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Man. What a party. I only remember two things after the speeches; falling off of a bale of hay, and sitting next to the toilet. I don't remember throwing up, but Ally said she had to flush spew, and my teeth felt like I had thrown up.
I can say with fair confidance that I drank too much.
But what an awesome party it was. Totally awesome.
I'm currently in Cessnock waiting for pizza. I hope I can stomach it.
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EDIT: Photos added!
Fun!
Although things get a bit hazy toward the end...
Met up with Boggle at the blisteringly early hour of 4pm (what's a birthday party if the host isn't drunk by the time the guests arrive?), and started on the turps at Lord Nelson's. The wonderful thing about winter is that it means Nelson's Blood is on tap. I fucking love that beer. While Boggle and I were hoping to get a meal there, the kitchen was not yet open, so we grabbed a pork pie each... I could totally go a pork pie right now, actually... they were good. Served with Mustard and Relish. Mmmm. Yeah, I want one now. Dammit. Stoopid stuck at work.
Anyhow.
We left there after a pint and a pork pie to head to The Hero of Waterloo, which was to be the main destination of the night, and the meeting point for everyone else. Pints are tricksy things, y'know... I was close to drunk by the time Leah (sorry if I spelt that incorrectly...) arrived. So as Boggle and I were getting drunk quickly, and Leah was hungry, we decided to get some food. Both Boggle and I bought their Hero Beef Burger, and Leah a salad. Tasty burger, man. I like the Hero; good food, good music, good atmosphere. Just wish they had Lord Nelson's beer...
We ate and continued drinking, and started moving further into the realm of drunk.
More and more people arrived, but I don't so much remember the order in which they did do.
We met some cool random people; Italians and Campbelltownians among the memorable.
Actually, the guy from Campbelltown was pretty fucking funny. He was hyperactive and had a good sense of humour (even if quite often it was "at" not "with"). He reckoned John 5 (not the robot) was the best guitarist ever, and said this as if it was fact. He only said it because his brother said so, and he trusted his brother's opinion. Of course, this is the first time I've ever heard of him being an exceptional guitarist... needless to say, I don't believe him. He claimed that he was good at bluegrass, and bluegrass was the hardest style of music to play. Silly man.
But he was funny.
So by now, my memories are becoming hazy. I remember Leanne arriving. I remember leaving the pub. I remember going to one nearby (although I don't remember the name). I remember getting cocktails there (and a TASTY chocolate one). I remember falling off my chair because of my heel getting caught on the foot rest (heel + a chocolate cocktail sounds a little queer...). I remember seeing Boggle in a bin. I remember going to McDonalds. I remember ending up at The Brooklyn. I remember not enjoying it and feeling drunk. I remember leaving. I remember the bouncer not letting Boggle in because he had a bag. I remember insulting the bouncer because of it. I remember a cab trip home (but not hailing it). I remember the cabbie nodding off and drifting across lanes. I remember surviving, and being happy about it. I remember waking up, feeling like I was floating. I remember waking up a second time and feeling better.
But indeed, it was good fun.
Sophie contacted me that night. She's about to leave for England (maybe even left by now?), and we both wanted to meet up before she left. So we arranged to grab lunch the next day - so it was good that I felt better the second time I woke up.
We met up at Macquarie Centre, and had Japanese. Very tasty. It was good to see her again, and I'm envious of her trip to England. I wish I could be travelling again. I really, really, really want to go travelling again.
Saturday night was the Cracker Carnival at Leanne's old Primary School (Murray Farm Public). It was cool. We took a lot of photos, and they too will be posted to flickr. Link coming soon. It was cool to have be around a carnival atmosphere again, and fireworks are always cool.
The next day we were to meet up with Pete (Talan) down at Newport, as I haven't seen him in some time. Mum was up in the Hunter, but she arrived by about 7:30pm and we had Thai with her. Tasty Thai down at Newport, but their noodles aren't as good as Sweeney's or Chat Thai. Also, my new Sopor Aeternus CD (and LP) was down there waiting for me.
I'm a little disappointed with it. Not worth the $100 they charged (for the CD alone). Because the site I bought it off was in German, I couldn't get a decent description of what it contained (despite using online translators), but looking at their previous bonuses (grave dirt, communion wafers, funeral wreaths, tshirts, patches, posters, DVDs among others, I figured it would be something super cool.
Nope.
It's in a nice box, and it's in a nice format (large, maybe 20cm x 20cm) with a nice booklet. But the bonus was a signed card (which, despite being cool, I already have one of) and a manga comic of the album. Whoopee. Well, the comic is big, but I don't like Manga. Here is what Babel Fish tells me it came with:
The CD comes in, a stable Deluxe limited on 2000 copies box with 6-seitigen Digipak in the 7"(!)-Sonderformat, 40-seitigem Booklet of inclusive all texts, extensive illustrations and exclusive photos, 112-seitigem Sopor Aeternus Manga Comic and one of Anna Varney personally by hand coined/shaped and marked dear map.Dear map? Coin? Those where the the things that intrigued me. The coin is a stamp in the corner of the signed card, and the dear map is the card. Shit. $100 of terrible value. Dammit. The last box set was heaps better. I haven't really listened to the album yet, as I wasn't really home yesterday to listen to it, and I forgot to rip it to my mp3 player before I left for work on Monday morning. I also didn't bring my iriver to work today. So tomorrow I shall have a listen. I hope it's really good. I might add I got number 1999 (2000 would have been cooler, but 1999 is still pretty cool)
Edit:
I've now uploaded the photos for my 24 hours of Flickr to a photo set here.
Hope it brings an interesting dimension to my post!
**
As you know, Leanne and I decided to head up to the Hunter for the TOCAL field day.
This seemed a good place to spend the 24 hours of Flickr that I was so willing to participate in, and I wanted to see Pete's college.
It was cool!
Leanne and I headed to Newport in the afternoon/evening to meet Mum for dinner, and to head up to the Hunter with her.
Dinner took ages, and we didn't end up leaving Newport until about 10:30pm, so didn't end up getting to our place in the Hunter until 1am (coz of going the freeway up to Cessnock, and stopping on the way for tea)... so that sucked... but it meant that we could start the 24hours of Flickr at midnight... as will be evidenced in the photo set I shall prepare tonight (I can't do it at work... the Flickr servers are blocked).
Unfortunately we took a lot of long exposure shots in the car, so the batteries died in my camera before I got one of my mailbox bathed in moonlight (although I don't think there was enough moonlight for it to work anyway). We were unsure that we were going to have power when we got home, but thank the gods (and Energy Australia), we had power. So I charged my batteries overnight, ready for a new and exciting day.
We headed off to Tocal later than we should have, and had to register Mum's Volvo on the way, so we didn't get there until 12:30pm... which meant Pete was only free for that quick half hour until he had to work (he was getting surveys from people). A bit of a bummer., coz I would have liked to have spent better time with him. Although he didn't let having to get surveys from people stop him from seeing us; he followed us around most of the day anyway. I met a few of his friends, and ended up going to dinner in Maitland with one of them (Carla?).
The Field Day was fun. There were markets, animals, rides (for the kids...), shows and farm equipment. You know, good ol' country fun. I bought myself some chilli sauces from the Chilli Factory (I bought the Turbo Supercharge, Fiery Frillneck Hiss, and Funnelweb Bite sauces. Fantastic. Ooh, a picture!
Yum yum yum. Unfortunately, they were out of the dragon's Blood sauce (they only brought one box), so I still can't try it on ice cream yet... next time... next time... I'm keen to cook up some chilli recipes now. Or at least some kind of food that I can use the sauces on. A while ago I downloaded the Byron Bay Chilli Co Recipe book (it's 64 pages!), so I'm keen to have a read of that... I want to print it, but feel bad printing 32 pages (double sided) at work. I'll see what happens.
Anyhow. I had a great day. It was really cool to see Pete's college, and it was great to meet some of his friends. I'm meant to be heading up to Scone B&S in a couple of weeks... I don't know what that'll be like... Don't even know where Leanne and I will sleep.
We went to a pub in East Maitland for dinner, and the food was tasty and filling. I had a chicken schnitzel with avocado, bacon and cheese (fat-tastic) and a Toohey's Old (there were some long-exposure, experimental-type photos taken at the table... I like the one with the ghost beer in it - I will link to it when I'm not typing this at work - *edit* here is the link).
The plan was to go down to Sydney Sunday morning, but we decided against it on Saturday, as the Hunter Valley is such a beautiful place. So Saturday night we stayed up late and watched the first disc of Twin Peaks Season 2 (I love Twin Peaks, but season 2 certainly is a little more... strange than season one), and went to bed late.
Woke up moderately late, went out to Cessnock for bacon and egg rolls, fucked around in the Warehouse (was looking for fish food, and didn't find any)... I bought a really cheap toothbrush that broke upon first use, and went to Woolworths for some cream to have with the Christmas Pudding that Mum bought from the markets (which was really average), and then we watched more Twin Peaks Season 2... yeah... weird... but awesome.
So we didn't get back to Newport until past 10pm, and didn't get back to West Ryde until nearly midnight... needless to say Leanne and I went straight to bed.
Because of the continual lack of work at TC, I took yesterday off because I thought my time would be better spent packing up West Ryde in preparation for Saturday's move. We brought a few boxes over to Leanne's house (all her books - which is actually a fuckload) and had some lunch. We had the great idea of heading over to Mum's place and cooking her curry for dinner too, and as Ross hadn't yet seen the place we invited him over too.
We cooked a delicious Pork Red Curry. Awesome.
And yes. We then went home and slept.
I am at work right now, and there has been no work all day - and there probably won't be any tomorrow either. I was meant to call Ron today to see how his work is going, but he isn't in today, so I will have to call him tomorrow.
Well, to say there is no work I guess isn't strictly true anymore; Lex has found some cleaning up work for me to do, so I'd best pop off and do it now (Sorry to cut the detail down for the last few paragraphs).
There will probably be a fair few "I'm bored" posts to come in the following days... be prepared.
Listening to: Infected Mushroom - Vicious Delicious (So god damn cool... sets an awesome stage for my memory of the concert to perform upon... a cool fucking album)
