Week Avenged by a Crafty Weekend of Surprises
I’ve just spent the last hour reviewing everything that’s happened over the last week and it made me realise one of the greatest things about blogging. It forces you to stop and review what’s really been happening. Too often we jump from the day-to-day and week-to-week events without taking the time to appreciate how much really goes on.
I also see myself as a fairly up-beat, positive, optimistic kinda guy, that likes to share fun and happy stories. So when I start thinking back to all the stuff that has transpired over the past seven days, I’m naturally inspired to put a positive spin on some of the stuff that may have stressed, depressed or angered me at the time.
For instance, this week I found-out that one of my newest team members at work will have to leave for an indefinite period of time due to an illness in his family.
We were just starting to get into a bit of a routine and getting ready to push a bit harder knowing we have the resources to handle more work, and this unexpected news has forced us to review, and potentially change our approach. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely no problem with him taking leave, after all, family and friends are the most important things in the world, but I’d be lying if I were to say a wave of stress didn’t wash over me when I heard the news.
Yet, less than a week later, and after a weekend full of small, but fun and interesting experiences, we’ve already started working on ways to proceed without our little Irishman. And, to be honest, I’d almost forgotten that he was leaving, let-alone caused me the amount of stress and concern that I felt at the time I heard the news.
I seriously doubt he’d read this, but if he does stumble across it – Shane, I hope everything works-out as well as it can for your uncle and we can’t wait to have you back… whenever that may be.
On the topic of unexpected events, I was on my way home from work on Friday evening and I got stuck in traffic. It took about an hour to travel 15Km’s, so by the time I got home, I was somewhat exhausted and still a bit stressed from Shane’s news a couple of days prior. I had just sat down when I got a text message from Emily asking if I was up to anything and if I wanted to have a couple of glasses of wine. As this was probably the best thing anyone had said to me in days, I jumped at the opportunity.
A couple of bottles later, I realised I had agreed to help with an upholstery class she was running the following morning.
Em has her own business called Furniture Fashionista where she up-cycles old bits of furniture, re-upholsters chairs as well as making new chairs in antique styles.
The class was happening out at one of the retail outlets that sells Em’s stuff – a quirky little hand-made boutique homewares shop called Homespun at Aratula (about 90Kms south-west of Brisbane).
Despite the stupidly early start and the complete shamozzle trying to get some breakfast from the little coffee shop next to the store, the class went really well. I helped with doing some video recording as well as handing around bits of material, foam and tools.
I also felt quite manly when some of the ladies in the class needed me to help fix their staple guns. Little did they know I had absolutely no clue what a staple gun was prior to that morning. But, before any of the ladies noticed, I whipped-out my phone and sneakily Googled like a Ninja in a craft class, and downloaded an instruction manual. Within minutes I became the resident staple-gunsmith – I can now appreciate how Neo from the Matrix must have felt when he learnt Kung Fu. 
After the class Em was dropping me home and I got caught-up in yet another activity that I am still relatively new to – scavenging kerbside collections. A few times a year the local council encourages residents to do a clean-up and discard any large or bulky items that don’t fit in a regular bin. You leave these items on the kerb and the council comes and collects it. Or they would, if dirty hoarding scavengers like us didn’t get to it first.
But in all seriousness, it’s not as bad as it sounds. One person’s trash is often another person’s treasure – and when you have the mad furniture restoration skills that Em has, there’s a lot of great stuff you can find. I have discovered a world of cool retro furniture that people throw away because the cushions are ripped or stained, but the frame and construction is often really solid (and usually a lot better quality than you get in brand new furniture). So with a little bit of foam and some new fabric, there’s a surprising amount of awesome stuff that can be saved before it ends-up as landfill.
The next day I wanted to try a cafe over at Hendra that had received a good review in the local paper a couple of weeks ago, but by the time I dragged myself out of bed and got over there, the place wasn’t open.
This turned-out to be a blessing in disguise because as I was driving away, I stumbled across the Eagle Farm Markets. They’re held every Sunday and have live music, an amazing selection of incredible foods, fresh produce, hand made stalls and all sorts of other quirky interesting stuff. I purchased a bag of chilli chocolate coated coffee beans from Guatemala that tastes absolutely phenomenal and I’ll definitely be heading back there again. The food alone is worth the trip.
Then to finish the weekend off, I went to see The Avengers. It was good. Not quite as good as I was hoping (although I did have very high expectations), but still a really fun movie. Strangely enough, I enjoyed the in-fighting between the group before they all started working together far more than when they were fighting the real enemy.
I also didn’t expect to say this, but the Hulk was very good. I have never been a huge Hulk fan, but because I really like Eric Banna, I felt he did a pretty good job back in 2003… but Mark Ruffalo absolutely smashes it (pun intended).
Read MoreA Loooong Weekend
As it has been a long time since I’ve regularly blogged, there’s a lot of stuff that I want to talk about, so the next few posts will probably end-up being fairly long and disorganised.
Lately I’ve started spending a bit more time at my local pub – the Royal Exchange (R.E.). It’s a student hang-out, so It’s cheap, within walking distance to my place and usually full of an eclectic mix of characters. More often than not, I’m one of the more senior customers, especially if I have a few quiet drinks mid-week, but everyone is usually incredibly friendly and I’ve made a few new friends.
On Thursday night I popped out for a drink and they had a new guy playing live music. Previously on Thursdays they had this thing called Rockaoke. It was basically karaoke but instead of singing along with a recording, you were singing with a live band. The rock band concept was kind-of cool, but it’s always a very dangerous thing to arm intoxicated people with microphones. I can say this from personal experience because I have not only mutilated a number of tracks myself, but also witnessed first-hand musical mass destruction.
So, Rockaoke is now no more at The RE. But instead they’ve got a new guy – James Johnston. He looks a bit like Greg Heffley from the movie Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but what he lacked in physical size he made-up for with incredible vocal and musical skills. He’s going to be playing for the next few Thursday’s, so if your local or just want to hear some good live music, you should check him out.
The following morning I was up early for a regular Friday morning social media coffee thing I go to. The group is currently undergoing a few changes in terms of what we call ourselves and how the weekly discussion topics will be shared online, but fundamentally, we’re a group of digital media geeks that like coffee and talking about what happens online. The conversation topics are usually fairly broad, but usually all relate back to the Internet, social media, search engines, comics, and anything else that broadly falls into the category of geeky pop culture.
On Saturday morning, I met-up with Anthony – one of the guys from the Friday group – to have a more detailed discussion on some of the more technical aspects of search engine optimisation. We have been meaning to do this for ages but I kept postponing as things have been really busy, so it was great to finally get around to doing it.
We went to a new place that neither of us had been to before called The Rabbit Hole at West End. I’ve been on an exploratory mission over the last 12ish months to try as many new cafes, restaurants, bars and other places I’ve never been. They don’t need to actually be newly established – just new for me.
The Rabbit Hole was pretty cool. The place pitches itself as ‘workspace meets coffee shop’, so it was a good place to meet and talk geek. The decor was funky (in a simple, yet hipster kind-of way), the coffee was good and the discussion even better.
Afterwards I ran a few errands, got a haircut and dyed my hair. This seemed like a fun thing to do, as I haven’t dyed my hair in a very long time, but didn’t quite turn out how I was hoping. I accidentally went a bit too dark and now I just look like a confused emo goth that smiles too much and missed the memo about not wearing pink shirts.
Fortunately I had far more enjoyable things to look forward and a bit of hair dye wasn’t going to spoil my night. I grabbed my sombrero and borrowed a poncho and headed off to Cinco de Mayo – a Mexican festival that was organised by one of my clients – Riverlife – and that my web hosting company was sponsoring.
The festival was fantastic. A few work colleagues and I spent the evening eating tacos and burritos provided by Guzman y Gomez and washing it down with sangria, margaritas and Mexican beer. It ended up fairly late and a bit messy, but I think everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
Sunday I was planning to catch-up with my good friend Mel, who I haven’t seen for far too long, at the Caxton St Seafood Festival… but after the shinenigans of the previous night, I wasn’t really in any shape to eat seafood. Instead, I opted for nachos and the largest coffee I’ve ever had, from yet another new cafe - The Vintage Kitchen and Closet at Coorparoo.
The coffee was rather good and was served in a soup-bowl with a handle. The cup was so big that my the kid from ‘So I Married An Axe Murderer’ could have worn it as a hat.
The rest of the long weekend was filled with recovering and vegetating in front of the TV watching episodes of my new favourite show – Parks and Recreation. I’ve waffled-on enough already, so I won’t bore you with details of the show, but if you haven’t seen it, check it out. As far as I’m concerned, the writing and characters are pure comedic genius delivered in a very silly, subtle and usually innapropriate way that just leaves you in tears.
So overall it’s been a rather fulfilling weekend and it feels great to blog again 
An Invocation for Beginnings (or re-beginnings in this case)
Over the past couple of years this blog hasn’t seen much action. Last year I tried to get back into blogging and it didn’t work. Or I should say that “I” didn’t work. I’ve been wanting to and meaning to get back into blogging as it was something I really enjoyed but there has been some weird insecurity stopping me.
Earlier today I saw the following video that a friend shared via Facebook and it’s inspired me to bite the bullet (so to speak) and get started again.
For anyone that is having trouble getting started (or re-started in this instance), I hope the above video is helpful.
Read MoreGood Vibes for my Birthday
During the week I turned 32. Not a huge milestone, and let’s be honest, there’s only one fundamental thing you need to do to reach this point (or really any point in ones life) and that is to successfully manage not to die.
To most, this wouldn’t seem like a huge achievement, and believe me – I have a lot more ambitious goals and aspirations other than simply staying alive… but given the last 12 months (and the 30 years prior to that) it sometimes surprises me that, for the most part, I’ve managed to clumsily fumble my way through 32 years and 3 days (and counting) unscathed.
After a wall full of Facebook birthday wishes, dinner’s with parents and friends, cake at work and a few bottles of wine inbetween – it came to the birthday celebration I was looking forward to most – Good Vibes 2011.
Due to poor organisation on my part, the day started a little later than anticipated, but a healthy breakfast of KFC and a quick visit to the shops managed to get that all sorted and I was on the road.
The first thing that hits you when you go to any Aussie summer festival is the lack of clothing worn. There were sooooo many pairs of denim short short shorts around that if you stitched them all together you might just manage to make a full pair of jeans!
Now don’t get me wrong – I like looking at girls butts just as much as the next guy (and trust me, there were a lot of very fine butts to observe), but I just don’t see the appeal in these shorts. It almost doesn’t seem to matter how good your legs and/or butts are – very few chicks actually look good in them. Then there’s the pockets that hang out the bottom. The second you try and put things in these pockets, it looks like you’re sporting a colostomy bag. I’m desperately hoping that others agree with this because if not, I’m starting to sound like my hair looks – old.
Anyways, onto the festival – I arrived in time to see the end of Tim & Jean’s set and quickly headed for the alcoholic slushy stand. In 38 degree heat with limited shaded areas – it’s important to stay hydrated! Wandered around a bit more and caught some of Koolism’s set followed by another couple of very tasty slushies which lead me to a nice shady spot on the hill to listen to Hungry Kids of Hungary.
While sitting on this hill I found myself pondering the festival layout. Things like where the stages, toilets, bars, stalls and food areas were positioned and ways they could have been re-arranged for better access and accoustics. As I was playing my own little version of Sim Festival and enjoying the fumes wafting over from a nearby group of people smoking, I realised my latest round of slushies had vanished and I was starting to feel hungry.
A big plate of the Curry Hut’s Satay Special, a healthy dollop of hot sauce and now onto beer I was ready for some Friendly Fires and a bit of Mike Posner’s cheesy pop. Then over to listen to the mellow vibe served up by Kiwi’s with horns (you don’t see a lot of bands bring-out the brass these days) Fat Freddie’s Drop.
More beers and I think another slushy or two… by this stage I had lost count… Nas & Damian Marley came on. Marley has the longest dreads I have ever seen! But before they could finish, I wanted to get over to the main stage to get a good spot for one of my favorite groups of all time – Faithless.
This meant listening to the last few songs of Kelis. At one stage her milk shakes may have brought all the boys to the yard, but now it just seemed like she had run out of her own songs to sing and was just covering and mashing-up a bunch of other random stuff.
Once she had finished, I shuffled my way to the front and got myself a great spot ready for Faithless.
Before I go any further, I just want to try and explain how much I like Faithless. My taste in music is very eclectic and I listen to a LOT of different stuff. As a result, I always find it tricky to say who my favorite band or singer is. There are styles of music I like better than others and there are albums that mark definitive times in my life which can and will never be forgotten. But often as artists and bands evolve, their sounds change and sometimes I only like an album or two, which, in my mind, doesn’t categorise that group as being a ‘favorite’.
That being said, I like ALL of Faithless’ albums and their music has accompanied me through many experiences. Some good. Some bad. Some have been half-way around the world. But all very memorable and all very special.
So to finally see them perform live is something that is difficult to put into words. But I’ll try.
The stage was setup with a lights, projectors and a jungle gym of drums – one drummer seated, the other standing and often jumping around. Lead and bass guitars jamming out the tracks, back-up singers (which took the forefront on a few tracks) with Sister Bliss sparkling away behind her wall of keyboards and Maxi Jazz’s toned yet somewhat skeletal form shirtless with a suit-jacket.
The set-list incorporated a good mix of their old classics like Insomnia and God is a DJ (both of which my feet barely touched the ground while they were playing), to some of their more political tracks like Mass Destruction and Bombs not to miss their newer (but just as good) songs like Tweak Your Nipple and Not Going Home.
It was pure energy, bliss and joy from the moment they walked onto the stage all the way through to their final encore of We Come One (which had the crowd waving their fingers and singing along with like a church choir).
Amidst all the rock-star energy and excitement, Maxi still manages to be one of the most humble entertainers I’ve seen.
For so many reasons – this will be a night I will never ever forget.
I’m Alive!
Hehe… the title of this post reminds me when Aaron Green (Jonah Hill) was stabbed in the heart with an adrenalin needle in “Get Him To The Greek”…
But what actually encouraged me to start writing again was the first few words spoken in the newish BBC Series – Sherlock (not sure if it’s going to be good or not yet, but the ads seemed ok).
In the first 5 minutes it has the modernised version of Watson seeing a psychiatrist to help him deal with his post-military trauma and trying to help him adjust to civilian life again. She says to him “Writing a blog about everything that happens to you will honestly help you” to which he replies “Nothing ever happens to me”.
Over the last twelve months I haven’t been blogging (or tweeting or facebooking…. or doing much in the social media sphere)… but it’s certainly not because nothing has happened to me. It has been quite the opposite.
This time last year I was in a long-term relationship with a son, a house and a cute little dog. Things may have seemed quite good and to be honest, they were. Although, like most products made these days – it was not meant to last – despite everyone’s best efforts. Well to be honest, perhaps not my best efforts, but hopefully not my worst either.
After eight years of ups and downs (like all relationships), we decided that it was time to move-on and split-up. The initial split didn’t happen quite as gracefully as the last sentence would imply, but despite a few heated words and some foolish actions (once again, on my part), the break-up was quite amicable. I still spend time with Caleb most weeks and Kristy and I are still friends.
I moved out, but had troubles finding a place to live for a few months and spent that time living between friends places and work.
Finally I found a place – moved-in and all was peachy… for about 3 months. Then the landlord decided to put-up the rent. Even though the increase wasn’t that much – I just couldn’t afford it.
Fortunately, a friend had just purchased an investment property nearby and offered to rent it to me while they fixed it up. The place needed some work and I didn’t have a functional kitchen for a couple of months, but the rent is affordable and they’ve been including me in the renovation process, so it’s actually been quite interesting.
Within a couple of months of moving into the new place, I had a reasonably major car accident. Fortunately no one was injured (other than my car) and unlike my admissions of fault earlier in the post – I can quite adamantly state that this accident was certainly not my fault.
It took the assessors a couple of weeks to determine whether or not to write my car off – during which time my insurance wouldn’t give me a hire car because if they decided to write-off my car, I wouldn’t have qualified for one. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) they decided not to write it off… but during the time my car was in the shop (and the build-up to that decision)…
I started walking a lot more and taking public transport.
This didn’t work-out too well for me (the walking part, not the public transport). I figured I was just drastically unhealthy due to the fact I haven’t done exercise for years and spend all my waking hours in front of a computer… and when I’m not working or dicking around on the internet I’m usually drinking or sleeping.
But my inability to walk the slightest distance without feeling faint started to cause some concern. I brushed this off as nothing serious until it reached the point where I couldn’t stay-up until sun-rise drinking alcoholic slushies, wine, scotch and various flavours of shots at my mate (and business parter)’s wedding. This was when I knew there was something wrong.
So I went to the doctor, who did the usual examination and suggested I get a blood test. A few hours later he called me back saying the blood results were in and I needed to get to a hospital ASAP.
Turns-out I somehow had two litres less blood than I should and as a result I was critically anemic.
I spent the following couple of weeks in hospital getting blood transfusions, blood tests, iron infusions, x-rayed, ultrasounded, poked, prodded and uncomfortably tested in ways I’d rather not discuss. Even after an endoscopy and colonoscopy they still couldn’t definitively establish exactly how I had lost the blood.
Their best educated guess was that I had a stomach ulcer that had ruptured and slowly released blood into my stomach in such small quantities it was either passed without me noticing or possibly even dissolved by my stomach acids. Due to the small quantities of blood loss, my body didn’t realise it was missing, so it didn’t replace it.
This most likely went on for 6 (or more) months and over that time my body had slowly been adjusting to the limited supply of blood – until I started trying to do the most minimal of physical activity causing my body to give-up.
While they couldn’t gain a definitive answer as to where my blood went – they did find a bunch of other stuff wrong with me – including that I have a hernia placing a large part of my stomach somewhere in my chest. Fortunately this is quite common and hasn’t affected my day-to-day life (although I am booked-in for surgery at some stage in the next 12 months so they can put my stomach back to where it should be).
Since getting out of hospital a few months ago – I’ve been feeling better than ever. I’ve lost about 5Kg, I’m doing more exercise and feel a lot fitter and healthier than I have in years.
Amongst all this, work has had its ups and downs (unfortunately more downs than ups lately) and although there are still a few challenges ahead, things seem to be heading in the right direction… and Queensland has been hit with two of the worst natural disasters in over three decades.
So if you had of said to me this time last year that over the next twelve months you’ll come out of an 8+ year relationship, live out of a backpack for a couple of months, move house twice, nearly total your car, discover a very serious (and without attention, potentially life threatening) health condition, hire staff, fire staff, have your city resemble Atlantis and neighboring cities being blown away… I would never have believed you.
Makes me wonder what will happen over the next 12 months 
Australia Day Continued and Pimping our Pup
Scotty’s Australia Day party was good – it turns-out that it was hosted at his place, so I didn’t feel like I was crashing once I discovered that, although not knowing anyone other than Scott made it a bit awkward.
I also realised that when we used to hang-out and drink together, it was always in a group situation. Nearly 10 years ago I’d spend most nights of the week drinking with a combination of Scott, Con, Gerard and a selection of other guys (usually bar-staff, bouncers or other figures from the clubbing industry), sometimes uni mates, other old school friends, neighbors and often a few people that I’d know to say “hi” to, but would have no clue as to who they really were or why they were there.
As you could imagine, from such a wide selection of people, there were always interesting stories and drunken adventures happening followed by hung-over recovery sessions around the pool. So while we all spent a fair bit of time together, the one commonality was the ‘group’ dynamic. Take the group away and the conversation sort-of dries-up after an hour or so.
This is what happened on Australia Day.
I tried a bit of mingling but that didn’t work-out so great as I discovered I’m really old.
The age factor has never really bothered me too much since I act like a child most of the time anyway and no matter how daggy I am, I still believe I’m ‘cool’ in my own special way (in the same way a blind person thinks they look good when they walk past a mirror).
However I found myself talking to one girl who asked how I knew Scott… so I explained that we knew each other from school and used to go clubbing a fair bit when we were in our late teens through to our early/mid 20′s. It was at this point you could tell she was trying to do some quick maths, then a startled look swept across her face and she said “Wow, that must make you like 27 or 28!” I replied “No, I’m actually 30… turning 31 next month” and she almost fell off her chair.
I think that was the first time I seriously felt like I was a pensioner who crashed a teenagers party.
Despite some awkward silences and some people clearly thinking I was in need of a Zimmer frame, it didn’t stop me enjoying a suitable amount of beer before I decided I’d head home in time for an afternoon Nana-nap
The rest of the week was, well, a standard work week.
Over the weekend that just flew past, we pimped-out our puppy George.
A friend-of-a-friend gave us a call recently and explained that one of their two female Maltese Shih Tzus was on heat and they were thinking about breading her. But they were lacking in the one crucial ingredient for this – a strapping male dog to step-up to the plate and sow his wild oats.
As they couldn’t find any dog that fit the description above, they thought perhaps our crazy little fluff-ball George might be interested. So, we pimped him out for the weekend in the hopes he can help make lots of cute little puppies that too will resemble the lint a giant may pluck from their belly button.
In exchange for George’s humping skills (which he regularly practices on anything that moves), we’ve asked if we can have one of the new puppies – this time a little girl dog.
So, if George did a good job with the ‘bow-chicka-bow-wow’, hopefully in the not-too-distant-future, he’ll have a play-mate to run around with and continue his legacy of destroying anything chewable that we leave lying around the house.
Read MoreAustralia Day
Since I’ve been a fairly slack blogger lately, I thought I’d try something new and blog during otherwise unutilized time (like now – I’m on a train to another Australia Day party… so pease forgive spelling and gramatical errors).
Chances are this will probably be as successful as my last attempt to create some form of blogging enthusiasm (the 365 project)… Which didn’t even last a week… But I think it’s important to try new things regardless of the end-result.
So after the Christmas / New Years hype, it was back to work. The first week was a little less productive than usual since Con was still in town and we spent some time catching-up. Some of this time may have involved a few quiet drinks
The night before he left, we had dinner over at Con’s folks place. Con’s sister and her hubby joined us and it was great to catch-up with everyone. Growing-up, Con’s family were more like an extension of my own and I can’t believe how long it’s been since I saw them all.
The week that followed consisted of lots of boring (but far more productive) work stuff and outside of business hours we spent our time cleaning and tidying our house and yard in anticipation of our Annual Australia Day Party.
Despite our best efforts (and the genuine belief we were totally prepaired for the event) when the day rolled around we found ourselves running around like blue-arsed flies (not entirely sure if I got that idiom correct but felt it was essential to try and squeeze-in some form of Aussie coloquilism).
Even though it didn’t fall on the true Australia Day (since it was on a Tuesday and we wanted a day to recover before having to head back to work) we held it on the Saturday before it was a great day.
Highlights included the green and gold jelly shots that had to be consumed whenever Rolf Harris’ song “Tie me kangaroo down sport” came-up in the shuffle of Triple J Hottest 100 songs from the last 5 years; The slip n’ slide; everyone’s effort to dress in aussie attire.
With the lowlight being me getting rather drunk and thinking it’d be a good idea to demonstrate how flexible i was (although Vicky started it by doing high kicks and the splits)… Which we then followed-up with an undie-run around the yard.
Overall was an awesome day.
As stated at the start of this post, I’m currently on my way to another Aussie gathering that my old drinking and clubbing buddie Scott (who I recently was reaquainted with) invited me to.
In true Scott form, I don’t believe it’s actually his party but that’s never stopped him before. Furthermore, despite being my age (aka old) Scott has and probably always will be 18… So today should be interesting. I’ll try and do another update over the next few days to let you know how it went.
Read More