I had tequila on Saturday for Selise's birthday. Now I will be pushing a medicine ball uphill all week.

Also I have to come up with some extension activities for the SMRTST KIDS N SKWL. Might just give them some jelly beans and a calculator, see what they come up with.

Here, have some Mike Chang for dessert.

I have been wanting to update Livejournal for weeks, but every time I get a chance to sit down I'm already watching seasons 1 - 7 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and nothing happens. I'm watching Buffy now, actually. Might be a short one.

...yep, that's it. Seeyas.

Usually when I log into Livejournal, it's with the explicit intention of updating with some very specific hogwash obscenity in mind. I never use the 'Writer's Block' topics on the homepage, but there's a first time for everything, isn't there? Today's cranium strainium was 'Bare Essentials: List Four Things You Can't Do Without.' And while the obvious answers are Food, Water, Oxygen, and that once-yearly moment when somebody scrapes by you on a busy train and you aren't obliged to pay for that fleeting magnetism of skin toward skin, I felt I would take a less literal tack.

1. Food... oh, okay, I admit this was a poor example to start with, but hear me out. I recently (two days ago) made a very silly purchase. I was overcome quite suddenly by the realisation that 'swimming gear' was listed on the required items for my upcoming German immersion camp. I have not been 'required' to bring swimming gear to anything since my year 7 summer carnival, and the thought of being the youngest AND the fattest person in the whole of Tasmania horrified me to the point where I scurried out and bought a 10-day Lemon Detox Diet programme. It promised the world, as often they do, and cost the universe. Breakfast was 1 litre of warm sea-salt water; lunch and all snacks comprised of some weird liquified tree bark soaked in lemon juice and cayenne pepper; and for dinner I was able to indulge a little in a Senna laxative tea. Poo Poo Pachoo, the joke was on me. I lasted exactly two days. Weak as a kitten, I fell at the mercy of my tyrannical carb cravings, and feasted on two slices of multigrain bread with butter. Good god I have missed you, Food. Please never leave me again.

2. Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate (Please see above).

3. Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate (Please see above. No, not that one, the one even above that. Yes, there you have it. What a magical mixed up text-laden tiramisu I have created).

Also tonight there was a giant villainous rat in my room and I squealed like a... well, not like a pussy, as this is one situation in which pussies tend to have the upper paw. But I definitely squealed like a girl. I stood in the middle of my bed while Mum and Lindy chased it around the house with the inner cardboard of a roll of Christmas wrap. It went under the couch, then into the couch, and we pulled the couch apart looking for the thing before it scurried cheekily out the patio doors, probably chortling in glee, or whistling some kind of jaunty rat tune. Jesus Christ I have no life skills at all.

There comes a time in every girl's life where she just really NEEDS to rock out to Quiet Riot at 7.43 a.m. on a Thursday. CUM ON FEEL THE NOIZE

Fresh white bread, thick chunks of real butter and Vegemite. Holy shit, this is truly the discovery of the ages. Why have I been wasting my time with multi-grain and heart-smart margerine this whole time. Hate ewe, Health

There are only so many afternoons I can waste making wistful mixed CDs and getting needlessly lost in Redcliffe. Is it can be Life Changing Event tiem nao plz.

I am currently obsessed with South Africa. This happens every now and then, with varying things or places. Like how, once you learn a new word, you suddenly hear it everywhere. Now that I have decided I would like to be able to insult everyone's mum's pussy in Afrikaans, all of a sudden Kerry O'Brien is interviewing South Africans on the 7:30 Report, and the doctor at the local hospital is South African, and a lot of people's neighbours are South Africans and there are South Africans on the bus. I am 100% confident there never used to exist this many South Africans in my universe. I believe they are here now purely because I am writing this entry.

Who wants to come to South Africa with me?

If I ever hope to have anything meaningful to say, ever again, I HAVE to get off the fucking Internet.

Until then, have some SODUKU PUNX. I bet all HIS numbers add up to 9, if you know what I mean.

What a delicious, clear Australian summer. The whole place feels fresh and bright, probably less to do with any actual change in climate than the fact that I'm seeing it with renewed eyes. Trains rattle past, dogs rustle in front yards. I hear birds, and cicadas, and city noise from Venner Road. Tattooed barflies command the pool table in their high school rugby shorts. Video Hits had a Big Day Out special on this morning. Dylan Lewis was hosting it, reminiscing with Eskimo Joe about when they were just starting out as kids, as opposed to just starting out having kids. My sister and her boyfriend have also settled in well to their fledgeling domestic routine; he's bought her steak knives for her birthday, a mortar & pestle for Christmas, and is going to a sleep clinic tonight to try and quell the snoring. His father stopped by for a beer after lunch. My parents, for their part, trekked down to see me, and I made them sit through 647 photos of American deserts and mountains and flooded vineyards. I figured out why Patricia is always covered in white dust - she shimmies under the whitewhashed verandah rails and hides from the hot sun, but no one escapes the humidity. Being home, my hair is frizzy, and my eczema has worsened when I expected it to do the opposite. My clothes get smaller and my posture gets worse by the day. They've changed the label on the Pepsi Light bottle, what the fuck is that about. Kat and I hung out in Kangaroo Point yesterday, under the Storey Bridge, which was closed because of a suicidal jumper whom the police eventually, conveniently, talked down. Kat's moved in with some Toowoomba boys - Chris, and Rory Joy, to be precise. How do they even know each other? The world is too small. I spent yesterday on the couch in their 2-day-old apartment, watching Sports Tonight and the Australian Open. Lauz has moved too. I think Garin may have helped her. He sent me a message to welcome me back, so at least that old flinching emotional terror is familiar. My brother has been occupying the spare room since I left, but he's in Mooloolabah for the Australia Day weekend. He's got posters of Pearl Jam up on the walls, he's run out of space so has got boxes and bags and bedspreads lending Essence of Dude to my room as well. Lollie and I had pizza last night then dropped by West End to wish Lucie happy birthday. She looked great, a vision in baby-blue vintage, an angel in an ivory nightgown. Chestnut bob and a satin ribbon. It's too easy to forget that I'm ten grand in debt and unemployed, that I have insurance forms to fill out, schools to doorknock, a weak attempt at a future to forge. I'm not ready. I just want to hang out here, feeling the breeze and watching the weeds grow along the sound barrier.

4 a.m., and I can't sleep. Third night running I've shared a dorm with a wild wicked snorelax, which is inevitable, really, but I can't take it tonight. It's the strangest snoring I've ever heard - like a wet snore, like he's gurgling, choking on amphibians in his sleep or something. Maybe he's European. Anyway, QUIZ.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Walk through the streets of downtown LA after midnight, getting heckled by midgets in elf suits. Never before, never again, and never without my Colt .45 and a shovel.

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't remember what they were, so I may not have kept them. I may have donated them to St Vinnies along with a vintage chunk of motivation and this old wood carving of self-respect stabbing a shark.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Probably, but they were subtle, and didn't get any of the placenta on my trousers.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Three or four cars in front of us on the highway between Florida and New Orleans, there was a body covered with a sheet. Car accident. Didn't know them, but I still felt bad about it. We tempted fate on the roads, driving for six, seven, eight, nine, even ten hours at a time one day, for weeks - and nothing like that happened to us.

5. What countries did you visit?
USA and Canada. Nearly gnarly Mexico, but I didn't want to be driven to a desert and forced to dig my own grave.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A job, lol. Cool hair.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
There are thousands - but reunification with the Great State of Lollie was a big one. We saw Old Crow Medicine Show at the Zoo with Bob and Spike, wallowing the entire time in more alcahol than I've seen since my 1984 inception in a vat of formaldehyde. The moment I figured out I might actually be able to pull off this teaching gig too, that was a good one. The night we met Garin and Elia at the Jube. Tom Gabel, Chuck Regan, Dwarves and Extortion. Good year!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Teacher qualifications, endless half-baked tattoo cock-ups

9. What was your biggest failure?
Owning tracksuit pants, but no shoes.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Probably, but it doesn't register without a fee.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Tickets to the USA, Tripp NYC jeans x 2

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Kath for being a top-notch salmon chef. Jemma for putting up with my neediness and deranged wailing. Patricia for probably still being asleep on the same couch when I get home, two months after I left.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
I can think of one example only, and it isn't worth mentioning here.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rock biographies, KFC. Record stores in California. Flippant financial fuckwittery afoot.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Travel, dumb boys.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
TOO MANY. Battletruk - 6 AM. Old Crow Medicine Show - Wagon Wheel. Tom Gabel - Random Hearts. Leftover Crack - Can't Go Home.  Darkthrone - Whiskey Funeral. Star Fucking Hipsters - that whole album, actually. See?

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Fatter.
ii. thinner or fatter? Fatter.
iii. richer or poorer? Fatter

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
Triple Zed stuff, hanging with Jemma, cogs out to Cashmere - general free time. I had a huge study year, and to no real avail so far.

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
Approving friend requests from douschebag school-mates on Facebook.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent Christmas in a deserted youth hostel in Montreal, reading a terrible metal biography and listening to some 16 year-old French twit gnattering ceaselessly on her mobile through the wall.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Nope. Do people even do that anymore? Christ. << QFT

22. How many one night stands?
Sufficient or insufficient, depending on your point of view.

23. What was your favourite TV programme?
Beauty and the Geek Australia. Xenogene inspired me to become an organic synthetic chemist. Sometimes, however, inspiration just ain't enough - you also need over-zealous trouser height. Under your armpits ought to do it.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Snoring-hostel-guy ( x 40,000).

25. What was the best book you read?
Love in the Time of Cholera. It took me about two chapters to get hip to the flowery, old-time-fucker language, but once I did it was all kene systems k-go

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Slough Feg is probably the most recent one, but also Destroyer 666, Naxzul, Rookwood - it's been a good year for metal. Gaslight Anthem also, which just makes it a good year for gay.

27. What did you want and get?
Drunk.

28. What did you want and not get?
I can't think of anything. I guess that's just the way it is with me.

29. What was your favourite film this year?
Until the Light Takes Us - black metal documentary starring Fenriz!

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 25. I believe I had Tanya, Rob, Jemma & Lucie over for dinner - Kath slaving away over appetizers as her classy usual - and Lollie and Lauz took me to see shitty pirate metal at the Tank Bar, where for some reason I procured no fewer than forty promotional bumper stickers and a t-shirt. HOT!

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If I'd have managed to get a job out of my hard-earned, heavily competitive degree, there would be cause for endless party pie rather than this smorgasboard of egg-en-face.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Clinically retarded.

33. What kept you sane?
Friends, Micra, thai curry.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Blegh. Celebrity is an abhorrent concept.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Education reform.

36. Who did you miss?
Jemma because she was the furtherest away, and we went from hanging out all the time to only hanging out every few months, and her dad always had wenches there giving me stink-eye. I currently miss Lollie and Lauz a bunch because two months is a long time without sing-a-longs and sushi.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Garin, if he didn't turn out to be such a sped.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
You're persona non grata in my hippie van, bitch.