exposing my comestibles

Eddy started it... Tom did it a week ago... I once showed off the outside of it... but today we have the contents of my refrigerator...

The photo is actually from Saturday afternoon, once my fridge was all chockers with post-shopping goodness and nothing-has-been-eaten-yet fullness...

1. Thar be meat in tham thar trays! While I know the middle one is a big chunk of mince (because I'm having it for dinner tonight, turned into chili con carne), I couldn't tell you what the other two are without going to look... or what's on top of them (I think one of the things is pita pockets, and there's probably some frozen chicken stock in there too). Actually, this is the spot that is supposed to be for the ice cube tray with the little drawer underneath so you can catch the prepared cubes for later use, but my freezer is usually too full to give up valuable real estate to an empty space.


2. Honestly, I'm not completely sure what the hell is in this pile... I know there's leftover pasta sauce (and ravioli) from Friday night kinda in the middle there and the box on the far right has frozen fish in it, but other than that it's all a mystery (I'm betting on there being more chicken stock though, my freezer is lousy with chicken stock).


3. Sara Lee Rocky Road Overload Icecream (mmmmmmm), demolished while watching Cars on Saturday night... and behind it somewhere (currently hidden) is the blue coldpack I bought when I blew out my knee.


4. All those narrow looking things standing up behind the bread rolls are various left overs (curries, pasta sauces, stews, casseroles... things that are gloopy in other words), popped into Glad ziplock bags (I tell you what, I couldn't live without those little baggies now), frozen flat and then stacked thusly.


5. Once something is frozen laying down flat, you can stand it however you like... just like this gravy beef (the perfect meat for the aforementioned curries, stews and casseroles)... and there are more Glad bags filled with leftovers stacked up behind that too.


6. Frozen chicken breast, slightly frostbitten frozen chicken breast (really need to use that one), frozen chicken breast, half a frozen chicken breast, frozen chicken breast (have I mentioned that I eat a lot of chicken?) and a spare margarine.


7. The seldom used "Chiller" section of my fridge complete with a take-home pack of Beyond India Lamb Rogan Josh... that will probably be dinner on Thursday with a bowl of steamed green beans on the side.


8. Rolls of film and printer cartridges should live in the fridge, don'tcha know... and there was a can of Black V in there that I got free in town on Saturday... demolished on Saturday evening with pizza.


9. King Island Dairy Chocolate Crème Dessert... Yummy! First of all, it's King Island Dairy, hello (expensive but tasty)... but damn this stuff is good (and just crying out to be licked off somebody's nipples or something)... and even better when eaten with strawberries. Also on that shelf there's cheese (the stuff I bought from the Market the week before last), a couple of different brands of jam and a jar of Beerenberg crushed garlic.


10. You want sauces? I've got sauces from here til doomsday... I've got sweet chilli sauce, I've got two types of barbecue sauce (Heinz BBQ with Honey & Black Pepper and Beerenberg Coopers Ale BBQ), I've got regular tomato sauce (which kinda gets turned into my own slightly more exotic blend, because I add some sweet chilli and some BBQ sauce to it as I go), I've got sweet chilli and sesame sauce for pouring over veggies (not really THAT impressed with that one though), I've got oyster sauce, fish sauce and soy sauce for those Asian cuisine moments... and there's some American mustard and Heinz Salad Cream in there somewhere too.


11. My collection of plain yoghurt, for use in Smashed Broccoli... I keep forgetting how many tubs of it I have, and end up buying extra ones and thus having way too much. And just behind it is the really nice Moo Yoghurt, Rhubarb and Raspberry flavour (although their Passionfruit flavour is nice too).


12. The tart-tastic Nippy's Tangy Lemon Drink (one of my three or four favourite beverages ever)... I can go through two litres of that in just a couple of days... I think it lasted maybe half an hour after the photo was taken, but in my defence there was only a little bit left.


13. Water bottles... there are always some of these in the fridge... come rain, hail or shine... but I really should be using them more often (although I do tend to use the one on my desk at work a lot, so it's not all bad).


14. All my veggies, safe and secure in their little crisper (emphasis on the word little... it's only about half the depth of the fridge, and has a tendancy to fall out at just the wrong moment)... pressed up on display against the plastic are way too many Royal Gala Apples (my current fruit of choice), a head of broccoli (no prizes for guessing what that was for) and the big bag at the bottom that's gone all condensed for some reason, that's full of the aforementioned green beans... I LOVE green beans!


15. And last, but by no means least, Sunday's ration of Farmers Union Iced Coffee, and next to it a 600ml carton of the Strong variety that got demolished with dinner last night.

Current Mood:

unconscious mutterings 296

The bus I caught home this afternoon was seriously old school... I'm guessing it had been doing something else before being absorbed into the public transport system, because it had that serious "country school bus" vibe to it...

It didn't even have "Stop" buttons... or a "Stopping" light, so the poor (but pretty damn hot) driver pretty much ended up stopping at every stop, just in case. Thankfully, due to school holidays there were only about half a dozen of us on there...

Which brings me, in no direct way, to Unconscious Mutterings...

1. Hearing :: Aid
2. Aggression :: Passive
3. Charged :: Negatively
4. Traveller :: Time
5. Hydrate :: Water
6. Detox :: Drugs
7. Qualify :: Race
8. Prison :: Break
9. Frontal :: Full
10. Pep talk :: Get bent!

Current Mood:

cereal killer

You Are Corn Flakes

You are traditional and easy going. If something is high quality, you're satisfied with it. You don't need much variety or novelty in your life. You're happy with what you have. You're quite loyal. You're the type of person who eats the same breakfast every day... And likely at the exact same time each day!

What Kind of Cereal Are You?

Current Mood:

summery shopping

The glorious weather from yesterday carried over into today...

Actually, if anything, it was maybe a little too warm (yeah, I know, I'm a wuss... but I'm more of a fan of Spring and Autumn really)... but that could just have been because we were out amongst the weather a lot more today. And the change is on it's way in as I speak, so it's all blustery out there, which is nice too...

But enough about the weather...

Today was probably slightly more successful from a shopping perspective than last week... although we did cover a lot of the same ground (well, in part anyway).

After the Ritual Supermarket Trawl, Return and Unpacking (and the Ceremonial Filling of the Fridge) we headed into town to revisit some of the same stores and look at some of the same things we looked at last week. I also took my Penguin bookbag from last week too... which came in quite handy and I really like carrying it around. How long before I get bored with it is anybody's guess though.

Anyway, we stopped off at Athlete's Foot (where I bought my last pair of walking shoes) because they had some cool chunky-ass thongs I wanted to check out and ask the price on. But, alas, it seemed like I was having Bad Sales Assistant Karma all day and none of the girlies in the store wanted to help me (okay, they were all with customers, but still). In the end I just interrupted one of the girls before she went off and got some shoes for some random guy and asked the price of the "thong"... $115 (what the?)... turns out they were Fit Flops... which are supposed to give you a workout while you walk (and yes, they do actually come in men's styles, the website just looks very girly). Me, I just liked them because they were essentially platform thongs... I'm a simple man with simple tastes really.

So after that we headed up to Spotlight to take another look at net curtain material... we'd looked last week, and I knew how much the stuff I liked was, and I knew that I needed 14 metres (it's a big window and while I could probably have gotten away with 12 metres, I wanted a little more, and there was no way in hell I was going to buy 13 metres, my luck is bad enough as it is)... but at $8 a metre, it was an expensive proposition ($112 worth, as it turned out... nearly as much as the Fit Flops) and I couldn't commit to a decision, so we left it and went off to do the rest of our wandering...

I'm not completely sure where we ended up wandering to... I know we hit Borders briefly (no purchases though), there were some vague attempts to look at clothes for Ma (the less said about that the better)... and eventually we ended up in EzyDVD (always dangerous). Now I've been salivating over the finale of Season 2 of Doctor Who for MONTHS now... it's come down to a more reasonable price, I really want it, but I could never fully talk myself into getting it.

Until today obviously...

Then I realised that they had the finale of Season 3 out on DVD too, same price... damn and double damn. My ongoing Bad Sales Assistant Karma came back to bite me on the ass though... I couldn't find a few of the things that I wanted to take a look at, and both of the staff out wandering around the floor (both boys this time) just seemed to be avoiding me, dealing with other people (although, really, it doesn't take two of you to deal with one customer)... finally I basically buttonholed the more pierced and interesting of the two and made him take me to various things, one of which it turned out they didn't have, one of which I didn't buy and the third of which was the possibly appalling D.E.B.S. The only real reason I bought it was because it was featured in a Queer Cinema documentary I bought the other week (dyke director, from memory), plus it was $10. I know it's going to be bad... but I hope it's so bad it's almost good.

They were also playing part of the Top Gear box set in the store, and Ma had pointed out last week that it was a pretty reasonable price... and the pair of us stood there for about ten minutes just watching it on the screen, so that kind of settled it (even if it is pretty much the same stuff they've been playing on teevee recently), and the box set has now gone away for Christmas...

We were then struck down by Food Indecision... we both knew we wanted a drink, but couldn't decide on what, if anything, we wanted to eat... so just settled on going to the Bubble T place again... while we sat around drinking our respective beverages we discussed the net curtain situation, and in the end decided that it made sense, even it it was something of a huge outlay.

Before we went back up to Spotlight though we swung back through Athlete's Foot because they had some other funky looking shoes... "MBT Physiological Footwear" (yeah, I know, pretentious much)... they had this cool looking curved sole (kind of ugly shoes though) and I just had to try them on. And yet more bad Sale Assistant Karma (BSAK), because either all the girlies were busy still/again, or the one who didn't seem to be was ignoring me (but she may have been taking care of the dopey girl who kept jogging around the store to try out her shoes). Honestly, I should have asked the price of the shoes before I stood around like an idiot for way too long and then they didn't have my size and then the stupid wench who eventually served me kept telling me I was walking wrong in them (well screw you too dear). But eventually I did ask her how much they were... and when she started off with "Three", I knew it was going to end badly, and with two additional digits... in fact, I have no idea how much the incredibly overpriced shoes actually are, because I think I repressed everything after the three...

Our final stop was, of course, Spotlight... but again, BSAK... I finally made a decision, Ma also decided she was going to buy some new curtains for her kitchen (they had little seahorses on them... I actually think they were fairly ugly overall, but it's not my kitchen or my window, so what do I care), and we headed over to the register...

And what did we find when we got there... the Cheech and Chong of the over 50's female set... okay, so they weren't actually stoned, but they were incredibly annoying, dithering over what hooks they could hang a bamboo blind up with. ITS A BLIND, BITCH, USE A BIGASS HOOK DAMMIT...

Anyway, they dicked around for far too long, but then went off to dither over hooks and let the dopey girl serve us (only to come back halfway through and pay for the blind, which then made the girly have to wrap part of it up with sticky tape or whatever, don't ask)... A-NOY-YING! After all that, she rolled out my 14 metres of material... well I assume it's 14 metres, I will really have to measure it myself at some point, because she seemed to be being VERY arbitrary with her measuring... I'm sure I have something like 14.5 metres... but what do I care, having paid THAT much for the stuff, I think I'm entitled to a little bit of free fabric.

We won't discuss the rather stupid idea we had on the way out of the store, stopping to look at off-cuts of fake fur fabric. Now I LOVE fake fur fabric... the really soft and tactile good quality stuff... love, love, love, love... but it's bloody expensive, and even these tiny offcuts were pricey, but there I was feeling them up, until I suddenly realised that I was covered in all the loose fluff from like half a dozen different colours, lengths and types of fur... not a good plan...

Then there was the somewhat expected insanity when we got back here of taking down the old curtains (and a brief bout of cleaning the windowsills) and putting up the new ones (it's exactly the same pattern as the old set actually... there wasn't anything else I liked, and I bought the last ones from Spotlight too, about 500 years ago now)...

And, to finish, is the fact that because we didn't really have any lunch today, I'm currently starving... and even though I technically have a fridge full of food, I'm thinking of maybe going out to get pizza... it does sound plan-like...

Current Mood:

photo friday: glorious

Today was GLORIOUS!

Let me 'splain... no, there is too much, let me sum up (extra points if you can name that movie reference even without the Spanish accent)...

• The weather: Glorious (the only downside was being inside for almost the whole day)
• Friday: Glorious (obviously)
• Casual Friday at work: Glorious (I've previously worn jeans to work on Fridays, but I haven't gone "full cas" for ages)
• Wearing vaguely inappropriate underwear to work: Glorious (nothing like wearing inappropriate underwear, even if nobody knows you're wearing it, to put a spring in your step)
• Blonde Eye Candy Office Boy (or BECOB) wearing no socks and showing some ankle (not to mention almost the same shoes as me): Glorious (what? I have a thing about unintentionally exposed skin *grin*)
• Boost Juice's Green Tea Mango Mantra with added blueberries: Glorious (mmmm blueberries)
• Getting an email last night that made me smile and feel pretty damn good (you know who you are... and thank you!): Glorious (unexpectedly so)
• America's Next Top Model to look forward to later tonight: Glorious (trashy I know, but glorious)
• Sara Lee Rocky Road Icecream in the freezer: Glorious (bad for me, but delicious)

And further to the glorious theme, today's Photo Friday photo is from my Grand Day Out last year... good times...

Sadly, I had to come home to the Brat Army celebrating the beginning of the school holidays... little tossers...

Current Mood:

random colton hotness

Today's Random Hotness is occasional actor, Colton Haynes, "just because"...

Just because I really like the pictures...

Just because of those gorgeous eyes and those plump pink perfect lips and that dusting of freckles across his nose (I'm a sucker for grown-ups with freckles)... not to mention those perky brown nipples...

And just because he very nearly scored the role of Edward in the upcoming teen vampire flick, Twilight...

Just because...

Current Mood:

hump day

Work... you can't live with it, you can't live without it...

Or, you know, something like that...

It's been one of those days today... the kind of day where you just want to beat everybody to death with a stapler or a keyboard and scream "SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP"...

I actually resorted to sticking my fingers in my ears at more than a few points so that I could concentrate on the text I was trying to rewrite (translation: divide the longest, most complicated and badly written sentences known to man into something resembling actual human speech)... on the one hand, one of the groups I'm working with were getting together just over my shoulder to workshop not only things of a work-like nature, but also having pointless boring conversations about crap teevee shows, organising Christmas parties, group social outings and god only knows what else... and on the other one of the other women who's doing some help desk/training stuff with people over the phone, and she has to use the computer behind me... and she just has one of those voices... and is obviously dealing with some of the dumbest people known to man... so that helps too...

It wasn't all bad... I got a fair amount of actual work done (just for something different), that is once I stopped falling asleep at my desk this morning... I swear it's a whole not enough sleep thing, because I'm seriously having trouble keeping my eyes open in the mornings.

I also kind of outed myself to the reception girly at work... well, she sent me one of those pointless emails that seem to breed in the email systems of large companies... one including pics of half naked hot guys with a subject line of "one for the girls"... and she'd forwarded it to me and two other guys (not in the building), so, rather amused, I emailed her back with something along the lines of "so, you worked that one out about me hey?"...

Not that I care one way or the other... I'm well past the point where I care about the difference between people who guess (whether they ask or not) and people who are essentially clueless. Because the clueless ones will stay clueless, the ones who guess have either pretended to be clueless or else it hasn't been an issue, so what do I care if one more person actively knows.

Current Mood:

movies: the mummy: tomb of the dragon emperor

Sometimes you hear about movies that are a bit crap, and you hope that when you see them that they actually entertain you for the two hours or however long, and then when you come out of the theatre you can pick at all the things that were wrong with the movie...

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is not one of those movies... you realise it's crap ALL the way through.

Which is a shame, because I really liked The Mummy and The Mummy Returns (and even the crappy spin-off, The Scorpion King), but this outing was just, well, limp.

The idea of moving the whole premise to China should have worked well... the addition of notable Asian actors should have added to the premise... it should have been bigger and badder and bolder and better... it wasn't. Next to this, even The Scorpion King looked like award winning cinema...

I'm not sure if it all fell down because it wasn't being directed by Stephen Sommers (which is saying something), but instead by somebody who hasn't directed anything for three years, and anything "good" for maybe six years...

You have to worry when one of the main actors doesn't want to come back, and it seems like Rachel Weisz may have dodged a bullet on this one... although I actually would have liked to see if she could have salvaged something from the rather lackluster role... as it was, they replaced her with Maria Bello, who had all the emotional range of wet cardboard, and had one of those faces that was very, very forgettable.

Having said that, the line she gets to say on the character's reveal is actually kind of funny.

Even Brendan Fraser just seemed to be "acting by numbers"... and for the most part, he just looked tired... still kinda sexy, but older and more tired.

And I don't know what it is about the role of Alex O'Connell that attracts actors that play annoying very well (actually, maybe that says more about the quality of writing being done for the character than the actor), but Australia's Luke Ford isn't that much more likeable than precocious little Freddie Boath was in the previous movie. To be honest, it could just be the writing, because he's really just a badly written cliché... part Indiana Jones, part Lara Croft (but with none of the good bits of either)... and half the time the stuff coming out of his mouth is so very cheesy, even by the standard of the previous two movies.

Also suffering in the script is John Hannah's character... I mean, they tried to take the character to it's logical evolution, but by doing so, they also took it to the really one dimensional and silly place. And half the time it's almost like they just did a cut and past job with his dialogue in the first two movies and replaced some of the details... he doesn't really even get any moments of saving grace like he did in previous movies.

Even the villain of the piece, Jet Li isn't given a hell of a lot to do with his part... half the time the character is completely CGI (I assume anyway), but when it's not, he just kind of strides around yelling things. And while Arnold Vosloo did a lot of that in the first two movies, there was at least some backstory and some depth there (help me, I just realised I'm talking about depth in a Stephen Sommers movie).

Michelle Yeoh is probably amongst the most watchable things in the movie, although as I said to Ma after it was over... Michelle Yeoh, floaty Chinese robe, sword, I'm there. She doesn't really have very much to do either, but she's Michelle Yeoh and you just watch her.

The stand-out though was probably Isabella Leong... her dialog isn't any better or any less silly than anybody else's, but there's just something about her while she's delivering it.

Other minor complaints include the fact that putting a blonde wig on a cow does not make it a YAK! Yaks are hairy and look like this! This was a black and white cow in a wig. And I'm not even sure it was ever a REAL cow anyway... so why you couldn't make a CGI and/or animatronic yak look like I yak is beyond me!

There's also a line towards the beginning of the movie about the fact that the O'Connells were involved in "espionage" during World War II (which obviously happened between the previous movie and this one)... and you just know that that wouldn't have been regular old espionage... but THAT'S a movie I would have liked to see.

The movie also suffers from extreme Bourne-itis... it's a terrible affliction, and highly contagious, because every other movie seems to suffer from it in some way. However, putting this Mummy outing up against it's two predecessors, it stood out all the more that there was way too much jerky camera movement and overly fast "cover up" editing going on. And you know it's really bad when you can't tell who's fighting who in a scene... in fact there's one little fight scene towards the end where, while I know who was fighting, I'm still a little fuzzy on how a certain character was vanquished.

I'm really, really, really, really fed up with movies with Bourne-itis... somebody needs to send a memo to all directors and especially cinematographers... ENOUGH NOW!

On the (rather more meagre) plus side were, surprisingly, some of the CGI effects... the whole "terracotta Dragon Emperor" effect was really well done (especially the point where he ripped off the outer "shell" from his face and threw it at Alex)... and I REALLY liked the Yetis. I mean, yes, they were very obviously CGI, but they were an interesting take on the whole Yeti idea (more cat than ape), and one that made sense given their location.

All in all though, there were more things to slam about the movie than to like... which is fairly disappointing...

yani's rating: 1 terracotta warrior out of 5

unconscious mutterings 295

I'm having something of a mood... and I don't really know why. I think it's because work is so mind numbingly boring at present and I really don't have anything much to do... but you would think that news about more work back with my favourite crew would have perked me right up... but for some reason it didn't... and we're talking maybe a whole year. I don't quite know what my childhood trauma is right now...

So I don't know what that will mean for today's Unconscious Mutterings... but why should today be any different...

1. Heist :: Bank
2. Hack :: The Planet
3. Dane :: Great
4. Stings :: Bee
5. Monkey :: Ninja
6. Junkie :: Smack
7. Pumped :: Up
8. Brass :: Band
9. Fight! :: Club!
10. Vouch :: Er (you know, voucher)

Current Mood:

food, sex and manchester

Okay, so the "sex" bit is a little bit of a stretch, but "Food, A Curiously Mentally Aroused State and Manchester" doesn't quite roll of the tongue the same way...

Although it could just as easily have been entitled "Money Has Been Running Through My Fingers Like Water This Weekend, What The Hell Is Up With That?", but that's a little long...

It all started first thing this morning... well, truthfully it started when I saw a commercial for Designer Direct (the place we never got to yesterday)... now I hate DD with a passion... I hate the commercials, I hate the gormless woman who owns it (and who appears in the commercials), I loathe the place... but the quick bits and pieces they flashed up on screen during the commercial didn't look too bad, so I figured I might as well go and take a look since they were supposedly having some extra sale thingy (I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention to the commercial that much)...

But because I almost never go shopping on a Sunday morning, I forget what time the stores open (that would be 11am), and the pointless DD website didn't even bother to have their opening times, but I figured it might be one of those places that's allowed to open early... so I toddled on down at around 9:30-9:45... and, of course, it was still closed. Now, it's only about five minutes away from my place, so I could have come home again, but I was already out, so I figured I might as well STAY out...

Fortunately I'd grabbed my camera when I left the house (and I'm still not sure why, I didn't really have any kind of plan)... but there's a spot not far from DD where I'd seen some street art on previous occasions, so I headed over in the general direction, stopped the car and ended up having an impromptu little self-photoshoot (the downside of which was that, like last week, I didn't put any product in my hair this morning, which is something I used to do every Sunday, but haven't done for ages... until last week). Which usually ends badly, because I hate having my photo taken, and on top of that I hate taking my own photos, but I needed some shots of me actually out in the world rather than just inside my apartment (and at the risk of overshare, with more clothes on than usual *grin*). So I fooled around there for a while, then got back in the car and drove back to DD, parked and went across the road to the Torrens and kept taking shots. I'm still sorting through them, so I don't know what percentage will actually be useable, but there are probably a couple of half decent ones.

I really need to drag Stu out and do a shoot with him... part of my problem is that I'm really, really light sensitive, so as soon as I take my sunglasses off I tend to have squinty eye look which isn't attractive... and if that wasn't bad enough I keep forgetting to have an expression because I'm busy making sure I'm in the shot, so I end up looking like Cletus the Slackjawed Yokel... suffice to say, all the Cletus shots got deleted from the camera before I even made it home.

After about an hour of me futzing around the store finally opened...

Big! Waste! Of! Time!

I still can't find anything I like in the colours I want... there was one set that was halfway decent, it was supposedly "Jade" (which should have been green, but was really turquoise blue) and had Asian characters all over it, but it was satiny material, even the pillowcases and I didn't really like that (I couldn't imagine sleeping on it all night... or not without waking up with an Asian character embossed into the side of my face)... not to mention they didn't have it in the right size. And I must have wandered around the store about 20 times, and not once did any of the pointless staff ask me if I needed help... other people, sure... me, no.

In the end I just walked out and went to get a sausage sizzle instead... I've said it before, and I'll say it again, you just can't resist a sausage sizzle... and for possibly the first time ever, the guy asked me if I wanted cheese on it... which was interesting, and pretty tasty, for all that it was "plastic" cheese (you know, the individually sliced stuff). He was also overly chatty (which was interesting, because when I saw him sitting in his car before the store opened he was obviously having a massive spit at whoever was on the other end) and asked me what jobs I could think of that started with an E (I dunno... I'm guessing it was part of his whole spiel, weird though)... fortunately after a couple of regular guesses (electrician, engineer) I think I threw him off with "entomologist" (thank you CSI). I will say that the sausage was very, very tasty... a much better standard than the kind you usually get...

I returned home, still quiltcoverless, got the newspaper, did my usual routine (which again included food), then settled down for a bit to resize and fudge with some of the photos I took...

But that didn't last a whole lot of time, I wanted to go into the city and maybe look at dress pants and/or jeans in Red Circle... and get some new workboots from the Army Disposals store... blah, blah, blah... so off I went again...

I managed to snag a carpark in the free multistory, even if I had to sit at the boom gate for what felt like forever because the dumb bitch who was leaving (and would have freed up a space for me to take) forgot to put her ticket in the payment machine or something and had to get out and go do whatever, and it seemed to take her a VERY long time to sort it all out. But eventually I managed to park...

Now normally dealing with pictures of myself wouldn't put me in a particularly "curiously mentally aroused state"... but I don't know whether it was that or the sunshine or the fact that I woke my libido up last weekend or the general hotness and skin showing hotnesses that were wandering about or that I could be "on a promise" for later tonight (although probably not, I messaged him about three hours ago and he hasn't gotten back to me... which is fair enough, I forgot to message him on Thursday)... but I definitely had a spring in my step as I hit the Rundle Street Markets.

I'd decided I needed a cupcake so headed for the cupcake stall (American Candy Stand) and was served by this friendly little teenaged Hobbit boy... and ended up with a cupcake entitled "Elvis Has Left The Building" (which is possibly the coolest name for a cupcake EVER)... I can't remember what the flavour was, but I think it had banana in the cupcake and there was a cherry on the icing (I just looked it up... turns out it was banana cake with chocolate ganache, peanut butter frosting drizzled with chocolate sauce and a cherry on top). It was very, very tasty...

There's never really very much of interest at the Market... a lot of it's jewellery, so if I'm not with Ma, there's not much point... but I did stop off at one of the stalls where the guy was doing leatherwork... and he had a bunch of belts and bracelets and stuff on the table, including three or four bondage cuffs. You always know they're bondage cuffs when they have the D ring on the back for clipping into restraints (plus he had a couple that already had little leashes on them). Given the photo at the top of the post, it should come as no surprise that I ended up buying one... I mean they were only $15, and initally I thought they were too big for my wrists (I have surprisingly dainty little wrists), but the guy helped strap me into it, and although the buckle side is way too big and chunky (not to mention the metal loop the end of the buckle bit threads into, which is about three times bigger than it needs to be), I like how the whole thing looks on my wrist.

I think that actually added to my whole "mentally aroused" thing... I'm not sure why, maybe it was because it's so obviously a bondage cuff, I dunno... but it wasn't helped by the fact that there was a lot of tasty manmeat in the city... I stalked more than one guy down the length of the Mall...

So after a Bubble Tea and some more stalking I descended into Red Circle to look at clothes... and even then I couldn't escape the stalking... there was this late-teenaged boy (actually he could have been as old as 21-22, but he looked just old enough to be legal) shopping the underwear section with his mother... and having massive amounts of indecision about which particular Bonds undies he wanted to buy. How very much did I want to take him by the hand and go "these will look awesome on you... and this colour will be hot... and you can totally get away with this style"... but I behaved myself. And as a peverse kind of reward, as I was going back up the escalator, who should be right in front of me carrying his new underwear purchases... yep... and he and his mother made pretty good choices without me... *grin*.

I wasn't so lucky... all the jeans seem to be the dark wash kind at the moment, and that's not right coming into summer... and I saw a great Megatron teeshirt, but it was that crappy thin cotton material that didn't look great on me... which was kind of a shame, but I'll survive.

Oh, and the Disposal store was closed, so I couldn't even get new boots... I'll have to haul ass down there at lunch one day this week...

It was just one of those days though... where you're supposed to be stalking cute boys in the Mall, or buying bondage gear, or going off to get a new tattoo or something (it did occur to me... possibly because there was quite a bit of inky manflesh on display)... so I guess two out of three ain't bad.

And I also found a cheap copy of To Wong Foo on DVD, so it wasn't a completely wasted trip...

Current Mood:

pie-rate

I pretty much forgot about Talk Like A Pirate Day on Friday... in fact, unlike previous years, I had totally forgotten about it (and I should remember, it's the day before J's birthday), but then I heard something on the radio... but I figure that since I'm only 30% pirate, this is about as much celebrating as you should expect from me...

You Are 30% Pirate

Ahoy matey! Ye can think o' yerself as a swashbuckler in trainin'. If ye study hard an 'do what the captain tells ye, ye may be gettin' part o' the booty. Get to work on yer pillagin', swordfightin', an' drinkin'. Ye dasn't want to end up in Davy Jones' locker, so make sure ye pipe down when the captain be around.

Would You Make a Good Pirate?

Current Mood:

successful and disorganised shopping

Bless you Andrew...

But more on that in a second...

Today was equal parts of successful and disorganised, but I think it all came out on the plus side...

Adventures in Groceryland was somewhat brief and rather cheaper than usual... I guess because I've been working, I've been less cooking/creating orientated and so my cupboards are pretty full, so really it's just the fresh stuff and any other bits and pieces that I run out of that I needed.

After the usual wanderings, the purchase of some socks in Red Circle (which meant being served by a boy with a pumpkin for a head who was about 12 if he was a day and who, given his voice, had to have his testicles somewhere up in his neck), a brief side trip to the Honey Man (I love the Honey Man... well, the Honey Man's store anyway, it's a bit crap, but the honey is fantastic) and the usual unpackingness, we headed into town for a couple of things...

This is where the blessing of Andrew comes in.

Because Andrew mentioned picking up some of the cheap Penguin classics one of our stops was Borders to see if they had them... which they did, a huge rack of them in fact... score! And I picked out three, A Clockwork Orange, On The Road and The Picture of Dorian Gray (which was really the only one I was intending to get... and it's interesting because I've always assumed it was The PORTAIT of Dorian Gray, not Picture)... and Ma picked out Tales of the Unexpected, which I then stole so I could buy it for her and put it away for Christmas... but when I went to the register the nice (if a little bit dykey) woman behind the counter went "Oh, you get a free bag with that"... to which I just went "Ummmmm, okay".

Turns out if you bought four titles you got a free Penguin book bag (that's it up at the top), which is fairly groovy... it's made of that same material as all those green reusable shopping bags, but it's got a really wide strap and it's one of those ones that you're supposed to wear across your body (which usually I don't like, but this one is okay)... but it was free, and it was unexpectedly free on top of that... plus I've seen people carrying around similar kinds of bags and always wanted to know where they got it. And now I've got one... woohoo me!

So I wandered around town feeling very funky and whatnot, which is always a good feeling, even if all of our other shopping endevours in town were slightly pointless...

I'm still on the hunt for a decent quilt cover, and I can't find anything in a vibrant enough tone of either blue or green or both... everything is either brightly red/pink/orange/brown or else muted and mostly white with touches of pale green or pale blue. Grrrr... annoyed.

After town we headed out to the "Mile End Homemaker Centre", which sounds much grander than it is... it's basically just a bunch of furniture/homewares/whitegood retails around a big carpark. But it's where Forty Winks and Snooze (the artist formerly known as Captain Snooze) are... and I'm half-assedly still looking for a bed. Actually that's not true, I'm about one-eighth-assedly looking.

I now know why Captain Snooze dropped the "Captain" part of their name... it implied that they were kind of low-rent and cheap... and Snooze is anything but... I didn't see a single mattress in the store for under $2500, so they can keep them all.

Like I said though, my heart wasn't really in it... I need to wait and see what the whole inspection situation is, and if I manage to get through that unscathed then I can think about a bed. Which is something of a shit, because I was psyching myself up to the mindset of buying a bed/mattress, and now I'm all stuck in limbo.

On the up side, Ma FINALLY got over her microwave indecision (she's been saying she wants a new one for about two years) and just bought a nice new LG model... one of those ones with the circular back to it... nice.

After that we headed down to the beach... for no real reason, just because...

We were going to stop off in Glenelg, but we did that not long ago, so we ended up driving up to Brighton just to have a wander up and down the road there... and of course we ended up in the second hand bookstore there (like we do every time), grabbed a couple of things that have also gone away for Christmas, then came back to the car.

There wasn't really a bakery of any kind along the road (which is something of an oversight on their part I think), but Ma suggested getting a steak sandwich somewhere... which sounded pretty good... except the fish and chippery at Brighton didn't seem to be open... so we headed back to Glenelg... and while we could have stopped there, it was busy as usual, so we planned to head down to Henley and go to the one there. Except it disappeared since the last time we were there, so no joy... and we had to keep driving... eventually we found somewhere at Grange and the sandwiches were pretty good fortunately, but it was a trying exercise overall...

But better than coming back to North Adelaide to have them... it would have been less annoying, but it's a better story when it ends with "and we ate them by the beach".

Current Mood:

dinner with rockchick

I babbled a whole lot earlier tonight, so this will be the short version of tonight (not that there's really a long version)...

Dinner with Rockchick was good... about what I expected really, but pleasant. She made pea and mint risotto and steak, and although the risotto initially didn't look very appealing, it was surprisingly tasty.

Both of Rockchick's sisters were there very briefly (one when I got there and the other later on)... and they're nice enough, although Rockchick obviously got all the groovy genes.

Then we settled in to watch Clue... and it was kind of interesting because Rockchick has a MASSIVE teevee, like seriously scarily massive, and I actually noticed things in the movie that I'm not sure I've ever noticed before...

And after it was over we chatted for a little bit before I brought myself home again. So a good night really... not overly thrilling, but definitely something different...

Current Mood:

photo friday: perfect colours, imperfect day

I'm having a day of variable quality...

Actually I think maybe the last couple of days have been of variable quality...

I've been "Blogger Lite" the last couple of days, with pretty much no inspiration whatsoever and even trying to make a simple decision, like yesterday's Random Hotness post, took me way too long.

However, today you get lots and lots of rambling...

But getting back to the variable quality thing... Other than the ongoing pain in my shin (I'm sure it's my big black workboots, they're slightly too big, and I swear that when I wasn't working the pain went away), my current list of woes is as follows...

Yesterday morning I picked up my bowl of hot mushy Weetbix (yummy) and somehow managed to spill the thermonuclear contents all over my left hand (and the counter and the rocking chair and the floor and my Ikea satchel)... fortunately I managed to keep most of it in the bowl and didn't have to start over, but I only managed to do a halfassed job of getting it all off the floor and whatnot... and Weetbix does stick like the proverbial to a blanket so the cleaning job is going to have to be revisited at some point over the weekend. My hand, however, was fine... it didn't go red, it didn't blister, wasn't even painful, nothing...

This morning I managed to avoid third degree breakfast burns, didn't fall over and get concussion while putting on my pants and managed not to get drenched with rain on my way into work. But once I got here I discovered that the pad at the base of my thumb hurt like crazy when I flattened out my palm, and as the day has worn on I've found that I don't have much strength in it (although it's mostly okay right at the moment, probably because I'm not trying to do much with it)... much, much less fun. All I can think is that I slept on it funny last night, but you would have thought that would have kicked in right after I got up, not once I got to work. And don't even have any memory of banging it or trapping it in anything... and I wasn't using it to hold onto the straps on the bus this morning. Weirdness...

I don't think the two are related, but I know that Sheba would probably tell me there's some greater significance to injuring my left hand twice in two days...

And as is always the case, you don't realise how much you use a particular body part until that body part stops working the way it's supposed to, and then everything becomes a chore...

Then we had a fire drill at work. A fairly pointless fire drill, since they warned us there was going to be a fire drill fifteen minutes beforehand. At which point about half the building probably went downstairs early... and a bunch of us stood around the office for fifteen minutes waiting for the alarms, then the guy "in charge" (a little odd but eye candy nevertheless) let us go down the stairs before he was supposed to, which was actually a good thing, because we didn't need to fight our way through the rest of the odd numbered floors on the way down.

When we were finally let back into the building, I followed the lead of some of the people who I work with/near... and decided to come back up the stairs rather than waiting with the entire population of the building for one of the elevators.

I can go downstairs all day, no problem at all... but up is a whole different animal. I was fairly pleased with myself though... I was too stubborn to give up and didn't pike out at around the 8th floor with two of the girls. But whoo-doggy was I overheated and knackered (albeit briefly) when we got back up there.

I will, I'm sure, regret the decision tomorrow morning...

On the woohoo side for today is the fact that I've had dinner with Rockchick to look forward to all day (all week if it comes to that)... although I'm not sure if it's just going to be her and me (since she lives with her two sisters), but I'm taking a range of Rockchick Appropriate DVDs over, as requested.

Also a big check in the "gives me a happy" column (not that kind of happy you filthy minded gits) was a trip to the Central Market at lunchtime (originally I was going to do it yesterday, but the Olympic "parade" was between me and the markets, so I decided against it)... but there is almost nothing that I like more than being set loose in the Central Market with cash to burn and only a vague shopping agenda.

As I think I've said on previous occasions, I usually love to play the "lets see how long this $20/$40/$50 will last me and how much I can get for it" and going to about 20 different stalls, but today I was on a short timeline and had some specific places to hit.

First stop was Goodies and Grains for more "veggie chips" (there will be a photo) and couverture chocolate (yum and double yum)... then Nana's for some lunch since I never got there on Saturday (and I picked up a couple of Custard Polos to take with me to Rockchick's house tonight, and I grabbed some Rocky Road Icecream too), then Say Cheese (Tom, you would love that place I think... actually you would probably love the whole Central Market) for their yummy yet generic cheddar (bless you Lownee for introducing me to it) and The Metwurst Shop... all of which are amongst my usual stops in the market.

Then I stopped off to browse amongst the Buddha/Geisha/dragon/faerie related tchotchka and found a groovy Chinese lion/dragon/dog thingy, a good size too, for not very much money. Score!

I have no idea where I'm going to put it... but it does kind of scream "door guardian" so I might have to demote my dragon "door bitch" for a while.

Also on the yay side of the fence was the fact that Ma was doing training nearby today, so she picked me up after work... definite bonus given my lunchtime purchases, even if I did have to stand around downstairs for a bit like a dufus.

Now we come to the bit I'm not completely sure about... I can't decide if this was a woe or a whoo...

On the way back to the office I stopped off to grab an Iced Coffee (to help keep me awake for the afternoon) and was standing in the poxy snackbar place near work waiting to be served (and dealing with the distinct lack of "kung fu grip" in my left hand) when Asher walked in.

You know those guys that you've been crushing on for the last billion years, and you know it will pretty much never get off the ground, but there's been vague flirting at points, and the possibility has been dangled just enough that you keep crushing, and if he did ever make a serious offer, you'd move heaven and earth to get your hands on him.

Asher is that guy for me.

I actually knew him (in a "not really friends, but friendly when you see each other out, and he's been to your house at least once with a bunch of other people" kind of way) about half a billion years ago (in truth we're talking about more than a decade) during the massively confusing and periodically slutty adventures after I moved out of home and was living with Ludo. And I had a vague crush then (even though he had a mysterious "boyfriend" that I ever saw), but then I disappeared out of the scene for a good long while, and that was mostly that...

Then, because Adelaide is about the size of a bank queue, I found a couple of Asher's profiles online... cue the vague cyber crush of the "I love looking at your (frequently naked) pictures but there's no way I'm going to message you and get shot down" variety.

And we won't discuss the time that I had "the sex" with his (now former) flatmate early one Sunday morning while he was asleep in another room... it's the kinda thing that could only really happen in Adelaide...

Anyway, before I make a long story even longer, at some point either I messaged Asher or Asher messaged me... anyway, there were messages and additional photos, then flirtations and discussions and revelations (he's supposedly bi now and has a "girlfriend", but I don't know how much I believe that one) and whatnot. I still have no idea if he remembers me or realises that "Present Day Yani" is the same person as "The Artist Formerly Known as Yani"... maybe he does and he's just messing with my head, maybe he honestly hasn't connected the two, I dunno.

But today was the first time I've seen Asher in the real live actual (yet sadly, clothed) flesh in nearly a decade. And damn he still looks pretty dammn good.

Yes he's in urgent need of some sort of hairstyle (or just product, really)... and he's all pale and brunette now right now, whereas I remember him as tan and blonde (even given all the photos I've seen in the intervening years), but he's still a sexy piece of manflesh...

So I'm not really sure how I feel about having seen him again... I just really, really need to resist the temptation to message him and say "I saw you at _____ on Friday, you look good"... Creepy Stalker Guy is SO last season...

But fortunately, I have more than enough to keep me occupied before I head off to Rockchick's, so I won't be tempted for at least 24 hours...

Current Mood:

random inked hotness

Sometimes you're just up for something a little on the unusual and extreme side... today's Random Hotness is one of those times...

Behold the uber tattooed, quirky hotness that is Hawaiian model, Caleb K Iida... sadly given my "no nudity" rule I couldn't include some of my favourite shots from his portfolio. And it's always good when you know what colours work for you...

Current Mood:

nothin

I got nothin' today...

Seriously... I could prattle on for 1500 words about teevee shows and the fact that I partially discovered the winner of So You Think You Can Dance by accident after like the first episode, so I've pretty much known who was going to win for the whole season (nothing like sucking all the surprise out of it)... or how the book I'm reading right now, The Te of Piglet, is SO the right book at the right time (mostly)... or that work is boring the everloving pants off me... or that for reasons I can't explain my left shin is as sore as all buggery and has been for a while now... or that I still have to go and wash a sink full of dirty dishes...

But really, I've got nothing...

Current Mood:

sidestreet details

Just a couple of random things I snapped on Sunday when I was out looking for the final shots for yesterday's Montage...

The little sumo men (well, they kinda look that way to me) are just regular graffiti, but the owl is something else entirely... it was moulded out of (I'm guessing) clay and then glued to the wall on top of a post. Very odd...

Current Mood:

montage monday: lions

I've "officially" been working on this Montage for over a month now. Unoffically I've had the idea for a while... probably since my visit to the Body Mind and Psychic Fair... and the fact that I see three of these lions every morning on my walk...

The only shot that isn't new is the centre one... that's from a trip to the Zoo about four years back not long after the lion cubs were born. And I'm guessing that the Chinese lion (fourth row, right hand side) actually IS a lion...

Okay, that Three Little Pigs quote I made this morning about "huffing and puffing"... a little bit inflammatory to the Universe methinks... no, the house is fine (cold, but fine), but the heavy grey blanket of cloud that lay over the city as I made my way from the bus stop to work this morning didn't bode well...

I looked at the cloud (it wasn't even "clouds" plural, it was just one big cloud from horizon to horizon) and thought "if that can just hold off until I get into work, I'll be okay"... which was tempting fate once again... because just as I was being blown through my usual shortcut between two buildings it started to HAMMER down. We're talking "somebody start finding two of everything and a lot of lumber" kind of rain... which was also blowing horizontal and upwards and whatnot because of deflected wind from various big buildings.

But I found a little nook to hide in at the base of one of the aforementioned big buildings, but I had no idea how long the rain was going to last, and work was just a quick dash across the street and so temptingly close...

All of this might have been a moot point if I'd bothered wearing a jacket this morning... but I hadn't, since the last time I saw a weather forecast it was supposed to be ick this morning and then improve, so I figured I wouldn't need it, and with the insane wind there was no point in using my umbrella (which I had brought with me) because then all I would have had was a broken umbrella.

So I dashed across the street...

I dashed across the street, in fact, just as it started to hail (those little tiny stinging chips of ice that feel like hard rain, but then you realise rain never gets that hard... although as I said to Ma a few weeks ago, you just don't get hail these days like you did when I was a boy... big, scary, 20c piece sized hail)... And then I (along with a group of other people) discovered that the security guards, in it's gormless capacity for mediocrity had LOCKED the side doors where I usually go in. Of course there's no way to get from the side doors to the main doors without going back out into the elements again (coz that would be silly, providing cover from the weather between the doors)... the upshot is that when I got in the building, my pale ecru business shirt was basically transparent (and yet flesh coloured, so not easy to tell where I stopped and the shirt started). Thankfully I haven't worn a white business shirt in YEARS, because that would have ended badly for all concerned.

Then, when I went to see if the bathroom on my floor had one of those warm air hand blower things, no luck. But I know there are some in the building somewhere (and I should, given the number of floors I've worked on), so I went down floor by floor (fortunately the men's bathroom is right next to one of the stairwells) for about five floors, sticking my head into the bathroom to check on the air dryer situation... nothing. Fortunately the overly warm air in the building, and my running around had taken the "very wet and clingy" aspect of the shirt away, and it did dry off pretty quickly (by about 11am I was all good).

And we won't even talk about how much of a twat I was not to bring a jacket given how arctically cold the wind was at lunch time (and again on the way home) or about the window that's situation just in front of my workstation that kept making odd little rattling noises, or that I'm sure I felt/heard the building swaying once or twice in the afternoon... the less said about all of that, the better...

Other things we won't discuss include the fact that the tasks they're currently discussing about the website right now are actually all the stuff that should have been discussed BEFORE I GOT THERE. It's going to be a long, slow, painful process by the sounds of things, and there really isn't a damn thing I can do to hurry it along. Be like the water, yani... flow around the problems and find the right path... you can always drown them all later...

On the topic of "people I'd like to drown", I realised something yesterday... something not great, and something that I would have realised earlier if I'd stopped and thought about it.

I just signed a twelve month lease (this is not any kind of news, I've been fussing about it for a while now). I haven't been on an official lease for some time... but neither has anybody else in my building, whether they've been here longer than me, or five minutes. And that means that EVERYBODY in my building just signed a twelve month lease (because you would think if they were going to just leave, they would have done that already)... which means that I have to put up with these useless, idiotic, inconsiderate neighbours of mine and their army of brats for another YEAR at the very least. That's not one of those thoughts that warm the cockles of your heart... it's more the type of thing that wakes you up screaming at three in the morning...

On a completely unrelated topic...

I've mentioned before that where certain movies and teevee shows are concerned (and occasionally books, but not so often), it's not really that difficult to turn me into a big weepy blubbery mess (or at the very least to get me "all faklempt"). I mean, I'm not sobbing during episodes of Top Gear or anything, but certain shows just get to me. The new and improved Doctor Who is one of those shows (yes, yes, I love the new Doctor Who, I'm a big nerd, this is no kind of surprise to anybody). And usually Doctor Who season finales are the kind of episodes that make me tear up.

Last night's episode wasn't the finale, but we're in the home stretch, so they're ratchetting it up. It had me alternatively sobbing my eyes out (seriously, I cried for almost forty minutes straight) or sitting with my fists up to my mouth (to fend off what, I'm not sure, the story maybe) or yelling at the teevee or all three.

I fully acknowledge that my body most likely took advantage of the fact that I was getting all teary to let go of a lot of other built up tension and emotion that had nothing to do with Doctor Who... but it doesn't change the fact that I was a basketcase for the whole episode.

Bloody Doctor Who... bloody Rose Tyler (oh how I love Billie Piper though, she's magnificent in EVERYTHING from Companion to Call Girl)... bloody Catherine Tate (which is interesting, because I'm not really fussed on her comedy show, but she's great in Doctor Who, which just proves the old adage "comedy, hard... drama, easy")... bloody Russell T Davies (damn you Davies, damn you to hell... so long as you don't stop writing Doctor Who episodes like this one)... and the really annoying thing was that it was all an "alternative reality" story, and I knew that the whole time, so technically none of it really happened (and yes, I'm aware it's a teevee show and none of it REALLY happened, shush).

Bloody teevee show... I can't wait for next week's episode!

Speaking of "bloody people"... Bloody Tom and bloody Eddy... they both made comment on yesterday's sauna adventures post about me writing a book based on (I'm assuming) my slutty adventures... which of course got me thinking about the whole thing.

Now, I know I can string a sentence or two together (even if sometimes I forget to make that sentence stop when it should), but I gave up any delusions I'd ever had about being a "real" writer ages ago. I'm no Tony, I'm not even an Alex...

Plus (and this is an element of self-justification which I only thought about late in the process) Adelaide is WAAAAAY too small... even if I made some of the stuff up...

Interestingly enough, even though I can never seem to tell a short story here on the blog, pretty much everything else I've ever written (and completed) has been pitifully short. And the stuff that's longer never really seems to have a decent plot, or in the one particular example I'm thinking of it had plenty of good moments, but I could never actually nail down the singular unifying and driving plot that would have made the whole thing hang together.

There are ways around that, I could try writing something in the vein of Michael Thomas Ford, short little "essays", each on a different topic, but my writing is never intentionally amusing enough to pull that off.

For the record, I'm not digging for compliments on my writing or the blog, I know what I'm capable of (and not capable of), and I'm okay with that (mostly).

unconscious mutterings 294

"Little pig, little pig, let me in... or I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house in!"

It's a bit windy out there today... but Unconscious Mutterings don't care about wind (and yes, I know that's a weekass segue...

1. Cut the crap :: Excuse me?!
2. Scent :: Marking
3. Vanishing :: Act
4. Wetness :: Reduces
5. Cheap :: As Chips
6. Badges :: We don't need no stinkin' badges
7. Puppy :: Love
8. Problem solver :: Puzzle
9. Gambling :: Addiction
10. Sophia :: Golden Girls

Current Mood:

penis name mark ii

This is not my first penis name... but I really like this one, even if it is far too long to actually use (although it is tempting)... and it goes with the theme from earlier today...

Your Penis Name Is...

Phantom Lord of Ultimate Darkness

Penis Name Generator

Current Mood:

socially uncomfortable sauna

I've been hitting the sauna on and off (and probably more off overall) for about the last ten years... and whereas once upon a time I would have never expected to run into the same faces over and over again, let alone run into people I actually knew, let alone people I knew from my life that has nothing to do with the sauna...

I mean running into the same people time after time is alternatively somewhat boring and occasionally frustrating... and running into past sexual conquests (either from inside or outside of the sauna) is probably to be expected given the size of Adelaide...

But running into people you know superficially from the outside world is one thing... but running into somebody who used to be one of your very close social circle is another beasty completely (and one we'll refer to as Stallion, for a number of reasons, not all of them the obvious ones)... especially when he's there with his boyfriend...

Now there are situations under which I would have stopped and said hello... wearing a towel is not one of them. So, basically, I hid. I actually thought about leaving, but figured that if I hung around mostly the "dark" areas I would probably be able to avoid Stallion.

Which mostly worked out okay... except when I realised later that one of the guys I kept passing in the halls upstairs was actually The Boyfriend... but I only ever really knew him peripherally, and if it was dark enough that I didn't recognise him, there's no way he recognised me.

There were a couple of near misses though... and I'm not sure whether Stallion was also playing the "pretend we don't see you" game, or if I just didn't feature on the radar enough for him to even see me let alone realise who I was.

One of the near misses was equal parts blessing and curse... I'd kinda gotten bored with mostly hiding, so I was headed past the showers to the steam room, glanced at the body of the guy in the outermost shower, only to realise that it was Stallion, in the process of wrapping a towel around himself.

Oddly enough, I actually have no memory of how naked the back of him was (and if I did see his butt I didn't realise it was him at the time so I wasn't paying attention)... but I know that I didn't see anything else (like his namesake), but what I'm not sure about is if I could have done if I'd turned my head slightly at the right moment... and I'm also not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I didn't see "anything". I'm a visual creature, I like to look... and I'm a hoarder, I like to collect things, including visual memories... but what I would have done with that particular visual memory once I had it, I don't know.

Part of me isn't sure I should actually have bothered going... I mean, I've been in this whole "non horny" groove for a while now (probably since my last sauna excursion... which would make it officially two months)... but then there's that whole erection metaphor for Spring, and yesterday was really warm and sunny, and while my body wasn't making any demands on me, my brain was thinking it would be a good idea... stoopid brain...

The point where I officially called it a night though was while threading my way through the maze of rooms upstairs, I turned a very dark corner and there they were, literally right in front of me... they then proceeded to detour off into one of the rooms (I'm not sure there was actually any other choice) and locked the door.

And there are times at the sauna where you don't necessarily want to hear people in adjoining areas doing the Horizontal Polka, but do... and there are times when you maybe DO want to hear them, but can't really and know you shouldn't be listening anyway... guess which case this one was...

On the upside, at least I didn't have Marc to deal with on top of all that...

Current Mood:

confused saturday shopping

Picture a very confused and slightly stressed yani...

I mean today was pretty good (and the weather has been GLORIOUS again, if a little warm), but perhaps ultimately pointless in either the long or short term. Today we went looking at mattresses...

We did the usual grocery crap in the morning, then headed off to Le Cornu... which was a big mistake... I know I got my pretty red sofa from there, but the place is pretty much stuck in the 80's... or else it just feels that way after Ikea... and the furniture is just crappy looking for the most part... all overstuffed sofas and ugly crap.

So we wandered around there for a bit... then diverted to Kmart for no real reason other than to see if we could find Ma another top, since she'd decided that long sleeved was the way to go today and she was getting a bit overheated... that did mean that we were both in red for a while though, which was way too Bobbsy Twins... then we took a side trip over to Target Home (or as I prefer to call it, Target Homo) to have a vague look at quilt covers and whatnot.

I have to say that just currently if you want bedding in green or blue and you don't want stripes or flowers (or dinosaurs from the kid's section), you're pretty much shit out of luck... or at least you are anywhere I've looked today. So less fun there. And for something that doesn't seem to take a lot of actual skill to make (it is just two big pieces of material sewn together for the most part) they're fucking expensive!

I'm aiming for something in the "cool colour" range since I realised that all my bedding is either red or brown or some combination of the two... or red mixed with pink and yellow and orange... so basically it's all "warm tones".

Anyway, I couldn't find anything that I liked...

After a brief detour back here after picking up my dry cleaning, we headed into town to go to a couple of bed stores... I wasn't really looking "seriously", so I wasn't sure I really wanted anybody to come and assist me, and I'd avoided it earlier in Le Cornu, but the woman in Dreamland was obviously bored and ended up following us upstairs and half ambushed us. I was all for fobbing her off with a vague "I don't know what I want so I'm really just looking but not really looking" comment, but Ma went into a spiel and I just kinda stood there while the overly perky saleswoman went into her spiel.

And seriously, is there anything more uncomfortable in all the world (in a retail sense) than being more or less ordered to lay down and test mattresses... and really, other than going "that's too soft, that's way too firm" I really can't tell one from another. Okay, that's not completely true, there was one I laid on that was just "no, that's nasty", but I tried three that were pretty much all the same.

But she wrote them all down and the prices for the three best ones (ranging from about $650 to $850, so cheaper than the latex version) and took my name and wrote "free delivery" on the copy of the bit of paper she kept (I'm guessing they work on commission and she wasn't about to put all that effort in and then see me come back and talk to somebody else in the store)...

We followed that up with a couple of other places, neither of which were very impressive and then stopped off at the Central Market. The downside to that being the fact that when we got there everybody was shutting up shop. I'm sure they never used to close the place around 3.30pm, but obviously they do now, so we didn't really get to do or see very much, since half the places had closed and the others were in the process of shutting.

Even the little Asian bun place we usually go to, "Nana's" was all out of odd little Asian buns, but we did stop at the even stranger "Obun" (I think) stall and get these cute little hockey puck type "buns", one filled with cheese (and vague other stuff), one with custard and the other with, essentially, chocolate custard. The cheese I could live without, but the sweet ones were nice. Odd, but nice.

And I can't visit the market without stopping off at Goodies and Grains for some of their Belgian couverture chocolate. Except we discovered another new favourite too... "Veg Crisps", which essentially are just bits of vegetable that have been turned into crunchy crispy "chips"... which doesn't quite do the look of them justice... I mean they had whole green beans in there... and carrot (the carrot was my second fave bit... the beans being the first) and possibly zucchini as well as any number of unidentifiable things. I'm going to have to buy more, so there will have to be photos...

But once we got back here the real confusion set in... I don't know what to do about the whole bed issue... I need a frame, and while the Ikea one wasn't bad, it may be a little large for the spot (or need a larger mattress, depending on the whole double/queen issue)... but given that I sent my signed lease in on Friday and I could be one inspection away from living in a cardboard box (or, more accurately, at Ma's), is there really any point in buying a double bed and squeezing it into the rather tight space I have, or should I wait and see if I have to relocate, and then buy a bigger bed.

That was also about the point during my conversation with Ma that the whole lease/landlord/inspection thought process fell out of my mouth. I mean she knew large amounts of it, but I hadn't articulated the WHOLE story at any point, even to myself. I'm not going to go into it all again now (but if either the best or worse... or, you know, pretty much any version in between... comes to pass then I'll probably blog the story later)... but I think it's enough to say that it kinda felt better to get it out in the world, but it actually made me LESS confident of a positive outcome in my favour.

So, yeah... confusion with a side order of not going to end well...

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photo friday: place

Now I'm really, really glad it's Friday...

It hasn't been a bad week, but it's mostly been a dull one...

For a while now I've been saying that I've worked on probably about half of the floors in the building I'm currently in, in one capacity or another over the last seven or so years... well today I actually did the maths. Out of seventeen floors, I've worked on ten one them... which is a little scary really.

The whole "rental agreement" problem is officially out of my hands, I dropped it into a post box on my way to the bus stop tonight, so it's all in the laps of the proverbial. Which actually doesn't make me any more confident about the whole thing, but at least there's nothing I can do about it now.

Life, hey... you wouldn't read about it...

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