Anything Can Happen

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while...been a bit busy lately. My mum's 50th was on the weekend (although her actual birthday was yesterday) and there are photos and videos from that, so when I get around to uploading them, I'll put them here. It was a blast.

I didn't sleep well at all last night. I dreamt mum and I were moving to Perth and we were driving there, and woke up really stressed about that, then I remembered I was sitting my driving test AGAIN today when I woke up. Not a good start. I wandered around downstairs feeling like I was going to throw up I was so stressed out...even playing some Split Enz couldn't calm my nerves. Had a shower, re-dyed my pink streak on the off chance that I actually passed and needed to have my photo taken. I had an hour and a bit long lesson before the test to try and shake off the ol' nerves. The pressure of sitting the test a third time was really getting to me, but I hadn't told anyone outside my immediate family that I was sitting the test again today so at least there was no weight of expectation. Then waiting at VicRoads...I hate waiting at the best of times...tried to focus on what Toby Puttock was doing with asparagus and mushrooms on Ready Steady Cook. My name was called - the guy failed me last time. Great. Walked out to the car, and I suddenly realised I wasn't all that nervous anymore. Or maybe I finally decided to accept the nerves and get on with it anyway. The test seemed to go really slowly...my slow maneouvre was a parallel park, and thank God mum showed me how to do them really well because I aced it. Driving along, feeling the nerves creep up every so often, singing in my head to push them down again. 'I feel good, de ne ne ne ne ne neh...so good, so good, I got you -Ow!' and Anything Can Happen by the Finn Brothers (ever the optimist). Finally got back to the VicRoads, parked the car, got called inside. Did I pass? My instructor gave me a thumbs-up as I walked in, but I didn't let myself relax until the tester actually said it.

So I have a tension headache, a not very well dyed pink streak in my hair (I was rushing, surprise surprise), and my probationary driver's license. I'm going to go pick up some Ps from Southland with my mum, then have my first drive as a P-plater. Life is sweet.

-R

Into The Dark

A one-take wonder...you can probably tell :D There are some bung chords, but I've only been playing guitar for four months now, so you'll have to forgive me. I would've tried it again, but my left arm is about to drop off from fatigue (I've been playing a *lot* this week!). I think you might have to download it too...it's not streaming for some reason. maybe because it's an m4a file. I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about.

Into The Dark

Oh yeah, the song is by Ben Lee, from his album Awake Is The New Sleep.

-R

PS The guitar is an Epiphone dreadnought acoustic from around 1970, with light gauge strings which are in dire need of a change.

Everything I do I do for you...

Ah! so happy! Things by Split Enz just came on iTunes shuffle. I didn't even know I had it. Downloaded it with a bunch of stuff and promptly forgot about it. I love it too, one of my favourite Neil Finn-penned Enz songs. It was a non-album single, and a bonus track on True Colours but I bought the wrong version. Maybe I won't have to buy the right one now - Things was pretty much my only reason for considering buying it.

There was no point to this blog other than to express my surprise and delight at hearing Things. It's a little gem of a pop song.

-R

I've found it!

I've found THE electric guitar. It's a beauty. Andrew sent me a message on myspace pointing me to Eastwood guitars (www.eastwoodguitars.com). They make replicas of vintage guitars. The Classic 6 is a hollow bodied elctric, the sound is very very nice - lovely warm, clean tones through the neck pickup, and an awesome bluesy sound through the bridge. (they had a demo up on the website). I'm in love. And the best bit is that it's $569 AUD. Granted, the demo was through a '67 Fender Deluxe Reverb, and I don't think my budget will stretch much past a Frontman 15R, but I think it'll still sound pretty.

And I'm very very excited about mum's party on saturday :D I've been compiling the playlist and we went to the venue yesterday and it's great. It's a funny shaped room and at first I thought it wouldn't work, but actually it looks really good. I'm going for a haircut today...my hairdresser's going to kill me for putting the pink in, especially after she expressly told me not to. :)

-R

PS today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. So Arrrrrghhh-harrrrrr me hearties, yo ho ho and a bottle'o'rum!

My computer never sounded so good!

My mum's birthday party is next week and I've been appointed DJ - it was part of the reason why I got this MacBook now and not next year. So tonight was the moment of truth when we hooked it up to the sound system to see whether it would work, and to our surprise (well mine at least) it works perfectly. Maybe I'm jsut pessimistic when it comes to technology, but I was surprised by how easily it worked. Ok, I was surprised that it worked at all. but it does, which is the main point. And then I was searching through my parent's CD collection to find songs to party to and stumbled across a 'Classic Aussie Rock' CD...The Easybeats, Master's Apprentices, Skyhooks, Cold Chisel, Split Enz, AC/DC, Icehouse, Mental As Anything...etc etc etc. Possibly the coolest CD in my parent's collection (sorry did I say my parent's? I meant mine, of course). And speaking of my parent's record collection, my cousinin Sydney does still have all my mum's old vinyl so he's going to give it to my dad next time he's up there (which will probably be next week). Apparently she has 60-100 vinyls...including Sgt Peppers.

OMFG.

I'm so having a listening party when I get them.

-R

I found out today that if your pick has gone missing, you can fashion an adequate but temporary replacement out of an expired metcard. Just fold it into quarters and use the folded corner. It doesn't last all that long, but it works ok, and it sounds better than a 10 cent piece.

-R

OMG. So, I like totally geeked out this morning.

Apple have redesigned the iPod Nano and shuffle. They're very sexy. Nano's now in coloured anodized aluminium, very much like the old Minis, except Nano-sized. And they're now 8GB. And thinner than the old Nanos. With a 24-hour battery life. I think I want one. The Shuffle looks awesome...it's now this tiny little silver clip, 2GB. And a new version of iTunes, which finds album artwork for your songs...after I spent a good 4 hours over the past couple of weeks looking for it all manually...and a nice new dark blue colours scheme, very sophisticated. You can apparently buy movies from the American store, but the Australian store won't even let you buy TV shows yet. I'm still waiting for them to catch up. Oh and there's dinky little games for the 5G iPods too.

-R

the old man is snoring

wow. five minutes ago it was sunny, now it's raining really really heavily. fat rain, rivers already forming in the gutters.

george and i decided last night that our band is going to be called The Administrators. now we just have to write some songs. i had a play of her 12-string today. it sounds nice but is very strange to play. i feel like my fingers are on platforms.

-R

GEORGIE IS HERE!!!!!

Georgina is sitting right next to me. My parents brought her home as a surprise present. Even though my birthday's not til next month. But anyway I got all excited, more than I probably should, but it's George and we always get a little too excited around each other. She's reading over my shoulder - well not really over my shoulder, it's only a figure of speech in this case - and giggling. Which is pretty much business as usual. Apparently she has to go home at 8:15 tomorrow morning to AGH the Grates just came on Rage! AWESOME! What was I saying? Oh yeah, George has to go home early tomorrow morning, which probably means neither of us will get much sleep tonight. Hmm. I'm hungry. I might go find food. I'm sure George is up for midnight snacking. I have to find her pyjamas too. And a mattress.

-R

Wow.

Steve Irwin (the Crocodile Hunter) was killed by a stingray this morning. www.theage.com.au-The story headlines there.

-R

I want to be my sister's best friend

My sister's best friend's birthday party was on friday and apparently the invites went out at very short notice. So being the kind os legend that she is, she got all of Laura's friends to contribute 20-25 bucks, and she went out and bought her an iPod nano.

How cool is that.

-R

The kitchen where I work is pretty small (we do only sit about 50 people tops) with an extremely large and efficient extractor fan running down one side, and a window at the end which opens out onto the unheated back area, with the back door usually left open. In the winter it's damn near freezing in there (which I know is highly abnormal for a kitchen) and we're usually begging the bar for hot drinks to keep us from completely freezing. So it's definitely a sign that the weather is warming up when I only wear one t-shirt to wash the dishes. We've also got a new cleaning roster (oh joy) which extends our cleanup to about an hour and half from 'closing' to clocking off.

Steve and I were discussing computers last week when I had just got my MacBook and he said that if I ever have problems with it, they will be quite big ones. Well on Wednesday my mac started with the dreaded Random Shut Downs (or RSDs). Apparently, looking at the mac forum, a few MacBook users have been having this issue. On wednesday I was importing a CD and had three RSDs, which scared the bejeezus out of me, and then twice on Thursday. So rather than let it get our of hand, I took it back to Myer today for them to have a look at it and hopefully fix it without having to replace it.. It turns out that having mismatched RAM chips is not a good idea - when I got my RAM upgraded, instead of replacing both 256s with two 512s, I got one 256 replaced with 1GB and kept the other 256 in there. So what I think they said was happening (well they being the Apple technician) was that when I was using more demanding programs like Garageband, it was trying to use both chips and then kind of dying. So I now have two matching 512 chips (okay, I'm calling them chips...I don't know if they're called chips. But let's pretend that they are.) and so far there have been no RSDs, so hopefully that's the end of it. Because other than that I completely adore this machine.

-R

PS actually it was pretty funny. The Apple tech guy asked me if I'd had it customised and I told him about the RAM upgrade, and later on when he brought it back he was telling me what had been done and the guy that actually sold it to me and done the original upgrade was there too, and the Apple tech guy told him what he'd done and said 'whoever did it originally put in mismatched RAM...that was dumb.' And the guy who sold it to me was like 'er...that was me.' LOL. Apple Tech guy got a bit embarrassed.