this post just made the list, too

I think I saw the Coolest Guy in the World on the way to work this morning. 

He powered past me in in a shirt, suit pants, converse (hey, no judging the commuting converse.  I maintain my right to silence regarding what supremely comfortable shoes I wore to work this morning.  BITE ME), backpack complete with 1L water bottle, blaring his music at top volume out of his cellphone.  He was clearly getting pumped for the day (some kind of late 90s gym music, it would seem).  He was moving pretty fast.  Perhaps my dawdle would become a brisk, efficient pace if I picked the right tune to play in the morning?  Might stick with headphones, however.

My, I've got my cranky/judgy pants back on today!  Other things what have not passed muster today:

- Colleague who only filled the kettle enough for ONE MEASLY CUP. 
- Failure of workplace to install a zip so I needn't fret about colleagues and their miserliness with the jug filling
- People who dawdled over their sushi choices at lunchtime (if in doubt, salmon/avocado!  If you don't eat salmon/avo, just get the teriyaki chicken CHOP CHOP you know that's what you want anyway!)
- All of my shoes. 
- My breakfast.  When I found some of it on my skirt.
- The weather.

OH EVERYTHING, BASICALLY. 

(PS I have become sadly addicted to The Block, NZ's most effective advertorial for DIY masquerading as a television show.  I know, I pity me too.  Live auctions tonight though people! WHAT A HIGHLIGHT, A)

more of the same feckless behaviour

A shame to knock Captain Von Trapp off the top of the blog, eh?

So old hopeless useless over here set off the fire alarm again the other night.  The toast cinders exhaled hot black breath into the sensors (I swear I only turned my back for a minute) and ominous bleeping began.  I yanked the plug from the socket and raced to open every door in the house, flapping the front door to try and dilute the fugue, while tearfully poking at my phone to call the property manager…thank god it dissipated before it triggered the complex wide alarm and brought in the firefighters.  The bleeping ceased after about a minute but my heart continued making frantic efforts to escape my chest for some time to come.  The shame! The shame!  We really have had a terrible run in the 7 months we’ve been in our current apartment. 

As advertised, the holes in the ceiling weren’t my fault.  We received a call explaining that there was something wrong with the plumbing upstairs, which necessitated access from underneath.  We think it’ll just be a small hole in your hot water cupboard, they promised blithely.  Several enormous holes in the laundry, entryway and hotwater cupboard later, we had ladder marks all over the door frames, scuffs on the walls and bits of severed gib all over the floor.  Then there was the fix-the-holes debacle detailed a post or two ago.  I can’t find it in my heart to get too worked up over it though because it’s probably some sort of karmic retribution for that time in about ‘07 when I dropped a hotel shampoo bottle down the shower drain and the plumber had to cut into the ceiling of the apartment below ours to extract it. 

I really shouldn’t live in communal housing.  I’m a hazard. 

Have I mentioned I don’t know where I’m living past Tuesday next week?  Ffffffff. TBC, no doubt. 

Other recent hopeless useless moments recently?  Well…you may never have experienced the phenomenon known as “wearing your high heels down to the nub and exposing the little metal bits” but sadly, it’s a phenomenon with which I am familiar (work shoes have no goddamn stamina around here).  Not normally a problem except for the scruffy look (don’t worry, people are distracted by the bobbles on my tights and stains on my dress before they get as far as looking at my shoes), but one rainy day last week I walked into the office foyer and both feet skated across the marble.  Whew, I thought, I’m still upright, I’m not sure if anyone saw, I’m going to keep on walking.  And promptly did it again but with one of those enormous wide arm wave/wobbles, handbag flying out sideways.  So profeshunal.  The rest of my steps across the lobby floor were deliberate, spraddle legged feet-plantings.  Really ladylike.  Graceful.  Etc.

i am stupid and i already have blisters

Can't believe I forgot to tell you this.  If I do say it, it becomes a real thing and then I can't back out.  That's the theory, anyway.

I'm gonna run the Auckland Half Marathon this year.

I know, I know.  Not exactly earthshattering or excessively ambitious.  I'm not running a proper marathon for charity, I'm not pushing the boundaries of human endurance for love, etc etc.  I'm just running a half marathon for a second time; the last was 7 years ago.  My knees will hurt, my feet will be blistered, the underside of my boobs will be chafed and dear god, that'll be enough to keep me moaning on here for MONTHS.  Good god, it's not even 'til November. 

But writing it down makes it real; as does the first run I endured yesterday.  I'd really like for 31-year-old-me to beat 24-year-old-me when the time comes but I'm not holding my breath (24 year old me was not exactly a speed machine but current 30-year-old-me can only race you to the bottom of a glass of G+T.)

Shame about the fact it's sold out already and muggins here doesn't have a ticket. 

An auspicious start, no? 

anticipating bad behaviour (the good kind) (sort of)

Last wedding of the season for me this weekend.  R is getting hitched to A.  R + P met in 6^th form (as they called it, back in the days of yore in ye olde high school) and caused general hijinks for years following.  R was P’s best man, P is R’s best man.  This means that I’m sitting at a table of wives/girlfriends from the bridal party, plus a few assorted other interesting folks, including a guy by the name of Irish Rob, because (congratulations, aren’t you CLEVER) he’s from Ireland.  I shall get gloriously tiddly with Irish Rob and the WAGS and we will be vaguely obnoxious while wearing pretty, pretty things.  Maybe I will cry at bit during the ceremony.  The bride will be beautiful.  Weddings, aren’t they lovely?

This one is the whole she-bang, too.  Upwards of 150 guests, formal attire (you know I’m wearing the same summery dress anyway, right?  It brings that thing down to about $100 per wear which is still horrendous to contemplate), church-y bit etc etc.  An old boss of mine is the uncle of the groom (this is New Zealand, of course.  Dad recently did the 2 degrees of separation trick in Bonn with some Kiwi he’d just met and within a couple of questions had worked out that the new acquaintance used to work in a former government ministry with a friend of mine from university who Dad basically adores), so that’ll be odd/nice. 

I better go find some new, respectable, only slightly-whore-y shoes in my lunch break today…except FFFFFF today’s the day we’re paying off P’s student loan!!!  The millstone hanging around our necks is finally going!  YAYAYAYAYAY – except it leaves us with basically nada in the coffers for the next wee while (spesh with this house purchase palaver going on).   OH WELL will wear the $20 shoes that gave me allergic reactions and are basically deteriorating within 2 wears (but they’re cute! $10 a wear at the moment, if I wear them tomorrow we’re down to $6.66 a wear!).

HOUSES.  HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE HOUSE do you love these???? (you better.  I will hear nothing nasty)

TURN OF THE CENTURY CUTENESS, NO? YES! YES!

I WILL GROW WISTERIA ALL OVER THE VERANDAH AND YOU SHOULD SEE THE BACKYARD AND I LOVE IT AND I WANT IT AND IT'S PROBABLY DAMP AND COLD AND UNINSULATED AND I CARE NOT I WILL JUST BUY MORE SOCKS

OH YEAH and the girls from work are having a BYO tonight at a Thai restaurant in Ponsonby. UH-OH SPAGHETTI-O!

(why yes, my much improved (somewhat manic mood) must be because my soul is shriven! I apologised to P! Who is taking steps to fix the problem!)

(Also, I resigned from my job in Blighty a year ago.  Feels like forever or the blink of an eye.  I shall write a post about the change, no doubt, entitled something like "London, I Love Thee, But I Did The Right Thing".)

shivery

Current bane of my existence: workplace air-conditioning.  It is twenty-something degrees outside, yet I’m sitting here in jeans (casual Friday!), top, blazer and full coverage shoes, shivering.  I’ve tried to get the building manager to turn it up but apparently the sensor in my office has a warped sense of humour and pushes it right back down again.  (Yes, privileged office professional first world woe.)

I don’t think I’m one of those too-cold girls.  I mean, last night I resented having to pull up the sheet to keep the mosquitoes off my tasty, prone carcass.  I adore an excuse to cuddle up under a rug on the couch but inevitably push it off, sticky, clammy and overheated.  So no, I don’t think the problem is mine (certainly its mine in that I am currently too cold; but not mine in that I am not the source). 

 

On re-reading that first paragraph, I had a vision of an equestrienne attired woman in the workplace.  Rest assured, you did read 'jeans' and not 'jodphurs', and there is no helmet topping my blazer combo.  Though, to be sure, there are small shoulder pads in the blazer...it's not an 80s throwback thing, I swears it -- more a Looking-Less-Round-Shouldered-Technique.  Us statuesque women (those over say 5'8 or 5'9) can pull off the blazer look, I promise.  Oh for fuckssakes, I probably can't pull it off but I don't care.  It's warm.

 

And speaking of office attire...I saw three colleagues this morning before the fourth pointed out I was wearing entirely different shoes.  A grey suede wedge on one foot, black leather pump on the other.  When I arrived in the office this morning, I kicked off my jandals and slipped my feet into shoes under the desk without looking.  HOPELESS.  I'm still not sure if any of the others actually noticed and just thought I was crazy, or whether they were still in need of caffeine and therefore incapable of picking up on detail. 

 

Wearing two different shoes feels a bit like that usual romcom/teen novel trope, doesn't it?  You know, the one where the otherwise smart, lovely and likeable heroine is clumsy and/or scatterbrained about everyday life.  Except let me just be clear: two shoes in two different colours, styles and heights?  That's just goddamned useless, that's what that is.  Trust me, it's not a  quirky-yet-endearing character flaw.  It's just obliviousness. 

__________________________________________

I’m generating a little heat snickering at this: my thing of the day for you.  Good God, Lemon!

__________________________________________

It's my mother's birthday today.  Happy birthday, Mumble dear.  Many happy returns. 

A brief selection of things that I love, in case you needed to know.

• Rain on car windows
• Flipflops/jandals/thongs; whatever you like to call them.  Though thongs still sounds wrong to me on a number of levels.  C'mon you guys, jandals = jelly sandals!  Even though jandals are closely related to a thing that I hate (toes.  They're so creepy and they remind me of some kind of Homerian cyclop-ish creature that pretty much just wants to kill you with a studded club, but hasn't got the strength or, possibly more importantly, the independent thought,or arms for that matter), they make my feet happy.
• Mindy Kaling.  She's freaking awesome.  Funny as hell - she writes, produces, directs and stars in the American Office (I don't care what you say.  Yes, blah blah Ricky Gervais is a genius but somehow I prefer the American version.  Trust me, I didn't want it that way either).  And her favourite movie is You've Got Mail.  I probably turned people off me significantly with that, but oh well, if public approval was what I craved I wouldn't write a blog that no one reads...would I?
• Sweatbands on men.  Michael Cera is wholly responsible for this. God only knows why I think a man wearing a sweatband is cool but I do.  Even when the odds that he's come from some squash match at the club with slightly-balding-Bertie and halitosis-Harry are significant, still love me a sweatbanded fella.
• Hyperbole and a half.  Allie is hilarious with mad skillz on Word Paint of which I can only dream. 
• Shoes made for total whore-bags.  Patent leather, peep toe, stiletto heeled visions of nastiness, I feel awesome when I wear these.  I had a gold, silver and bronze pair of peep-toe tranny shoes that made me feel not only like I'd performed some kind of clean sweep at the Olympics, but that I was the sexiest bitch on the planet (or the most good looking girl on the street, depending on the street - linking to another thing I love, Flight of the Conchords).
• Potatoes.  The humble potato never lets me down.   Has downsides (see: my waist and ass) but generally totally worth it.
• Wine.  See: Potatoes,
• Gin.  See: Wine and Potatoes.
• Olives.  See: Gin.
• And now that I'm listing booze and food related items, best I stop while the going is good...