The Book of Ashes

Saturday already 1:12AM

Hi people, apologies for missing the last couple of days, I have been busy. Lets do a quick catch up as lots (as usual) has happened.

Thursday involved a normal day at work. Once again it was a freezing cold, beautiful clear day. Wellington people are not used to this and there are sooooo many cars sliding out on black ice. Let the grit come out and cover the streets. Anyway after work I got home, showed Fi the invite for the party then we headed off to Roller Hockey. This was pretty good. I was well dressed up as it was cold but I was sweating before long. I am getting alright on the blades, just need practise with the puck and stick. Anyway we played a game and that rocked. Gerry was really getting into it which was cool. Afterwards Fi looked spaced out. Her hands were shaking and I said I don't get that and held up my hand which did the same. I had NEVER seen my hand shake before, but thats probably cause I don't check it that much. I guess I was pretty pumped from the game. Then I realised that I had forgotten my keys. Gerry had hers but she was threatening to lock me out until I gave up the secret location of my 25th. Ha! I would be so easy... NOT! I would rather spend the night outside in the cold and explain to work the next morning why I wasn't wearing my suit than give up said information. Fi thought she had gotten a clue which was from an email I sent her saying that I had found a place while rollerblading.
What she didn't realise was that everything I think/say/write is calculated down to the last degree so that I knew that saying that wouldn't give anything away. Gerry slyly said she had an idea but I don't think she does. Her idea is based on where we went looking together and I think she thinks its the Grand. It is so not the Grand. Nobody knows where it is but me and all the females are dying to know. The males don't care that much so long as its providing alcohol, which they know it will. I think the females need to co-ordinate their clothes with the venue or something.

Anyway I got home and met up with my cousin Simon, who was down for the night. We get on well and talked from 8pm till 1am... which left me no time to enter a diary entry last night and just a little tired the next morning. We discussed politics, the government (and how they suck), the stock market, etc, etc. He is quite a thinker. I gave him a good run for his money on the debate about why humans have no life force as such (nothing special apart from chemical reactions etc). He said he had to think about it. We discussed moving money to other countries when the exchanged rate was bad, then bringing it back when it was good to make money. Along with creating false web sites hyping up stocks to sell what you own at a higher price. I couldn't do this but he could. He didn't perceive any loosers till I pointed out he could be one of the suckers believing the fake web sites

Continued 1:15AM

Damian managed to get a hot chick to have her photo with me. There was also a real hot chick dancing and let me mention here I suck with approaching woman. This can be summed up quite simply by saying I usually don't. See the photos that will be put up soon in the disturbances area cause all in all this was a good night. Then Damian made the mistake of trying to convience a group of girls for photos. I think he went a bit over the top and they complained to the bar staff so we got asked to leave. This is not the kind of image I want associated with the Perihelion so will not be using that approach any more. Anyway we headed down the street and Damian dropped into home to drop something off. Kelly wasn't home so he invited everyone up. I was tired and wasn't up for conversation so left.

On my way home I bumped into my uncle Terry and auntie Vron. It was both of their birthdays that night so I wished them happy birthday and followed them into Hummingbird for a few drinks. Hummingbird was cool. All of Vron and Terry's friends were older and so thought I was a novelty. I like feeling young when I'm soon to be 25. I should hang out with these guys more often. So I shouted Terry a shot called the house of pain (a nice and hot one) and it turned out that Terry knew the owner there who paid for the shot, sweet. He also shouted a bottle of bubbly so we drank that. I took a few photos, some of which are really good, Terry kissing the owner of The Realm (his favourite bar), a mother and daughter at a table, and Terry being his seedy self in general. My auntie said she was going to bake me a chocolate gatto (she made the most awesome one for my Nana last week). I'm not sure if this was a pissed promise or not, we'll see. I hope I get one cause they are YUMMY! So anyway the mother and daughter couple left, not before the daughter gave me a little pinch on the bum. That hasn't happened for a while. Vron said I should have invited her to my 25th, I think she was trying to set me up. Anyway it was getting late and I was tired when I began the night so now I was real tired so I excused myself. I got home and cooked up some chips, drank lots of water and wrote the bit at the top of this page. This morning I was feeling pretty seedy. I slept it off though and am now feeling good.

Training update: Thursday skipped rope 200 times, played roller hockey (training and a game) for an hour. Friday I negated all that by doing no exercise, drinking heaps and then scoffing down on some greasy chips just before going to bed. Saturday morning skipped rope 500 times. Will do some more later.

So its an average to sunny day. I'm feeling kinda average. Things to do in the afternoon are go for a blade with Fi, go out to PineHaven with Damian, take some photos of his house with my camera and maybe see the house I grew up in, shop for decorations for my party and finally do some house work. I won't be able to do all these things but will see what I can do.

Ps 1:20AM

PS - Yeah I know I write too much, I just can't help it

stuff 1:25AM

So Friday was hard to get into. I was a little worn and had tonnes of work on. I decided to just do what I could at a leisurely pace and not worry about it. This worked sweet. I went out to a brunch, ignoring work for a short while and caught up with friends. Then one job said they'd wait till another guy got back from holiday which was sweet, I could ignore that one, and I fixed a couple of other smaller jobs. Things just seem to work out for me.

OK its 1:36am in the morning and just way too cold to be doing this. I have a few other things to say and they will be said tomorrow morning. Good night..

End of day 8:45AM

So Damian was going out to PineHaven to take photos of his parents house that they rent out. I lived in PineHaven for the first three years of my life but had never been back so I went for a trip down memories lane with them (not that I can remember anything from that time). I called up Dad on the way out there and he gave me directions. He couldn't remember the name of the street (it was Winchester Ave) but we found it anyway. It was cool to see the first house you had ever lived in. This was where I played and grew and learnt things for the first time. PineHaven was a very peaceful place. I really liked it. I was almost tempted to get married, move out there, buy a house, have kids and live the peaceful suburban life. But then who would take over the world? Anyway I missed out on that Blade with Fi. I managed to get some weights and exercises in and may still go for a run tonight. I cooked an awesome fried rice meal tonight. I was quite proud of myself for remembering Dad cooking up crispy bits of meat in his meals. So from memory and a bit of improvising I wisked up an egg, added some paparika, dipped meat strips in it, then dipped them in flour. If you fry this in real hot oil, it makes real yummy kind of crispy meat. Ok so this may sound simple but it was the first time I had done it so it was an achievement.

When talking to Dad I found out that my brothers had gone ice skating. Now ice skating is cool. I love it and would be even better at it now that I've been practising on my roller blades. But theres no ice-skating rink in Wellington, this sucks. Also my sister has got a job. Not the one she wanted but a pretty good one none-the-less. She is starting on a salary that is higher than mine was before I got my pay rise last week. Lucky I got that pay rise! But then I've been working for 2 and a half years. Good for her I guess.

Advice for the day: Don't compare yourself to others. Don't feel depressed because others can do or are doing things better than you. If you do, you will always loose because theres always someone doing something better than you. You can never be best at everything. Instead look at life this way... be happy with what you've got, two arms and two legs etc. If someone is better than you at something then think, thats a good attribute to have and then go hard out till you've improved yourself to their level. Sometimes its impossible to be as good as them. Just remember that everyones different, you have your own skills, they have theirs. It would be dumb if you were exactly the same as them.

Advice #2: If you go hard out at something, say getting fit, your motivation and happiness from achieving something will carry over into other things you do. This is currently happening to me. I am going hard at many things and life is throwing back a little bit of applause. I still am waiting to collect on two things though, the motherload of money and the perfect woman. Both are coming closer on the horizon but I must remember to keep my eye on the road in front of me least I veer off the trodden road

next morning 12:29PM

Hi again. I was too wasted and cold to continue writing last night. It was a good night, but we'll get to that soon enough...

Oh yeah. I had forgotten to mention that while at a client site I commented on their cool stylie mouse pad (it actually wasn't that great but had an inbuilt calculator which I thought was cool). So having commented I was prompty given one. Cool. I got it back to work and my manager, Paul, said What are you going to do with that? You don't need a calculator. For a second I drew a blank then the old grey matter kicked in. I can do this I said, typing in 60 (cause there was one hour left in the day) and then 1 MINUS MINUS. Then every time I pressed EQUALS it decremented by 1, effectively performing a count down of the minutes left in my day. They looked at me with sad looks. I grinned cause I thought that was quite clever. Ok so back to Friday night.

Work finally finished and I got myself a beer, Speights of course and it went down well, as did the next one. We sat around talking and I played a game of foozeball (table soccer) with Damian. I won but was so tired I was playing crap. Then Damian and Kate went off for a smoke so I gave Jon a game. He beat me but I found out something interesting. He had been trying to get onto my computer and find a photo of me at the lighthouse as I had digitally altered all the photos to make it look like he was the only one there (man I am good). He is actually quite worried about this as he knows I have something over his head. He spent a lot of time trying to find it and eventually got the zipped up copy I had. This was password protected as I'm not dumb so Jon has spent the whole week downloading password cracking programs and running them for hours on end. He still hasn't got into it so I'm thinking he deserves some kind of retribution for this. After my party I'll be free to concentrate on these matters.

So anyway Damian and Kate were having a smoke so I went off to Arizona to see what was going on there. They had a fourth of July kind of party and there was lots of people there. I got a good photo of them doing Tequila laybacks, standing on the bar and pouring straight from the bottle into peoples mouths (only $3). Cool. So I caught up with Vikkie, Sophie, Kelly, Crispy & Tammy there. Had a few drinks then they went off for a feed so I went back to work. I had missed some calls from Damian and Kate and Tessa had turned up. I had a few more drinks there and then we headed out. We went to the Loaded Hog where we met up with the bar tender dude that knows us. Hes good value and introduced us to some of his friends. We took some photos and did a bit of dancing. I was quite pissed already so this came easily.