes, he made some good movies, but this was the guy who publicly supported Nixon and Reagan, accepted a medal from George "Right now a village in Texas is missing its idiot" W. Bush, was the head of the NRA and in that position made a statement only days after the Columbine shootings that the government could pry his gun from "his cold dead hands".

Does this make me:
a) a tree hugging granola eating wildlife loving gun hating freaky liberal
b) a heartless bitch

Warning, fan-girl level dangerously high....spoilers ahead.

t-minus 10 minutes until the first CSI of the year..... I have been waiting since December for my fix!!!
Curse you, writer's strike!

Let the live blogging commence....

8.56 pm: 4 minutes to go. Am wondering if its wrong that I am skipping a day in my tooth-whitening regimen. Focus, woman!!!!

8.59 pm: Fucking commercials.

9.00 pm: Hello Grissom. I adore you.

9.01 pm: Hello Brass. You're pretty awesome too.

9.02 pm: Hank!!! The drooliest boxer on telly. Yes, drooliest is a real word. Grissom is wearing his jammies, making himself chicken soup and coughing up a lung. He has to make it himself because SARA IS GONE!!!!

9.06 pm: I see that Catherine has taken the time off during the writer's strike to get some more work done on her face. Leave it alone woman! You are a beautiful woman, stop plasticifying your face.

9.07 pm: Hello Greg. Poor baby is sick too.

9.08 pm: NICKY!!!! Le sigh.

9.14 pm: The whole team has got the lurgy. Poor Nicky..... and all the others of course.

9.20 pm: More of Grissom's house. This is rare, but sadly, NO SARA!!! Brass cries. Nicky looks hot. Happily Warrick has turned up for this week's performance instead of sending in a cardboard cut out of himself, as he did for the last few episodes. Perhaps there was an upside to the writer's strike after all, you know, aside from the better deal for writers and all....

9.27 pm: BOOM!!!

9.32 pm: Grissom references MacGyver. I die a little bit. Too. Much. Awesome.

9.34 pm: Flatmate tells me that she has a "really bad flu" and that I should be careful and take my vitamins so I don't get it. Note that flatmate is up and walking and talking and eating and therefore doesn't have the flu.

9.35 pm: Nicky looks fine, disses Hodges. I smile.

9.41 pm: Where is the dog? I want more Hank. Consider that perhaps Vegas might not be the safest place in the world to live. Remember this isn't a documentary. Have another sip of wine. Experience moment of sadness because CSI is over halfway done.

9.45 pm: Ben pings me online and gives me shit about being a fangirl.

9.53 pm: Grissom mentions Dave Eggers. See 9.32 pm. There is some complicated story about a bad-arse gang guy and Dante's Inferno and piss (really) and a burnt out car. Thankfully, iTunes will download the episode tomorrow so I can actually pay attention to the story instead of geeking about.

9.57 pm: Grissom receives a phone call from Sara. Sigh. Episode ends. "Coming up, scenes from our next episode....."

10.00 pm: Next week looks grim. Next week I will be home. Yin, meet yang. Happily, the one outweighs the other.

10.01 pm: Ooooh look! Without A Trace!!!

M.I A. rocks my world




Updates:
- by 7.15 on Monday morning I had already walked 2 dogs.
- I'm going home in a week.
- I need to find a summer sublet for my flat.
- I fit my jeans again.
- My cow slippers are falling apart.
- I have accumulated far too much stuff in the nearly-three-years I have lived here.
- I'm going south a week before Bonnaroo to do fun southern stuff and get shown around the place by a proper Southern son-of-a-preacher-man boy.
- The top step onto the porch and into my building is missing, replaced by a hole.
- I'm going to make bacon vodka.

I know what I *said*.....

But for serious, I challenge anyone to sit down to a medium rare sirloin on a mozzarella crusted polenta cake topped with garlic, pinenuts, spinach and green beans without requiring a glass of cabernet sauvignon to wash it down with....

In other news, I got a dress for my sister's wedding. I think its appropriately pretty and respectable, as well as being appropriately understated and not-as-pretty-as-the-bride's dress.
At least I hope I have the balance right.

I'll take you all on

Today it was Not Freezing (7 in normal, 44 in American) which makes a rather significant change from the last few months, so to celebrate I borrowed Maggie the Mega Dog and together we felt the wind in our hair and got mud on our feet and ran through the park and chased the blackbirds and breathed the air and smelled the first beginnings of spring and we were happy.

First night of your life, curled up on your own



I heard this song ages ago and really liked it, but recently I listened to it again and actually listened to the lyrics...... and fuck me its an intense tune. I challenge anyone to listen to this song and pay attention to the actual lyrics and not at least get goosebumps.
After a couple of listens I googled it, and it turns out its actually about what I thought it was about, which makes it even more intense.
Anyway its late and I'm kind of tipsy, so just listen to the song ok? Cheers.

Mr Obama I like you, but don't be such an arrogant fucker

One thing that really rips my knickers about this country is this myth that lives in the popular consciousness that somehow it is so unique and free and that the rest of the world sits around and goes "Gosh, that America is a bit fantastic isn't it?"
Yeah, its a pretty cool place, in so many ways. It does my fucking head in as well, in so many ways, but every country I've lived in, including my own, does that as well.

Obama, generally a pretty cool guy, does this amazing speech about race and justice and history and legacies and whoever writes his speeches should well be giving themselves a pat on the back right about now. But I couldn't let this one bit pass without comment.

In talking about the fact that he is the son of a white American woman and a black Kenyan man, that he has family of all colours all over the world, that he went to some of the best schools in America and is now running for office he says, and I quote "for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible"

You're kidding, right? Does he really believe that?
The implications of that phrase just do my fucking loaf, you know? That there is no other country in which the child of an immigrant can run for office, that nowhere else can a person of untraditional parentage can attend good schools and make a success of themselves, that the rest of the world lives in this time warp in which if one is born a chambermaid, one may never rise above the station of chambermaid no matter one's abilities.
That we still judge a person's suitability for office on the occupations of their parents and the residency of their grandparents. That one's success depends more on their parent's lineage than any other factor?
Sure, there are aspects of that the world over, and there might always be. Sure, where you are in life has a lot to do with your family, where you were born, the opportunities available to you because of your parent's wealth and your country's condition. I am living proof of that and won't dispute the fact that a significant proportion of my successes are due to the family I was born into.

But to imply that America is the only place in the world where it is possible for a man to overcome the conditions of his birth (if 'overcome' is even the right word, which I am not convinced it is) and run for public office (yes I know its a pretty significant office in the scheme of things, but its not like he's going to be president of the world) smacks of arrogance and insularity of the worst US-centric kind, and is exactly the kind of thing that, given the record of the last seven years, the US should be doing its utmost to avoid.

Mr Obama, please pull your head out of your arse, take a look around and get a realistic perspective on the world in which you are likely to become a very important part of.
Thank you, that will be all.

Normal inanity to resume presently.

Holy crap I am a blogging machine

Three things.....

Number one: I know there are rumours that he was a dirty pervert and while he was found innocent of all related kiddy-fiddling charges, as Ben reminds me, so was creepy Michael Jackson. HOWEVER!!! As a bit of a geek it would be remiss of me not to mention the passing of one of the twentieth century's greatest brains, Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

Number two: I am way too excited about this.

Number three: I had no water in my building for about 4 hours this evening and while that doesn't sound much like an ordeal in the global scheme of things, and really it wasn't, it just happened to coincide with me wanting to do all sorts of watery things such as wash the dishes, flush the loo and have a leisurely hair-washing leg-shaving shower. I had to wait, and I am really not very good at waiting.
Its probably character building.... most things that suck are.

OK cos I can't count, number four: In a very brief conversation with the delightful Sunshine this evening, the following phrase was uttered: "You say potato, I say fucking bitch".

Not complaining, merely observing...

The thing about living in a different time zone is that days last so much longer.
Say, hypothetically speaking, that Tuesday was a Significant Day for one's family.
One's family is at home, which is currently 17 hours ahead. To participate in Significant Day therefore, Tuesday essentially begins on Monday afternoon because I am here and they are there.
However, because I am here, Tuesday goes until the end of Tuesday in my time zone, thus making it a day and a half long.
Which is all well and good for the most part, but when said Significant Day is not so much a cause for celebration as the end of all the firsts and the beginning of a whole other thing that involves redefining normal life and there being no more surprises in this new world and generally a day characterised by terrible fucking sadness then really 24 hours is just about enough.

One Year



We miss you

Not exactly Cancun....


This is what I did on my Spring Break.
How was yours?

Given the time and the moon, you look a lot like her

I say this quite a lot I know, but how on earth did we manage ANYTHING without the internets?
I've just spent the last 10 minutes comparing flights on priceline.com for this June's Tennessee (and possibly the mythical pirate state of Arkansas) musical adventure.

I can sit here in my jammies and compare flights from Memphis to LA with flights from Little Rock to LA, and then compare a trip from here to Memphis and from Little Rock to LA with a trip from here to Little Rock and from Memphis to LA.
The verdict is that there is obviously something seriously spiffy about flying in and out of Memphis because its hella expansive compared to Little Rock. Perhaps Memphis airport is gold plated or something.

I still don't know if I am driving south or flying cos it looks like Paulie is going south a week early for a thing and I am yet to decide if I am better off driving with him early or hanging about here and flying south the day before Bonnaroo. Ideas?
He is going to be in one of the Carolinas, which according to the map in the back of my diary are both right next to Georgia, which is next to Alabama so I could go and stalk Harper Lee.
Surely between us we can find something to keep me amused for a week in the deep South (on the cheap, cos I am church-mousey in my poor-ness).

Viable suggestions welcomed.

Thanks, universe

Great.
Now, on top of the rib-shattering I-sound-like-a-character-in-a-tragic-opera-dying-of-the-consumption cough, and the snot, and the headache and all the other fun things that go with this lovely lung infection/cold double barrelled health bomb, I have a freaking toothache.
Of course, me being me, its never just a toothache is it. No. Its an ache that starts in my tooth and goes all the way to the roots and spreads right through the joint of my jaw. Basically half my face hurts.

Would someone please just put me out of my misery?

This blog brought to you by the Whinging Pom Brigade. I'm getting in touch with my ancestry....

Sparks

The tinest of tiny sparks in the settling storm: went out with some fellow single friends on VDay.
Friend One there meets a friend of Friend Two.
Friend One emails me afterwards requesting information about Friend Two's friend. I pass on request to Friend Two, who passes it on to friend. Friend replies in the affirmative, so Friend Two and I gleefully pass on the appropriate information to the appropriate parties.

Friend One and Friend of Friend Two Go and Do Fun Stuff, and plan to Do More Fun Stuff again.

I sigh, safe in the knowledge that even if my life is a big pile of turds, romantically speaking, at least its not contagious.

It's Alive!!!!!

Update from the front: I am still breathing and mostly alive.
Most excitingly, I was in fact hungry yesterday so instead of having to force half a cup of soup and a piece of toast down my throat I actually ate most of an omelette. This morning I really went to town and ate 2 pieces of toast with tomatoes on top and a banana with yoghurt, which I think is more than I have eaten in one sitting for a week. (Am currently ignoring the fact that I feel sick from eating so much.)

I can also sleep now, which is nice.

And now: time to catch up on all my work.

I can't remember the last time I was this sick. Possibly that week at the beginning of 7th form when I was off school for a week and lost 5kgs. That was 15 years ago. Hopefully it will be another 15 years until I am that sick again, this shit sucks.

Currently running on about 65% engine capacity. Estimate 75% by tomorrow.
(yeah.... spent a bit of my downtime watching Top Gear. Clarkson for PM!!!)