My Lungs Refuse To Breathe The Air Without You Here

[Without You Here – Pensive]

Hello Winter! Hello another 3 months of song titles.

Yesterday I went to dinner with April, Simon, Oli- (April and Soph’s older bro) Soph, Erh-, Kud, Andrew and DANI!!! (Left the best part ’til last.) Yep, Dani was in Melbourne, so we all went to dinner.

We went to Sante’s at Crown, which I realized upon getting there that I’d actually gone there before, for Gina’s birthday back in Yr 9 or 10. I was immediately relieved that my starving myself earlier in the day paid off because Sante’s is an all-you-can-eat buffet!

Dani gave me this really really awesome book which is titled The Ants Are My Friends, by Martin Toseland. It’s about “misheard lyrics, malapropisms, eggcorns and other linguistic gaffes”.

And we laughed and laughed and laughed at just about everything. Dani, Andrew and Kud were finding it hard to eat their fill because they had a huge lunch.

April ate food!

I had a huge plate (with lots of coleslaw haha) and then I ate a 2nd serving…OF PRAWN CRACKERS! Let me tell you now, Prawn Crackers with mint sauce is a-may-zing.

Also, I discovered crackling pork through Soph. I like it, but I think it’s really fatty so I didn’t have more.

On the train home, I introduced Wutinie to Fruit Ninja and suffice to say, they are hooked. Dani and I (unsuccessfully) tried out hand at Sudoku and Crossword. I used to think I get words fast at the Word Scramble, but that was before I had to go head-to-head with April. Crazy April.

So far I’ve finished 2 out of my 4 subjects. Now I have to start on my two 2000-word-essays. I dread it.

I hope to visit Canberra this winter. Hope. Hooooope.

Alex.

It Was A Fun Day, It Was A Fail Day, It Was A Ducking Fantastic Day

That was a long title.

Today, instead of going to singing rehearsals (which I think now that I think about it, I was actually aware of last week, then forgot about until last night) I went out with Katherine again. We went to the city to “research” webcams, speakers etc. Also, I had to run errands.

Got to the Glen uber early because I couldn’t be bothered catching a bus so got mom to drop me off as she went to work, meaning I waited around at Maccas using their free wifi for about an hour. Got the 10:11 train, and Katherine got on at Mt Waverley. This doesn’t sound exciting. It isn’t.

Got to Melbourne Central and needed to pee. Then got Caramellatte. Still isn’t that exciting.

(What WAS funny, however, as right before I went into the bathroom I told Katherine to “stay here” and the look she gave me could only be described as “oh-no-you-didn’t-just-treat-me-like-your-dog”.)

So first of all we went to Myer to look at speakers. It took ages to find the entertainment section because we had to go down down down down.

Katherine also looked at cameras because she wants a DSLR. Anyone gonna help her out? Didn’t think so.

By the way, and this has been bugging me all day; to my friends: do any of you use Versace New Woman? Because Katherine was wearing it, and I SWEAR I know someone else who wears it but I cannot for my LIFE remember who. It would, I assume, be someone who I get close enough to smell. Just ignore how ducking perverted I sound right now.

I think that’s the bottle. Google does tend to duck with me sometimes.

Then we left Melbourne Central and went to Bourke St to head for JB. We went into Target first, and got lost. I told her to “ask the Asian chick!” but she refused to. “We can find it ourselves!” “You’re such a guy!” “What?!” “Guys never ask for directions.” “FINE I’ll ask the Asian chick!”

Then we got out of Target and went into JB. This is gripping stuff this is.

We saw the speakers that she wanted. Z4 or something? She gasped. Then saw the pricetag. She gasped again.

Well, at this point (and I just consulted Katherine who also has “NO idea”) I forgot the chain of events, so I’ll just throw in stuff that happened and hopefully the universe doesn’t collapse into itself in a mess of chronological mess.

Mess of…chronological…mess. I need to sleep.

At some point we traversed Russel St. We walked around in the shade (thank you vampirism). We walked a hell of a lot. We went to the Dirt Cheap Books store. Haha. Ha. I made Katherine look at a book about sex or something naughty starting with S. I found it funny. She found it fit to simply walk away from me. I tried calling her name but to no avail. I contemplated using the tried-and-true “MARCO POLO” tactic but felt it not emergency enough.

At some other point I took Katherine to the “secret shop” that Eunice once showed me except she’s been there before with another Alex. We looked at PostSecret books and random books. She found this book called “Wreck This Journal”. At the back of the book, it says “tape this book together, and mail it to yourself!” I think I might actually mail it to her.

At some other point we traversed Elizabeth St. That was painful on my feet too. We walked into a lot of electronic stores. Most of the time I just whinged about how Katherine doesn’t watch FRIENDS, and never has.

(I started marathon-ing Season 2 of FRIENDS again last night. I gotta say that summer when I marathon-ed it all was such a wonderful summer. Michelle, can I borrow all of them again?)

At some yet other point we ate lunch. Had an interesting conversation at lunch. It was interesting because I made Katherine talk and eat. You know she doesn’t do either in public right? Apparently she doesn’t sing in public either. I mean. Who doesn’t or hasn’t once sung in public?

At some yet other other point I ran my errand. We went to National Geographic and I got Eunice her Sea Monkeys.

At some fail point I started going up in the down escalators because my brain said, “No one is going to that one, it’s empty!”

Finally, we were bushed. We were so bushed we decided to find a place to sit down except the downstairs foodcourt at Melb Central was too hot and one of the good couches upstairs was taking by a really PDA couple (there was a lot of space next to them – they were REALLY PDA – but yeah we thought it would be WAY awkward to go sit with them).

So we went down to the Basement and found a couch to crash on. Listened to Katherine’s iPod. Then this group of guys came down and sat on the couch next to us and it was majorly awkward turtle ‘cos we just basically sat still and pretended we weren’t there. Then they left. So we had the gummy people I bought her, and I made her drop one in my mouth except she missed (I swear, oh my god, my mouth was 10 cms from her hand. She missed).

At some point after that we took the train home together after I made her take Glenny with me (the guilty puppy face actually works on her. Wow.) and we tried to solve the Sudoku except I ducked it up. Then we were doing the crossword, and 16-across was “Ass-like”. I wrote “Katherine” next to it.

I guess I can’t be bothered explaining the huge in-joke behind that except just simple to direct you towards “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas.

There was a clue that was “seize”. So far we had _rap___ and at the same time both of us wondered out loud, “Crapture?”

After she left I was sending her a text and I tried to write the f word except it came out as “duck”. I think that’s how I’m going to swear as from now on.

Well, I was aiming for 1000 words and I hit it.

Alex.

P.S. Apparently singing rehearsals sucked. Yay. (Annie…Annie…ah duck it)

P.P.S. 14 days ’til Sorrento!

Bonjour, 2009

I went to sleep at around 1 yesterda…no this morning (force of habit. Before Sleep is “Yesterday” After Sleep” is “Today”) after watching the fireworks by myself in my dark living room, with the volume turned down to 7 because my parents went to sleep. I silently mouthed “happy new year” to myself as Channel 7 counted down the New Year for me.

So, what did I do NYE night after I blogged?

After finishing dinner and watching What A Year on Ch 9, I played The World Ends With You for a long time, and then came downstairs to watch Lovely Complex (an anime). I laughed a lot watching it so it wasn’t too bad. I watched it until 11:50, and went upstairs quietly to turn on the TV for the countdown. I knew that Carmaine was at a party (which she told me about today, and it sounded and looked really awesome from the photos) and I knew that Bianca was probably dancing her time away and Eunice…who knows. When midnight came I sent off the batch of texts I had pre-done. Vania replied that I got it on the dot again, so I’m very happy. Jen replied “so everyone knows it’s my birthday?”. Got a few more, then I went to sleep.

Woke up at 9 today, had breakfast, checked emails (net uncapped, hoorah) and went upstairs to start chopping stuff because mom planned on making dumplings. Then, just as I finished chopping, the phone rang. I thought it would be Bianca, it usually is these days, but a soft and familiar voice said, “he-llooooo”. I couldn’t hear it properly because it was soft and I had music in, so I made the voice say it a couple more times before “Oh hey Carmaine! Happy New Year!” She told me about the party yesterday and then she said that she was really bored at home. So I invited her over (first impromptu invite ever) and she arrived in time to eat some fresh dumplings. I looked through her photos of her cruise – backwards chronologically – and it was really awesome, everything that she took, the beach,the sea, the ship, and of course a backwards trip through her various stages of sun burn. Which has now progressed to a very rich dark tan. I mean, her socks and shoes were almost fluro against her legs, and her white short shorts gleamed. Her teeth, when she smiled, was a bit like Ross’s on that episode of FRIENDS when he whitened his teeth too much. I think that the tan will fade after a while, but Carmaine is now indubitably worthy of dark-tan jokes. Which I took full advantage of today. It got to the point where Carmaine called me mean for making all those jokes. But you know that I love you and wouldn’t make those jokes if I didn’t.

We played a few games of pool, she soundly beat me in all games but one. Then we went upstairs and watched some afternoon kid shows (Malcolm In The Middle was good but everything after that got Carmaine to make a face like she’d swallowed a lemon covered in acid) and we did a couple of sudoku’s (she’s so cool, she’s got a sudoku book).

Went back downstairs, watched an episode of Lovely Complex (I thought Carmaine would like it since it’s about a freakishly tall girl) and then she played one last game of pool before leaving about 20 minutes ago. Of course I hopped right on and blogged about it. Ha..ha..sigh.

Not a bad way to spend the first day of the year though. Since I made her laugh a lot, I am about to send off an email to make Eunice and Bianca laugh, thus starting my year long campaign to make them laugh at least once a day.

De Fluffe, Out.

P.S. Happy birthday, my baby Jen.