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