LAX II

Sorry it's taken so long... but here goes.

Where was I? Oh yes. Was planning to buy presents and then this happened.

I got in the queue for immigration. An hour later I was still in the queue for immigration. What was most frustrating about this was that they kept opening new queues but taking the people from the BACK of our queue over to the new queue. Which would then get procesed super fast while we stayed in our S.L.O.W. queue. So the Jamaican lady in front of me had a shout at the immigration steward who was moving people around with no regard to who had been there first etc. She pointed out that 'It's like a freeway. You never know which lane is going to move faster."

Philosophical.

No one else seemed to be philosophical about it though and pretty soon this lady was getting dogs abuse. At this point, I had been in the queue for two hours and my concern had moved from not having time to shop to missing my connecting flight. I spoke to the Aristotle of US Immigration and she told me that I should have told her when I first got to the queue that I had a flight to catch. I pointed out that two hours ago and fifteenth in the queue I thought I had plenty of time to spare. "I'll see what I can do." she said.

Apparently what she could do was to move herself to work on another queue. That queue was far enough away that I would have to leave my queue and lose my place to go and talk to her again. Or shriek at her and probably take 65 bullets to the face by trigger happy yank wank guards.

Here's a sugestion LAX- since you insist on people who don't even want to enter you're shitty, bullying, capitalist pig dog country clearing immigration, how about you have seperate queues for those people who have connecting flights. It's hardly a giant mental leap.

So EVENTUALLY I cleared immigration and I still had to collect my luggage, clear customs, check in, clear security and board. My flight was boarding in twenty minutes. By the time I got to security my flight was boarding. The line was (Now I know I'm prone to a bit of exaggeration but this is the God's honest truth) 250 metres long. I whiped past the line to the security guard, certain that I could skip ahead as my flight was boarding. The security guard looked exactly like Adam Sandler wold if he was a couple of stone heavier.

I fucking hate Adam Sandler. The conversation went like this:

Lorraine: (A bit breathless after sprinting quite a bit, but smiling and friendly) My flight is boarding now
Fat Adam Sandler (FAD): (Smiling delightedly with a vacant look in his eye) Uh
Lorraine:( in a 'oh sorry, it's my accent, you didn't understand me' tone) My Flight. It's boarding now.
FAD: (Still DElighted with himself and nodding) Uh Uh.
Lorraine: So can I go through please?
FAD: Nope

Now here's what I should have said in order to make my point that I am a polite if somewhat stressed passenger and he is not being as helpful as I'm sure he is encouraged to be by his supervisor:

"Oh I understand now, See when you said, "Uh" I just assumed that you were one of those moronic, slow wited morans that your country specialises in the mass production of. But now I see you are in fact a rude and unhelpful neanderthal."

What I actaully said was "Cock sucking mother fucker" Which although harsher, makes me look like the nasty customer.

I can visualise his face now and I really really want to SLAP it.

I fucking hate LAX

LAX

Los Angelus Airport.

I FUCKING HATE the place.

I will be including a number of inflammatory words and links in the attempt to make this blog noteworthy to the American Government and so get my complaint letter on record by any means necessary.

George Bush, Death threat, Saddam Hussein.

The thing about passing through America on your way to somewhere else is that a while ago, some terrorists flew some of their planes into some of their buildings. This is very very very sad. And as a result they are conscious of security the way I am often conscious of my head after drinking nine bottles of wine.

Jihad, Osama Bin Laden, 9/11.

That's fair enough. Now it's quite frustrating that the response to this terrorism hangover is that, on a stopover, from one country to the next, I need to clear immigration, have my photo taken, get fingerprinted, collect all of my luggage, clear customs and go and check it all the fuck back in, clear security, get xrayed and finally go to my shitty departure lounge because LAX was built before a single person in America had any notion of class, comfort or style. But that's the price you pay for transiting in the States and the upside is it increases your luggage allowance.

Terrorism, National security, Suicide bomber.

However.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam.

They seem to have a further obligation to make this process as frustrating as possible.

War, Attack, Invasion.

So on my way home I had a three and a half hour stopover in LAX. 'Ah' I thought, 'I will stock up on books in Barnes and Noble'(books are weirdly expensive in NZ), 'I will visit MAC and MAX my credit card, I will investigate the shops for a present for Dee Bee's birthday.'

Day of reckoning, American infidels, Communism.

No no and no.

Bomb, explosion, incendary device.

I'll have to tell this in installments. I'm getting too angry.

More stories

I have many more random travel stories that didn't quite make the grade while I was there. But I will include them here over the next few days/weeks.

I should say that the reason that I haven't updated here since I got back is because I have been in one of two states that precludes me from updating.

In work
Pissed

This morning it is Waitangi Day in NZ (the day they signed an agreement with Her Maj to let her have the country in return for her protection - this is the non controversial version of the treaty of Waitangi. In fact there are still a series of treaty claims and it's a big political lever. But this isn't really that kind of blog - google it if you're interested). Anyway the point is I'm at home. And although i have a hint of badger's arse in my mouth from last night's drinking I can at least type a sentence without gagging. That's probably because I restrained myself knowing that I was getting pissed today.

Anyway, which story to start with.....

Nearly over

I think I´ve finally cracked hyperlinking ... we´ll see

After two failed attempts to dive on this trip (and one in NZ just before I left) I was starting to think I was jinxed. But I´ve finished off the trip with three days of spectacular diving and I can´t believe it´s nearly over.

I did two reef dives, two at Cozumel (unreal wall of coral) and today, two Cenote dives. When I first did scuba diving in the ocean, I said it was like flinding another planet. Well today I found another one again. Completely different. I loved it.

And now all that´s left to do is pack, get a bus to Cancun (I´m in Playa Del Carmen), pick up some luggage at Dreams and then I´m on a plane home. Obviously I´m not DREADING going back to NZ, but to be fair, I could easily go another couple of months out here. I have fallen in love love love (with the place and people in general - not an individual!!)

For those of you in NZ... see you soon. For those of you not... come and visit, for those of you I´ve met on this trip - thanks for makign it memorable... and come and visit.

Travel roles

Alex and I have travelled a lot togethere. Having travelled a lot together we had certain roles that each of us took becuase we were better at it than the other one. Alex looked after money (boys´ clothes just naturally have more pockets), I always organised the accomodation (partly becuase I´m fussier, partly because it just seemed like I would get rooms when Alex had just been told they were completley full for the next six weeks).

Anyway, it´s not that I can´t work exchange rates or when Alex goes traveling he can´t find places to stay and sleeps rough. It was just that we had our roles.

However there is one thing that was Alex´s role that was purely and simply because I am SHIT at it. Navigation (that´s ´finding places´ to the rest of us).

I couldn´t navigate my way out of a paper bag. I have no sense of direction. I get lost on the way to the bathroom.

But on this trip I have embraced this flaw and just not tried to go anywhere that isn´t really really close to where I am without a cab, or someone else accompanying me who can find their arse with both hands. And I haven´t been lost once (well not really, really lost, just `oh well that restaurant has obviously shut, moved or melted, I´ll just go to this one instead´lost).

Which is why I was very disappointed with myself today when I suddenly realised that when I´d left the ruins at Tulum and gone straight I should have taken a right in order to get back to my hostal.

Here is the list of reasons why this is particularly embarassing:

1. My hostal is about 600m from the ruins. I walked about 2km before I began to think I may have gone wrong
2. On my way to the ruins, I walked past a market, an info booth and some lean tos. On my way from the ruins I walked past a ticket booth and about five hotels before I suspected something was up
3. The fucking Carribean Ocean was on my left when it should have been behind me.

As landmarks go - that´s a tough one to overlook.

Back in Mexico

Following the previous post I decided to catch the ferry from Caye Caulker to San Pedro and do some diving and a couple of wildlife watching tours. I had heard that San Pedro was an upmarket (and more expensive) version of Caye Caulker and they did regular jungle tours etc. Arriving on the Caye I went into the tourist office to see if they could recommend a good budget hostel. They recommended Ruby's which was also in my guidebook. They only had a double room for the first night but there were singles available after that. I was keen to get my bag dropped off and go and sort my tours so I said ok once I'd seen the double room even though even the single room was going to be the most I'd spent so far at US$20 a night.

So I went and investigated and realised that my budget wasn't going to stretch to a diving trip and a wildlife one. So I opted for diving and booked it for today. Yesterday I moved to the single room. It had a padlock on the outside to shut it and from the inside just a rusty bolt in rotton wood to hold the door shut. There was a guy sitting under my window (and when I say 'window' I mean ´fly screen' watching the world go by and drinking a bottle of whiskey. When I returned from a wander he was plastered and tried to come into my room with me.

I went out later and confirmed my dive for today and he'd passed out in the room next to mine with the door open. He soon revived though. From inside my room I could hear him shouting to women to come up to his room around eight. Not one but TWO pimps popped by to see what he needed for the night. He was very specific.

He had a buddy who he was yakking to and from the conversation (which was taking place about a metre from where I sat on my bed with just the fly screen to dull the sound) I discovered that he´d been in the US security forces, he came to SP every year and always stayed at Ruby´s, that he had plenty of booze and drugs for the night, EXACTLY what he spent his time (and money) doing and he was claiming that he had slept with me (amongst many, many others).

At this point I was pretty fucking miserable to be fair. It was only 6.30. If I was going to use the bathroom or get something to eat I was going to have to walk right past this asshole and I was REALLY conscious of the shitty lock on the door and the fact that I didn´t really have a window pane in the window hole.

The thing is this ridiculous travelling pride thing. Every backpacker has a cache of stories about shitty accomodation and transport. About food poisoning, bed bugs and near death experiences. They wear them like badges and trot them out to show how passionate they are about travel, what they´ll endure to make a dollar go further and get an extra day/week/month in Asia/Europe/Central America. And when I say ´they´I mean ´we´. I am absolutely guilty of it. I´ve had shitty rooms, dodgy food and caught buses and trains that were marginally cheeper for much lower quality. I´ve even stayed in a brothel in Singapore before and actually felt perfectly fine with a decent lock and the knowledge that in a couple of days Alex would arrive to meet me and we´d laugh about it.

But after an hour of his ranting I´d had enough. I reckoned that booze, drugs, shitty locks and a solo female traveller who knew no one in the town combo was just too big a risk. I grabbed my stuff and legged it.

Unfortunately my cards, passport and cash was in the office safe (as I was planning to be out all day the next day diving) and I only had US$40 on me to pay my national park fee. The office was locked for the night.

To make a long story a little bit shorter, I had to cancel my dive, use the money to book into the (expensive but safe safe safe) hotel affiliated with the dive shop and I got out of there as soon as I had my stuff and am now relieved to be back in Mexico.

What a day!

Today I awoke to my first hangover of 2008. I remember now why I stopped drinking beer. I doubt it will be my last but I really, really did not enjoy the experience. Particularly as the plan was to go manatee watching and snorkling. I had planned to go with Alan and Julie, a Canadian couple that I met on the way to Flores in Guatemala. Peer pressure prevailed and I went. So rough but so glad.

Manatees, rays, parrot fish, pelicans, storks and a whole day on a boat. Lovely lovely lovely. Best way to shift a hangover. Although I'm still a bit seedy and definitely not drinking tonight! At least right now...

I'm in Belize (Ker, I'm totting up those countries!) which is beautiful but a lot more expensive than the other places I've been so I think I'll do some wildlife watching in the next couple of days and get out of here. Back to Mexico, a final set of ruins and a few days on the beach before the mammoth trek back home.

A couple of days ago I watched the sunrise over the jungle and Tikal and heard howler monkeys, toucans and parrots wake up. One of the best things I've done on this trip and probably ever. For those of you in NZ, if you don't want to be bored to death by photos, you should avoid me for the first couple of weeks!

Why I love New Zealand

Facebook is the shit. It really is. While I was on there today loading photos I noticed that one of my kiwi friends had updated her status to ´is sad about Sir Ed´. Realising that she probably meant Sir Edmund Hillary I rushed to the NZ Herald website to find out what happened. Below is a small extract from the piece;

'To the people of the Himalayas, he was a god. Around the world, he was regarded as the greatest of adventurers, the man whose extraordinary endurance forever changed perceptions of human possibility.

And for New Zealanders, Sir Ed was everything a good bastard ought to be...'

Only only only in NZ would they say 'XX was everything a good bastard should be' on an award winning, media website.

Never in a million years would you see that on the home page of the The Guardian or The Washington Post or The Irish Times. Can you imagine? ´Today we mourn the death of the Arch Bishop of Canterbury - a thoroughly good bastard´,´Millions flocked to pay tribute to one of our nation's best bastard - Stephen Spielberg´, ´Our country is in shock on hearing of the tragic death of one of our good bastards, Eammonn Dumphy´ Atually if you left out ´good´in the last one I could imagine that in print.

I think it´s fucking brilliant. Full link below for anyone who would like to read the rest of the tribute which has some very endearing stories about a real hero.

Driving in Guatemala

Here are some things I have learnt about driving (that´s being driven in my case) in Guatemala.

1. Suspension is for the WEAK.
2. (Speedlimit + 40KMPH) x (Cobbled streets + 1000 years of earthquakes/subsuidence) = (Becoming airborne x a lot)
3. Vehicles in front of you are to be taken over AT ALL COSTS and regardless of speed, size or proximity to oncoming traffic.
4. Use of a single indicator makes you a pussy. If indicators must be used, use your hazards and keep your options open
5. Car jacks are not to be relied on. However this does not mean that you should inconvenience any of the people by asking them to get out of the vehicle while you change a tyre.
6. Sometime animals just like to hang out on the road.
7. If you´re taking the corners at the right speed, the centrifugal force should extract DNA from your passengers.
8. You should accelerate AS FAST AS YOU CAN as soon as all doors are shut. This will aid the passengers who are still standing to find their seats. If they find them with their face rather than their arse... well at least they´ll reach their destination 1/8th of a second faster.
9. If you are a passenger and attempt to rest your head on ANYTHING in an attempt to sleep, you will aquire a dent in it. This dent will be painful but you will be utterly unable to stop yourself from prodding it for the next four days to see if you can still fit your finger inside it.
10. If you get a ridiculously cheap fare it´s because they are paying their driver youth rates. They are paying him youth rates because he is a youth. I.e 14 tops.
11. 14 year old drivers are much more cautious and look like they´re going to cry when you all almost die. Which is nice.
12. If you are hot and the fans aren´t working. Simply mention it to your driver. He will very helpfully, scoot over to the passenger side of the vehicle and and open the other window. It´s important to note that he will definitely still be driving at the time. He may even be overtaking.
13. Sitting in the front seat or anywhere where you can see how close you almost came to hitting whatever if was is foolish, foolish, foolish.
14. Beeping is the punctuation of the highway. It is to be used regularly.
15. No matter how much you tell yourself that your outfit is comprised of sufficient layers to perfectly match all altitudes, speeds, seasons, times of the day and level of exposure to the elements/ open air nature of the vehicle, it fucking isn´t. You will be FREEZING at some point. At another point you will be far, far, far far far too hot. This may repeat depending on the journey.

Are you serious?

I will preface this with a disclaimer. I am not a touch typist and this keyboard had has all of the letters apart from qwypfj rubbed off.

When it comes to jewlellery, as I often say, I´m definitely quantity over quality. I generally prefer the look of tat to expensive stuff, I crave variety and I lose earrings at a scary pace. But occasionally when I travel I do like to try to get somehting ´nice´and local. The big four here are silver, jade, obsidian and turquoise. I´ve alteady stocked up on silver as that falls into the same price bracket as tat in many places. Now buying jade in CA and taking it back to NZ is a bit sand to Arabs and snow to Eskimos and obsidian - neh. But Turquoise is my birth stone, and pretty, so I´ve had a look at a few shops.

Today I went into a jade shop thinking they would have turquise also. They didn´t. But they did have a very smart looking and smiley man who I said good afternoon to and smiles at before realising he was holding a BIG FUCKING MACHINE GUN.

Tribute to a faithful travel companion

Having ignored the absolutely true adage, a stitch in time saves nine, my rucksack lid has needed major surgery to halt the decline of the seams and prevent it coming away in someone´s hand, possibly as it was being lifted onto the roof of a bus. Today it got to crisis stage and I finally had a chance to track down a needle and thread in a hardware shop.

I bought twenty needles, partly because this was the quantity they came in and partly because sewing through two layers of that fake canvas they make rucksacks out of, two layers of waterproofing and, in some cases, a triple reinforced seem, I anticipated it would take about ten needles to repair the twenty or so cm of damage.

Now I know that it´s a funny thing to pick as your first thing to RAVE about when you get to a new country (and let me be clear- I am finding Guatemala enchanting and will no doubt prattle on about that at some stage soon), but these needles were frickin fantastic. Seriously. I didn´t break a single one! You could sew rhino hide with these babies.

My sewing is rough as bricks and rucksack is not pretty but what rucksack is?

I bought my rucksack in Scotland and since then it has flown, bussed, hitched, ferried, trained, trekked, shuttled, cabbed, biked, sailed, hiked, driven, scootered and riden through 20 countries with me. It´s been thrown, slid, hefted, hoisted, dragged, dumped, dropped and pulled by every possible strap, support and grip on it thousands of times.

Its harness had to be replaced after a particularly disastrous attempt to hitch in a national park in Kangaroo island, South Australia, it´s missing one of it´s clips and it is truly truly FILTHY in an ingrained, will never again be clean, kind of way. I think this is its last trip.

The next inatallment

It´s been a whirlwind I tell ya. A real whirlwind.

I´m currently in Panajachel in Guatemala having just crossed the Mexican border a few hours ago.

After the blissful holiday with the clan in what was really really a BEAUTIFUL resort, I have gone solo and have visited Campeche, Pallanque, San Cristobel de la Casa and, as mentioned, am currently in Pana on Lake Atitlan. So much to tell so will share some highs and lows.

HIGHS (in no particular order)
Seeing the fam
Having dolphins under the bedroom window every morning while I was in Cancun
Completely, completely relaxing after a big year
New Years in Mexico with my clan
Old buildings - some of them really old!
Lovely, lovely people
Realising that arriving in a new place will never, ever lose it´s appeal for me
Being able to do exactly what I want

Lows
Getting slightly sick for the whole time I was in Cancun meaning that my one attempt to dive turned into an expensive lesson that equalising is not possible when you´ve got a runny nose
Getting groped outside a church and realising I don´t know the Spanish for 'fuck off'

I think that´s it for the lows. Not bad for three weeks of travel I reckon.

For those of you on Facebook I am trying my hardest to upload some photos but it´s proving a challenge. For those of you not on Facebook.... get on there, this is 2008 for chrissakes!

Next installment

So Im writing this in stages and way behind but I did really want to relay this story as i think i have unearhted a sinister international conspiracy.

I got to the airport in Mexico City to fly to meet the fam in Cancun. Now my experiences of flying in Peru taught me that flight times are a guideline at best. So I wasn't 100% sure that I would be landing on time. However...

She said somehting quickly in Spanish and although I don't speak Spanish I'm pretty sure that she said that my tickets had been cancelled. I repeated it in english and she nodded and went on typing furiously. Evenetually the guy on the next desk leaned in and said, 'Your flight's been cancelled' When i aksed why, he simply said 'No pilots' in the same way that you might say, 'we're out of diet coke'. 'Ah,' I said.

Eventually they put me on a flight leaving three hours later.

However the clan were planning to meet me at the airport as their flight was getting in at roughly the same time. I asked if I could call the hotel in Cancun. I was sent to the information desk.

Eventually I spoke to someone who took me into a back office and introduced me to a girl who could make a phonecall for me. I felt bad interrupting her cigarette break (there was a lit cig smouldering away on her keyboard) but she was very nice. Unfortunately I didn't have the number for the hotel. I suggested the internet. This illicited gasps of incredulity, 'We don't have inernet in this office!' Or a phone book or in fact anyway of looking up a number.

So I went to an internet hub and failed to find the website for the hotel. I found a million websites where I could book a room in the hotel, a million places where i could look at pictures. But noone had a freakin number. So I had a brainwave. I'll leave a message with their airline.

So I walked to the international section of the irport. Queued for 40 mins in the check in queue which doubled as a info queue. When I got to the top of the line, I told the gent from American Airlines that I wanted to get a message to American Airlines in Cancun, 'You want to get a message to American Airlines in Cancun?!?!?! That is impossible. How would i do that?' Eventually he recommended that I call them. So I asked for a number for their Cancun office. This resulted in a many more raised eye brows and looks implying I was asking for something entirely unreasonable. Eventually he gave me a number in the states for customer service and I treked back to my airline and queued again for the info desk.

To make a long story short when I eventually got to call AA I got a 'computer says no' response. It is impossible to get messages to people travelling on AA. Under any circumstaces.

So here's my theory. The airline industry survives only because some things just have to be done in person. Attending weddings, diving in the carribean, celebrating xmas with your family. However modern telecommunications, (phone, internet, email, teleconference etc) is making the more mundane, day to day stuff possible without any travel. The airline industry is resisting this by not embracing any of this technology themselves and making it as hard as possible to communicate (even internally!!) with people. Bastards. I bet not a single one of them has a decent internal communications manager.

I love Mexico... anyone surprised?

I'm having a ball ball ball. So much so that it's taken this long for me to haul my self out of Lazy Assland and start to update my blog.... so the story so far. Possibly in a couple of installments.

The guidebook had thoroughly freaked me out about crime and danger in Mexico City. Although I have to say that if I'd read it and was planning to travel with someone else, I probably wouldn't have worried so much. This was added to by getting in my cab to my hostal and being told that the steet it was on was closed for the xmas festival. What followed was a conversation between my cabbie and a concerned sort of concierge, which my limited spanish loosely interpreted as, "Get her as close as you can and then call a policaman over to take her the rest of the way" Either way, it was no more dangerous than, or at least I felt just as comfortable as I have in, any other major city in the world. I made my own way to the hostal.

I spent my birthday in Mexico City. Pretty much the only thing I miss (apart from the people) about living in NZ is old stuff. So I spent the whole day in museums, catherdrals and art galleries. It. Was. Lovely. And then I stumbled across the Sheraton. You see a colleague had told me that they do great Margaritas. Two Margaritas later the jet lag hit me like a ton of bricks and the day was over.

But it was a brilliant brilliant brilliant day. Although when I come back I will make sure that I speak Spanish. I created much amusement trying to buy cream of the sun and telling a cab driver that I am from Ireland but I bedroom in New Zealand.

Also I am angry at living up to the stereotype and getting a cold, so no diving so far... but it's coming.

Have to hand over the laptop (I'm on Donal's). Will update again later.

Hope everyone had a lovely xmas and is gearing up for the New Years of a live time.

First of many

I°m here. Iàm in Mexico city. Iàve been awake for about thirty hours. But Iàm here. I canàt use the keyboard... can you tell?

Anyway Iàm off to shower and go to sleep. Canàt wait to lie down FLAT.

Ooh ooh ooh though... I bought a camera... watch this space!

Apologies

Hi folks.

It's been a while. I'm aware of this. I have several excuses but they are all work related so I'll skip them....

...and say that I'm going to Mexico next week. I will be updating my blog. I will make it interesting. I will be back i the land of the sane, and the free (time) and the people who have time to do normal things.

Talk soon

One other thing...

As an addendum to the last post.... Kerry has poted a video on You Tube which has some highlights of the christening. Obviously I cried.

Even if you're not interested in the christening for some reasons there are some very cool NZ photos at the end.

Sophia's Christening

I also love the statement of non faith that Kerry has used in the sound track.

I suspect this was Jeff's idea

Inexplicable emotion

I am not a church goer. In fact I'd say I have not been inside a church of my own volition (and by that I mean other than for a wedding or funeral) snce I was about 18. But today my friends Jake and Kelley were having their daughter Sophia christened and it seemed like a worthy occassion to cehck out St Patrck's Cathedral which I walked or drove past pretty much every day for four years when I worked at UDC.

It was an 'ocassion' for many reasons. There was an Arch Bishop heading off to another Parish, it was the first Mass since they had refrubished the cathedral and baby Sophia was having her soul safe guarded- or whatever it is that happens when you get christened.

Anyway the mass seemed to be longer than I remember about two hours - although it may not have started on time since I couldn't find parking and arrived half an hour late.

I'm definitely a crier. Weddings, speeches, ads. It doesn't take much to get me going but usually the emotions are down to sentimentality I can explain. Today as we went through the mass, I found myself getting weepy at weird times. Like times other than when Sophia was being baptised, just random times in the middle of the service.

I have no idea why. I can't even tell you if the tears were happy / sad / nostalgic. I have no idea. None. Maybe I just needed a cry?

Sick *cough*

I'm at home sick. I forgot how boring it is. However I am spoiling myself with enough tea to drown a small child.

I still have a problem with the neighbour's cat. It is coming into my house and terrorising my cats. Pinot is peeing on the furniture and panics whenever the cat flap goes and her skin is starting to get flaky and dry- a really bad sign.

I want to do BAD things to this cat. Not to actually endanger it but to make it so shit scared of my house that it never never comes back.

So how should I do this? Some options below:

1. Close the outside of the cat flap so next time it comes in it's trapped. Then throw a bucket of water over it (there are some very obvious cons to this with regards to my house however I am deperate).

2. Electrify the cat flap. This involves putting my cats ina cattery for a week or so until the cat learns that my cat flap is a danger zone.

3. Have the cat assasinated

By the way I tried magnetic collars but the cat flap is on a funny angle so basically it didn't open for any of the cats - mine included

Already sick of it

I do love NZ. I really really do. I've even attempted to get a little bit into the national sport- rugby. I have attended two test matches. That's double the number soccer games I have atended having grown up with a dad who was soccer CRAZY.

But I am already thoroughly, utterly, totally, completely, 110% SICK of the fucking Rugby Wolrd cup. Every day the newspapers and TV and radio news programmes are full full full of All Blacks. They've arrived in Europe, they've had photo opps with footballers even how fricken long it would take a room full of hackers to break their training code.

In the meantime several finance companies have tipped over leaving hundreds of people who had saved for early retirement with nothing, the PM is in an all out fight with a former PM, Australia and Air NZ, an Iranian refugee almost starved himself to death to protest his deportation and th paper is full of photos of the (admitedly stinking hot) swimming All Blacks

Scent of a lemon

I made a dinner that featured an amount of lemon juice.

Therefore my fingers smell of lemons.

Therefore I keep thinking about gin and tonic.

Therefore I REALLY want a gin and tonic.

We don't have any tonic.

Incidentally, just as I finished the above sentenced some Calista Flockhart in her new show claimed that she didn't sleep with the man whore at her work, the gin slept with the man whore at her work.

I still want a gin. What does this say about me?

Good mood/ bad mood

Hello there. I thought I'd share a summary of my weekend and resulting fluctuations in mood.

It started with my addiction to Scrabulous spinning out of control. Still I won a few before I left the office - good mood!

In a bid to save time as am now late for dinner, decide to bypass supermarket in favour of off licence for booze. Try three before I find one that stocks my hosts' beer of choice (Corona) but at twice the price of the supermarket and mediocre wine at premium prices. Reduced good mood.

Get to Claire and Darryl's and drink the extortionate alcohol, eat the fabulous red curry and have great chat with great mates - excellent mood.

Toddle on home (they only live around the corner from me so left my car at theirs). Wake up only slightly hungover - Middling mood.

Walk around to get my car to find a smashed driver's side window - Bad mood

Talk to insurance and find out that so long as I only claim the smashed window (and not Pink Floyd's 'Dark side of the Moon' cd and Nifty Streets 'Silly Sausages' cd) it doesn't effect my no claims bonus - good mood.

Get back in the car to take it to the glass place and realise that the shower of cunting fucks who smashed my window also stole my A-Z - sort of vengeful, angry, homicidal mood.

Get to glass place and they say they don't stock the glass for my car - bad mood - but they can put in a vinyl thing so at least if it rains my car won't flood - better mood.

Decide today to celebrate my new job and cheer myself up by spending money I don't have on clothes I don't need. Find dress I love but in wrong fabric in Vanilla Ink in Mt Eden - dejected mood.

But they have it in the right fabric on the North Shore - exultant mood.

Cross the Harbour Bridge in gale force cross winds with vinyl window immediatly to the right of my face desperatly trying to escape the gaff tape holding it to my car, shatter into a million pieces and kill me by piercing by brain via my eyeball, causing me to careen into other cars and cause a multiple car pile up and several deaths - exceptionally fearful mood.

Repeat the above on the way back. But have THE DRESS so - ok mood.

Go to St Lukes shopping mall to get wrapping paper for a birthday present. Get back to car and cannot get into it. The remote isn't working and it seems the fuckers who broke into my car also fucked the locks because I can't get the key in - bad. mood.

Go to phone AA, realise I have left my phone at home - pissed

Lovely lady in shop let's me use their phone, lends me pen and paper, walks me to the part of the labarynthine car part where the AA meet you and even offers to stay wth me (I decline) - overwhelming sense of the goodness of humanity

90 minutes later I am still in the undercover car park, it's dark, the shops have been shut for an hour and, apart from a few yoofs, it's deserted - very impatient and slightly aprehensive mood.

AA man shows up, takes me to my car, breaks in, can offer no advice other than, "Don't lock your car and take it to the dealer tomorrow. If they tell you they're busy tell them the customer is alsways right and ask to speak to their boss and then his boss and then his boss" - resigned and baffled mood

Am now back at home and have realised that instead of spending the bulk of the weekend working and cleaning as planned I spent it shopping and doing car stuff.

So it's all worked out in the end.

FACEBOOK...

... is taking over my life.

That sucks as an excuse not to update your blog and so here are some other ones:

I have a new job. Still in the same place but a different role. The role I have been in for a year is really bus at the moment and I am kind of starting to do the other one too. So I finished work at 9.30 tonight. Not bad as didn't finish until 10.30 the other night. Also have been working weekend etc.

Whinge over but there you are. That's why I haven't been blogging

Rating

This has made me want to try harder as Shazzle's is R for Restricted

Pissy Pinot

Pinot has a new trick. I call it "the pissing indoors trick". I don't like this new trick very much (particularly as my place is so tinchy that you couldn't swing a cat - pissy or otherwise - so the pee pong gets overpowering REALLY fast). "Maybe she has a kidney infection," suggested my Mum. So I took her to the vet and it turns out she doesn't like the trick very much either.

My cat has an anxiety disorder. She is not peeing, she is spraying. This is becasue she is unhappy in our new house (two neighbour cats like nothing more than beating her up when she's outside and glaring at her from the other side of the window when she's inside) and recent activity (having the place water blasted and spending a whole day cleaning the inside and rearranging all of the furniture) have tipped her over the edge into full on nervous breakdown mode.

My cat is actually mentally ill. Da baba.

So she spent the night at the vet's last night (to be extra sure and rule out the kidney infection) and she will be on cat Prozac for the next month. The vet told me to check all vertical serfucases for pee stains. Walls, cupboards, bookcases.... BOOKCASES.

If we had a fire and I lost absolutely everything, assuming I got my cats out, the only thing I would mourn the loss of would be my books. More than my photos even. I have shipped books from Ireland at huge cost. I have a couple of first editions, I have some books with inscriptions that are sentimentally very important to me. I also have books form NZ that mean a lot to me, or, are just downright, fucking great books.

When I got home first stop was the bookcases.

Bedroom bookcase.... clear
Bookcase by TV.... clear
Bookcase by dining table........ . . . . . . . .

The left hand side wasn't so bad. She had peed up against some cookbooks, some of them from overseas, but all in dust jackets. The right hand side has a complete works of Shakepeare and Oxford Book of American Short Stories that will never be quite the same.

It never rains but it pours

I'm a toastmasters right? I've mentioned that here before. I do a leetle bit of public speaking. In my own time. For my own development, peace of mind etc.

Sometimes I do have to use it at work. Or I use elements of the shit sandwich to couch feedback. But it's not like it's a lifestyle choice or anything. It's just a now and again kind of thing.

Well.

Last week I got invited to speak at a conference. I should qualify this immediately by saying that they seem to have just emailed every single comms person in New Zealand. I would not like to give the impression that I was head hunted or specifically sought after as this would be blatantly misleading.

So anyway, I accepted. I'll be giving a 45 minute presentation on internal communications during change with five mins Q&A at the end. Ha. Hilarious don't you think. In a kind of , "What the FUCK was I thinking kind of way." And then I got the agenda and saw who my co-presenters are. Oh I see. I won't go into it, but these would be well known industry types.

Today the secretary at my Toastmasters club asked me if I'd be keen to be involved in a Toastmasters fundraiser. Every year there are competitions and the NZ champ goes to the States to compete in the worlds. As TM is a not for profit, they hold fundraisers to raise money for the airfare, accommodation etc.

Sure, I'll be involved.

And then he sent me through the agenda for the event:

Robin Grieve Current NZ Champion
David Nottage 1996 World Champion
Brett Rutledge 1998 World Champion
Ivan Pivac Blind speaker on Hitchhiking and motivational speaker Kevin Prohl Four times NZ Toastmaster of the Year MC and speaker
Kathy Torpie Inspirational speaker
Clinton Jones Humorous speaker/motivational speaker
Lorraine Breheny Humorous speaker

Apparently I will be delivering a seven minute 'humorous' speech followed by and IMPROMPTU session with David, Brett, Robin and Kevin.

Hahahahahahahahahaha (to be read in a high-pitched, bordering on the hysterical tone).

Fuck.

You know...

.... when you're just so fruckin busy that you might as well just throw your hands up in the air, down tools and update your blog?

Well that's where I am at the moment. I have been FRANTIC all morning, I am leaving the office in 1.5 hours to go to the venue of the event I'm organising tonight and if I don't take 15 minutes to stop running around, clear my head and do something completely different it's all going to go terribly wrong.

So here's the thing- this. I'm doing this.

My laptop is on the blink. It is under warranty and if I ever get home before 6.30 when the helpdesk closes I will get it fixed. But that's not going to happen tonight.

The good news is that I have tomorrow off to recover from the event I am organising (it's a party for 120 people celebrating the end of a MAJOR project - there will be a lot of free alcohol). I might get to it then.

Although I also have a gigantic amount of cleaning to do - more about this in future posts. I've just remembered something I need to do very urgently.

You see- taking time out really works.

Suzuki Swift

So back to my comments on other people's marketing...

There is currently and ad on the telly for the new suzuki swift. In case you haven't seen it I will summarize.

Two girls are on the side of the road attempting to hitch hike. The have a sign that says 'city'. A reasonably hot farmer type pulls up in his manly ute, complete with bales of hay. The girls wrinkle up their faces and give him he thumbs down. He drive off.

Next is the surfer dude, sun kissed with a board on the roof. The girls wave him on.

The next candidate is a guy in a suzuki swift. The girls high five and wave their 'city' sign frantically. The gent looks like he can't believe his luck.

Cut to next scene. Girls are driving away in the Swift and the guy is on the side of the road looking glum and holding a sign that says 'help'.

Advertising campaigns generally have a 'single minded proposition', if there is one message you want potential consumers to take away, this is it. For example, "This will get my clothes clean and keep my whites white" or "These people will really look after my money" or "Using this product will get me laid".

So with this in mind what did the folks at Suzuki want their SMP to be for this ad?

"Driven by the kind of blokes who get car jacked by girls"??

Well hello there

Someone emailed me the other day to point out it had been more than a month since I wrote in this.

Bad Lorraine.

So what should we talk about?

Well today I went to see the Dalai Lama. In a stadium with 10,000 other people, including the Mayor of Auckland who introduced the Dalai Lama and wrapped up at the end.

Note I say the Mayor of Auckland. Not the Prime Minister. Both the leader of the government and the opposition in New Zealand refused to meet this man.

The title of his speech was compassion and kindness. In that vein I will refrain from the rant that is simmering away at the moment. However I don't think I'm being unkind in saying what I'm about to.

There are a number of global leaders who are objectionable above and beyond merely their politics; leaders who infringe on human rights or allow infringements to go unchecked in the countries they lead; leaders who are mouth pieces for terrorists or overtly terrorists themselves. Morally you can legitimately reject the opportunity to meet with these people. And by that standard you could include Nelson Mandela and most of the current political leadership in Northern Ireland in the list of people you have the right to not meet.

But somehow I don't see that happening.

I am not a particularly political person and I don't claim to know every in and out of this situation. However, this is a man who represents to pretty much everyone, well, compassion and kindness. And for the Prime Minister to refuse to meet him is shameful.

Er - Yuk

The other day I left my trackie bottoms draped over the end of the bed. When I came to bed Pinot was VERY interested in them.

'Hmm,' I thought, 'I must have run past something interesting and now my trousers smell interesting.'

She was really going for it. Biting, hanging off them with her claws, scrabbling at them etc etc.

Anyway, I put them a bit higher up and we all went to sleep.

Then yesterday I put them on. I could feel something sticking into me. Inside the right trouser leg. Around about my knee.

I reached down and pulled out a weta.

Let me introduce you to the weta again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weta#Tree_weta

On brand?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

ClaireFund

My flattie Claire K works for TearFund which does raises money to help in the developing world, This includes child sponsorship. So we were almost obliged to make this video for here 30th bday

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cH34YAVOXg

And then there were the outtakes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH-X7uT4qWI&mode=related&search

Parallel parking

There is lots of free parking around my office. In the interest of geting the one closest to the building I have become VERY good at parallel parking.

But even I was impressed when I managed to wedge myself so tightly between two cars that I was touching at both bumpers. Luckily I recognised the car at the rear. In a bit of a panic I called Nicole (who I work with) to ask her to come down and move her car so that I wasn't quite so tightly wedged.

Nicole came down alright. But onlyonce she had grabbed the digital camera and told the ENTIRE marketing team to look out the window at me and my car.

No idea how I managed to get in there. None.

Allergic

To be fair, I've always had opinions about people who claimed allergies. I was firmly in the 'toughen up' camp. Although this was only ever in my head. Externally I was sympathetic. When I was about 17, after subjecting me to every other test under the sun to try to explain why I 'wasn't well', the doctor decided I might as well have an alergy test.

I did. I was allergy free. Not allergic to cats, dogs, dust, grass, mould, trees, polen etc etc etc. You get the idea.

And then I moved to Auckland. Auckland of the poor housing with damp and mould and no insulation or central heating. And in my second full summer I developed this irritating sneezing habit. My ears were so itchy, I longed to stick needles deep into them as the pain would be preferable, my entire face would feel like it has swollen up and after the first thirty or so sneezes my throat would feel like it had been grated. Streaming eyes and nose, the inability to hold a conversation, swollen tear ducts the whole nine yards.

And when I went to the doctor thinking it was most likely consumption, she diagnosed allergies. Apparantly everyone gets them in Auckland. So now I am allergic to lots but the big ones are cats, dust and silver birch. Cats aren't too bad- you do eventually build up a resistance with exposure so I'm fine with my own. The dust thing makes housework a bit of a pain and very necessary at the same time but it's ok if we keep the place clean.

Silver birch.

When she did the tests I reacted to all of the above with a lump, like a mosquito bite. I reacted to Silver birch with a lump like a golf ball.

So my new flat is carpeted - dust is inerradicable. And the neighbour has a line of silver birches running along his fence and my driveway.

I feel like my entire head has been boiled.

Phew

Finally. For ages I haven't been able to mention certain things on this blog.

For example, the post about sing star where 'Come as you are' was the best song ever...
1. It was 'Smells like teen spirit'
2. It was not quite as good as I remembered

Apparantly I was VERY drunk.

I learnt this when I was around at Kev and Julie's the following week and they showed me the video clip someone took of it on their digital camera

The reason this and inumerable other little things were unmentionable is because Claire K reads this blog. Claire K just had a birthday. We organised various surprises for the day. In the organisation of these surprises I did things behind her back - like going around to Kevin and Julie's while pretending I hadn't you see.

I also had several email conversations with her family and friends and got all confused about what I should and shouldn't know about. So I have generally been playing stoopid.

Keeping secrets makes my face hurt.

But it was a lot of fun.

Blue

I suspected I was missing my friend Clare B when instead of emailing Claire O'T (who lives around the corner) with "Hey how are you. You free for a coffee or something soon?" I emailed Clare B who lives in Paris. She replied that she'd love to but the logistics were an issue.

Then yesterday I meant to send Claire K (who lives with me) the below message:

Going to Supermarket again tonight.

Was thinking we need:

3m Hook to hold mirror in Bathroom
Onions
Anything else?

[My life is pretty sexy don't you think?]

And Clare B replied:

basil plant and chocolate and a couple of sexy men! Maybe firemen and better get condoms too...........!

I REALLY MISS MY FRIEND!!!!

Sing Star

Last night I went around to Kevin and Julie's house for sing star. It. Was. Hilarious. Obviously the 1100 glasses of wine helped but there is something pure dead brilliant about singing your head off with friends.

Claire and I showed up at about 9.00pm and we eventually left about 5.00 am. In between we must have sung about 100 songs. Some of them more than once.

When I was at university we used to have a car racing game with a life sized steering wheel and gear stick. We would play it at the start of the evening and in the middle and again at the end and confirm that drinking did in fact impare your driving abilities. And I could tell how drunk I was by how quickly and dramatically I crashed and burned.

Sing Star is my new car game. When I get to the stage where, in order to read the words, I have to shut one eye and squint with the other one, it's time to stop drinking. Similarly when I find myself half a line behind the song, laughing more than singing and insisting on Dolly Parton's Nine to Five I am effectively crashing and burning.

The pinnacle of the entire evening was when Kevin and Dinny cracked into Nirvana's Come as you are. In every session of Sing Star there is one performance that is gob smackingly, totally unexpectedly, brilliant. This was that performance. It was amazing and, as Jeff pointed out, it's a hard song to sing.

But they nailed it.

Bugger

So if you were reading this blog many, many months ago, you'll know that the carefully ignored, two decade old back injury* had resurfaced and I was seeing a chiropractor often enough to put his troop of perfect postured children through school, university and probably rehab if required.

And then I got ok again so I stopped seeing anyone. Great approach don't you think?

Anyway recently I have been leading a stressful existence. Very stressful. I'm not going to explain why. If you know me well enough to want to know but don't already, you know me well enough to either ask me in person or via skype/email/phone the next time we communicate that way.

Anyway, The stress had meant that my back was getting sore again and I probably needed to do something about it. Like some neck excercises and maybe seeing a chiropractor once a month for a bit.

Then on Wednesday, I was on my way from stress causing scenario one to stress causing scenario two. I was in a bit of a rush as in between I had to pick up my car from the garage and have a chat with the gleeful man who was gleeful because he had identified about $600 of work that needed to be done on my car by him. This conversation had taken longer than expected and I was late.

So I was zooming up Mt Eden Road behind a lady who was driving one of those giant 4X4s that absolves the driver of any need to consider safety at any point in their driving career. She illustrated this luxury by breaking SUDDENLY to take Entrance One into the church she had just about driven past as opposed to Entrance Two which was five metres further up the road. Full of the knowledge that if I rear ended someone, even someone as blatantly FUCKING PIG SHIT STUPID as this Sherman Tank driving gobshite, I would be the one at fault, I broke SUDDENLY. There were screeching tyres, there was an adrenalin flood, there were tensed muscles and gritted teeth, there was copious swearing. But there was no crash.

Until the lady behind me ran into the back of me causing my body to react like the crash test dummies you see on the telly.

Anyway the conclusion is that I am back in physiotherapy. She couldn't really see what I had damaged as all of the soft tissue surrounding it was 'Just all horrible' (her exact, and often repeated, phrase). Comforting.


*I am putting a disclaimer here for Shazzle who I know reads this blog. I won't make a big deal of this but I want to acknowledge that any back injury of mine, subsequent pain and/or inconvenience and whinging, is minor minor minor and insignificant.

Happy Easter

I've just had the best weekend. Michegro and Simon got all hitched up out at the beach and it was choice bro.

I was MC and did a bit of making sure the caterers knew what to do and stuff and it was lovely, lovely, lovely. The speeches were great, the food was amazing and everyone had a great time. And Simon and Michegro promised to be each others' person for the rest of their lives.

That was Saturday and then yesterday was a big BBQ that Claire came out for and then today we went for a walk out to the gannet colony and horse riding and for a swim. It was lovely. Can I say lovely again? And then today it took 30 mins to drive back to my house. I love living in New Zealand.

Healthy

No glandular fever for me. No no no. Stoked so I am. Although still knackered unfortunetely but that should resolve itself when I start reintroducing sleep into my lifestyle and not working 14 hour days.

Can't wait.

I am feeling a bit uninspired blog wise. And it's not that nothing is happening. I think I've got writer's fatigue. It's what I usually do all day and in particular in the last couple of weeks.

So what's actually worth hauling myself online and writing about today?

Hmm.

Well I'm MCing friend's wedding this weekend and should really be writing multiple speeches.

So I'm not. I'm doing this instead. Always the frickin way.

No. I'm going to log off and write them

Once I've done the dishes and cleaned the bathroom.

Lethargy

After a reasonable start to my blogging year, I have relapsed into blogging slackness.

There are a number of possible explanations for that

1. The novelty of my new laptop has worn off
2. I have been working stupid hours at work
3. I am generally lacking in motivation

This in turn I am hoping will be explained by the slew of blood tests I subjected myself to today.

I am bad with needles to be fair. So it takes something pretty drastic to agree to them. But I feel bad bad bad. I really hope it's nothing as there are murmerings of glandular fever which means six weeks booze free.

Six weeks?

The last time I didn't drink for six weeks was before I started drinking.

I am potentially entirely devoid of personality. But luckily I will be able to make up for that by having hundreds of dollars more than usual each week because I'm booze free.

Maybe glandular fever wouldn't be so bad....

Follow up

I never cleared up the mystery of the you tube video. About four hours after it went around the office we got an invite from our direct marketing agency to play football and prove that 'beating yellow pages isn't child's play'.

Hilarious. We play them this Wed. I reckon we'll kick their asses.

I've been crazy busy at work lately and that's why I've been slack on the blog front. Literally getting home and going to bed.

Claire is in Guatemala for work at the moment so it is very quiet in the flat. Apart from a couple of drinks with my friend Ange and brunch yesterday with another friend, Fionnagh, I have done nothing nothing nothing. Sigh. Lovely.

Next weekend I have three birthday parties on the same night so it will be a different kind of weekend I reckon.

Monday mornings

I had a HUGE weekend. Hen night on St Patrick's Day. Drinking until 4.00am.

One of the people who I was out with reminded me today of my attempt to steal a plastic roadworks barrier while leaning out of the window of a moving taxi. Apparantly the taxi driver thought I was brilliant.

Oh and then there's the guy in the Irish bar who offered me a job but I told him that I couldn't consider any offer lower than $180,000 a year and I had to take my team of three staff with me. I had two of my potential team with me. These people are in fact my real life boss and another colleague. He was still pondering whether to accept my terms when we disappeared.

And then there's the brilliant conversation that I had with the bouncer when I went out for a cigarette and really stood up for my rights as a patron of his bar to expect some level of service and security.

Bouncer: You can't take that drink outside with you
Lorraine: Ok I'll leave it here. Will you watch it to make sure no one puts anything dodgy in it?
Bouncer: No
Lorraine: Right. Well I'm going for a cigarette anyway. I'll take my chances.

Anyway, very sick yesterday and still a bit shaky today. So I went to feed the cats and Pinot had been sick. Nothing too unusual here, she gets sick quite a lot. It doesn't seem to worry her much and she's not a super skinny cat so I don't get stressed about it unless it happens three days on the trot. Anyway, this morning she had vomited... into Puck's food bowl.

I don't know why that's freaking me out but it is.

Then I went to work. I was almost there, in the middle of a three point turn to pull into a parking space to be precise... and I ran out of petrol. I have never done this before. And I can tell you that it will never happen again. I had to run up to the nearest garage and get a can and then take it back to my car, empty the petrol in, move my car to a parking space and then run back up to the garage with the can again.

The man behind the counter was very sympathetic when he heard. The conversation went like this.

Lorraine: Um I've just run out of petrol
Man in garage: Hahahahahahaha. And on a Monday morning too! Hahahaha.

Then I eventually got to work and didn't have my pass so had to stand outside for ten minutes waiting for someone else to come along and let me in.

Strange

I play seven a-side soccer for work. We've just won our local division and play in the semifinals for the Auckland one tonight. I would probably be the weakest player on the team and spend most of my time up the back as 'defence'. That's incidental. What I should note is that the average age of the players we play is probably early thirties.

Anyway, today this got circulated amongst the team. We have NO IDEA who did this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGHgz2rHSao

Drugs and Alcohol

At the end of last year I ran a half marathon - all 22 kilometres. I loved it. Since then I've been running about twenty times and only twice in the last two weeks. Last night I smoked about twelve cigarettes and drank a couple of bottles of wine. And today after only about 2.5 kilometres I had to stop running. This is not good.

So I'm giving up cigarettes, I'm laying off the booze, I'm going to run five days a week and I am going to do a half marathon in under two hours by the end of this year.

Right I've said it now. It's going to happen. Sure it is.

Broody?

Girls talk about getting broody. I've never got it. If you want to have a kid, have a kid. But if you aren't ready/sure/with the right person/ whatever, what's to get broody about? Yes I understand that at the core of it we are all just animals and one of our most intrinsic instincts is to reproduce. But the notion of getting 'broody' has always flummoxed me. "You want kids but you're not going to have them. That's not wanting kids. That's not broody. That's seeing a kid and deciding it's cute and maybe one day...."

I've had this feeling for countless children, numerous newborns, oodles of offspring etc. I can acknowledge they're cute but the rational part of my brain tells me that it's not for me. Not now. Possibly not ever.

And then yesterday I met Alexander. Not my ex boyfriend, the baby of my good friend Suzy. Thinking about him is making me teary. He's 20 days old and has those milk spots they get and is a deep purple colour. And he looked at me and smiled his first ever smile, followed closely by his second ever smile. And he was the most beautiful thing I have EVER encountered. Then he dropped his lower lip to wind up to a cry and I thought that was gorgeous too. And when he threw up while Gretch was holding him I wanted to rush over and clean him.

I got broody. I am broody. I'm not sure that I like it.

We're having a picnic on Tuesday. I can't wait.

New heights/lows

I'm not going to make a habit of talking about work on this blog.

However.

Usually on a Friday, the social club bring out a few bottles of wine and some crisps. This week they have stepped up their game. I am at my desk drinking vodka and orange juice. The marketing stereotype has been adhered to. Next week there will probably be pills.

I love my job.

Smoking

When I was at home in Ireland I started having a cigarette in the evenings with my sister. Then I got back to New Zealand and started having the odd one here when someone else was smoking. I joked that my New Year's resolution was to start smoking.

Then I started buying cigarettes.

I have just bought my second pack this week. Meaning I am buying more cigarettes now than when I actually really considered myself a smoker.

I am not running, I am taking breaks from work for cigarettes. I am having conversations with my flattie Claire from the deck while I smoke.

I am a smoker.

Oh dear.

That weekend feeling

For my birthday I got a bottle of ginger liquor. "Mm," I thought, "This has vodka cocktail potential" So Kerry and I pretty much mixed up the entire bottle with an entire bottle of vodka and a variety of fruit juices and drank it over the course of about four hours.

Phew.

Drunk.

And I woke up this morning and feeling rough but not too rough I had the following texting conversation with Kerry:

Lorraine: thanks for a great night. Was suddenly very drunk. Not too bad today thankfully
Kerry: Yeah it was cool. My head's a bit fuzzy but not too bad. Good cocktails.

Cut to text from Kerry about an hour later

Kerry: Hmm maybe I'm not ok after all. Just threw up on the street, beside a poor dog who was tied to a bench. Bet the owner will be very happy. Nice!

Get Skype

Ok so I read Carol's blog and decided to join her campaign. This post is not 100% original but here goes....

GET SKYPE.

You are on a computer of some sort. GET SKYPE.

In the last week I have had three AMAZING conversations. Those conversations where you talk shite. Well sometimes you talk about important stuff. You talk about work and relationships and plans for the future and your cats and the neighbours and you say "Hang on I'm just going to grab a fag/ go to the loo/ get a drink of water". What was amazing was that two of them were with Clare who is in Paris and one of them was with Carol who is in Honduras. It felt like they were in the room though.

I don't know if it's because it's free, I don't know if it's the webcam thing (although I didn't have one for Clare), I don't know if it's because you can wander around and you don't have to hold onto something the whole time. I suspect it's all that and more.

We had a yack.
A chat.
We talked shite.
For hours.
You didn't think, "Oh I won't go into the details of the weekend because this is costing [someone] squillions." I just talked about it.

I LOVE it
I LOVE it

And I feel like I can really, genuinely, properly be in touch with people who I got used to missing the tangible presence of.

So please, if you are reading this blog and don't live in NZ, get skype. And then let me know.

And another thing

I lived in my last house for two years. In that time I probably caught about 200 taxis to and from the place. Last night I was in the cab from my house to Kevin and Julie's house to pick them up and go into town. I pointed out the house I used to live in. The taxi driver (Monty) was familiar with the property three doors down. Apparantly all taxi drivers are. It belongs to gang members you see and they run a slew of illegal activities out of it. Taxi drivers know that if you are taking a fare to or from that house to get the money up front. Also if you do, for example, get attacked when you drop someone off there and she doesn't want to pay, it's best to go around the corner before you call the police.

Two years, 200 cabs. No one ever mentioned it.

The best laid plans

Mm quiet weekend.

Mm reading papers.

Mm going to work.

Who the feck did I think I was fooling?

I have that hit by a train feeling again.

last night Julie texted to say lets go for drinks. "I'm not going out," I thought, "Oh no. I'm having a quiet weekend. I've got no money. I'm quite tired... I've got two new tops that I bought in Ireland and havn't worn in NZ yet. I'm going out ray ray ray."

I
Got
Annihalated

There was dancing, there was drinking, there were stolen menthol cigarettes, there were multiple taxi trips and a boy.

There were no papers. There was no work. I have just now managed half a bowl of soup and I'm still not sure that was a good decision.

Quiet weekends apparantly are not for me.

No plans

The weekend has begun and I have very few plans. I mean hardly anything. Practically nothing. Very little to do. Mmmm. Looking forward to it. I don't think it's that thirties get out the slippers thing but I am pleased that I have minimal plans and will get to sleep late and do relatively nothing.

That said, I am planning to go to the beach, have brunch and read the papers.

All of them.

I might go to work for an hour or so on Sunday because Tuesday is going to be a day of nightmare if I don't. But it is dependant on someone else emailing me which I can check on my phone so if they don't... they don't . Yay.

I am drinking wine and wondering how you download telly shows form the internet.

It's going to be a non productive weekend.

Next weekend I will have to get RATTEd to balance it though

Baby Bird

Last night I was having drinks with my friend Ange. Ange doesn't read this blog very often and so I had fresh ears for my baby bird story.

Ange loves all animals and so was making appropriate squealing and sypathetic cooing noises. And then I revealed the clincher that I have not yet revealed even here.

"It was a dead baby bird..... with no eyes"

When Ange pulled herself together and stopped wringing her hands she said, "It could have been worse."

"Imagine it was a live baby bird.... with no eyes."

Good road

Last year we had a fire at our house (the last house we lived in). An arsonist who was hitting bins in the area, came into our garden and set fire to the garden waste bin leaning against the front of our house.

A deoderant can that was in the bin from the previous tenants exploded and woke us up. It was loud. It probably saved our lives because the house was already full of smoke and three minutes after we got out, the entire front of the house was on fire. We called the fire brigade. Three fire engines two police cars and a fire inspection officer showed up. Four hours later (8.40 on a working Wednesday) the last truck left.

Throughout the entire experience no one on our street came to check what was happening. One lady three doors up, came out, looked up the road and went back inside.

I now live on a different road about a fifteen minute walk from the last one.

Today is a holiday so most people took Monday off and are away for the weekend. Everyone else, I assumed, was at the beach or somewhere else lovely. I was cleaning the house.

The house four doors up went on fire. Fire engines, police and fire inspection officers showed up.

And so did about thirty of the neighbours.

Last Pinot post

After I finished last night's post Pinot brought in a beetle and a praying mantis in quick succession.

She slept in the lounge.

Big girl

Bear in mind the last post when you read this.

Pinot just brought in a Weta. Wikipedia descibes them as being like a cross between a cricket and a cockroach. Link below.

The one Pinot brought in was about 15cm long. And still alive. Pinot thought it was fantastic. I thought I was going to die. I managed to get it into a jug and out onto the deck. Pinot will probably go back out and get it and bring it back in. Possibly into my bed.

No sleep for me tonight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weta

Hungover

Last night I celebrated my thirtieth birthday in New Zealand. I did this by getting annihilated. It was lovely and I had a great evening. And then today I feel like I've been hit by a car. And then reversed over. A couple of times.

I had the party at The Musket Room in Ponsonby and if you are having a party in New Zealand and you are looking for a venue - I recommend this place. They were AMAZING. The food was fantastic, the music was great, they even opened the door to the cabs as people were leaving.

I am not capable of much else this evening so I'm goign to bed now.

Revenge

Since Pinot brought me the baby bird, my car has been shat on seven times*

I'm not exaggerating.

Coincidence? I think not.

* by birds

Final Straw

I got home today and I had a piece of mail addressed to me from my broadband company. "Broadband now in your area" it declares. It even has a roadsign with the name of my road on it.

"Oh" I thought, "A personalised welcome to the company. Finally they do something right!"

But then I read on

"We've just upgraded the lines in your area, so now your neighbourhood can connect to the world with Broadband.

"Sign up today and get a $20 credit to your account"

But I signed up two weeks ago and activated my account on Monday.

I probably don't need to say but...

BASTARDS

Pinot the wonder cat

My younger cat, Pinot, really is a very talented creature. She fetches you see. You throw something small and preferably chewable and she brings it back for you to do it again. Rubber things are popular, those plastic wrapped tie things that you get to keep chords on electrical equipment tidy are a fave, plastic covers from magazines scrunched up into a ball are also good.

Sometimes she decides she'd like to play this game while I am engaged in other activities. For example sleeping. So she does this thing where she wakes me up 'accidentally', by dropping the fetching object in my ear or betwen me and the duvet and then stand on my chest and uses her paw with almost unveiled claws to retrieve it. Endearing? No. No it's not.

Anyway sometimes it's easier to just play for a bit. But the other night I felt something drop by my back and decided against it. I could hear Pinot purring her head off and she even came and sat on my chest to see if that might rouse me. I wasn't having it.

And when I woke up properly the following morning, the object that Pinot had dropped right next to me in my bed was... a dead, baby bird.

Revenge

So today I was randomly selected form the millions of people who, in the last month, have contacted the company I have been dealing with for my broadband.

They wanted to survey me on my customer experience.

Oh the sweet, sweet justice of it all.

I was ABSOLUTELY honest. I feel exorcised.

Interestingly, last night a prime time current affairs show awarded the very same division the 'Complete Ass Award'

I'm so pleased that my experience was a consistant one.

FINALLY

I have just now managed to get broadband.

Finally.

Once the modem arrived it didn't work.

It took two more phonecalls and the patience of a saint. I also had to lug the Tv out of the wall, replug all of my appliances with extra power boards etc and pretty much almost kill myself moving it from my phone line to my /sky line and back agin several hundred times.

The USB cable (or 'the blue one') is about half a metre too short to be of any use to anyone but there you go.

I'm exhausted

Stupid week

The stupid week continued .... and so did my saga with my alleged braodband provider. I was supposed to get my modem last week and then call on Saturday to set it up. But the modem didn't show so the following conversation took place:

Me: Hi, I haven't received my modem
Broadband person: Let's have a look. It was delivered
Me: Well I haven't received it
Broadband person: Well it was delivered.
Me: (Verify they have the correct name, address etc) Nope it hasn't shown up
Broadband person: Well according to the file it was delivered at 11.15 on Wednesday
Me: ....
Broadband person: Hang on I'll check with the courier company.... Thanks for holding, they're not there but according to the file it was delivered at 11.15 on Wednesday.
Me: (slightly angry) I'm not here at 11.53 during the day, neither is my flatmate. I cleared the mail that night and it wasn't there. I am now standing in front of my letterbox and it's not there. It may have been delivered but it's not here.
Broadband person: Is there a delivery card from the comapny?
Me: No
Broadband person: Well I can leave a message for the courier company but I'm not on again until Monday at 12.00. so...
Me: (speaking in very clipped tones to illustrate that despite her not being at work until 12.00 on Monday I am NOT letting her off the hook). What do you think I should do?
Broadband person: I'll log a call with the courier company and call you back on Monday...

Cut to Monday

Broadband person: Hi I checked with the courier company and it was delivered at 11.53 on Wednesday.
Me: (Through clenched teeth). Well I didn't get it.
Broadband person: Was there a card from them?
Me: (Pause to dwell on the thought that I work for the same group of companies as this person and so would not struggle to track her down and have this conversation in person). No.

After further conversation backwards and forwards, we agreed that she would order another one to be sent to my work address this time, where there would be someone to receive it and she would credit me $5.23 which is exactly four days of broadband usage taking me to Tuesday.

It still hasn't shown up.

I have my angry face on.

Back in New Zealand

I'm home! Again.

It's good to be back although it's not good to no longer be in Dublin. The weather is better here though!

It does appear that I have left my brain in Dublin however. I have reached this conclusion based on the following incidents:

I really wanted to buy perfume while I was travelling. I need some and I really wanted to get it duty free. So I found some I wanted in Dublin Airport just as they called my flight. In a rush I brought it up to the till and paid for it and hopped on my flight. When I got to Auckland and opened the box what I found I had purchased was this:

http://www.sephora.com/browse/product.jhtml?id=P167638&categoryId=B70

For $100. I. Hate. It.

But I wasn't finished there. In Hong Kong Airport they were doing a two for one special on Pashminas. They were HK$1050 each. Brilliant I thought. I applied my advanced currency conversion skills. Two geniune pashminas for $50.

No. Try $200.

Brilliant.

But wait. There's more.

Yesterday I was in a pay and display car park trying to text to park. After four attempts I realised that it wasn't working because it was a VODAFONE text to park and I have a TELECOM mobile. Rocket science. so then a gent wandering by said he still ahd an hour of parking left and he was leaving. Did I want it? Oh yes I did.

So what this meant was that I should follow him to his car, get the ticket and display it on the dash of my car.

What I actually did was run away from him to the other end of the car park where my car was and hop in it because somewhere in my brain I had decided that I needed to be in his actual space. I realised my mistake about half way between my space and his. He was at the car park exit. Feeling flustered and embaressed, I hopped out of my car, ran up to him and said... wait for it..."I'm such a blonde".

No Lorraine. You're not. You have red hair.

So now the guy is thinking that I'm not only stupid, I'm also deluded.

Got home and opened up my brand new laptop (I have a new lap top). I called a broadband provider from the land line to set up my internet access on it. They asked me if I was plugged into the phone socket and I said no but I'll do it right now. Once I pulled the phone jack out of the wall to put in the internet cable I realised my mistake. I tries to call them back on my mobile but I'd made the call at 8.55, they close at 9.00 and it was now 9.05. So I missed them

Seriously. I'm eating fish every day but it's not doing that brainfood thing it's supposed to. Anyone got any other ideas?

Packing

I'm going back to NZ tomorrow. And so what I should be doing is packing. what I am doing is sorting through a bag of papers that my mam wants me to take with me or throw away for chrissakes.

Oh. My. God.

There is the usual dreadful diary shit that I will have to take with me as we don't have a shredder and there's no way I'm just throwing it away. Embarassing.

There are hundreds of letters written to me in Donegal, Cork, America, Dublin from friends family, boyfriends. Including one of the most beautiful love letters from a guy I knew for a total of two weeks in Wisconsin. Some I am keeping, some I am binning, some I am keeping but know I will never have the courage to read.

There are dozens of poems written by friends. Some are hilarious and some are very, very good.

There is a Valentine Card 'to my wife, Lorraine' signed from 'Mr Pitt'.

There is a letter from Kerry that I CANNOT WAIT TO READ TO EVERYONE WHO KNOWS HER.

I have also found two and a half episodes of a radio play that I worked on with seven other people. Five episodes actually went to air before we got cut for being generally unreliable. I was originally supposed to be one of the actresses but muscled into the writing team eventually and ended up doing a bit of directing too.

It was based on six students sharing two flats on campus at University College Dublin. Sort of Friends, only on the radio and with Irish accents, limited sex and no money. The writing teams worked in two teams of four and I can't remember who wrote which of the spisodes but the half episode is the worst.

However, it has handwritten notes at the end that made me choke with laughter and nostalgia for the sheer clever pretentiousness of it all.

The scene is fairly typical. Fresher student (dave) tries his hand at some clever debating at the immensly popular and well attended debating society friday night event. He is lucky to escape with his life. His dignity is another matter. The girl (emer) who fancies him is trying to comfort him and he lashes out at her and stalks off. Fade to next scene (the handwritten bit)

The handwritten notes are clearly intended to take the piss out of the simplistic nature of the scenario by doing a pastiche of Sam Beckett's Happy Days/ Waiting for Godot

Notes in handwriting unknown:

A scream. Pause (five seconds)

Fade to Emer buried up to her neck in rubbish. Parasol goes on fire reflecting the essential meaninglessness of existance

My handwriting:

(alternatively we could just fade to Emer snogging Dave)

Back to unknown handwriting:

Emer: Argh! (pause five seconds) My parasol (pause three seconds) is on ... fire (pause) reflecting the essentail .... meaninglessness... of existance.

Fade to country lane. Enter Pozzo and Lucky on hands and knees.

Pozzo: so... where's the debate

Seriously. We were subsidised to be at university for fukes sakes.

Your opinion please

In the States I tossed a coin to pick an apartment to live in , after university I tossed a coin to pick a city to live in. In light of the last entry, would it be ridiculous to toss a coin to pick a hemisphere?

Hello. Again

Is once a month poor show for blogging? I think it probably is.

So I'll join each and every other blgger on the planet and vow to blog more in the New Year. Hmm yeah. Whatever.

No really.

Anyway I'm getting a laptop this year. For sure. As soon as I get my MASSIVE xmas debt under control. So in October 2008 then. We'll see.

I'm currently in Dublin and the rain is pitter pattering on the roof over my head in a very Oirish kind of way. I've been away from NZ for almost a month and some features of that time have been:

• two (boozy) thirtieth birthday celebrations
• diving in Lanzarote
• xmas with my family for the first time since 1999
• my mammy cooking me dinner a lot
• a new year's party that flung me right back into the days of university parties where we sang for eight hours without stop, you had at least three fascinating conversations with people you've just met, people recited poetry and you caught unsuspecting revellers in random pashes on your way to the loo

Everyone keeps asking me am I looking forward to being back in NZ. The answer is yes I am. But if they asked me if I am looking forward to leaving Dublin, the answer is no.

I rang Auckland on christmas day and managed a few words with Kerry and Claire over a resounding Singstar rendition of A Thing Called Love which sounded as if it was being performed by about forty people after forty drinks each. I was dying to be there. I miss everyone in NZ and my cats and I am looking forward to going back to work and doing more diving this summer and running again because Dublin sucks for that kind of thing.

And Lanzarote was great and I've had a ball and I love being in Dublin. The city is beautiful the people are magnificent (except for shop assistants who are universally rude and need a freekin good slap in the gob) and I don't actually mind the weather all that much. My family are brilliant, the dog is the cutest canine in the world, my friends here are great too. And then there's the central heating...

Highlights

....from the previous month or so that I have been ignoring this blog.

In no particular order

1. Got burgled again
2. Had to move
3. Have been drinking solidly for six weeks
4. On Friday night / sat am I caught a cab home with my boss. Apparantly I couldn't remember my address.
5. I'm going home in a week
6. I bought a new car
7. I discovered that my cat Puck, prefers tea towels to litter trays as a toilet venue when he's locked into the new house. Frankly it was a relief. I was concerned that he was going to burst soon when I couldn't find the poo anywhere else.
8. I had been out so many nights in a row and partying so heavily that my friend Belinda was not surprised to receive the following text from me at 5.00 am on a Sunday morning, "Still out. Will probably die soon. I'm looking forward to it. Could do with the rest" I have no memory of sending the text.
9. I did a half marathon - it was amazing, life changing, inspiring.
10. Havn't run since

Hope everyone is well

xx

And still with the cold housing

I refer you to earlier messages where I talked about how cold it is in NZ houses. And then today' the NZ Herald ran an article with the headline:

Insulation good for the health and the pocket, says survey

I'm sorry- this is a HEADLINE???

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10407427

Link above takes you to the full story but in a nut shell :

Reports from 500 of those homes surveyed showed 91 per cent of people felt warmer, 71 per cent drier, 86 per cent more comfortable, 39 per cent healthier and 58 per cent reported power bill savings.

Contact [power company] chief executive David Baldwin said the results reinforced the importance of ongoing investment in home insulation and energy efficiency.

"The strength of these results has surprised even us," he said.

"For 39 per cent of people to say their health had improved simply through living in a properly insulated home shows what a difference the Healthy Homes programme is making, and how home insulation is a significant public health issue."

He was heartened by people reporting lower power bills and an improved quality of life.
"With so many New Zealand homes cold, damp and energy-inefficient, there are huge gains to be made through simple energy-efficient steps around the home."

What? The CEO of a power company is surprised that insulation is a good idea.

Grr. Argh.

Also...

Noticed in a previous blog that I mentioned my lost glasses.

Hum.

Well I bought new ones and i claimed them on my content insurance. Then I claimed the excess on my medical insurance.

Then, this weekend, I found my glasses.

Oopsey.

No more wine for me whicle logged on - I'm revealing insurance fraud already.

The best laid plans...

So since the last entry I have don two runs.

But also smoked two cigarettes and drank booze booze booze.

At the moment I am enjoying a glass of wine at my desk as I wind down to the weekend. I am about to log off, go to the supermarket and buy more wine so that I can enjoy wine with friends over dinner at my house.

I like booze. This is the problem.

I also like workplaces where management bring drinks to your desk on a Friday. There should be more of that I think.

Anyway back to the booze. Hope everyone has a stonking weekend.

Half Marathon

I'm supposed to be doing a half marathon. This is supposed to involve five days of training a week. This is supposed to involve me getting up at 5.30 every morning and squeezing it in before work three days a week and then getting up whenever I like on the weekend and going for a run whenever I like.

Guess which one I'm struggling with?

Yup it's the weekend. I hve not missed a single weekday session in the last five weeks. I have not done a single weekend session for the last two. I blame booze.

So (and I'm posting this on my blog so I will HAVE to do it), from Monday 9 October, no booze will pass my lips until after the Marathon two weeks later.

I'm publishing this before I change my mind

Strange Game

VERY funny night on Friday night. Had dinner with Claire and Darryl, got relatively wasted and then got captivated as Darryl proceeded to muck about with this online chat room/virtual reality thing.

You have a character and you get free basic stuff but then you can buy local currency with REAL money and buy things like clothes, jewellery, a house etc. You can even buy new skin to make yourself more beautiful. Which is important it seems becuase we were barely in there five minutes when we got picked up! Imagine.

I will spare your blushes and not go into the sordid details of what happened next. Needless to say it was hilarious and either that chicky is a really sad case or she was also three people sitting around a table and laughing themselves sick.

I hate people texting in restaurants and all that kind of 'technology replacing human interaction' as much as the next person but I was sore the next day I'd laughed so hard.

Crocodile Hunter

Now I'm sorry if this is a predictable post but COME ON PEOPLE.

DISCLAIMER: I am not stoked that Steve Irwan died. He is a husband and father of two and it is sad that anyone in that situation has died in a weird, tragic way. This should be kept in mind as you read the following.

Maybe it's becuase I live in the bottom part of the world which is relatively close to where Steve Irwan lived and perhaps people everywhere haven't completly lost their minds and sense of proportion over this but I must speak up.

Stupid line number one: "I can't believe that he's dead"
The man made a LIVING out of putting himself in dangerous situations with dangerous creatures under dangerous levels of stress. How is it a surpirse that he was killed by a dangerous creature?

Stupid line number two: "The man did so much for anmimal rights"
This is a guy who everyday was faced with the same decision.
a) Sedate dangerous creature with a dart from outside the enclosure. Wait for it to fall into a peacefule sleep. Lift it up and carry it to the other place it needs to be
b) Get into the enclousure with fully allert creature with sharp teeth and an anger management issue. Body slam it, pin it to the ground, get three other people to endanger themselves and the creature by sitting on it, stick my fingers in it's eyes, tie it with my bootlaces and skid it out of one enclosure (now with five pople sitting on it) and into another.

He chose b). Every day. For the viewing pleasure of many.

Stupid line number three: "It's like when Princess Diana died"
I'm not even going to address this apart from to say : No. It isn't.

I'm Back

I'm slack I know it. You've probably all lost interest but there you go. I'm back on line (although at work so can't go nuts).

Hope that everyone is well.