Bon Voyage. To Me.

After a truly hectic and stressful 6 months of work, I am off on my first real holiday in close to a year, even if it is a brief one.

Despite my excitement about the trip, my ability to procrastinate crosses over into all parts of my life. I didn't do my laundry until getting home from a pub trivia night around 10pm, and this was a conversation with my flatmate this morning:

Flatmate: Uh, shouldn't you start putting stuff in that suitcase.

Zander: Yeah.

Flatmate: Haven't you been awake for like 2 hours?

Zander: Yeah.

Flatmate: What the hell have you been doing?

Zander: Uh, well, I was emailing, and I just listened to the new Lindsay Lohan song online, and had a snack.

Flatmate: Wow...

So yeah, now I'm blogging. Even though I need to leave in less than 15 minutes and I'm still not sure how this laptop will fit into my bags.

Needless to say, I won't be updating here much, if at all, while I'm away. As always, you're welcome to go back in time and read about what an asshole I was in 2005.

You Are Not Tall Enough To Experience This Ride

It was a pretty typical weekend, with Saturday's boozing starting around noon and then moving to Fish's new apartment around the corner.

It was seeming pretty civilized until I noticed that both Fish and Juice (unfortunate combination of nicknames, can I just say) were slurring and starting to lack any sort of coherence, despite the fact that I'd had just as much or more to drink than they had.

When you're 6'4" (and a half, bitches), it's easy to forget that people who are almost a foot shorter than you might not handle large intakes of alcohol quite as well.

In any case, photo of the month:

Because passing out on your sofa when the sun is still shining is always a Kodak moment (even his dog looks disappointed in him).

Different Strokes

Some people actually spend their average weekday doing "work". So I hear, anyway.

I spend half my day trying to convince people that Chris Noth/Mr. Big has a secret past where he was the lead singer of Right Said Fred.

Come on, get past the hair issue...can't you see it??

Maybe He Just Hates Money

Continuing in his crusade to offend anyone in the world who has ever had even an ounce of respect for money (never forget the iPhone incident), Juice managed to turn an otherwise low-key evening into the reason he will be eating soup in his final days before next pay.

After having a few drinks out at Stranger's place in the 'burbs, Juice figured he hadn't spent much money so may as well shell out $50 on a cab ride home, which I suppose is reasonable. Except that when he got home, he realized his keys were still sitting back at Stranger's house. Oh yes. Guess who ended up taking another $50 cab ride BACK to the asshole of nowhere and spending the night there anyway.

If that isn't almost the equivalent of simply flushing $100 down the toilet for no real reason, I don't know what is.

What Not To Bring To Trivia

Went to trivia the other night. We didn't do so well. If you want to avoid the errors of my ways, I suggest the following:

• Don't go to trivia in Australia when you have no Australians on your team. Rookie mistake.

• Don't go to trivia with 4 people who will mock you for wanting to hear the questions (thereby drowning out any chance of hearing the question repeated).

• Don't go to trivia with a girl who will drink three glasses of wine and start playing some pictionary version where you draw your answers.

• Don't go to trivia with a girl who insists on being the scribe, yet can't spell. Like, at all.

• Don't go to trivia at a pub where you might run into your friend's drunk sister who happens to smell like she eats cigarettes for at least 2 meals a day, and has no sense of personal space.

Oh right, I should probably mention that you should probably not go to trivia when you're secretly a super competitive asshole who will post a bitter blog entry about it later in the week, so that your friends will read it and then not invite you to trivia again.

Schadenfreude, Interrupted

There's a new channel here in Sydney (LifestyleYOU) that seems to be made for me - 90% of the programming is trashy UK reality shows about everything from fat people, to parents have zero common sense when it comes to raising children, to brides who are willing to let their husbands plan the entire wedding and surprise them on the day. I'm still not clear on why these people participate in these shows, but I love them and every single one of their silly sounding accents.

The latest show that seemed to have a lot of promise was Spendaholics - showing us people who seem to have zero concept of personal finance management, and gladly drop a few hundred pounds on a pair of jeans that don't actually fit.

The primary appeal of such a show, of course, is to remind ourselves that despite our own failings, we are not quite as dumb as these people. And so, the first 20 minutes or so is fantastic.

And then...they bring in the psychologist. And he's like, a real psychologist. I personally tend to prefer the fake ones, like the "psychiatrists" they would have on hand at that makeover competition show The Swan, who would actually tell participants that their unwillingness to get a nose job showed that they weren't really committed to changing their life around. But no, this guy is serious. And within minutes we have to hear some pathetic story that ends up somehow linking the spendaholics purchase of a $2,000 projector to the one time their dad didn't take them to the zoo when they were six. And for some reason, it always ends with the spendaholic taking a walk on the beach with one of their parents to discuss whatever childhood trauma has been dug up.

So yeah, my advice is watch the show, but switch off after the first 15 minutes. It's not like any of us actually want to watch people getting helped, for god's sake.

That Hurts

The blogosphere, twittersphere, and various other spheres are all enamored with the "90 Types of Bitches" list that seems to have been written by one or more 3rd graders in the DC-area, so I just want to make sure EVERYONE is across it.

I qualified for the list by the time I got to category #2, but feel free to point out which other categories you guys think I fall into.


And of course, the original blog post and full list can be found here: http://andiamnotlying.com/2010/types-of-bitches/

Go for the amazing list. Stay for the hilarious comments.

Successful Friday Night

You know you had an awesome Friday night when you:

a) don't actually remember getting home

b) left your friend talking to a hot German

c) made new best friends with a group of Irish people based on the retelling of your classic racist jokes

d) can't bear the thought of drinking on Saturday until 6pm when you crack open a bottle of gin.


Hurrah.

You Guys Are Gonna Love This

As I may or may not have mentioned here, I started running a few kilometers every other morning or so starting a few months back. I figured it was the best way to make sure I wasn't fat in my birthday photos, since the swimming alone didn't seem to be cutting it.

Last week an email was sent to the entire division of my company asking if anyone wanted to join our company's team for the corporate biathlon coming up in March. Since the distances didn't look too horrifying, I responded to indicate that I had some interest but was very new to running in particular so wouldn't be offended if others were a better fit for the team. I figured, maybe there would be a B or even C team where performance didn't really matter.

About 10 minutes later I got an email confirming that I was representing the company in the biathlon with 3 others (who would all qualify as the most fit people I have personally ever met) and a corporate shirt to compete in was on its way.

Needless to say, I am already having visions of being the next big thing on YouTube. Also, my mother hasn't stopped laughing since I told her about this three days ago.