everyday shoes

Damn ... I organise my identity around here as a refugee from Wgtn ... I go there and buy clothes like my Duncan and Prudence jeans. I buy three pairs of shoes thinking I have the urban styles. I come back here and see two of the three pairs everywhere I go.

that's my welly

oh and stayed tuned to hear about how had a tourette's moment at ballroom dance class ... infact perhaps don't get me started about ball room dancing might be a better teaser

getaway plans

I guess it has been a while ....

So I tried to escape the schmerz by running away to the big city and it worked. Went down to visit the recently holidayed M and S fully expecting to find them all married up. What else do you do in Vegas? ... shoe shop apparently!

So I met the on Friday night in the city and it was full of shiny young things. This was scary for two reasons - the full part - Palmengrad streets are empty even on the most rocking night. And the shiny part. I felt so country cousin ... but well I drank stuff and was happy to be with M and S and run into V who apparently has been shifty of late. Then I started to recognise people, and they recognised me. It felt good to see people after four long years in the 'grad. It is safe to say it hasn't changed me unrecognisably. Hurrah, perhaps still a little young a little shiny ....

We went to Chow again and the waiter who I don't know but still knows me was excited to see us. He gave us a top tip involving garlic soy and coconut rice. It tasted like biscuits. We then went to Habana where they have a sort of smoking lounge... but we didn't last long ...not feeling shiny anymore... and went home with burgers on the way ....


Day two in the big city and we shopped ... okay so I shopped but S cheered me on. I bought three pairs of shoes from the one store and then went crazy and bought a pair of jeans from where I wanted to buy a t-shirt ... they make the cool newtown but well you know how it is when you are on a roll ...

curse blogger ... I had pictures to show you ...

oh well ...

anyways ... the schmerz did lift like a wellington fog this weekend and then dramaticallay descended on Monday ... or is that buyer's remorse

damn the schmerz

the schmerz continues ... it has even sprouted stems and slithering across the damp soil towards paranoia. Today I went to the library and upon the return there was a not on the door asking me to call someone whose name I didn't recognise. I immediately went into a panic ... thinking who is this? What do they want? Why me? The paranoia got worse when the number wouldn't work and I started to invent elaborate hoaxes. Eventually I worked out the missing number and it was simply a mundane work enquiry .... I think I need medication ...

In other telephone news, I am finally free of greedy telecom. Having been slow to relinquish the monopoly provided by their former existence as a state owned enterprised, they charged through the nose and treated their customers like shit. Now they have been forced to unbundle their internet stuff and divide up into separate companies. But it is too late haha I finally succumbed to Sarah's charms and signed up with the competition. Like Sarah, they are friendly and nice on the telephone, and hopefully not like Sarah, they are cheap cheap cheap. Not that more timewasting on the internet will be good for me.

I'm off to fry up squid tubes ...

it's raining ... dogs and chickens

and the water is just laying about as it will for the next three months. The indigenous names for the region around Palmengrad translates as 'build you cities in our swamps and on our volcanoes, foolish whiteman'.

Today all I achieved can be summarised in the chemical formula CO2. Yes my contribution to humanity was giving the trees something to photosynthesise. It was not my fault I had work to do and was charged with friend-related duties. R of the rampant multi-tasking is away. So I volunteered to feed her chickens. And then she was back to drop of her dogs. She did notice that I fed the chickens, having not cleared my frantic message on her cellphone that I was not sure how frequently if at all these duties needed to be carried out. So she had simply thought the henshad not been hungry for two days as an explanation of their conscientiously filled feed and water dishes. So she's off again and rings me to ask me to exercise her dogs, which I agree to. This morning in the rainiest rain we have seen since the floods I trooped up her to exercise her dogs. She has three of them. I found two. The largest one was missing. I searched for gaping holes in the building and the property perimeter and concluded a large dog would make a large hole somewhere in either as a means of escape. Finding none I assumed that R neglected to tell me that she had taken her largest dog as company. Meanwhile I duly exercised the two smaller dogs. Their idea of exercise on such a cold and wet occasion was to run to the front door of the main house and whine to be let in. Good luck with that, I told them.

So then shepherding them back into their accommodation, I went to work, and work I attempted to do. However my computer had other ideas. It seems I have or at least my computer has a macrovirus. Inspired perhaps by watching the local soap where the most irritating character died of Samoan rat pee disease or was it poo disease, my computer decided any time I wanted to change the formatting of a document, it would, no matter what my command would be, insert 25 000 blank pages into it. I didn't get far needless to say before I wanted to throw the hard drive out the window. To while away the time it inserted the bloody pages it also ate my email inbox and discarded my screensaver.

So with that I went to the bus stop and made my way home, trying to quell a tourettesian tyrade of cyclonic proportions. I did at the supermarket mouth to a man that was blocking my aisle "only a cock would want to buy that many potatoes" which strikes me as neither witty or particularly cutting. I took this to mean the day had entirely defeated me and not even tourette's could rouse me.

here comes anybody

Ho hum. Its cold and my blinds fell down when I tried to clean them, and other domestic disasters have befallen me. I am feeling guilty about starving a whitetail spider under a cup but the buggers bite and 10% of the population have a necrotic reaction to their poison. Besides, I blame black box recorder, I trapped a spider underneath a glass, just to see how long he'd last. He thought that he would win ... But England made me.

In more interpretable news, I went out and got pissed with a trio of 50+ ladies which was fun. We had to carry one to the car. You would too if you spent most of your time in an alcohol free zone in the middle east. The rest of the weekend was not so flashed. I failed dismally at buying a pair shoes. I visited the same shoe shop as last week where I almost achieved but not before knocking over a whole display of footwear. This time I turned up and all was going fine until a huge four-way dispute among the enitre staff erupted with vicious name calling and foot-stomping ... as shoestore staff are probably want to do.

Went out with R in the evening but her eccentric desires to constantly multi-task drives me mental. She agreed to meet at 7pm to go for a drink so she turns up at 7:30 and off we go ... to her friend in Cindertownham (not its real name) about 25 minutes away to plead for some dogsitting for the coming week. The same friend 'dashed' into town with me on Friday during work time to get a new printer for this computer and a good 2 hours later I got back to work without any technological goodies ... we visited a bank we read her telephone bill while parked eating secret pies and discussed transporting fridges to Hawkes Bay with an assortment of disinterested staff ...

Still I made a new new friend, i.e. not Sarah of the phoneservices ... not those kind of phone services. His name is TH and he is tiny with little tiny glasses and like all the Americans we have ever had on our quiz team, terrified that they won't know anything. I think this may stem from the assessment technique known as the pop quiz which seems to have stolen the fun from that word.

Well deso housewives is almost on and there are books to be read ...