The Book of Ashes

The Moulin Rouge 9:41AM

This story is about love

The woman I lo,

Loved is dead

There was a boy

A very strange

Enchanted boy

They say he wandered

Very far, very far

Over land and sea

A little shy and sad of eye

But very wise was he

And then one day

One magic day

He passed my way

While we spoke

Of many things

Fools and kings

This he said to me

""The greatest thing

You'll ever learn

Is just to love and

Be loved in return""

- The Moulin Rouge

I had to leave early this morning to get round to Damian's place and make grant access to the sponsors page to the public users before anyone found out it was broken :) It was a rainyish day but quite refreshing. I found another 5 cent piece on the way to work. I brought a gun yesterday (metaphorically speaking), am just wondering when I will use it

I have known from the begining I would be a writer... 10:15AM

It was known from the begining that I would be a writer. The exact relisations of this have only just begun to manifest themselves though. I shall take that path, as it best serves our purpose

Thoughts roaming many places. The ideals of a writer. 11:49AM

I was walking back to work at lunch time from a client site and found a 5 cent piece on the foot path. I picked it up then decided on impulse to go try out one of those roast filled roll thingies at Sticky buns. I went in and got the biggest filled roll ever with heaps of roast lamb, bacon, and all other fillings, it rocked. So I walked back out and Fi almost gave me a fright calling out my name, but not quite. Us Bryants have fright genes in us. Dad and Grandma almost have heart attacks when you drop some thing or slam a door around them. Dad gets really angry some times. I get frights too but not as bad and I try not to let it affect me as much as I don't want to end up like Dad & Grandma. Hopefully it doesn't get worse with age. Maybe I'll go deaf and won't hear a thing, but maybe someone will create my brain splice to fix that (I think I've yet to tell you about that one). Anyway I walked back to work and chowed down on this mamoth roll - it was great. The day went by and the best I could do was to book myself in for a safari trip, maybe I'll see some lions there. I brought 4 books today. Whitcoulls have a buy 3 get the 4th one free thing so I am catching up on some of the legend sci-fi books I don't have. Julian May and Frank Herbert (Dune books) if any one cares. Dan, I now own the entire collection of Julian May books (all the good ones anyway). Pretty cool. If ya ever come up I'll lend them to ya. The movie Ever After has inspired me a little, a beautiful princess with a love for books (and she climbs trees!) is cool, I really want to read Utopia now but can't remember who wrote it. Her speech is cool and from reading lots, being able to quote stuff is cool, and not just the simpsons. Anyway I have posted up the photos from the weekend for Amy's 21st. Check them out cause they are cool. All the girls looked awesome especially Amy with her cool hair (of course she's a hair dresser).

K, so I did the biggest shop tonight, spent $110 on every, coke, chocolate milk, juice, everything nice, but I should only have spent half that. Just cause its pay day I think I've got lots of money. Anyway I'm going to be living the good life for a couple of days.

I went for to Damians to help him with some work then came home and went for a jog, put out the trash then played a little guitar with Gerry. Between us we managed to tune it back to about the same level it was at anyway. Not bad for us. Did my ironing which was meant to be 5 shirts ironed on the weekend, now its only 2. I downloaded Nature Boy at work today and listened to that. Itwos not bad (yeah I made that word up).

Hmmmm.... to become a writer I should embrace the true ideals. I must give up money and prestige and live in my emotions. They must soar from good to bad, happy to sad, right to wrong as truly it is our emotions that motivate us. Do we not write with the most feeling when we are saddened or the most conviction when we feel justice is not on our side? Is our creative mind not unleashed with no restraints when we are emersed so fully in emotions? It is truly so. So let the pain come and I shall write all the better for it and let the good times roll on and you shall cry with tears of happiness just as I do and let all the other colours of emotions embrace you and move you to their fullest ability for a writer I shall become... a peniless sitare player..

Hanging out with people and stuff 12:07PM

So its late Tuesday night and I'm sitting here naked typing in my diary entry. Why am I sitting here naked you ask, well its probably got some thing to do with a comment Damian made earlier tonight. But to understand that I should probably explain where it came from and if I'm going to go that far back in the day, I might as well start from the begining...

Gerry is beating me up in the mornings, hmmm, maybe I should refrase that. Gerry is getting up before me in the mornings now. It didn't use to be that way, but then again I didn't use to get only three hours sleep some nights. I have been thinking back to the rollerblade last night. It was pretty cool. I believe I was spurting forth poetry through town which didn't bother me then, but, thinking back over it, I'm wondering if any one noticed. Anyway back to today. I was a little behind time but since I didn't have to wear a suit and I skipped breakfast I managed to get out the door by the time Gerry left. I got to work and filled in last nights diary entry then went to my development meeting. At the end we had guru nominations for those who had acheived outstanding things in the week and the director of our company got nominated for using our website to allow customers to download certain files that got blocked by our email system, everyone was keen for that until Crispin nominated me for getting sponsored a free bottle of alcohol through my web site. Chris (the director) then said well free alcohol beats my nomination hands down and it was only for something that Ashley showed me how to do any way. Hehehe, I was doubly guru. Cool. So I got a chocolate fish which I scoffed down for breakfast.

I then headed home and went over to Robyn's place. We went for a 40 min bike ride round to the round about before the airport. It was a good bike ride and I am happy to say I am fitter at riding than my sister, although I was impressed by how fast she could go. We got back and she had to work so I headed back home and finished off my book. I then called Damian and we headed off to Mezzini's.

Damian had a weekly meeting there with a supplier who was a cool chick who we had been out drinking with on a few occasions. They discussed their business while I drank my raspberries and cokes and put in the odd word then we headed off to Arizona. We were going to do the big sell on them but now I'm glad that we didn't. We sat down and strategically ordered classy spirts. We missed the right opportunity to talk to the right people but made a new friend of some guy applying for a job there and handed out a couple of stickers for the website.

So I borrowed Damian's house keys and headed back there where I did the legend program and put in place the basics for the sponsorship coding. I can now add and edit sponsor details from home in a matter of minutes and just need to manually add images. A while back I created some code that will create a web interface to add/edit/delete data from a table, all you do is specify the fields. This allowed me to type in what kind of information a sponsor would have and then it generated all the code to maintain that information, what would have usually taken about 3 to 4 hours to achieve. This has saved me so much time so far, it is cool.

So then I came back to work and gave Damian his keys back and we headed home. I got the call from the Liquor King people asking when I wanted my bottle delivered. I said around 6 would be cool. It about then that I realised just what Shop Naked really meant. Man I am slow. Damian just laughed at me. So we each headed home.

Savants round for a drink 12:26PM

I got home just after Amy my neighbour had driven in so I had a quick chat to her. I returned Chars book to her then hooned down to the super market for some coke and some tea. I got back and had just given one bottle of coke to Fi (for drinking all hers) when the Liquor King dude came and delivered my bottle. Oh this was a sweet moment. It was all wrapped up with a complementory card but what I really cared about was on the inside, that sweet, dark, sticky liquid, made to tantalise the tastebuds. So I opened it up and one by one, Robyn, Crispin & Damian came round. We had a FREE drink each (courtesy of Shop Naked) and congratulated ourselves on our achievements. We began to discuss further business and it was determined that I could never be a sales person. I am too nice and cannot charge people lots of money. I started off thinking of my idea of a nice price for advertising space on the site and eventually got convinced of something five times bigger, thats how cheap I was. Crispin had brought his chess board round so he cained Damian then I at a game. The total for us is now 9 games to 7 to him. So every one departed and I was left pondering how fast a bottle can go down when you've got friends to help you drink it. I decided to test out the video and watch Ever After which I had borrowed off Fi. Gerry pulled the couch out into the center of the room and we turned the stereo on (TV plugs into the stereo for better sound). We got my duvet and relaxed back to watch in ""Ashes pretty good"" home entertainment style. The movie was pretty good but definitly a chick flic. It is funny because I have met Nicole Delongary before at a masquerade party (my 25th). She wore a silver mask and signed my guest book. You would probably see her photos some where in the disturbances area if you looked hard enough ;)

So I hadn't been for a run for almost a week now. I was feeling a little guity and so jogged up the hill. I don't know if it was those couple of drinks I had or if I've lost a little bit of fitness but I was about a minute slower than usual and had to stop a couple of times. Maybe the bike ride from earlier had weakened my muscles a little bit. Anyway so now I'm home and its time for bed. I put clothes on a while ago because it was just a little too cold. And the reason I did it was because we were talking about it and Damian said, ""You should surf the web naked tonight Ash"". I was like ""Nah"", then I when I came to use the computer I thought, well its not really that great to do it, but then I'd be boring if I didn't. So I did