Saturday, February 25, 2006

Why don't you walk away?

(yes, I'm still going with the song-lyric-as-title idea).

I just went to mass with my family as I'm not working tonight, I'm working tomorrow instead. Every mass they read out the names of the sick and recently deceased in our parish. Despite the fact that I've never met and will never meet most of these people (with the exception of one man who used to mow our lawn), when you hear their names week after week you start to develop some kind of tenuous connection with them. Then every week when the names are read out, you begin to feel very tense. Are the names you know still on the sick list? Or have they 'departed into eternal life before us'? You get more and more nervous until you hear that name. Then you breathe a sigh of relief. They're still sick, but they're still alive.

...It's quite morbid, I know. But I get this feeling every time I go to mass.

-R

slow burn

holy crap, someone just delivered the paper and I still haven't gone to sleep.

laptop with wireless internet that can be surfed while sitting in bed = evil!

-R

Friday, February 24, 2006

Try to catch a deluge in a paper cup

I've given up trying to think of interesting titles all the time. If I can't think of anythig within 10 seconds of the page loading, then I'm going with whatever lyric's stuck in my head at the time. This one's from the Sarah Blasko version of 'Don't Dream It's Over', originally by Crowded House. Can I just say - girl crush! She's gorgeous. And has a good voice. I got her stuff from G and I've listened to it quite a bit. Heaps of new music. Was listening to Fiery Furnaces today (damn, Eleanor Friedberger is a lucky girl). My favourite of theirs is still Tropical Iceland, which I didn't actually know was by them until this week. I still haven't listened to any David Bowie, but I'm thinking tomorrow after I get home from work and I'm chilling out in my (still rather untidy) room I might give it a shot. I'm eager to hear 'Slow Burn' after hearing it covered very well by G's friends in Burbank on the fourth of July last year.

Anyway, speaking about work, it was damn busy tonight. We didn't actually do that many covers, I think about 60 which is a fairly good night for us, but they all came at once and for about an hour or hour and a half it was like a busy saturday night. I surprised everyone, not least myself, by keeping up quite well with the dishes. I wasn't feeling my best, a little lethargic for the first couple of hours. It's amazing how a full restaurant can motivate you though. S kept me sane and happy too. Unfortunately she had to go home early because she's been working doubles all week and is exhausted, so she did a bit of cleanup after service ended, then it was all me until closing time. I think I did OK considering, I only finished a few minutes after front of house, and this was with me doing two people's worth of packing up, cleaning the stove, benchtops, dishwasher, rubbish, mopping and sweeping and all the other little things involved in closing. It's the least glamourous job I've had as I end up smelling revoltingly of oil and feeling pretty oily too, but funnily enough I quite enjoy it, despite being wrecked at the end of the night. I came out the front of the restaurant when I'd finally finished to wait for my mum and there were these two hot young things who'd just come from Mint, the nightclub across the road. There they were, all long hair and fake tan and stilettos and non-existent dresses, and there was I, all greasy pale skin and hair and bonds trackies and clarks school shoes. I would not swap with them for a second (...well, they did look like tacky slappers).

I've got work tomorrow again at 11am, so I'm waiting for my bro and his lovely girlfriend to come home so I can say hi and go pass out for 8 hours.

-R

PS The other contender for the lyric tonight was 'gonna have nutella tonight', a misheard lyric from 'Tell Her Tonight' (It's meant to go 'gonna have to tell her tonight). But although it made me nearly wet myself with laughter when I read it, it's not really a lyric, so the serious soulful one wins this time.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

So come and dance with me Michael

Here I am again at G's place. We haven't actually got a whole lot done because her iPod arrived this morning and we've kind of been distracted. I raided her iTunes music library and doubled my music stash - I now have something like 6.4GB of music on there! Lots of David Bowie now. And the Franz Glastonbury 2004 gig. Can't wait to hear it :) I'm discovering a lot of new stuff as well, like Big Soul. And I want to get my iPod engraved...G has 'Ich heisse superphantastisch' on hers, I might get the accompanying line 'Ich trinke schampus mit lachsfisch' on mine.

Tonight we're doing the pub quiz again. We'll see whether we can do better then second last this time round!

-R

Barcode SUCKS...

...but I'm sure you all knwo that by now. We went there after the quiz night (where we came third, hooray! and yet boo), for the second week in a row. The song list is shit and the DJs such a fox fm wannabe. We're going to find a new karaoke bar for next time.

-R

Monday, February 20, 2006

You can feel my lips undress your eyes...

(the lyric from Darts of Pleasure that was playing a second ago when I was trying to think of a title).

Just thought I'd write a quick entry, seeing as I've already got the laptop on to check the weather tomorrow and find a restaurant address (I still can't get over the fact that I can now do all that from the comfort of my own room). I'm going to G's place again tonight to stay another two nights and get all musical. Maybe we'll record something this week - I've been working on that bassline for Michael like a demon! My fingertips are actually starting to peel from the old blisters. We might just have crack at Jacqueline this week too, we'll see how it all pans out tonight and tomorrow. I'm excited :) Augh Michael just came on! Bassline, bassline! 'Beautiful boys on a beautiful dancefloor, Michael you're dancing like a beautiful dance whore...' ah, love it.

-R

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Singular

I thought I would tell everyone here so that you all don't hear some crazy version from someone else. T and I decided to call it quits tonight, after going out for the better part of two and a half years. It was a mutual decision and amicably made. That's pretty much all you need to know.

And on another note, I'm sitting here blogging from my bed (I'm actually *in* bed), listening to a playlist I've just compiled in my iPod. How high tech am I?

-R

Just because I can...

I'm writing a blog entry while sitting on my brother's bed. My laptop's just been wirelessy networked to the net (finally!) so here I am, my trusty Acer Travelmate 347T perched on my lap while I hunch over the edge of my brother's bed. I'd blog from my own bedroom, but it's just too messy. We had a few hiccups after installing the card, the laptop kept freezing. Probably because I'm running Windows Me. My computer's never frozen before this becuse I've never really tried to do anything cool with it before. So hopefully it won't freeze too much now!

Well, I'm excited to say the least. I can now blog from anywhere in the house. I might do a blog tour of my house, one entry from each room (well maybe not the toilet, that's just unhygenic). When I've tidied my room I can blog from there too! I might try and upgrade my computer to Windows 2000 as well. It's nice to finally have a functional laptop again after all this time - now it's not sitting in my room collecting dust.

-R

All nighter

I've just pulled an all nighter!

For whatever reason I didn't go to bed immediately after writing the blog entry. I just surfed until my bro and his girlfriend got home and we've been chatting downstairs ever since. It's now growing light outside and I'm still wide awake. Considering whether to go and get that 2 hours of sleep or just stay awake until tonight. I might force myself into bed to get a little rest but I'm really not tired, which is surprising. The birds are already beginning their morning chorus outside my window. I almost want to be out there experiencing the dawn with them, the promise of a new day.

-R

Is it sad...

that when I bought a bottle of nutella with the promo Spongebob Squarepants character magnets in the lid, I searched through every jar until I foung a Spongebob magnet?

-R

Winter lovin', Trolley Karma and late night cleanups

I'm officially a winter girl. As recently as a year ago, it would take me the better part of a day in the sun with no protection to come anywhere near a sunburn. Today I was outdoors for less than three hours and in the sun for maybe half an hour and my shoulders are sunburnt. Not blistering but rather pink. I've never sunburnt so fast in my whole life (the only other time I've been sunburnt was the 2003 Big Day Out, where I forgot my sunscreen). The only thing I'm annoyed about is that now my shoulders will be much darker than my face.

And yes, I've had some freakin good trolleys this week. Namely on Wednesday at Safeway Kew and yesterday at Coles Church St. They were perfect trolleys! No drifting or anything, steered so smoothly. Perhaps I'm a little too overjoyed by this but it's the little things in life that can really make you happy. I seriously wanted to buy one of them to use as my personal trolley wherever I go from now on.

And lastly, S and I finally got to have music on while we cleaned up the kitchen at work tonight. It's amazing how music changed the mood - usually we're exhausted and just wanting to be out of there as fast as possible, but this time we were actually enjoying doing all the dishes together! Bizarre. I accidentally upended a bucket full of utensils on her with my hose and we just about wet ourselves laughing. It really wasn't that funny and I'm sure it was quite painful for S, but we were so bloody tired that everything was suddenly hilarious. I did six hours tonight and I think I may be finally getting the hang of this dishwashing gig. Hopefully I'll have three nights next week which means I can actually pay for some textbooks.

-R

Friday, February 17, 2006

Here ya go

...and you thought I wasn't gonna put any photos up. You thought wrong.
World Of Cheese <--go there. The photos are there. There's a couple of photos of G and me arseing around in the alley but not too many because my bandwidth limit is ridiculously small.

-R

Thursday, February 16, 2006

I'm a baby sea tuna...

Greetings!

I'm at G's place for the second night in a row tonight. We caught up yesterday and went to a quiz night at The Pub at Crown, then decided the easiest thing would be for me to crash at her place so I wouldn't have to worry about taking the last train home. It's great to see her again as I haven't seen her for a while. We wandered around the city for a bit, up to DeGreaves lane to take some photos amongst the overflowing skips and the wild graffitti. We took some pretty cool photos until the sickly sweet odour of rotting garbage had us hightailing it to Southbank. We went to take more photos at that art installation that looks like a crumbling sandstone building but my camera died. When I get home I'll put up the photos. I'm wearing my new Dangerfield jacket - a black woollen winter one. I'd tried on one previously that was my exact mental image of my ideal winter jacket, but it was Costume National (since when did Myer become designer central?) and $1289. *dies* the DF one was a tenth of that. And still just as nice.

So yeah, we went to the pub quiz. We didn't come last and Georgina won us a few cocktails which was nice. Our team name was Baby Sea Tunas, after a misheard lyric from the Franz Ferdinand song Dark of the Matinee (it's meant to be 'I'm on BBC2 now...'). After the quiz we went round to Barcode for karaoke. Yes that's right. G and I made ourselves look like a lesbian couple (unintentionally I might add) by singing 'Can't Buy Me Love' as a duet. I guess it was Valentine's Day so people may have thought we were out together. Next week we're going to go back and sing 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart'. Just to really confuse them. We sang some Kaiser Chiefs in the car on the way home, and something really freaky happened when we pulled into the driveway - a fucking MASSIVE spider had built a cobweb right across the driveway! we drove through it and were freaking out because we thought the spider might be on the car. We got out really quickly and RAN through the garden to the road, trying not to scream. We're so sad.

Anyway last night G and I had a play on her iBook and discovered the joys of Garage Band, namely the ability to record drum tracks without a drummer. We decided to record a cover version of 'Michael' (by Franz, surprise surprise) so this morning I laid down the shittest drum track ever heard. It takes a little getting used to, typing out the drums. I'll do this one but I'm making George do the next. Or we're going to find a real drummer. Anyway as has happened the last few times I've stayed over, I've ended up staying another night. Mum dropped my bass to me this evening so we had a good old bash at the song and it's sounding ok now, although we've had to stop because of finger soreness. We need to build some callouses! G's also working on playing and singing at the same time. It's easy for me - I'm doing backing vocals for this one and all I have to sing is 'Hey you, hey you good looking' repeatedly throughout the chorus.

SO tomorrow it's home for me, but the bass amp stays here so that when I come over next week I can record some more. Hurrah!

-R

Monday, February 13, 2006

Pillow Fight Club

Tomorrow (valentines day). Flinders St steps at 5:37 pm. Comewith your pillow in a bag. At 5:37 pull it out and start fighting. You may not fight with nyone not holding a pillow (unless of course they allow it).

Just passing on an email I received this afternoon. I'll be there with bells on!

Had a jam with the boy today. Went Ok but I need to learn more bass lines. MY fingers are kinda sore but mianly my wrists and left shoulder. Found another easter egg on the Franz DVD - or rather someone on the forum told everyone about it. :)

-R

Sunday, February 12, 2006

And another thing...

I've memorised the bass line to 'I'm Your Villain'. And I'm getting callouses on my fingertips. next step: trying to play the bassline without looking at the neck (too much). Rock \m/

It's official: she bats for the other team

...In other words, I've officially been employed by my old workplace as a dish hand (ha, you thought I was going to say something completely differen!). Ok so it's dirty unglamourous hard work but the pay's Ok and I get good hours so I'll live. It's all money isn't it? And I get to see my friend whenevr I work so it's all good. Last night was quite busy, we didn't finish until 11:30. I thought I'd never get through all my dishes (the pass was literally full and overflowing with dishes) but with our super organised system we knocked em over in 10 minutes flat, which was quite satisfying.

Anyway nothing much else to add other than I really need to get out so I can show off my new hair. I haven't gone anywhere except for work since I got coloured.

-R

Friday, February 10, 2006

Best $2.50 I've ever spent

I had another shift as a dishie last night and brought my own rubber gloves. Seriously, the best $2.50 I've ever spent. Well $2.45 if you want to be exact but who's counting? As long as they pay me. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this work is tough! I suppose it's less mentally challenging than waitressing because you're not constantly dealing with customers and shit, but physically it's quite demanding. Tonight I'm taking my speakers so that if the boss leaves before we're finished we can have some tunes to clean up to. Last night we managed to finish a whole half hour earlier than the night before, but it was pretty quiet again. Tonight will be a real test of my skills!

I'm off to brekkie now. And to watch the Big Day In on Channel V. And to stretch some - my physio was mean yesterday and I'm feeling it now.

Oh and correction from the last entry - I don't actually care whether you guys like my hair or not. *I* like. End of story.

-R

Thursday, February 09, 2006

New Hair pics



I went to Springvale to get my hair coloured today to complete the 'transformation'. Hope you like.

-R

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Come To The Dark Side...

Tonight I spent an evening on the other side of the pass, working as a dish hand at the restaurant where I used to be a waitress. And I have to say, man, that work is bloody hard!!!! I apparently did OK but I reckon I could definitely be faster. I have another shift tomorrow night at the same place, and hopefully this will lead to a job because I'm fucking desperate.

Oh and in brilliant news, my friend who works there as an apprentice chef now loves Franz Ferdinand because of me :) yay

-R

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

New Haircut (again!)

So I got yet another new haircut. I reckon it looks pretty cool. I just went to Springvale yesterday and asked the girl to do something short. Apparently my type of hair didn't suit the photo I had in mind, so she sdked if she could do something 'creative' and I told her to go for it. I had two 'oh my god what am I/is she thinking!?' moments - the first was when she sectioned off my very long fringe and chopped pretty much all of it off, the second when she took the hair on the top of my head, twisted it around then choppedmost of that off too. It's definitely the most extreme haircut I've had but I love it - quite short and spiky but with a few long wispy bits. Like she said, not many people will have this haircut. Next week or maybe even tomorrow I'll go in and get some 'chunk foils' of highlights. I saw a photo in a magazine at my friend's placelast night where this girl had highlights of really, really pale pink (practically white) in her hair. I'm not usually a pink girl but they were so cool and unusual. That's what I want.

Oh yeah and the haircut cost me $15. I think the colour will be about $60-$70. Yay for Springvale :)

Monday, February 06, 2006

new music for me

Yesterday I 'obtained' from my friend the first Franz CD and the soundtrack to Spamalot. Yay :)

I really like the first CD. I'm already familiar with some of the songs, like Jacqueline (which for me invokes such strong memories of sitting outside the theatre in NYC waiting for spamalot tickets with three hours of slep under my belt after the day with Franz, falling asleep into my bagel and cream cheese). I hadn't heard Michael before and I love it - it's one of my favourites already! Such an awesome song to dance to and so sexy. Alex's vocals are amazing. I saw the video too which is very cool. The band all look extremely hot in it.

Anyway I know it's boring to talk about the weather but I'm really enjoying Melbourne's cool weather right now. Hopefully this means no more hot days until next summer. Today was quite windy though which reminds me to get my hair cut. My fringe is down to my nose :)

-R

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Muso joke

Is it sad that I get pretty much all of this joke and find it hilarious, or should I be proud of my theoretical knowledge? Whatever. I love this joke. My friend emailed it to me yesterday - one of the few email jokes I've enjoyed :)

A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, but we
don't serve minors."
So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between
them.
After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and the G is out flat.
F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.
D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying,
"Excuse
me, I'll just be a second."
Then an A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that
this
relative of C is not a minor.
The bartender then notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar,
causing
him to bach: "Get out now. You're the seventh minor I've found in this
bar
tonight."
The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night
in a
three-piece suit with nicely shined shoes.
The bartender (who used to have a nice corporate job until his company
downsized) says, "You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could
be
a 'This proves to be the case', as the E-flat takes off the suit, and
everything else, and stands there 'au natural'.
Eventually, the C sobers up, and realises, in horror, that he's under a
rest.
The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the
diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 yrs of DS without Coda at
an
upscale correctional facility.
On appeal, however, it is found that C is innocent of any
wrongdoing-even
accidental wrongdoing-and that all accusations to the contrary are
bassless.
The bartender decides, however, that since he's only had tenor so
patrons,
and the soprano out in the bathroom, everything has become altoo much
treble; he needs a rest, and closes the bar.

-R

tear through the city on a saturday night

I went out on a saturday night! yay :)

We went to the mso free concert in the bowl, which was fantastic - Suyeon Kang the solo violinist was amazing. She's 3 years younger than I am, how depressing. I liked the Stravinsky Firebird suite. Then we went to Jarrah on southbank for cocktails then onto the kitten bar on little collins st. to see my friend's friend play keyboard in a band which may have been called King Armadillo or something.they were pretty good, jazz and funk and ambience kinda stuff.

-R

Friday, February 03, 2006

I should not play bass

I apparently have abnormally small hands. Last night I was catching up with friends and when we had tea it came in very nice little china cups so I decided to drink with my little finger sticking out (why did people do this!? It's frickin' hard) and pointed it out to everyone, at which point everyone went:

'OMG, your little finger is so little and cuuuuuuuuuuute!'

So a round of hand size comparison ensued where I found out that I do indeed have abnormally small hands. The only person with hands the same size as me is quite a bit shorter than me. I feel cheated.

I can't even stretch over two frets on the bass.

Maybe I should play piccolo or ukelele instead.

-R