Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Well I guess eight days since the last post is an improvement on the time before that… (except now it's actually Friday as I saved this as a draft and didn't post it - doh!!)
Last week did indeed go quickly, though I must admit to feeling bewildered by the move over to my new routes. It’s so weird to feel so impotent (insert appropriate joke here). Hopefully I’ll get up to speed soon, but the person I’ve taken over from didn’t really get a proper handover when she took over and so the whole thing is limping along quite badly. Obviously when I say limp… and we’re back to impotency again. Yikes. I got into work every day last week before 8am and went to the gym on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. Good for me! And finally my short week was over. Friday I got up and got organised and headed over to Aaron’s. We hit the airport around 9am ready for our Melbourne adventure. Soon we had joined Rich and Russ and were having fabulous italian lunch sat in the sunshine with bottles of wine. How much more civilised is that than work? We then pottered about and before long we were drinking in the Laird. The gang all finally arrived and I for one was a little tipsy. Tired and drunk I called it a day before midnight and went home to sleep. Good to see all the gang again – particularly the Brisbane boys. Saturday we were actually all up and about reasonably early and so yesterday’s gang of four plus Tim and Ross did brekky.
From there we all went our separate ways ostensibly to shop – I hit the markets but couldn’t find a single pair of black boots I liked. About 3 hours and several locations later I finally got a pair of Doc Martens and met Aaron for some t-shirt browsing. Finally it was back to the ranch and I did the whole shave, shower, wet shave my head thing – well why not? Various people arrived at our rooms for pre-party beers and soon we were on our merry way. And to the party! We got to the party not too long after kick off and suddenly we were in full swing. The party crowd was fun – sexy, friendly, peppered with familiar faces and new, appealing ones! The music however, left a lot to be desired. It was as though someone had prepared the Trance-master 3000 and left it churning out ethereal dance tunes by rote. Oh well. The smaller room didn’t really get going music wise either, which was a real shame. Come 5am Aaron and I had had enough and so we adjourned back to our place for vodka, some real music and a bit of a chill out before showering and changing and heading down to recovery – for which we had high hopes. And boy were those hopes realised! The recovery had those vital elements the party lacked – still ostensibly the same crowd, but with much, much funkier music. The venue was great too – small funky bar with dance area and cool loungey bits. So much fun was the recovery, that come midday we really didn’t want to stop. Fortunately for us, we didn’t have to…
Chance would be that some of our extended group know the organisers of the Beyond parties, and this was the 4th anniversary one. Consequently they were having a post-recovery recovery at a funky apartment in Melbourne industrial-ville by invitation only. You guessed it – we got invites! Thanks need to go out to Tim and Andrew the organisers; the lovely Wayne for putting a good word in for us and for Susan the hostess for being so gracious with her hospitality. Aaron and me had met Susan at one of Wayne’s chill outs previously, and it was great to see her again. And verily we partied on and on… until about 7.30pm when we thought we should at least stop and eat. It proved our downfall – one we stopped there was no winding ourselves back up (which had been the plan) and so to bed we went…
Monday – more brekkies en masse. We had every intention of hitting the supposedly great Impressionists exhibition, but we were out-queued for the third day running. Oh well. Eventually it was time to head home to Sydney. So nice to get out of town for a bit though, and catching up with the gang was fantastic. Melbourne well and truly painted red!
The good times weren’t over however – I had managed to get Craig’s holiday dates wrong and so when he called a day early on that Monday morning I’d been most pleasantly surprised. Thus straight off the (delayed – grrr!) flight home, and then over to see Craig. Great to see him again – all bronzed and gorgeous after his hols. We did some much needed catching up…
Tuesday and back to reality. Work was really, really dull. I so didn’t want to be there – in fact all I felt like doing was curling up with Craig and shutting the world outside. Fortunately he was up for that so Tuesday night was more snuggles, this time at my place. Bliss.
Wednesday – work and then home. Food and telly. Bed.
Yesterday was a weird one – I got trained up to essentially be a replacement steward in the event of industrial action. Get me! So, after my 12 hour day I can now in theory prepare and serve chicken or beef (with a hot towel) in any cabin of a 747. Cool! And all I wanted to do after that was snuggle with Craig again. Lovely man that he is was happy to invite me over, and even made me dinner. How gorgeous is he exactly?
And so to now. Friday 4.15pm. About to leave work and head out to Peter and Gary’s in Tamarama. Craig is going to meet me there hopefully in time to watch the sun set. Then it’s a weekend by the seaside for us. Fantastic. At this point next week is a dim blur and not worthy of contemplation. Too many lovely things happening between now and then… :o)

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Well so much for the promise to improve. I have been doing other stuff honest! Actually quite a bit has been going down (as it were…)
Two weeks and a day ago I left you. Still in August no less. Crikey. The start of that week was pretty non-descript… work, podiatrist on the Tuesday, tried to do the gym on the Wednesday but Peter the trainer was so late we cancelled and I just did a run. That evening though was great. I headed over to Newtown and met Craig for a beer before we had dinner and home to his for a last night of snuggling before he headed off on holiday on the Friday. I’ve no idea what else I did that week. Think I was meant to catch up with Aaron, but didn’t. Probably lurked around Potts Point in the new surroundings. Got a nice message from Craig before he headed off on Friday and managed to speak to him. Not looking forward to not seeing him for 17 nights. And counting. :o(
Tried to keep myself busy that weekend. Managed to hook the PC up to the new ADSL connection in spite of the company’s help desk being a no-help desk. They won’t thwart me with their ‘we don’t support your modem’ shenanigans! So I’m back on-line at high speed all the time. Yay for music downloading! It really gives me no excuse for not updating Minkered…
Pete and Bobby had got up early to go to day Manacle, and so that afternoon they were up for continuing. We went for drinks to Jason’s in Bondi and had a couple of beers there. Thence to Bobby’s friend Martin’s party to continue. Fun. Then to the Newtown to finish things off. I piked around 11pm and took myself sensibly home to bed. Only to have to let Bobby in at 4am…
Sunday was Bobby’s birthday, but he had to work. Pete and I did brekky at Truck and then kept ourselves amused somehow – can’t remember how! Eventually it was time to head out for birthday beers – and we got to the Colombian at around 9.30pm – just in time to meet the gang. And verily we hit Arq. And there we stayed. Til after my self-imposed curfew. I did head home with Bobby so I could go to work… but then decided to head back out again. Naughty. Day Manacle was great though – Rado played a good set and we had fun. Colombian for more beer. Green Park for more beer and pool. Food. Home. Bed at 6.30pm. Sleep.
Tuesday was the worst day… Wednesday we made lo-o-o-ove. Sorry. Thought I was George Michael for a second there! Actually the whole week was a bit of a busy blur. In work early every day, ready for the move to International. Wednesday I did the gym, where Peter did a ‘fifties’ session with me. That’s where you do fifty reps of each exercise. Ouch! The rest of the time was resting, reading, internet-ing. Oh, and I hit Peter and Gary’s again on Thursday for food handover and the confirmation of looking after George, their Staffordshire terrier for that coming weekend.
Friday was very, very busy. Early into work. Did the handover to Bev and relaxed. Ended up managing to leave around 4.30pm. Woohoo! No more Domestic flights for me! Headed out to Bondi Junction and picked up George from Peter’s vet’s practice. To their place in Tamarama where I planted myself for a weekend of dog sitting. By the beach admittedly, so hardly too much of a trial – except that George is very high maintenance. Think 4 year old boy who has the ability to take your arm off if you rub him up the wrong way…
However, Friday night passed uneventfully with takeaway chicken and chips; League of Gentlemen Series 2 on DVD and a relatively early night. George managed to sleep on the bed and banished me to a tiny quarter so I didn't sleep particularly well! Saturday was brekky; taking George for a play in the park and then off to do some chores. Ended up back at Tamarama later and did not much else again. Pasta for dinner ready for my 10K race and more League of Gentlemen (the rest of Series 2 and the Christmas special). Early bed again and I managed to get George to only take up half the bed. Woohoo!
Up at 5.30am. Brekky and headed off to North Sydney via Potts Point to drop the car off. Come 7.30am and we were off - running in one of the most scenic runs around for the third year running. Wasn't sure what to expect time wise as I've not been training, but ended up with a respectable 49mins - about a minute slower than last year. Happy with that! Back to have brekky at Tamarama and then eventually Pete and Bobby came over for tea. They left and I hit Bronte to catch up with Rich, Russ and Aaron. First time I've seen R'n'R in about a month! I then took George off to one of Peter's veterinary nurses and my dog-sitting weekend was over. Back to Potts Point for dinner and sort out and an early night. Yay!!
This week - started in International. Weird. I've got all the systems knowledge I need to do the job, but no market knowledge. Consider the next few months as I immerse myself if all things India; Qantas flights from Australia to Singapore and Australian Airlines flights from Darwin and Cairns to and from Singapore. Phew! I'm exhausted just contemplating it. Not really doing much else. Gym last night which was good, and I'm going to go again today. Got an unexpected message from Craig on Monday night which made me feel all warm and fuzzy. Assuming he was at Darwin airport en route to his beach in Thailand. Can't wait to see him in 6 days.
It's a short week this and next for me as I take a long weekend and head to Melbourne. We're partying on Saturday but to be honest I'm not that interested. Looking forward to catching up with a lot of people I've not seen for ages - Adrian and Shane and Graham and David are flying down from Brisbane, and I'll hopefully also see Mark S and Steve A. I'm determined to see more of Melbourne than the inside of bars and clubs. Check back next week to see how I managed!!