Just watched:

Taken. If you like Bourne-type movies, then this is right up your alley. Oh, it is so far up your alley. What I thought was going to be 93 minutes of Qui-Gon Jinn faffing about like a git, was actually full of SO much arse-kicking that it has reached its arse-kicking limit. I don't think it is possible to fit more arse-kicking into a movie. And karate chops to the neck. Neck chops, and arse-kicking GALORE. We watched it last night, and had beers, and yelled "yeah!" and "phwoar!"

Currently reading:

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I am ashamed to say how long this book has taken me, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the book and everything to do with the fact that I just haven't been reading lately. I guess it comes down to work, but lately I seem to prefer to put in headphones and zone out when I'm on the bus, rather than read. But! The book! The book is quite good.

Listening to:

The Cassette Kids. They are pretty darn cool. I feel so young and hip right now.

Feeling:

Hot (hot hot), as summer seems to be kicking in, well and truly. My little green shitbox has had to crank up its dusty old air conditioner over the past couple of days, and it doesn't like it one bit. Expect the compulsory summer complaints of "why do I live in this country when I hate the heat so much" to commence shortly.


Doing:

General Sunday stuff. Cleaning. Booking flights to Thailand for February (with a day spent in Brunei on the way there to pop in and say hello to the Sultan). I've put up the Christmas tree and shoved a couple of presents under it. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go. Etc. I went to the shops yesterday, and some kids were getting their picture taken with Santa, at a cost of $49.95 to the parents. What the EFF. I swear that shit was free when I was a kid.

Eating:

Gingernut biscuits. Because nobody can deny the awesomeness of the gingernut.

Some ponderings, on this marvellous day off:

• After passing a hazard perception test on the weekend (which was quite miraculous, considering that in one of the test videos I murdered a few pedestrians), I have been considered eligible to upgrade to my open licence. Which is what I just did. I will no longer receive the looks of suspicion and derision that followed my p-plates wherever they went. I can now get away with changing lanes without indicating, swerving into other lanes every time there is a bend in the road [INSERT RANT ABOUT OTHER DRIVERS HERE] etc.
  
  This has me thinking that managing to spend a year driving solo, without crashing into anything or anyone, might mean that I have had a sufficient amount of practice to upgrade my car to something better than the crumply green shitbox I am driving at the moment. And with this thought comes a sudden pang of sadness, because it turns out I have grown quite fond of the shitbox, despite these facts:
  
  
  • following a head-on collision involving the previous owner, the panel beater has not aligned the engine correctly when repairing, resulting in headlights which point to the floor and the kind of creaks and groans that make me suspect that one day the engine will just fall out onto the road while I'm driving.
    
  • brakes which squeal like a banshee.
  • a missing badge on the front, so my car looks like it is a no-name brand.
  • a radiator cap which I only managed to take off last weekend, for the first time in a year. Due to the engine alignment problem. Miraculously, it didn't need a top-up.
  • a God-awful smell which permeates the house after every time it is driven. Like normal car smell, mixed with a burning heap of tyres.
  
  So, well, maybe I might keep it for a little bit longer yet.
  
  
• At a super mental Myer shopping event last night, I bought the best underpants ever. They are blue, with red bits, and a red bow, and they are a bit frilly, and awesome. Flinging them around the house last night in the joyous rapture which can only follow the purchase of new underpants, I tried to express my excitement to Beardie.
  
  Me: [squealing] Look! Look, look!!!
  Beardie: Why did you buy kids underpants?
  Me: [head explodes] They're NOT kids underpants!!1!@
  Beardie: They look like kids underpants.
  Me: THEY ARE AWESOME.
  Beardie: Um. Ok.
  
  I mean, I would be excited for him if HE bought the best underpants ever. Boys just don't get it.
  
  
• Piano lesson number two is tonight. I appear to suck as much as I did last week, but I am hoping that this progress that everyone speaks of will start to kick in soon. If I spent more time practising today, and less time searching for random videos on YouTube, it could possibly help. Possibly.
  

I decided to have a productive Saturday and went to a yoga class. I had been reliably informed that this class was for beginners, and to avoid the more advanced class until I felt more confident.

LIES! Lies, I tell you!

I did a class earlier last week with a different instructor, and that was incredibly tough, but this was like I had walked into flexi-hell. Turns out I am completely stiff with the joints of an eighty-year old. My wrists don't bend the way everyone elses do, my ankles don't bend the way everyone elses do, and I can't balance for shit.

And the funny thing is, I will admit that I always thought that yoga was a bit on the easy side. I mean, I knew it was great for the flexibility, and the inner peace, etc., but as far as improving your fitness goes I would always pick a class that involved jumping around like a loon over the people chanting "om" and crossing their legs a lot.

WRONG! I was so very, very wrong!

After about an hour of having the instructor single me out, correct my position and ask me if I was ok as I gasped, cracked and groaned, I started thinking that my 45 minute class seemed to be running for a really long time. I don't know if it was the last class of the day, or if she just had a lot of free time on her hands, but LUCKY ME, the instructor decided to give everyone a free 90 minute lesson. HOORAY!

Summary: I am completely crippled. Muscles are spasming randomly, and the back muscles I needed to stretch so badly are aching like a bitch. Which I guess is a good thing? It's either a good thing, or I'm dying.

I am:

• lazy. Right now, I can't be arsed doing much of anything at all.

• puffy-haired from the storm. It seems to be storm season at the moment, with crazy flooding and the like. A couple of hours ago the rain was coming down sideways, and the hail was rattling against the windows. But now it is all quiet, and we are just left with the occasional flash of lightning off in the distance.

• a bit chuffed that I finally dragged my arse to my first piano lesson. The instructor said that I was very good, but I suspect that he is full of lies and deceit to try and convince me to come back for more lessons. But hey, a compliment is a compliment.

• also a little bit chuffed that I have made it to the gym, completed a 4-hour pilates workshop and 45 minutes of bending myself into painful positions (i.e. yoga).

• in agony, from the above.

• stoked that it's Friday tomorrow. And that I have no meetings to run or attend. I plan on sitting quietly at my desk and muttering to myself like a crazy person until it's home time.

• a bit giggly, because Beardie gave me flowers today.

• trying to get ABBA out of my head.

• going to bed. Soon. Me = tired much.

• zzzzzzzzzzzz.

To prove that I am not the ever-procrastinating wench that everyone suspects I am, I have achieved two things:

• Booked my first piano lesson. My overwhelming desire to become one of those music people I envy so much has finally led to me setting the date for next Wednesday, and I expect to have transformed into Tori Amos in approximately one month.

• Joined a health club and booked in for a health assessment, where I will probably be asked to ride a bike for a while before they pinch my fat with giant pincers. This place is jam-packed with yoga and pilates, which is just what I need for my stupid back with its stupid muscles that suck. I expect to have transformed into a super bendy circus freak in approximately one month.

(Side note: before going to check out this club for the first time, I called up and asked for directions to get there. The lady was very, very vague and would only tell me about things nearby, with no specifics. I turned up, found the place and noted that the location was directly nextdoor to Just Hooters. Oh! Why did you not say you were nextdoor to Just Hooters?! If she had said that, it would've just made my day.)

Obligatory work whinge: I've been letting things get on top of me since I got back. The total misery of being back there on Monday has rolled over into general discontent for the rest of this week, but with Friday rapidly approaching I think I am just about back to normal. This week's reason why I consider this job to be the hardest of my life:

Having to tell a casual staff member that there's no hours available for her, even though she is in desperate need of the money to pay for her husbands medical bills. Her husband who has leukaemia.

Yeah. You want to be me.

Every time I come home from a beachy-type holiday, I look like this. Within five minutes of walking in the door I realise that my toe ring is giving me a callus, my anklet is catching on my fat pants, and my hair which was formerly windswept by the salty air is now manky from the Brisbane smog, and life goes back to normal.

Well, not fully back to normal. I still have to make the return to work tomorrow and it will be highly sucky, I am sure.

Thirty second wrap up!

Good flights, ocean rafting, snorkelling, fish and coral, beautiful beaches, catamarans and a ferry, Hamilton, Daydream and Long Islands, eating, eating and more eating, massage from hell, cocktails, cocktails and more cocktails, lots of sunshine, my dirty tan, backpackers galore, seedy nightclubs, spending an insane amount of money, shitty sleepless nights, manhandled underpants, home, oh my!

And just to elaborate on a few things there:

Eating: My stomach seems to have stretched and I am now eating bigger meals than Beardie. How this works, I do not know.

Dirty Tan: So all of this glorious sunshine, and I was ever so careful with sunscreen so that I didn't come home a lobster. I am slightly tanned now (for perhaps the first time since high school) but it turns out that I don't turn lovely and golden - I turn dirty and patchy. So I look like I spent my holiday in a gutter instead of in the sunshine.

Manhandled Underpants: I apparently left a pair of my undies up in the room somewhere when checking out, and when we returned to collect our bags for our flight home, I discovered that the cleaner had collected them and put them in my handbag for me. Used underpants surprise!

Massage: What was supposed to be the most relaxing part of the trip was actually pretty awful. I knew that my back was in a pretty bad state, from past massage experience, but half an hour of having somebody jab her fingers into the knots in my back had me on the verge of tears. I survived, and on the way out the masseuse grabbed me and said "excuse me, but WHAT have you been doing?!"

I replied with something like "um, office work?" and she proceeded to tell me that my back was congested, that I need to drink more water or else I'll get osteoporosis (apparently my back was sucking up the oils like a sponge, but surely the booze from the night before is partially to blame?), that I need to exercise and stretch, BIG TIME, and that I am pretty much a gigantic, knotty freak.

As you can imagine, I was slightly freaked out, so I've been throwing back water like I'm an addict and I'm joining a health club tomorrow. I knew the fitness bug was coming anyway but it's definitely a kick start when you're told that your body is basically shit.

There's more than this but I am spent, and this post is too long already. Back to reality tomorrow. Sigh.

What a crazy Friday. Trying to attend five meetings (one of which was the dreaded, face-reddening Team Meeting), partake in a team lunch (in which I ate the team food, but did it at my desk, while I continued working), and then hand over my entire job to somebody else, and then catch up on the e-mails I haven't had a chance to look at all day is my definition of a crazy Friday. I went home late. It blew.

And now, welcome to my crazy weekend. Before we leave for the airport tomorrow at 11-ish, we need to:

• completely clean the house from head to toe, because there is a house inspection while we are away, and we currently live in a sty
• prepare the spare room for the friend who is house-sitting while we're away
• clean up the files on my PC so that the friend who is house-sitting doesn't stumble upon a) blog stuff, b) porn
• go to the going away party of a friend who is moving to another country
• attend an appointment in which hair will be violently ripped out of my body
• eat regular meals to prevent starvation
• PACK
  

So, I guess I better get cracking.

Sunday afternoon through to Saturday morning is CHILL TIME. I'll see you after that, tanned and carefree.

Well. Hopefully.