photo friday: light play

light playTechnically this is a shot from Tuesday's Camera Club shoot... although it's also kind of an experiment in Kinetic Photography... only I was holding the camera and waving it around... I'm sure there's a name for it, but I have no idea what it is... there might be more of these as I experiment...

Current Mood: okay i guess

peanut butter kitkat reprise

i still can't believe we did this...Way back at the very beginning of this blog my eighth post was about discovering Peanut Butter KitKats and how much I loved them...

I also uttered these fateful words...

Hopefully they keep them around for a while, otherwise, I'm going to have to stock up.

Guess what's happened... yep, all the stores are marking them down and selling them off as a clearance line...

Peanut Butter KitKats are to be no more! Oh the humanity!

It also kind of explains the photo that goes along with the post... Ma and I went, well, a little crazed this evening on a brief trip to the shops...

First we grabbed the remaining 8 in the box in the confectionery aisle... they we saw three half full boxes on one of those "mark down" racks, with all the things that are either near or past their used by date or didn't sell, or whatever (I got a ton of raspberry licorice from the same rack a few weeks ago)... so, well, we filled up a box... 24 units... and bought that...

Then we went across the road to one of the OTHER supermarkets and bought their remaining 12 PBKK's (the second supermarket in the complex didn't have ANY), then went back to the first supermarket and cleared out the rest of what they had... we actually filled a second box and Ma was going to leave the last few orphans and I just looked at her and said "We are not buying every other one we can find, but leaving these six!"... so we bought those as well...

74 Peanut Butter KitKats and just over $60 later...

They've all gone to live at Ma's place, since she has much greater willpower than me (not to mention a lot more storage space)... she did say though, that if we only have one a week each, these will last us all the way to Christmas... which is just a scary thought... Not to mention the fact I still have five of the suckers in my fridge... plus the four or five Ma has at home... so that's around 84 Peanut Butter KitKats between us...

Current Mood: no more pbkks!

random branson hotness

It's not enough that this week's Random Hotness is blonde, blue eyed, stunningly beautiful, looks good in everything and has a £1000/per day contract modelling for Burberry... but no... this is Sam Branson, and on top of all the other things he has going for him, he's also the son of Sir Richard Branson... so he stands to inherit the family business, worth around £2.5 billion...

Yeah, I think I hate him too...

sam bransonsam branson

Current Mood: mmmmmm hotness

phoenix's visit

phoenixWell... Phoenix just left...

And I have to say that it didn't go at all the way I thought it would...

He got here smack on 10am, so points for him (I hate it when people are tardy), we hugged hello, and instead of putting on Empire Records like I figured we would for some in-movie snuggling, we just ended up sitting on the couch and snuggling. Now, as much as I love and adore my sofa, I think that quite possibly it's a little too small/narrow for prolonged snuggle session... but we made do as best we could...

I'm just going to assume you're all champing at the bit to know what I thought of him physically (well... at least one of you anyway), and, well, I'm still not sure that I know... technically I guess the small and blurry photo of him I'd seen before we met made him look slightly more attractive than he was (which I know sounds mean, but it's true), but even with his very Roman-eske nose he wasn't completely unattractive... plus the whole cuddle thing was sucking me in bigtime.

After we'd snuggled on the couch for I while I was sitting there thinking that I should really suggest going into the bedroom and snuggling on the bed because it would be a lot more comfortable, but I knew he was shy and inexperienced so I didn't want to put the cart before the horse as they say... luckily, HE suggested it (yaaay, I get what I want and I didn't have to be the one who asked), so we came into the bedroom and got under the covers (dressed) for some snuggle...

It was so cute, he kind of fit right in the L shape of my body when I had my legs up, and we had the whole leg pretzel thing going on too... so you can imagine it didn't take long before the tops came off... and his belt and pants got undone... then both of our pants came off... then the underwear... mmm naked snuggles...

We weren't doing a whole lot of talking (surprise, surprise), although I did discover that he's done literally nothing, and with only two guys... and then if you compare that with my sexual deprativity... you have to ask yourself, do these kind of mixed marriages ever work?

Ahem... anyway... we played around for a while, then snuggled for a while, then played, then snuggled, then played... until finally things came to a logical conclusion, for him at least... basically all thanks to me...

After that we took a shower together and because he got up before me, I got my first really good look at his butt... OH! MY! GOD! It's just the cutest most perfect little rear end... and broad shoulders and tiny waist... the whole deal... his whole back in general is definately his best feature.

When he finally got out of the shower (I got out first to find him a clean towel), we both got dressed and put Empire on, but because we were both still pretty overheated from the playtime and the overly hot shower he sat/lay on the couch and I took the chair, so there were actually no movie-time snuggles.

Once the movie was over we chatted for a bit and, well, I just fell into Default Mentor Mode (it was nearly like having a weird alternative universe version of J on my sofa)... and the short version is that he's completely and utterly hung up on his best friend...

Okay, confession time... yes, he is hung up on his best friend, that much is true, and given what he was telling me, I told him as much... even more so when the aforementioned friend called him to see what he was doing... it just didn't sound like a "friend" conversation to me (and he ended up leaving here earlier than I had expected him to because the best friend called him... so figure that one out)...

But did I play up that aspect of their relationship while we were discussing it? Yeah, I might have done... partly because I don't think he's ready for a relationship... partly because I know he's not ready for a relationship with ME... and partly because I don't know that I want a relationship with him. No, scratch that... I don't want a relationship with him.

And I don't even think it's the physical... it didn't affect me that much when we were all naked and snuggling... to coin a phrase, I'm just not that into him... he's cute and fun and I will probably see him again, and it would be nice to teach him a few things before I send him back into the world (c'mon, the boy can't even french kiss for christsakes)... but I don't see a future there...

So, yeah... it was fun... and it may or may not happen again...

Sorry to disappoint all the hopeless romantics out there, but this one doesn't look like it's going to have that kind of happy ending.

Current Mood: it was nice... but who knows what happens next...

camera club disposable camera shoot

city lights 2006So... tired... two... lots... walking... North... Adel... aide... fall... down...

Dammit and double dammit... I'm so exausted... after my walk this morning, then tromping around North Adelaide for two hours this evening (wearing the same "new" sneakers both times, given the state of my old sneakers on Monday... and after I got blisters this morning I put Band-Aids on both of my little toes before I went out tonight, which seemed to help slightly) I got far too much exercise today... the word knackered comes to mind... and on top of that, for reasons I can't quite explain I have a splitting headache... Thank god for Nurofen Liquid Capsules...

For the record, while the Camera Club photoshoot tonight was supposed to be done with a disposable camera, both Stu and myself decided against it... Stu because he's a digital snob (and when you turn out work the quality of his, why wouldn't you be) and I was less interested, but also broke. Luckily we had to take shots in and around North Adelaide, so I took Stu, Mikey, Cathy and her tag along (but very amusing) husband Mark basically on a truncated and slightly altered version of my daily walk, going across the park, down the right hand side of the middle leg of my walk, then worked our way around to my old apartment and then back to meet up with where everyone was having coffee/dinner.

It was fun though... I'm not sure how many shots I actually took, around 80 I think, but after I culled out the crap and blurry ones I have about 50 left... it was interesting to not only see various bits of North Adelaide that I see on a daily basis through other people's eyes, but also other photographer's lenses... the brush fence that was hit by lightning way back in December and is still all burned up interested them way more than I'd expected it to... and various buildings along the way that I don't even see half the time anymore... I didn't take as many shots as I possibly could have partly because I didn't take my tripod along like I did on the North Terrace shoot... and my camera just hates the low light, and due to setting off at 7 instead of 6:30, we lost the light much faster than we would have done otherwise.

Thinking about it, it's possible that my headache was caused all the talking very loudly for prolonged periods of time that Cathy's hubby Mark and I were doing, and the fact that the pair of us were also doing horrendously bad French accents for the majority of the evening... he started it, and like always when someone else is doing any kind of accent I know well, I get stuck in it and can't get out... I also kept channelling Evette from Clue which didn't help...

The shot I included with the post was one I took up at the Light's Vision lookout thingy that looks out (funnily enough) over town... I tried taking a couple of shots there the second night Ma and I went to see Il Cielo che Danza... but, for whatever reason, I think this one came out better than those earlier ones I tried. In lieu of a tripod I rested the camera on the stone railing and used the timer to get the shot.

Once we were all photo'ed out, we headed off to the cafe where everyone was supposed to meet up, but there weren't really enough seats and I wouldn't want to bother mixing with a lot of the people who were there, and Stu really wanted an AB again, so we trundled off down the road to the Red and White Cafe so Stu, Cathy and Mark could have AB's and I could breath the very, very taste fumes in and be thankful that I'd stuck a couple of plums in my backpack and eat them earlier before "Food Cut-off".

For whatever reason, O'Connell Street was being ever so slightly Fagola Central tonight, I saw two "couples" go past... one I know was definately a couple, the other I used assumed... but I recognised one guy from both couples, which is how I knew they were actual fagolas and not faking it...

And for reasons that we won't go into (but should be obvious after my other posts today), I was noticing all the Asian guys that were coming in and out of the cafe (Eddy, hush *pokes out tongue*)... *mutter*

Okay... it's off to bed for me... I'm sooooooooooo tired and sore right now...

Current Mood: and you know you're sleepy when looking at your sleepy emoticon makes you yawn...

what am i... 14?

Well, I just got off the phone after about an hour long conversation with Phoenix... and I'm blushing like I was a 14yo virgin or something (oh great, I just realised that's going to show up as a search term... *waves to all the perverts*)...

He's coming over tomorrow at 10 and we're going to watch some movies together... he sounds so cute and so sweet and so nice... okay, I just re-read that... somebody, anybody... slap me already...

At a couple of points when I was busy blushing and laughing and whatnot, I could almost hear Lownee's voice in my ear... the words were something she had already said to me once before when I was all googoo about some guy who ended up not liking me back... but the spirit of the message is the same...

To quote the Lownee...

You are truly scary. But oooooooo, is so much fun!! I like to hear you in early love stages, is nice. Had momentary Buffy flashes of "Guess who's got a thing - I don't have a thing, I am without thing" I don't remember a specific instance of this happening, but you know, its a Buffy/Willow type thing, and thence tends to translate itself readily to our universe...

So, yeah... I'm a world of... "I don't have a thing, I am without thing"... but I'm kind of having a thing... and I hope this thing I'm having translates over once we're in the same room together...

We'll see...

Current Mood: i don't have a blushing emo... but if i did... he would be...

coming out of the woodwork

Obviously my post on Sunday started something because I'm suddenly all about the sharing...

It's so weird... suddenly there just seems to be so much potentially on offer to me, probably more than there has been in the last two or three years to be honest... and I can't work out why... did the Universe finally take notice of my Wishlist? Was turning 32 some mystical fork in the road, kind of like turning 22 was... maybe it's me and birthdays that end in two... hmmm... could be something in that... a ten year cycle...

Anyway, there are three, potentially four, theoretically five guys in and around my life at the moment, and I kind of need to clear my head about them... and I give you the same warning I gave on Sunday... which, to be honest is just my way of saying to the one or two people who might read this who I actually know "Shoo! Go read something else"... the rest of you can go nuts...

Guy #1... We'll call him Slick Willy (although technically he's not half as slick as I think he thinks he is)... with Willy, it's just about the sex... but it's also just about him laying back and me servicing him... which is okay... he's enthusiastic and appreciative, but like I said, it's all about him. I guess he's just a placemarker more than anything else... or maybe the "Go-To Guy"... I know he's probably always going to say yes, and it's fun... but that's all it is and all it will ever be... and more importantly all I would ever want it to be... and when it stops being fun, I will have no hesitation about kicking him out of my life... "Buh-bye... don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out"... although I should probably thank him... he was kind of the catalyst for all this happening... I can't explain it... but after I hooked up with him again (we'd played once before just after I got back from Melbourne, but I hadn't heard from him since) all these things started to fall into place and guys just started to crawl out of the woodwork left, right and center...

Guy #2... Cubby from Sunday's post... he's actually the "potential fourth" guy... I know I can't have him, at least not any more than I already have... firstly he has a partner, secondly I'm actually too young for him by at least 10 or more years... which just seems to weird to me, since he's about 7 or 8 years younger than me. That's not to say I wouldn't kill for a snuggletime session with him... like I said on Sunday, he's all about the snuggle...

Guy #3... The "theoretical fifth" guy... The Academic... he and I chatted a long time back when he was still with a partner, then again after they had broken up... and eventually, after what felt like too much energy spent chasing him on my part, we hooked up in January... he's sweet, a little depressive, but sweet... but since then I've always been the one to message him or start a chat with him and he even admitted he'd deleted me from MSN because he "did a complete erase weeks ago in a black period"... so after seeing the Oprah show I mentioned on Sunday, the whole "He's Just Not That Into You" thing, I'm cutting him loose, because, clearly, he's just not that into me... there were also a couple of other guys who were "sniffing around" who got deleted from my MSN list in the wake of HJNTIY... guys with partners who just seemed to be looking for something on the side, and one of those I think was lying through his teeth about almost everything he said to me.

Guy #4... Marc from Sunday... yeah, I know... I hooked up with him once (technically twice, but both on the same day and in the same place)... and I may never actually see him again... but I would really like to...

And finally...

Guy #5... Phoenix... I honestly don't know how I feel about about Phoenix yet...

Phoenix messaged me on Gaydar last night, when I was sitting in chat but really should have already logged out and gone to bed... I initially thought he was going to be a tirekicker... someone who messages you, has some inane chat with you but hasn't read your profile and then runs off when they have... (the description comes from the whole image of someone shopping for a car who gets the salesman's hopes up, but basically just looks at the car, kicks the tires and leaves)... but Phoenix had actually read my profile, and was asking me stuff about some of the likes and dislikes I have listed there... and it looks like we had some similar opinions about things... always good... but all that his profile told me was that he is 21, 5'9" and slim build...

For some reason something in the back of my brain thought me might be Asian (Buffy fan, 5'9" slim, seemed to be into me... call it a hunch of some kind), but I wasn't sure... and, I'll be honest, when considering things of a sexual nature, guys of Asian appearance just don't do it for me... but then neither do black guys, or some Latino guys... it's just the way I'm wired (although on the flip side of that, mix any of those races with white and I'm all about the lust... eurasians, cafe latte guys... mmmm). As it turns out, I was right... he is of Asian heritage, but born and raised here in Australia...

So I wasn't sure I was all that interested in Phoenix (although I hadn't actually seen a photo at that stage)... but his conversation had me hooked and kind of intrigued... especially since he had approached me and was chasing me just a little bit... I cannot tell you the last time I was chased like that... actually I can... or at least the last time it was effective... my first (and only) boyfriend, Stephen... so it wasn't a completely new experience, but one I haven't had in a great long while (like ten years).

We chatted for far longer than I'd intended to stay up last night (from about 10:30 to around 12:45am, which made me less happy about getting up for my walk this morning... whole world of Zombieyani)... and when I logged in this morning after my walk he messaged me again and we chatted and flirted some more... and he showed me a couple of pictures of him... and I did likewise... and, well... I'm still undecided...

He's cute, he's sweet, he's funny, he looks like he has a killer body and he seems to think I'm cute for god only knows what reason... but I'm not sure I can get past my "wiring"...

It might be nice to try though... so I'm thinking about asking him over to watch DVD's with me tomorrow since he mentioned he has a day off from Uni... it might be fun to do something with a guy that doesn't start off being about sex... of course it might END UP there... but I don't want it to start off there...

Current Mood: really, truly, 100% totally unsure

monday musings

wet red sign 2006Yep, that's right... no Monday Montage this week... I didn't have anything planned because I had expected to be doing a photoshoot yesterday, but we decided to reshedule due to bad weather (and given the fun I had yesterday, I'm not the least bit sorry about that)... so I'd kind of thought I might have had some kind of model montage to share, but since that wasn't the case, I had bubkus...

I half thought about doing something this morning, trying to grab sixteen shots during my walk, but when I woke up at 7, I could hear it raining, so I rolled over and went back to sleep, something I haven't done in a great long while. I did end up getting up about half an hour later after it had stopped raining, but when I went out it wasn't really photography weather. In the end I just grabbed this colour/texture shot of raindrops on an Ennis Partners realty sign... yep, Ennis, spelled the same as Heath's character in Brokeback...

The downside of doing my walk on this grey and wet morning was that the hole in my right sneaker that has been threatening to appear made it's presence felt and I've worn the left sneaker through to the lining, so both of my socks ended up wet and slightly dirty... less good... and because, besides on my daily walk, I haven't worn anything but thongs for months and months, the two pairs of new sneakers I do have aren't broken in yet and would just chew my feet up if I tried to wear them.

I also got rained on, which I can live with, since the showers were brief and not too heavy, although I didn't appreciate getting hit with spray from a couple of sprinklers... c'mon people, look outside your door occasionally...

I still stunk of chlorine this morning after yesterday's activities, but now that I've had my shower I just smell like clean... mmmm clean...

Hopefully my Agency Girly calls me this morning, or since I'm running out of morning at a rapid pace here, sometime today... I called her on Thursday last week, but she wasn't in the office again until today (and I only twigged on Sunday that she probably had two days off to go to the Clipsal 500 which was on from Thursday to yesterday... stoopid city with it's stoopid car races... first it was the Grand Prix before Melbourne stole it, now it's the V8 Supercars... Stoopidcars more like).

Current Mood: pretty good... although a little sore in spots

sunday sexual sauna safari

sauna boys via tottyworld, i think...Okay... this is your first, last and only warning... this is officially a TMI (Too Much Information) post concerning aspects of my sex life... you have been warned... proceed at your own risk... having said that it doesn't get that graphic, so put it back in your pants hotshot...

Now that that's out of the way I can pop the top of my Strawberry Blast Gatorade to replenish my fluids and start sharing...

Where to start, where to start... well... a little while ago I "fell across" the site for Bear Men of Adelaide again (I'd actually been to a couple of their "den nights" in the middle of last year, but kind of got over it, and stopped going) and saw that they were having a "Bears in the Mist" day at the local gay sauna (ie bathhouse for those of you who don't speak Australian)...

Now there are three things that are important at this junction. Technically I'm not a bear... no beard, and not in the least bit hairy... but I guess technically I fall into one of the "and Affiliated Industries" (work that one out) categories... secondly I've been to the sauna (the only one we have... one gay pub, one gay dance club, one gay sauna... could Adelaide be more lame) on more than one occasion, but not for a really, really, really long time (at least five or six years, if not more)... and three, while I'm not generally prudish about sharing information about my sex life, I do choose who I share it with and how much I share on a case by case basis (Adelaide is just to small a place and everyone knows everyone, especially in the gay community)... so this may be the first and last time I share it here... there was just a lot of stuff that happened that I don't want to forget about because it was fun and I enjoyed myself...

Anyway, I marked the date for the Bear Day down in my Outlook calendar, just to remind myself rather than as a definite indication that I was going to go... I wasn't even sure this morning that I was actually going to go... or even as I was driving into town... I thought that if I couldn't find a car park right away, right near the place, then that was officially "a sign" and I would just come home again.

But no... perfect car park around the back of the building, no problems...

I went in, got changed and wandered around in my towel for a bit... hid in a couple of the dark sections upstairs until my eyes adjusted to the monumental lack of lighting... including wandering around the new "maze" section (including walking into my own reflection in a huge full wall mirror because I still couldn't see properly and I wondered why the guy coming in my direction wasn't getting out of the way)... which was pretty much a maze... I just kept wandering around and around and around... they had definitely extended the upstairs section, I think it now spreads over the right half of the building, whereas previously the upstairs second has just been the left half (the building was identical mirror image, two storey, attached townhouses originally, and most of the stuff is in the left hand townhouse, except the "staff area" and the "snackbar/teevee room")...

I stopped and "played" a couple of times, but nothing that I couldn't walk away from... and did when if was no longer fun for whatever reason... including something I've never tried before and never thought I would try... but which was interesting for a little while and as a sensation, but I don't think I ever need or want to do it again... (and all your little overactive imaginations can come up with whatever you like, I'm not telling!)

I have to admit that, putting the sex to one side for a minute, I remembered what it was I used to really enjoy when I went more often... the whole thing of baking in the wet sauna until the sweat was dripping off me and it was just too hot to stand anymore, then usually jumping into the spa... well, I did a whole session of that again today... but I got into the pool instead... SO nice! Not only the whole sweating out of toxins (which I also used to do at the gym) but then getting into the cold (at least it feels that way after the hot sauna) pool. I haven't been swimming in about forever, but I love being suspended in water like that... even if I can't actually "swim" per say. The downside is that because of the fluid loss and the temperature change I sometimes used to end up with a headache, especially coupling that with going outside again afterwards in winter... and I will admit to a slight brainache this time, hence the Gatorade... (the other downside being that my skin will pretty much stink of chlorine until I take a shower tomorrow morning)

It was interesting just wandering around the place for the simple fact that it was a "Bear Day"... so the skinny or buff or "cute" or just average boys where definitely in the minority (not that they're always in the majority, but it was never quite as pronounced as this... and twice as obvious when all the bears seemed to disappear at around 5:30 or so)... everywhere you looked there were big and round and usually very hairy guys... which was just interesting from, I suppose, a "people watching" perspective... as well as the fact that I wasn't the biggest guy there.

That of course didn't stop me perving on and lusting after the one of two skinny/cute boys... there was one boy there, soooo skinny... jet black hair... abs for days... yummy...

Being a big guy I usually just assume that I'm going to get rejected by those kinds of guys, especially in that kind of environment where basically all of your flaws are out there for the world to see... but sometimes it doesn't work out that way... there was one notable incident in the past where this very cute, very skinny and VERY well hung country boy had a fairly packed wet sauna room lusting after him, and ignored them all, but when I went past him on my way up the stairs, he just said to me "Hey, wanna fuck?"... I mean, c'mon, with smooth chat up lines like that, how's a boy to say no?

Anyway, during one of the "bake and swim" rotations this really cute, smooth and skinny guy came in and sat not that far away from me in the wet sauna... now, for those of you who haven't had the pleasure, those places are designed so that you can't see more than about a foot and a bit in front of your face, so very dark, and what light there is is actually red, coupled with steamy... less good for seeing anything... but I was checking this guy out and he was just sitting there with his legs open and everything on display, and I was wondering if I had enough nerve to go over and sit next to him... and then one of the big bear guys who was also in the room moved closer to him and touched his leg...

Now normally I would have expected the skinny guy to either remove the bear guy's hand and move further away, or else get up and walk out, or whatever, but no... he was open to the concept... so very shortly after that I went over and joined the two of them...

Skinny Guy... so damn cute... in his mid or late 20's I would say, although I could be wrong, I suck at the age game... and a really good kisser (he lay back on the bench and I took the top half and the bear guy took the bottom half before we switched)... the bear guy left part way through, leaving me with Skinny Guy, which I did not have a problem with... but we both got a little overheated after being in the sauna for so long, so when he told me he was going to go outside and cool off I told him to come and find me again when he was ready and left it at that... you never want to appear too stalkerly, especially in a place like that, and really, after watching Oprah's two shows about "He's Just Not That Into You" last week, I was just going to play it cool...

I sat in the sauna for a couple more minutes grinning like a twit after he left, then came out and dunked myself in the pool.

While wandering around I'd also noticed a guy that I recognised from the Den Nights I mentioned earlier... a total cutie who has a thing for older bear guys (the older the better I think, but we won't open that particular can of worms)... we'll call him Cubby... I wasn't sure if I should say hello or not... I was fairly certain I didn't have a hope in hell of hooking up with him (which would have been nice), but I could have just said hi and left it at that... but every time I thought about it he was either already talking to someone, or else he disappeared out of the room I was in or whatever... so I didn't....

But later, in the course of wandering around I went into the dry sauna (which is so much hotter than the wet one, so it has a little anteroom out the front which warms up as well, but isn't as bad as being in the actual sauna), noticed a couple of guys in the anteroom as I went through, but didn't really pause, then realised as I sat in the dry sauna that it was Cubby "with" someone... so I went back out to take a look, because I figured having a perv was probably as good as it was going to get, so why not...

Cubby and this older guy (using the term "grandfather" is never complimentary, so I won't) were making out and there was already a guy watching them, who then went in for the grope on Cubby, and when he didn't get chased away, went back in for something a little more personal... which would have been hotter to watch if the guy doing the "more" had been a little more attractive. I'm guessing, given the pattern I mentioned before (waiting for someone else to move in and then going in myself... I swear, I'm like a freakin hyena, moving in to taste the kill, to coin a phrase, after the lion has already done all the hard work and brought it down) you can join the dots and work out what came next... I will say this... he was much, much smaller than I expected... but sometimes it's nice when a mouthful is just a mouthful and not something you have to take in stages, you know...

Anyway, after a while Cubby said he needed to hit the pool, which I totally agreed with, being a little overheated by that stage myself, so I just hightailed it out of there and plunged straight into the pool... Cubby and his gentleman friend were a little longer in getting out of the sauna (at first I didn't actually think they were going to join me, but they did)... as he got in the pool Cubby looked at me, pointed, and said "Hey, I know you..." which made me laugh... he's a very huggy, very cuddly, very affectionate guy, so there was some snuggle action going on in the pool, which was very nice... then his gentleman friend said that it was his first time at the sauna, so Cubby decided we needed to take the guy on a tour of the place... which we did... with much chatter... which is not often something you hear in a sex-on-premises venue (which is both understandable, but also kind of weird)... then, after we'd wandered around the entire place (which actually never takes that long... its not exactly mammoth) we ended up going back down for another baking session in the wet sauna...

And who should be sitting in the corner near me as I walked in... yup.... Skinny Guy from before... I put my hand on his leg, just as more of a hello than anything else, and before I knew it, it was back on for young and old... so much so that I remember hearing Cubby chuckle when he saw what was going on, but I didn't realise they'd left the room until much later (I didn't actually realise that EVERYONE had left the room... if was a fairly full sauna when we came in, and when Skinny Guy and I were done it was just the two of us). When things had reached their logical conclusion with Skinny Guy... well, HIS logical conclusion... (I'd already had a logical conclusion upstairs earlier involving a very dark room, a hot bearish but buff guy with a beard, dreadlocky type hair (and I only know that because I saw him earlier in a much more well lit area), possible Tony-eske dimensions (at least from what I could feel) and a prophylactic... paint your own picture)... okay, where was I?

Oh yeah... Skinny Guy bent down (he had been sitting on the upper bench in the sauna, me on the lower, obviously) and whispered in my ear something complimentary that I now don't remember and then asked me my name... I had that 2 second delay between "Do I tell him my real name or do I give him the "casual hookup name" I've used occasionally?" (yeah, I know, shut up and stop looking at me like that)... but he was too damn cute, so he got my real name.... his, it turns out, is Marc (I'm guessing on the spelling based on something Cubby said to me later)... he then said "This might sound like a stupid question, but what's your star sign?" which made me smile... what is it with me and star signs? Seriously... it's a whole thing... I swear...

I told him Pisces, and he said that he figured as much (although he didn't say why)... either that or Cancer... so I asked him his... Cancer, which I should have guessed, just from him mentioning it. I asked if he wanted to go upstairs and maybe grab a booth/room/cubicle/whatever, but he said he had to go soon, but that he was usually there on Saturday nights...

Again, after he left the room I sat there grinning before going out and dunking myself in the pool again... he was in the shower but when he got out and was drying off I got out of the pool, went to get my towel and kissed him on the way past... just because...

Okay... I'm a big shmuck, and I'm having warm fuzzies for a guy I hooked up with in a sex club... damned water signs...

It also means that I will probably swing by the place if not this coming Saturday, then the Saturday after... if only to attempt to give him my number so, theoretically I can have sex with him that doesn't require an admission fee... I'm also keeping in mind that he probably already has a partner... but it's nice to dream for a little while...

After that I wandered around a little, found Cubby and his gentleman friend in one of the cubicles together, played around with them (well, mostly the two of us with Cubby between us and all the attention on him) and then I decided that since it was getting late (6pm by this point, and I got there around 2:30pm) and my towel was all damp, and to be honest it was going to take more energy than I could summon up to actively seduce Cubby with or without his gentleman friend, and I just couldn't be bothered at that point, so I decided it was just time to take my sauna'ed, spa'ed, pool'ed, sex'ed and happy ass home again.

I stopped on the way home to pick up two bottles of Gatorade (the Strawberry Blast flavour I mentioned before as well as a Fierce Grape) because all those repeated sessions in the sauna had pretty much wrung all the water out of my body... and decided whether or not to actually blog this story...

Now that it's written (two and a half hours after I started it) I just have to decide whether or not to post it... but of course, if you're reading this, you already know the answer to that one...

Current Mood: extremely happy but tired and a little dehydrated

to adsl or not to adsl

not my computer... there's no dustADSL, or Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, is a revolutionary new way of connecting to the Internet. While traditional modem-based dial-up services transfer data to your computer via an analogue signal, ADSL uses the latest broadband technology to transfer data digitally, at up to 1500k per second - almost 30 times faster than via 56K modem.
extract from the Chariot Website

My dialup account expires tomorrow, so I called up my ISP today to renew it... which is usually a pretty painless exercise, once you get done waiting on hold with the annoyingly perky recorded woman telling me that my call is important to her, my call has been placed in a queue and one of their operators will be with me shortly.

For better or for worse my call got answered by the ever so slightly perky (and no less annoying) Simon (I think that's what he said his name was)... now normally they just go "same again?" I say yes, I give them my credit card number and expiry date, wham bam, thank you ma'am... but noooooo.... Simon had to pay too much attention to not only my connection times (apparently I have very good times and hardly ever have a drop out, which is true... but not why I was calling)... he then expressed surprise that I was paying $135 for three months, which I'll admit does kind of sound like a lot (but is only actually $45 a month), but its the same amount I've been paying since I got connected to the internet back in, god, how long ago... 1998 I guess... yeah, that would be about right, because I was working for the Courts Authority at Port Adelaide at the time... I remember filling out the paperwork at my desk.

But suddenly Simon had all these other options about what plans I could use instead of the one I'm on (which I don't think even appears officially on their list of plans anymore, I've been on it that long... granted the original ISP I was with was absorbed by this one, so that never helps either). But the other plans he mentioned either don't have as big a download limit as this one (although lately the 2.5 gig download limit seems a little more snug than it ever did before... and what do you know, as if on cue, I just got a 250mb remaining message from my ISP), or else they have the dreaded Busy Killer, where you get booted off the system after a certain period of time during busy periods... no thank you very much, been there, done that, didn't like it! I was wandering around on the cordless phone feeling overly hot (once again, although thank the proverbials that a change comes in tomorrow) and thinking "Dude... just ask me for my credit card number and renew my account... seriously!"

Then he mentioned the magic word... ADSL... I will admit, I've been thinking about ADSL, Broadband, call it what you will, for a while now... its in the back of my mind as something I need to ask J about, since he's the technically whizkid in my life with the disappearance back into the woodwork of Raury...

I mean, sure, ADSL sounds good in principal... 40 gig download limit, $49 a month (which works out as $147 per quarter, only $12 more than I currently spend), supposedly both the connection and the ADSL modem are free on that particular plan, and it's a download speed of 512kb versus 56kb... on the downside it's a 2 year (I love how they call it 24 month so it sounds like less) contract... and it sounds like there would be some screwing around with either the phone company or at the very least, my phone line...

I hate frickin around with stuff like this... once I'm on a plan that works for me I don't like to change usually come hell or high water... okay, I have done, but only on my mobile account and with my long distance call options on the landline... never with my internet account.

Decisions, decisions... do I stay on my dialup account, which is sometimes painfully slow, but which I know and which works for me... or do I change to something that could theoretically be much faster and let me do more, but will involve possibly changing my modem and doing a lot of fudging around...

Opinions anyone?

Current Mood: unsure and very hot

mentor mode

Eddy has been having some ongoing parental drama, and when I went to comment on his first post about it I found myself falling into what I tend to think of as "default mentor mode"... I do it with a lot of people... I used to do it all the time with Spike, I do it sometimes with J, I've done it multiple times at Camera Club, I've done it with about a hundred million other people, and, for some reason, out of all the people on my blogroll, I do it with Eddy.

Maybe it's just how I respond to people who either seem to be actively seeking my advice, or who I just feel like need the advice I have to give them. But I actually think it's more than that, because I'm sure that more than the "normal" number of people actually seek out my advice.

And it's something I've noticed about my interactions with younger gay men... a lot of them in the past have actively sought my opinion and advice on things. It happened a lot when I was doing this course at the Youth Health Service/drop in center place in town after I moved out of home (and incidentally the place I met my first boyfriend, the course, not the drop in center). Probably because I was one of the oldest in the course and I was out to Ma and not living at home. But I remember getting together with one of the guys at the pub one night so we could catch up, and we ended up discussing him coming out to his parents.

But it's not just matters of sexuality... Mikey from Camera Club brought his laptop in the other week to show me some shots he'd taken at a nude figure shoot where there were both male and female models, and he wanted my opinion on the male shots... which is fair enough, because I'm pretty much the solo authority on male nudes at that club.... or at least the only person who seems to take them. And Stu will often show me a couple of the shots he's not sure about entering and ask me which of them I think he should enter.

I know why J asks me things, because he knows that I'm never going to sugarcoat my response to him... he asked for my spin on a situation on MSN a couple of days ago and I replied with something along the lines of "Well, in a perfect world you never actually force him to have that conversation with you... but since you're second only to X as Lord of Confrontation..." (X being a mutal friend who wrote the book on confrontation)... his response was "That was blunt... Can I borrow the club when you're finished with it"... but he also knew I was right. He and I operate on that level of friendship where you can say the overly confronting thing and the other person 99.9% of the time knows that what you've said is absolutely true. But that's pretty much been the nature of our relationship since Day One... literally...

Maybe that's why people want my advice or opinion on things... if I know them well enough I'm not going to sugarcoat it for them.

It's not just me, Ma has the same thing going on... although I think that's because she broadcasts the wise and venerable thing rather than the non-sugarcoating thing...

I'm not saying that I'm all knowing and always have the answers and that's my people come to me... often times I have no answers and it's not even a situation I've actually been in... but I do seem to make people think, and they seem to appreciate what I tell them.

I actually think it goes deeper than that though... given what I believe about reincarnation I somehow have a feeling that this is one of the things that I've actually done before (the whole mentor thing) and I also think it's one of the things I'm supposed to do again on this turn of the wheel.

So be warned, if you ask for my opinion (and sometimes even if you don't) I will give it to you...

Current Mood: a little reflective

random exposed hotness

Blogger is playing "silly beggars" as my grandmother would have said, and won't let me upload any images, so I can't bring you the Random Hotness I'd planned to... fortunately I had this one already loaded on standby...

I don't remember where I got this one from, I think it was from a photography website somewhere... and I found it again recently in my files. All I know for sure is that the filename (and I assume the title of the photo) was "Exposed". So pretty!

exposedCurrent Mood: mmmmmm hotness

career personality type

Your career personality type is ISTJ

istjThat means that based on the standard measure of personality traits, you have a quiet determination and sharp mind — you're very focused and buckle down when it comes to work. You are the type of person one looks to in a crisis. While others may provide emotional support in a situation, your clear and logical thinking allows you to solve the problem at hand.

You are adaptable and can work independently or on a team. You are a careful thinker and get all the details before making any decisions. You don't jump to conclusions and stick with the facts provided. In other words, you're the go-to person for the real story, not the spin or gossip. While others may view you as a bit stubborn at times, they begrudgingly respect your ethics and straightforward approach.

The reason employers and recruiters might be on the lookout for you is that only about 7% of the U.S. population shares the unique characteristics of your personality type. Research shows that businesses succeed when employers create a good balance of personality types in the office. And since only 7% of the U.S. population shares your type, that means employers are looking for you.

Career Personality Test

Current Mood: a little down

movies: aeon flux

aeon flux - the future is fluxI swear, if I live to be 150, I will never ever understand Hollywood's obsession with taking a fully cohesive property, be it a play, a book or a teevee series and turning it into a movie that has little to nothing to actually do with the property it's based on other than the names of the characters and a few incidental things here and there...

You can pretty much tell how I felt about Aeon Flux after we'd been to see it tonight, can't you...

I adored the old Aeon Flux cartoon series... it lived up to the subtitle of this blog in spades... often vague and sometimes homicidally esoteric... but it was beautiful, so long as you didn't try to take it literally or expect it to make sense outside it's own internal logic and just enjoyed the visual storytelling.

When I first heard they were doing a live action version, I was a whole world of sceptically raised eyebrow... I mean, c'mon... half of the joy of Aeon Flux was Peter Chung's highly stylised art... and that was also the reason why I was so pleased to see he'd contributed a piece to The Animatrix (disturbingly enough though, part way through watching it at the movies I suddenly thought how cool it would have been if he'd been involved, and lo and behold, two segments later, Matriculated came on)... but honestly, I knew that there was no way in the world that they could possibly pull off Aeon Flux as live action.

And I was right.

Sure, the movie works pretty well on it's own merits... but unlike Corey at OpieBlue I did get the animated series (so maybe that's a prerequisite for getting the movie, you didn't understand the series)... but basically with the exception of the character names, the fact that one of the characters had hands on her feet, and one or two other things, this movie had NOTHING to do with the series or with the world of Aeon Flux...

The series has two countries, the movie has one big city... as far as I'm aware the main villain, Trevor Goodchild, never had a brother, and I don't think Aeon had a sister, but I could be wrong about that... and the whole plotline of the movie... while it wasn't completely out of line with the kind of stories Chung excelled at, it definitely wasn't something that I think the series would ever have tried to pull off, just for the ongoing consequences of it.

Basically you could have taken the movie, changed all the character names, plus a few details here and there and called this movie something else and I don't think that anyone who had seen the Aeon Flux series would have connected the two together in any way.

I couldn't even get lost in the visuals of the thing because the story kept grating on my nerves... to be honest, even there it lost out to the series in some ways... particularly in Aeon's costuming... and yes, I realise the outfit from the series is never going to look good on any actual flesh and blood human being... but could they at least have paid homage to it?

A lot of the German locations (both inside and outside) were really beautiful, but you never know with this type of movie what's real, what's been added to or extended and what's purely a digital matte painting or a set.

I also don't know what they did to Jonny Lee Miller to make him look so damn unsexy... I think it was just bad hairstyling, but man, that just shouldn't be allowed! I did like the very brief cameo at the beginning by Charlize Theron's real life squeeze, Stuart Townsend as an overly mascaraed spy who passes Aeon a message by way of French kiss... he was looking kind of hot.

Having said all that, if you're someone who isn't familiar with the original series, then you may well enjoy the movie... for the most part it was well done, if a touch over predictable and a little too "oh look, social commentary" in spots.

yani's rating: 1 Monican spy out of 5

montage monday: glenelg

glenelg 2006For Monday Montage this week I figured I would use up some more of the shots from my Pre-Birthday Birthday Adventures last week... Pretty much all of these were taken down at Glenelg, which is the first place what white settlers landed when they arrived in South Australia (hence the monument in the bottom right hand corner)... and as a side note, this is the only state in the country that was founded by free settlers rather than convict labour (take that Rest of Australia)... and that might mean something if I could actually trace my heritage back on my father's side at all (since Ma came out from England in her 20's, so I know where her side of the tree comes from)...

I forgot to mention on Saturday that while I was doing the voting thing, I'm pretty sure that the Indian guy who was the Polling Officer (ie met people at the door and sent them across to get their names checked off) was someone I used to work with a million years ago back at Department of Human Services... I half recognised him, and I think he half recognised me... but neither of us said anything, me mostly because I couldn't remember his damn name... starts with an S though. And then as I was leaving and heading home again I walked past a guy who was the spitting image of the guy that took over my job at DHS when I left... I don't know that it WAS him, but it looked a lot like him. Very strange...

I had a Coffee Meeting on Friday with two guys interested in my photography... they were on holiday in Adelaide for a few days and one of them was possibly interested in modeling (although, having met him he probably wouldn't be on my top ten list), and the pair of them are looking to start up a travel website for gay men, so they were interested in my photographs from the other end of the spectrum too... Not completely sure how I feel about the meeting, it was nice and all, and if I could actually get some paying photographic work out of it, then that's always good... I don't want to close myself off to the possible opportunity though, since I was only commenting to J the other day (and I'm sure I've said it here too) that I know there is something coming workwise, I just have to get in it's way when it does. Somehow I kind of doubt that this is it... but just in case...

Hopefully, all things being well, I have a shoot scheduled for next Sunday anyway with a guy I've been discussing doing a shoot with for nearly two years now... so it will almost be a relief if it actually, finally, happens.

Current Mood: still doin' okay

reflections

I found this while I was digging through some old papers... it originally bubbled up in my head on a drive to a friend's place for dinner... when I got there I asked her for a piece of paper and a pen and for five minutes on my own... this was the result...

I sleep, I dream, and there I find them. The Lifetaker, the Healer and the Warrior.

They look at me, regard me through space and time, and we wear the same face. We look nothing alike, these three and me, but we all wear the same face.

They move, slow and rhythmically, like people move in a dream, and each motion repeats. One movement, four bodies, perfectly aligned, completely in sync.

We wear black, it is our colour, the colour of the darkness we all carry, we all bear. They wear armour, leather, silk. I wear simpler garments, my style not as confined to a time and place as they are.

I watch them, envy them, desire them, want to be them. But I also fear them.

They are everything I can never, will never, be. Am unable to be.

The Lifetaker is forever young, desired, desirable. He knows his place, has a clan, a place to belong, and knows it will be so forever. I envy him this, this ease of belonging.

The Healer too belongs, knows his place, but his is from his purpose, his role. He has a loving partner, a devoted, caring lover. And a beautiful, loving child. I have no wish for a child, but I envy the love they give him. They affirm his place, give him strength.

The Warrior I know least of all. I know he exists, I see him, I feel him. But I do not know him. He is skilled, brave, calm and he too has a purpose.

I reach out to touch them, take some of them into me. But when my fingers touch them, they waiver, like a reflection in water, once touched it is broken by ripples, and only when the water calms does the image return.

I know now. They are me, are parts of me. They are reflections of how I view myself in the world.

I grow strong from them, draw their strength into me always. They look at me, their eyes are mine, and we smile, we know now.

And I wake.


Current Mood: sunday afternoon blahs

voting and stamps and fabric oh my...

stamps 2006You know those days when you don't feel like you've actually accomplished much... it's one of those... and it's only half over...

Today is our State Election, so I toddled off down the road before 9 this morning to vote, ignored all the dumbass people offering me "How To Vote" papers (seriously, I'll vote how I damn well want to vote, not how you want me to vote), and this time managed to go straight into the school hall where the voting was being held, and straight into a booth to cast my vote (whereas last time we had one of these elections I didn't vote until much later and had to stand in line for what felt like hours)... Usually with these things I start off numbering things from the bottom up (especially since I got caught out once because I missed out a number and had to go back and renumber everything)... get rid of the wacko parties first... One Nation (racist), Family First (homophobic), all the stupid independant parties (No Rodeo Cruelty, Legalise This, Support That... I mean, c'mon, it might as well be the Homicidal Clown party).

And who did I vote for up at the top, I hear you ask? The only two parties with strong records on gay rights issues, of course.

Anyway, my "civic duty" over for the day, I went into town to collect my stamp money... the Stamp Man called me on Friday to tell me that he would give me $100 for all my stamps... not great, but better than a kick in the teeth... turns out it wasn't the Double Thumbed Freak from last time, but someone who actually had a sense of humour, even if it wasn't a great one.

So with money in my pocket I headed over to Spotlight to get some more fabric for the backdrop for my baby photography studio... when I was doing the Expose Yourself post the other day I realised that I actually couldn't find one of the two piece of black fabric I use to make a backdrop... which is very bad... given that I only ever store them in one particular place (the top cupboards in my wardobe) and my apartment isn't large enough for them to get lost anywhere else)... so I decided I should probably buy a couple more pieces, that way I would actually have enough to make a solid wall across my living room.

But when I got to Spotlight... no luck... I couldn't find the right fabric anywhere... I must have looked at every single type of black fabric they had in the store, from fleecy to satin to cotton to faux fur to lyrca to velvet... but none of it was the fabric I was after. The only thing I can think is that they no longer stock it... which is bad... because it's very very good photographic backdrop material... it's light, it's matt black when you hang it and it looks okay creased. I even went next door to Lincraft to see if they had anything similar... still no joy...

I'm going to have to go in again sometime next week with a piece of the fabric and ask the staff in there if they still have it... and of course, I fully expect that asking the girls who work in Spotlight for technical fabric advice is going to be a bit like banging my head against a wall... it will be nice when it's over... But you never know...

If not, I'm just going to have to get some other kind of fabric.

Current Mood: non-committal

photo friday: veritas

truthThis was taken during my Pre-Birthday Birthday Adventures with Ma on Monday... we went down a side street to take a look at a little shop we'd been in once before and when we came out I saw this sign and had to go and take a look. It's from the front of a school, but I just love the copper on blue on grey colours. Even though it's a religious school (hence the cross), I also like the simple school motto... "Truth".

Current Mood: doin okay

not as evil as previously indicated

You Are 60% Evil

You are evil, but you haven't yet mastered the dark side.
Fear not though - you are on your way to world domination.

Larry is 6% more evil than me... who would have thunk it...

Current Mood: amused

random irish hotness

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expose yourself

Originally I wanted to do this as a Monday Montage, but it just didn't quite work... so I'm going another way with it...

This is 50% inspired by Eddy's first Expose Yourself post (which, in turn, was actually inspired by Nathan's ongoing Expose Yourself theme) and 50% inspired by the regular Inside Story feature in the Sunday Mail's Home liftout where various local "people of interest" are photographed surrounded by belongings that mean something to them and the image is surrounded by little blocks of text for each item.

  1. Wooden Staff
    This is the first of several "Me and J" stories that seem to go along with all this stuff... I did mention it briefly in my original post about him but basically he showed up on my doorstep one night carrying a tree branch and a handful of sandpaper so we could craft me a walking stick/staff... and all I'd done was say to him that I wanted to ask him about making one... next thing I know, he's there with not only the wood, but the tools (okay, just sandpaper) to craft it. We ended up going and sitting on the grass in a nearby park in the middle of the night so we didn't get sawdust all over my apartment. It doesn't show up in the photo, but it has this great curve in the top of it, and I've added a white cockatoo feather I found during one of my walks, and a wolf pendant I got a few Christmases ago to the top.

  2. Farmers Union Iced Coffee
    I'll admit... I'm an addict... I've mentioned this Iced Coffee more than a few times in various posts, but it's my absolute favourite beverage in the whole wide world. It was named as a BankSA Heritage Icon in 2004. And with good reason! No other brand tastes as good, and if they ever stop making it I will cry... a lot...

  3. Macquarie Dictionary
    I've had this dictionary for over half my life... the inscription inside says "With love on your 15th Birthday, love Mum"... and it's served me well in all those years. I also like it because it's an Australian dictionary, so it has stuff in it that you wouldn't find anywhere else. It's the same dictionary I mentioned in my first ever blog post too...

  4. Mobile Phone
    This is more than just my phone... it's my radio (for when I'm on my daily walk), watch, reminder, alarm clock and calendar... and if I have to leave the house without it because it's charging or whatever, I feel a little lost...

  5. Dragon
    This adorable guy was a present for either Christmas or a birthday when I was a teenager... he used to sit on top of the teevee in my bedroom when I was living at home, but a tumble resulting in a broken neck and dislodged "bubble" put an end to that. His feet hook over the edge of either a shelf, or in his case, a couple of books layed on the top of one of my bookcases.

  6. Bladed Ankh
    I got this bladed ankh (and yes, the "tail" of the ankh actually does have a blade on it, although the point is actually sharper than the blade itself) pendant on my first trip to Melbourne back in 1998 at the St Kilda Markets. I hardly ever wear it (and it actually needs a good polish), but it appeals to my love of all things vampiric and gothic, as well as my connection to the ankh symbol.

  7. Laughing Buddha Statue
    I mentioned this guy on Monday... he's the statue that J bought me for my birthday last year, and he sits in pride of place on top of the stereo speaker next to the teevee. I've lovingly oiled him over time until he's basically soaked to the gills and the wood isn't going to split any time soon. As a result he's also a little darker than he was when I first got him.

  8. Film SLR and Compact Digital Cameras
    Not surprisingly with all my other photography related entries (9, 11 and 14), but I had to include not only my digital camera (although in truth that's just my empty camera case, since I was taking the shot with the camera), but my big Pentax SLR too.

  9. Camera Club Medals
    These are the two medals that I won at my first Camera Club Annual Exhibition... you get big trophies too, but only for a year, whereas the little medals are yours to keep. I'm very proud of these (especially since I may never win anything in the Annual Exhibitions ever again).

  10. Sunglasses
    Never leave home without them... except at night... my eyes are pretty light sensitive (probably from spending too much time indoors) so I can't go anywhere without my sunglasses, even in winter. I also never pay more than about $20 for a pair, since I drop, break, lose, fiddle, scratch and generally mistreat them. This pair is the ones that I scored at the post-Christmas sales last year.

  11. Photographic Negatives
    These two folders contain all the negatives from my photographic work... 114 rolls of film... somewhere between 3000 and 4000 photographs... if there was ever, god forbid, a fire in my apartment, this is one of the things I would save.

  12. Red Sofa
    Yes, with all the recent drama over my sofa, it's been a recurring blog theme for a bit, but I love this sofa for two reasons... firstly I've had this obsession with red sofas since I was a kid... I don't know why, I just have... secondly, this was the first piece of furniture I ever bought for myself with my own money... everything else in my house is either stuff that's been bought for me, or stuff that I had at Ma's place when I was living there and has travelled with me ever since.

  13. Dragon Sword
    I'm not sure whether this is actually a wakizashi (the blade length is about right) or if it has another name, but it was a going-away gift from J when he was headed to London... whatever it is, it's very obviously only ceremonial, but it works in nicely with my love of dragons.

  14. Jeff
    This is my favourite from three images given to me by the photographer Chris Reynolds. We met through PhotoSIG and emailed back and forth for ages. He told me to pick out a shot or two and he would send them to me (just because he liked me... I'm very likeable). They're only inkjet prints, and I think they've gone a little sepia over time, but I like that. He's been published more than a few times, and Gaydar also used to use his images as part of their website design. I framed all three shots so that they kind of looked like the images framed in the top left of this photo.

  15. Parlour Palm (Chamaedorea Elegans)
    A year and a bit ago I decided that I actually needed some greenery in my apartment (probably around the same time that I got my red sofa actually), so one Saturday morning I went out to one of those huge Hardware/Garden Centre type stores and got a little palm and a small square pot and some pebbles and potting mix. I was more than a little bit surprised that I didn't kill the thing, but it actually flourished. Around the time I stopped working the little palm had grown and grown and it's roots had actually pushed their way into the water well in the pot, so it was off to the hardware store again for a bigger pot, more potting mix and more pebbles. I split the clumped palm into six smaller clumps, put four of the palms into my new pot and repotted the other two in the old pot and gave it to Ma. It's still growing like crazy (Ma, on the other hand, managed to half kill her palm by leaving it outside in the afternoon sun).
Current Mood: i love this stuff

birthday camera club

gold and silver competition 2006Yep... only three images for Camera Club this time around... I'm seriously running out of photos and need to take some more so I actually have something to enter...

No, what I actually need is a job, so I can afford to both do more shoots AND get reprints done...

But that's a lament for another time...

I slightly overdid my self-made Birthday dinner of Tandoori Chicken wraps this evening, so I was feeling a little overstuffed when I got there, so Stu, Cat and I ended up sitting up the back on the not overly comfortable wooden benches... on the plus side it meant that we could giggle and snicker, but we do that anyway... so... the downside was that after listening to the judge drone on and on and on the benches become less comfortable.

The Club seems to be attracting a few degree of hot new guy members... there are a couple of guys who came together (although not in a Brokeback Mountain kind of way... I don't think)... who I remember perving on at the last photoshoot... the cute American guy with the dreadlocks, who, as I discovered is called Seth... the new "junior" member, who can't be more than about 15 (he's not hot, but he's young and male so he gets included)... although his "minder" (brother? father? cousin? family friend? I haven't quite worked out their relationship as yet, but said minder did eyeball me twice after I commented to Junior about what he should do with a couple of his shots while he was taking them down after the judging)... and the guy who turned up for the first time today who was very cute in a big, tall, strapping blonde way, and who, because I was sitting around not actually doing anything, came over to me and asked if I could tell him who he needed to talk to about joining the Club....

Unfortunately, because none of the Committee Members were actually there at that stage I couldn't, but I did tell him a little about how the club works before El Presidente turned up and I turned Random Blonde (I never did get his name) over to him. So it's looking like there's new young, male blood in the club... now if only we could get young male blood in the photos and the judging... *sigh*

We've had the judge once before (actually we've had all the judges before) but I don't actually remember him, just that that particular meeting went on and on and on... it sounds like it was probably the first competition night of last year, that seemed to go forever.

He was a judge who liked what he liked and it had to wow him... and he didn't like softer lighting... I knew I was kind of dead in the water right there...

In the end Golden Light, Silver Water (bottom center), the only shot I did that was actually within the Set Subject for tonight contest (and came from the billion shots that Stu and I took at Heritage Shoot) got a 7... which I kind of expected wouldn't score that highly since it was the first try at getting something printed from my digital camera, and I think I got them to print it a size too large... then Blue Tease (top left) also got a 7... for some reason the judges automatically think that any shot containing men in their underwear where the brand name is visible must be an attempt to sell said underwear brand... stoopid judges... finally Male Form (top right) got an 8, which was a surprise because although I like it, it's actually a soft shot because the camera's auto focus kicked in my accident when I was taking it, and focused on the point of his elbow, rather than either his face or body, I'm not sure which now, leaving the shot just soft...

As I mentioned before, after the judging I briefly spoke to "Junior" about the male portrait shot he took at the Heritage Shoot and how he should crop it and that he should enter it in the B Grader Portrait Contest that's coming up in the not too distant future (damn... at the time I couldn't remember when the contest was, but I just remembered it's the meeting after next, because it's partially tied in with the outcome of the next meeting)... and subsequently got eyeballed by his Minder, twice... stoopid Minder...

Coffee was slightly less fun than it could have been because there were a couple of people with us who just annoy me, but I mostly spoke to Mikey about an upcoming shoot he's doing... then Cat turned up at the cafe, late, but with Seth and one of the other members in tow... but he sat on the other side of the table so there really wasn't a great deal of opportunity to chat with him... worse luck.

Addendum: I was about halfway through this post when the ever lovely J (you know, I really should have gone with Jay instead of the single letter... it would make it so much easier to link to just his name) messaged me on MSN to wish me Happy Birthday (actually he messaged me with a voice chat request so he could SING Happy Birthday to me) and we ended up having an hour and a quarter voice chat... so I'm backdating this post a little... in case anyone cares...

Current Mood: sleepy

sofa!

mmmm sofa and delivery boys 2006*singsong*

It's back, it's back, it's back it's back it's back...

Ahem... yes, after far too many weeks and much complaining on my part, my little red sofa came home!

And seems to have taken up all the space in my living room... again... *sigh*

I was being sneaky and snapped this pic of the cute delivery boys through my net curtain (which is why it's all hazy and crooked) as they unloaded the truck. I'm pretty sure they were the same duo who picked it up six weeks ago... well, the main guy was... the little speechless offsider could have been different. Cute though... although maybe that was the whole "doesn't talk" thing...

I have a sofa again!

Current Mood: i have a sofa!!!

it's my (32nd) birthday

happy birthday to me!I'm not the only one having a birthday today...

As well as Johan Paulik I also share my birthday with... Johann Strauss, Albert Einstein, Michael Caine, Quincy Jones, Wolfgang Petersen, Billy Crystal, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Kevin Williamson, Chris Klein, Taylor Hanson, and Jamie Bell... Happy Birthday boys!

And according to Wikipedia, today is also Steak and Blowjob Day!

Current Mood: still good... but a little tired...

pre-birthday birthday adventures

*sigh*

What a day!

I'm tired, sore, sunburned, fed, and much more contented than I was first thing this morning...

birthday bonanza 2006Ma came down not long after I finished my Monday Montage post, along with the seemingly 400 metric tons of presents...

Although it kind of looks like I got spoiled all to hell... okay, I kinda DID get spoiled all to hell... but the DVD's are things that Ma has been putting away since before Christmas in some cases (the Futurama ones in particular)... and every time we've been somewhere (okay, Target mostly) and there's been DVD's on special we usually walk away with something...

That being said, there are actually MORE here in my birthday haul than the pile of DVD's I got at Christmas... 27 actual physical cases, 20 "titles" if you count Futurama as one title...

So what exactly did I get... well... And then there are the books... the Terry Pratchett ones I remembered, and Memoirs of a Geisha (which I'm dying to read again after seeing the movie), but I'd forgotten about the other two...Plus socks... I have no idea why... but you can never have too many pairs of plain white athletic socks from Target... especially since I keep putting holes in the ones I do have...

After the orgy of unwrapping, Ma and I did our world famous double-act, entitled "Where Are We Going To Go And Eat?".... *rolls eyes at us*

Like I said this morning, I had no freakin idea where I wanted to go or even what type of food I was in the mood for or anything... other than a few vague ideas that I didn't want to do the same things that we'd done in other years... and knowing what you don't want is sometimes half the battle... after some collective song and dance between the two of us, we decided to just drive down to Glenelg (again), to at least give us a place to start.

We did pretty well most of the way down there, then suddenly, for no apparent reason there was a million billion cars... which didn't make sense to either of us... but the further down the road we managed to get, the more it dawned on us... obviously the Adelaide Cup Carnival (hence the reason for today being a public holiday) was being run, not at Victoria Park Racecourse on the other side of the city, but Morphettville Racecourse, right smack bang next to Anzac Highway, our route from my place to Glenelg... which meant big traffic... fortunately there were enough pretty or at least vaguely interesting people wandering along the road on their way to the Racecourse to keep us amused until we got past the worst of it.

One of the down sides of today being a public holiday, and the large chain stores in town not being open was that everyone took off for places that did have a lot of shops that were open... like Glenelg... it was absolute chaos down there... the main redeeming feature of which was beach = wet, half naked guys in boardshorts and floppy hair...

We only got an hour long carpark, so wandered around for an hour looking at places we might have considered going to eat at (the one place that I was thinking about, the organic pizza place, who's name escapes me, wasn't actually open), but in the end we used up the hour and decided that rather than driving around trying to find another park, we should take off for places unknown and eat there...

In the end, we went down to Brighton (since we always go up the coast from Glenelg, we decided this time to go down the coast)... most recently visited for the Camera Club Beach Shoot... which turned out to be a good idea. We wandered down Jetty Road at Brighton, checking out all the shops and the restaurants, and ended up settling for the cute and funky little cafe place right down at the very end (or start... it was the furthest point away from the beach), called Edge.

the edge 2006Edge had what Lownee and I would have classed as a perfect set up back in our Rundle Street Lunch Days... cute and funky decor, interesting and tasty sounding menu items and waiting staff that were as cute as all hell... with no actual exceptions (well, except maybe the girl... but she was cute... you know, for a girl...)

Which was good, because collectively they were as dumb as a box of rubber hammers...

But they looked terribly stylish doing it...

And I have to officially apologise to the waiter boy with the board shorts and the yellow Livestrong bracelet... dude, I'm so very sorry, when we first came into the store and I saw you behind the counter, I thought you were a lesbian... I have no idea why, I just did... when I got a proper look at you, you could not have looked LESS like a lesbian... again... very sorry...

The food turned out to be quite nice, not mindblowing, but nice...

I had this Tuna Cake/Patty thing, which was quite nice, even if it tasted more of potato than it did of tuna, and Ma had this thing with a tomato sauce (the kind of you have on pasta... not the ketchup kind) and eggplant... which was actually tastier than mine, mostly due to the tomato sauce. I had intended to take a shot of our lunches before we started them, but of course, I forgot until we were both like halfway through...

You can see the remaining bits of lettuce on my plate in the bottom of the photo up there... I sneaked the shot after I had finished eating... and I also tried to sneak a shot of the absolutely STUNNING guy behind the counter who took our order... but the little bugger wouldn't stand still long enough.

As we left, I think the couple sitting by the door had seen me taking photos because they both gave me the strangest look...

After wandering back down Jetty Road, we got back in the car and just drove... and drove... and drove... and drove...

Because we never tend to do anything "down south" it was all kind of new to the pair of us, so we ended up driving all the way down to Port Noarlunga... which is a pretty fair way out... it wasn't a completely unpleasant drive though, and I did spot a couple of places that I may need to go back with a camera, either just to shoot random things, or else as a location for a shoot with a model...

On the way back towards Glenelg we decided to stop off again and go to Bracegirdle's House of Fine Chocolate (and I was sure that Bracegirdle was the name of a Hobbit family... turns out I was right... scary). Because they were kind of packed when we got there we went down to the other lolly shop with has all the import brands from England and America, and Ma bought me a big bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups... the "miniature" kind... mmmmmm Reeses...

Anyway, we came back to Bracegirdle's and were going to have some of their melted chocolate product but there was a wait of ten minutes and by that time we were already bored and over it without waiting another ten minutes, so we gave up the idea of eating in and got a few of their different flavoured truffley-chocolates (well, Ma did... I just got a little block of their plain chocolate to try) and we also got two marshmallow dippers... marshmallows dipped into their melted chocolate...

It was wrong in 153 languages... but sooooooo nice... mmmmm

Then we came back here and watched The Pirate Movie... god, it's so very 1982... but holy crap... Christopher Atkins is just adorable in every single scene... particularly the itty bitty little pirate loincloth modeled, I think from his Blue Lagoon loincloth).

On the downside, I now have a sunburned arm from hanging it out the window during the drive... on the upside it was a kickass pre-Birthday Birthday...

Current Mood: feelin good...