Merry Christmas and to all a Freaking Amazing Blow Your Neural Pathways Night

It's Christmas again! Can you believe it? Why just days ago I was putting away my Talk Like a Pirate Day paraphernalia, and now the tree is up and glowing like the radioactive remains of Chernobyl (but with way less genetic damage caused to any passers by), I have more Lindt balls, Toblerone logs and Cadbury chocolate-covered sultanas than you could poke a glass and a half on non-fat milk at, in my cupboard, and the wondrous sounds of Sarah McLachlan's "Wintersong" is pouring forth from iTunes.... yes it's the most wonderful time of the year, and like all extroverts everywhere I have out-tinselled, out-carolled, and out-decorated like a frenzied Christmas version of "Survivor"..... I am also profoundly exhausted and extremely glad that I have made it to the end of the year, surrounded by brilliantly good friends, a loving family, a job I actually love, a great home and house mate, and a really severe case of Athlete's foot that frankly the medication won't budge and..... oops.... too much information right? :)

All that to say, that though I have yet to find Mr Right and live happily ever after - yep still a hopeless romantic despite all my dating tribulations - that my life is great, and I am one very happy man.... of course, I would be far more happier if I could eat all the Lindt balls etc in my cupboard and not put on a gram of weight but alas, scientists have yet to grant reality's touch to that particular shining fantasy....

While I wait for them to do their thing, I am jetting off to the bucolic idyll of the Ancestral Estate in Alstonville, where I will celebrate Christmas with my wonderful family and my cousin, Ngaire, who is joining us.... followed by swimming and lunches at Byron Bay....Bangalow Markets crawling... book reading.... and lots and lots of lazy days.... then it's back to the frenzied madness of Sydney and New Year celebrations at the home of my good friend Fahmi.... 

I hope you all have a fabulously Merry Christmas and the kind of Mind Blowing Stick Your Fingers In Electrical Sockets Range of Possibilities and Hoped-For Eventualities that only a new year can provide. 

Andrew

Christmas Parties and the Death of Good Judgement

High Blood Pressure in the Cubicle Salt Mines

The glamorous chic lady next to me is Sammi, my closest friend at work, lots of fun and an absolute sweetheart.. another reason why moving to Optus was the right move....

You may recall that in September last year - OK it's likely you don't since let's face it most of it barely remember what we ate for lunch yesterday, let alone what we did last year! LOL - I fled the oppressive work environment of FedEx, and landed into what I hoped would be the more welcoming embrace (hmm, this use of romantic jargon in regards to work is disturbing.... must stop it now)... well the very good news is that, insane work hours at times aside, and the dead hand of Mircosoft Outlook upon me, that the move has been a most excellent one.... I quickly adapted to a new work place, got to know everyone in my small division in record time - yes, I am as shy and retiring as the US army wantonly invading Middle Eastern countries - and began to make a real contribution to the social life of the group as well.... just over halfway through the year, the woman who had been the Executive Assistant to the Managing Director (prestigious role as the MD reports to the CEO) left to work on the Executive level, and my manager at the time, without checking with me (bless her!) volunteered me to cover the MD's EA's role as well as my own, which included two senior Directors, and two teams of 30 people each.... it was full-on, stressful but exhilarating all at once as my skills, nascent though they were in some respects, were put to the test....

The gorgeous lady in the red dress is Sandra, the other EA in the division, who I work closely with, and who has become a very good friend....

Thankfully I passed with flying tastefully coordinated colours - you think I would use clashing hues? Please! What kind of gay boy do you think I am ?! LOL  - so much so, and this was a massive ego boost, that the MD asked me to take on the job of looking after her permanently. Due to some cost cutting, I ended up with half of my old job as well, so my days are rarely quiet, but I get on brilliantly well with my boss, still enjoy the company of my colleagues, and stressful though it is, really love what I do.... I love it so much that I have foregone all my Christmas holidays and I will be working through all public holidays too...... and then the pretty pink flying hippos all flew in formation to LaLaLand, accompanied by celestial choirs of fluorescent chimpanzees.... which is my way of saying....HaHa!! I love it but let's not get ridiculous.... I am very much looking forward to 3 weeks off, during which I plan to let my brain forget any and all useful information, read lots of books, catch up on DVD box sets, and not schedule one freakin' thing! YEAH!

I am the thorn between two lovely roses, Tricia and Amanda who making working in the division a real delight....

Fun takes on Christmas

Walking... and swimming... and sweating....OH MY!

That's me standing at the top of the Hill of Death, pleased to be alive after the steep ascent, and hoping I look incredibly fit and taut and trim after all that exercise....

Somewhere around the age of 32 my body decided that the Earth was facing an imminent apocalypse, and began to treat each meal as a last-ditch chance to bulk up to be ready for the lean and hungry years spent wandering a nuclear devastated landscape with Mel Gibson Mad Max-like (fascinating they can still source great leather gear after the bombs go off!)..... not one to take a challenge lying down (unless it involves a fantastically long afternoon nap on a Sunday in which case I say bring it on!!!), I started walking my heart out 7 years ago, and took it up a notch about 4 months when I added swimming to the repertoire of fat-attacking after a few years of treating it like my illiterate 3rd cousin, Irma, from the back of Bourke, here to sponge off me.....

From a shaky start when I swore my lungs were going to explode out of my body and hit the walls of the 2 lane, 25m swimming pool in my apartment complex's gym (presented two issues - (a) How to explain all the blood and body parts across the wall and (b) how to do this with no lungs to draw in breath, keep my heart going etc.... a true conundrum indeed), I am now up to 1.5 km a session and loving the way all those laps de-stress me beautifully, strip away the fat, and shape my body into lean muscular contours with none of that boring gym work! It's the perfect way to end all those long stressful days at work and while some may see endless laps as boring as a lecture on slow drying paint in a small country town in Kazakhstan, I love the zen-like calm that descends on me as my mind switches off and drifts on the waves of nothingness.... OK that was just a tad too "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" for me but you get the idea....

Fahmi walks along one of the many paths in Sydney Park, which we usually share with a plethora of dogs and fitness conscious owners.....

I have twinned the swimming with walking which involves getting up at 4.45 a.m. (yep when it's dark!!) and power walking like a maniac trying to reach the post-Christmas sales while the fridges are still priced at $4.95... most mornings these manic walks are done with my very good friend, Fahmi, and it's a great chance to catch up on life, the universe, and everything, and to ponder if we really are insane (I am thinking yes! LOL)... the week day walks happen in and around King Street, Newtown/Erskineville, while the weekend walks (which follow my swimming at 7 a.m. both Saturday and Sunday) take place in beautiful Sydney Park, across from my complex, which is where the photos were taken....

The view from the Hill of Death, which is this amazingly steep hill in the middle of the park (my apartment complex is in the foreground).... Fahmi absolutely loves the ascent.... yep like he adores being poked with flaming daggers....lol

Candy Canes...YUM!

It's My Birf-day!! Party on yeah!!

I have never been a thoughtlessly traditional guy (I will embrace a tradition if it's still relevant and involves copious amounts of chocolate ingestion! Say Christmas, or Take Your Parrot to Work Day) so it should come as no surprise that not only do I not restrict my birthday to just one day, but by clever use of time zones and endless social outings, manage to make the day itself stretch to 43 hours, and the celebrations last 8 days. I mean I have to wait all year for it, and it's over in 24 hours? I don't think so!!

DAY 1 - Saturday Nov 22

Tracy and I at the delightfully named Hog's Breath Cafe (yes they use mints thank goodness!)

Having fled the Not Me Anymore confines of Sutherland Shire a year ago, I have periodically returned to see some good friends there, and did just that on Saturday Nov 22 when I drove to sunny (and very windy that day!) Cronulla, picking my good friends Ellen & Tracy on the way, for a fun steak lunch at Hogs Breath cafe.... only again displaying a breathlessly brazen seditious streak, I didn't have steak! Oh OK I did eat steak, but it doesn't sound even remotely rebellious to say that..... fortunately in the midst of such culinary conformity, I had a brilliant catch up with my friends John & Susie, Ellen, and Tracy, and finished it all off with a walk down Cronulla mall.... the plan was a leisurely walk along the Esplanade but with the wind blowing like a madman chopping wood (no, I have no idea how that would look either), and the very real risk we'd be blown to somewhere just offshore Auckland, NZ, we opted for a walk on a tiled mall past shops to a car park..... very picturesque.... well the tiles are blue.... they're pretty... really...

I raced from there back home, changed clothes in a frighteningly fast 7 minutes (trust me that's scary quick!!) and drove like a mad man chopping wood in a car (OK an overused analogy and physically hard to do without risking artery severing or eunuch-dom ..... or both) to Cammeray to watch the delectably handsome Daniel Craig in "Quantum of Solace" (the official birthday movie) which was brainless but emotionally-tinged action fun, and would have been a good movie if all Daniel Craig had done was wear fabulously sexy clothes and stand there (YUM!).... followed that cinematic fun at the Cremorne Orpheum with a delicious dinner at Malabar, after some quick car repair after I detached a mudflap in a bout of reckless curb hugging by my car's left back tyre..... I do love my curbs, it's true..... and mad man analogies.... and parrots.... but I digress..... and Day 1 of Andrew's Birthday Festival 2008 was done and dusted....

Ellen and Susie (camera shy John, Susie's husband, didn't make it into the pic) @ Hog's Breath Cafe

Day 2 - Sunday Nov 23

It dawned bright and clear with visions of Yum Cha (Dim Sum) delicacies dancing in my mind.... all very disconcerting especially when they started pole dancing in a very suggestive manner not befitting Chinese food .... I met my dear friend Heather, one of the few Very Good things to emerge from my time at FedEx in the City for more pork buns, dumplings and egg tarts than you could poke a pole at (a well danced with pole if my fervent imagination is any guide) at the Palace restaurant in the Piccadilly Arcade.... followed by lots of fun holiday and birthday shopping... two gifts for me, one for someone else, three for me, one for someone else etc.... we had a lovely catch up away from the same telecommunications company we both now work at, and actually got to talk without the sense we had to run back to our cubicles and apologize to our PCs for neglecting them so......

Day 3 - Monday Nov 24

So it's Birthday Eve (usually celebrated by gaudily decorated camels racing around a dirt track chasing bagels on a stick..... a weird tradition but there you have it) and I did what anyone sensible person facing a fun birthday would do... I went to work! In an attempt to completely drain the day of any fun whatsoever with stress, over work, and sense of relentless foreboding (not to mention a needy PC who demands my everlasting attention), I raced from one email to another task to a meeting so fast that my head spun like a mad man chopping wood while possessed.... projectile vomit does not help with chopping accuracy let me tell you! .... the day was only saved by my dear friend, Sammi, who whisked me off to the trembling social environs of North Strathfield for a fabulously OTT dinner at the Outback Steakhouse, eating an American's idea of traditional Aussie food..... the waiter was wonderfully cute (sadly not our one but the cute guy walked past enough to make it seem like he was our guy), the food actually yummy and full of all the stuff I normally avoid eating (which is essential in any sort of celebratory eating), and the company a delight, as always..... and I had another steak.... clearly my commitment to vegetarianism was faltering.... mainly because I am not one... hmm, that could be it....

Day 4 - THE DAY ITSELF!! Nov 25 - Ring the bells! Sound the klaxons of joy! Hit a saucepan (till the neighbours come over and throttle you!)

I am an absolute stickler for always taking my birthday off work, mainly because my idea of a fun celebration is not endless piles of work to be done in a crushingly finite time frame with everyone standing around expecting everything to be done instantly, or even soon if the space-time continuum can be bent fast enough).... I know crazy idea but there you have it..... I am a wacky rebel, what can I say? Anyway my time-honoured tradition of telling work emails to go throw themselves off a very large cyber cliff and fall onto the jagged rocks of the Don't Care Inbox of Death went completely off the rails when my birthday (aided and abetted by nemesis Outlook, which controls all calendars) fell on a Tuesday, the busiest, longest, most frantic day of the week.... a usual Tuesday is a blur of Trade Report writing, information collating, agenda setting and a 4 hour management meeting that I sit in on to take notes etc.... more fun than a madman covering himself in fairy floss and running naked down a crowded street.... no, no it isn't.... this Tuesday initially bucked that trend by  showering me with tons of wonderful emails, phone calls and Facebook messages from wonderful friends, and keeping my good mood robust and intact.... my boss, who I really like working for (really!) even bought me a piece of Rocky Road for morning tea.... all seemed well till about 12 noon when the flood gates of overwork opened up, and I was swept downstream in a swirling mass of reports, impossible deadlines, and a meeting that went for 4.5 hours when I was due to head out for ....

I take to cutting my birthday cake at work with serial-killer gusto.....

I tried enormously hard to stay upbeat but was eventually defeated by the ennui of endless discussion points and droning agenda items.... thankfully the HR lady who sits in on the meeting offered to type up the notes from the meeting, and I raced to meet my good friend James who picked me up from work and whisked me (there is a lot of use of that fabulous kitchen item in this blog and rightly so..... it sounds like so much fun, and speedy too!) to a yummy dinner with another close friend, Jason at Chinta Ria, one of the best restaurants in Sydney and home to a funky fat Buddha, and a wine called Cockfighter's Ghost, which can be mispronounced in the most embarrassing way which I won't detail here.... James gave me a beautiful Italian pewter bowl, paid for dinner and made me feel very special indeed, and I finally relaxed and enjoyed the Best Day of the Year..... well for me anyway and on November 25, I get the make the decrees..... it's enshrined in law somewhere trust me.... 

Day 5 - Wednesday Nov 26

A day off!! Yes, my boss approved it, and I ran screaming from the building Tuesday night (not far off the truth - see above!) and claimed it as my own.... technically I still had my birthday off since although it was Nov 26 in Australia, it was Nov 25 till 9 p.m. my time in Hawai'i, USA.... so I swam 1.5 km to buy me some calorie space (after all the lunches and dinners the caloric storage areas were starting to bulge a little more than I would have liked) and headed into the City for lunch with my dear close friend, Justin..... and where did we end up? At the saucy end of pole-dancing Chinese cuisine.... Yum Cha! We talked about anything and everything, ate lots and followed it up with a wander through Tiffany's (I did my best Audrey Hepburn languid stroll and looked wistful as hell, trust me), and the cosmetics area of David Jones to hear the paino playing (Justin loves it), a trawl through Borders and JB HiFi and finished it all off with a delightful afternoon tea at the Tea Centre in the Glasshouse.... I even got to try Iced Turkish Apple tea.... served by a waiter with a sexy smile..... naturally we asked which tea was best for a good 5 minutes and flirted and made him laugh.... hey. it's my birthday in Hawai'i damn it! Why not?! LOL .... 

Warren & I at another event entirely but let's pretend it was my birthday for ease of blog completion..... lol 

after all that shopping, eating and perambulating (never easy on a full stomach!), I met up with Warren and we ate up a storm (like a mad mad throwing lightning and hitting garbage cans lids together to simulate thunder!) at Tony Roma's, a bastion of American cooking and a great ribs.... yes oddly enough I again ate way too much, a hallmark of all my birthday outings thus far..... I was not only sentimentally embracing my birthday as special, but also enough calories several small Bolivian villages for a year....

Day 6 - Thursday Nov 27

Another day at the cubicle coal face, working like mad man who is... ah screw it, that analogy must be given at least one day's grace... followed by another a star-studded fabulous birthday gala... well there were no stars and it was reasonably gala-lite, but I did get to have a fabulous Indian meal, complete with great service, with my friend, Kevin, in between his stints flying overseas as a flight attendant at another restaurant called Malabar... yes it is a bizarre and strange thing that I can't escape restaurants with that name... fate? Or just great pappadums? Will I ever know? The only downside was the humongous hill we had to walk up to get to it in Darlinghurst but all the wine, food and great conversation soon made for all that... now as for that abrogated mad man analogy.... oh, OK I will leave it alone....

Day 7 - Friday Nov 28

This was not an official day of manic birthday celebration because (a) it's Friday and my usual state of TGIF-dom is exhaustion and a general overwhelming sense of relief that I have two days ahead of me that don't involve travel on Sydney's trains; and (b) I knew I would extra-exhausted, and like a seer of old predicting the future from a cup of sheep dung, I was indeed exhausted beyond belief.... and yet.... and yet.... I ventured forth into the pounding sock-soaking rain and met my friend Peter at St Leonards, and walked with him to the only marginally drier environs of Cammeray to have a general catch up and dinner at Pappaya, a brilliantly innovative Thai restaurant with some of the best entrees known to man.... and it was not raining inside the restaurant which was a major point in it's favour before we even got in the door..... add to the fact that a very hot guy was sitting at the table next to us, that Peter and I had a great conversation, and that Pappaya managed to do things with lime and tuna that my taste buds adored (in such a way that marriage to the chef was a distinct possibility, regardless of his or her sex!), and it made for a wonderful night out.... from which I was driven home where I could finally take off my drenched socks, which frankly did not fare anywhere near as well as my stomach that night, and the less said about that smelly mess the better ....

Day 8 - Saturday 29 Nov

The Big Night. The night when all is revealed. When worlds collide.... when destinies are revealed.... when all power.... oh OK so not that dramatic but you can't blame a guy for trying... tonight was the supposed Big Night Out.... drinks at The Colombian, a gay bar on Oxford Street, followed by a delicious dinner at Tandoori Palace across the street (and being flirted with by a very cute Indian waiter.... now that was a great present!) and then dancing our socks off (within acceptable hygiene levels of course) at Palms, just up the street.... and you know what? It was fun! I brought together my best friend Warren, close friends Ian, Peter and Fahmi, another good friend James and his friend Alison, while a soaking downpour screamed down outside... very atmospheric.... we even saw an Elvis (the real Elvis is working night shift at a 7-11 just outside of Des Moines, Iowa... trust me, Marilyn Monroe told me) doing cheesy Indian-pun laden versions of his songs and a Neil Diamond song too... what the?! Well the hens party downstairs in the karaoke bar didn't question it..... and neither did we... OK I did.... I'll admit it... but I danced away all those nagging questions at Palms till 3 a.m. with only Warren for company, everyone else having decided to leave by 12.30 a.m. to get, um, sleep..... I would have gone to sleep earlier too but I feared dreaming of a Tandoori coloured Elvis singing songs about Blue Suede Pappadums and who wants those kinds of nightmares on your birthday?

......... and so it ends for another year..... and I walk off into the sunset of my 43rd year on this planet, clutching my J B HiFi vouchers close to me, I think to myself.... only 4 more weeks and I get to eat more bad-for-me food at Christmas!!!! Woohoo.... yes I dream big my friends, I dream BIG...... party on like a mad man.... well you know.....

How Santa Tells If You Have Really Been Naughty or Nice

Bundles of Kittens Tied Up With String (a few of my favourite pop kulcha things)

Like a psychotic sugar plum fairy shaking her rainbow-hued wings around in a frenetic whirl on the dance floor (she is such a scene queen!), pop culture kept on throwing one bright gaudy bauble after another in my direction, and apart from the few unwieldy clunkers that hit me full in the face (Britney Spears new CD anyone? I didn't think so with the exception of "Womanizer" which is poptastic perfection!), I managed to catch some charming, fun movies, CDs, books and TV shows in my hands and enjoy myself mightily! Yes mightily!

TV

My TV viewing was all over the shop this year, and frankly while I persevered with "LOST" (No, I still have no idea what's happening but in it's incomprehensibility is a challenge I will not back down from! LOL) and "Dr Who" (ah David Tennant....yum!!), I gave up on "Heroes", "Supernatural" and a few others.... I did keep watching "Ugly Betty" and enjoyed the new kids on the block like "Eli Stone" .... I also watched new episodes of "Stargate Atlantis", "Brothers and Sisters" and "Battlestar Galactica" via downloads, courtesy of my house mate Aiden's boyfriend, and caught some shows via DVD boxsets like "Mad Men", "Big Love", "Entourage" and "60 Sunset Strip", shows that were either terribly neglected by the free to air channels (while they screen execrable crap like "20 to 1" in prime time!) or never made it air in the first place.... I have inadvertently, in my quest to see new and exciting shows, joined the new media revolution which means less TV shows on the TV itself, and more via downloads and DVDs... yes I am so cutting edge I am bleeding all over my remotes....

BOOKS / MAGAZINES / BACKS OF CEREAL PACKETS

It was the year of the sci-fi sagas..... when I wasn't reading 1000 pages novels by masterful stroyteller, Peter F Hamilton, I was polishing off a 7 book space opera called "Saga of the Seven Suns" by Kevin J Anderson which had wars, infighting, death, destruction and oodles of galactic mayhem.... each novel was 700 pages long but with all that commuting time to work in North Ryde, I have plenty of reading time and I am making good use of it... I also read a fascinating book called "The World Without Us" which looks at what would happen if humanity suddenly just vanished from the earth..... a sobering call to action to protect our planet and realise we are likely going to be the architects of our own demise.... cheery bright sunshiney stuff! LOL No wonder I escape into high-concept sci-fi space operas.....

When a very heavy paperback wasn't weighing down my manbag and potentially giving me curvature of the spine (must switch to very light books next year or junk mail), I was delving into "Empire", "DNA" and "The Advocate", and enjoying the amazing revelations on the back of my Triple Berry Breakfast Cereal... apparently eating this particular cereal concoction will make me immortal, stem climate change, and sew the seeds of peace in Iraq.... yes it really is that good.....

MUSIC (Makes Me Lose Control)

It was the year that Coldplay, may the music gods bless 'em, brought out not one but two CDs.... well technically one of them was an EP but it meant lots of wonderful new music including my Song of The Year.... drum roll please... "Strawberry Swing"... it is bright sunshiney (great when reading about the ecological destruction of our planet!! LOL) fun song, and while there are more stirring 'worthier' songs on "Viva La Vida Or Death and All His Friends" (yes such titular brevity!), this is the one that emotionally gets to me.... like a musical stalker but without the stabbing and obsessive compulsive behaviour.... I also listened to a fantastic new dance CD by Cyndi Lauper, and loved the pounding beat of Lady Gaga, who's debut CD has been buring a hole in my Ipod.... well a virtual cyber-like hole anyway..... Kanye West, Bloc Party, Pink, and Keane also dropped new CDs - witness my very hip grasp of industry lingo! - and I started downloading with a frenzy as my old PC finally shuffled off it's electronic coil and was replaced by an iMac..... yes I have rejoined the Computing Light and I love it.... still trying to figure it out (and using a PC all day at work thoroughly confuses me!!) but the iMac, and the new iPod that came shortly thereafter when my old faithful white iPod died too (as did my camera.... apparently all my gadgets developed a death wish and no, it's not because I refuse to read the manuals and expect them to work anyway! LOL) have allowed me to download all across the shop, and I suspect my days of buying lots of real world CDs are over.... yes I am now so cutting edge, I expect to bleed dry by lunchtime, all the while listening to the funky new sounds of September, and Glasvegas.....

MOVIES

Hi, my name is Andrew and I am no longer a movie addict... yes sadly I fell off the movie-junkie wagon this year, and sobered up far more than I would have liked. I didn't intend to, and love movies every bit as much as I once did, but somewhere during the year movies became a casualty of life regulated to a manic degree at work by Outlook etc, and I found going to movies at a set time for a set period just too rigid a concept for my off-work hours.... I hope to remedy that next year but in the meantime, the highlights of this year were "The Savages", a mostly sad journey (but ultimately hopeful) through the lives of two estranged adult siblings struggling to reengage with life when their elderly father loses his grip on reality, and of all movies, "Kung Fu Panda", which I saw with my friends John & Susie and their 10 year old daughter, Madison, and loved.... lots of very silly, but cleverly written fun.... I also continued my evergreen love affair with romantic comedies by seeing the delightful "P.S. I Love You", "Definitely Maybe", "The Jane Austen Book Club" and "27 Dresses", the quirky amazingly well put together and acted, "Juno" and "Happy Go Lucky", and the wonderful emotionally evocative, "Paris"...

I also made it to the Mardi Gras Film Festival, and unlike last year when Warren and I practically lived at the cinema (not all that glamorous trust me!), we kept to just two movies. "The Bubble" and "Outing Riley", the latter being an uplifting of four brothers dealing with an unexpected revelation about one of their number, and being all the richer for it....

Santa and His Clones

More Events Than a Plethora of Agoraphobic Sardines Stuffed in a Tin

In my ongoing frenetic quest to make the Energizer Bunny looked like a lazy white trash dole collector, I hit the ground running (and likely drove a fairly sizable crater into it with my forward momentum!) in January, enjoying the outdoor fun of Sydney in Summer. As usual, January was dominated by Jazz, Symphony and this time, Opera in the Domain, all shared with very good friends, lots of wine, cheese, salad, and some killer desserts.... actually Symphony in the Domain ended up being Andrew, Warren, Ian and Justin eat Tapas and watch "P S I Love You" thanks to an almighty downpour of rain... not even remotely an outdoors event but we clung doggedly to the spirit of the event..... 

I pose with the glamorous Tina and my friend Mark from Boston

Massive amounts of rain, and a wildly spectacular lightning and thunderstorm also drove another outdoor event into the far drier indoors when Peter and I tried to see "Waitress" at my beloved OpenAir Cinema... it was the first time it had been cancelled in 11 years due to weather, but given the imminent threat of death from the lightning strikes, no one was going to argue with them! I did manage to see a few other movies at the Cinema including "Juno", in pouring rain (sans nature's deadly light show this time) with Warren, and I also finally made it to the other outdoor cinema, Moonlight Cinema, in early March to see "Casablanca"... what a wonderful movie which I finally managed to see after all these years.... 

Mark and I at the Moonlight Cinema screening of "Casablanca"

I saw it on the same weekend as the Mardi Gras Parade which I saw with very good friends Warren, Peter and Ian, and some other special people including a delightful lady called Tina (see the pix above - my friend Mark and I pose either side).... As usual the parade was lively, colourful and boisterous as always, and a great affirmation of the thriving mad diversity that is Sydney.....

My friends Ian and Warren pose either side of me with Will and Jason from Brizvegas as we await the start of the Mardi Gras parade

My friend Mark was in town that weekend for Mardi Gras (and a tour of Sydney) from Boston, and I also met a lovely guy called Jason (in the blue T-shirt above next to Ian, me, Warren and Will), in town from Brisbane who I dated for a few months till the tyranny of distance defeated our very best of intentions (we remain firm, wonderful friends).... I need to make it clear (after a badly worded pervious sentence... who is writing this anyway? LOL) that I just dated Jason, not the entire city of Brisbane, which would of frankly been exhausting, and beyond my ability to juggle (and my circus-oriented skills are woefully inadequate!) ..... 

When I wasn't dating men from other cities, I was also racing to see "Billy Elliott" the musical in January, dashing to Melbourne for the first time in February to see a friend (Graeme) and falling in love with fabulously offbeat suburb of St Kilda and it's yummy bakeries, to see a play called "Corpus Christi" and the stage version of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" in March, and bopping away to concerts by Kylie Minogue (yes finally made it to a concert by Kylie!!) and Alicia Keys... and the fantastic fun of the "Sound of Music" Singalong, which was basically a madcap dress-up event where you can  do your best karaoke singing along with Julie Andrews to the movie.... so much fun!! Next year I plan to dress up as a schnitzel or something wacky... which will differ from my usual standard of dress how? Hmm... maybe I need to re-think this...

My sister Helen and cousin Rebecca (red skirt) pose with me around the birthday gal herself

The biggest event of them all, and a monumental achievement for anyone was my Great Aunt's 100th Birthday Celebrations up in Alstonville, where I joined my whole direct family, my Uncle and Aunt and cousins, husbands and kids to wish my darling Great Aunt Liz all the very best on an amazing milestone (I was thinking I should go non-Imperial and try kilometre-stone but (a) it sounds weird, and (b) Auntie Liz is 100 so she gets the measurement system she wants!) .... we ate lots, laughed lots, and Auntie Liz lapped it all up, alerted and animated and thoroughly enjoying all the attention.... it was a very special time, and I loved seeing everyone! 

The entire extended family on my Mum's side pose in my parents' family room 

So yet another quiet do-nothing year in the life of this never-say-no-to-a-fun-event extrovert... next year I may take it easy.... start gardening, knitting tea cosies and making scones.... yes, and then I shall herd my rainbow-coloured unicorns on the Yellow Brick Road to Oz.....

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!Party like it's 199....ooops too late! Have fun anyway!!