22 posts tagged “friends”

On Thursday we went to see the new movie about the quest to save the talking badgers (aka Prince Caspian). I had a nightmare that I was late because I had got stuck babysitting, and it was so horrible that I woke up way too early. I got in the car at exactly the right time, but then discovered that my GPS had forgotten Gity's address, and it took me 7 minutes to program it in. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA to GPS's. So I was kind of late to Gity's, and then we got caught in an excessive number of traffic lights and couldn't find a parking spot. So we drove past the cinema and waved to everybody standing there waiting for us. Yay. For once in my life, I was the last one there. We watched the movie. It was moderately great. Then we went to The Glen, ate, talked and freaked Scott-Mr-KFC-Dude out by staring at him for ages as he tried do do his Mr-KFC-Dude work. Then I took Marie and Gity on a tour of the changes to the school. There aren't many. The toilets were painted over and quickly falling into disrepair and clouds of cigarette smoke again; the eye-sore of an incomplete fountain is now a completed eye-sore of a fountain. We saw Mr Edwards in the Sci Tech (wtf? WHY is he not in Canada yet?) so Gity and I talked to him. I discovered that he used to be a dog trainer and show his Weimaraners in competitions. (wtf? WHY DID I NOT KNOW THIS?!) And then we went home.
On Sunday I had a dog massage workshop. That was informative.
On Monday I went to Jess's. My bus was 10 minutes late, leaving me shivering and miserable. It was great, in the purely nostalgic sense. I was just getting out my phone to tell Marie not to bother picking me up when it arrived. I got to the carpark at exactly the same time as Marie. Yay:) And so Jess, Scott, Andrew, Marie, me and eventually AJ played dungeons and dragons. It had taken Andrew a while to convince me to play, because I thought I would become addicted and wierd. Me and Jess were tied up for a large chunk of the game, and the b**ch of a captain took my dog-steed and has pet electric lizards which killed Jessica. I am now wierdly addicted to Dungeons and Dragons. So is Jess. Sigh. I feel, as Jess's uncle put it, 90's geeky. Other people went home but I stayed overnight to avoid more public transport. We watched some of the first season of Charmed and had scrambled egg for dinner, played playstation games, watched Tudors and spectacularly failed to do any of the work we both should have done. The following morning was spent making Spore creatures and sorting counters until people came. We watched some Doctor Who episodes until Caitlin arrived, whereupon we ordered pizza and started our Murder Mystery night. I was (please excuse the use of person in this, me is merely copyin'.) "Steph, a noble woman without any great title. You have lost your lands and your frtune to betting on the races, die, cards and other games. You are friends with the Lady Jessica, but have never met her husband Duke Andrew and are looking forward to doing so. The only reason you have been invited to the paty (is that) it is hosted by your cousin Marie. However, you almost didn't come. Greatly in debt and needing to fuel your gambling habits you are afraid that one of the loan brokers you owe money to, AJ, will be present. she is a member of the King's Guard and a soldier, but most of her large fortune comes from her other trade. If you don't pay up you are afraid of what AJ will do to you."
My first objectives were to start a gambling game with at least 3 other people, avoid being alone with AJ (actually just avoid her as much as possible) and talk to my friend Lady Jessica about my life.
Lady Jessica introduced me to her husband in her room, then we moved to the sitting room to meet the other guests. I was just about to start avoiding AJ when Cousin Marie started talking, forcing all of us to be seated. I amused myself by pinning Scholar Josh to my chair. As soon as Marie stopped talking, I released him and went to learn more about Lord Andrew (or should I say Lord Xavier Formulaic Acid); I may have been rather more interested than was strictly necessary. Interested enough that as soon as Jess walked past he grabbed her frantically and used her as an excuse to extricate himelf from my company. Muahaha. Then I started avoiding AJ. I talked to several people, including Jess, who was upset with her husband about something, and Marie, who apologised for her character's tendency to encourage me to gamble excessively. I got Scholar Josh relatively alone and I was rather more interested in his life than strictly necessary, but he was oblivious. I tried to interest him in a game of cards, but he refused. I turned to Marie and said "Could I interest you in a game of cards, cousin? You party is dreadfully dull." I suddenly realised that that was probably quite offensive, but she cried "YES!" and we went to set up. Somehow we managed to accumulate every other person at the party by the time we were ready. We played 21 (or whatever it was called back then), followed by Dragons (or whatever it's called. They probably didn't play it back then, but who cares? I won a round.) It was during these games that the great scandal came out - Marie had had an affair with Lord Xavier 10 years ago. AJ pointed out that they would have been 8 at the time. Every time people went to yell at each other in private I stole some coins from whoever was silly enough to leave them unguarded, but the last time someone stole all of Marie's coins so I had to give the 2 I had taken back. She was convinced that I had taken all of them. Humph. As if the desperately in debt gambling addicted cousin would do that. As we were finishing, Jess and Caitlin went off to talk in private. Caitlin emerged shortly afterwards crying out that Lady Jessica was dead, so we all rushed in to stare at her. She was laughing. "Oh no!" we all lamented. "Quick, make sure she's dead." I tested her pulse. "Yep, she's dead." Andrew sat beside her and tried to show his grief by pretending to beat his hands against her. "Yeah, well done Andrew, just stab the dead body to make sure." Everyone was cracking up. We left Andrew to "grieve" while Josh performed a medical examination to determine the cause of death (poison, he said.) We sat on the sofas and tried to decide whodunnit, trying unsuccessfully to pretend that our laughs were really sobs. After a while we went to check on them, and the door swung open to reveal Jessica's body lurching towards us. "AAAAAAAH!!" We screamed at the undead creature. She corrected us, "I'm the mute servant now."
"Ah." we said.
"She did it!" I cried.
She handed out new objectives. Mine was "Convince AJ to give you time to repay the money. Jessica is dead, but you are sure, in your desperate situation she would help you with your debt; attempt to rob her money out of her handbag." I went to the kitchen and took a butter knife, so that I could kill AJ if I felt like it. I tried to edge towards Andrew's private room, but everyone was by that stage sitting in the lounge in full view of the door, so I never even got close. I grabbed AJ and drgged her up the hall to try and make some excuse about how I was going to get a job tomorrow and pay her off. Unexpectedly, she offered to halve the amount due (I had to ask how much it was, and she dug around for her paper and we discovered that it was meant to be $3000, so it would now be $1500). I dug around in my pockets and found counters. It took a VERY long time to count them. I gave up at $1000, and she said that she could consider the $500 owing in view of my not saying anything about what had happened earlier. I didn't know what had happened earlier, but didn't really feel like mentioning it. I didn't quite know what to do with the knife in my pocket. I was a little disappointed to have no reason to kill anyone. After a little more circulation and speculation, Caitlin pulled me asside and enquired as to my relationship with AJ. I confided that I owed her (or him) some money, as I had seen Caitin pay him/her off earlier. Caitlin offered to lend me some money in exchange for a favour later on. I agreed, and she gave me the $500 I needed. I went and passed it on. Without a debt, I wasn't quite sure whether I should still go and nick money out of Jess's handbag. Andrew saw me hanging around and asked for a word. He pointed out the imaginary blood stain where Lady Jess had been lying. Servant Jess barged in and handed us our next set of objectives. "Look in the handbag," she hissed to Andrew, and left. We looked at each other for a moment, and then I reached for the bag. Andrew lunged forwardand pinned me to the wall with his cardboard tube sword to my neck. "DROP IT!" He thundered. "She did say to look in it." I opened it and found coins and a label belonging to Gail. I can't remember what we discussed, because my sleep deprived mind fogged it over, but it did involve me taunting him then saying "Oh wait, I forgot, I probably shouldn't anger a man with a sword to my throat." "Hehe yeah you forgot." "So are you going to kill me?" "No, but sonsider it a very stern warning." I left, very sheepishly. My third objective was to "Either repay the loan or get AJ off your back one way or another. If she tries to speak with someone, follow them and eavesdrop." I had been eavesdropping all night anyway. It hadn't really got me very far, most of what I overheard being "I think someone's listening." I guess I'm not very good at sneaking. After a long discussion with Marie, it was time for final favours to be called on. Caitlin told me that her favour for the money was that I should vote for myself as murderer. "But ... I would be hanged. That is SO not worth $500." I competely emptied my pockets, and started counting. After we had established that it was somewhere between $400 and $470, she got bored and said "Okay, since you've sort of payed off your debt, I will revise the favour to voting for Marie." "Did she do it?" "Yes." "Are you sure?" she nodded vehemently. "Okay then." I was wandering away when I heard a scream. I grabbed my trust knife and raced into the lounge room, where Marie was struggling with Andrew. They raced off before I got there, so I followed, which is how we ended up in the final scene, everyone standing in the hall with weapons drawn. "Having a concealed weapon is against the law." AJ informed us. "Well maybe you should tell us the laws BEFORE we break them." I said. AJ and Andrew withdrew to the study to confer, while the rest of us sat down to discuss final theories. AJ and Andrew were in there for a VERY long time. We took it in turns listening at the door to make sure there was no unauthorised hanky-panky. Unfortunately, there wasn't.
The final votes were cast and Marie got the most. "Yes, you're right, I did it." She said. "You did?" asked Caitlin. "You said you knew!" I said, scandalised. We took her to the deck to hang her, but she took too long trying to think of decent last words, so I just pushed her off to be done with it.
We sat down afterwards and everyone told their stories. Turns out AJ had been convinced I had seen her take all Marie's money and kindly kept quiet, when in fact I had only suspected her. I didn't enlighten her.
That was fun.
Then we played murder in the dark for hours. Twice when I was murderer I manged to perform mass murder, but lost count and said "Have I killed everyone?" Only to be met by the cry from the last survivor "Stephanie did it!" (Actually, the first time Andrew said "Jess did it!" HA.) In one of the games I ended up in the middle of a 3-person pile up.Josh was a really sneaky murderer, and would try to hand me a dog or wait for me to hug him and then grab my shoulder so I died. I love following people around and creeping them out, even when (especially when) I'm not the murderer. Oh it was so much fun :D
At 20 past midnight Josh decided that he probably should go home. Murder in the dark slowed and eventually stopped when no-one could stand up any more, except to dance. Which we did. Crazily. In the dark. Yay :)
We finally settled down for bed. Marie and I shared the sofabed next to the laundry. We were just drifting off when we heard music from the tv. "They're watching 300 ... at 2 am. Oh my god." Marie laughed. Jess went to tell them to turn it down, which they did. A few minutes later we heard her commenting on the effects. "Yup ... turn it down you freaks, it's 2am. *Sits down and watches movie with them*" I giggled. We eventually stopped hearing it and drifted fitfully in and out of sleep, woken occasionally by the barking dogs. The second time I let them out (which must have been about 7) they got out. "Help, I being mauled my wild beasts!!!" Squealed Marie. (Surprisingly, I learned later, no-one heard her). Rascal opened the hall door and disappeared, and Nagari (with a huge amout of effort) heaved herself up onto Marie and lay there for hours, squishing her lungs. She's such a cute dog. We were finally able to sleep properly and were woken up by the doorbell. Josh and Gity were bright and dressed, which contrasted comically with the rest of us, croaky with sleep and dressed in our pyjamas. We finished watching Doctor who episodes and ate pancakes for brunch. We played Taboo, and my team won because it had both AJ and Caitlin on it,  despite the other team cheating by going through a bunch of cards they'd had before. HA. Gail came home and people left, and Marie kindly dropped me and Gity home.
On Thursday morning Jess's mum called to say that she was sick, so I waited 5 minutes then called Marie to ask if she could pick up AJ and Andrew. She said she'd woken up 5 minutes ago. How ironic. I got texts from Phil and Josh saying they weren't coming. I called AJ to tell her MArie was picking her up and she said she MIGHT come. I said "If you don't ... it will be very lonely." Marie arrived at quarter past 11 with both AJ and Andrew in tow. Andrew decided that we should play pokemon master trainer. We laughed, realised he was serious, and got stuck in. I won, grâce à luck and good item cards. We then made muffins, with lumps of chocolate and marshmallow, so it would be like rocky road. In hindsight, we probably should have realised that marshmallows MELT in ovens. They were very sticky. But nice. And choclatey. After a false start, we figured out how to play labyrinth, and Andrew won. Then we played uno. It was a great game, ie it went on for AAAAGES. I think Marie won. AJ was not having her usual winning streak, which was kind of fun for us. We watched the last scene from Life of Brian, and while I was switching it off we stumbled across The Hoobs, which is one of those drug-induced children's shows. It was strangely fascinating, and I couldn't quite turn it off. After looking at washing powder adds on youtube and AJ discovering the joys of our cordless mouse, it was time for everyone to go.
And today I walked dogs at the RSPCA for 4 1/2 hours, and one of them was a mastiff cross that was way stronger than me, and I have a bruised wrist from walking it 150 metres out and 150 metres back (that was as far as I got before I realised that if I went any further he would probably pull me off my feet and escape).
So yeah. that post took a ridiculously long time to write up, it wasn't even detailed.
Life is fun.

WOW I haven't updated properly in ages. Alow me to reduce the past month into a conveniently compact list:

• Marie, Jess and my family went to see Richard III at the Athaneum. It wasn't their best play.
  
• Athough it was kind of amusing when lots of furry green things leapt onto the stage and started dancing during the big fight scene for no apparent reason. Very Knight of Ni.
•  Also when a whole ton of people crawled out of Richard's bed. How many people can you fit under one matress?
• Went to see a movie of Hamlet with AJ and Marie. I hadn't realised that it was a completely uncut version, with all the lines in - it went for an insanely large number of hours. We missed the last train and had to call Marie's dad to pick us up.
  
• It was moderately brilliant though. I loved Hamlet's manic episodes - he seemed almost like a normal human being (as opposed to a stuffed lyrical partridge).
  
• I bought a packet of fantails and made Marie eat them. Suffer. Muahaha.
• During intermission AJ went :S (I have officially been corrupted by MSN) and showed us the first sentence of an sms - "We was robbed!" We went :S. Then she showed the second half - "House a repeat." :|
• Had a psychology excursion to the museum. My teacher is, as I suspected, a fool. But I liked one of the other teachers, Donna. The museum was great. I learned stuff. Also, we got to try out a lie detector. I got caught. Aw. Also, my heart pattern is mildly retarded.
• I had an agility trial in Geelong. Merry got two titles ^_^
• Mystic has developed luxating patella (a dislocating kneecap). Poor baby :(
• Went on Distance Ed "Urban Camp". There is a school camp in Royal Park. I never knew that.
• Day 1: We stood in a circle (the 19 of us who turned up out of the hundreds of people who do distance ed. There was only 1 other year 12 there.) and attempted to learn each other's names. It didn't work particularly well. Then we went to Vic Markets and wandered around for a while. We got bored. All the boys bought toy guns, which they shot people with for the next 2 days. The teachers didn't seem to care, which was awesome. Then some people went to Galactic Circus and others - like me - went to the Eureka Tower. The skydeck is way overpriced, but the glass is truly awesome. It flickers :) After dinner we were allowed to do whatever so I tried to watch a movie, but the room was too loud and I couldn't hear. I was joined by an attractive young male teacher and, by exerting my full will power, managed not to hit on him even when he stretched out on the couch next to me and started discussing Arundhati Roy, then mentioned that he'd forgotten to bring his PJs. *Giggles*
• Day 2: Ate way too much toast. Went to the MCG sports museum, which I'm sure everyone would have loved had anyone had the slightest interest in sports. They had a games room where we could "try it ourselves". I got creeped out by the tourguide, who was a fat, bald old man who showed a disconcerting interest in my life. Was rescued by aforementioned teacher and managed to impress him with my grip on the "test your grip game". Still didn't hit on him. I think. Went to the museum, patted reptiles and amphibians. The tourguide informed us that snakes have 2 penises which are next to their anus and hidden behind "that scale riiight there". One of the boys cried "Wow! They have a neat little container for it all!". she spent a while swearing while trying to catch a turtle, managed, and then held it out for us to pat. We did so, and she then said "Yep, pretty neat, but don't put your finger near it's mouth because it's a bastard and it will bite the first joint of your finger clean off." Hmm, OH&S anyone? That night we watched movies. Unfortuantely the female teachers chose. "How to lose a guy in 10 days" was even worse than I remembered, but "Suddenly 30" was as great as ever.
• Day 3: couldn't be arsed going to the immigration museum so I left early. 'Ra being over 18 :)
• Had a "skilled drivers" course. It was basically "Don't do drugs. Now lets go slam the breaks on your car :D".  It was actually quite fun, doing hairpin turns and slaloms at 45kph and losing control of the car.

  "You are now 8 ... 9...10 metres into the imaginary petrol tanker that stopped in front of you. You are now dead. Lesson learnt." Hehe ... death.

• Had a TSFX psychology lecture.
• Had DECV psychology lecture. Got lost for 30 mins at the end because of my !@#$%ing GPS. But Donna gave us all lots of lollies, so that was okay. I know more about psychology than the teachers. They offered me a job.
• I quit TAFE. Yay.
• Had psych exam. Pwnt it.
• Had GAT. lolz. May have to attempt to recreate humerous essays sometime.
  
• Went to the city with Andrew and Marie to see Medieval Scripts. The line was freakishly long. We recited shakespeare, and then got a demand for an encore by the people in front of us. The scripts were pretty. I want to learn Latin, and how to use gold leaf. The besiary had a picture of an upsidedown elephant, because apparently elephants have no joints in their legs so when they fall over they can't get up again.
• Ha!
• Did not, in the end, buy doughnuts. Did get high on apple flavoured liquorice. I bought 2 books. T'was great. Marie, plz do account of The Lair.
  
• Movie on Thursday. Yay :)
  
• Have been roped into Dungeons and Dragons on Friday. Sigh @ peer pressure.
• Byeeeee
  

So, sunday. We played a word game - I forget the name. It was like taboo, but easier. I baggsed being on AJ's team. Woah big surprise, AJ Andrew and I won. Then some people went and fiddled with the keyboard while others played the castle building game. Scott won cos of all his lil farmer doods. We lit all the cupcakes on fire (well, their candles anyway. It might have smelt a bit elsewise.) and then ate cake. Jess turned a couple of balloons into instant breast implants. After that, a large part of the afternoon was devoted to boobs, nipples and sex changes. Yeah, we're SO mature.
Gosh, I hope someone got pictures of that ...
ANYWAY Parnie turned up a lot of hours late, even more than usual, and we played Totally Gross. This time I made everyone veto the spinning-around-til-you-fall-over card, simply for the sake of the floor (vomit and carpet make an uneasy mix). Aparna and I lost very badly, but at least we learned stuff - like the fact that Uranus is a planet. Wow :O
Then we watched Lano and Woodley. Ah, slapstick, how could we live without your brilliant crassness?
Parnie and Jess left before dinner, which was tacos, which we had mainly because they were the esiest things to have which didn't have egg... and AJ's cake didn't have egg in either ...DARN Aparna for not eating things we prepared with consideration of her *grumbles*.
We tried to play 1000 blank white cards, but we ran out of time so it was a very short game indeed. But it did involve 2 cards being eaten, so I think it was worth it. Then we went to Darkzone ... and accidentally left Andrew at my place. Hehe. Mum brought him along with my sister. We played one team game and one free-for-all. I prefered the team game better (mostly because I kicked ass :P ) It was fun running up and down all the masses of levels, lying in wait and then shooting people in the back. Except when they shot you in the back, like Andrew did. Sniper.
And then we went home.
Aw.

Yesterday I drove to Marie's place(yes, I did get lost), and Gity was there which made me very happy because I haven't seen her in months and months. We played Uno and watched My Family. It was awesome fun. And we ate cup-a-soup from bowls. That was also mildly amusing, in a foody kind of way. Then Gity and I went to Josh's (and yes, we got lost. Thank god for GPSs) to return the games he had left at my house on sunday. Gity wanted to go home rather than stay, but once I figured out that it was because she wanted to talk to "someone" I asked Josh to log her on to msn and then we were fine. We ate yummy biscuits and played scrabble. Josh whupped our arses, but he let me cheat so I had great fun.
And then
sigh
we had to go home.
Gity saw her brother walking home when we got near her house so she made me race so that she could get to the computer first. Hehe.

And now I'd better go to bed cos I have to get up freakishly early tomorrow.
G'night.

Yes, I have been lazy and haven't updated in aaaages. Well, here goes.

On Monday the 7th of April, we took Merry and Mystic to the vets - Merry to be desexed and Mystic to get her teeth cleaned. (They were originally booked in for March 10, but then someone suddenly realised that that was a public holiday.)
So we took them in on Monday, but at the end of the day they still hadn't been done. We took them home and took them back again the next day. They told us to pick them up at 6 pm, so we turned up then ... and their surgery had been done, but there weren't enough people to discharge the animals or some such rot. After an hour and a bit, we realised that I was going to be late for my lecture, so dad drove me there (luckily I was only 10 minutes late) and left mum behind. When he got back to her at 8:15, the dogs STILL hadn't been discharged. Grief ...
Anyway, we got them home in the end.
A few days later, and Merry was getting worse instead of better. By the time she started screaming whenever she moved, we were extremely concerned and mum took her back to the vets. They wanted to do x-rays and all sorts of stuff, but mum said "Could we just try a laxative first?"
A few hours and a large number of compacted shits later, Merry was feeling much better. Mum returned with the dog and the antibiotics and painkillers they had cleverly forgotten to give us when they handed back the dogs ...
Poor babies.
And then a couple of days after that they came down with kennel cough from being in cages for so long with all the sick dogs around. Luckilly they've had their vaccinations so they were only violently ill for a couple of days, instead of weeks.
I don't think much of vets. They can go hang. We took Merry's stitches out at home.

Aaaanywho. I also went to a two day seminar thing about T-touch for dogs, which is a bit like massage, and I had a methods sac which was crap and a psych sac which was fine.

On the 17th, I was going to go to a French trivia night with Marie, but then she realised she had to be home for the computer installation guys. I really didn't want to go to TAFE, so I went to AJ's place instead. I never did tell my parents about that change of plans. Oops :P

The Saturday after that, lots of peoples went out for lunch. It was supposedly Yum Cha, but we ordered form a menu. I think I ate more pork dumplings than everyone else combined. Despite sitting next to Jessica the entire time, I still don't like tea, which I guess means I never will. But the food was nice, and affordable too .. so we went and blew our leftover cash on gelati. Mmm, gelati. We ate it next to the library, where we met a slightly retarded but funny old guy with a nice dog. Andrew stole Jess's handbag and hid it up a tree. Several times. I love Jess-Andrew wars. Hehe.

Over April I had a few driving lessons at Frankston, with a driving instructor who was actually nice and didn't make me feel like I had all the driving ability of a week old turd. That was a nice change :)
On the 24th, I went for my hazard perception test. I kept on clicking too early. As I got further and further through it, I grew more and more certain that I had failed. When it got to the end, I turned to the lady and she said "You got 64%." Woops, I thought. Mum is going to hate me. "Which is great, and you passed." I did what now?!  So. 64% is a pass mark for that. You learn something new every day. So my driving test went ahead as planned, on the 2nd of May at Frankston. I drove around for an hour beforehand with my instructor, which was supposed to clam me down. I'm not sure it helped much. In my test, despite having my instructor with me and a very nice examiner, I clammed up and lost a few marks for giving way for too long at round abouts and driving too slowly. But I PASSED. OMG. And with better than 90% too :P
So the past few days, I've been driving myself places. I was warned that it was going to be very different, but the only difference I notice is that it's way quieter and calmer without my mother there.
But I do get lost a lot now.
Thank god for GPSs.

Now backtracking a bit ... I went to Thisiri's "birthday party" on the 26th. I turned up what I would consider late at 20 past 6, and there and there was a handful people from La Trobe there. I got to know them a little and wished I hadn't. They are so VAIN, self-obesessed, dumb ... gargh. Most, not all. When some more people turned up, they started drinking wine and champagne and turning up the music. I was just getting more and more akward. The saddest part was that so were most of the people there. As more people from Glen Waverley turned up, it ended up just being a huge room of people with IQs greater than 110 pretending that they had IQs less then 90 so that they could enjoy drinking, dancing and being really sociable with people who they didn't know. It wasn't working. I left as early as possible, just before 9, and there were still people turning up. Remind me never to go to anything like that again.

And on the 28th Marie, AJ and I went to see The Tempest at Monash. It was really well done. The guy who played Prospero was great, and they did magic tricks throughout the play. I want to learn how to do magic tricks now :P

Sam got a dog, a 9 month old rotweiler called Phoebe, so I'm helping him to train her every Tuesday now.

On the 4th was AJ's "surprise" party at my place. Jess and Josh turned up early with cupcakes, so we decided to stick the candles in them - but they wouldn't stay in their holders. So we melted wax into the holders first. That was so much fun that when other people turned up, I had to make them go outside to burn a musk sick. It didn't work very well, mainly because the match boxes were crap and the one lighter dad found was broken. I did discover that you can melt musk sticks in the microwave, however, and then they taste like lollipops. Kudos to Marie for bringing musk sticks :)
We moved to the bottom room, in theory to play a game, but in practice to spend a while popping balloons.

I shall continue this account later, but for now I must skedaddle.
Au revoir.

AJ, Marie, Andrew, Scott and I went to see Labyrinth at the Rooftop Cinema just over a week ago. They took the train, but I went by car via Heidelberg because I had oh-so-cleverly left my learner’s permit at my dog lecture the night before.

I found the right building, went up the stairs … lots of stairs. And then up some more stairs. And then up some more. There were some security guards and I wondered if I was meant to have a ticket first, so I asked whether this was the rooftop cinema and they said it was, and then ignored me. I hung around for about 10 minutes, got freaked out by being alone with all the people, and went all the way down to the bottom again to wait. After a while, no-one came, so I went allll the way back up again. I tried calling people, but my phone was totally out of credit. (I whacked myself severely over the head for that.) But eventually AJ called and I went down a level and found them, stopped behind the security guards. Apparently they had had their IDs checked twice and weren’t allowed up until they got tickets, which we got and went up.

I could’ve got in for free. Hehe …

It was a charming movie, in a mildly pathetic way. I liked the characters which were puppets (ie almost all of them). They were cute. Specially the fox, and his occasionally real dog-steed. “Come back right now Ambrotious! Now!!!” *dog keeps running* “Or I shall never feed you again!” *screeches to a halt and rushes back*.

But EWWWWWW David Bowie’s pants *burries head in sand*. They are the stuff of nightmares.

We caught the train back at 11-something and spectacularly failed to be mauled by hobos. I think we were the ones freaking out other people, with our incredibly loud and slightly insane banter, drug-rehab-looking wristbands and throwing of oat bars. Yay, I’m a juvenile delinquent!

 

On Saturday I went to Jess’s house and watched completely random stuff on TV until Andrew turned up, whereupon we watched him scaring the crap out of the dogs. When AJ came we switched to Blackadder, which was a slight improvement on an ancient Indiana Jones and scared-shitless dogs. When Marie and Caitlin finally arrived, we took the poor little puplets to the park to get parboiled by the disgustingly smug warm weather. We got back and lay around listening to soundtracks for a while, and made nachos. Just like the last time we went to Jess’s house, the sauce seemed impossible to open … but this time, we had a guy in the house. We gave it to him and he opened it. No more struggling for half an hour with bizarre jar opening devices for us. (Remind me to always invite at least one guy to a party if there’s going to be any jars or bottles involved.) When it got dark we went to the park and howled at the full moon, kicked the marvellously crappy lamppost (hopefully waking neighbours and fulfilling my teenage need to be socially unacceptable scum) and then hid 60 eater eggs. In hindsight, it probably would have been better to play while we could still see the blasted things. Especially as some people *coughCaitlincoughAJcough* randomly hurled them into the middle of nowhere. After a long time searching, our final haul was 52 eggs (although 2 of them later proved to be acorns). We lamented a while over the fact that animals would find the missing eggs, eat them, and die horribly because of us. To prove this point, a tiny baby possum poked its head out and started climbing the tree right in front of us. “Jessica! That poor thing is going to die because of you!” And then we all laughed, went home and ate lasagne and chocolate. We decided to play murder in the dark and eventually figured out rules which made it work, after which it was awesome. Particularly when Jess put on some atmospheric music … stalker music. Killing people is fun *evil grin*.

However, waiting in the dark for some unknown murderer to leap out and strike you down is scary. But also in an incredibly fun way. I learnt that Marie is crap at getting away with murder, and that AJ can be terrifyingly good at it. I managed to commit mass murder and get it pinned on one of the victims (possibly only because Andrew looks shifty, but that was still great.) My dad turned up after a while and we played 2 games with him before I had to go home.

 

Because in the morning I had a dog trial. In agility Merry got a pass (woohoo!) and 3^rd place. Go the little dogs! In her two jumping rounds, she ran beautifully and missed out on a pass by some negligible things. I was so proud :P And in pairs, Merry did well but her partner B’Ellanna completely fucked up. It was hilarious. That was a great day ^_^

 

On Monday I did stuff with my family, which was awesome because we’re hardly ever all together with nothing vital to do. We went out walking, but unfortunately it was still disgustingly hot. We went down to a river and were going to have lunch, but the dogs thought the leaves and floating scum looked solid and fell in … at the same time. Fools. HA! They looked very surprised and very bedraggled. We laughed at them for a while, then rescued them and took them up to an oval to run around and dry. Then we had lunch and went back home.

 

On Tuesday after work I got an unexpected call from Jess, asking me to come over to Andrew’s. My parents decided to let me out of going to grandma’s (again – we’ve been eating with her a LOT recently), so I went. I arrived at his house (stumped at first by the lack of a doorbell. People should have doorbells. It’s the LAW. Well, it should be anyway.) and somewhat bemusedly greeted Jess and Andrew. They were playing some random computer game which involved slitting people’s throats and stealing all their stuff. That was mildly fun. Then Jess went home to spend time with a family friend. Andrew and I did a sdskdfj,beirhva,szmjdz bfcz*&$%^$@ bug puzzle-thing (to the sound of Harry Potter arriving at Hogwarts). We won. Eventually. It was missing one piece. Yay. Then we had dinner, which was rather nice tacos, and played a game whose name I have forgotten but which had “gross” in the title. After a little while his brother and sister joined us. It was hilariously good fun, and I beat them all at spinning in circles really fast and not falling over. HaHA! Dad turned up before we had finished, so he had to go away again and come back a few hours later.

 

Which probably annoyed my parents, because they didn’t want to have to pick me up from Josh’s party yesterday, so AJ said I could sleep over at her place.

I drove to the Rollerama. It was PISSING down with rain – the flooding kind. We crept past an accident on the freeway – the emergency services weren’t there yet, so the motorcyclist was lying in the middle of the road with just a blanket over him. Mum gave me crap directions so I pulled into 2 wrong entrances before I got to the right one … and then there was no-one there for about 10 minutes, and then we had to wait another 10 before Josh and the others turned up.

But when they did it was fun. By the end of the hour and a half, I had almost learned to skate (so long as the music had a good beat to it). I fell over soundly on my bum once – but only once - Josh got a blister, Jess didn’t skate and Andrew won a kitkat in some daft game involving a stick. We all headed back to Josh’s place (me in Marie’s car, ignoring mum’s express instructions. Hehe …) and figured out how to play Imaginiff with 14 people … that game is like a tradition now. AJ won. It was good to catch up with people who I haven’t seen for a while, and to meet some new people. Everyone slowly trailed off, Marie and Cameron leaving last at about 11:40, but AJ and I hung around because we couldn’t be bothered moving. We hijacked his msn, which was briefly amusing, and listened to songs and fiddled around with mobile phones until it was eventually nearly 2am and we decided it was probably time to leave. I met the rats that AJ is babysitting. They are gorgeous.

I woke up at 9am, made toast, and watched A Little Bit of Fry and Laurie. I’m glad I’ve been to her house often enough to know where everything is, because otherwise I would have been bored until 11, when she finally woke up. Apparently she read for an hour after we got back. Sick people and 3am should not be mixed, in my opinion, but never mind. We couldn’t find the scrabble board. We played magic cards (which AJ won. Do I even need to say it?) Then I decided to go to Josh’s place again while AJ had a shower. We ate plums and persimmons with a fork (Who uses a fork to eat fruit? … erm.) and watched Neon Genesis. It has a lot of breasts in it. Josh’s sister informed me that that’s because all Asians are perverts. When AJ arrived we played scrabble using only 3 letter words, with no scoring and a mild amount of cheating. Cheating is fun. Then I went to the Glen with Josh and his sister. He told me that his parents think that I’m his girlfriend. Brilliant (lol).

I got home around 4:40pm. And I walked the dogs, had dinner, typed this and watched Life on Mars. Final episode next week. O.M.G.

Well, it would be if I didn’t know all the spoilers.

Damned spoilers -_-

 

My freaking internet is freaking broken at the moment. (I typed this in word and will post it when my internet stops being an ARSE.) (One of my current favourite words at the moment. Arse. It’s a good one.)

I’d better go find a book or some other form of old-fashioned entertainment, but not one so gripping that I read til 3am. Which I seem to do with disgusting regularity. 3am is not a good time to be awake.

OK, so it's Saturday night now. My internet is still an arse and I can't get onto msn, but at least I found some good books. Gripping enough to keep me reading until 12:30 but bland enough to then put down. I still don't have Locke Lamora. Tonight we're going to the neighbour's place for dinner and for Earth Hour. Yay to no electricity! So now I'm going to shut down the computer and turn it off at the wall.

Byeee

PS thanks to Jess for pointing out that this post had been doublepasted. Stupid cut and paste ...

Fixed now, I hope.

Ya, the last post was a tad too enthusiastic for its own good. So shoot me.

Anyway ... more updates.

A couple of weeks ago my great aunt Ingrid came to visit. She stayed with grandma for most of the week, but we had her on wednesday. She's been living in America for the past 50 years, but she still sounds charmingly Swedish. I can't believe I've never met her before. She's an animal trainer and always has been. And she's so nice and friendly and loves everything. Particularly my dogs. =D
We took her to the Wallaby Yards and showed her newborn wallabies - little tammars. So cute. Then we went to GWSC so I could get them to sign a thing saying I can do my exams there, and all the teachers talked to me and said "Come back if you need help anytime! Really! Or just visit! Anything!" Nice to be missed :P Then we went to Melbourne Uni, but the O-week bbq was already over (aw). We ate at the union building, then went to the zoo. I got a couple of good pics of a snow leopard. The Orangutans were SO COOL - one of them swung up the the viewing platform, saw us all watching, and covered itself in a box. From time to time it would peek out, see us still watching and try to hide better. Eventually it gave up, waked over reaaally close to the glass, staring into the eyes of a little boy, hypnotised with his nose pressed against the window. Then a little girl came and shoved him out of the way, and the orangutan got bored and went and got it's box, then lay down to watch the other orangutans - but it got too absorbed and leant too far over, and it lost it's box over the edge! He was like ... crud. I love the zoo : )
Then we went to see the wild bat colony. Bats are great. Like huge, flying rats (with big sharp pointy teeth : E3  < emoticon with teeth.).
On saturday we went to the zoo agin, so Viv could get more pics (she went to the zoo with school on friday). I drove there and the traffic was soooo shithouse. Of course dad and Viv insisted on sitting still for half an hour everywhere to get the perfect shot. I was a tad bored by the end of that. But oh well. They did get some good shots.

Last thursday I took my dogs to TAFE for show and tell. Everyone loved them =D

On saturday I Marie and I went to Jess's place to watch Torchwood (why can I never remember the name of that series? Argh)
And today I went to Josh's place. I got there before he did, and his dad had NO idea who I was or why I was there. That was kinda funny.
Josh helped me with maths and we ate way too much. He spent ages trying to convince me to eat fish. He lost. I am the champion of obsinance. Then we played scrabble and cheated (why would you play if not for the fun of cheating?). And one of his rabbits is seriously aggro. It is the monty python rabbit. Yay! ^_^

And apart from the normal paraphenalia of stuff I do (like fat pony walking, yoghurt-drop-feeding rats and getting my dogs to tell me whether they prefer Mama Mia to Sex Bomb), that is mostly all. Toodles!

PS heat is bad. I dislike heat muchly.

PPS driving is now 44 hours, 15 mins and counting. I have my first lesson on wednesday.

It's getting to the point where I'm not sure whether I'll ever have the time to expand on my previous list of stuff that's happened since the exams. But now I have a little while - not long - so I'll make another dot-point summary of the stuff that's happened since I failed to expand on the last list. Only I can’t remember heaps of it. Damn. I’ll try and go through old emails to jog my memory … If I forget stuff or say something wrong, please correct me.

• I had my birthday party. We went to see The Golden Compass and had gelati. Some people came back to my place and played Uno and stuff. I got some awesome presents. Score : )
• I emptied my old piggybank and found $82 and 40 cents and 2 rupees and a button.
• I started helping at the Summer Film School. I got a lot of driving practice going to and from Melbourne Uni. I feel like I was cheating … I did almost nothing to help yet I got to do the entire course for free. The best bits where when I got to act like a brazen hussy on stage, and when they shot someone with a sub machine gun. In the lecture theatre. Hehe.
• And that took a whole month, except for the few days I was disgustingly ill. But I did get a diploma in filmmaking. So random …
• The Uni of Melbourne is up itself.
• I started studying Psychology and Maths Methods (why am I such an idiot … please shoot me now…) by distance education.
• I went to TAFE and sort of “accidentally” became a student. So now I’m doing Small Business Management. Yay … at least it’s useful.
• And I also started my Dog Obedience Instructor’s Course. That’s great. I love it.
• And in my “free time” (wasn’t this supposed to be a year off?!) I do my dog sports – agility, freestyle, hiking etc.
• In case you didn’t grasp that last little lament … I have basically no free time. So I tend to not do homework and go out with people instead. It’s great. Stuff that we did in the past while:
• On the 13^th of January (Since I went through emails to find dates I might as well put dates in, hey what?) some people went to Jess’s place to play games. Andrew put the counters in Marie’s shoes. It’s becoming a habit, that.
• On the 19^th we played Laserforce. Josh and I played pool afterwards – I suck. Hoorah!
• On the 22^nd we went to see Romeo and Juliet at the Botanic Gardens. It was slightly modernised in some points – like the truck – and it was really funny. People think tragedies shouldn’t be funny. I disagree. Some of the actors could have been better, but Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio were great and they’re the important ones, aren’t they :P
• On the 28^th was the Australia Day Duck Race, so Marie and Jess and Josh and I (and Josh’s friend) went to Birrarung Mar to watch. Some of the little duckies escaped, and the lifesavers “rescued” them. We didn’t manage to steal a duck. Disappointing.
• On the 3^rd of February we had a picnic at Jell’s Park. I took my dogs. The merry-making (ie football kicking and Bang playing) went on well into the afternoon.
• On the 7^th, Meggs passed away. I have already written about him, of course. : (
• But on the 8^th I went to My RSPCA interview anyway. I had my first day last Friday (22 feb)– I’m alternating between dog walking and working in the education barn.
• On the 12^th we went to see Sweeny Tod. It wasn’t as gruesome as we feared, because the blood looked like paint. They went through a LOT of paint. And all the songs are stuck in my head. Even the one about the cat pies.
  
• Went to Aparna’s place on the 13^th and watched “My Fair Lady”. I love that movie. It cracked me up. Mum left home with her phone turned off not knowing the house number. When I realised this I frantically SMS’d her and luckily she got it in time to interrupt us very conveniently at the end of an amusing card game.
• On the 15^th I went to Josh’s place and we played Imaginiff and stuff, and went to AJ’s house for lunch. After Marie and Andrew went home we watched Ever After, which was surprisingly enjoyable.
• On the 16^th I took Mystic to the Papillon club trial in the morning (she did some crazy stuff, but she had FUN!!! WHEE!!!), then raced off to my instructor’s course, went home and had lunch then raced Merry off to a trial in the afternoon. She fell off the A-frame in the first run, and refused it the next 2 runs. Her final run – at about 10pm – was Jumping, and she was just a few seconds overtime. Everything else was *perfect*. Love that dog.
• I went and crashed The Monash Law intro day. Which actually meant that I got stuck for hours in a horrendously boring lecture. But when we got out there was free food (and mud). And lots of friends were there, because most people I know are going to Monash … And they joined crazy clubs and Marie beat a knight with a big stick for ages, and we went and saw an incredibly suggestive play. Actually, it went through suggestive and out the other side. It contained condoms.

 

That took me way too long to write, even in a form more condensed than Campbell's pea soup. Ah dear. I should write more often and not get behind like this … but such is life.

Well, I only sort of died. But it was worth it.
I'm so behind in my posts. I've done a lot of stuff lately. Stuff is great. But when I do lots of stuff I don't have time to write. I'm really tired.
And omgf I'm 18 tomorrow. Which is good cos I keep on thinking 18 and now it won't be wrong. W00t.

I'll post, really ... sometime ...

Things that happened (in chronological order, and most of them on consecutive days) and which I will, at some point, hopefully write about:

• New Zealand
  
• Andrew's 18th
  
• The Results  came out
• I kidnapped Marie, AJ and Josh
  
• Aparna's 18th
• Presentation night, after which I went to AJs house and watched Fry and Laurie
  
• Jess's 18th, and the wonderful floods which followed
  
• ADCV presentation night
• My grandma died
• Christmas lunch with the Donnelleys
• Mum and Dad went to Tassie for the funeral
• I discovered that we had the entire collection of Black Books
• AJ came over and watched it with me
• Marie and Jess came over to edit film which, as it turns out, wasn't where it was supposed to be, so we just did fun stuff instead
• Had a New Years Eve party at Jess's place and slept over, if you can call 3 hours "sleep" and not just "light nap" (which is why I am so very tired and also was the day on which it ws so damned hot. I think Jess angered a weather god. Her events keep happening on massively extreme days.)
• Went and saw Spamalot with Jess and Marie and Viv and Mum. That was today. Mum got back yesterday. And, as I said, tomorrow I'm 18 and we're going to see a movie and then do something. I don't know what. I'm getting very good at doing completely unplanned stuff.

And I have a job helping at the Summer Film School at Melbourne Uni from the 7th of January until the 5th of February. I don't get paid, but I get to do the course for free. And it sounds like a great course, so in essence I get around $2000.

And yeah. Stuff is great. But now that I don't have a uniform to wear 5 days a week, I am discovering that I have no clothes. I went and got some stuff today, but I'll need to go get even more stuff sometime. Stuff I can wear for summer and not boil to death. I dislike summers muchly.
And on the 14th I discover what I'm going to do for the next 4 years of my life, when the uni offers come out. Woohoo.

Sleep would be great. Sleep would be rally great right now. Au revoir.

Okay now sorry if this is slightly inaccurate or if I skate over things. It was, what, 10 or 11 days ago now. I remember noooo-sink! Well I actually do. But it’s hazy. A glorious little hazy blur, just like the inside of a cataract (last bit is a Simpsons quote, ok?)

Spent about 15 minutes the night before convincing mum that I really *did* need a uniform to creatively destroy. Got there in the morning and couldn’t find my friends. I asked a girl I thought I’d seen before if she’d seen Marie and she said “No, but when you find her can you punch her for me?” Well, I did find her. We went around and signed shirts. Lots of shirts. Marie immediately took up half my back (and spelt her name wrong!) and Gity took the other half. All further attempts to sign my shirt were preceded by words to the effect of “Oh my goodness, there’s not much room”. And they signed my sleeves instead. By the time Phil turned up it was time to go to the hall for a ‘practice assembly’. Wasn’t much of a practice. We went through the song twice. Then we went out (Bharat had turned up by this stage) and started preparing for the skit. This involved me running to the Glen to buy a bottle of ‘piss’ (Juice. Orange I think.) and Jess and me going to the library to find a newspaper, or, failing that, and article about Ben Cousins and some horoscopes. Well, newspapers cannot be taken, only photocopied. Neither of us had a photocopy card. All horoscopes are blocked on the school network. Plan suitably imploded, back to the sci-tech. Well, assembly time came. I figured I was no longer needed for the ‘slutting it up for myspace’ scene (Phil did this perfectly well on his own. Teehee.) and went to sit next to Jess instead, and used her scissors to snip and generally artistically mangle my dress. Speeches came and went blowflies through the house when there’s a dead rat in the roof. Mr Penso made jokes about the ‘nicotene brothers’ and bagged his own ‘VCE swimming pool’ obsession. God I hate that pool. When Mr Penso talks about it I think he might just be trying to kill us all by making us fall asleep while we’re trying to swim. The first act was some guys running around stage to the tune of Doctor Jones, which was followed by (w00t) Marie, Bharat, Phil and Vanja. I have the whole script. Here I am not sticking it in because I’m hoping that EVENTUALLY it will end up on youtube or some other form of electronic media. If not, I will stick in the script. Teehee. It was great. And Phil didn't think it would work. Shun the non-believer. Shunnnnn-uh. Mr Imam was sitting right behind us and giggling the whole way through. As they were introduced everyone in the audience went “oooh it has MARIE in …” (ie, prepare to be bombarded with sick humour.) They were not disappointed. ‘ra for bagging every dodgy facet of modern society. :D

And then we all went home and had strawberry ice-cream.

Actually no we didn’t. We sat through a gay version of back street boys (people didn’t quite get the irony of this following the patronising statement that teenagers are unable to laugh at anything other than a gay joke). Then we had some good songs, some bad songs, got bombarded with hundreds of painful lollies during one of the latter, and then we were all called up to do The Songs. I was still sucking a lolly and had thrown away the wrapper. Oops. I nicked someone random person’s lyrics ‘cos no-one had had enough foresight to bring theirs, me included. I’m going to remember the line “Hit Me Ramsey” for a very, very long time. The song is, in fact, on youtube, but the camerawork is frankly shite and very sea-sick-making.

And THEN we all went home and had strawberry ice-cream.

Well no, actually, I went home and had a shower and waited for mum and dad to come and take me to Jess’s place, where she and Gity and I watched Doctor Who and I ate junk food (as is my wont) and generally made time disappear into a black hole, which we will never get back (unless of course my plans to make a real working Tardis actually happen. Which would be awesome.) Did make up – Marie turned up in time to tsk at my eyeliner, add more, realise that it was way too much and painstakingly remove most with one of those ear cleaney cotton stick thingys.

Wayne drove us. Wayne does corners way too fast. We got lost and did 3 or 4 circuits of the park before he finally gave up and called Albert by the Lake, and of course we found it as soon as the phone started ringing. We tried to figure out where our table was and couldn’t, until Josh found us and showed us to where AJ was sitting in a dress! Squee!

And we took loads of photos and the food was boring and mildly shithouse, and Gity had brought the blue unicorn who takes LSD and steals Charlie’s kidney. We had fun torturing him.

And eventually the music improved and we went to dance, and it was awesome and fun and stuff. And Gity danced with a cow, and she was happy, and Marie convinced Mr Tatnall to dance with her, and then we joined the end of a conga line (he told her off for abandoning him. Hehe…) AJ and various transitory other people made a collection of glasses filled with water on which you could play the tune of Fur Elise. Yay!

Oh yeah, and we graduated.

Took a while to get through everyone. Half the year level up, classes in rows and people arranged alphabetically, call out name, shake hand with principal, take certificate, go away. Wow, that was really worth attending school for 14 years.

Aaaand … yeah. Went home, had shower, got up 5 hours later, got in the car, picked up Gity and Marie, went to Jells Park. On the way we saw a whole hoard of people making their way there, still in their formal clothes. (Nuts, all of them. Nuts. With beans.) We got slightly sidetracked. We were faved with a fork in the road and mum said “which way?” and we all pointed right so she took the left road. Sigh. Anyway, got there, met people. We were going to the playground but Jess came, so we didn’t.

About half the people there had stayed out all night and were looking slightly fatigued.

 

I will continue this tale after I have taken the dogs for “A little shit tour” outside. Mum’s words, not mine. Eloquence and propriety are her particular fortes.

 

Okay I’m back. Where was I? Oh yeah, breakfast. I went up when they first called out that food was ready, so I only had to stand and get blinded with smoke and flying grease for a little while before I got a sausage. The other people had to wait in a line. Suckers (snh snh snh). When everybody had been suitably fed, we resumed our quest to find the playground. We played on the swings. Swings are teh awesomeness personified.

Then I went exploring. I remember it from when I was a little tacker. Fond memories. ‘twas nice. For some reason we all ended up on the rope thingie. (Yes, I know, I have a very vast and varied vocabulary…) Actually, I think it may have been my fault, cos I went over there to sit with Andrew and David (and to take photos of him being a fool).

Other people started playing with a Frisbee, so I went to the car to see if I could find some sort of object for us to play games with, but there was none, even though there usually are. This is the downside of actually tidying things up. Mum said either she would drive Gity and me home now or we could make our own way back whenever. I went to tell Gity and bumped into Bharat, who had only just bothered to wake up. Gity said stay, so we stayed. Mum brought out a sunhat and sun block, but it was cold and I was wearing a jumper and I didn’t want any. She was disgustingly smug when I got sunburnt, damn her. I would listen to her more if she wasn’t wrong 75% of the time.

Anyway.

Oh, and Josh took a picture of this Minah bird that came and stole our drinks.

I don’t think people had really eaten enough, because someone decided that we catch and eat it. I think it may have been me. And then throughout the day there were multiple suggestions that we catch and roast assorted wildlife.

Phil and AJ and Gity and Marie and I all decided to take a wander down to the lake. Most people were starting to head off at this point, but it was a nice day and we had all been sensible and gone to bed the night before. It was really nice. The daisies in the grass were blooming, causing nostalgic memories of daisy chains in primary school and, in some cases, hay fever. We talked and laughed (Phil actually collapsing onto the floor pissing himself when we told him about the SMS Marie got from … someone …)

 We got to the lake and decided that the other side looked decidedly greener, and we set off again.

We found a sign pointing out the way to the Dandenongs. “Hey, let’s all walk to the Dandenongs!” “Okay, lets go.” I called Jess to inform her of this. She didn’t seem to find it quite as hilarious as I did. If it’s possible to raise an eyebrow verbally, she did. She told me that Josh had come to find us. AJ tried to phone Josh, but he didn’t answer. About 1/3 of the way more around the lake, we realised that his number had changed and I called him and told him where we were going. He caught up to us just before we reached the other side, riding very fast on his bike.

AJ threw a rock in the water and suddenly every duck in the lake was at our feet, staring up hopefully underneath the signs that said basically “If you feed the ducks they will die”. I suggested we eat them. Duck is nice.

On the way back Phil tried riding in tandem with Marie. It didn’t really work very well, but at least they didn’t kill themselves.

About this point Phil realised that I had just walked a couple of kays over gravel with no shoes on. For some reason, this surprised him. I explained: “I don’t like shoes.”

On the way back I made friends with one of the many flies who were enjoying the now sunny weather. His name was Frank. I said, “AJ! I found a new friend for you! His name is Frank.” And I proudly proffered the little animalcule for her inspection. She killed him. I collapsed in hysterics. Josh took my shoes. As we passed the teahouse we met an odd sight – a post wearing a child’s jacket. It looked eerie. I took a photo.

We found Jess under a tree, and we lay there for a while. It was calm and warm and nice. Josh found a very pretty bug and Gity named him Quentin, and he was my friend and Marie smacked my hand and made me lose him. AAAAAAAA

 Next time I will think a little harder about what I wear, cos my top was too short for my pants and I had to keep pulling them up. You didn’t need to know that. Sorry.

After an hour or so of lizarding (lying outside and enjoying the sun), we decided to get lunch at the teahouse. It was very expensive. Josh took photos of people’s shoes. Jess’s grandpa was there, and he took her home, and it was time for us to go home too.

“Er … how exactly are we getting home?”

“Let’s walk.”

“Okay.”

Hm, great idea. All the way from Jells Park to the Glen. It was fun though, in an it’s-suddenly-35degrees-and-we-don’t-have-hats-or-sleeves-or-sunblock kind of way. Except for Marie, who had sun block so she didn’t burn her eyelids again, and of course Gity has her scarf. People took turns riding the bikes. When Marie rode Phil had to carry her handbag and he struggled for a while to see if there was a word for how it made him feel, and came up with “emasculated”, and then wasn’t sure if it even existed. We found a bus stop, but the bus wasn’t gonna come for ages so we kept walking. Eventually AJ and Josh had to split off to go home, and eventually Phil too. Gity and Marie and I were getting thirsty, so we went and became juvenile delinquents and stole water from someone’s garden tap. And we came across the Glen, all majestic and huge and air conditioned, and Marie went to catch the bus and Gity and I went and bought ice-cream. Not strawberry. But it was nice. And we went home. And it was late. And there was a guy on our bus still in his formal clothes. And we raised our eyebrows at him, but not while he was looking, because that would have been rude. The end.

 

PS, today was our English exam. I think it went moderately shite. Won’t know until results come out. Went to Jess’s house, didn’t really do much useful but ate good food and watched 300, which is incredibly Gory (with a capital G) but also beautiful. And yeh. Other exams next week. Eep etc.

The actual end.

Well, it will be once I've pinched some of Josh's photos and stuck em in where they should be. Tomorrow. Pip pip.

Edit: Done it. The END.