Trish & Jo

Hey Jo,

I like your idea. Since I update hogfish.net semi-regularly I probably won't have that much to write here, but I'll give it a shot and certainly read yours anyway.

Today I got some bathroom scales that actually work and discovered that I'm hideously overweight, so it's back to WW for me. Actually I bought the magazine today and they've started some weird new "NoCount" program that sounds kind of dodgy. I figure if I wanted to go on a diet that restricts my food choices, I'd go on one of those wacky fad ones, like the coconut diet. I freaking love coconut.

As of yesterday afternoon I'm officially unemployed. Happily, this means I get a week of free time this week to do things like clean the flat, get money back from Medicare and rearrange the living room so I can sew and paint. In other words, all those boring yet essential things that never get done when both you and your partner work full time. I guess technically "there is always the weekend" but if I'm not travelling intercity on my weekends or entertaining intercity guests, I always just end up sleeping most of Saturday and doing cooking and laundry for most of Sunday. And hey, call me a big lazy slob, but I prefer to keep the other half day of free weekend to actually relax and have a bit of fun, a concept my Mum seems to have a lot of difficulty with. Grrrr.....note to self, resolve this year to block out Mum's voice when she calls me "a filthy person" and instead think happy thoughts...rainbows...butterflies...off-planet colonisation...mmm hello therapy in 10 years...

My last day at work was pretty nice. My team took me out to lunch and Mike (my manager's manager) gave me a huge bouquet of flowers which was lovely. Lots of people looked suitably sad about me leaving and I managed to round up all of the wartortles, despite theft attempts.

Speaking of spiders, a daddy long legs spider moved into our bathroom while we were away. My arachnophobia only covers the big scary types, so daddy long legs don't really bother me. I don't like how it's moved in next to the toilet though, it's a little unnerving. Paul has called it Steve and I told him off for naming it because one day I'll get cleaners in and they'll whack it and throw it out and he'll be upset at me when he can't find Steve. I hope he doesn't start naming other weird bugs as well since I've been on the lookout for blue-tongue lizards in the garden that I can bring inside to fatten up on household pests. Lizards are so cute.

What the heck is the difference between Coke Zero and Diet Coke I wonder??

That's it for me.

Trish

Dear Trish,

I thought i'd start writing letters to you on LJ as I thought that it would be a good way to keep people updated with what i'm doing, but also give me someone to address when I write on here, makes it a little easier to write. I just figure that we have been so busy and not able to catch up as much as we used too, so here goes....

Not a whole lot has happened since i saw you last, I got a few more things from the sales and started back at work again.

Last night I bought some awesome little dragonfly lights from National Geographic and hummed and harred about buying a quilt cover set for my bed... but couldn't commit to buying anything just yet, instead, i think i'll buy the massage chair mat thing that they had at Myer as it is just divine, and not all that expensive... :)

And today i was having lunch with bridezilla (and she wasn't too bad today) and a guy at the next table had Coke zero!! i was like wtf!?? I figure it must be like sprite zero but the black label looks pretty intimidating!!!

Also, since Naomi has moved out, life has been really quiet at home and I haven't had many people over. It's not a bad thing but just different. But mainly, since there is only one person's food in the fridge it looks really really bare and I've also been too lazy to shop, so dinner has been interesting. Lots of things in jars. mmm pesto.

And a very inconsiderate spider tried to take up residence in my laundry bag as well. WHY DO I ALWAYS FIND THE SPIDERS IN MY HOUSE!!!??? I HATE THEM! THEY'RE SO FREAKY! this is like the 7th spider this year that i've come face to face with. There was the one in the shower that i found only after i was in there with the door shut, then the one that was on the back of the toilet door, and numerous ones scurrying along the walls.... I just hope I don't have any more spider nightmares....

Anyway, I hope that everything is going well for you down there! and please feel free to write back and let me know how Sydney is going!

Over and out.

Jo.

So, once again we are faced with a dilemma. A dilemma of online journal proportions. The future of this journal is once more in peril and its fate once again rests in my hands.

Cut to frog.

Thing is, you may or may not know this already but Spiff and I have moved to Sydney because I got a job with Microsoft. So it's pretty unlikely that I'm going to see Jo much, which means there's not much point in there being a Trish's journal of Jo anymore. As far as I know, Jo's completely forgotten about this journal so not much chance of her updating it.

So I could just let this journal die a long overdue death, or figure out some other use for it. Any suggestions?

Trish

Jo and I did some party planning today. We're a little worried about the guest list getting out of control and Jo's especially worried about the potential state of her carpet so we're having to restrict the guest list to 40 people. Jo started brewing up about seven and a half cartons worth of beer. It's going to be awesome, I can't wait.

Last Friday I went to The City (My The City) and caught up with Jo and her cousin Chris. We decided Dewi wasn't going to turn up anytime soon so we looked around the Myer Centre for stuff. Well, not immediately, first I had to get some alcohol. So we sat down at Cafe East and I drank the cheapest non-beer drink I could find, then wandered into the Myer Centre. Soon I started babbling about having a girly girl girl girl girl girl's night, which I should probably organise sometime, now that I think of it.

Then Jo and I discovered that The Sims 2 was out, and all of our free time disappeared for the next 3 years.

After purchasing said computer game, we headed over to the casino. I downed three lovely inexpensive daquiris and Jo played the pokies. I was a little creeped out by the pokies room actually, this whole room full of people staring at machines, putting money into them, just totally focused on the machines. I mean, that's way sadder than a LAN party. I whined to Jo a bit and we headed upstairs to play roulette. Jo won $18 on top of the $10 she put in to play, and Chris and I promptly herded her away to spend it on more alcohol.

It was about then that Dewi turned up (Tanya met up with us later). Jo and Chris decided to call it a night and Dewi decided he was hungry so after much indecision we went to McDonalds. Their new lean beef burger is only 5 points! After deciding that the drinking night was probably over, we walked over to Southbank to meet up with Paul, Dave and Will so I could grab a lift home. Incidentally, I hope Paul didn't expect me to walk across that bridge all by myself, it's scary enough when I'm with other people, there's always lots of people asking me for money. Although strangely, this time I can't remember walking across the bridge at all, even though I certainly had to in order to get across the river.

We went to some cafe / bar place and resumed drinking anyway, Dewi opting for a double shot of black Sambuca (which looks an interesting blue colour in a glass with ice) and I asked the dude what he thought was good and he gave me a guava cruiser which was nice, but after drinking half I felt sick so I gave it to Dewi. There were people dancing outside the cafe/ bar place and Tanya and I looked on and it made us want to learn to dance like that too, but then we looked at Dewi and realised our respective boyfriends would probably be horrified at the prospect.

So then Paul, Dave and Will turned up and stayed around to chat a while. I told Will that I don't like his girlfriend....errr tactfully. He seemed a bit surprised at this. He seemed to think this was a recent thing. Sigh.

All in all, a good night really.

Till next time, this is Trish, typing words at you from BEYOND.

Saturday night we went to the i-think awards at Bean Scene. Nobody seemed terribly impressed with Bean Scene's food, saying the portions were far too small for the price you had to pay. In addition, Dewi got charged for a meal he never got. However, I still maintain that it has a great bakery section, with really good sweets that's all baked in house, and Paul still says it has the best iced coffee he's had in Brisbane (and he's had iced coffees at just about every cafe he's ever been to). So a great place for coffee and cake, not so great for a hearty meal.

Jo finally managed to get a hold of a "delicious" shirt, which looks fantastic. I had a killer new outfit, since I'd managed to keep my resolution of buying no new clothes all through August. So once September hit I went out and got new jeans and top / shirt / blouse / whatever term is generic for women's clothes covering upper half of the body - I'm just not sure anymore.

My Mum's chicken won the "Best Chicken" award, a category I was in charge of anyway. Paul and I won "Best Breakup" (for breaking up for 3 weeks last year then getting back together), but I can only assume this is because certain people were just voting for anything containing Paul by default, since he won about 80% of the awards overall anyway.

Also, Jo and I won the "Best Party" award for Trish and Jo's Christmas Party last year. :)

I'll be putting some photos online soon, there are already some of Rhys's on his website, but be warned, they're in need of some serious culling.

Jo and Daymon came over for dinner on Sunday night. Jo says she's moving to a new place. She said she wanted to make an online calendar so people could schedule events and she'd know to turn up to them. The next day, I decided that probably wasn't so crazy, so I set one up on hogfish.net: http://hogfish.net/calendar/

I've only put Robe, Cloak and Hood Day so far for my events, but new users can set up accounts and add their own events. Apparently you're able to overlap calendars so you can see everyone's events at once. I hope it works. I'd hate to have to make one myself.

Crap. I had a winner entry all about Jo and the concert and then I accidentally pressed some button that made a paragraph disappear, then I pressed ctrl-Z and it all went away!! How do you Redo what you Undid?

Bugger that, I'm not typing it out again. Short form:

Saw Jo.
People complained about their jobs.
I went to a Regurgitator concert.
Saw lecturer at concert (hi Jasmine).
Concert good.

I am at Ant's wine & cheese thingy and Jo just left with Daymon. Cheese = good!! Now i am eating an apple - goodapple. Jo's having a bit of a crap time=atm. She dressec to kill but it wasn't the real wine n jazz night so eveeryone else was not so dressy. almost finished good apple bye

Okay got a new idea. I'm going to update this every time I see Jo. Maybe vice-versa if Jo ever wants to update this. But yes, this is henceforth Trish's journal of Jo.

Saw Jo on Tuesday night, we went to a Japanese place in Paddington with our respective boyfriends. I thought the food was pretty poor but that could just be because I was trying my best to avoid anything deep fried, which was pretty hard believe you me. There was an entire section of menu devoted to deep fried cheese.

We had a rather in-depth discussion about the poor quality of today's pornography. The guys didn't see the problem but were just delighted that we were discussing pornography at all.

I could swear this library (Hawken) has got bigger. There's some huge wall picture of satellites on a timeline. Look at all these other poor un-graduated sods. Yes my brethren, I feel your pain.

Does brethren mean brothers? Is there some female or unisex equivalent like sistren or siblen?

YOU DON'T DESERVE SUCH GOODE FORTUNE.

FOULE SWINE.

TODAYE I BECAME SADDENED VERILY BECAUSE OF ALLE THE STUPIDE PEOPLE IN THE WORLDE. EVERYBODY IS STUPIDE, EXCEPTE MYSELF AND MINE FRIENDS.


AND MAYBE THE KINGE.


BUT DEFINITELY NOT COLIN THE BLACKSMITHE.

BY ALLE THAT IS HOLY, I AM IRKED BEYONDE MEASURE BY THESE PEOPLE ON YE OLDE LIVEJOURNALE WHO DO THESE QUIZZES AND THEN POST THE QUIZZE ON SAIDE JOURNALE. THOU ARTE THE LOWESTE OF MORTALS AND I WISHE A DREADFUL POX UPON THEE.

MINE WIFE HAST SENT ME YONDER QUIZ. MANY THANKES O SWEETE HONEY BEE.

DOST THOU PREFER TO DRINKE COKE OR PEPSI?: VERILY, I PREFER THE SWEET TASTE OF PEPSI, IT IS LIKE FRESH SPRING NECTAR ON A DEWY MORNE.

WHAT IS THY FAVOURITE COLOURE?: MINE FAVOURITE COLOUR IS GREY, LIKE MINE MULE AND THE GRUEL THAT MINE WIFE DOST SERVE ON SPECIALE OCCASIONES.

IF THOU COULDST TAKE THE FORM OF ANY BEAST, WHAT FORME WOULDST THOU TAKETH?: I DOST WISH TO BE A MIGHTY DRAGON SO THAT I COULDST START A FIRE WITHOUT THE USE OF STICKS.

I WOULDE WISH UPON YE A DOZEN THINGES, SPLIT IN TWAIN, THEN SPLIT IN TWAIN AGAINE (THAT MEANES THREE). KNOW THESE THINGES THREE:

1. I KNOWE ALTHOUGH I AM A PIOUS MAN, THAT I AM NOT ALWAYES PERFECT.

2. EVEN IF I HAD KNOWN, I WOULD DO IT ANYWAYE!!!

3. I AM SORRYE.

TODAYE I JOURNEYED TO YE OLDE MONASTERY WITHER TO CONFESS MINE SINS. COLIN THE BLACKSMITHE JOURNEYED BY MINE SIDE.

BEING OF SOUND MIND AND CHARACTER, I HAD NO SINS TO CONFESS.

HOWEVER COLIN THE BLACKSMITHE STAYED IN YE OLDE CONFESSION BOXE UNTIL THE SUN HAD CLIMBED VERY HIGH IN YE SKY INDEEDE.

I SUSPECT COLIN THE BLACKSMITHE MAY ALSO BE BLACKE OF HEART.

LIKE SOME OTHERS I COULDE MENTION.

NOTTE MUCHE EMAILE TODAYE.

TODAYE I TOOK MY MULE TO THE PONDE BY YE OLDE ELM TREE.

A GROUP OF BONNIE LADS DID DESCEND UPON ME.

"A POX UPON YE!" I CRIEDE, AS THEY BEATE ME AND MY MULE.

THEN I STUMBLED HOME TO CHECK MINE EMAILE.

MINE WIFE THEN DID QUOTH "THOU BE LATE AGAIN! HENCEFORTH ON THE COUCH THOU SHALT SLEEP."

I ATE YESTERDAY'S BEANSE FOR DINNER.

THOU HAST STOLEN MINE TURNIPS!!

AND MINE HEART.

I'll probably end up abandoning this LJ just like Jo did, since I'm updating hogfish.net 3+ times per day these days. Kind of sad really. Poor LJ.

I'm sure Jo and I will find some creative use for it.

GOOD LUCK JO*

YOU'RE COOL AND FRIENDLY AND SMILEY AND HAVE AN AWESOME SUIT, THEY WOULD BE FOOLS NOT TO HIRE YOU! FOOOOOOOOLS.




*for those who don't know, Jo has a job interview tomorrow. sure, I could have just sent her an email but this way just seemed like more fun. plus now you, gentle reader, can add your messages of good luck to the comments part of this post, thereby increasing the luck given and giving you substantially better karma.

Helluva long day yesterday. I didn't have a laptop lock so I borrowed one off Jasmine (one of Paul and Dave's supervisors - thanks Jasmine!). Then we had to hand in our assignments for COMP4600. By the time I got to the expo I was sweating like crazy from the heat, it wasn't a good day to be wearing long pants and carrying a heavy backpack with a heavy laptop in it. Plus of course my shoes were killing me and I had a blister on one foot by the end of the day. But once we got there it was fine, we even got fuzzy comfy chairs.

When I got there I found out another person had joined my booth, so there were five people sharing the one booth. It was pretty ridiculous but everyone but me nicked off for most of the day anyway, since I was the only one with a demo to worry about. My second marker turned up fairly early and I think the marking went well, but it's hard to tell. After watching Jo get marked by a horde of INFS people and hearing about Paul and Dave's crazy marker I think I was pretty lucky though.

I took a break for lunch with Paul, who informed me that we'd both forgotten Dave's birthday, which was the day before the expo. And it was his 21st birthday too. :( He'd told us multiple times, so we felt pretty bad about it.

Jo and I came to the realisation that the Red Room would be packed that night, so we decided to pick up our free drinks at about 4pm, along with Jo's cousin Chris, Kewn, Dewi, Zais and Kahless. We wandered back at about 5.30pm, feeling rather tipsy. The wine had worn off by about 6.30pm, when Will and Alison turned up, so I was feeling a bit sour by then and they got the short version of my project talk ("Read the poster").

I got a bit bored, so Loz and I played The Sims for a bit, then later on I showed Chris the "Yatta" music video, which stopped one industry person in his tracks as he did a bit of a double-take, commented on it not being what he expected to see or something, then wandered off looking highly embarassed.

Jon turned up just as everyone was packing up. There was a huge line to sign out your equipment, something that the security people weren't happy about either - I overheard one of them mutter "Jon Whitty's bill just went up".

Even though Paul and Dave still had free drinks to pick up, we figured it wasn't worth going to the Red Room since it would be packed and we still had all our equipment, so we picked up an interesting wine and some cheese and had a small celebration back home, as well as a birthday ice-cream cake roulade for Dave's birthday.

Pictures from yesterday that I took can be found here: