So here’s a recap of my Christmas… I hope you are sitting down and have a nice cup of coffee handy cause this could take a while.

Ok, the intro to this post was a little unfair. In all honesty, I love each and every one of the families I’m involved with and it’s always good to catch-up with everyone. It just irks me that it all gets squished into a few days of back-to-back activities.

But before I get to that, the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas were really very exciting. We went to see Arj Barker perform at the Powerhouse. As expected, he was awesomely funny, but I didn’t expect that his warm-up act would be equally as funny. So, if you hear of a guy named Joel Osborne touring (and not the one who’s an internet marketer who’s obviously used his online marketing skills to outrank the comedian of the same name), go and see him cause he’s great too. After the show, we bought a couple of Arj’s DVDs which he personally autographed for us.

The following weekend (or maybe two… I’ve lost track now) we had the Kintek Christmas Party. For those of you who don’t know, my web hosting company works closely with a number of web development firms and one that we’ve done a lot of work with over the years (and in the process become close personal friends) is a mob called Kintek.

The party was held at one of our joint clients – a wine bar called Bar Barossa. The food was great, as was the wine and their selection of international beers. After a lot of great conversation (that I’m sure became progressively more entertaining as the night went-on) Kristy and I were honoured to accept an offer from another client of mine – Chester’s Boutique Hotel in the Valley.

I’ve done a lot of stuff with the owner and helped him get a number of his sites online and in return he said that if we were ever in the area and needed a place to stay, just let him know. So the week before the party, I asked if the offer was still available and he hooked us up.

The room was awesome – in fact, the whole place is spectacular. It was once the owners personal residence that he converted into a guest house and now it’s grown to be a fully licensed boutique hotel. It’s quaint with about a dozen rooms which gives it a very warm atmosphere, but at the same time is classier than most hotels I’ve stayed at. Despite our stay only being overnight and still being in the same city that we live, it felt like we were on holidays.

That was the build-up to Christmas… this is when it starts to get hectic.

On Christmas Eve we went to Church with my folks. This year Dad was in the choir and Mum tried to encourage my brother and I to join him. We both politely declined, but Dad did a great job with the singing and I must admit, I do enjoy the Christmas Church service.

Then we grabbed some Macca’s, went home cracked a beer and opened our presents. It was pretty cool – this year I got some Skeleton Keys, Ice Invaders, some new board-shorts, Prototype for the PS3, a cooling base-station thingie for the PS3 and a computer screw-driver set in a novelty grenade casing.

We had a few more drinks, watched some Christmas stuff on TV and went to bed.

Got up early the next morning and headed over to Kristy’s Mum’s place for breakfast. Had some food, chatted, exchanged presents then it was back home to quickly make a salad and grab some wine and then head down to the Gold Coast for lunch with my family (this year it was at my sister’s new place).

Lunch was good and my family are always a very entertaining group of people to be around. Dad jokes, Tom’s new dreadlocks and the Woodford Folk Festival. After eating a little too much and the kids opened their pressies, we headed back home again. More beer.

Next day we went over to Kristy’s Auntie Sue’s place for lunch and then afterwards we caught a bus into town for Kristy’s old school friend – Bexta’s birthday which she was having at The Exchange. They had a deal where you could buy two cocktails for the price of one up until 9pm, so we built a decent stock-pile of mojito’s. Bexta had a great turn-out of people and as it so happens (and I’d like to throw-in a joke how Ipswich being a reasonably small town, it can be a little incestuous… but given Ippy’s reputation, that comment most certainly would be taken the wrong way) I went to primary-school with some of Kristy’s old friends – so it was great catching-up with everyone. Kristy has some great old school mates. Caught a maxi-taxi home with a bunch of them and ended-up drinking some more at Andrea’s place and somewhere during that time I passed-out on her couch.

Kristy woke me at about 5:30ish and we caught a cab home. Had a few hours sleep and then it was off to Kristy’s other good friends (these ones from Dancing) – Trish and Dave’s. Had lunch with them and they gave me a great little book called Twitterature – basically classic literature, as it would possibly be told today using Twitter.

Before I go too much further, I just want to point-out that this simple gift really took me by surprise because (and this may only apply to me… I’m really not sure) but generally when you receive a gift from a friend of your partners, it is most often generic. Something that they think you might like, but often turns-out wrong – like buying a bottle of bourbon for someone that drinks scotch. There’s always good intentions, but they often fail to hit the mark. For this reason, I’m always thankful and grateful for the thought, but expect that I’ll never be able to use the gifts I receive in such instances. But in this case, it was perfect.

So back to lunch – which was good (although I wished I wasn’t quite so hung-over because I’m sure the afternoon would have been more enjoyable if that were the case). I then headed back to the shopping centre bus terminal near Auntie Sue’s where we left my car the day before to go into town for Bexta’s drinkies.

Grabbed the car and then headed straight over to Caleb’s grandparent’s place for dinner. Fortunately, by this stage, I was feeling less hung-over enough to make it through the evening.

Next day it was over to Kristy’s Dad’s for a BBQ. After we ate and the kids exchanged presents, I found a nice comfy spot on the couch and fell asleep. Kristy was out the back chatting with her Dad and the kids were well engrossed with the PlayStation and their new toys, so no one really noticed and it was great to actually have a break for an hour or so.

Went home, drank some more, played some Prototype and then went to bed. Next day was our first day off since Christmas Eve. Enjoyed it by doing absolutely nothing. I think I spent most of the day sleeping in our newly air-conditioned bedroom.

The following day Con came round and we caught-up before Kristy and I had to head over to my brother’s place for dinner. I say this every time we catch-up with my family – I don’t do it enough because we always have such a great time when we’re together, but I suppose the months between visits is part of the reason it’s always so good to catch-up again.

Then the following day was New Years. Kristy had some stabbing stomach pains and despite the fact I give her a hard time, she’s a pretty tough cookie, so when she said that she might need to go to the hospital, I knew it must have been pretty bad. After a short wait in the emergency ward (read: a couple of hours) and a few tests later, they determined that Kristy may have a tiny gallstone.

They couldn’t find it when the doc did the ultrasound, but based on the results from the blood-test and the symptoms, they were convinced that was the cause of the pain. It also made sense that the pain had subsided because it only hurts when the stones move and once settled, you can go for months or even years without them bothering you again. Just in case, he subscribed some pretty hard-core pain killers and suggested Kristy gets a proper stomach x-ray.

Despite feeling a lot better, Kristy wasn’t up to a big night, so Con came around and we spent the night catching-up, talking a lot of shit and drinking a lot. By the time mid-night rolled around, Con decided it was time for his proverbial drunken phone calls and for the first time ever it was fun to be on the sending end and not the receiving. Other highlights of the night included us trying to climb one of the trees in my backyard. Not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Fortunately, we were too drunk to get anywhere (despite crafting a primitive pulley out of a rope that Caleb plays, and sometimes swings from the tree with).

So overall, was a quiet night with my closest and best friend filled with ample amounts of beer, moving onto lots of nice scotch, some PS3, failed tree climbing incidents and most likely a hefty phone bill. Which, in my books equates a pretty good way to see-in 2010.

Two days later it was back to work. While I wasn’t looking forward to working again, the backlog of Christmas / New Years work seemed like a quiet walk in the park when compared to the explosion of family and festivities over the previous week.

Since being back at work I’ve set a bunch of goals which include reading more, blogging more regularly (well, the blogging I meant when the goal was set related to work blogs, but if I’m work blogging more, I’ll inevitably blog more personally too) and generally doing more social media stuff.

To help the whole motivational process, I’ve decided to jump onboard with a photo blogging experiment called the 365 project where I have to take a photo every day for a year and upload it… so here goes…

So, that was my Christmas / New Years… how was yours?

It’s 9:15pm on a Monday night and I’m only just starting to feel human again after a huge weekend of drinking. Sometimes I make references to weekends where lots of drinking takes place, but this weekend the drinking began on Friday and didn’t stop until late Sunday night.

On Friday night we had our work Christmas party. This was pretty cool because prior to this Christmas I haven’t really had any staff (other than Glen, co-founder and business partner)… but this year, our team doubled in size and we now have two awesome employees – Brigit and Emily.

I was a little nervous when organising the gathering (which was just a small BBQ at the office) because we’ve all only worked together for a few months and despite the fact we all get along well during office hours, I wasn’t sure if there would be excessive awkward silences when trying to bring everyone (and their partners) together in a social situation.

Further to that, I discovered that there’s apparently some workplace legislation that states I have to demonstrate a certain duty of care when providing my staff with alcoholic beverages. How could I possibly do that AND be so drunk I can’t even remember my own name?

Fortunately, it all went really, really well – no one died of alcohol poisoning, there are no incriminating photos of me or any of my team floating around the internet (or at least not as a result of Friday night) and now we’re talking about the possibility of making this a semi-regular occurrence.

The next day I got-up early, helped Scotty get his broken washing machine on the back of his ute so he could get it repaired and then later that afternoon I headed over to Cameron’s place for more drinking. We were supposed to catch-up a few weeks back but due to unforeseen circumstances, that didn’t happen… and as it turns-out, Cameron’s partner (Erika) is in the process of starting her own photography business and wanted to talk about getting a website etc. (so technically, the visit was somewhat work related).

Time seemed to disappear as quickly as the beer did and before we knew it, it was the next day… so after a few hours sleep on their couch, I headed back home for a couple of hours of decent sleep in my own bed before heading back out again – this time to meet-up with some very smart and always entertaining local SEO blokes for (you guessed it) more beer.

When that finished, I remembered that an old friend – Scott, who I hadn’t seen in years sent me a message via Facebook saying he was doing some work at one of the backpacker bars (who also co-incidentally happens to be a client of mine) and that I should drop by and say hi.

So I did.

I was only going to catch-up for a chat and then head-off, but when Scott and alcohol is involved, it’s never ever just a quiet one. He had a bar tab which turned into a late night of drinking with him, his little brother (who isn’t so little any more) and a few other guys he works with.

Was an awesome night and I forgot how much fun Scott can be – likewise I forgot what it was like to have 3 solid days / nights of back-to-back drinking… so all day today I felt like a guy in a wheelchair competing in a hurdles race.

The last few weekends have also been pretty busy (hence the lack of posts), but I’ll fill you in on that when my head stops hurting.

But to be honest, I couldn’t be arsed right now… so I figured I’d write a blog post instead.

This will hopefully be the last “catch-up post” covering the random happenings over the previous month (or two) and then I should be up-to-date… well, as long as I keep this updated from now on… or unless I just stop doing things. With how busy everything’s been lately – both options seem quite reasonable

So back in September we celebrated Talk Like A Pirate Day with our annual Pirate Party. In my opinion the party wasn’t quite as good as previous years as we didn’t get a great turn-out and I was also interrupted with a work-related issue which I had to resolve (in a very un-pirate-like way given that a true pirate would not conform to such trivial computer issues… well, unless you’re a software pirate).

In the lead-up to the pirate party, we did a big clean-up of the house and when tidying-up the bathroom, I took apart my beard trimmer – gave it a clean-out and put it away in the drawer (when usually I’d just leave it to clutter-up the bathroom bench-top).

A few days later, I had some meetings scheduled and thought I should probably trim my beard and make myself look a little presentable… and without thinking (or checking) I grabbed the trimmer out of the drawer and swept it across my chin.

Normally, I leave the little ‘blade-4′ head attached to the beard trimmer, but due to the clean-up a few days prior, I had taken it off… and as a result of this, the trimmer had proceeded to take-off a large strip of hair down the middle of my chin.

So I had two choices – I could either go around looking like Wolverine (and believe me, the thought had seriously crossed my mind)… or I could continue to shave the rest of the beard off… and unfortunately I went with the later option. In the days that followed, I discovered that I look better with a beard than I do without and sheepishly had to explain to everyone I came in contact with that I had accidentally shaved it off.

The weekend that followed was Mel and Joe’s wedding and of all the weddings I’ve been to, this was one of the better ones (up there with Ger & Chris’ and Kate & Nicks). I may have enjoyed myself a bit more than usual because (unlike when I attend weddings for friends of Kristy’s) I actually knew some people… or it could have been that the ceremony was quite classy, yet quirkily suited Mel & Joe by having a recital from the Dr. Seuss book ‘Oh the places you’ll go’ instead of a bible reading.

It could have been that the speeches were all reasonably short… or that the wedding and reception were all at the same venue (the Victoria Park Golf Club) and while the photos and other bridal formalities were taking place, we could go to the club bar and drink while we waited. Or it could have been the great food or copious amounts of alcohol.

Regardless as to what it was – the night was fantastic.

We drove to the wedding, left the car at the golf club and caught a cab into the city for a few more drinks – we were going to party-on with a few of Joe’s mates, but in the few minutes it took our maxi-taxi to get into town, they had all decided they were going to pike (despite my best efforts to encourage them with ‘Arrested Development’ chicken taunts).

As we didn’t have the entourage we were hoping for, we only hung around for a few drinks and then cabbed it home.

The next day, after shaking off the hang-over, we picked-up Caleb, caught-up with Skye and Scotty for some noodles and then went to pick-up the car. When we got to the golf course, we thought it’d be a shame not to take advantage of the awesome facilities, so we had a game of putt-putt.

I hadn’t played putt-putt in years and despite the course not having the cliched Windmill and the fact that I was more handicapped than Stephen Hawking – it was tonnes of fun.

Incidentally, this is also the same reason we tend to enjoy the music we do – research shows that music heard at different times of our lives will have different levels of impact. Particularly music heard in our prime phases of development – such as babies (even back to when we’re in the womb) and then again music heard in our teenage years (as we’re starting to develop our own sense of individuality and identity) will tend to stick with us for the rest of our lives.

I’m not saying that it will be the exact bands or songs, but the rhythmic patterns, nuances, timbre etc. will often be recognised in new songs that we hear on the radio and think “hey I really like that”… so if you’ve ever wondered why you like the music you do, that’s one possible explanation. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff too, but that’s really not the purpose of this post…

So back to the marketing story… I made reference to how I remember that BP Service/Petrol/Gas Stations used to sell small Smurf figurines at the counter. I can’t remember if I ever owned any and I can’t say that I have ever been a huge Smurf fan… but I do remember those little figurines.

Now selling Smurf’s at a Servo may sound pretty pointless as it has nothing to do with petrol – but the idea is that (as an adult) if you need petrol and there are 3 places all with the same pricing and roughly the same distance away, you’ll go with the brand you feel the closest association with. So if that means choosing BP because of the $1 Smurf figurines that your Dad would buy you to keep you amused on those long car trips when you were 5… then BP end-up being the big winners.

So, as I mention this, the guys at the table start making some jokes about why I remember that specific example and before I know it, one of the guys has pulled-out his iPhone and twittered that I have a “thing” for Smurf’s.

This creates a humorous short-lived twitter conversation between myself and a few friends when I get back to the office and once that was done, I figured that would be the last of it.

A few weeks later, I’m chatting with someone else online and through a completely unrelated chain of events, the topic of Smurf’s come-up and I make a passing comment “don’t get me started”… and presto… my apparent Smurf fetish is reinvigorated.

I have come to the acceptance, this probably isn’t going away anytime soon… so while I don’t have a genuine fascination with little blue people in white floppy hats, online rumours may suggest otherwise. It’s just lucky that I quite like those people responsible for starting and circulating the rumours and I figure a Smurf fetish isn’t as bad as rumours going around that I’m gay (which I’m not… but.. arrr crap, here we go again).

Whenever there’s a celebration that requires some costume planning and preparation, we always end-up turning to DVDs for inspiration, so we had a vampire weekend… and no I don’t mean the very cool band Vampire Weekend (although I’d be quite happy to listen to them for a whole weekend as well).

Since Kristy isn’t as big a fan of vampires as I am, I did a little bit of solo research which started with a recommendation from Con – a Swedish vampire flick called: Let the right one in. It was a very sensitive drama about a little kid that had no friends and was always bullied until a new girl moves in next door… they form an interesting and somewhat dysfunctional relationship as she’s a vampire… and without wanting to spoil things too much, they live happily ever after.

I also watched Twighlight and that too was surprisingly not bad along with some other old fav’s (Bram Stoker’s Dracula etc. etc.)

As well as watching movies, I researched YouTube on how to craft realistic looking vampire fangs and had a few different ideas as to what I might wear, but in the end, I took the easy way out and purchased a cheap cape, some plastic fangs and a bit of white make-up… and here’s some pics of the night to show how it all turned-out:

Another interesting and somewhat unfortunate thing happened that night – Skye and Scotty’s toilet overflowed due to some piping-related issue rendering the lavatory off-limits. Given the copious amounts of alcohol being consumed, as always, necessity became the mother of all invention and some rather creative solutions were established (which ranged from the boys helping water some of the plants to the girls opting to drive to the nearest McDonald’s or use a bucket).

Much to everyone’s surprise, this one minor issue didn’t seem to disrupt the night at all – if anything, it made the evening a little more interesting. Overall was a really good party and I can’t wait till the next one.

It all started a few weeks ago with Scotty’s 25th which was a themed James Bond Casino Royale party.

There were Russian Spy’s, suits, tuxes, bow ties, cocktail dresses and one very large golden gun (no pun intended – Scotty’s best mate Tucker turned-up with a Hellboy sized golden toy gun). Was an awesome night with cocktails freely flowing, poker playing, guitar heroing and as the night was drawing to a close, we thought it might be fun to continue partying-on with some uni students who were having a gathering a few houses down the road. Unfortunately our stealth efforts and smooth talking failed miserably and mission ‘uni student party crash’ was aborted very quickly.

The following weekend I had a (very) belated 30th party. Wanting to bring-out the geek in everyone, I themed my party around Internet Phenomena, which basically translates to anything that has gained mass popularity via the Internet.

I wasn’t sure how it would go, but it turned-out a lot better than I could have ever imagined. We had friends turn-up dressed as myspace, the “net”, lol cats, ask a ninja (me), home star runner (Kristy), hotmail, twitter, google, red tube, there were demotivational and other internet-related T-shirts. I was honestly surprised we didn’t get a ‘trent from punchy‘ or a ‘star wars kid‘ and very thankful we didn’t get anyone thinking they were Beyonce.

As the night got-on and after drinking a lot of beer (including a rather potent Quadrupel beer from the Netherlands which was given to me as a gift from the Kintek crew) we thought it’d be fun to have a go at this:

Kristy’s MacGyver skills quickly turned some fence paling’s, a piece of elastic, some string and a bag of marshmallow’s into our own back-yard version of the gameshow above. And these were the results:

A few days after the party, I headed down to Sydney for the Annual Search Marketing Expo / Conference – SMX Sydney. As far as search marketing conferences go, this is one of (if not THE) best and attracts some of the most knowledgeable guest speakers from all around the world.

I won’t bore you with all the search geekiness (if you want that sort-of stuff, you should read my work blog) but the minute that the last speaker finishes, all search marketers (regardless of where in the world you’re from) share another common interest – DRINKING!

Needless to say, it was a very big three days of learning and business networking, followed by three very big nights of partying. If you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, you can see the photos from the event on there or follow the many Twitter references to SMX.

This coming weekend is Easter and other than catching-up with my family for a BBQ, it should be a quiet one and I’m really looking forward to doing nothing!

Some may find this annoying, although it’s sort-of become part of my annual birthday experience. If he actually got the date right, it just wouldn’t be the same. Although this year he didn’t do too badly and was closer than usual – but I contribute that purely to the fact he’s on the opposite side of the world and the differing time-zone helped.

Talking about catching-up with Friends for my birthday, I had lunch with Mel on Friday which was really good. The thing I love about catching-up with Mel and other old school friends is that we often have the most interesting conversations. With friends I’ve made over the last few years, there’s always interesting stuff to talk about, but at the end of the day, the conversations usually gravitate around the reason you were friends in the first place (perhaps it was because you worked together, were members of a club or sporting team etc). But at school, there often wasn’t a reason to befriend someone – it could have simply been that you shared similar subject-choices and sat next to each other in class everyday.

I like to think that my eclectic group of school friends had closer ties than just sitting together, and with all groups, some people are closer than others, but in all honesty I can’t think of anything specific that we all really liked or did that kept us together. So in a way, it surprises me that I’m still pretty good friends with a few of these people today and although we don’t catch-up regularly, we still keep in contact despite having very little in common, and it’s always a tonne of fun when we do get together.

On the topic of fun things… there have been a couple of events that happened recently that looked like they may have been interesting to get involved with, but at the time I either had stuff on or just couldn’t be bothered… I’ll have to make more of an effort for future events.

The first one was Pecha Kucha Night (or here’s the brisbane edition’s website). To paraphrase, here’s some info about the evening and the concept:

Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham (Klein Dytham architecture), was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. But as we all know, give a mike to a designer (especially an architect) and you’ll be trapped for hours. The key to Pecha Kucha Night is its patented system for avoiding this fate. Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor. This is a† demand that seems to be global – as Pecha Kucha Night, without any pushing, has spread virally to over 100 cities across the world. Find a location and join the conversation.

The other event that sounded pretty interesting was The Brisbane Twestival (Twitter festival) with live blogging and Twittering done by one of the organisers iReckon. This evening featured local bands, art displays and auctions, other artistic acts and presentations with all money raised going towards improving the quality and access to fresh drinking water around the world.

So maybe next time something like this is organised, I’ll go along…

The big news from the weekend was Caleb’s Birthday – he just hit the double digits and turned 10! The day started with breakfast at McDonald’s, then Granna came over… then it was over to the other Grand Parent’s place (Grandma and Poppie’s) for lunch. We came home, played with some of Caleb’s new toys (the main one being a mobile phone… which seems a little ridiculous, but unfortunately somewhat important in today’s society) and then it was out to dinner at the Pancake Manor.

On Sunday we caught-up with Caleb’s Granddad (and family) for lunch and then Kristy went to a Tupperware party allowing me to play some PS3 and watch The Mighty Boosh Live DVD I got for my birthday.

Although not technically for my birthday, I had a really great weekend – we went to the Game On Exhibition – An action-packed celebration of videogames culture tracking the development from the earliest computer games to arcade-era hits and the very latest from today’s billion-dollar industry. With more than 100 playable games, as well as rarely seen consoles, controllers and collectables, it was a showcase of games history like no other. I was in heaven!

On Sunday I caught-up with a couple of search marketing guys who I met at a conference last year. It was good to share a few beers and have someone to talk to about geeky search stuff (the stuff that would put most people to sleep)… and on the topic of search marketing, I owe a HUGE thank you to everyone who got behind me and voted on my T-Shirt design for the Search Engine College competition. If you have no idea on what I’m talking about, check-out the build-up to it here.

I have to say I was honestly amazed at how far word spread and the number of people that voted. I had family, friends, the families and friends of friends, it was promoted via Facebook, on Twitter… emails were flying around from people I haven’t seen in years saying ‘nice design’… it was quite literally incredible and I honestly had trouble believing how many people voted.

What’s better yet – I won!!! So that was a nice little birthday present. The prize is some search training material, a ticket to an expensive search conference in Sydney later this year and the proud honour of knowing I’m responsible for the T-Shirt used to promote the Search Engine College for 2009.

Due to my general lack of organisation, the fact that there has been a lot happening this month I didn’t quite get around to arranging a birthday party for me… but all is not lost – in the next few weeks I’m going to have a geeky celebration like no other. The theme of the party will be Internet phenomena – those people and events that have gained famed and notoriety as a direct result of the Internet. Some are tragic, some are incredibly funny and most are just plain wrong. It should be a fun night – I might even advertise it on MySpace

So that’s it for me… I’m off to the movies to see The Wrestler.

A couple of weeks ago my car mysteriously wouldn’t start. Kristy gave me a jump start, I took the car for a long drive to recharge the battery and all seemed good again… for a week. Then over the weekend I didn’t drive around much only to discover my car wouldn’t start again on the Sunday. So later that evening, we did the jump-start thing again, I drove around for a couple of hours and all was good again… until this weekend. I sensed a pattern. So my car’s battery could hold a charge for about 24 hours, but if left undriven any longer, it’d die.

To indicate how much I know about the mechanics of a vehicle, it dawned on me this-morning that car batteries usually have water in them, so I open the little screw things on top of the battery to discover it’s as dry as Victoria… when really it should have been as wet as Cairns.

After consulting with my friend and business partner Glen (who knows considerably more about cars than I do) he informs me that since it’s been dry for this long, the batter is most likely screwed, so until I get the time to get the car into a mechanic to replace the battery, it looks like my daily tasks will now be – recharge phone, recharge laptop, recharge mp3 player, recharge car…

I don’t know if there was anything particularly exciting that was happening 9 months ago, or if it was just a really boring month, but there seems to be a lot of birthday’s around the month of February (mine being one of them).

Over the weekend I helped celebrate two of them – my Mum’s and Vicky’s (and sorta my sister-in-law Lyndal’s too as hers was only a week ago). For Vicky’s birthday, she had a small group of family and friends over for a BBQ. As things were quietening down, we decided to head-home, but put the offer-out to anyone if they wanted to come back to ours for a few evening drinks. Skye and Scotty accepted.

Other than the drinking, the highlight of the evening was their sushi machine that they bought along to demonstrate. It basically looks like a slightly larger version of a bike pump. You open the cylinder and line the sides with rice and then place your chosen ingredients down the middle. Seal it up, which makes the rice form a nice tube while compacting it all together… then you take the bike-pump handle and squeeze the rice log onto your seaweed… roll it up and slice. Presto – a perfect sushi roll without having to stuff around with bamboo mats and getting rice stuck everywhere.

What makes the experience even more fun is when you try and do this after a few drinks.

While we were drinking and making sushi, Caleb was at a sleepover birthday party at one of his friend’s places. When Kristy picked him up in the morning, he had done me proud… it was a games night, so he and a few of the lads made it their business to stay-up all night playing computer games.

At breakfast, Caleb was adamant he wasn’t tired as he kept drifting-off between each bite of his eggs.

After breaky, I went into the city to help my Mum celebrate her birthday. My folks headed into South Bank to have a ride on the newish Ferris Wheel. Not sure if it has a proper title, but it’s sorta been dubbed the Brisbane Eye… and like Brisbane, it’s not very big – but like they say, it’s not the size of your Ferris wheel that matters it’s the size of your… um… not sure how that should finish, but I think I should stop now before I take my Mum’s birthday from the Ferris wheel to the gutter.

After the ride, we all (as in my siblings) met up with Mum and Dad for a buffet lunch at the Casino. Only place where you can get a nice smorgasbord with all you can eat at a fairly reasonable price and then finish the meal off with a game of blackjack.

So that was my weekend… next weekend is valentine’s day and to quote something geeky I saw online:

Ladies love techie romantics… cause we give ‘em what they like. E-cards, E-mails and public forum posts saying ‘I lubb U Baby, XOXO, @}–,— x 12′

Then a couple of days later it’s my birthday… and Glen’s, then Caleb’s birthday which also coincides with my nieces and probably a whole bunch more that my sieve-like mind can’t think of right now.

This year the holiday fell on a Monday which was a little awkward since the traditional celebrations usually involve drinking copious amounts of alcohol knowing you have a long-weekend to recover. So the celebrations were shuffled back a couple of days to accommodate.

But before any of this happened, on Friday afternoon Kristy went to some farewell drinks for one of the US contractors she worked with who was heading back to the states. As the work group shrunk, leaving only the more interesting team members (aka the alcoholics), Kristy called to see if I wanted to join them. So I did… and it turned-out being a bigger night than we had all anticipated.

We woke the next day feeling very seedy, only to realise that Skye and Scotty’s Australia Day BBQ was on later that afternoon / evening.

So we sobered-up, did some last-minute shopping to grab a few Aussie accessories, picked-up Marty on the way through and did the truly Australian thing of celebrating Australia Day (two days early) and hung-over.

To reinforce how Australian I am, I rocked-up wearing a rather short pair of Ruggers/Stubbies (or for the uninitiated, basically a short pair of workman-style shorts), a Bonds singlet, a bucket hat and thongs. This was topped-off with a little fake Aussie Flag tattoo and accompanied by a stubbie cooler that said ‘Top Aussie Bloke’. There were a few photos taken throughout the evening, so as soon as they surface, I’ll put them up here.

The evening consisted of drinking, BBQing, Guitar Heroing and lots of very wrong, yet very funny conversations.

Sunday we discovered my car battery was flat for no apparent reason (or at least not one that I’ve figured-out yet… which isn’t surprising as I know just as much about cars as I do about nuclear physics)… so I jump started it and then proceeded to drive around aimlessly for a few hours to charge the battery again.

Monday, we decided to go to Ikea and bought some picture frames so we can finally hang some of the prints we bought back from overseas.

And that, my friends, was my Australia Day weekend.