Leaf, probably…

I haven’t done a post in list form for a very long time. At least a week anyway. So I thought I’d do one today: 

• I might be going for drinks tonight with Karlie and Leslea. Or I might be going to the gym to work out all alone. Considering how much I enjoy working out on my own (I don’t) I’m leaning a lot towards the drinks.

• This morning, while on the bus, I saw a man stumble out of Mermaids (Wellingtons premier men’s entertainment club.) He grinned blearily at my bus and waved before stumbling down Courtney place. He looked very pleased with himself.

• The other day I had to buy a text book for my POLS course. I hate it when the lecturers prescribe books that they, or the course administrator, have written. And I hate it even more when the text is so very obviously overpriced. $50 for a badly written dry-as-toast book.

• Because I was angry about the book and the spending of hard earned money I went on TradeMe and bid on the equivalent amount of trashy romance novels, and winter clothing. I am a very bad influence on myself.

• Taekwon-Do camp is coming up on the 15th-17th (I think) of August. It’s near Lower Hutt somewhere, and Dad, if you’re reading this, family is allowed to come watch the grading, which I’m fairly sure is on Saturday (16th) morning.

• Last night at TKD they made that same joke about the 6am run and swim in a freezing cold river. I think they might actually be serious.

• I hate running.

• It’s winter here in New Zealand. Winter is cold. 6am in the morning is cold. Rivers are very cold.

• I hate being cold.

• Seriously, I don’t like the cold. I have an electric blanket, two duvets, two blankets, a throw rug, a hot water bottle and many many pairs of flannelette PJ’s. Last night I used them all. Except the electric blanket - I’m scared it’s too old to be safe anymore, and I’ll wake up on fire.

• In that same week of the TKD camp I have a briefing paper (worth15%), a class test (worth25%) and a 2000 word essay (worth 25%) due. I’m thinking I’d better start writing now.

• Also: I’d better start practicing and learning my theory for TKD because my mini-grading is in roughly two weeks. (there will be no grading without first passing the mini-grading.)

• Whoops. I agreed to go out for a drink with the girls before considering the fact that I am so not dressed for it. I am wearing trainers, jeans, a woolly casual Friday jumper, and a very baggy thermal top that I stole off my Mum last weekend. Crap. I need to go shopping.

• I also need to go food shopping. I am down to a packet of pasta, three different types of rice, a jar of pesto, and a jar of garlic aioli. I’ve had pesto and pasta for three nights in a row. It would have been four, but thankfully Louise took pity on me last night and gave me some of her chicken and vegetable pie.

• Who says I’m not domesticated huh? THREE types of rice. Domestic goddesses probably only ever have two at a time. And one of my bags is wholegrain brown rice. That’s very healthy.

• Usually I have brown wholegrain pasta too. Last time I couldn’t find any on the supermarket shelf, so I gave up. Also: It takes five times as long as normal pasta and rice to cook because it’s so much denser. Sometimes I’m just not that patient.

• Ok. I’m never that patient. I eat crunchy pasta and rice 99.9% of the time.

Hm. So that was less of a list and more of a stream of consciousness in list form.

Anyway: Homework.

I’ve just started back at uni, and there seems to be an excess of it. You know me though: I like to share the fun around, so today you have homework: I’d like you to list three things you’ll be doing today. If you don’t have three things, make some up. 

Shannon needs some procrastination material…

Despite my assertion that the weekend was going to suck, it didn’t.

I got my exam done, and that pretty much sucked. The rest was pretty awesome.

I went to Leslea’s birthday party on Friday night. She had mini slices on one of those cute three tiered cake things. There was also mudcake from the chocolate cake company, and many cocktails. Has anyone tried Fejoa vodka and Chi, with a squeeze of lime? It’s my new favourite thing. It tastes just like fejoa.

Karlie, Louise and I brought Leslea the Dirty Dancing special anniversary DVD, and the workout DVD. Leslea’s partner, Damon, saw them and wept. With happiness no doubt. I know he’s been dying to do that workout tape for some time now, we’ve just made his dearest dreams come true.

When it came time to leave we realised that I - true to form - had checked the wrong bus timetable. So we walked to Kilbirnie and caught a taxi.

On Saturday Louise, Karlie an I went to the zoo and Karlie photographed anything that moved - and plenty of things that didn’t. She has a new camera, and was super excited about it. You could take a gander at her photos here if you were so inclined…

After that we went for a very late lunch at Kallais in Newtown. It’s a bit dodgy looking on the outside, but the inside is a totally different story. We all ate too much, especially considering we had an early dinner at One Red Dog to go to.

Chris piled us all into his car, and took us out to his place where we met a goat called Buster. Karlie took photos and bonded. Did you know that Karlie daydreams about owning a heard of goats and making goats cheese for a living? No? Well she does.

One Red Dog was good, but then Pizza is always good.

Cats was amazing. I went with Louise, Becks, and Becks’ two flatmates. I got us seats WAY up in the gallery, and off to the side, so we missed all the action in the front right hand corner of the stage. There was enough action on the rest of the stage for me not to give a damn.

I had goose bumps the entire time, it was that great.

Then Louise and I went home and attempted to recreate the magic for Karlie. We would have succeeded too, except Louise wasn’t half as good as me at pretending to be a fat cat. I forgive her though, because she did attempt to sing, and not everyone can be as fabulous as me at this sort of thing. Neither of us attempted to do the splits, and that was probably for the best.

The rest of my weekend was spent eating roast pork, and slaving over the stupid 1000 piece black and white puzzle that I bought from the Salvation Army ages ago. Is anyone out there considering buying a black and white puzzle? Because you shouldn’t. Colours are what make these sorts of things fun. Also… you know… possible.

Why did wordpress log me out while I was in the middle of a love letter to M&M dark chocolate candies?

It doesn’t matter I guess. It’s just that given my well known aversion to work, I’ll never write that post again - and that’s a real pity considering it’s you guys who miss out on reading about the “crunch of candy between my teeth”, and the “delicious, slightly bitter, chocolate after taste”, and how I am a Very Big Fan of M&M’s dark chocolate.

Oh well. Console yourselves because I’m moving on to a new topic.

It’s not quite as interesting as the M&M’s dark chocolate love letter, but then not very many things are more interesting than reading someone elses mail. Especially when it contains details of a sordid love affair.

My backup topic today? The stench in the number 22 bus from Uni yesterday.

It’s not just a stench. It’s a stench. A urine scented stench.

Are you all gagging yet? Because I was, for the entire 11.58 minutes it took to get to the bus stop closest to my work.

In honour of the stench I put together a short poem. I say ’short’ because it’s generally quite terrible, and I don’t like to drag punishment on longer than it needs to be.

This bus smells like pee.

This seat is squishy
if I could move, I would.
Fat sob on my left
has wedged me in real good.

Excuse the terribleness of my poem (Is it too short to actually be classified a poem? Maybe) I wrote it on the bus, while attempting to free my thigh from underneath a very large lady’s butt overflow.

Or I have a haiku version. I’ve never written a haiku before, so you’re going to have to excuse this one too.

this bus smells like pee;
breath frigidly through your mouth.
I wish we could wait

Did you know that haiku’s aren’t actually done in syllables? They’re supposed to be written on the sound counts (when a new sound it introduced). I dont know how to figure those out properly, but I took a guess that in this case it’s the same as the syllables. (An example that isn’t the same? syllables: Hai-ku sound count: Ha-i-ku. Get it? No? Me neither.)

Also Haiku’s generally have mention of the season they were written in there somewhere… Lets just call the word ‘frigidly’, in mine, a reference to winter. Ok? Ok. Good.

So the moral of the story? If wordpress hadn’t picked 10 minutes ago to sign me out without warning, you wouldn’t have had to read bad poetry about a bus that smells like pee.

*My hair smells like coconut and hair dye. It’s a confusing mix.

*I have my International Relations test today at 11am. I’d like to pass it.

*I found out that I have one week less to write my International Relations essay than I thought I did. It made me want to cry.

*Some nice people at TKD insisted on giving me a lift home on Monday night, and they made me feel bad for not asking people for lifts. I really don’t mind catching the bus, and don’t like the idea of asking people for lifts.

*People with cars generally don’t care for taking the bus.

*I want a car. It would make it easier to go places late at night, and get to Uni on weekends, and see Ben, and go home for weekends. We even have free parking at our house. I even have a free arm, and a leg for petrol.

* The more I go to TKD the more I realise I don’t know.

Yes you read that title right, and I’ll get to that later.

This weekend was a good one. I lay in bed for a few hours following Friday night’s attempt to go dancing. I say attempt, because we ended up in the Big Kumera waiting until midnight for the live band that never showed. Then we re-located to KFC.

After I spent a few hours lying around my house, Ben and I spent a few hours laying around his house. Then Later Jordan and Karlie joined us for laying around at Ben’s house, while watching DVD’s.

While it may sound an awful lot like I spent Saturday laying anywhere I could, I actually didn’t. There was that walk Ben and I went on to get him coffee, and me gelato. And I had to sit upright on the bus all three times that I used it to get between Ben’s place and mine.

On Sunday I had to be in Petone at 9am to get my gear ready for diving. I wasn’t. At 9am I was standing in the bus stop at Wellington Train Station watching my phone’s power supply inch closer to death. In short: Wellington doesn’t have an actual public transport system  on Sundays before 9am. Instead, it has one man, and a donkey-drawn cart. It’s not very effective.

I eventually did manage to get to Island Bay, which is where everyone (including Kat!) ended up diving from. It was cold and rainy and I was pretty much freezing my butt right off - until I had to wrestle myself into my wetsuit that is. After that I was warm like a sauna.

The spot we dived from was all rocky and sea-weedy, which was a new experience for me (it’s all new) and if the water was cold, then I didn’t feel it. I saw tons of little fish swimming around in the vegetation, and was pretty much stoked to be there.

The second I win lotto, I’m buying myself all my dive gear and quitting my job to take up my new life as a bum who dives, and hits things a lot. I’ll probably also write crap poetry, because there’s only so much diving and hitting things you can do in a day.

So. Back to my weekend. When I got home in the afternoon, I watched a DVD for work (I know right!? Who does that?) Then I went to the bathroom, and rinsed some conditioner through my hair because it was one big mangy mess from all the sea salt.

I was standing there, in the bathroom, combing my hair and staring into the mirror when I suddenly thought: “I need the ends chopped off this. But there’s no way I can afford a haircut until that loan has been paid off… And that’s still a few months away…” So I used the comb and my fingers to mimic what the hairdresser does to cut my hair, just to see if it was as easy as it looked. And you know what? It was.

And then I went and got my scissors. I’ve always been pretty certain I would be one of those idiots who one day gives into temptation and cuts their own hair. I had managed to avoid falling prey to the lure of the scissors, until yesterday that is.

I chopped a centimeter or two off the ends, and layered the hair around my face a bit.

As I was standing there, looking into the sink full of hair, I thought: “Well, I’ve come this far. I might as well dye it while I’m here, right?”

So I dug around in the bathroom until I found that extra bottle of ‘rich brown’ hair-dye from a few months back, and dyed my own hair. Just like that. It was that easy.

It doesn’t even look that awful. It’s not crazy uneven, or blunt, or anything. I’m even wearing it straight today, so it would have shown VERY clearly if I had taken a giant chunk out of the side. But I didn’t. And if we had the Internet at home I could show you that. But we don’t. So you’ll have to take my word: My hair looks fine. Normal. Almost untouched by the hand of an overeager penny pincher.

The funny thing is that even as I write this I’m fairly certain I can hear my mother screaming in horror from her computer in Foxton.

This weekend I went to Feilding to visit the family and see Stace and Jemma. Also: Eeee! Dogs and cats!

I brought myself a train ticket home on Easter Friday, and at no point during the transaction did I think “Huh Easter Friday: buses don’t even start running until half an hour after my train leaves the station.” Instead I realised 10 minutes after leaving the cashier, and ended up having to get a taxi at 6.00 in the morning. On Easter Friday. Which, for your information, is a public holiday.

That was not a chipper and upbeat taxi ride.

On arriving home in Feilding I set my bags down, and was whisked off to Palmy in Lisa’s brand spanking new speed mobile.

It’s silver, and totally sexy. You can tell it’s sexy because of the curvaceous wing mirrors. She told me what it was, but that went totally over my head, because I’m just not that breed of girl (ie. the type who can remember the model of the car she just rode in. Or even owned for three years.)

In Palmy North I got the grand tour of Stacey’s amazing new house - right after I got “What are you doing here so early?”… Stacey had just changed out of her PJ’s into her bedroom cleaning trackies when I arrived.

I pretty much wore out my welcome by whining about how I wanted her house, and her backyard, and how cool her house was, and why she should buy a puppy for me to keep at her house, which I will be moving into next week. I also whined about how shithouse my flat was. And how it was in MIRAMAR. And how my room smells like mould, where her room smells like lush. And how our kitchen smells like the pile of dishes in it, and how hers shines, and has a coffee machine, and smells like tasteful cleaning products. Also how Scott (her flattie) has a bowl of M&M’s. Right there in the kitchen. It’s a cool bowl.

Remarkably she didn’t throw me out of the house after 10 solid minutes of this carry-on. She also, very kindly, restrained herself from beating me over the head with her patio heater (!!!) to shut me up. (Thanks Stace…)

It kind of blew my mind how someone my age could be living in a house with matching kitchen appliances, and no mould, and a landscaped backyard. I really dislike Wellington sometimes, and  think it’s set the bar high for my future flatting arrangements.

Stacey also has an entire basket FULL of Lush products. It also blew my mind that she doesn’t have to dive headfirst into them every few hours just to get a whiff of OMFG-Awesome. If I had a basket full of lush I would lock myself in the bathroom for a week.

Jemma eventually arrived and she was VERY pregnant. Or at least she was more pregnant than I’ve ever seen her before (I’ve never seen her pregnant at all…) Stace and I had been talking about pregnancy before she arrived so the minute she walked in she was bombarded with questions and asked for a full explanation of exactly what pregnancy was like.

All I can say about the new stuff I know as a result of that conversation is WHOA. (Actually OMFG also fits in here also.)

For the rest of my time at home I caught up with my paternal grandparents who were visiting Dad and Lisa, and my Mum (who has lost, like, a ton of weight) and Liam.

Liam and I took a stroll around the Foxton Easter fair, and brought fudge, and he also indulged my love of scratchies while we visited the beach. Woo! Yeah! (We totally sat in the car and did a crossword scratchy ticket each. While at the beach!)

When I arrived back in Wellington I got home to find Karlie at the flat by herself, and proceeded to blow her mind with some of the stuff I’d learnt off Jemma (Wine bottle effect!)

On Easter Monday Karlie and I went shopping. I got the funkiest scented draw-liners from Briscoes. The second our Internet connection is up and running I’ll be posting a picture of them in action. I trust you will be suitably shocked and titillated by the contents of my sock draw.

Karlie and I also spent a while laying on the beach at Lyall Bay going bat-shit crazy over the puppies! And the Dogs! And the little Collie with a stick! He wants to play fetch! And the Dog who loves his owner! and the dog who plays with the dudes sandals! Aww, they love each other! And the little short puppy learning to swim!

If I had a puppy, and I lived in Lyall Bay, I would walk it along that beach every morning at 5am. That’s how committed to having a dog I am.

Last night we had Leslea over to our flat, and made her a giant pasta salad with store brought cheesecake. Leslea did one better and brought us a basket of homemade Easter eggs, and ambrosia, along with some Hot X buns for the morning. We had a good gossip, and hung out for a few hours before walking her back to the bus stop. I also told Leslea about the stuff I’d learnt while in Palmy with Jemma (seriously, like a wine bottle!)

So after this incredibly long winded post you’re probably wondering what on earth it was all about right? You’re looking for a nice neat ending perhaps? Well truthfully on my blog you’re not going to get a nice neat anything, but I will provide you with an executive summary (especially handy for all of you who skipped a paragraph or eight.)

Executive summary:

Shannon went home for the long weekend, and did things, with people. Mostly she gossiped with her mates and annoyed her brother. There was very little mention of chocolate in the post above. There was favorable musing about Lush, puppies, and Stacey’s house. Someone Shannon knows is pregnant, and she thinks it’s cool, but not really for her at this stage, or maybe ever. Babies sound scary - but less scary now that Shannon knows someone with almost two.

What did you get up to over Easter? Did it involve more chocolate than mine?

Wellingtonites: Have you ever noticed the giant flocks of birds that come home to roost on the strip of trees along Lambton Quay? I did last night.

Those trees must be humming with life at night. There were already hundreds of them in each tree when i started watching, and still they kept coming. And the way they do it! They come in at what looks like 18 floors high, and then just drop, banking crazily left and right to slow the fall and avoid the other birds. I missed a bus because I was glued to the sky waiting for one of them to screw up and smash into each other. None of them did though.

In my next life, I wouldn’t mind coming back as a sparrow. Or an otter, if I get the choice.

Questions I need to answer before I move jobs/ houses:

Why does that room on the basement floor smell like a cardboard box of old dusty raisins? What’s inside it? I’ve always imagined a wall of switches and blinking lights, with exposed wires and pipes.

Why does the garden of that unfinished looking house on the corner always smell like a bag of cheap iodised salt? You know the kind that comes in the big plastic bag? And if it is salt, then how on earth do the plants grow? is it because they’re all cactus’s and desert plants, and they like salt? Do they like salt?

Also: The Internet is STILL not working. Because the modem STILL has not been set up. This is ridiculous.

Last night as I sat at one bus stop waiting for my bus home to arrive, I saw another bus on the opposite corner leaving for Miramar. I swore, gathered up my stuff, and ran for it.

I only got halfway across the road before I realised that my bus pass was missing. I sprinted back to the original bus stop. I then realised that my bus pass was in my hand. Where I left it. Idiot.

I then turned and ran back across the road towards the bus, as it happily turned the corner and vanished off in the direction of home. Sighing I tuned and re-crossed the road to sit back at the original bus stop.

That little story doesn’t sound too bad does it? I mean sure it’s a little embarrassing, but nothing too bad, right?

Right… Except when you add in a few of the Signs of The Crazy, then it begins to get a little more of a spectacle. And that sort of explains why I had all the people at two bus stops, and the smokers from the bar across the road, staring at me like I was about to strip down to my sports bra and start shrieking about how the power lines talk to me.

Signs of The Crazy that I exhibited last night:

Disregard for personal safety and/or walk signals.
I didn’t mention that the road I was running back and forth on was a busy road did I? And that the cars sort-of-maybe-kind-of had a green light? No? Well they, ah, did. Thanks to the dude in the white ute who stopped and watched as I ran back and forwards in front of him, rather than hitting the gas and scoring 10 points on the crazy lady.

The Crazy Person uniform.
I had just finished Taekwon Do, So I was wearing what must have looked like white hospital pajama’s. On top of crazy comfortable Jesus sandals… erm… And a big shapeless waterproof jacket. With panda arms.

Talking to no-one/ everyone/ someone who isn’t there.
“Ah! no the bus!…. Ahh! Car!… Shoot my bus pass!… Please stop driver… Shit, I have my bus pass!… I’m an idiot….Ahh! Car!… Stop Driver!… Danm I missed my bus…”

Unusual attachment to an inanimate object/s.
The whole time I was running back and forwards across the road I was clutching my brand spanking new laptop to my chest like a newborn baby. Also my subway sandwich (I was really hungry.)

The Crazy in the eyes.
I was pretty tired, and hungry. And I had been waiting for a bus for 20 minutes. I would have accepted a lift from any bus that looked like it had a 45% chance of reaching my house. So I looked a little desperate/ mad/ bat-shit crazy.

I’m clinging to the fact that I knew I looked like a crazy person. Everyone knows that if you know you look crazy, then you’re not actually crazy. At least I’m pretty sure that’s the rule.

Also? NEW LAPTOP. I’ve named it Cecilia, it’s a white MacBook, and the newest computer I’ve ever owned. I’m terrified I’m going to ruin it somehow. Example: I washed my hands before I used it the first time… Not because they were dirty, but because I thought maybe the oils in my skin might somehow instantly turn the pristine white keys yellow.

We still don’t have Internet at home though. Well actually we have Internet (and we have had it for TWO MONTHS now) but we do not have a modem. Nope, what we have is a wireless router. That my flatmates and I hadn’t already realised this makes us all worthy of ticking the ‘fricking idiot’ box on our next job interview form.

My iPod shuffle and non-apple-brand dock don’t seem to be getting along with the laptop.

I can connect, and sync, and even load the shuffle with songs…. But I can’t disconnect my shuffle safely. iTunes tells me that it can’t eject my shuffle, because it’s being used by another application. I look for this mystery application that is apparently using my shuffle, and I can’t find it. It’s like GHOST APPLICATION.

MacBook: It’s touching me.
Shuffle: No I’m not!
MacBook: It’s touching me! Stop it!
Shuffle: I’m not!
MacBook: Yes it is! I saw it.

Shannon: If you two don’t quit  and eject, so help me God, I’ll turn this car around and I’ll disconnect you myself!

MacBook: NOOOOOOO. That’s a really dumb idea.

Shannon: Quits all applications, relaunches finder, pulls shuffle unceremoniously from non-apple-brand dock.

MacBook: Unauthorised device removal. Dude, I told you that you couldn’t do that.
MacBook: MacBook needs to restart. Why do you hate me?

Shannon: Oh God. I killed it.

 Things I learnt while standing outside the Stagecoach lost property office:

• CMYK printers are the future. Digital is the future. Of course you do still see plenty of RGB’s around. Printer dude doesn’t know what’s up with that.
• Hamond is being shifted back into the control room. He’s not sure if it’s a good thing though, because he’s already been there and it feels like a side step. You know?
• Printer dude and Hamond are friends and both should be working.
• Mark isn’t around. He’s late. As usual.
• Someone finds wholegrain bread very offensive.
• These new buses? They’re fucking amazing.
• Red Shoes girl doesn’t give a shit what Mary thinks, and Joel is welcome to tell her that.

THE BUS COMPANY FOUND MY WALLET.

While it’s not quite as great as it would have been if I hadn’t lost it in the first place, It’s still pretty up there on the awesome scale. My ID and Cards, and $1.20 in coins and my $95 gold pass were all there.

I am the luckiest idiot ever to lose her wallet. I could only have been luckier if the person who found it had popped a few hundred dollar notes in there. Actually, now that I think about it, why didn’t they… Everyone knows it’s a common courtesy right?