amphigoric macoronical pointlessness

it's raining datsun cogs again. i love it.

unfortunately it's flooding up north, which isn't so good. my cousin will be pissed off. he's got a farm just south of ballina. too much rain now will probably screw up his beans. the sugar cane will be right though, i think.

i'm still doin the rain dance for down here. maybe it'll flood the river and all the jelly blubbers will get washed out to sea. then my good surf spot comes back, plus i can go waterskiing all winter. make the local fishos happy as well.

soccer was cancelled tonight. something to do with half of the grounds being underwater or something like that.

poets day tomorrow. thank the gods...

what a blast!

we went up again for a ride day at eastern creek. i usually just do pit crew stuff, but last time they talked me into entering as a rider. i haven't ridden a bike on the road for over 5 years, and a motor scooter around the pits at eastern creek isn't much practice either.

there was meant to be 4 different groups, but there weren't enough slow riders to make slow slow, and medium slow groups, so they just put us all into one group, which meant all the groups got a few extra sessions.

i arrived late as i had to pick up some scuba equipment from the apollo distributor in seven hills, and as i got there i was rushed through the registration bit and shoved onto the bike, just in time to do one whole lap before the first session finished.

the next session was too wet so i woosed out. the other did their sessions, but i'm not riding on a wet track with slicks, i'm too much of a woos for that! but fortunately the track dried out a bit for my next session. not enough to really explore my limits (wouldn't get anywhere near the bike's limits) but i had some fun and overtook a few people, and got overtaken by a guy who was a bit "less slow" than me. what a rush!

the next session was wet again, so i woosed out again. and then it dried out a little and i was feeling a little more confident so i went out again. this bike is just so easy to ride. coming out of turn 9 i was feeling a little adventurous so i wound out third and hit fourth, i thought i'd hit neutral, until the back stepped out, the damn thing was spinning. grunt grunt grunt!

i managed to stuff up a bit, scare myself coming into turn 2 and rode around the rest of the turn shitting myself, as stiff as a board. experimented with going fast on the main straight... i have got to get another bike. that is too much fun.

they put some photos of me (and everyone else) on the photographer's website. of course if he was a better photographer, he coulda made it look like i was going really fast and stuff. but i guess there's only so much bullshit you can do with photoshop!

i was in the white group, otherwise known as the slow group :-)

i love weekends. admittedly i spent a bit of time at work this weekend. but you get that.

soccer on saturday was fun. more fun in the mud. but we played well and won the game. after the game the opposition was a lot more organised than us. beer :-) but i thought we'd got something organised at the pub. turns out we didn't have anything organised after fuck it. next time i'll organise it.

i told the kids i couldn't have them saturday night because there was a soccer do.

so had a few beers at the pub and went and did some cultural stuff, watched a theatre thingy called "the world goes round". completely out of character i know. we kept bumping into people who asked me what i was doing there. we just told them that we were all cultured and stuff. it was fun.

drinkies afterwards then sleep in today. another brief work visit to check up on the patient, but all is good, the newborn is kicking and squealing. checked the backups, then, in response to an sms from my brother telling me the superbikes were on, i decided i'd had enough work for one weekend and took off. unfortunately it wasn't the full coverage of the race but some kind of summary crap. bastards.

i wonder if pay tv covers all the local superbike and world superbike rounds. if they did that would nearly sway me into gettin it. otherwise, 40 channels, and nothin on? not a chance. unfortunately i don't have my playstation here either, i got a new game called v8 supercars. i'm hoping it has an eastern creek race in it, tuesday is the big day. and unless it's raining i'm gonna be going and having some fun. if it's raining i don't feel like risking my friend's racebike, so i'll just write off the entry fee and get pissed.

all in all, it's been a good weekend. sleep ins, some extra overtime money, getting cultured, and now church. gotta love it :-)

working late, on a friday night. missed out on friday drinkies too.

if i have another red bull though i reckon i'll bounce straight out the window

traction in the mud

soccer last night in the rain and the mud. the ball skipped and skidded, and generally didn't go where we expected it to. so all was pretty normal for me but the rest of the team was less than impressed. we got done 2-1.

i had fun though. kicking and giggling. try to do a sharp turn (because i've run the wrong way or someone has stepped around me with the damn ball) and i end up skidding in the mud. one of their strikers was making a run for the ball and ended up running out of legs and skidding along on his knees. we just looked at each other and laughed. what else can you do?

so afterwards we celebrated with a few beers and sausage sangas. the dinner of kings.

we've got this computer in the building that is connected to all kinds of rain measuring, river height detecting and temperature sensoring type doodads all over the region. it connects to the bureau of meteorology over the intermanet and sends them whatever they want to know so they can get the weather report wrong.

2 days ago the computer broke. so of course it's done nothing but rain since. woops. we've got a new computer for them, but they didn't leave us any installation disks or instructions, so they'll just have to wait until they send down another trained monkey down to reinstall it.

maybe they'll sack me :-) but i'm not too fussed, i just got an email saying i've won the flash fortune draw, all i have to do is send them my bank details and my password and they'll put in the money! woohoo!

the other day someone sent around one of those joke emails about IT support rules. the second one is:

Don't write anything down. Ever. We can play back the error messages from our video recording.

2 hours later one of my techs tells me that someone has just phoned her and told her he's got a problem with his machine. he can't remember what the error message was and got rid of it off his screen, but he was sure she'd be able to work out what the problem was just from him saying his computer was playing up.

i told her she should send him the email.

it's funny. short descriptive error messages, people never write down or remember. but they're quite willing to read out a blue screen full of zeroes and ones that means absolutely nothing to anyone. as though we can decipher binary and as if really matters what was in memory when the stupid thing dropped it's guts anyway.

what were you doing on your machine at the time?

oh nothing much.

anything in particular different to normal?

no

so we troll through the machine to discover it's got some spyware removal tool, which is actually a large spyware and virus infection. it popped up off the intermanet and told him he was infected, and he should click here to download it.

thank the gods it's friday....

just kooky enough to be true

at me folk's house the other day my brother was rambling on about some new type of crank calls, errr, telemarketing method. took me a minute to think of the word. as far as i'm concerned it's verbal junk mail.

which reminds me of a joke. what do you get if you cross a jehovah's witless with a hell's angel? someone who knocks on your door and tells YOU to get fucked.

anyway, apparently the telemarketing fuckers have a new way of trolling for phone numbers. they've got some computer system that rings your phone, you answer and no-one is there. the computer records that someone answered at that time and puts you in it's little database (hope it's a microsoft database and shits itself, and i hope their fucking servers are microsoft and they fucking melt down, and are connected to the web and catch a mother fucking virus)

so where was i? oh yeah. once you've answered the phone then it records etc... but apparently if you bash the hell outta the hash key it fucks it up and it doesn't know what's going on. or something. you can apparently tell if it's one of these computer calls, cause when the phone rings, there's no-one there.

anyway i thought it was all a load of shit. being the believing person that i am, and then i get home to the house i'm babysitting, and the phone rings, and no-one is there? goddamn! ######################################################################

dunno if that works or not. maybe i should consult the oracle of all knowledge. can't find what i want, but i find yet another example of torturing telemarketers. it's a pretty good example. not quite as good as torturing them in person. give me a fork and a telemarketer and i'll amuse myself for hours.

trolling austar. music max is on. they've got this song my dad used to play ad-nauseaum, queen of hearts, by juice newton. i thought it was bonnie tyler, but not according to music max. maybe they both played it. then tom petty with some of the travelling wilburys, before they became the travelling wilburys, or maybe after. i've got no idea.

unfortunately they are still playing 80's though. and while i likea lot of the 80's stuff, a lot of it is rubbish as well.

i'm house-sitting for friends of mine while they go off sailing up the coast. it's better than last time, because the cats aren't allowed inside. all i have to do is feed them in the afternoon, and pretty much ignore them.

they've got austar as well. which is about as exciting as regular television. instead of 5 channels with nothing but shit on, now i've got 45 channels of shit. but it's monday night and pizza is on. so i might try and hang out until then.

so i'm bored and sleepy, so i thought i'd get on the net. over dialup. bleah! in a min i'm gonna find a fork and stab myself a whole bunch of times. i'm sure it's less painful.

except for fat pizza! they're big and they're cheezy!

drat

another weekend has disappeared. i reckon i'd like 3 day weekends.i don't live to work, i work to party, and buy toys...

saturday was good.

after, eventually, draggin myself out of bed, i fronted up at my mate's house who i'm babysitting for. and i offer them a lift to their yacht so they don't have to worry about their car. next thing i know, i've screwed up the timing and i'm doing 140kph in their car back to their house, so i can get my car with my soccer gear in it, and get me and me brother (who i've already warned and who is already kitted up and ready to go) to the game on time.

we made it with 10 mins to spare, which was a bit less than i liked. but one thing in my favour. after our last miserable performance, i begged the captain coach to make everyone play a bit of a 5 on 5 game of possession before the game, which they did. that may or may not have been the contributing factor, but we played the best mother fucking game we've played so far. everyone had fun, ran into space, and despite playing hard, we were a whole lot less worn out than usual.

until the last 90 seconds, we were 1-0 winning, then our keeper fucked up and toe punted the ball to one of their strikers. i scramble my arse and try to get in the way but he does an awesome kick, which the keeper manages to push up onto the crossbar, only for the other striker to kick in. dumb. fucking. luck. our dudes go all out and miss out by inches getting a goal in the next 45 seconds. if they'd played with that intensity for the first half, with the fun that we'd had, we'd have monstered them. well maybe :-) hindsight is a wonderful thing...

kicking and giggling... i love it.

stayed up late with the kids surfing austar. what do you know, 40 fucking channels, nothing on. doh!

sleep in.

tonight was a little wierd though. this dude turned up at the rsl club and asked if he could join us. whatever, pull up a seat dude. he's got an accent, turns out he's from northern ireland. been working in the united states, and south africa. and he's yarping on and on, ad nauseaum about how good we aussies are. i'm like whatever, no better than anywhere else dude. he repeated some crap about how good he was at uni and stuff (like I care)

a big dude and his missus, who've been drinking with us, are already leaving. me mate who's leaving says no worries dude, it's not up to me (if you join the party) cause i'm outta here. and this guy goes on about big guys not needing to be polite, and i say that big guys are usually the most polite, got nothing to prove, while little guys often get the whole "small man's syndrome" and are cranky.

so he's going on and on about how good we aussies are, gibber gibber.

and i give him the parable thingy

there's these two dudes (they can be dudettes, no worries). they meet in between two villages, travelling in opposite directions. one dudette says to the other. "what were the villagers like at the last village?". the other responds, "well, it depends, what were the people like in the last village you visited?" implying that if you were a cranky fuck, you'd meet cranky fuckers at the next village, and if you were a polite happy traveller, you'd generally (GENERALLY) meet nice happy people at the next village.

next thing i know, this prick has switched poles. aussies are the worst pricks in the universe, we all suck. his ex-wife psycho (secret police if you believe) has set him up and fucked him up for everything. he's going home to northern ireland. he's been humiliated and abused, called a child molester and a whole bunch of other shit.

the worst thing is, i'm only hearing it outta his mouth, but i'm thinking he's got enough loose screws that he could be michael jackson's brother.

i think i've played enough "be nice to the idiot tourist (even if he's been here for 30 years) for one night" so i'm outta here. "woh! look at that dude, everyone else is goin, so i'm, like, outta here. hope you have fun back in ireland". i'm anticipating a whole lot less fun than he had here though. sure he'll fit in with his accent, but an unhappy fucker, in a centre of shit-just-waiting-to-happen is just a recipe for disaster.

whinging fucking poms. they give the rest of them a bad name.

friday finally

a fairly uneventful day though fortunately. i enjoyed my moment of fame. 2 people heard about my goal! woohoo! one person said i should take his advice and shoot with my eyes shut from now on, the other asked if i had trouble going to sleep with a swelled head.

after work was a bit of running around then went to see a movie. mr and mrs smith. it was quite good i thought. something for everyone. a bit of romance for the girlies, car chases and gun fights for the boys, plus a few funny bits as well

beer, bed, sleep in

when things go good...

i am on the biggest fucking high. we just played one of the hardest teams in the over 35's soccer comp and beat them. and i scored the best mother-fucking goal of the match and of my life, which isn't that exciting i spose, scored 2 goals now in over 35's, one last year, one this year, and only a handful of goals in summer soccer, but it was a fucking cracker all the same.

usually they sub me into the backs, and occasionally into the halves, but a striker was stuffed and wanted to come off, and the others on the sideline had just come off, so i subbed on as a striker. best i've ever played up front, we created chances, ran around, passed the ball, stuff, then our goalie kicked out the ball. i really hate them high, loopy kicks. i always fuck them up. the bounce beat our other striker and their stopper, and i somehow bounced it over the sweeper and got around him. the biggest, baddest volley (volley's i suck at too) of my fucking life and then the ball was in the corner of the net. i swear it was heading out and it curved in around the keeper. he never had a chance. sweet

my love life is good, finally getting the hand hang of my new job (doh! maybe that means i've got my hand on it...), and now i score a dream goal. i know i won't be on a high forever, it's only a matter of time before my life all fucks up, but while it's working good, i'm riding the crest of the wave!

humpday

friends of mine from work have organised a trip up to watch the state of origin this arvo in sydney, so i've taken a flexi. whether i take 2 hours or the whole day, it's still counted as a flexi, so i figured i might as well have the whole day.

so i drop into work to drop the car off this morning. i'm in the carpark, getting a lift home, when the boss rings. "the internet is down". fuck fuck fuck.

scramble around checking stuff for about 30 mins, restarting bits and pieces of the network, until at last we find the broken bit, one of the techs had hinted at it, but in the confusion (and with the boss standing over me) i hadn't paid him enough attention. that'll learn me.

finally i escape. now to get some stuff done then catch my lift on the booze bus up to sydney :-)

'carn you mighty blues!

(the only problem is people are sitting there going "look at X go" and "did you see how Z did that 'insert suitable football term here' and got past!" and i have no idea what they're talking about it. i like watching the game, well occasionally, when there's beer, but i have no idea who is on which team. i have only a half arsed idea about the rules, and any time i say something definite or authorative, i am completely wrong)

another long weekend disappears into drunken past...

i've enjoyed my long weekend though. had a date on friday night, it was nice, and she invited me to another on sunday, which was fun as well.

had the kids saturday night and sunday, the dinner party sunday night, then soccer today.

we played like shit, and we got rolled. 3-0. there's not much else you can say. the ref was ok, a bit over eager to blow the whistle, and one of the goals wasn't a goal, but, when it all comes down to it, twice they put the ball into the net, and we didn't. end of story. but we acted like the biggest bunch of losers. whinging and carrying on. one guy is off for the rest of the year for punching and head-butting. others just went on and on and on likei have no idea what.

once the ref blows his whistle, he's made up his mind, whinging and carrying on makes no difference. if the ref has not yet blown his whistle, don't fucking stop and start complaining, look, there goes the opposition, and he's still got the fucking ball.

we had moments of brilliance, separated by large areas of cluelessness and incompetence. team spirit, without it, we have nothing. the coach has the sulks, as do some of our star players. they thought it would be as much fun as summer soccer, and it should have been, but they are sulking too much instead of just playing and having fun.

next weekend is going to be the crux i think

another chaotic day in the life of a...

saturday morning i wake up. so far so good. i'm on time. get in the car, drive to kiama, pour concrete. no worries. oh shit, car is over town. damn.

i get a lift over to the crap-mobile and a few stops later, including a mc-rubbish-breakfast, i'm on the way. two hash browns and an orange juice. then i remember it's a long weekend. and the traffic is crap.

somehow, my zen attitude to timing (or maybe it's just my "don't really give a shit" attitude to timing) gets me to my mate's place about an hour late, but just in time for an "after grog bog", and then the cement truck turns up. perfect timing. saturday mornings are not a time of rush...

anyway, pour concrete, carry rocks, wash barrows, carry rocks, shovel concrete. the other's think my back is playing up because i'm not doing much. it's a case of too many cooks, and not enough kitchen. let me know what you want dudes, and you'll get it. oh, you want the trowel, would that be the trowel under your left foot? don't panic Mr Mainwaring (dad's army quote). hang around like extra bicycle wheel, eat food, piss off.

so it's me and the gremlins now. watched a few movies, had home-delivery pizza, bored them shitless with crappy advice. poor little buggers. the best advice i can give them is that life is pretty wierd. enjoy the good bits, for as long as you can. it'll all go pear shaped one day. so enjoy it while you can.

termorrer is watching wog-ball, a dinner party (at which i hope to avoid embarrasing myself) and lotsa sleep.

"could his life be any more boring" says you

"hell yeah :-)", i replies. "it's an old curse. may you be cursed to live in interesting times".

so, until i'm ready (financially) to travel the world again, boring is good.

friday. finally.

the week hasn't been that bad though. much better than last week. nothing exciting to report though. a new employee within a week or so should bring us up to full strength. then, hopefully, we'll all unwind a bit and get some projects done that have been hanging over the top of us all.

coupla beers after work at the pub with some workmates. tomorrow i'm helping a mate pour concrete. it's gonna be a big day...

bein old, an excuse to be crabby.

just had some old duffer goin off at me. sure, he had a point, but get some people skills you old grump.

when i occasionally drop in on the folks on the way home, i usually park on the wrong side of the road. it's no big deal. once (ok when i was a lot younger) the coppers dropped in to deliver a warning to whoever had spun the wheels and made a huge noise at the bottom of the street. they didn't give a shit that he'd left the car parked on the wrong side of the road, just delivered the warning to stop annoying the neighbours and pissed off.

so i rock out from mum and dad's, jump in the chariot, and start the car and turn on the lights. a car comes around the corner, weaves around a bit, and flashes their high beam. i figured they must know me, so i wind down the passenger window, only to have this stupid old bastard start berating me for parking on the wrong side of the road and havin me high beams on.

if he'd said, for example, do you realise your high beams are on? i'd have said no, they aren't, the lights must be badly adjusted. i'll have them checked forthwith, by jingo, thanks for the heads up.

but he arc-ed up like a mutant fool looking for a fight so i told the stupid old fucker to grow up, wound the window up and drove off.

heh, makes you wonder what young old people are coming to these days. didn't get young old people like that when i was a young lad...

in other news, today didn't turn out too bad, for a toxic thursday. don't reckon i'm getting the hang of thursdays, but apart from some noxious old arsehole, i had a reasonable day. perhaps i should turn up for work sober on thursdays more often :-)

i think i'm going through some kind of kooky "nesting" phase.

i just did the washing, folding and ironing, and now i'm thinking of tidying up. how scarey is that.

on the bright side however, i was watching a movie called "the warriors". i saw it once when i was in school. sposedly a cult movie. like i care. it was a fun yarn.

started a management and leadership course today. everyone else started last week, but i was off in sydney. so they wanted me, and another other guy who missed out last week, to come early. took us about a half an hour to skim the stuff we missed last week.

i learned some things, and got bored by some others. at one stage he said that managing was playing a series of roles, or "acting on the stage of management", which i found amusing at the time. but not as amusing as when he told us that we were role models for our subordinates. i'm pretty sure my team think less of me as a role model, and more of me as a drunken lunatic. he asked me who my role model was. i have absolutely no idea.

i'd like to be as good at some stuff as my predecessor. he was pretty good i reckon. but i'm also a lot more laid back than he was. it's a learning experience though. the team is learning to cringe when they see me coming, cause they know i'm gonna drop some bombshell piece of shit on them. and it happens too often. i'd like a whole lot less panic and knee-jerk-react, and a whole lot more planned stuff. it's a lot less stressful that way.

apparently our lecturer comes from holland, and he has a bit of an accent. the comment of the day was when he told someone he was "barking up the tree with the wrong paddle". i'm sure even the king of screwed metaphors, ronald reagan, would be spinning in his grave at that one.

soccer training, running around in the fog, sweating like crazy, having lots of fun. i went hard tonight cause i've got a few days off soccer now. a bye on thursday night, i'm probably (hopefully) missing training on friday night, we've got a bye on saturday and then we play on monday. i'll either be fit as a fiddle, and raring to go, or i'll need retraining.

just another manic monday

not enough sleep, so i was struggling all day today. after work we had an over 35's match, a catchup game from a few weeks ago. we managed to win 2-1, but the refereeing was pretty ordinary, it could have gone either way.

beer, bed

i don't remember the last cocktail party i went to. but i certainly will remember last night's for a long time. gotta find the diary and put it in.

after a big friday night, losing soccer and celebrating afterwards, i had a little nap to recover then met up with some friends at a pub before going to the cocktail party. watched the rabbits draw with the doggies, great game.

so i went to the party, and after a few cocktails i sms'd a mate of mine to "bring beer" as my wobbly boots were taking on a life of their own. true to form he came through and after a few more cocktails, i was flying. had a pina colada, daquiri, manhattan (a little strong for me) and two other ones that i don't remember and can't spell. towards the end of the night they were getting a bit strong.

so we're sitting round the fire, spinning shit, and generally having a great time. the theme for the party was formal - st vinnies. there was this one girl wearing a red dress, she said she wore it because she thought it would be suitably tacky. hehehe it wasn't. i felt like a puppet on a string, every time she moved, it caught the corner of my eye, and i swivveled round to watch. and got caught. somehow the general discussion ended up talking about bra sizes.

i said that guys like breasts, but aren't generally fussed over size, one girl disagreed, she reckoned it was like penis sizes, and that boys talked about that all the time. i must live under a rock, i don't talk about dick sizes, nor does it interest me in the slightest.

and then this girl in the red dress stood up, adjusted her bra, and sat down. i don't think she meant to short circuit my brain, but that's what kinda happened. after that i was looking for excuses to get her to "adjust herself". "one is looking lower than the other" i sez, or "it's been 5 minutes, don't you think you should adjust yourself?" and generally having a great time having my head messed with. next thing i know it's 3:30am and time to go home.

what a great party. alcohol, jokes, a cute girl in a red dress. can life get any better than this?

by jingo, by crikey,
by golly, by gum.
i'm dribbling shit,
but i'm havin a shitload of fun

weekends are cool. i like 'em.

i wasn't working this weekend. so i slept in, went over to a sports shop for some new soccer boots. the lad there remembered me being there a few months ago for boots, and wouldn't let me buy any, he wants me to bring in the old ones and maybe he'll exchange them. otherwise i'm not fussed. he always looks after me with sporting equipment (NOT watersports Hooch!). i'll buy another set and have two pairs. i wear the shoes wednesday, thursday, friday and saturday, so they will probably wear out quickly.

it's recommended with even normal shoes that you don't wear them two days in a row. one pair of shoes might last you 2 years, but 2 pairs last you 6 years. if they are given time to dry out, and worn on alternate days, they last longer. anyway, sounds good in theory. and i'm full as a goog, you could sell me anything at the moment!

lost soccer 2-1. we just ran out of puff. i felt like i was running through molasses the whole time. but it was fun and i enjoyed myself. a few quiet beers to celebrate our loss afterwards. our keeper had a huge game. best and fairest voted by the team. unfortunately he doesn't go to the pub afterwards so we had to drink his free beers...

party tonight, should be good. but i'll need a nap and a coupla red bulls in the meantime!

i have a new hate.

i don't particularly love belinda carlisle, but as i listened to some idiot turn "summer rain" into the, errr, spaced out junkie version, i decided that's what i hated...

i've heard pathetic idiots with ego's attempt to re-make madonna (fools) and others try and take off the beatles, and other attempt to take off a whole raft of powerful sounding groups, only they all sounded like they were in love with the sound of their own voices, and were too poor to afford bands to make the music

a voice is only one instrument in a band, and you've gotta have balls like coconuts to be madonna, the cure or the beatles, idiots. if you're gonna take on the decade of power music, don't be re-making it, sounding like an opera singer who just had his nuts cut out.

get your own songs to fuck up.

anyway. i've heard spaced out junkie songs before. some can be ok, but this was a classic "tim the toolman" example of what not to do. get a grip moron. just because it's been done before, doesn't make it good. sounds like fucking pan pipes with drums for chrissake

and for the locals, 94.9, wanker fm... fuckwits

ever had one of them nights? one of those really cool nights.

i'm walking home from the pub, and i know i've been at the pub, and it's taken me 5 mins to work out where i was before that.

friday arvos. it's poets day. so after work we're up at a pub havin a few muscle relaxants. eventually only 4 of us are left. a beer or two later, and we end up at what i'd thought was a furniture shop, but is now some kind of pizza joint, that serves beer. how cool is that. and the pizzas were JUST. FUCKING. AWESOME. or maybe i was just pissed. you get that.

time to go, so i'm thinking of the long walk home. the one sober person offers everyone lifts home. woohoo! so we're nearly home, but we're going past the pub i live near. the one that sponsers our soccer team. got a ticket for a free beer here. might stop by, drink a beer, and see if any of the lads are in evidence.

i run into a lad i know. Taff. he is built like a brick shithouse. one time i'm out surfing and it's a bit over 7 foot, and i'm freaking, Taff paddles past and says "what the fuck are you doin out here?!" i'm kinda askin myself the same thing. so he gives me some advice on how to get in, and pisses off to smash a few more waves. we used to have this night club with psycho bouncers. they bounced a few people and made a bit of a reputation for themselves as bad bastards. Taff got banned for smashing the shit out of one of them one night when they tried it on him.

anyway, back to my real story. i drop in the pub and there's Taff, havin a beer with the publican.
"hey dude, long time no see! " i sez. been a bit between drinkies for us. and he says, "Come with me, I'm gettin ya a beer". i'm trying to be all cool and stuff, but it's obvious something is goin on, so he drags me out the other side of the bar and fuck my black duck if his brother isn't there. haven't seen him in over 10 years.

he's the maddest of the mad, and the coolest of the cool. i've seen him paddle out into 5 metre surf. and not at some cool reef break, but here at a toxic beach break. got a few waves, got drilled by the 4 foot thick lip of a wave, held underwater for about half an hour, then paddled in. he taught me to surf, mostly by listening to whatever stupid shit i'd been doin, and then telling what i did wrong.

he's the example of what an adventure life is. worked everywhere, done everything. now working on an oil platform in the timor sea. and on his days off surfing more and better than ever before, near some place called palm beach in qld. i don't even know where the fuck that is...

catching up with him tonight,

words do not express.

over 35's soccer tonight. a wee bit chilly though. not as bad as when i was a kid doin soccer training in goulburn, but cold all the same.

we played some good soccer, some ordinary soccer, and then we played a whole bunch of shit :-) but you get that. after the game the beers were cold, showers were hot, and sausage sangas were free.

i copped a beauty though in the second half. running one way, keeping up with the guy i was marking, and i ran into another guy, nose first, straight into his head. i thought i'd broken it for sure, and then i thought it was gonna bleed. it's still sore. it's a big effort not to keep fiddling with it (my nose!) cause it feels funny.

the rest of my day was crap, and knee jerk stuff. screw it all. termorrer is gonna be worse though. breathe in, breathe out, go hard, survive...

inane shit for a wednesday

learning more about microwave radios and cisco routers was interesting. so hopefully when we install them i won't meltdown into a gibbering heap on the floor.

playing with the demo blackberry was fun. reading and replying to email whilst bored in the car, going through sydney traffic, and browsing the web, well the little browsing you can do through a 4cm by 3cm screen.

a few dramas cropped up at work whilst i was gone, but those that i couldn't deal with remotely, the guys managed to deal with. they're getting more resourceful, which is good, but more stressed, which is bad. i'm workin on it.

got home about the time that soccer training was starting, i'm coming down with the flu, and i think that soccer training, in the cold, is a bad idea when i need to be at work for the next 2 days. so i rocked up, made me apologies, said i'd be there for friday training, and pissed off. apparently, whilst me and me bro were in sidney movin house, we only had nine players and we got flogged. oops

life has, again, hit full throttle. but that's cool. ain't dead yet

cruising up the highway, on my way to sidney, bored in the car. I brought some work related reading, hehehe, dunno why I bothered. Checked it out for a few mins, now stuffing around with the blackberry.
Whenever I go on a trip I get the fidgets, and today is no exception.
Now for the fun peak hour traffic...