Off To Paris

First I should mention that when I'm having dinner with my parents in a sleepy French village, the last song I expect to hear in the tiny restaurant is "Pony" by Ginuwine. But when it happens, it is awesome. I will just be thankful that Domini isn't here yet, as I can only imagine what dance moves we would have been inspired to break out with.

Speaking of Domini, I'm about to head to Paris now to meet her, so everyone have a Happy New Year and I'll try to manage some sort of update next week.

Still Behaving

Honestly the most drunk I've probably been was last night's dinner party, and that was really due to mixing too many types of alcohol, not because I was doing keg stands or anything of that sort.

My favourite part of the night was probably the drive home where my mother called my annoyingly drunk stepdad an "asshole" and followed that up with "shut up or get out". I can't even remember why it happened, I just thought it was fantastic.


In other news, I continue my appreciation of all things weird and European in the world of music. I'm still getting into a lot of the actual French stuff, however I saw this earlier today and had to share. Be sure to watch at least the first minute of the video for the full WTF factor:

Starting Rock & Diva Avari - Don't Go

A Nice Change

Well first I have to say that the trip getting here was probably the longest I've ever endured. About 38 hours door to door. But 3 flights and 2 train rides later I finally arrived at my mother's house here in the French countryside (aka the asshole of nowhere), just in time for Christmas Eve dinner and drinks. I even impressed myself by staying up until well past midnight and opening a few gifts before having to go up to my room and collapse.

Probably the part of my trip that you would all enjoy hearing about most would be the point where I totally thought I was getting checked out while I was standing in a line at Heathrow. Seriously, I had a certified hottie look me up and down from head to toe. And just when I was a little too impressed at getting checked out after some 24 hours of traveling, said person pointed at my feet and says "Um...is that yours?" Looked down and one of my freaking passports was lying on the ground. Damn, I am such a smooth operator sometimes.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So far though, this place is just as relaxing as I remember. I've spent all of my time sleeping, eating, drinking and reading, and even took a nice walk along the cliffs nearby with the family. How very wholesome.

Of course now there are about 40 people beginning to descend on our house for my mother's annual Boxing Day event. This means there will be mostly people who either barely speak English or don't speak it at all surrounding me on all sides. The trick will be to drink just enough that I am relaxed about speaking my basic French to our guests. The more probable outcome is that I will drink so much that I will start slurring in Swahili and then get confused as to why people won't talk to me anymore. Wish me luck.

The Glamorous Life

So I'm almost ready to head to the airport and jet off for Paris. Actually, I'm ridiculously hungover and haven't started packing yet even though a car will be picking me up in an hour, but I'll work it out.

Considering the amount I paid for the tickets it would be only fair that they will have 4 Burmese virgins massaging my shoulders for the entire journey, but I'm guessing that won't be the case. Actually I'm just hoping I will really arrive in France on Christmas Eve like I'm supposed to, considering the current chaos at Heathrow, which I'm flying through. After a week of partying entirely too much, I'm in no condition to put up with that kind of nonsense.

Anyway, everyone enjoy the holidays. I will try to update a couple of times while I'm jet setting, but rest assured that there will be plenty of pictures after these two weeks, most of which will ensure that I will never have a career in politics.

Naughty Girls Need Love Too

*Apologies for the title, but it was the last song that came on my iPod and it's blocking any attempt at something creative or less embarrassing.

So last night...I headed home, and at 7.15 I found myself sitting on my couch watching Friends and finishing off some dinner, pleased that I was really going to pull off a quiet night.

And of course at 1.30am I was heading home from a bar. Hopeless.

Events between those times included outrageous amounts of beer, an engagement announcement, 5 tequila shots each to celebrate, hilarious discussions about people we don't talk to anymore who are terrible liars when there's hard evidence to the contrary, someone borrowing a skateboard from a male prostitute (eww) and ending up at the doctor getting their arm put in a sling, and much much more.


So now I'm at work on the last day before the two week shutdown and I'm not sure I'm even hungover yet, but I'm still eyeing the booze fridge like a fucking pinata because you know we are gonna raid that thing as soon as the afternoon hits.

Loving China Right Now

Not that I needed any more reason to think China was awesome after my trip to Shanghai in May, but I am seriously want to worship whoever it was over there that decided that fat people are no longer allowed to adopt Chinese babies. China, you are my hero.

Random Tuesday Night Drinking

There weren't any real plans for drinks on Tuesday after work, but one member of the group managed to have their third breakup of 2006 and the team instantly mobilized to celebrate this latest development.

I headed to the usual spot to meet up with The Unit (as we've decided we should be called) and immediately started throwing the beers back. As it usually goes, the random get together turned into one of the funnest nights we've had in a while.

Fantastic moments:

• Paddy imitating a retard, causing K-Town to spew a mouthful of white wine across the table
• The barback reaching over Mickey's shoulder to get an empty glass, and Mickey thinking it was me and biting the barback's arm. He realized it wasn't me once his teeth made contact with a hairy arm instead of the sleeve of my shirt. It was awesome.
• Ending up at a karaoke night at one of the usual trashy bars only to have Chip and Paddy get on stage to sing a duet. Made even more embarrassing by Paddy just standing on stage staring into space with a drunken look in his eye, because he couldn't find the screen where the words were. Humiliating for all of us, I assure you.

Not a clue what time I got home, but I'm completely useless today and loving it.

How The Grinch Made All His Friends Cry

It was a bit of an odd weekend for me. On Friday I stopped my drinking after about 6 hours to try and save some energy for the planned festivities on Saturday.

Unfortunately I woke up on Saturday with the unusual urge to injure anyone to come my way. It's not that often that I'm in a bad mood, but when it happens it is UGLY. Realizing this was the case, I was sure to warn my friends as soon as I met up with them for our Christmas BBQ (god, that's so Australian) that my bitchiness was not to be taken personally. And as a disclaimer, I would like to say that someone else did storm out of the apartment before the end of the night without saying goodbye to anyone, but I really really had absolutely nothing to do with it, thank you very much.

I decided that I just needed "more wine" to make everything better, which left me just as bitchy but at least I don't really remember the last couple of hours of the night. Ah well. Merry Christmas, sorry I was a bit of a Scrooge. I actually checked my horoscope belatedly, and it basically said "you will be in a FOUL mood today, and there's nothing you can do about it." I shit you not.

At this point I'm just trying to get through a somewhat stressful week at work so I can get on that freakin' plane on Saturday and head off on my fabulous jetsetting in Europe. Apologies if I bitch you out in the process. Toodles!

Overheard In The Office

The assistant walked up to me to talk about an invoice yesterday. Unfortunately for her, me and one of the female designers were in the middle of a conversation, so this is all she heard:

Zander: Kinda makes you wish you were a lesbian, huh?

Designer: Well, I had sisters growing up, so we did that.

...resulting in...

Assistant: OH MY GOD WHAT???


By the time I'd finished explaining that we were randomly talking about same-sex couples being able to share clothing I was crying with laughter, and she still looked skeptical. The designer just looked embarrassed.

God knows what the rumours around the office will be by next week...

Celebrity Me

Sometimes I like to ponder aloud who exactly I would be if I was a celebrity. I often say I'd be Paris Hilton, but let's face it, I simply wouldn't have the old money charm to even attempt to balance out my trashy image. And occasionally I'll bring up Andy Dick, but I can't imagine ever genius enough to replicate some of his antics.

Today, I was reading one of my usual trashy websites and came to the harsh realization that I'd be more like the tragic Tara Reid:


Talentless, a messy drunk, and downright irrelevant other than to be someone else's laughing stock.

And then I just thank the lord that I'm not actually famous.

Catching Up

Sorry it's taken so long to post something about the weekend, I've somehow managed to end up with work to do these days.

Of course now I found myself in the extremely unenviable position of having a ton of things to do, but being unable to do them until people send me files or fix systems or whatever else. I could use this time to start my long neglected Christmas shopping, but I think I'll blog instead.


Friday -- the work Christmas party

I'll be honest, this wasn't that crazy. My theory is that Australians spend so much time drunk together as it is that a Christmas party is just another drop in the bucket. Having said that, there were some decent highlights. My favourite was easily one of the directors swinging his pool cue around drunkenly and almost blinding the group personal assistant. As a matter of fact it was so close that he managed to leave a chalk mark on her eyelid. Impressive.

I was running my mouth as usual, but managed to leave after 8 hours without saying anything too stupid. The star of the show was the Swedish girl who sits next to me and always gets a bit crazy when she has a couple of drinks in her. At one point I just started snapping pictures of her because it seemed like she was doing something weird every 2 minutes or so.

The rest of the pics are here.


Saturday -- birthday drinks

Woke up feeling fine and started the birthday drinking at 3pm at the Beauchamp (which is annoyingly pronounced "Bee-chum" for some reason. Reminds me of driving near Pittsburgh when I went to college there and seeing "Versailles" and knowing that the locals called it "Ver-sails". So aggravating). The turnout was good and only one person had to be sent home because they were so trashed. I'll be nice and not print her name here, although it's blatantly clear from the picture here who I'm talking about.

Otherwise the night turned into some trashy dancing and then a fine Indian dinner around midnight before crawling into bed. Good times, and much preferred to my birthday party last year which I only vaguely remember.

I Love Today

Went to the open bar last night but I'll admit that it was a little too crowded for me to really enjoy all the free booze and food.

The night also managed to take a turn for the worst when I stopped by Paddy's place and he attempted to introduce me to the world of "granny porn". Absolutely vile. I'm actually grimacing while I type this.


But it's all good. Today is our work Christmas lunch which is promised to devolve into a pub crawl towards the city. The only issue is that we are leaving the office at 12.30, and I didn't bother showing up until around 9.30, which makes it seem somewhat pointless to actually start doing work at this stage in the day.

I almost did earlier, and then a friend and colleague asked me how to do something in Outlook. Instead of showing her in 2 minutes by going down one floor, I created a PowerPoint presentation with screenshots and instructions and emailed it to her. It just seemed more fun that way.

I've got my camera today so I will hopefully have something to share with you all next week. In the meantime, enjoy this because it's hysterical.

It's My Party...

My actual birthday was very nice but pretty uneventful. Alas, work is a little too busy for a couple of days that I can show up drunk or hungover. A few moments:

• Insisted on buying myself Starburst Gummy Fruits on the way into work for breakfast, because it was my birthday and I could do what I wanted. Started to feel sick mid-morning, and looked down to realise I had eaten the entire bag in about 20 minutes.
• Recovered from my self-inflicted nausea long enough to head to lunch with the A-list from work.
• Stupidly chose the place that everyone from work goes, meaning every 5 minutes someone we didn’t invite would walk by and wonder why we they’d been left off the invite list. This is how I end up as part of the “Mean Girls” crew in every office I work in. On Wednesdays we wear pink!
• When being hounded about something work-related on a conference call in the afternoon, I actually said “Hey hey, it’s my birthday, you have to be nice to me”, and it totally worked and shut them up. I still haven’t done what I was supposed to do.
• Left the office as quickly as possible after 5pm so I could get to drinks at Darling Harbour. Was mean to everyone because it was my birthday and I knew they’d have to put up with it, and I’m clearly 6 years old.

After all that, the answer to the usual question is NO, I do not feel older, although it is weird to think that I am officially in my “late-twenties”. I’m still hoping my eyesight will hold out long enough that I can wait until 30 to get the glasses I clearly need desperately, but as I said last night, it’s not really a problem until I start having trouble seeing myself in reflective surfaces.

Hang in there for some real drunken excitement. This week includes an open bar after work tomorrow, our work holiday lunch and pub crawl on Friday afternoon, and birthday drinking starting at 3pm on Saturday. Surely at least one of those can land someone in either the hospital or the local jail.

I'm Surprised This Laptop Doesn't Hate Me Too

I almost managed to pull off the low-key weekend I was aiming for. Friday night was a few of us having dinner at Longgrain, favourite restaurant in Sydney. Saturday night was a quiet one with some wine and a DVD. So of course by 3pm on Sunday we were all sitting on a balcony overlooking the harbour and demolishing the leftover supply of alcohol from last weekend's Thanksgiving picnic. Ah well, it was worth a shot.

I don't really have any crazy stories, so instead I'm going to subject you to some bitching. You see, technology has turned on me in the past week. Here's the update:

• My Foxtel (that's cable TV, for the non-Aussies) has decided to get difficult every since we got a new TV last week. I finally got through to technical support yesterday, who "explained" to me that I had to go out and buy some whole new fancy type of TV cable that I can't pronounce. I have fortunately obtained it and after plugging random cords into various holes, I now have a picture AND sound on the television. We have no idea how to involve the VCR in this new process, and at this point I don't care.
• I managed to crack the screen on my oh-so-lovely mobile phone not too long ago. Granted I was over the novelty of it all, but until it's fixed, I'm relegated to using my New York phone which has the charming quality of not actually identifying calls and text messages when they come in. I'm actually starting to memorise people's numbers, something that no one has done in over 7 years. It's scary.
• And the winner of this trifecta of retardness is that my iPod adapter/charger that I bought only 3 months ago has decided to stop working. Of all the most unlikely things to stop working, how the hell did this happen? I don't even understand how it's possible. It just...doesn't...work.

Fortunately for me, this is where my silly habit of keeping every receipt in every box in every bag for every gadget I buy under my bed comes in handy. Too bad I'm usually too drunk to handle things like this.

I promise I will have more stories in the next few days, considering it's my birthday week AND our work holiday lunch/pub crawl is coming up soon too. That will definitely require pictures.

Kindred Spirits

Had this email from Emla this morning:

"[My friend] hosted Thanksgiving dinner at her place for herself and a few other people who weren't going away somewhere. Anyway, this annoying girl invites herself but only can make it to the dessert portion of the evening. Fine. So, she shows up with a bottle of dessert wine (fitting) and is annoying. Comes time to leave and she took the 1/2 drunk bottle of wine with her when she left. How gauche."

Perhaps. Or maybe she's like me and she feels naked walking down the street without a drink in her hand. God, I hate it when people are so judgmental...