It's generic life update time!

Dexter! Dexter is the naughtiest kitty ever, and basically divides his time between slashing my flesh to pieces and sleeping on my hair at night. My right hand in particular looks as though I shoved it into the insinkerator. He has settled in very well and I love him muchly, despite the pain he causes me.

The Abbey Medieval Festival! Alas, good sirs and fair maidens, we did not go. And the friends who were supposed to go and then bring us hilarious stories also did not go, because they wanted to go to a chocolate fair instead. Chocolate over jousting? Oh, come on. I guess there is always next year.

The job! Have heard nothing yet but I would expect to receive some type of notification next week. I was the sneakiest of sneaky people and asked a friend with access to the government jobs database to have a look at how many other people had applied, and who they were. Only 11 applications! For two jobs! This is great, though I did recognise two of the names (and at least one of them is a shoo-in), so it's still very uncertain. I am hoping though, because to move into a shiny new job would be just delightful.

Boring fitness shit! I am on Week Eight of my running program, with just one more week left until I am officially Hardcore. And by Hardcore, I mean rubbish. But I should be able to hobble my way through Bridge to Brisbane, which was the whole idea. I can already foresee that being in the middle of thousands of other runners is going to make me run much faster than what I am capable of so that I tire in the first 30 seconds and have to sit down on the side of the road with a glass of water. Should be lovely!

Piano! It's official - I am going to be "performing" in a small concert for adult piano students at the end of September. I predict that I will completely cock it up. This is very certain. But I will ask Beardie to film it on my shiny new video camera and then perhaps I'll post it. Especially if I screw it royally, because it will probably be very hilarious (i.e. shockingly embarrassing for me).

What else! Nothing much. Doing some training over the next couple of weeks, followed by an exam, to turn me into a super 1337 techo nerd geek h4x0r type person. Going to a barbeque tomorrow at Beardie's boss's place, which is apparently a Big Deal and I'm not allowed to wear fat pants and thongs. Other than that, business as usual. Work is work, and highly worky.

I hope you are having a tip top weekend.

Frubears. You can find Frubears in the health food/dried fruit bit of your supermarket. They are little bears that are made of dried apricot, dried peach and mysterious "fruit fibre". They are healthy and pretty tasty and having a couple is just lovely.

Eating an entire packet is NOT LOVELY.

Beardie and I had a movie date tonight to see Transformers 2 (Review: Fox is extremely hot, robots are pretty cool, movie was ok overall but not superawesomecool like the first one) and in an attempt to be healthy, I purchased some things to eat in place of the usual salty popcorn and choc top loveliness.

Frubears seemed like a great option due to the health factor, however I made the deadly mistake of forgetting all about the fibre content.

I JUST ATE 20 GRAMS OF DIETARY FIBRE IN 15 MINUTES.

Imagine if somebody cut open your stomach, dropped a large stone inside and sewed you back up. My digestive system is really pissed off with me.

I really shouldn't be making these kind of mistakes at this age.

Bleurgh. What a weekend!

Grade 7 Poetry:

Ode to a Little Green Shitbox

With your crumply front plate
And your unroadworthy state
I was ripped off when I bought you

But your smells and your squeals
And your crooked front wheels
Meant that slowly, I came to adore you

Then I bought a new car
Which was better, by far
For economics, I had to sell you

I put you up on Carsales
Excluding some minor details
Within a day it was time to farewell you

Now I see and hear you around
(I know your unique clicking sound)
And your new ginger owner dotes on you

And while I am cashed up and glad
My heart feels a bit sad
For my Little Green Shitbox; I loved you

Sniff.

And briefly:

• I turned 26 on Wednesday. Beardie and I both had the day off work and went shopping, followed by a big mother of a steak. I am all about the steak lately. 26 seems to be going ok. I am in my late twenties. Apparently I am lover of steak in my late twenties. All is well.

• I organised a night of bowling for my team on Friday night, which was super fun, though every time I stay out for drinks with work people I regret it. I mostly regret all the shit that I spout which is really not making that great an impression when you have to go back to work and be in charge of these people. BUT THEN, I also went out last night for an engagement party. Plus, we had an enormous dinner beforehand (including a rocky road sundae, which we completely inhaled in seconds, much to the disgust of the other patrons and amazement of the waitress). So basically I am feeling seedy and porky today and as a result am going to detox this week.

• There's some whispers on the job front that could see me putting in an application for the department that brutally rejected me the last time. The only difference between now and then is that next month I am going on an awesome training course which will actually give me some of the skills that they were asking for the last time I applied. They are only rumours at this stage, but I still get a little excited skippety-skip in my tummy.

What's the best thing to do when you are seedy and porky? Clean the house from top to bottom for an inspection this week. Fricking awesome. Hope you've had a good weekend, lovely people.

For people who enjoy the full use of their arms, shoulders and upper back, might I suggest that you do not go canoeing for seven hours? Just a tip.

Alas, I am only able to give myself this tip in retrospect.

OW.

Cue mental imagery of Beardie and I lazily paddling along a calm, clear lake, with the sun shining and birds twittering. Then replace it with me screeching "go RIGHT, go RIGHT!!!" and us drifting head-first into an overhanging tree. And the lake was brown, but most likely from tannin and not actually from poo (as I kept claiming), and there were definitely birds about but they were vastly outnumbered by the mosquitoes. By about twenty billion to one.

Our party also ended up lost at one point, and frantically trying to escape from a rapidly dwindling inlet before we ended up completely bogged.

However! I did not fall out, or capsize the boat, or even get wet a little bit. In fact I did more damage to myself at lunch by dropping tuna all over my pants, and therefore smelling delightful for the rest of the day.

It was actually pretty good fun, with good company and lovely scenery and all of that. And the pain isn't too bad this morning, though Beardie tells me that it might be that kind of deeply burrowed muscular pain that will come out the day after the day after.

Other ridiculous things I have signed myself up for:

• My piano teacher, who is as quiet as a mouse (I am a very quiet person, and she makes me seem like a big, loudmouthed git), asked me if I wanted to participate in an upcoming concert that they were holding. Given that the rest of the participants were aged 10 and under, I declined, not wanting to be the only Giant Person on stage. She said that they were considering having a concert just for their adult students and would I like to participate in that one instead? I said that if she gives me plenty of notice, I would do it. That's right. Performing on a stage. In front of strangers. This is only just an idea at this stage and I already need a change of underwear.
  
  
• Beardie suggested that we partake in the Bridge to Brisbane Fun Run this year, and because I want one of those t-shirts that says "I completed Bridge to Brisbane", I said yes. Then I realised what I had just done, and said "ah, shit." It coincides pretty well with the running program that we're doing and I figure we can always just walk/hobble/crawl along if we need to. And can I just point out that the idea of me EVER partaking in something like this is just freaking crazy; I never thought I would. It's got to be a good thing, I guess.
  
  
• We've accepted an invite to go a popular American-style restaurant which is famous for house-sized portions of ribs, wings, pork belly and other meals primarily based around gigantic slabs of meat. As somebody who has always been a small eater, and a lover of all things vegetable, I am already quite frightened by this concept. They don't have a menu online so I can't even make a plan beforehand and can foresee an evening of clutching my stomach, my pants exploding, groaning with a trail of hickory-smoked, porky BBQ sauce running down my chin.
  

Today I have a whole range of crappy girly movies to watch (as Beardie is working, I am sparing him the pain best time of his life) and I will probably try and finish reading The English Patient. For those indulging in public holiday awesomeness today, I hope you have a shiny, tip top day.

Lately, I am on a baking frenzy. I have made muffins two weekends in a row (and I'm wondering if it's just the way they make the house smell that I am addicted to) and am fully getting into the whole "make loads of food and then freeze it for lunches" concept. I even bought a gigantic cookbook from one of those discount book places, and it's not as dodgy as you would expect.

Reading: I've read a few books lately, In Cold Blood (which was quite good), Musicophilia (a non-fiction book about the different ways music impacts the brain, which was quite interesting) and I'm currently reading American Psycho, which has so far made me feel physically queasy only the once, though I still have half the book left to go. It is so very graphic (with both violence and sex) that I can't even act all cavalier on the bus, flaunting my banned book in front of everyone's face, because I find that I need to burrow into a corner so that nobody reads about what Patrick Bateman is doing with two girls over my shoulder.

Watching: He's Just Not That Into You. I saw this last night, and Beardie pretended to watch it with me while he actually surfed the net on his iPhone and read through a JB Hi Fi catalogue. It did have me pondering how anyone can possibly live that kind of lifestyle, going out with a different guy every week and obsessing over whether he is The One (do people really do that? Really??), while my "dating" experience has been to go out with the one guy until we are Boyfriend And Girlfriend without going out with anyone else during that time, which is apparently not the norm. I spent the rest of the movie marvelling at Scarlett Johannson's body - are her boobs actually bigger now than they were before? These are the important questions.

Working: On developing a pre-crazy Britney back:

(Actually, that looks like some pretty frightening spine cleavage.)

And a Jessica Biel arse:

It can be done, surely? Maybe I shouldn't be baking muffins.

Weight loss and fitness: THE JOURNEY*.

[cues Shannon Noll music]

Actually, not all that impressive really. Ten weeks ago, I started wearing a pedometer constantly** and writing down every little bit of exercise I did. I also started exercising, which in itself was a Big Deal for the girl who likes to sit around in fat pants feeling lardy.

I joined up with a website and started recording what I was eating. I stopped buying lunches and social club chocolates and energy drinks and iced tea and lattes and butterscotch hot chocolate with marshmallows and buttery raisin toast for breakfast. This was A Change, and all of a sudden I had shitloads more cash. Funny that.

I cleared all of the crap food out of the house and replaced it all with super healthy goodness. Beardie gave me two Easter eggs this year, and I have eaten one so far, except it took me a month to get through. Yes, a month. I became so jam-packed with fruit and vegetables that I would probably make a hearty addition to your winter stew.

Sigh. And all this because Thailand made me feel podgy.

The Outcome:

• My stamina is up and upper. I can jump around all over the place and my face is only 50% tomato-coloured, instead of 800%.
• I have muscle tone in place of jiggle. Well, there's still a bit of jiggle, but a bit of muscle tone, too.
• I lost weight. Based on BMI, I picked a target of 56kg. As of today, I am 56kg. After Thailand, when I started this thing, I was 63.5. It is kind of freaky that this whole thing has worked out exactly within the ten weeks of the work fitness challenge, but hey, I am down with it.
• I'm back to the weight I was before I started my binge drinking Journey at 18. It's pretty cool, but I'm a bit peeved that a lot of weight seemed to come off my rack. I liked my boobs, but oh well. They're still there, but a bit smaller.
• Not many of my clothes fit me properly anymore, and my jeans are all saggy around the arse.
  

The Lessons We Learn:

• I could, in theory, go onto a diet of pies right now. However I am kind of unsure how to function like a normal human anymore, and will have to keep recording everything I eat, at least for a little while.
• I could, in theory, sit around like a lazy git and watch my newly-developed stamina go to shit. However I'm kind of keen to keep it up for a while longer, and I'm starting a 9-week running program next week which will most likely kill me.
• Most of the snacks I used to eat and consider healthy are actually really shitty for my health. If I become one of those preachy nazi health nuts, can you please punch me in the face.
  

*The extreme overuse of the word 'journey' on Biggest Loser-y type shows makes me cringe, big time.
**Cannot wait to take the bitch off.

Yesterday, Beardie and I celebrated our anniversary. Because we are big, childish nerds, we did the following:

• Went to Underwater World
• Went to a Ginger Factory

Yeah!

Underwater World is pretty similar to how it was the last time I was there (15 years ago). I was still too scared to touch any of the slimy things in the hands-on tank and still very confused by the private parts of rays and sharks. It was pretty darn cool.

I have an unhealthy obsession with ginger. Sometimes people become obsessed with ginger, when they're elderly and wear cardigans all the time. I am 25 and I want to marry ginger. While I'm at it, I also love cardigans. I ran around the ginger shop like it was Willy Wonka's ginger factory, waving my arms and leaving a trail of drool. Damn this healthy eating bullshit; I could only leave with some ginger bears and a solitary gingerbread man. But they have an online shop, and I will be back. Oh yes.


In brief:

• I emptied my entire savings account today, to pay for the car. My tiny bank balance makes me sad.
• Only a week and a half of my fitness thing left! I will do a full wrap-up next week, but it's been a pretty interesting run (and for reasons I cannot fathom, pretty darn successful).
• I bought some new glasses and prescription sunglasses today. Because apparently I am not content leaving any money in my account, at all. But these things must be done as I progressively become more decrepit and blind.

Adios!

Reading: I've just finished Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh. It did not float my boat. It was such a bore. It was boredom-making. I have heard that it is some type of highly-acclaimed, insightful social commentary, but methinks it was perhaps much more valid in the 1930's than it is so many years later. I suspect it is most likely one of those books that I just Don't Get. And I am very glad to be rid of it. Now I get to choose a new book to read, which makes my heart all a-flutter.

Watching: a few different things, but I am devastated that United States of Tara is now off the air until 2010. Multiple personality Toni Collette is my favourite Toni Collette.

Going: to the movies. Beardie and I went and saw a movie which cements our reputations as the nerdiest nerds that the realm of nerds has ever known, i.e. Dragonball Evolution. Yeah! It wasn't bad. Goku's hair wasn't big enough and Piccolo was missing his little antennae things. We probably could've waited for the DVD release.

Spotting: a blogger at the gym! A real-life blogger, in person! However, it wasn't actually anyone I read regularly - just a random Brisbane blog I stumbled on one day and spent a few minutes looking at. This girl walked into my class and I just couldn't work out where I'd seen her before, until all of a sudden it dawned on me and I inwardly exclaimed "OMG, I have seen her off the interwebz!" I don't know why I was so terribly excited by this.

Doing: not an awful lot.

• Piano is on hold until May, with a brand-new teacher who is just down the road from me.
• Herbie is doing well, and is growing impressively despite having bits snipped off him all the time.
• I am continuing to lose little bits of pudge here and there, very slowly indeed.
• Work is killing me, as per usual. I did actually get a heap of feedback following that e-mail I sent to the Director and I am slightly daunted by everything they want me to do before I can get a job down there. Where I am going to find the time to complete a billion training courses, I don't know.
• The plan for Easter is to buy a coat (this is outside of the buying-new-clothes ban, because yesterday was fricking cold and I don't want to spend this winter shivering) and go for a drive to a cave to look at some glow worms.
  

Lovely.

Today is Random Photo Friday!


This my herb garden. I went to Bunnings (I LOVE BUNNINGS), bought the bits, and then made it with my own two hands. I would give it a name, but can't come up with anything more imaginative than "Herbie". And now I just have to learn to cook something other than vegetables and meat so that I can actually use the bloody things.


Another Threadless order arrived! I love Threadless. Jesus is breakdancing!

So I have the day off to go to the dentist and I expect to be prodded and poked with sharp metal hooks and that horrible thing that blows gusts of air into your mouth. But 6-monthly check-ups are good for the whole Dental Health thing, and I plan to keep them up to try and avoid another disgusting abscess and subsequent root canal. Dentists = lovely.

I have a couple of other things to do as well, another driving lesson, a new battery for my watch, some new stockings OMG WHAT AN EXCITING DAY.

But, I am not at work, so hoo-fricking-ray, I say.

There's a shitload of changes afoot at work at the moment, which is not unusual, and if you want to survive working there you need to be really adaptable to change. I am cool with change. I am all "Oh, a change? Yeah, that's cool." But I coach somebody who hates change, and every time there is a change she sits next to me and complains into my ear for HOURS. And being bombarded with negative vibes kinda gets me down.

So besides feeling a bit down, I decided to e-mail the Director about that job that I didn't get. Yes, I was feeling a bit ballsy. And I said "hey, yo, why didn't I get an interview, you bastard?" except, you know, worded all professional-like. And he replied saying he had forwarded the e-mail to one of the panel members, and thanked me for my interest in his Section. And that's the end of the story.

It's the end of the fourth week of my fitness thingy. I realised earlier that this is the first time I have ever stuck to any type of self-improvement thing for more than two weeks, so I am a bit chuffed.

But I figure there's still six weeks left for me to completely cock it up in some way.

Trinny & Susannah are in town! They are going to the shopping centre just around the corner from my house, and I am wondering if I should go along to learn how to Dress Proper, and not look so frumpy and dishevelled all the time. Maybe I could even have my own personal fashion analysis, which I fear would go like this:

Trinny: Your arse looks terribly fat in those pants.
Me: Oh. Um.
Susannah: And that top! Your tits look like two lumpy potatoes.
Me: Uh.
Trinny: You look like a prostitute.
Me: I thought I was dressed quite modestly...
Susannah: HOOKER!
Trinny: SLAG!

Etc.

Maybe I won't go along, after all.

In brief:

• I finally bought what I needed to start playing with my dodgy Thailand video on my PC, only to discover that my video camera (which is apparently a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 2) is now being an utter bitch and is incompatible with everything. So now I have to get a new camera.
• I am taking this week off The Piano as I've finished all the lessons that I have paid for and need to commit to another 10-week term. Before handing out large wads of cash, I've decided to check out a place which is closer to home this week, to see if I can get the same thing without the long drive.
  
• I think that the Chrimbo gut is pretty much gone, revealing the long-standing Beer Gut I have had for so long. Getting rid of something which has been so firmly attached to my body since my teens is not going to be easy, but I've got 7 weeks left to try.
• My manual driving test is booked for the 28th of April, hoorah! Sometimes I forget I have a clutch, and stall the car, and accelerate wildly towards red lights, but hey. I'm sure I've got a shot.
  

I hope you have had a spectacular week. Full of rainbows and lollipops, etc.

Life update:

Two weeks into the ten-week fitness thingo and my Bangkok bulge has pretty much gone. Hoorah! I expect that the sudden shock of going from HUGE meals and an abundance of ice cream to my usual stressed self who runs around and forgets to eat has done the trick. Now to work on my Chrimbo gut for the remaining eight weeks, which I am thinking won't be as easy. I've started taking tennis lessons (despite being incredibly uncoordinated) and have had my arse kicked at the gym a few times, too. I am even being careful with what I eat and resisting the temptation to jam chocolate in my mouth when my energy is feeling low, or when people piss me off. "Just eight weeks to go" is my internal mantra as I eye off the blocks of white chocolate Kit Kat in the supermarket.

Meanwhile, Beardie has decided he also wants to lose some weight, and has started the Tony "Creepy" Ferguson diet like the big cheater that he is.



Would you trust this man?

I am powering through books at the moment, and have actually started reading on the bus again after a long stint of listening to music and staring wistfully out the window. I have just started Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, which has made me laugh out loud several times so far and therefore I love it, and just finished reading Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami. If you have read this book, can you please explain what the frick the end of it means, because I was confused as hell. I think I was distracted by the drawn-out beginning and wasn't expecting it to turn all crazy.

Today I have had a productive day off, as I have had my car serviced and been to visit my mum for lunch. In today's episode of The Sordid Lives of the Mountain Dwellers!!!!:

[In David Jones, my mother, brother and I walk around the menswear section, looking for t-shirts for my brother.]

Mum: A lot of the clothes here are very gay, aren't they.
Me: MUM.
Mum: Well they are. [Mum checks the price on a shirt nearby, splutters loudly]
Me: Hmm?
Mum: THIS SHIRT IS $60 [several DJ staff glance in our direction]
Me: [ushering Mum away] they've got a mix here, some expensive clothes and some cheaper clothes too.
Mum: Hmph.

[a moment passes]

Mum: Our nextdoor neighbour's house was struck by lightning during the storm the other day. All of his chickens died.
Me: Oh, really?
Mum: Mm.

Never a dull moment. I am off to re-learn how to drive a manual car so that I can eventually upgrade from my Little Green Shitbox. I am going to count how many times I stall it, and crunch the gears. I expect it will be many.

So my ten week fitness thingy starts tomorrow. As I know myself quite well, I am predicting that I will be full of enthusiasm for the first week, and that it will slowly decrease from there. Though I am quite determined to at least get somewhere with it, so that my work clothes fit me properly again. I am giving myself an incentive, which is that I am not allowed to purchase any new item of clothing until I have lost my pad thai pudge. Which works well because a) it makes no sense to buy clothes if I am trying to lose weight, b) it hurts me deeply, because of my addiction to wandering around and buying random clothes (most of which I never wear), c) it saves me money, and makes me feel like a sensible grown-up person.

Whether I have the willpower, time will tell.

The trip away had me thinking about a lot of things, aside from my gut:

• Work. I was constantly thinking about the two jobs I had applied for (which both came to nothing, bah), but more than ever, having three weeks away made me really dread coming back. I guess this is a normal feeling, and there's not many people who love their jobs, etc. etc., but I am thinking that I should at least be trying to find a job which makes me happy. I suspect I have dug myself into a bit of a hole with the career path I have been following, as I'm just racking up more and more experience in people management/team leading when I have no desire to do it, whatsoever. I hate that with each day that passes, I am losing more of the technical/system knowledge that I need to go where I want to go. But what to do? Keep looking on Seek, I guess.

• Achieving something. I was dreading my piano lesson yesterday. Not only because I hadn't played for three weeks, but because I thought I was doing My Usual and getting to the point of quitting, because I'm a lazy cow. But I went along, and ended up coming home all inspired to keep trying. My piano teacher is in love with music, and I don't mean following the Top 40 or what's new; she lives and breathes the sounds and the feelings and gets so excited over new pieces. I know that I have the capability, I just need to keep the lazy at bay. Perhaps one day I can add "can play piano" to my list of talents, which currently contains "can spell reasonably well" and "can type fast".

• Other people. I am constantly analysing both myself and others. People with incredibly active social lives, who are constantly replying to phone calls/text messages from friends, who have every evening and their entire weekend planned from start to finish with non-stop excitement. I look at myself, who may go to drinks/dinner/etc. maybe once in a fortnight, and whose main contact with another person is Beardie, sometimes virtually through an MMORPG, and I wonder if I'm missing out on something? I've done personality tests, Myers-Briggs and all that jazz, and they all tell me that I'm an introvert (no shit, eh?), and I am pretty accepting of this. Yet I still feel inadequate, that I need to make more effort to interact with others, join a club or something, I don't know.

Yes, today is Introspective Sunday.

I hope that yours has been tip top.

So I was expecting a horrendous first week back at work, but in all honesty, it hasn't been that bad. This is because after one day of being back, I felt as though I had never left. So because my work is all-consuming and sucks the life and memories out of me, I didn't have too much trouble settling back in. Hooray!

Also, I think I can finally say that both jobs that I applied for have brutally rejected me. The first has only sent me an e-mail to say "you will be contacted by phone if you have been successful in gaining an interview" (and this was last week), and there has been no contact whatsoever, which is a wee bit shitty given that this is the job in my own department, and I would expect that given I am one of their own I would receive a phone call, an explanation at least, and woah, what an incredibly long sentence, yes? My friend at the second job sent me an e-mail to say it had been filled, and that apparently they had had somebody in mind for it all along. He apologised for wasting my time. That one I am more disappointed about, as it was system development/project work, and that floats my boat.

Alas!

I shall continue on my merry way and keep an eye out.

Whilst I was at work, wearing uncomfortably tight work pants with an overhang of holiday pudge and a waistband so tight my circulation was beginning to fail, I picked up a flyer for a 10 week fitness challenge, starting next week. I immediately joined. I am actually quite enthusiastic about it, figuring that 10 weeks is a good block of time (long enough to make a difference, short enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel), and that I can get in tip top shape and parade about in front of everyone in hot pants and bikini tops in no time! Good plan? Chance of success = shaky. But if I can at least lose my Thai green curry jiggle then I will be happy.

Lovely Lucy recently posted about her Lady Maintenance regime and I was left feeling woefully inadequate. I thought about my own beauty routine, and realised that it consisted of the following:

• Haircuts, when I have too many split ends and it looks too ratty.
• Showering, daily.
• Brushing of teeth, morning and night.
• Waxing of the sacred lady area, at home, when I have too many split ends monthly.
• Shaving of the underarms/legs, when I am going to wear an outfit that will reveal these areas (for real. In winter, they might not see the light of day for a couple of weeks).
• Eyebrow plucking, when needed (well, when I notice).
• Chapstick, when my lips are dry.
  

And that's it. No make-up (though every time I look at the dark lines under my eyes, I consider it), no skin care routine (besides shower gel which smells like mangoes, or some type of fruit), and no visits to the beautician to speak of (I have been professionally waxed once, had a reaction to whatever they put Down There and spent the following week scratching my crotch like a frenzied whore with crabs). And as Lucy is low maintenance, this can only mean that I am a hairy truckie named Barry with questionable personal hygiene.

Sexy indeed.

So, I am getting the travel post out of the way. Apologies for a billion pictures and RIDICULOUS length, I figured I'd just do it all in one hit and then it's done, and I can go back to blogging about the smelly person on my bus and that one time that somebody laughed at one of my jokes.


This is Buddha. Buddha is everywhere. He is normally gold and shiny.


This is Buddha's head, which was cut off its body a long time ago, was kicked under a tree, and then the tree grew around it. I expect I could find a story about this place that is much more impressive than this. Either way, it is very famous indeed.


Also in Ayutthaya (which is where Buddha's head is) you can find lots and lots of ruined buildings, as the place was trashed by the Burmese 250 years ago. They have semi-restored some, and light them up at night, and they look lovely.


Here is a large market, where you can buy amulets and jumpers and dried fruit and live eels. This market was small compared to some of the ridiculously large markets we lost ourselves in along the way.


Obligatory baby elephant photo!


Here is a man being stomped by an elephant in a wild rampage! Actually, no, it was all part of a show where elephants kicked footballs and threw darts (but not at the crowd) and the like.


Phi Phi Don, with the limestone cliffs and the tourists and the prettiness and all that.

And randomly:


There are BNE stickers alllll over Thailand. It was very puzzling.


Thailand has some incredibly colourful buses!

So in short (yeah, right), Bangkok is incredibly dense, thick with pollution and scantily-clad tourists, and touts who will try and scam your money at every opportunity. We indulged in standard tourist behaviour, and ate a great deal, drank quite a bit, and bought t-shirts/jewellery/rubbish for ridiculously low prices.

Kanchanaburi, and the Bridge over the River Kwai were fascinating, and incredibly sad. We visited the Death Railway museum and were amazed at the things we didn't know and the stories we had never heard. If we visit Thailand again, we will visit Kanchanaburi again for much longer.

Ayutthaya was beautiful and full of history. I was interviewed by Thai students as part of their English studies. I am not sure that a red-faced, sweaty girl, giggling like a git, is the best tutor in the English language. But the ladyboy student said I was pretty.

Chiang Mai was by far the best place we visited, with elephants, and white water rafting, and an incredible temple on top of a mountain at Doi Suthep (very, very tall stairs in new profile photo to the right), and a really great vibe.

Phuket was where we gave in to our Western indulgences and scoffed McDonald's, KFC, pizza and donuts. Beardie was trying to recover from his gut trouble by eating at the places he recognised, and I joined him because, well, because I guess I was just feeling like a gigantic lardarse. In fact, on top of my Christmas gut expansion I am now sporting a major Thailand gut, which means I am packing one hell of an expansion pack right now. My loose work pants were considerably tighter this morning. I am expecting to make some major life changes and start some type of diet/exercise regime. Soon.

Oh, and following on from that little tangent, we went to Maya Bay, home of The Beach, and there were so many tourist boats there that I couldn't actually see The Beach, unfortunately. Alas!

And....... breathe.

Back to the usual boring shit.

I am lazy. La-la-lazy. Take me away from work and put me at home with no plans whatsoever, and watch me turn into a gluttonous procrastinator who takes frequent naps. I have made a mental list of all the things I should really do over this Christmas break, and my plan of attack so far has been to lay on the couch a lot, and play Fable II until my eyes are so bloodshot that I look like I celebrated Christmas by smoking a small mountain of pot.

In fact, right now I am currently experiencing a high of the most energy I have had so far these holidays, and rather than cleaning up this sty of a house, or planning next year's trip away, I'm putting it to good use on this here blog, before I go out to gorge myself on Thai food.

Cirque du Soleil: Last night, Beardie and I went out to see hundreds of circus freaks prance about on stage, and it was absolutely awesome. Beardie had splurged and bought VIP tickets, which meant that we ended up in a la-de-da tent with other similarly posh people, drinking free booze (FREE, NEVER ENDING BOOZE) and snacking on hors d'oeuvres (and one day, I hope to be able to spell that without looking it up). My favourite was super bendy girl (total freak of nature) and the boys who jump through small hoops. Hoorah!

And now for a full, feature-length episode of The Sordid Lives of the Mountain Dwellers!!!!!: On Boxing Day, Beardie and I traipsed out into woop-woop to go and see mumsy and bro for some merry Christmas cheer. We stopped at the local country pub (the kind of place where the bearded locals put down their beers and stare at you when you arrive) for a bite to eat.

Mum: Pineapple juice! Do you know what it has in it?
Me: [shakes head]
Mum: MAGNESIUM! And hardly anything has magnesium in it these days. Oh and the neighbour's ducks are at my front door every morning now. One of them was shot by our other neighbour and then lay there in the sun for hours, its blood congealing...
Me: [spluttering] Mum!
Mum: [laughs] Oh sorry. So, Beardie, since the last time I saw you, you look... how do you say it.. fuller?
Me: [chokes] MUM!
Mum: Oh, I don't mean it as an insult. You were too thin the last time I saw you. Now you're average. [to my brother] Tsk, you're drinking Coke. It doesn't even tell you that it has aspartame in it, you know. Oh, it's not diet. Well it doesn't even tell you it has six teaspoons of sugar in it, you know.
Bro: [guzzles drink, making Mmmm noises]

Christmas cheer: for the first time that I can remember, I have visibly gained weight over Christmas. I am normally not that much of an overindulger, but this year my gut is noticeably bigger, and I don't like it one bit. Unfortunately, the whole house is so jam-packed with chocolate, jelly beans, and leftover candy canes, that my chances of making any difference are not that crash hot. But I have decided to at least try and go to the gym next week, to try and pilates my gut away. We shall see.

I hope your Christmas has been very merry indeed.

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.

Yesterday, I was incredibly moody. Whether the moons of Saturn were waxing gibbous and freaking with my chi, or if it was The Almighty Hormones, I do not know, but I was just ridiculous. We had planned to go out for breakfast and were aiming for 9am. At 8:45, facing the prospect of Not Leaving On Time, I started accusing Beardie of killing hungry puppies, or something along those lines. On a Sunday! Later that day, when I tried on an unflattering dress which was very hessian sacky, Beardie gave me his honest opinion and told me that it looked like a potato sack. To which I accused him of being Hitler in his former life and of ripping out my heart, trampling it underfoot, and ruining my life in general. The poor boy.

These are all gross exaggerations. OR ARE THEY????!!11?

But you get the picture.

Today I am fine!

On the matter of my health:

• In a couple of weeks, my Doctor will get some cold instruments and start fiddling around with my lady parts. This will be so he can determine the health of my cervix. Hoorah! It will be my first ever Pappy-McPapSmear, and quite frankly, I would rather spend that hard-earned day off on the couch with some cake.
• Beardie and I have just arrived home from a Brisk Walk. This is fitness attempt, #337. I am depressed that of the many times I have tried to get my arse into gear and increase my fitness level to something better than geriatric, I have quit 100% of the time. But sometimes not for many months! Let's see how this goes, and hopefully I will shape up and start posting pictures of my arse in hotpants on the interweb.
• A cable arrived for my camera, which means I can plug it into my computer and the vlogging will (may) commence shortly. I have included this under the health topic, because it will be bad for YOUR health, when I subject you to crap jokes and perhaps some Very Shit Guitar.

Now lunge with me.