Cankle-free zone

I just bought a new pair of shoes...the second in 6 months, which is a bit of a miracle for me.

I have had my eye on them for aaaages, after a girl at work trotted in wearing red ones. She bought them new season, up in Auckland, and lo and behold a year later they're out in Tauranga, on sale even, because you can't get drunk and go pole dancing and spew on the pavement wearing platforms love! It's all about the jandals here in the BOP.


Anyhoodle I bought them......I call them Pony, because I look like a knock-kneed foal trying to walk in them. Or maybe that's the 2 glasses of savvy I had at lunch. Nah. It's the shoes.

That pxt gives me serious cankle, which I DO NOT HAVE....it's the one part of me I'm proud of.

Anyway, these babies are going to get a serious work out this winter with some skinny jeans and 3/4 pants. Bring it on!

In which I discuss the trajectory of lingerie

So this weekend I am Getting out of Tauranga! finally, and pootling down to the Hawkes Bay where I am from, to attend to one of my yearly traditions.
No matter what, I always attend the concert at the Mission Estate winery. It's held around this time every year, and is always a great day out.
This year the star of the show is none other than Mr Tom Jones. While I have never been a huge fan of his, I am really looking forward to this concert because he is such a showman. I have stocked up on large granny knickers to hurl at his face with a catapult, so look out for a headline "Tom Jones suffocates on a pair of incontinence panties".
The concert day will go something like this:

• Eat enormous breakfast
• Cover self in sunscreen
• Make large picnic lunch of bread rolls, chicken and coleslaw
• Pack silly amounts of alcohol and ice into a chilly bin. (yes you can take booze in. I know. It's awesome).
• Head to a mate's house for a pre-concert BBQ. Play Tom Jones CD, get halfway through it and put good music on instead.
• 3pm- get to concert and spend a good 10 minutes staking out our area with cut-in-half rubbish bags which will end up in shreds by the end of the night
• 5pm - wave arms in the air to the first support act, usually a 14 year old kid from the local highschool on a banjo
• 6pm - go nuts to Jimmy Barnes, who is the main support act - especially to "Last Train out of Sydney". Voted best rock song ever in Aussie when I was there. Beating Queen and the Rolling Stones. Insane.
• 8:30pm - hazily glance toward stage and realise Tom Jones has started. Try to stand up and sing along. Realise I know none of his songs. Weave my way to the loo.
• Bump into a thousand old friends from school and have a good natter. Miss most of the concert.
• Leave 15 minutes early and hitchhike home with a cruising boy racer to beat the crowds. I have done this every year and always get home in 10 minutes. Waiting for a cab can take up to 2 hours. Dangerous? Hey by this stage I'm invincible.
• Have lovely cold shower and fall into bed after drinking a litre of water and chopping 2 nurofen.
• Wake up, wish for death.

So it's going to be an awesome weekend - I shall let you know how it goes and post pics!

Sport Billy

We started a work tennis team last week, and had our first game on Thursday. We play at a lovely tennis club that has the most redeeming feature of being 1 block from my house, against other work teams from around Tauranga.
Part of my 2008 scheme, along with putting on more handcream (eek) and eating better (um) is to Get Out And DO THINGS! So when the invite for this team came along, I was the first to sign up.
Now when I was at school, I was quite a good tennis player. I am lefthanded, so had a quite a killer backhand. When it went in. My step dad used to say I'd win Wimbledon if the courts were 8 feet longer. We had to play sports 5 days a week at school, so we were playing tennis for about 8 hours a week. I have never taken anything more for granted than the fact that we HAD to play sports. It just was part of our day. Since school, because it is not structured into my day, exercise and I have not been friends.
So as tennis drew closer, and I realised that I had not seriously played since 1996, other than playing in jandals on a bumpy clay court at Lake Tarawera, I enlisted the help of a friend to get my shots looking relatively normal. One hours practice to make up for over a decade of nothing.
Surprisingly, this went well. Much like beginner's luck. I began to believe I was naturally gifted at tennis, and had wasted my 20's being a Beauty Therapist and a PA, when I could have been on the cover of mens' magazines instead of Anna Kournikova, because I would actually win stuff.
Thursday rolled around, and I rocked up to the courts in my nifty little skirt and work branded shirt, all ready to blow the competition away.
Warming up, I hit the ball into the net approximately forty times. The other girls were only getting warm by running to retrieve the ball I had hit 3 courts over. I got all stressed out and red faced and nervous and we hadn't even started.
We start playing. It's mixed doubles, and our opponents are both pretty good players, keen for a good run round and a bit of fun. I serve. Double fault. Laughing shrilly, I switch sides and double fault again. My heart sinks. Switching sides again, I double fault, and say a bad word. Game over. The other team haven't even moved. I am humbled. My confidence is in tatters, and every time they hit the ball to me I say to myself JUST GET THE BLOODY THING OVER THE NET...which I do, but still not within the realms of the court.
Anyhoo, it's about 5-0, and the perfect backhand is set up for me. I think, fuck it, and take out my frustration on the ball. It rockets over the net landing in the far right corner. Kick ass.
This is called the ego shot, and once you've done it, you can relax. Unfortunately I relaxed too much, and we lost. There is nothing worse than losing continuously. It's so boring.
So anyway I did have a lot of fun running around in the late evening sun, and having a nice cold beer with my team mates afterwards - especially when they cost $3.50 each. But tonight I am going to the courts and am going to practice practice practice. Maybe there's an Enrique Iglesias for me yet.

Procrastination 101

How to feel like you're getting your assignment done, only to realise you have a couple of lines along with a lot of "NEED TO WRITE MORE HERE."

• Dust and tidy desk.
• Dust and tidy office.
• Dust and tidy entire house, including grouting in shower and de-clogging of kitchen sink.
• Play with Basil.
• Go back into sparkling office, with a bottle of water and a cup of tea.
• Turn computer on, and wait 20 minutes for it to start.
• Check all favourite blogs and Facebook and Gmail and Wikipedia and TradeMe.
• Finish cup of tea and make another.
• Remember to put washing on. Fuss around putting all clothes in the right way out with a dab of Frend on the most miniscule stains.
• Play with Basil.
• Lunchtime. Make baked bean and cheese toastie, and become engrossed in Dr Phil. The Jena 6? Never heard of them. But totally enthralling.
• Drag self back to office. Stare at assignment question. Google the answer. Re-word it to sound like I wrote it.
• Celebrate getting work done by pottering in the garden. May as well pull out that tomato plant, it's getting out of hand. And those grapes are about to get eaten by the birds, better get those in. That palm there is way too top heavy, better chop off some fronds. Roses - deadhead. Veggie bed - fertilise and weed. Trim the buxus hedge.
• Collapse exhausted on the couch and congratulate self with cold Coke Zero.
• Play with Basil, who is looking at me weirdly. All, woman, leave me alone to SLEEP!
• Slink back to office. Research the US sub-prime mortgage crisis on Google. Learn more about it in 10 minutes via the web than I ever would have by asking someone at work. Fire off 300 words.
• Go to kitchen and begin preparing exceptionally difficult meal, with hundreds of ingredients and at least 3 hours of preparation time. Call this "a quick healthy snack."
• Back in the office, check blogs again, Facebook and Gmail. Check bank account for any surprise, large donations. There are none.
• Dream about winning the lottery.
• Look at accommodation in the Maldives and contemplate booking a trip and going.
• Check bank account again, just in case.
• Google some more about tax imputation credits and listing rules and OCRs and the export sector. Jot some notes down and highlight question saying "elaborate on this one."
• Write a blog post.
• Turn computer off and watch back to back episodes of the Simpsons.
• Shove guilty feeling far far away with a lovely spicy Bloody Mary.
• Hunt Basil down (hiding in the linen cupboard) and plant him on my knee. A most successful day.

It's all about ME!

Well what a hideous past week. With all my going to the gym, eating better (not like soy milk and lentils better, just less sausage rolls at 9 in the morning), being On Top Of Things, and sleeping lots, I still get knocked down by the most debilitating virus known to man.
Turns out the lip was a cold sore, and let me tell you that I have never had one of these before, and I plan to never again. My god they hurt. Is halfway healed now, and taking its time about it. I need to get some passport photos taken quicksmart for the trip to Fiji in May, but in no way am I having a cornflake lip for the next 10 years.
Anyhoodle along with the cold sore I got a nice virus to go with it and also a really lovely throat infection. I looked like I had goitres, or the mumps, or at the very least, like I had no neck. It's hott. So anyway 3 days off work (3!!! I felt so guilty) and lots of Berocca and fancy pants vitamins I'm slowly coming right. It's making me feel old, the time taken to heal.

So! That's my life in the last week. Hellalame. How was yours?

In other news, summer seems to be on a wane here in Godzone, with a certain lucidity to the light and crispness to the air that hasn't been around for months. It's still bright blue sky and gentle breezes, but for some reason this morning I had an urge to put the car heater on and wear a comfy woolly jersey to work. It's about 22 deg.
Last night we sat on the deck having a lovely BBQ of lamb chops and sausages with salad made from my garden of goodness, and I said to my friend it's nights like these that we'll reminisce about in the middle of winter. Summer has been oddly good here this year - no more whingeing about the crap Kiwi summers for some time. Of course now all the whingeing is about the serious drought, and hand held hosing only, but I couldn't give a toss.

On Saturday I went around to my sister's brand new house. They moved on Friday to a location much closer to me - 3 minute drive instead of 30 - and I spent the whole day "helping" them unpack by playing with Amelie. Man she is cute. She is now crawling and pulling herself up on anything, and she loves her cheese. She's also a real chatterbox - I'm sure I heard her say "Aunty Amy" but it may have been buh-buh-me-me. Close anyway.

So this week I am going to be finishing my assignment - did I tell you I'm doing some sharebroking papers this year? The one I am doing is titled "The New Zealand Sharemarket" and has questions like "How has the US sub-prime mortgage crisis affected the NZ markets? Explain your answer." My immediate response is "pretty badly", but then they want about 300 words. I had better pad it out. "Really, really kinda bad." I'm totally going to pass.

Fearfully grumpy

Sorry for having been gone for so long. I have not been in the greatest frame of mind due to the stress of work (see previous post) and have been doing far too much drowning of my sorrows.
It has got so bad that today I sit here with the flu, a mouth ulcer, a sore throat, cracked lips that are threatening to turn into impetigo and one great big grumpy ass mood.
I guess the fact that Valentine's Day is right around the corner also has me a bit depressed. Although I saw an ad on the telly last night for an Ink Jet printer "to surprise her with for Valentine's Day!". If someone gave me one of those for V Day they would get a punch in the mouth. What's wrong with a red rose? Honestly.
Sorry for the grumps. If anyone has a funny joke or pic, please feel free to forward.