After an unacceptable drought of communication, the epic beginneth here.

It all began on Tuesday night, when I get my new computer. Well, it's not actually a whole new computer, just the bits that need upgrading about my old computer, which is just about everything. Motherboard, processor, memory, soundcard, box... but not the hard drives. And therein lies the difficulty. Because it's having difficulty reconciling everything, and it's getting late now and I want to go to sleep because I have to get up early tomorrow and go to Sydney because I'm going to see RAMMSTEIN!!

Ahem. Anyway, we decide J¹ will get it working while I'm away so it's ready for me to come back to. Begin, the worst night's sleep of my life. I tossed, I turned, I had weird dreams where I finished reading my book and had to get a new one. I awoke at 6:09, my alarm having somehow failed to go off (probably, I later realise, because I had set it for 5:30pm). The taxi has been ordered for 6:10.

Panic. I dress in thirty seconds flat, grab my bag (thoughtfully packed the night before) and sprint downstairs. I make it on time. Somehow. I tell K^r the story in the taxi. She laughs. What an auspicious beginning.

The train is freezing and I drift in some sort of dozy state contemplating roleplaying characters and other obscurities. In Sydney, we meet up with M and J^e no worries. We hit Oxford Street. We delight in kitsch pulp fiction snippets and the wonderful contents of goth/bondage stores. I fall in love with a corset and have to be dragged bodily from the shop. We ponder getting wigs. Lunch is sushi in the park with a toilet stop at Hungry Jacks where the door to the facilities can only be opened from the inside, and I wonder what sort of secret documents they have hidden in the cistern to require all this security. We go mainstream in the afternoon, hit the QVB and spend a head-spinning hour in a shop called 'Lush'. (Watch out for that link. The first time I followed it, I ended up at some bestiality porn site. But it is the right link. Things are just weird.)

Back to Central station, where K^r and I get changed in the toilets. It's a weird experience, spending any length of time under those blue lights. But they're right, it's almost impossible to find the vein. We bid a fond farewell to our companions until later, and board a train for Newtown. There are other Gothed up people on it, and we know we're going in the right direction.

Wandering the streets of Newtown in search of sustenance, we decide on Thai. Three steps later, we are confronted with a sign declaring the restaurant in question "Sydney's best Thai restaurant of 2000". We decide that will do. It is a great restaurant. We do our make-up in the bathrooms.

And then it's off to RAMMSTEIN!!! Ahem, sorry. Excitement is building as we near the theatre. We can tell we're getting near by the goth and metal types scattered haphazardly on the footpath. We buy overpriced tour T-shirts. We go in.

The mosh pit is already three-quarters full. We decide not to risk our delicate feminine necks in there. It looks dangerous. Besides, we have really good seats, from which we can see everything. Including the support band, when it starts to play. They're called Not From There and they're a three-piece band with alternative rock leanings and a heavy experimental bent. I get the idea they might actually be really good, but the crowd isn't in the mood for anything but Rammstein.

So we get them. Good and hard. The crowd is on its feet at once, and from the first beat of the first song, the mosh is on. It becomes obvious that first song will be, in fact, 'Rammstein'. They're all in white, backed by banks of white light. And then out comes the lead singer, wearing a cyborg eyepiece complete with red lazer sight and a big grey overcoat.

Half-way through the first verse, I notice that big grey overcoat is on fire. And that is when I know that this is going to be a mind-blowing experience.

An hour and a half later, my mind is well and truly blown. This concert has been so spectacular. Everything that could have been set on fire, has been. Various contraptions for showering sparks have been wielded, including boots. There were fireworks on and above the stage. There was an interesting gimp set piece. There was an incident where a guitarist went crowd surfing in an inflatable boat. There's a very wet mosh pit because they keep throwing water all over them.

But most of all, there was Rammstein . Glorious, incredible, loud, irreverent, screaming, laughing, comedic and mouth-wateringly German Rammstein.

I'm in love.

The glow has faded in the past week, but it's still there. These boys are fan-bloody-tastic.

K^r and I float home on trains full of other euphoric Rammstein-watchers. Showers and much raving to M later, we fall into bed and sleep the sleep of the satiated.

The next morning is begun with eggs and blueberry pancakes. It continues with a triumphant return to Newtown, this time to shop. We rave to J^e about the concert on the way.

Have I mentioned before that I love Newtown? It's such an eclectic, noisy, wonderfully quirky place. Sparse boutiques snug up against second hand clothes and books, with dodgy little restaurants of every ethnicity competing with trendy yuppie cafes. And scattered amongst them all are furniture places and sex shops. It almost boils. It's so alive. This day, we turn it upside down and shake. I score the entire Fionavar Tapestry second hand and in good condition, while J^e picks up some obscure and valuable treatise on heroism in history for $5. Score. I debate buying a large, silver ring in the shape of a rose that fills the entire knuckle of my middle finger. It's gorgeous. But I'm poor. Maybe later.

Finally, M leaves to climb the Harbour Bridge, and J^e puts us on our train. The train, once again, is freezing, and I drift while K^r sleeps. It rains outside.

We get back to Canberra and my computer still isn't working. It takes another four days and two C drive formats before it starts working again. I lose a lot of stuff I was very attached to. I am annoyed.

But hey, my computer can run Carmageddon 2 now! Woohoo!

Now returning you to your regularly scheduled mayhem.

Well, I would write a huge grand report about what I've been up to, but part of it included getting some transplants for my computer, which seems to be in the process of rejecting them. In any case, everything is all stuffed up and refusing to work properly. Reports forthcoming when things start working. In a nutshell though: I'm tired, but Rammstein rocked my socks all the way across the country. Those boys are my new gods. They are Chosen.

Gah. Results of apathy. I am removed from 'ablaze'. For one second I considered appealing, but I decided it was for the best. Since I haven't done anything on it and though I love it, maybe I shouldn't be involved in something that doesn't really grip my soul. It was fun, but art doesn't do it for me like writing does.

Speaking of which, I'd best get my arse in gear for Emily's community, because that's something I don't want to be cut out of.

Anyway, I had a wonderful time at ablaze, and I wish them all the best, because it's really something good and they're all unspeakably talented. And since I'm out, they've got a space. Quick, go apply.

Today I watched the X-men movie again. This time through a veil of knowledge learnt from fan fiction and roleplay and canon sources. It was a very different experience. And I think the others found it disconcerting when I laughed at something that's only funny if you've got the inside knowledge I've got.

What I got out of the movie this time: (1) The L/R shippers are right, there is major tension there. I still don't think I like the consummation of it, though. It just doesn't mesh with my image of Wolvie. Which I admit, is fairly highly tinted by comic canon. (2) I love Scott. So much. He's fantastically brilliant and can the people who say he has no personality in that movie please stop drooling at Hugh or at Mystique's cleavage or whatever it was they were doing rather than actually watching it. There's this sly humour running through his entire character that I just adore. (3) Storm seriously needs more air time. I'm praying for it in the sequel. (4) Sabretooth's a moron. I don't know much about him as a character, but honestly, is he supposed to be that stupid? How did someone that dumb survive as long as him?

So yeah. Then I supervised K^r at bar. She played Rammstein very loudly and we moshed. Then I translated some lyrics for her, and I thought she was going to tell me she didn't want to come to the concert any more. Honestly, I could have told her that Rammstein were really not Nice Boys, and in fact went out of their way to be offensive. But she got over it remarkably quickly and started giggling, and asking me what this song was about, and this one, and this one...

Three days till Rammstein. Damn I'm excited.

Who the hell is Jessica Alba anyway? And why does anyone think I have nudie pictures of her? Go away. No nuns, no Jessica Alba!

No sir, we have no bananas... we have no bananas today...

A drunken night better than any I have ever known, except for five minutes of pure angst in which my impure thoughts were burned away. I miss my A, and I feel sad knowing I have had this night without him, but I love the menfolk in my life. A and J² who I hope is making up with K^r and J¹ with whom I have spent so much time in the past few days and with whom I just played Nintendo for a few hours. And even Tom, though we have never spoken, and he ran away from me tonight. And I will never speak to him, and I will never make the attempt again.

Drunken blogging is never a good idea, but I will leave this one here. For Mallory, and a wonderful split conversation this afternoon, and John, and an attempt to throw my keys down my cleavage. Doomed to failure from the beginning, because I have no cleavage.

As over-the-top and highly illegal amusing situation, as constructed by a Little Red Car-ful of people last night and built on by yours truly:

Turning right where it's not allowed and crossing a double line to go the wrong way down a one way street while speeding in a car holding nineteen people, none of whom are wearing seatbelts, two of whom are minors having sex in the back seat. There's a poodle glued to the ceiling and a policeman's wife strapped naked to the roof of the car. The driver is talking on a mobile phone and conspiring to assassinate the president. In the middle of this, the car runs over an illegal immigrant who is jaywalking, carrying two kilos of cocaine, and has just robbed a bank.

Not only did our carful find this an interesting concept, but the mental image of a cloud of cocaine gently settling around the car until the evidence was thoughtfully destroyed by the Canberran junkies kept us in stitches.

What does a peanut butter sandwich taste like without margarine? Let's find out!

Fun with searches: If you search for "Tell me about it, stud" (yes, from Grease when Olivia tries terribly hard to be a slut and only barely scrapes in under the wire because she's wearing pants she can't breath in), you get horse stud farms. Somehow I just expected more, know what I mean?

Quote of the day: "if it hasn't been shown to be fraudulent and corrupt, it is carcinogenic." ~ A, beginning a rant on why our generation is so known for being depressed, apathetic and cynical.

Oh my DOUG. I just came back from seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon for the second time. It just keeps on getting better. Another layer of significance and meaning. The ending nearly ripped my heart out this time. Another grin that wouldn't stay off my face for more than thirty seconds. This movie is spectacular. I promise I'll shut up about it one day. But expect a change of layout to something appropriately themed very shortly. I am officially obsessed.

So I did it. I made a little Dee Trooper.


I made a doll of my role-playing character as well. Have a look, if you're interested. In case you aren't aware of where you can play with these fun little things, the place is Stor.co.uk. Good fun.

More fun with search engines: Did you know that if you search for no more mr nice weasel you get three links to the same Faith No More interview and two to something about Alice Cooper? I found this highly amusing.

Incidentally, the fascists at Google are going to be closing their affiliate program on Feb 1st. They'll pay up - if you've got over $15. Now, I'm only up to $12 and some spare change, so I would really truly and desperately appreciate anyone and everyone reading this to go and do at least one search. Please. In that box on the left. I'll be your best friend.

So G^j's in Canada. Did I mention that? She is, and she's homesick, and she wants to come back. I think she just misses the college/instant-friends atmosphere. It's tougher out there in the real world, you know. But anyway, she's been 'rushed'. I think that's the right term. I'm not quite up to date on the correct expression, but in essence, she's been invited to join a sorority.

Now, as soon as we girls back here in Australia heard this, we immediately went nuts. Of course she had to join, we insisted. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity! You just don't get it; we don't have these things in Australia. 'Going Greek' means ordering take-out from a restaurant of that nationality. Sigma Delta Epsilon means nothing more than something vague to do with maths. We have been living our whole lives hearing about these weird things, and now one of gets a chance to get on the inside? It's like being invited to the Mason's most secret inner rituals. Even if you're not interested, you just have to do it!

But G^j's skeptical. She thinks it would be like hanging out with the Belly-Button Brigade all the time. (For those not in the know, the BBB is the group of first-year girls on our floor who are all, like, normal and teeny and so... well, I hate to say it about anyone, but they're so Quinn.) She has a point. And we're loath to point out that it's her scientific duty to take this mission. After all, she's risking her life for us over there in Canada. We can hardly ask that she immerse herself in giggling culture as well.

Besides, some of them might be perfectly nice girls who don't deserve to be slaughtered horribly when she finally cracks under the strain and goes on a killing spree with her lip-liner. Maybe it's all for the best, really.

Incidentally, the sorority in question is Alpha Omicron Pi or something like that. Anyone with inside information, please let me know, because I'm obviously not going to get it from a first-hand source. We're particularly interested to know what the "Depinning and Inspiration" is in the events section. On the 22nd March. Just before this "Initiation" that we also have questions about. Does it involve goat's blood? If not, why not? (What's your favourite colour?) And why is a Mourner's Dinner held a week after it? Am I the only suspicious one around here?

If they ever remake Gone With The Wind, I want to be involved, dammit. I want to make sure it gets a proper ending. I mean, sure, maybe Margaret Mitchell was going to write a sequel, but she didn't did she, and that damned piece of stupefying fluff by that Alexandra Ripley woman was so pathetically awful I move we strike it from existence and pretend it never happened. So, hence, the original needs to be given a better ending. And if I was writing it, there's be just one small, subtle change. It'd come after Rhett delivers his most famous of lines: "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." And Scarlett would run down those stairs (cleverly not falling and breaking herself again) and grab him and say: "Well I do!" and give him a damn good kiss.

Because he's a man who should be kissed. Often, and by someone who knows how.

Quote of the day: You blinked! Hah! You did it again! Face it, you're just incompetent. (Well, it made me laugh.)

A catalogue of my Weekend War Wounds:
- One (1) long slice up the outside of my left index finger. Cause: the foil around the top of a bottle of wine as I unheedingly ripped out the cork to pour one of the numerous glasses of wine. I don't know which, because I didn't even notice it until I had time to breath, which was some ten minutes after it was done.
- Numerous (lots) of small cuts and tender spots all over my hands. Cause: Various bits of bar paraphenalia. Melbourne Bitter boxes, the bottle opener, plastic packaging, the edge of a syrup bag, you name it, I've scratched myself on it.
- One (1) great big bruise on my right shin. Cause: I have no sodding idea. It's a beauty, though. Found it because it was a raised lump. Now it's painted in glorious technicolour. Looks like I walked into something impressively hard.
- One (1) great big split in my bottom lip on the right hand side (mine) where I chewed through it at some stage. Cause: Insanity.

Look people, just stop searching for pictures of nuns, all right? I don't have any. I don't want any. I'm slightly worried by thoughts of what you might want to do with them. I can't help wondering why on earth all these people keep coming here looking for them. Go away!

On the other hand, more searched of amusement value as high as Starcraft communism are very welcome.

I wish life could always be like this. Good music. Lots of water. Chocolate. In one window, I role play a character with claws threatening to rip a guy's through out. In another, I discuss with Mallory a list of drink metaphors for fantasy authors. Champagne for Eddings. Guinness for Donaldson. Mystery punch for Pratchett.

This is fun. And though J² would shake his head and call me a nerd, I love it.

Now, if only email would come back up. My student account has been down since Saturday morning. When the email comes, it's going to be a flood.

There are some things too personal and serious for me to put in this. I enjoy blogging, but this isn't my journal. It's not where I angst. It seems strange to me that it's usually around this time of the year that I need somewhere to angst in. A cycle of some description. Summer when I made my first journal site. Summer when I created eXx. Summer now, and I need a place to put my thoughts in writing.

I don't know why, because it never helped.

So stuff it. They can just stay in my skull, and not be transmitted into the ether where they can be discovered by those with no need to know about them. And I can wish I had a friend with whom I could share them. Wishing for the impossible is something even I do occasionally.

Oh DOUG, I hate this job. My bar has run out of, in no particular order, change, chardonnay, bitters, kahlua and most of all the patience of the staff. I am just about tearing my hair out and I'm not being paid enough for this.

In other news, we have J² back. Apparently he went on a roadtrip (not the movie of the same name sort, but the Fear and Loathing sort, or so I gather) with his housemates until the money ran out. Which it did in a big way. He called me from the train station having 15 cents to his name and no way to get home. A lift was found, and he hasn't stopped scabbing our wine or telling stories since. It's good to have him back. There's no one quite like J². Thank goodness.

So, some updating to the site. A new section called "Furtive Scribblings" which is my X-men fanfic. Yes, I write fanfic. Anyone wishing to make fun of this, please form an orderly queue on the left. I have my reasons, and if you go and visit the section, you might even find out what they are.

Anyway, there's also a whole heap of new RP logs from XET in the "Mud" section, if you just happen to be interested in those.

But since I mostly keep these sort of sections for myself, I don't really mind if no one else is interested. :-)

Example of below-mentioned difficulties:

The following mail was sent to all Scanvaegt Regional GM´s representing Norfo on the PortionCutter side today.

Jacob Hessellund has started working for Norfo fulltime now doing demonstrations with the Road Show Demo-Van and helping out sales supportwise etc. - when the van is out with Paul Bingham or somewhere else.

In order for myself and Jacob to get a good solid base to work on, we would very much appreciate it if you can make sure someone takes action on the matter below at your earliest convenience.

This is obviously not for me. Not even marginally. Did it amuse you? Maybe I got some good out of it, then. The random value of lost email should not be underestimated.

Lizz has new CDs. She has "Wuthering Heights" and "West End Boys" on the same album, effectively. Coolth factor high and climbing.

Mind you. My last CD purchase was "Galore" by the Cure. Robert Smith rocks my socks clean across the room baby. My DOUG, I'm channeling J². Who, incidentally, seems to have disappeared. He has not been sighted since he left for home before Christmas. Well, not by us. He could be sitting at home drinking martinis out of gum boots with his father and we wouldn't know about it. And it wouldn't surprise me one little bit if that's what he was doing.

All right, this has officially been a weird post.

Sometimes I think life would be better if it wasn't a full-time occupation. If it was a computer game. If I could hit 'Save game' and then 'Quit' and go away into the void for a while and come back later when I was ready to play again.

Sleep should be like that. It should be remembered as a void where we're free of everything that goes with living. The sheer effort of it. Of thinking about it all day long. But it's not. One moment you're falling asleep, thinking about the things you should have done today but didn't, and then the alarm's going off and you're waking up and thinking about all the things you should do today but probably aren't going to.

I need a break. Not a holiday. Not a rest. Not a trip to some dinky little holiday house somewhere where I still have to live. I need a break from life. I need a save-game button. Or at least a pause button.

But I'm not getting one. So I'd better get on with it.

Dee the Language Nazi's tip of the day: It is not 'intensive purposes'. It is 'intents and purposes'. As in: For all intents and purposes, this is the correct usage.

Say it. Memorise it. Use it correctly. Don't make me beat you to death with a rusty pipe.

Wheee! Someone else wants me to beat them with a wet noodle. This is a strange sort of dream come true.

Speaking of strange dreams, I've been having a lot of them lately. Probably due to the lack of A cluttering up my bed and helping me sleep better. I had a very odd one the other night involving a canal with a steam boat on it, an educational institution of some sort run by nuns with over-sized baseball bats and me flying around. At least there were any voice-activated nuclear mushrooms this time.

Randomly collected snippets.

My internet connection is an injured three-toed sloth on valium.

K^r and I are so going to the Rammstein concert in Sydney. Hell, I'm even prepared to buy sturdy boots for the occasion.

The band One Minute Silence are such pretentious Rage Against The Machine wannabes. It's really flabberghasting. I mean, they even use the line "Fight the norm, fuck the rules". Which is so different from "Fight the war, fuck the norm". I like the latter one better anyway.

If anything prominent and presumably unstealable due to size and/or motivation for the theft, odds-on it was pinched by a college student. Or group thereof. Whole billboards. Large concrete bollards. Pizza Hut letters. Real Estate signs. There is no stopping a determined, drunk college student. We are a force to be reckoned with. Give us five minutes alone and a couple of mates, and we can move the world.

I just got off the nightmare bar shift from hell. Pre-dinner drinks, 5-6pm supposedly. At 6 they were still three deep along the bar and I was working it by myself. Who would have thought the Royal Society of Church Music could drink so much.

I would like to blog more, but I'm going to pass out now.

Hey, I think Meghan's on a good thing here. The year in review. Let's go, kiddies:

Jan '00: Got dumped. Sat in Gladstone and moped. Melted from the heat or watched it rain buckets. I can't remember if we had a wet season last year. Went out with Nards and her Young Man. Did bugger-all very glumly.

Feb '00: Got over it a fair bit. Did more of the same. Came back to college and had a fantabulous o-week. Considered picking up a wonderful American. Didn't manage it, which is probably good.

Mar '00: Uni begins. Tedium ensues. We settle into the pattern of life that was 3B 2000, with all its varieties.

Apr '00: Easter holidays. I work cleaning staff and bar manager. My parents come to visit. I attempt to write two essays. I die of exhaustion and am quite happy when uni goes back and I get a break.

May '00: K^r and I celebrate our birthdays. Much alcohol is imbibed on both occasions. We have fun in true, drunken 3B style.

Jun '00: More holidays. Not having learned, I do the same thing I did last time, but this time without parents or essays. It works better, but is still adjacent enough to hell to make me declare I will never do it again.

Jul '00: Second semester begins. More tedium ensues, this time without our North American exchange students. We miss them. I buy viscerate.com, and hence begin this dump of extraneous matter.

Aug '00: Did reviews and blogged better than I do now. Got fed up with stupid people. Read Foucault's Pendulum; a truly life-changing experience.

Sep '00: That bloody sporting match was on. I morphed to another universe. Actually, I lazed around at home and watched the Olympics while pretending to write. Acquired Olivia, the Travelling Typewriter.

Oct '00: Panicked because there was only a month until exams. Procrastinated in an extreme sense.

Nov '00: Finished all exams before the official period even started, securing the homocidal envy of all my friends. Proceeded to languish.

Dec '00: Worked after-hours duty. Languished some more and bloody well enjoyed.

So there's my year in review. Rather more laziness than was, perhaps, absolutely necessary, but I enjoyed it. I met some wonderful people and did some truly hilarious things this year. And I don't regret a moment of it, which is all that needs to be said, I suppose. Here's to a worthy 2001.

Random definition of the day: Ice Hockey ~ several large men carrying large sticks and wearing armor and blades on their feet constantly fighting over a small brown paperweight.

Oh my DOUG. I don't think I can ever watch another movie ever again. This beautiful, stunning masterpiece is what I have been looking for all this time. Through endless hours of fidgeting in darkened theatres. Unnumbered counts of scornful derision heaped upon the heads of lesser movies, undeserving because they could never be this.

Yes, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has blown my mind right out my ears. From the first moments I felt connected to the movie. Well directed, well acted. That first moment when the black-clad figure flipped up, and then through the window... it took my breath away. Then they took to the air, and I was lost. I laughed with delight, with the sheer joy of witnessing this movie. It took an hour to lose the grin after the movie was finished.

I am someone who gauges how good a movie is by what time and under what motives I look at my watch. Spiceworld lasted fifteen minutes. After an hour and a half of this movie, I looked at my watch, and that was only in disappointment that there was only half an hour left. As the BeefKing next to me gasped in one particularly stunning sequence, I could watch this all night.

This movie was made for me. Merely the word 'epic' is enough to make me pause and take notice, and this exemplifies and surpasses the term. Enchanting, breath-taking, exotic and all in all, a grand and beautiful dream.

For those who (amazingly) haven't heard of it, this is a Chinese-language movie made by Ang Lee with a huge Hollywood-style budget. Starring Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh, it is, as the director said, "a kind of dream of China... a China that probably never existed, except in my boyhood fantasties in Taiwan."

See it. Immediately. Experience the dream.

This catch-all email thing sucks. Big time. I have a metric fuck-load of email, but it's all in Spanish and not even addressed to me. Or spam. Or both.

And now I know I'm really back. For your referral pleasure, I present taxidermy "freeze drying". Because a modern girl needs to know.

Fear not, my children. I have not abandoned you. I have, rather, been involved in events of epic proportions, as I shall now relate. (Get comfy.)

24th Dec, last year: Dee flies for Queensland, having had enough of people whinging about it being 'hot' when the temperature barely crested 35 (celsius) and the humidity was practically absent. It wasn't hot; it was nicely pleasant. So I pack a suitcase, realising that since my present for my father was fresh coffee, everything I owned was now going to smell of coffee. Oh well, this might be the beginning of a new range of colognes.

The flight from Canberra to Sydney is an interesting thing. It lasts about three quarters of an hour. There isn't enough time for the plane to level out, it's just up and down. It's like a normal flight in fast forward. No sooner has the air hostess done her little speech after take-off than she's wheeling out the refreshment cart. She serves you coffee while the pilot tells you all the particulars of the flight. Then she whisks away your trays, and it's seats-in-the-upright-position time for landing. Except the amusing parade of this flight was interrupted by the worse patch of turbulence I've ever encountered coming into Sydney. Of course, I didn't have a little film development (aka up-chuck) bag in my pocket, so I had to beg my neighbours before I proceeded to throw up everything except my toe nails (I checked).

So I get to Brisbane, where the minute I got out of the nicely air-conditioned car (having leapt straight into it from the nicely air-conditioned airport), the sticky heat clamped down on me like a slap in the face with bread dough that's been left in the sun to rise. I turned to my darling father and wailed: "Take me back to Canberra!" He laughed. Bastard. I consider not giving him his coffee, but realise that he'd know I had it, since all my clothes now smell of it.

That night, I escape going to Mass, but am stuck with being the cat-sitter. Easy, you may think, but this cat is no ordinary hellish feline. This cat is especially devillish, and determined to go outside. After it managed to open the door and escape while I was in the shower (thankfully not going very far, so I went out, got it, brought it back, and scolded it) I camped in front of the door, attempting to write. Hah. The cat crawled all over me, trying to find the way out. Eventually, it retreated to a chair, from which it watched me closely, no doubt waiting for me to fall asleep so it could claw out my liver and escape. Luckily, the church-goers returned before I nodded off.

25th Dec, last year, Merry Christmas all: The problem with sleeping on the sofa bed in the lounge room is that you become, by necessity, the second-earliest riser in the house. My cousins, who always used to wake me up with exhortations regarding my laziness, do not surface for an hour and a half after my own 6am emergence. My aunt shocks me by telling a story whose punchline is: "Are you coming?" (and I assure you, they were not wondering if he was going to accompany them). My mother shocks me by laughing herself silly. Later, my father will shock me by nearly repeating the story to my grandmother, who shocks me by complaining that being grandma is no fun, since you miss all the good stories.

Honestly, old people these days.

So the grandies arrive, and the presents are doled out by the young 'uns, as it has been from time immemorial. I end up with fairly much equal piles of reading matter (Martin and Jordan, as requested) and chocolate. Along with a few randoms like some socks and this weird smock-dress thing. Lunch is plentiful and blessedly free of jokes with sexual connotations. Afterwards, the grand tradition of the Christmas Nap is enacted. I decide to get amongst it this year, and awake half an hour before dinner to find that I've taken line honours at 4 hours straight, but have been disqualified since the judges think I was sleeping too heavily to qualify for the 'nap' part.

I demand a recount.

Later, I am left the sole remaining one awake as I sit up to watch the usual Australian Dancesport Championships, and wonder if maybe, just maybe...

But probably not.

26th Dec, last year: Visiting the sister time. My sister is 17 years older than me and married with three children. All daughters. The youngest one is spoilt rotten and quite a brat, which we don't understand because my sister is a school teacher and you'd think she of all people would have enough sense not to let her child behave like that. Anyway, it wasn't an extended lunch visit, which is good, because my sister and I don't have much to talk about, my brother-in-law is a tall, gruff, stoic fellow who hides behind his beard and my nieces are either too young or old enough to find hanging out with me just too uncool.

That afternoon, my cousins and I play multi-player Grand Theft Auto. More fun than three people should be allowed to have. My younger cousin (who I have described as a younger, male version of me) and I were in the same room, shouting abuse at each other, and eventually we just decided to find the biggest vehicles we could and play chicken at 100+ mph on the freeways. What better way to spend Boxing Day?

27th Dec, last year: We drive home. I sleep a lot. Mum plays Camelot and Pirates of Penzance cassettes. The whole family sings along. It starts to rain. It will keep on doing this for the next three days. Bah humbug to sunny Queensland.

28th Dec - 30th Dec, last year: I catch up with Nardia, to discover that her live-in lover proposed on Christmas day, in front of the entire family. She shows off her ring. I tease her and the lucky man shamelessly. We all hang out together and be silly, like we usually do. Sleepy Hollow, GalaxyQuest and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are watched. Trashy romances and porn are read. Sarcastic, insightful comments are made. Far too frequently. I enjoy life. It is still raining.

31st Dec, last year, but only just: I spend New Year's Eve packing. Or attempting to pack, while the cat goes to sleep in my suitcase. I consider bringing the cat back with me. My mother plays pinball on the computer. We spend the last few hours of the year 2000 beginning a jigsaw. You know, spreading out the pieces and picking out the edge bits. The fireworks start at 11:30, and I'm a bit miffed, because shouldn't you wait for the thing you're celebrating to happen before you start celebrating it?

Good bye, 2000. You were fun while you lasted, but now you're swept aside like so much debris to make way for the new model. From where I'm standing, it's bright, shiny, new and full of promise. No doubt, once I get closer, it will turn out to be just like the old model.

We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.