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Hmm birthday Wednesday.  My daughter’s guitar teacher has a birthday the following day.  I must say he is cute, but he’s a lot younger – hell most people are, it seems.  She told him it was my birthday and asked him to guess my age, as most people get it wrong.  He first guessed 31 but Hayley informed him I was older than him (he will be 33) so he guessed 33.  LOL.  She then informed him I would be 45.  He was surprised, as all people are who guess my age in the 30s.

It’s Hallowe’en here.  An anti-climax as always.  Hallowe’en is the pits here.  Nothing ever happens.  A few kids go trick or treating, but that’s it.  This year I saw two groups of kids.  Just two.  It was pathetic.  Didn’t see anyone pass my house, much less come to the door.  Not that I like the idea of going to strangers’ doors, but it’s a bit of fun.  The boring adults here don’t even get into the spirit of things, having parties, etc.  Totally a non-event.  Pity.  It’s the wrong time of year here anyway -it’s still light when most kids go around.  No darkness, no lights – boring.

Well, time for bed.

Later, when I can think of stuff to write….

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So my Saturday evening starts

Mood: cruisy
Listening to: german rock

I haven’t yet made dinner – might cook myself some pork.  I’m currently reviewing a few old tapes and making one up for the long drive north in January (well, may as well while I think of it).  I don’t have a CD player in my car.

I’ve just scanned a few old photos and showed daughter a few of her grandmother, great grandmother and great great grandmother (holy shit, she says, seeing how old they are).  I had some ancient negatives which I knew were fragile.  Well two of them gave up the ghost today.  I’m afraid they’d got damp and the handling just put paid to them.  The others are close behind.  Thankfully I do have photos from those negatives but interesting to have the actual big negatives.  I then came across a few letters from my grandfather to my mother – very interesting stuff.  My parents were apparently going through some difficulties when I was about 9, which I never knew about.  I also gleaned from the letters that my mother must have moaned about her weight gain in the early 60s and also that they had planned to settle back in Australia (I wish they had).  I don’t think I’d ever actually taken the time to read them before.  They dated from 1959 before I was born through to the early 70s.  My grandfather died in 1974.  Precious stuff.  The funny thing is that parts of my grandfather’s letters, the way he wrote or the words he used, reminded me of S.

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The weekend

Mood: relaxed
Listening to: Richie Havens

I went to buy tickets for Big Day Out yesterday.  At over 200 I didn’t want to withdraw from my account, since I have a few bills to pay, so decided to use the credit card.  Get this – the store that sells the tickets don’t accept credit any more!  WTF?  Well **** you, I thought.  I left, ignoring the apology.  I’ve now bought them online.

Had a good night last night.  Met Nick and Margaret and we went over to Marise’s to see her new house and have a night of comedy.  I bought Black Books earlier in the day (the whole 3 series for 35) and took along Little Britain series 2.  Nick had The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Little Britain series 1.  And Marise had Blue Collar comedy tour 1 and 2.  Well naturally we couldn’t watch everything, so we settled on 2 that most of us hadn’t seen – a movie about the League of Gentlemen – Apocalypse, and Blue collar comedy tour 2.  I’ve never been a huge fan of League of E G, while Nick and Marise love it.  I just find the characters rather repulsive.  The movie was ok, although I wasn’t laughing as hard as Nick and Marise.  I really couldn’t figure out what Nick was laughing at much of the time.  Blue Collar Comedy tour was good.  Larry the Cable Guy was a side-splitter.  I’d seen B C comedy tour 1 so knew what to expect from them all.  He’s my fave – cute and cuddly and his accent is great.  I laughed the hardest at his performance.  Left Marise’s just after 11pm and headed  home to bed.

Just watched episode 1 of Black Books – one of my fave episodes.  Brilliant.  I can’t believe my brother hasn’t seen it so it’ll be great to show him.  Haven’t heard if he’s dropping by this weekend.  But it doesn’t really matter.

Time to do housework, etc.

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Slept in

Mood: Relaxed
Listening to: Oomph

God, it was nice.  Weird dreams and I’d wake briefly to look at the time and think yeah I should get up soon and sleep another hour.  When I did get up I still felt groggy.

So I’ve had a nice lazy day.  Browsed the net, checking emails.  It’s fine with my friend in Auckland to stay with her in January.  Her son and my daughter get on really well too and had a great time at the last BDO.

Then I played Sims (the ‘old’ one).  It’s been a while and I can’t even recognise which families are mine (as against my daughters’).  Today I saw a cool character and wondered if it was one of mine, but no.  So I mucked around with a few families not achieving much.  I’ll think I’ll concentrate on one which has interesting dynamics.  Originally a family of 3 guys and one girl, one of the guys got a girl to move in and they slept together.  But sexy guy wanted her and moved in on her.  She now sleeps with him and, needless to say, the guys are not on good terms.  Neither are the two women.  Great stuff.  Meanwhile the bachelor of them all has excelled in his career.  They’re my most successful (friend and career-wise) and interesting family.  Perhaps I’ll include a pic of them at some stage if I can remember how to do that.

So yeah, great for fogetting my own life and controlling others.   Very time-consuming though.  Not sure when I can get back to it after today. 

Ok, I have to go and pick up my daughter.  Later!

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Music

Ha. My daughter just informed me that tickets are now on sale for Big Day Out.  So I’ve been ordered to purchase a ticket and one for me as well.  Last year (or rather, January this year!) we went along and it was great.  I wasn’t really into System of a Down, but knew the songs (from having heard them so much!) – good show.  I basically went along for Chemical Brothers who were playing right at the end.  So next year so far it’s White Stripes, etc so nothing in it for me I thought, until I saw that Iggy Pop will be there – cool.  We’ll see what other acts are going to play.  So better get saving – it’s a long trip to Auckland, etc.

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Moods

Mood: reflective

I was kind of tetchy yesterday.  I got angry at work and lost my temper briefly.  Not a good sign.  And after today’s email I just need a day off work – a mental health day, if you like.  Just a day to myself to reflect, to think, to sort, to relax and look after myself.  I only thought about the possibility this morning of taking tomorrow off and I can’t tell you how happy I am that I was granted it.  I really need it. 

There really should be mental health days for everyone, which is separate from ‘sick’ leave (for which you feel guilty if you’re not actually physically sick) and annual leave.  However, it’s either or so tomorrow is annual leave.

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Surprise visit

My brother turned up about 1.30.  He’d tried to get through on the phone but of course I was on here earlier!  15 minutes after he got here I had to pick daughter up so left him to it.  He’d packed his car with more boxes of stuff.  I think he’s taken some of mine with him by mistake but we’ll sort that out later.  Helped him put some bookshelves on the trailer.  We had a beer and some fish and chips and off he went again.  I’ll visit him tomorrow – need a drive away from the place and I’ll get to see their house furnished for a change!  (There was only a mattress on the floor last time.)

Next time he comes he’s going to take away some bigger items of furniture like an old chest (which I swear is about 17th century).  At the moment it has all my notes and piles of books on it so I’ll have to find somewhere else to put them!  I need a low bookshelf – hard to come by.

I went through some old floppy disks.  Half of them wouldn’t read – I’m not sure if they’re corrupted or whether this floppy disk drive is stuffed.  I’ll take a couple to work and see if I can open them there.  If not – out they go.  The whole purpose was to transfer anything on them I wanted and throw them out.  Old technology.  They don’t last.  I think (or hope) that the photos on them are just copies.  I should have some actual photos of the ones on disk.

Ok, enough for today!

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Browsing the web

Mood: muddled
Listening to: Eisbrecher

I was just visiting this site – no intention to update.  Didn’t have anything to update.  But now I’m here I may as well.  But it will be random as thoughts emerge.

I should be doing other things, especially considering I have to go out again soon.

My daughter is with friends, took her guitar with her – some garage jamming to do with her ‘band’.  They’re a great bunch of girls.

Picked her up yesterday along with one of her friends.  I filled petrol while they went to a supermarket for munchies.  Waited in the car, reading a book, and who should come back with them but Dave.  He’s a really nice guy and I should drum up enough courage to ask to meet him for coffee or something.  I get ridiculously shy around men I like, it’s so silly.  That’s one good thing about online friendships.  They can’t see me, there’s no worry about what I look like.  Online I can think about what I’m going to say.  We can chat about all sorts of things, the visual distractions and environment taken away.  It’s more focused on words.  And I tend to express myself far better in words than I do ‘IRL’. 

So I’ve attempted to start relationships online with a view to continuing offline, but it doesn’t work.  For a start the onliners I like are thousands of miles away.  The local onliners just don’t intrigue me enough to want to meet them.  Or if they do, they bugger off if I haven’t contacted them every day or every second day.  Talk about impatient.  I don’t have the time to sit every day at the computer for hours on end.

Where is this entry going?  I have no idea.  Just random thoughts… and I appear to have reached the end of any coherent ones (if you can call them that).

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Driving lessons/Friends

Bro decided not to drop by, which was good.  Daughter got dropped off by her father in her ‘new’ car!  He bought her a cheap little Subaru Justy to learn to drive on.  She wanted a manual, rather than automatic, so she’s happy.  I hope it’s reliable – it’s a little jerky while driving.

So took her for a couple of lessons.  Taking her a while to get used to the clutch – a few bunny hops and stalls. 

Read a blog about meeting someone from online.  I envy those who live near enough to be able to do that.  I’ve chatted to so many nice people online that I would love to meet, but alas they live thousands of miles away.  It’s doubtful I will ever meet them.

Realised while thinking of that, that I have few online friends left.  They’ve drifted away living their own lives, rarely getting online.  I don’t get online myself much.  Certainly not long enough to make new friends.  I have one online friend left who I chat to regularly.  He’s such a sweety – we’ve been friends for about four years through ups and downs.  He’s a lot younger than me and now lives with his girlfriend.  She’s not jealous at all – realises sensibly that 1) I’m 1000s of miles away and no threat, and 2) I’m old enough to be his mother.  I appreciate her letting him chat to me though.  Lots of women wouldn’t.  Our friendship is important to both of us.  It’s quite strange how we became friends – me trying to calm down an angry young guy full of emotion.  His sensitivity and common sense attracted me and he’s so tolerant of my moods, as I am of his.  I’ve feared his breaking off our friendship, especially when he got a girlfriend and when he moved in with her.  But no, he still keeps in touch, and I’m glad, considering everyone else online has disappeared.

But yes, there are times I would love to have been able to meet them all.  Even if nothing came of it.  Just to interact with them face to face – look into their eyes, feel them near.  It would have been interesting if nothing else!

Time to check dinner but I suspect my oven has crapped out.  Great.  All I need.

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The return of people

I’ve had the house to myself which has been brilliant for working, but a little lonely.

My brother had planned to return today to take away some more of his stuff.  I’m hoping he’ll leave it for sunnier weather as it’s still wet and cold and not the nicest of times to try and sort through my garage to see what’s his, or to take the bigger stuff away on a trailer.

Daughter returns today also after spending some time with her sister in Wellington.  So the house will have life in it again, instead of being so quiet.  Even when I have my music on it’s still too quiet and lonelifying (yes ghastly word – just made it up, but couldn’t think of one to say what I wanted – which is that playing my music seems to accentuate the emptiness somehow).

Time to attack some laundry so I’ve got something to wear to work tomorrow!

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