Life in 2D/3D

Last night I went to see ‘Bugs Bunny on Broadway’. It was my Christmas present from KJ. I loved it. There’s something completely surreal about hearing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra playing the Merrie Melodies theme. They had my favourite looney tunes cartoon right at the end What‘s Opera Doc?” - the one where Elmer Fudd dresses up as a viking and chases bugs bunny around. I could watch that over and over again.

It’s amazing, you know, how much Bugs Bunny dresses in drag. You don’t realise it until you watch a best-of from all the cartoons and he’s dressed in a tutu in the better part of them. I wonder what the guys at Warner Bros. were trying to tell us all? If you ask me, there aren’t enough cartoons with rabbits dressed in drag. It’s all robots and weird little yellow animals that fight each other. I think they had it right back then.

To top off a great evening, we went for a very romantic late night dinner at Hungry Jack’s(Australian equivalent of Burger King, I think). There’s nothing like a Bacon Double Cheese Burger & Onion Rings to end an evening at the theatre.

I've just had my car serviced by the best car servicing bloke in the whole of Australia. Ok, so maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but he's pretty good. He's the partner of the woman who does my nails. He's a mechanic who does a few jobs from home for a bit of extra cash. He did such an incredibly good job of it that i think he will forever be servicing my car from now on. he also brought to my attention the fact that the last guy who serviced my car did a very dodgy job. Grrrrr....

I feel so organised and good now because i have given my car to someone else to work on, and it came back having been very well looked after. It's always been a bit of a stress fopr me to give my car to someone that i don't know to do work on it. I don't like getting it back and not knowing what they've done with it. This guy explained everything he did that you couldn't see by just looking at it. He was good. very good.

I'm on a bit of a high at the moment. A bit hyperactive. I started work at 6:30am this morning and left the office at 6:30pm. I've just gotten home now (8:27pm) and i've just discovered my second wind. I think i better eat something (other than these incredibly addictive cashew nuts that i'm scoffing down) and go to bed before i drive everybody nuts.

Banks are stupid. i realise that this is probably painfully obvious to everyone else in the world, but it's been somewhere around 8 years since i even set foot inside a bank so I’d completely forgotten.

Today i got a bank statement for an account that I’ve had since I was 4 years old and in which recent years I’ve stopped using. Ok, so I’m not using it - i know i should have closed the account. But I never actually go into banks, so it's not like I’ve had much of a chance. besides the point. this account had $8.00 in it. it was just sitting there doing nothing for...oh...3 or 4 years. It wasn't earning interest, it wasn't moving at all, it was just sitting there. I wasn't being charged fees because the account hadn't been touched in X amount of time so the fees weren't being charged. That's the way i wanted it to be. My wonderful $8.00 just sitting there keeping my unused account warm. Actually, it was $8.05, but it's not really important. What IS important is that i received a bank statement today for the last 2 months where all of a sudden i was being charged FEES!!!! $5.00 a month for the last 2 months!!! Do the math! I am now -$1.95. Soon to be -$6.95.

So now i have to take a day off work so i can go to the stupid bank (because it's not even remotely close to work at all) to close an account that should be minding my $8.05 but is now just sitting there giving be a bad credit rating or something evil like that that the bank will bring up one day when i want a big home loan or something.
Banks are so stupid! I will lose a day’s pay (which is considerably more than $8.05 or -$1.95) so that I can close an account which I shouldn’t be paying fees on anyway. And they didn’t even tell em that they were going to start charging fees! They just sprung a nice big negative number on me.

I’m so angry. I’m going to tell them exactly how shit I think they are when I go in there (hopefully tomorrow) and close the account I’ve had almost as long as I’ve been alive.

An interesting phenomenon occurred during the week. After successfully avoiding the post boxing day sales, I headed to the local shopping centre to pick up a few things. While I was there, I bought some aromatherapy candles from Dusk (my newest obsession), and on a whim, I bought the Body Shop’s ‘Brazil Nut Body Butter’ because it felt so good on my skin - and as an added bonus, it smells kind of like nutty chocolate - hard to explain, but the Body Shop is all over the world, so next time you pass one, stop in and have a sniff and you’ll see what I mean.

So I went home and sat outside in the sun and read a book for half an hour, during which time I got incredibly sunburnt on my shoulders and knees - I can only attribute this to the fact that after working in my cave-like office for 2 years, never seeing any sun, my skin was a little more sensitive to the sun than it used to be (I have an olive-complexion and usually don’t burn very easily at all). It was either that or the ozone layer - but I think enough gets blamed on our Swiss cheese ozone, so I’ll blame the office.

I started using the body butter on my sunburn to stop it from peeling, and because I was putting it on my shoulders, I could constantly smell this beautiful nutty chocolaty smell all day long. Now, I didn’t notice it at first, but as soon as I started using the body butter, I started craving chocolate all the time. Normally I’m not a big chocolate fan (I blame a previous job in a Mrs Fields Store - chocolate overdose), but during the next few days, I managed to polish off every single chocolate in the house (and after Christmas we had what seemed like a few hundred kilos of the stuff lying around!) and then had to go out and get some more.

It wasn’t until a couple of days later, when KJ mentioned that I smelt chocolaty that it clicked - the chocolate smell that had been lurking on my shoulders for the past few days was making me want chocolate. It’s like the smell of freshly ground coffee making you crave a cup of coffee - it’s a subconscious thing that you can’t control.

I stopped using the body butter on my shoulders purely to save myself from putting on a few hundred kilos before I realised it. It makes me grateful that I didn’t buy the Hemp Body Butter - who knows what could have happened!

$1.8 Billion is a lot of money. I think John Howard deserves a pat on the back, even if he is a creepy weird little man with eyebrows that may (allegedly) be alien lifeforms.

I've been watching infomercials again. Last night i watched for 2 hours. 2 HOURS! That's huge. I keep getting suckered in by these products and all the "real life" testimonials of 'ordinary' people and celebrities about how great they are. Last night i almost spent $200 buying a product to make my skin look 'fresh and blemish free' and a makeup product that is sheer but covers severe blemishing.
That's how much of a sucker i am. I'd buy a product to fix my skin (even though there's nothing wrong with it) and a product to hide my skin before it was fixed, that theoretically would be no good to me once the first 'miracle' product had made me extra super beautiful like it promised to.
this is not to mention the fantastic set of knives that i was tempted to buy until i remembered that i don't really do a lot of cooking.

I think that i might write a storng and worded letter to Guthy-Renker to tell them to take away their infomercials before i spend all my money on useless crap that i don't need. Somehow, though, i think that might be what they're trying to get me to do...

An amazing thing happened. An amazing, wonderous, completely unexpected thing.

I didn't take my own food to my friend's dinner party - and we still got fed!

Actually, the whole thing was a bit of an experience, because not only did we not have to bring the food to them, but they seemed like entirely different people. It was good. Great, in fact. It's like after they decided that they should get married they suddenly started to like each other a whole lot more. I'm glad that they're like that, because she didn't really seem to like him all that much before. I don't know for certain, but i'm pretty sure that if you're going to marry someone, you should at least like them.

The meal was burritos and we were their test subjects since they'd never made it before. Watching my friend cook was kind of painful, as he is 29 years old and has never even cooked so much as a piece of toast for himself. In fact, i think the only food-style substance that he has ever made is a cup of coffee. How do men end up being so dependent on their mothers? Where do they get mothers who are willing to do all of this stuff for them even up until they're 28? KJ's mother is exactly the same and it's hilarious when she goes away for a week or so and KJ runs out of clean clothes. He's so lost when you put him in front of a washing machine. His solution is to go shopping and buy some more clothes to last until she gets back. I wonder if she would do my washing for me, if i just left it lying around her house?

I have been slack with my blogging but i only have two weeks of holiday where i don't have to stare at a computer screen 10 hours a day, so i'm taking advantage of the fact and avoiding it like the plague. Once i'm back to my desk job, sitting in my concrete cave with my face practically glued to the screen, i'll be back to blogging more, hopefully.

Welcome to 2005 everyone! I have to admit, 2005 feels suspiciously like 2004 did, which in turn felt suspiciously like 2003, but i must be imagining things. I've avoided making new years resolutions, because they are really just a big crock - no one ever keeps them.
Actually, scrap that - my new years resolution is to not do anything different and just continue on as i'm going. That should be an easy one to keep.

I have just been invited to dinner at a friends place. I'm not especially looking forward to going, to be quite honest. She is not really a friend. She is the fiancee of a friend. In fact, i find her to be one of the most awful human beings i have ever come across. She's not outright rude or nasty. She doesn't do drugs or stab people or any of the traditionally horrible things that bad people do. She is just an awful, clueless woman. The worst part is, i cannot even explain what it is in particular that makes her so awful. Off the top of my head i can only think of two things that i could explain about her that make her so terrible. The rest you can only experience by spending a weekend away with her (2 of the most awful days i spent in 2004). I think it mostly comes down to a sort of arrogance - she holds herself above all others and expects that she can control everyone and everything.
I think i'll leave it at that, or i'll begin to rant. Or have i already ranted?

The big reason i'm not looking forward to dinner with her is that every time she invites us around for a bbq, we have to take everything. And i mean everything. Meat, bread, salads, even tomato sauce (That's Ketchup for you Americans). You should never have to take your own condiments to a BBQ! And when i say we take everything, i mean we take everything for us and for them. it's like inviting someone around for a BBQ at my place but giving them her address.
It's just wrong. I beleive that if you're invited to someone's place for dinner, you should always take something along - but you shouldn't have to take all of it. Especially not for the hosts as well. Did i mention drinks? We take drinks as well.

This time i'm making a stand and i'm going empty handed. I've been told they're cooking dinner (not a bbq this time) so i'll assume that they have food to cook with. It's already 8pmish, so if we show up and they have nothing to cook, it will be too late to go out and get anything. I'm hoping that if that happens, she will get the idea. I don't like my chances.