Passionless moments

This entry is sort of brought to you by the Jane Campion film of the same name.

I'm having a nice time in a fairly restful state. While my days are filled with activity, I think my head has just reclined, letting it all happen.

Skippy came down from Brisbane early last week so I went to see her on Tuesday. Yes, hiked all the way to The Hills. It was good actually, seeing someone doing something with themselves and being passionate about their future. I'm not at the moment.

I think it has something to do with the fact that only half of what I do is about the writing - the rest is about the kind of message I want to communicate. That is yet to be discovered. I know I am supposed to be doing something with the environment, but I have no idea what yet, and it's quite annoying not knowing.

On Wednesday it was my ed Jen's birthday so we went to the pub for lunch. I later went to writing group, which was held at Passionflower (ice creamery) so I had one of those days where I ate anything I wanted and felt good about it.

I like Jen, but I'm getting incredbily annoyed at her because lately the only things she can talk about are going to the gym, her low carb diet (and how bad carbs and sugar are for you) and her birthday. BORING. And besides which, who is she to judge whether I should have a toastie for lunch? Anyway, I unfollowed her on Twitter because I found everything she said either an @ reply or incredibly inane. Inexplicably, she has 2000+ followers, but then, that's always the way.

Anyway, so Saturday was Jen's party, which was at Sparkle Cupcakery, which had a decent lavender and honey cupcake, though I was not so taken by the pistachio and cardamom. The venue was a bit cold, atmosphere-wise, so I was relieved when we went to the White Horse Hotel for a bit, even though people kept bumping into me and making me spill my Lemon Drop cocktail and whenever I walked past my boss he kept saying "where are you going?". Argh! Wherever I damn well want, it's Saturday night!

I had to leave just after 9 anyway, to go to Robert's farewell. He's setting off on an odyssey around Australia next week and I rarely see him. He also invited Ass and Sir to come (Ass came, though Sir was at her parents'). It's interesting because talking to him I can see why I fell in love with him, but also why I broke up with him. And I'm amazed that I'm not at all jealous when he's with other girls.

The party was basically a room full of nerds. Sometimes amusing, sometimes just yawn. Ass and I were classifying various people: there was one girl who was uncannily like Anne (a mutual acquaintance who went to primary school with me and high school with Sir) - she was a vain, pseudo-poised, drama type who flitted around pretending to be important. There was another guy who seemed to have feline tourettes, randomly mewing at people. And so on.

It got to about 1am and we couldn't take it any more so Ass came over to mine and we ended up talking until 6am. That was the good part.

After going to bed at 6:30am, then waking at 1pm on Sunday I watched Jeff Martin's 'Live at the Enmore Theatre' DVD then aimlessly wandered around my neighbourhood.

Oh yes, I will also be in Melbourne at the end of August to catch the Melbourne Writers Festival. The purpose of the trip is not the festival but Ness' presentation at the Young Egyptologists Conference the weekend following. However, in a fit of scope creep I managed to look at it like a 10-day holiday and book flights accordingly.

I'm going to try and see if I can line up a couple of days of work-related meetings so that I don't use all of my leave, plus it means I can claim all the transport as a tax deduction. Then I'm going to see if anyone will give me free/cheap accommodation on account of being a journalist.

My Melburnian cousin will be in Japan at the time, so I won't even get to catch up with her. Besides which she's just moved in with her fiance so I'd feel a bit weird about asking to stay, even though I know it'd be fine.

If all else fails, there's a new YHA on Spencer Street that looks totally sweet. And I have to make use of my membership somehow, right?