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.