The Book of Ashes

Risks 11:10AM

The time for risks has come. I'll see what I can do this weekend to start the ball rolling. I have a few BIG ones up my sleave but they will take all the guts I have to pull them off. As I said we'll see.

Since my birthday I have been on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride. The hangover lasted a few days and got me down. Yesterday night I got picked back up again. Martin rang up just as I had got to Damians to do some work, so we dropped everything and went and saw Evolution. It was pretty cheesy but funny enough. But what was really cool was the shorts for Final Fantasy. People this is going to rock so much. If you like Sci-Fi then this is the one for you, totally computer generated but so real I almost wet myself... Then I got home, did some shopping and talked to Fi. She had woken up that morning with a burn mark on her arm and realised it must have been from the hot water bottle. Pretty funny, I had never thought that you could sleep through getting burnt like that. I showed the girls the photos and Amy didn't like her one showing the leg. I thought it was all class, but then I'm a guy. So today I took it down. She was offering to cook me a meal or give me photos of her kissing another chick in exchange for this one. I thought this was cool but don't want anything now. Don't take advantage of people, specially nice people. Anyway she is keen to get fit so we went for a run round Oriental Parade. She told me how she had been heaps into gymnastics and sports and we discovered that she had known Tammy, my last flatmate, even though she hadn't realised it till them (through gymnastics). We made a bet for her to stop smoking and me to stop drinking. I am quite keen for this, as stopping drinking will be good for me. Hey Dan, I'm so going to beat you in this race up the hill ! I almost drank tonight though, but on to that soon...

Chatted to Gerry about stuff till late then went to bed. So of course I was tired yet again on Wednesday morning.

Today work was pretty suck. I didn't achieve much and put off some stuff I need to do. I went to the Malthouse at lunch time and picked up some of the left over decorations and thanked them for a great night. I bumped into two people who had been at the party which was cool.

continued... 11:24AM

After work I came home, cooked tea and went round to see my sister. I gave her some chocolate and thanked her for looking after me/putting up with me on Saturday night. I then went for a jog up the hill. I made it to the lookout again, this time I timed myself, 12mins 47secs. Not bad. It doesn't seem that long though but its a damn hard run uphill. I now aspire to beat the 10min mark which is totally do-able. I went to my uncle and aunties from there (only a couple of mins walk) and hung out with them. They have 4 kids ranging from about 3 to 10 (something like that). They are real cool so played cards with them and other games. Auntie Myra offered me a red wine which I said nah to cause I had been running and then she convienced me to try a Contrau. I took it and raised it to my lips then remembered that I had said I wouldn't drink. I got a little taste from licking my lips but hope Amy doesn't see that as counting. I need to be more careful. I don't want to drink its just that you don't always think about it. So I talked to uncle Paul and he decided he would come up to Palmy with me on the weekend. This gives me a ride up which is sweet and I can help out a bit with cleaning the Marae and stuff. Time out shall be good, me-thinks.

So thats my night. On to a couple of thoughts I've had lately...

On Sunday when I was really hungover I was just lying there, trying not to use the brain at all as I had a splitting headache but at one stage I closed my eyes and pictured the full on, 3D detailed head of a friend from primary school, from maybe 15 years ago. I could see everything clear as day in much better detail than if I tried now. But the freaky thing was I then tried to think of another friend and found I could bring up his face just as easily. I went through a number of faces like this before my brain started to wander and generated some random heads (still really detailed though). This kind of clarity has never happened in my life before and may never happen again. I shall give you my theory on what it was. I believe the brain contains information to this level of detail but most of the time can't access it because it is tied up processing irrelevant things (like even when you're thinking hard out you get distracted by noises or people watching you. Why? Beacuse the brain is always monitoring its surroundings). When the mind is totally clear such as when you're hypnotised or in my case so hung over I had shut down all other senses in order to help survive, it can access memory with less restriction or more devotion. Ok, thats just a little bit of food for thought. Think about it, I'm not saying its true. I'm just saying that the mind is an awesome machine.

PS 11:36AM

When I'm not feeling 100%, maybe I have a little bit of a head cold or some flu symptoms or just hungover I like to imagine that my body really has some kind of super bug (like ebola or more realistically meningitius) and my super immune system is fighting it off and keeping the symptoms down to a minimum. This may sound dum, like I'm daydreaming (which I usually am) but it makes me feel better and my run down symptoms all of a sudden don't seem so bad. In fact I'm almost proud that this is all that I've got for such a nasty virus...

I thought that one might interest you. A few notes to the readers, Dan - keep believing, theres most definitly intelligent life out there somewhere, whether you find it or not is a different matter. I've been black-listed by the Johosive Witnesses now as a house not to come back to after a guy made his second visit and recognised me. I was really hungover (I don't drink that much, have just mentioned lots of hungovers this day) and he pointed out that the keys were left in the front door from the night before. I still invited him in and talked to him till he found an excuse to leave. Tom - yeah the party rocked, shame you weren't there, I am going hard on smoke-free stuff now, apparently though I was smoking from the girls classy pipes on Saturday night though, both at once! This must just have been for effect, I don't actually like smoking and average about 1 a year.

Now I lay my head to sleep.

Pray the lord my soul to keep.

Hush little baby, don't say a word.

And never mind that noise you heard.

Its just the beasts under your bed.

And in a closet in your head.

See you in the dream world..