C is for Caught Out

Back when I was at Uni, and well before I had a full time job, my best friend and I were out at the Casino one night. We were both flat broke, bored and desperately in need of a few drinks that we didn’t have enough cash to buy.

Clearly, in this situation, the only thing to do is to find someone who is willing to buy drinks for you in exchange for the pleasure of some sociable conversation; however we didn’t even have enough cash to buy our first drink, which would have given us a reason to be in a bar in the first place. Instead we were loitering around the pokies trying to come up with a way to salvage our night.

It was only when an American couple wandered past chatting loudly that we came up with a plan. What guy can resist a couple of girls with accents!? So we settled ourselves into a couple of chairs in a walkway and began to chat very loudly in what I can only assume were terrible American accents. They might have been terrible, but American accents were the only ones that both of us could manage without it being obvious from word one that it was a put-on.

The casino is a big place full of drunken men, so it wasn’t long before a slightly inebriated guy stopped next to us and exclaimed something along the lines of “Oh! You’re American! That’s awesome!”
There followed a few minutes of nervous conversation, during which we both felt that it was inevitable that he would call our bluff. We claimed to be from New York, having decided that it seemed like a suitably varied place accent-wise, and that we were travelling students. Thank, I’m sure, mostly to his state of drunkenness, he seemed believe everything we said, and invited us to go with him to meet up with his friends, who had won some kind of competition and were getting free beer all night at what was then the All Star Cafe.

When we got there, we found a group of about 5 guys who were all even drunker than the first. The accent seemed easy after that, because they never asked any question more difficult than “So what do you like about Australia?”
The beer flowed freely, and for the next hour we enjoyed ourselves endlessly.

About an hour or so in, and while I was in the process of being chatted up by a very attractive guy, another of their friends showed up. We remember him as annoying mustard shirt guy, because he had come from some other function and was wearing a hideous mustard coloured shirt made of that horrible 80’s/90’s fabric that feels a bit like suede.

Problem - Annoying mustard shirt guy was sober.

This was a problem, because we weren’t sober anymore, and the terrible American accents had undoubtedly become appalling American accents. Five minutes later, and annoying mustard shirt guy started in with the questions. Where are you from, how long are you here, where in New York do you live...
After a few questions, It became like a quiz. Where do you like to eat, where did you go to school...

When he asked us who we voted for in the last election, we knew we were caught out. We faked a bathroom break and ran out the door as fast as we could. Which if memory serves me, probably wasn't that fast. You can drink a lot of free beer in an hour.


It was a short night out by our normal standards, but more memorable than most. I’d like to say that I feel bad about the deception, but I would be lying. The guys had a great time, we had a great time, no one had to buy drinks and it made for a memorable night. If only it weren’t for stupid annoying mustard shirt guy, the fun could have gone on.

I think this experience is one of the reasons that I hate to be the only sober person when we head out for the night. Mustard shirt guy should have headed straight to the bar and had a few shots first, and then instead of ruining everyone’s night, he could have joined in the fun.


This entry is part of my ‘A-Z of Me’ Series. 26 Days of alphabetically ordered random crap about me and my life. You can read the rest here.

B is for Ballroom Dancing

When I was 16, my friends and I started going to a social dancing class once a week. It was a place that we could hang out away from home, have fun and keep fit as well. It was also a good way to meet new people.

We did that for about a year or so, and then we started taking medal classes. In a half hour class once a week we would learn a routine, and then after about 3 months, we would take an exam during which we were scored on our performance. I learnt the cha-cha, rumba, samba, jive, waltz, foxtrot, quickstep, and my favourite – the tango. It was fun and kind of challenging and it meant that when we went out to formal functions, we could use our skills on the dance floor.

So we would dance and have fun every week, and when we turned 18 we started going to clubs that played Latin music so that we could all dance and drink and have a gold old time. It’s a time of my life that I remember pretty fondly – particularly the clubs, because bourbon does amazing things for the grace and flexibility of your body. Or it makes you think it does. Either way, dancing after a few bourbons was good fun.

Then, the year that I turned 19, some of our group decided to start taking lessons to do a bit of competition dancing. I like to reflect on this time as being the beginning of the end – or the last waltz.

Suddenly, everything was technical this, and posture that – and when I moved, I began to feel self-conscious. In classes, no one wanted to fool around and have fun. The competition crowd stuck together, and everyone else was on the out. When we went out to clubs, the competition crowd only wanted to dance their routines with their partners, which left those of us who were just out for a bit of fun sitting on the sidelines looking at our watches. No amount of bourbon could bring back the enjoyment to those nights.

In the social classes, a noticeable divide started between the competition dancers and the rest of us, and all of a sudden it wasn’t fun anymore. We had stepped out of the world of fun hobbies and into the world of bitchy dancers with bad fake tans, Strictly Ballroom style.

Not long after that, I stopped going to the social and medal classes. It just wasn’t fun anymore. It’s only when I go to events like weddings that I get a bit wistful about it all and wish I could go back. But even then I get a reminder of it all when KJ wants to dance. He was one of the less obsessive competition dancers, and every so often he’ll head off on the beginnings of a routine that is entirely beyond me and it transports me back to those classes.


Lately I’ve been tossing up the idea of taking some swing dancing classes. I love the way the Lindy-Hop looks. I’ve tried to convince KJ to come with me, but he’s not really interested, and I’m not enthused enough to push it – I’m worried that it will be end up being the same thing – a fun hobby that is ruined by overzealous people.

For now I guess I’ll just have to content myself with dancing around the house while I do the vacuuming. The vacuum cleaner doesn’t care about my technique or my posture. I wonder if bourbon or two would make the vacuuming easier as well?

A is for Animals

...and that makes it sound like I’m starting my A-Z by reading a kid’s alphabet book and using their ideas instead of coming up with my own. If that were the case, it would probably be A is for Apples, but it’s not. In this case, A is for Animals, and more specifically my pets (or lack there-of).


It seems like the norm for little kids to have a pet. Maybe a dog or a cat, or failing that, even a bird or a fish. I’m pretty sure it’s encouraged in order to give kids some experience with how to treat animals and with the responsibility of looking after something living.

When I was a child, I never had a pet – not even so much as a pet rock. The reason for this is quite simple – I come from a long line of pet killers.
Perhaps pet manslaughterer would be a more appropriate description, because the death of the pets is never intentional. It’s more like my family has incredibly bad luck and by freak coincidence, that bad luck is manifested in the form of any and all pets failing to live for very long.

Clearly, this meant that having a dog or cat was entirely out of the question, so for the early years of my life I found myself without any exposure to animals at all. The result of this? I’m pretty much the only person in the world who doesn’t really like dogs.

That’s a big confession for me to make, because if you tell someone that you don’t like dogs they immediately think that you’re secretly a psychopath. But that’s not the case – I just never had any experience with the companionship and friendliness of a pet like a dog, so now when a friend’s dog is slobbering all over me and trying to lick my knees, I can’t look at it with the gooey eyes of pet love and think how wonderful it is.

Really, my mother’s total lack of affinity for pets has turned me into a freak of sorts.
My very earliest pet memories are of her being asked to look after the neighbour’s budgerigar while they went overseas for a couple of weeks and then, inexplicably, at a later date their fish. By the end of week one, the budgie was no more. The same fate befell the poor fish when it was his turn to be babysat.
Poor pets. It’s not that she was neglectful or careless; it’s just that they didn’t seem to want to continue to live. I like to blame all the subsequent pet deaths on pet suicide – they knew the odds of surviving a week with my Mum and they opted to check out on their own terms.


So since childhood, I have successfully managed to avoid having (and therefore killing) any pets of my own. But last Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law gave us some pet fish. Their reasoning, they told us, was that if we could keep the fish alive we were ready to have kids.


Oh well. I was never really that sold on being a parent anyway.

The A-Z of Me

Since I’ve been sick for the last few weeks, I haven’t really been around here much and I feel a bit guilty. I like to try to write at least a couple of times a week if I can because it stops my brain from turning to mush.

In aid of getting back into the swing of things now that I’m feeling better, I’ve decided that for the next month I’m going to try to blog every day. That’s a pretty big undertaking for me, especially given that I’m usually entirely removed from the blog world over the weekends.

I’m pretty sure that if I tried to write every day for the next month with no kind of idea what I intended to write about, you would find 30-odd entries about the weather and how boring my job is on any given day. To avoid this kind of dullness, I’ve decided that I need a running subject and I’ve come up with this – “The A-Z of me”. It’s really quite catchy if you pronounce it “Zee” instead of “Zed”, although my grade 1 teacher would slap my hands for pronouncing it like that and tell that me I’m not an American.

For the next 26 days, I’m going to write a post that tells something about me, my life, my interests, my memories or even just my random thoughts – and each day’s topic will begin with a new letter of the alphabet. It would probably be more aptly named “The A-Z of random crap about me”.

I can’t promise that it will be interesting reading, I can only promise that it will be alphabetically accurate, although I think it would interest me to read an A-Z about some of the bloggers I read regularly. Having said that, feel free to join me for the next 26 days and write an A-Z about yourself!

Dance Music, Glam Metal & Boy Bands

The new formula for my life this week:

Illness = Medication = Insomnia = Me in a very grumpy mood today

I guess you could say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. I’m in a terrible mood, and there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason other than the fact that sleep is eluding me this week.

I think what might really be getting to me is the fact that having been ill for the past 3 weeks, I’ve barely left the house. I’ve had to cancel a lot of plans and I think I’m going crazy, like a prisoner thrown into solitary confinement for just a little too long.

Even thought going to work isn’t much of a social occasion for me given that every other person in the place is male, I’m even starting to miss that tiny bit of human interaction. Up until the last few days, I haven’t even really had the energy to spend much time online, which means that even online chatting has been out. My lifelong dreams of becoming a hermit are getting closer and closer to becoming a reality.


Luckily, this weekend marks an event in my calendar that no illness could stop – that’s right, it’s Eurovision time again!! This Sunday Night, a group of my friends and family will be coming around for our annual Eurovision party, where we will which the tackiest best musical talent that Europe has to offer.

The best part about watching Eurovision (aside from the complete and utter dagginess of it all) is that it transports you back about 10 or 15 years. For some reason, Europe seems to be a decade behind the rest of the world musically. Obviously there’s the occasional modern song which will usually fail dismally, or something traditional which fares well with the countries located nearby. But there is an overwhelming abundance of what I would call imitation retro music.

Last year’s completion saw a lot of bad 90’s style dance music:



with a bit of what I’m pretty sure is classified as glam metal thrown in:



as well as a few 90’s boy band-ish love ballads (I call this one Danish Ronan Keating):



It was like a trip down memory lane – that is, a trip down a foreign and slightly confusing lane where everything looks sort of familiar, but the signs don’t make any sense and you have no idea where the lane is leading.

As always, I highly recommend that everyone watch Eurovision. It might not be quite as funny since Terry Wogan retired from doing the commentary, but it’s still pretty amusing, and this year should remind you of a lot of music in the early 2000’s.

Now all that is left to be decided is what kind of foreign food I’ll serve at the party. I was angling to make something Norwegian since this year’s competition is being held in Norway, but it turns out that from what I can find, Norwegian food is slightly less than exciting and also pretty heavy on the flatulence inducing ingredients. Not ideal for a small room full of people if you ask me. I’m thinking maybe I can just go with a Scandinavian theme and do a bit of grocery shopping at IKEA. Maybe meatballs will do the trick – they seem appropriate.

I’ll leave you with last year’s winner, a guy that freaks me out because he looks a lot like a boyfriend I had in high school.

Back to work - sort of

Today, after over a week of being disgustingly sick, I attempted to head back to work. That was a bit of a failure. By 2pm I was so tired I had to head home again. It was the longest 30 minute drive of my life - I thought I was going to fall asleep at the wheel the entire way.

I'm trying very hard to just pretend that I'm not actually sick, but it isn't working that well. I'm a lot better than i was last week at least. After seeing 3 doctors and taking what feels like every drug eveer invented, they finally managed to work out what was wrong with me. Then I got to do fun things like have a throat ultrasound. That was pleasant.

The only redeeming thing about having a doctor pressing an object the size of an electric razor into your throat and rolling it around for 20 minutes is that my doctor was kind of hot. That NEVER happens. Doctors are only hot in movies and on TV - real life doctors are always old and have ratty looking beards and spit a little when they talk. Ok, maybe that's a generalisatiion, but in my experience hot doctors are few and far between. So I could kind of forgive him for 20 minutes of extreme discomfort.

I'm off to see yet another doctor tomorrow - a specialist - so hopefully after that I'll be back to feeling my usual self. I can't wait - illness sucks.

Back soon

I'm feeling pretty bad that I haven't really blogged this week, but I am so sick at the moment that I'm not really capable of writing anything that isn't about how utterly and completely crap I'm feeling. So at the moment I thought it best to just write a post to say that I'll hopefully be back soon and feeling a bit more like writing things that are a bit more interesting than talking about how sick i am.

The Uncommon Cold

I think I've managed to invent a new kind of disease. It's like the common cold, only rarer - so let's call it the uncommon cold. Its main symptom is that you're freezing cold ALL THE TIME. Either that or else my constant coldness could be related to the fact that my central heating is broken, and has been for a couple of weeks now.

The heater guys are coming to replace the unit this morning which is good because it's 12°C in my house this morning and that's just a little bit cold for my liking. It's not the greatest living temperature when you have a bad cold either. My illness of last week has gotten better only for me to get even sicker this week with the good old winter bug that's doing the rounds.

I'm taking so many different drugs to fight it off that it's a wonder I'm actually able to function. I've had to work two very long days this week without even a lunch break to get a very important presentation finished and as a result, today I've just fallen into a heap after getting out of bed. So it's pretty lucky that i had to stay home anyway for the heater to be fixed. 

I'm hoping the heater wont take long to fix, so that my cold will disappear and my brain will begin to function properly again. Then i wont do stupid things any more, like i did last night.

After a very long day, i was sitting on the couch trying to find something to do. Following who knows what train of thought, I found myself assessing the need for shaving my legs. Do i leave them unshaven in order to preserve some warmth, as the growth of hair on our legs was presumably intended to do, or do i shave them anyway? After a handful of various pills to try and make myself feel better, i decided that shaving them was the best idea. I guess i decided on beauty over comfort, or something equally as shallow.

I can now tell you that one thing you should never do when you're zoned out on cold medicine is shave your legs. I'm not talking about cutting yourself, which I've never been able to work out how people manage to do. I refer instead to the fact that in a spaced-out frame of mind, it's easy to forget that when shaving your legs, you need to do both the front AND the back.

At least the back of my body is warm this morning.

Impulse Buy

The reason for my total slackness in posting this week is that I've been pretty sick. I've had tonsillitis or something, which means pretty much feeling like crap all of the time. Thankfully I'm heading back to feeling alright now.

After feeling half dead for the entire start of the week, I finally got around to going to the doctors on Thursday and he gave me a prescription for some drugs. I went to the pharmacy to get it filled and as per usual I had to sit down and wait for it to be ready. As I sat there, I found myself facing a wall of products. After a while, I noticed that they seemed to have a kind of common theme in that they all seemed to relate to issues of the bowel/intestinal kind. They had regular-ish things for upset stomachs and what not, but also some odd things like some kind of liquid that helps stop excessive farting and things for haemorrhoids and constipation.

I had to wonder what kind of pharmacy would put this crap right in your eye line knowing that you would have to stare at it for so long. Then the elderly fellow who was sitting next to me got up when his name was called, and on his way past he grabbed a bottle of antacid. That's when I realised - this is the pharmacy version of the impulse buy item! In a supermarket, it's candy bars and magazines, in a pharmacy, which is frequented by more elderly people than any other age group, the impulse buys are targeted at them and their weak bladders and excessive cabbage consumption!

How did I never notice this before? Now I have to wonder what other places have impulse buy items targeted at specific markets like this that I've never noticed before. I'm going to keep an eye out everywhere I go now just to see if there are other businesses that do this same thing, or if I've just come across a pharmacist who also seems to be super business-savvy.

The price of a haircut

I had a haircut last Thursday. It’s a pretty long process, but it’s a routine that I don’t think too much about because it’s one of those things that has always taken a long time, so I never really think it through too carefully.
Basically, I spend three hours sitting in a chair, during which my hair is fondled, coloured, foiled, washed, trimmed, dried, straightened, fondled some more and then trimmed again. For this amazing experience, I get to fork out around about $110. It’s a massive amount of money for a haircut. But I’ve had a lot of bad haircuts in my life, so now that I’ve found somewhere that leaves me walking out feeling like I’m starring in a Pantene ad every single time, I don’t question it.

But on Thursday, being that I was pretty bored and extremely tired from a very busy week, rather than reading to pass the time I stared blankly at my reflection in the mirror and pondered my hairdressing experiences.

I get my hair cut once every seven weeks. I know it’s always exactly seven weeks, because I’m lazy and useless at making appointments for things, so I always book my next appointment while I’m there. That means that I get approximately 7.5 haircuts per year. So on average, I’m spending about $825 a year just on my hair.

Kj, on the other hand, has his hair cut about once every 10 weeks. His haircut costs him about $18. That means he spends about $93 a year on his hair. That’s less than one trip to the hairdresser costs me. Granted, it takes him a hell of a lot less time than it takes me to have a haircut, but still! It would take him around 7 years of haircuts to work up to what it costs me for 1 year.

Truly unfair.


The other thing that I find weird about getting a haircut is that for three solid hours you stare at yourself in the mirror. It’s quite vain really. I never look at myself that much at any other time. Even when I do my own hair at home I probably don’t look at myself for more than a few fleeting seconds just to make sure everything is in place.

The other thing is that my hairdresser is a guy. He’s not one of those overly effeminate male hairdressers – he’s a kind of ¼ goth, ½ emo, ¼ nerd combination. Having a haircut is pretty much one of the few times that you can have a guy running his hands through your hair and have your husband be ok with that.


I’m not really sure what I’m getting at with all of this. I guess I’m just pointing out that it’s kind of crazy that I can spend $800 a year on haircuts when KJ can get away with a great haircut for about an eight of the price. And getting a haircut is actually an odd kind of experience, if you really think it though.